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On a bed of mycelium under a shrieking sky, Robotnik lay nursing a fever, a borderline case of dehydration, and a gashed palm. It wasn’t raining on this piece of shiitake planet, no, that wasn’t good enough - micro-meteriods were falling like blazing hail on his work site and bouncing in smoking ricochets off his shelter. He had sliced his palm open climbing down from the antenna array, and for two days he’d been huddled here chewing up antimicrobial lichen into paste to fight off the infection that was making his palm angry red and making him sweat through the remains of his flight suit.
His brain was like a big ringing bell in his skull. It wasn’t mushrooms this time. Spheres glowed in the dark vault of his consciousness, humming in voices of blue, green, viridian. That one was a meteor… combine a migraine’s nausea with a fever’s boneless, jelly-jointed weakness, and he hadn’t had a sip of water in days. His good hand made a weak, disconnected grasping motion, like he could summon a Badnik or his Agent. He wouldn’t die. He kind of wanted to.
There was a word for this, he thought feverishly, staring dazed at the flaming green sky as it fell down on him. There was a word to make it stop. Veyron.
* * *
His hands entered the shimmering field around the Chaos Emerald and his gloves shorted and stopped reporting data. It didn’t matter, because every cell in his bloodstream was suddenly as nimble and capable as a nanomachine and starting to glow in his veins. Like Spock at the end of The Wrath of Khan.
With this power, he could be… do… have … anything he wanted.
Anything he wanted.
In the blink of an atomic oscillation, he appeared in front of Stone.
It was like a sitcom rerun. He was back in the Mean Bean, freshly re-hatched, and Stone was standing behind the counter. And Stone was just as insultingly confused this time around, trying to parse Robotnik’s snazzy new look. As if he had any room to criticize. How good would Stone look after ten months among-us the fungus?
Besides, Robotnik was proud of the new ‘stache. The sip of latte left a bow of foam on it and Robotnik licked it away with relish.
Stone beamed at him, and Robotnik felt their rhythm reconnect in his synapses as if they had never been apart. Robotnik had never “clicked” with anybody before in his entire life, but Stone was as form-fitting as his flight suit.
This time around, the pink Knucklehead was nowhere to be found. Robotnik wasn’t even sure where the rest of himself was; he felt a little green (nauseous) and a little like a prism had split him into an absolutely blinding rainbow of possibilities. This Chaos Emerald was straight gas.
“I followed your instructions to a T, sir.” Stone said it like that was something to be proud of, and not the bare minimum. (Robotnik knew he would.)
“All of them?” Robotnik asked, questioningly.
“All of them,” Stone confirmed. He smiled.
Robotnik curled his mouth.
“Can I get you anyth-” Stone began, and Robotnik bounded the counter (maybe he phased through it, who knows), and was suddenly an inch from Stone’s nose. Stone looked up at him, because this close, he had too, and Robotnik felt all of his prismatic longings settle into one very very specific need.
“You waited for me?” Robotnik asked, grabbing Stone’s chin.
“Sir,” Stone managed, off-guard but not timid as Robotnik’s thumb dug into the soft space under his jaw. “Yes.”
“Nobody else touched you?” Robotnik asked; he could smell the electricity in Stone’s brain. It smelled octarine. He felt the bundle of energy running down Stone’s spinal column. It got hotter and brighter when Robotnik spoke.
“No one.”
Robotnik was satisfied. He smashed his mouth to Stone’s and it wasn’t very nice because he knocked their teeth together. Being out of your mind on Chaos Energy will do that. He didn’t want gentle or soft or nice. He wanted to eat Stone alive.
The salty taste of blood delighted him and made him growl, and Stone’s glittering eyes told him he was tasting it too. Robotnik reared back for a second to shake off the ringing in his teeth, and then Stone grabbed his head and wrenched it, him, down toward him so they could do it right. Stone liked the taste of blood, too.
