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Sonic and Shadow, in the woods one day, find a mushroom.
“Whoa,” it’s Sonic who says. He holds his arm straight out against Shadow’s chest. “Shadow, look.”
Shadow, who’s been wearing Sonic’s jacket out the door these days, looks. “What is it?” he says, like a lawnmower rumbling, and like a chainsaw, Sonic says back, “It’s a mushroom.”
Maybe it’s a moment or two before he adds, “Let’s eat it,” which is the most sinister part. It’s like he’s really gave it thought, and still somehow, concluded, “Let’s see if we get high.”
Shadow licks something dry and residual out of his teeth. “We’re already high.”
“Not high enough,” Sonic says, because he has a big mouth and likes to argue. He’s bending over the brown earthy patches of leaves in the path, crouched down with his quills showing to pick the fungus off the base of the tree it called home. “C’mon. Let’s eat it,” he says again with the little thing in his hands, and all Shadow can think is how cold it still is in the middle of the woods, even with a coat. Sonic’s probably wondering, he bets, something different, like how many onion rings an elephant could stack on its trunk. Or something more avant-garde, like eating the mushroom.
“I’ll go first,” announces Sonic. He’s broken the thing into two halves, the stem and the bright green cap. Shadow’s never really seen a mushroom like that before, on Earth or when Sonic gets them over to Christmas Island for a visit, or even on whatever alien home planet his petri dish was swished around on. Arms crossed, Shadow blinks the hard, gritty feeling out of his eyes. The mushroom almost looks like it’s glowing, to him.
Sonic’s chewing up the stems and the wind blows again. “It’s hot today, huh?” he says with his mouth full of them. He’s dressed himself in basketball shorts and no top, and Shadow can’t say he minds the choice, even if Sonic did fight with him, yesterday, that the Malo Mart music was from a different shop, because his Sonic’s gotten quite the body, anyway. The kind of body Shadow hopes to see on him. Chain-necklaced and long-quilled and centered by a hot-dog-eating kind of stomach. And Sonic doesn’t need any other top but him. But mostly, he likes to see his belly in the sunlight.
It’s breaking through the trees as it sets, then, golden streaks of it skewering through Sonic as he finishes the mouthful. Dirt’s on his leg and there’s a few layers of bandage taped around his knee still, from the last time they’d been this deep in the forest together and he was talking too much to see the big gnarled tree root. “It tastes,” he says, but he’s already frowning like he had when he first tried cauliflower and cottage cheese and peaches without syrup, sort of like the way he does at the dry and dirty taste of a Xanax from time to time when he’s feeling overly Werehoggish, “pretty bad. Want some?”
“Pills?” Shadow asks, and Sonic shakes his head.
“Mushroom, here, have some. The cap looks way cool, doesn’t it, Shad?”
“I don’t want any,” Shadow tells him. “It’s probably going to kill you.”
“Nah, it seems safe enough,” he says, waving a hand. “Doesn’t matter. You’ll get too full for dinner, anyway.”
Sonic’s Homer Simpson gut turns toward the other end of the forest, and Shadow blinks back awake. “Just keep walking.”
“Sure,” he goes, already started forward again with the green mushroom in both hands. “What kinda mushroom do you think this is, anyway?”
“A green one,” Shadow answers, outpacing him within a few more steps.
Sonic holds it up toward the sun and squints at it like it’s a diamond. “It kinda looks blue in the light, really.”
At dinner, Shadow’s still pissed off that the waiter asked if he knew his choice of broth would be spicy, and watching Sonic boil the rest of the mushroom in his own feeble and oniony soup just makes him madder.
“This meal is about to cost me 90 dollars,” Shadow says, “and you’re putting dirt in it.”
“I figure,” Sonic figures, his chopsticks caught in a spiral of wet bok choy, “if I hide it in here, I can get a lot more of it down. Are you gonna order rice cakes?” He brings a leaf to his mouth and eats it and then talks with his mouth full, “‘Cause I kinda want some rice cakes.”
Shadow has to take a breath because, “Of course I’m getting rice cakes. That mushroom is melting your brain.”