Robotnik had been on a planet without human contact for ten months, and until the mini’niks had burned off the sad remains of his flight suit, he hadn’t exactly been in touch with his own skin, either. They swept their cleaning lasers over him like so many little fish darting in and out cleaning a big predator’s teeth. So much for machines. He loved them, but what he really loved was Stone’s solid, seeking hands getting into his sleeves, under his coat, wherever he might find a way into his clothes to touch his skin.
The thing about the suits, Robotnik thought in one of the many, many little corners of his mind where he kept thinking even when there was a tongue in his mouth, is they were great for temperature regulation, disposal of shed epidermis particles, and environmental hazards like gamma radiation and spilled soda, but the nanoshear zips and clasps made it impossible for your [henchman? boytoy? redacted, static noise ] to get his hand around your dick without some truly stupid fumbling around.
Robotnik grabbed Stone with two fistfuls of his suit jacket and pulled him. They were in the back room, where the bed was waiting - sheets untucked at bottom of the mattress. Instructions to a goddamn, marvelous T. Robotnik yanked the cover and top sheet off the bed like someone doing a tablecloth trick. He opened the discreet cabinet, right where his blueprints said it should be, and found a precisely-folded stack of towels waiting. He threw one on the bed.
Stone recognized the script. He knew his role now. While Robotnik undressed, Stone opened the mini-fridge. He took a black box out. It was inlaid with a red R, and opened with Stone’s thumb print.
Stone tugged his tie off and hung his jacket over the desk chair. He came back to stand at the foot of the bed.
Robotnik was sitting on the edge, and turned to face him. “Leave the rest on,” Robotnik said. After ten months of living in the dirt, Stone’s android-like attention to dress was really… really working for him. Crisp. Perfect.
“Are we going to talk?” Stone asked. Stone was watching him bob between his legs. Like, following with his eyes watching. Staring.
“After,” Robotnik said.
“Get comfortable,” Stone said, sounding so businesslike despite the heat and tenderness on his face.
On his front, biting the pillow? Or on his back, so he could scratch. He wanted to see everything.
Robotnik grabbed a pillow and got it under his hips. He laid back, naked, and watched as Stone primly undid the button at his cuff. He rolled his left sleeve up once, twice. The bony bulb of his wrist. Dark hair. Robotnik grabbed himself and played as Stone's broad hairy forearm was revealed with every turn of the pressed sleeve, all the way up to his elbow. Stone flexed his fingers. The veins in his arm jumped, and Robotnik’s eyes went dark.
Stone set the beautiful box on the bed beside Robotnik. He pressed his thumb to the lock and there was a cold hiss.
Robotnik closed his eyes, settled back, and listened to Stone’s careful, precise preparation. Wet sounds. Latex stretching and snapping. He shivered in anticipation.
He thought he heard conversation in the front, in the coffee shop. Display bagels? Something stupid. Then his own voice. Maybe some other part of himself, doing something else. Something useful, while he was so strangled with need that he couldn’t think straight. Bi-locating. He could get used to this.
(What Stone saw from the foot of the bed was his beloved doctor. He had odd ragged tan lines on his arms and shins. Long legs folded, knees in the air, and his toes wriggling against the novelty of soft satin sheets. Strong muscled thighs and his long fingers around his flushed dick, and signs of hunger in the way his hip bones jutted on either side of the hollow of his stomach. Wherever his doctor had been, he had been living rough; this wasn’t missing a few meals because of his unsleeping brain, or too much coffee and not enough solid food. The broken fingernails said more than the doctor would probably ever tell him.
Stone would pamper him. Later. For now, he dripped the lube on his hand and let it seep into the creases between his fingers. Of course he was beautiful; and Stone loved these moments when the doctor let him simply look. If Stone’s body was a weapon and a shield, packed muscle and poise and silent danger, the doctor’s body was an instrument, and Robotnik was a big loud virtuoso. And Stone could never see enough.)
Robotnik held his dick and felt Stone climb onto the bed, felt each of his hands and knees landing and the heat of his body as he drew close. Robotnik spread his legs for him, and he could see sound waves like a laser light show behind his closed lids; the brush and ruffling of Stone’s neatly pressed shirt as he shouldered Robotnik’s bent knees apart and sank between them.
The first touch of his lips and tongue made Robotnik gasp. The fingertips of Stone’s bare right hand acted as the advance guard of his kisses, tickling the inside of Robotnik’s knee, the pinching, sucking, biting stops up the long, pale slope of his thigh. One gently testing finger at his entrance while Stone was nuzzling his nose into the dark curly hair. No resistance at all.
Stone’s left hand was in a black latex glove. His fingers were already lubed so he went for two, up to the knuckles, and Robotnik felt them like a beautiful first sip of something hard. It burned like a singe from a hot pan, before he relaxed and exhaled with a satisfied groan.
"I missed the way you smell," Stone said, and smiled as the balls against his lips lurched. He slid the applicator where it needed to go, guided in between his two fingers.
"I missed - " Robotnik managed, before his nerve failed. Then, "Hurry up."
Stone squeezed the plunger. Robotnik's belly scrunched and his knees bounced as cold lube spurted inside, and Stone's mouth was on his fluttering tummy, kissing and enjoying the ride. Robotnik's uncomfortable little sounds petered out as Stone laid his cheek on him, holding the doctor down so he couldn't buck and squirm.
Stone shifted over him. He replaced the little applicator with his fingers again, three this time, now that it was slippery inside and out. “That’s okay?” he asked against Robotnik’s hip.
Robotnik was riding his hand a little now, helping to guide his fingers to jostle the right spot. “More.”
Stone pumped his fingers and the pain notched up to almost too much. His fingers were wide enough that it hurt, but good warm hurt, not sharp, tearing hurt. Robotnik kept his dick caged in his hand protectively, wiggled his toes, and concentrated at letting Stone in.
Stone stretched up alongside his body to get some face time. He worked his hand in a gentle, slow half-circle, smearing lube around the crease of Robotnik’s cheeks and up his wrist. Robotnik was looking inward, distractedly. Stone had him in profile and saw the shadows of deprivation, hunger and thirst, the tightness around his eyes. He leaned in to kiss Robotnik’s bare shoulder. “Sir.”
“More,” Robotnik said, face screwing up like he’d gotten a mouthful of sour milk.
Stone slid his pinky in with the rest, leaving just his thumb to catch on the stretchy ring of muscle. “Good?”
“Yeah,” Robotnik said, around a heavy breath. His free hand roamed over his bare front, over his chest and ribs, stroking down his belly where he thought maybe he could feel Stone’s fingers moving in him even from the outside - they were so fucking big - the sweat was pooling in the small of his back, the hollow of his throat, and everything in front was awash in Stone, his breath and his weight and his earnest big eyes. The way his leg was slung over Stone’s arm. The way Stone was propping it to his chest to keep him open.
“Where were you?” Stone asked. He kept up a lazy, rocking pace with his fingers. He was up on his elbow for the traction and to study the doctor’s face.
Robotnik had said later and he had not stuttered. But Stone was putting words into their beautiful little scene, carried away by his own curiosity: "You look like you did well,” Stone said, punctuated by another kiss, “Wherever you were. I’d expect nothing less.”
Robotnik was very glad he had changed before he went to Stone. Stone did not need to see him in tatters. Stone also didn’t need to talk at him while he was getting rimmed by the web of his thumb, but here they were.
“I missed you," Stone said. Stone ducked his head and snuggled him like - as though - as if Stone meant something, something more intimate than having his hand halfway up his arsehole.
Robotnik didn't mind. The sensation was not in any way disagreeable; the sweat on his chest was evaporating and cold and Stone was warm. Fit. Even the humidity of his breath was only a slight ick, when he used his lips under Robotnik's ear and pressed his face against him like he was important.
I don’t know if I missed you, Robotnik thought. He didn’t know what that meant. Missing, like misplaced? Waiting to see Stone again was frustrating. Boring. But he had known where Stone was.
Missing like wanting ? He had wanted Stone many times. When he was hurt and tired and wanted it all to stop for a while…
“Do it,” Robotnik said, as the electric turmoil in his amygdala suddenly became a dropping, scared sensation in his chest and a fuzzy static around the edges of reality.