“I kinda want shrimp, too,” he says with his mouth stuffed again, but with yam this time, “but I know it pisses you off when I rip their heads off.”
“It only pisses me off when you pretend to talk in its voice first.”
“I only ever make the little octopi beg for their life,” says Sonic. “You know what, I think I’d like this place better if they served bread, right?”
“It’s octopuses,” says Shadow.
“What?”
“It’s octopuses.”
“Don’t you ever get tired of arguing everything I say, Shadow?”
“We watched that documentary. It was about octopuses.”
Sonic slurps up another slice of yam. “Now you’re just saying it to say it.”
“Those octopuses that you’re eating,” Shadow says, “are one of the most intelligent creatures on Earth.”
“Sounds like something an octopus would say,” Sonic says with one in his evil front teeth. “Mmm. The tentacles are the best part.”
“That’s where their brains are.”
“How do you know so much about octopi?”
“We watched the documentary,” Shadow says, “about octopuses. Why don’t you remember anything?”
“Pff,” Sonic pffs. “Says you.”
“Episodic amnesia aside, I have a better memory than you.”
“Oh, I forgot,” Sonic says, reaching across the table to take Shadow’s glass of water, “you remember, like, the Kennedy assassination? And when Coke still had the drug in it, right?”
Shadow does violent things to a roll of beef. “Those are two completely different time periods.”
“I don’t think so.”
“That doesn’t change anything,” Shadow says. “It’s still true.”
“What is?” asks Sonic.
“That it’s octopuses.”
“Oh, right.” Sonic takes a third paper menu and hunches over it. “So, let’s get rice cakes, shrimp, octopi, and yams. Do you want broccoli?”
“What?”
“Broccoli, the vegeta—”
“Why would I want that?”
“You said you wanted to try it here once, remember?” Sonic, because he’s a sweet talker, gets a waitress over to take his order that Shadow thinks is too servile, but he’s sure Sonic just spends the whole night trying to figure out what celebrity she kind of looks like to him. “We had a whole conversation about how you don’t really like it boiled. Remember?”
“When was this?”
“Alright, grandpa,” he says. “No more comments on my memory, got it?”
“Was this before or after we saw seals at the aquarium?”
“Is that how you tell time?” Sonic asks him. But he nods. “Before.”
“Then you’re lying. We ate hot pot that week, so I would have tried it then.”
“Shadow, why would I lie about you wanting to eat broccoli?”
At once, the waiter who’d disgraced Shadow’s bloodline sets a tray to their table. Naturally, he commits his second sin in delivering the rice cakes rubbing up like that on the defenseless and sensitive octopuses. The last bits of his high and the gullible bits of his diagnoses convince him they’re squirming, even, in their own cold tears. Shadow swallows the lump in his throat.
“Sweet,” Sonic cheers, and tips the whole plate into his brewing pot. “The octopi are here.”
Shadow gets ridiculously close, the closest he’s ever been, even, to:
A. reliving 2005, and feeling again as if he’s just himself and the ghost in his chest and the gun in his hand, and
B. grabbing Sonic by the back of the hair and tightening his hold til he whines, like a good dog, with a few hundred kisses waiting for him, wet ones and long ones with tongue, until he’s panting, now, the dog, and Shadow his kind master only barely makes him beg for it; afterward, there’s heat lightning outside the window, and two bongs on the hassock (that Sonic sometimes still calls an ottoman, like a simpleton) and something brightly colored on the TV. “Haha,” Sonic says, sort of like his throat hurts from the amount of bitemarks on it, or as if he’s just remembered a time when they were enemies, all the times that they’d done each other wrong or all the times they will again, for years and years and millions of exhilarating years to come, and on the same nights become hot for each other, anyway, breathe and moan, let Sonic’s apology be the cute trembling way he whimpers between every kiss, Shadow’s the smart, rapid way he makes him his finger puppet. Sometimes Sonic will— and this gets Shadow going most —tell him he loves him, both their spit on his mouth, and Shadow will remember a time when they were enemies, and Shadow will keep on biting down harder and harder on the fat of his chest. “Squidward just exploded.”