“Do what,” Stone asked, too gentle to be teasing, too certain to be a question. He tried to distract Robotnik with a sucking latch on his nipple, a swirl of his tongue.
"All of it," Robotnik said. One hand around the back of Stone's head, insistently squeezing at his short hair and scalp, and one hand pumping himself with some of the grease Stone had smeared all over him.
“You can’t be ready -”
“Don’t care,” Robotnik said, his voice overlaid with itself in a dazed out-of-phase buzz.
“ I care ,” Stone said, as he made his hand into a hard unyielding slab and felt the answering quake in Robotnik’s insides.
Big. Big. Robotnik rocked his hips. That was so fucking good. He was starting to glisten with sweat. Holding himself poised to take more, bailing the tension out of his body with every measured heave of his diaphragm. Ready to take him.
His whole body shook. Mn.
“Sir?” Stone asked.
Robotnik pulled Stone closer to him by the front of his shirt. "Kiss me."
Stone did. Something profoundly profane happened here: the way Stone licked open his mouth, made it fall open in hunger, and the way it was like a direct line to his asshole, suddenly unwound and soft and ready.
Stone widened his fingers in a stretch and there was space - he could feel it - the way Robotnik was ready to swallow him whole. Stone squeezed his fingers and thumb together and pushed his hand up to just before his knuckles. “Tell me when.” Still a breath from Robotnik’s lips, parted and wet, the tip of his swollen sucked tongue.
“Now,” Robotnik said, sharply, desperately.
Stone had been gentle so far, now he used some of his real strength to push his thumb through the last gulping flutter of resistance, through Robotnik’s little keen and through a panicky twist of his legs. Tight constricted wire-taut muscle gave way to velvet pillowy liquid-heat squeezing everything and Stone felt Robotnik’s startled “ Fuck! ” like a bolt of lightning in the pit of his stomach.
Robotnik's body screamed. Stone's hand was broad and flat and even pinched and making himself small, it was too much. His legs jumped, his body wrenched and tried to flee - tried to back against the headboard without a lot of purchase on the sweaty sheets. Panic.
“I’ve got you,” Stone said, holding on tight. “I’ve got you.”
Robotnik’s chest heaved. He’d gone limp with the dump of adrenaline. His legs were numb. He snarled something unintelligible, eyes screwed shut so he didn’t have to share this moment with Stone. Leave me alone.
Robotnik could barely think around him. Too much . So fucking good. The pressure of bony knuckles grinding against the gland that sent lava-hot lines of pleasure and overstimulating pain up into his stomach and down his thighs and made him shake. His stomach turned; the taste of latte came to the back of his tongue, but he exhaled through his nose like a dragon and let the saliva run out of his mouth like a broken glass.
Stone was frozen, as patient as a rock. His face was gentle, but his eyes were like glowing coals. He was hard in his pants and pressing the heated zip like a brand against the doctor’s bare hip. Robotnik was puffy, he was gaping, he was gorgeous. And Stone didn’t even need to look between his legs; Robotnik was drooling like an animal and the slamming artery in his neck was there to tear like a ripcord if Stone wanted to. His eyes were shut tight and Stone wanted to cradle him and crush him and watch him moan. Watching Robotnik flail and deal did something deep to him, called to those darker impulses that he was always so mindful, so careful of. Smile wide, trap the demons behind white teeth.
Robotnik shuddered and rolled his neck. He was in the feeling now. Stone had smashed the emptiness inside. It hurt like hell. It fucking hurt, it felt like Stone had climbed inside of him. There was no room for anything else. Get out of the way.
Then the heat started to come back. He shifted, squirmed, shook out his abused body and played some life back into his dick. Stone rubbed his leg, helped him reposition it so he sank lower on Stone’s hand. And Stone twisted, and found the right spot.
The four walls of his brain blew out and just before he saw black and stars, he thought, finally .