“Who?”
“Squidward Tentacles,” Sonic says, pausing just before he brings his mouth to his bong. “He rode his bike off the cliff, and he exploded.”
“Oh.”
“Is that all you have to say?”
“I didn’t really know him,” Shadow blankly says as Sonic lights the bowl.
“You guys would probably like each other.”
“Why’s that?”
For a long few seconds, Sonic breathes in his hit, coughs so hard he almost pukes, nothing unusual. He’s so elated, then, that he doesn’t seem to notice he’s gotten resin on Shadow’s big NIN shirt he slugged on after their affair. No, yes, Shadow’s certain he hasn’t noticed, because he hasn’t said anything foul like, “Oh, fuck my fucking ass,” or, “Trent Resinor. Get it?”
Instead of any of that, he says, with his breath caught, “You’re pretty alike. I think if Squidward had access to a gun, this show would go a lot differently.”
Shadow sort of looks at him funny. Later, after he’s caught Sonic in the kitchen spooning ice cream between two peanut butter cups and thusly gone to bed first, he feels it creak, and pulls the pillow from overtop his head (the marshmallic iron gate between he and the back-of-the-throat way Sonic snores at night); “I don’t think SpongeBob would use a gun, though, even if he could,” Sonic says as he’s sliding in beside him, the blankets cold with moonlight through the window he’s just opened. Shadow yawns and lets Sonic spoon up behind him, even though his legs are goddamn freezing.
“What about Patrick?” he says into the dark. Through it, everything’s blue, and the slats in the closet door catch shadows in ribbons of shape.
“I think Patrick is willing to do what it takes,” he says through the yawn he’s been passed. Beneath the covers, he grabs hold of Shadow by the waist. “Let’s go to sleep, ya ready?”
“How was your ice cream?” Shadow asks just before Sonic kisses him on the forehead and answers, “It was good. Night, babe.”
“Goodnight, baby,” isn’t humiliating for Shadow to say in the dark of their room, where no one else ever has seen. He still says it in his same old boneless voice, nothing special, he just wants Sonic to know that he’s his baby. He’s shearing sheep with Maria somewhere when Sonic says, rewaking him, “Do you think the bananas will be ready for banana bread tomorrow?”
“I think they need another day.”
“I think so, too, but I really want it tomorrow.”
“Goodnight.”
“Night. Oh, did you ever fix the thing in the dishwasher?”
Shadow hits his pillow a few hard times. “I don’t know, but it should be fine.”
“Should be or will be?”
“Go to sleep.”
“Okay, sure. One more thing, though: we should eat hot pot again soon. I’ve really been craving it.”
“Sure.”
“Mmm. Now I really want sweet potato. Goodnight.”
Shadow pulls the pillow over his head again, and just borders on dreaming Sonic is a roasted sweet potato running away from his fork and knife and brown sugar butter, when he hears him talk through it another time.
“What?” he bites with the pillow lifted, and Sonic repeats, snickering, “I just forgot to tell you: I found my favorite keychain. Y’know. The bottle opener I got for drinking so many Asahi Super Drys.”
“That’s great, Sonic.”
Underneath the pillow, it’s quiet until it’s not. Lifting it one last time, Shadow guts him with his eyes. “What?”
“Nothing, I was just quoting Family Guy,” he says. “Night.”
The next night, Shadow sleeps with headphones over his ears. He listens to Chevelle and white noise instead of Sonic, which all in all helps him sleep sounder and dream a lot differently. Sonic holds him as they do. Everything’s alright. While they brushed their teeth in the bathroom mirror, Sonic had asked (because he still talks, even when he’s brushing his goddamned teeth) if the pasta in the fridge from the beginning of the week was still good, to which Shadow, at the end of the week, said it wasn’t. “On a scale of 1 to 10, how sure are you?” was left unanswered, just a spit of toothpaste in the sink before Shadow turned away. Sitting on his half of the bed, he’s rubbing in the lotion that always makes Sonic tell him he smells good, like coconuts, when Sonic comes in with his white socks bunched at both ankles, sliding into bed and flattening down against a sigh. He folds his arms behind his head. Shadow pretends he’s reading his shirt just to admire the way his breasts lay in this position, and Sonic says, “I like when you use that lotion. It smells good.” Another few seconds pass. “Is it wrong that I’m still mad at Knuckles for drinking my iced tea the other day?”