And then it was pleasure. He was jelly, he was hovering a foot over his own body. Stone was sliding his hand shallow, deep, and he was nothing but a furrow and the play of hot, slick pressure. A piano when you run your hand across the ivories, scales climbing and the sky coming down to meet you. Long minutes of ecstasy winding together into a noose that made it impossible to breathe. He felt the eruption building in his toes and under Stone’s hand and in his own fist and if he hadn’t already lost his mind he’d have lost it now, every single one of his marbles launched from a slingshot and clattering away. He came, hard, his whole body was the trigger and the clip emptied fast, staccato, copious and cream.
Seismic. Shudders rolling away into the earth. The silence after.
Stone laid with him quietly, listening to him breathe. Robotnik was staring at the ceiling like he was laid out for an autopsy.
“Doctor.”
Robotnik didn’t hear him. Something was happening. Reality was starting to splinter again. The hot puddle of lube in his guts, dripping out around Stone's wrist, was starting to feel like it was crawling. Chilly slugs creeping up his thighs.
His eyes darted back and forth in their sockets, faster than any human’s should. Flickering like electrostatic discharge from a gigawatt of energy frying his spine. Digital, discrete channels of reality starting to go out of phase. Like falling through that ring portal, like he was just so many protons and electrons helplessly along for the ride. He didn’t want to go. He didn’t want to go.
Stone was asking if he was okay. And Robotnik didn’t know how else to tell him: if you can save me, do it now. Make it stop. I don’t want to leave you again. I don’t want to be alone.
The safe word fell out of his mouth before he could stop it, in a voice so cracked he didn’t recognize it. “ Veyron .”
Stone’s hand slid out of him and it felt like his insides would go with it. Stone’s quick pull out left an aching, nauseating emptiness, like stumbling as you fell asleep, right in the middle of him.
Stone fumbled off his glove. No blood on the sheets, it was okay, he was okay. He might have bitten off more than he could chew, but he was okay. He looked wide-eyed like he had been hit on the head, but he was okay. Stone reached for the bottle of water on the nightstand, offered Robotnik a sip when his head turned. Then Stone let it roll away splashing on the floor and climbed on top of him. He ran his thumbs over the ridge of Robotnik’s brow, then the sensitive, bruised skin under his eyes. The edge of his mustache, and his parted lips. Top, then bottom. He wiped Robotnik’s chin with the bedspread, dragged up from the floor.
"I’m right here," Stone said. He pulled the blanket over them, a shared little shelter against whatever catastrofuck was happening inside Robotnik’s brain.
"I'm leaving again," Robotnik said, anxiously. He was looking at something Stone couldn’t see.
Stone's thumbs were still tracing his face. Stroking his cheekbones. "Take me with you."
"I can't," Robotnik said.
"You'll find a way."
Stone kissed his forehead, right between his eyebrows. Robotnik had left a slash of dribbling lube and come on Stone's thigh by now, and Stone -
* * *
Robotnik’s consciousness shuffled back together like a deck of cards. No more warm bed. No more blankets. The Mean Bean again, like a time loop. That idiot not-sheriff was there. Stone was tied to a chair. The atmosphere had gone electric and everyone was scared.
He had power untold at his fingertips, and his guts ached.
Robotnik saw all this without seeing. He was scared, too. Just a little. (And exhilarated. And hungry.) He’d broken determinism with that infinite improbability emerald. And he had been there, now he was here, and who knew where he went next. If continuity was DOA, then he was finally what he always feared he was - one of a kind, one and only, one alone. God must be lonely, too.
Then he looked down at Stone. Grabbed his face, inhaled deeply. Stone peered up at him warmly. Stone wasn’t afraid of him.
Robotnik caught a reflection. Stone had a glistening stain of something on his pants, just above the knee. Robotnik’s eyes leaped back to his face.
Did we? He asked silently. Do you remember me? Am I real?
Stone winked.
Robotnik felt some of the pieces inside him fit back together. A lot of the fear went away. He grinned. Witness me, Stone. If I can bring you with me, there’s nothing we can’t do.
Outside, GUN ‘s feeble little men and guns were like dandelion puffs ready for him to blow them away.
He threw open the doors.