Before sleeping, they kiss for a while. It starts as an innocent goodnight before Sonic catches his neck and takes more, more. They lay on their sides and hold each other. They let their mouths play-date, slowly warmly wetly making out until Sonic is panting against him. He whispers something crude with that crude and dangerous mouth of his. “You’re making me wet,” or something of the like, something bold enough that, after Sonic’s fallen asleep with one hand in his boxers, Shadow dreams so vividly about him that it makes him hump the pillow between his knees. It isn’t exactly sexual, more like he’s serving Sonic over a bed of curry rice, and the soft-boiled yolk of the egg on top jiggles and bounces in a way that’s full of such life, Shadow has no choice but to sticky his own thighs as he sleeps. Sonic jokes, after he’s just spent 10 bucks trying the claw machine in the grocery store, that the smiling elephant plush he’d been after could’ve been their firstborn, and rubs a big proud circle on his tummy accordingly, to which Shadow, recalling his dream, buys what they’d come for and the few extra things Sonic campaigns for, and takes him home to drill into the mattress, groceries defrosting on the kitchen tile. They watch a movie later that same night, some Ghibli-made feelgood one that Sonic can quote inside out, which he does, mouth stuffed with the pork bao he’d insisted spoke to him in the cold goods aisle. Personally, Shadow just wanted and wants to watch him eat it, and maybe that’s why he still can’t tell if everyone can hear the black cat talking, or if it’s only Kiki who can, and why he hasn’t felt loved this rawly by anyone before;
C. crying,
so he sets down his chopsticks and slides out his chair.
“I’m going outside to smoke.”
The blurry darkness and cluttered noise around the restaurant weaken Shadow’s senses. “I’ll come,” Sonic says. He leaves his pot bubbling.
Underneath the night, Shadow sucks on an old cigarette while Sonic leans against him. After some time, he reaches up to ask for the smoke, which Shadow gives him one puff off of and takes back. On the other side of the walkway, the sycophantic waitress hits a pink vape and frowns at her phone. Coughing, Sonic watches her, then snaps his fingers all confident-like. “Hey, doesn’t she look just like the bartender from that place we went in Metal City?”
“I guess so,” Shadow says, exhaling. “Not really.”
“You just love to argue with me,” Sonic bitches, and steals from him the last centimeter of cigarette above the filter. Shadow, sincerely, can’t argue with that.
“Let’s go back inside,” says Sonic. He’s grinding the smoke stub into the black parking lot with his shoe. “There’s a pinball machine in the back. Hey, I just realized: that mushroom didn’t do a thing to me. Huh.”
“Maybe you didn’t eat enough of it,” Shadow says from behind him, tucks himself further into the blue SEGA jacket hiding him from the wind.
Sonic’s chains jingle in the same breeze. He holds the door open and stops there, smelling the damp in the air like a dog. “Maybe I’m already high on your love.” Beneath the white moon, Shadow watches him grin. “Ever thought of that?”
Shaking his head, he can only tell him back, “You make me sick.”
(Sonic accepts it, of course, but he gets a warm kiss goodnight, at least, after they’ve mazed through the little imports store beside the restaurant and gone back home again. They’re in bed with the baby safe between them, the stuffed plush of the Nerds candy rope mascot that Sonic swore he couldn’t leave the imports store without, because it looked at him with too much desperation sewn into the eyes. Sonic holds it to his chest and falls asleep in under a minute like he does after a good long day. The quick steak-knife of his snoring replaces the quiet. Shadow spends the rest of the evening with his glasses on, researching the varieties of green mushroom that tend to grow around here, and wondering, mostly, when he’d become so used to living easy).