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Shadow knows what sex is.
His basic education upon the ARK taught him this: sex is a means of reproduction. A man and a woman commit the act and the woman becomes pregnant. He'd have to be living under a rock not to pick up a few other pieces of information, but he doesn't know many details beyond that. He doesn't talk about it, no one talks about it with him- usually.
He knows that it involves the genital organs, that some means of penetration is involved, that it feels good, and that the society he lives in is equally repulsed and obsessed with the concept. It's never been relevant to him, so why should he waste time thinking about it?
Unfortunately, it becomes relevant. And it's that damn blue hedgehog's fault, because of course it is.
Post round one of sparring and laying in the grass in a prairie somewhere, Shadow listens as Sonic rambles about whatever he wants. They lounge in the shade of a vast and ancient leafy tree atop a hill, the only one for miles around. It's a beautiful place, easy to get lost in the scenery as the wind blows gently and ruffles his slightly sweaty fur.
Shadow hums and nods at appropriate times, but Sonic's unending verbal sludge is mostly background noise. Up until he starts talking about "hooking up" with someone, a topic he's never brought up before. It's abrupt and startling- Shadow tunes in and sits frozen as Sonic continues to chatter.
"-without seeing if it was okay. So I stopped her and said, 'You don't just try to stick your fingers in my ass without asking first' 'cause, like, seriously? That's consent 101. She got mad and almost left when I pointed out that it'd be messed up if I did the same thing to her. And the sex wasn't even that good, so that didn't go great. Oof."
Shadow does not hum or nod. He watches the beautiful, partly cloudy sky and mid-morning sun and wonders why the hell a woman wanted to put her fingers in Sonic's rectum. That seems unsanitary. His silence drags on.
"...I mean, I was talking about consent but I didn't ask if you wanted to hear that. My bad."
Shadow turns his head to look at Sonic. "I don't care. Why would she even want to do such a thing? You said you were having sex."
Sonic blinks. "Huh?"
"Weren't you trying to get her pregnant?"
Sonic sputters and sits up, face reddening. Shadow mimics him, minus the flustered expression. "What?! No! How did I even give you that idea?"
"Because that's the point?" he hates feeling ignorant, but Shadow is clearly missing a few pieces of knowledge. "You were attempting reproduction."
"Uh. Wow. No. We were hooking up , dude, not getting hitched."
Shadow doesn't say "I don't understand", but Sonic doesn't need a verbal confirmation that he's out of his depth- his face must say it all. Sonic asks, "Shadow, are you a virgin?"
Shadow frowns. "I don't know what that means."
"Oh," he says, suddenly staring at his feet and red up to his ears. "Uh. Okay, man, I- um."
Why is he being so awkward? He was just speaking freely about sex with some random woman, why is Sonic clamming up now? Embarrassed by his own dearth of knowledge and Sonic's reaction to it, Shadow stands and says, "Enough of this. Get up and get ready for round two."
"That's-" Sonic's ears flick. After a second he stands as well, face still flushed under his fur. "I'm gonna pass on 'round two'. Think I'm done for the day."
Shadow growls- this is not routine. Most often they chase and fight for hours upon hours. He's not yet satisfied, not internally light like a weight has lifted from his chest and aching all
over simultaneously in that pleasant way he gets on their designated sparring/racing days. "Why not?"
"I, uh. I just think it would be a bad idea. You should ask Rouge about sex 'cause she'll probably be excited to explain. I'm... gonna go now. Later!" Sonic waves and bolts away like this isn't unusual behavior, but his oddities are sporadic enough that Shadow shrugs it off. When they meet next, he'll just have to kick Sonic's ass twice as hard.
...He isn't going to take the advice and ask Rouge, like hell he is.
He's going to use her phone.
Shadow returns to Team Dark's house in a flash of light, startling the occupant in the spacious kitchen. Rouge, still in her pajamas, faces him and says, "You're back early."
"Sonic was being strange. Can I borrow your phone?"
"Sure you can," Rouge takes the device from her lounge pants and unlocks it. "What for?"
Shadow approaches, accepts it from her, and lies through his teeth. "He spoke of a Chaos-related phenomena I was unaware of. I don't want to be ignorant of something that could impact me in the future."
The last bit is only partly a lie, and Shadow is basing his untruth on a truth he learned a few weeks ago ("Werehog powers triggered by Dark Gaia energy", he's convinced Sonic made that shit up). He opens the browser app and hesitates, he doesn't feel as if he should be doing this where Rouge could peek over his shoulder. "I'm going to my room. I won't be long."
"...That's fine, honey. Is something else the matter?"
Shadow does not and will never understand how she always reads him so easily. He says, "No," and retreats to his bedroom to do some reading.
Looking up "sex wikipedia" is sort of helpful. He reads about gametes and zygotes and sexual dimorphism and other such scientific facts before scrolling to the top, where the links to relevant pages are. There's "human sexual activity" and "Mobian sexual activity" and he clicks on the first one, mostly due to the difference between himself and humans. He was raised with their diagrams and can somewhat distance himself from them.
This page is far more eye opening. There are... pictures, the very first one a Kama Sutra drawing of a woman positioned above a man during intercourse. He clicks through and reads every tab, pieces fitting together in his head. It's... a lot. BDSM, legal issues, the "human mating process" are all fascinating and disturbing. When he's done he hits the back button and visits the "Mobian sexual activity" page.
Some of it is similar to its human counterpart, but there's a great many tabs listing differences between species. Shadow scrolls down to "H" and reads the section on hedgehogs. Huffing and snorting while circling and chasing each other is one of the more primitive courtship displays listed. Hedgehogs purr- can Shadow do that, or is his biology too alien to be capable of it? He has no idea. Apparently it's common for hedgehogs to be noisy during copulation. Screaming, really? Would he scream? Does he even want to entertain that idea?
His penis doesn't look like the shown example. This one is smooth and pink, thicker towards its base. Shadow stares at the images of the genitalia for his half-species and wonders why the extraterrestrial aspect of his biology presented itself moreso in his groin than in his outward appearance.
He ends up on the page for masturbation somehow and doesn't know how to feel about it. He gets to the mutual masturbation tab, takes a detour to the highlighted word "virginity" (ah. So that's what that means), and from there reads about heterosexuality, homosexuality, and bisexuality. He knew about being gay and whatnot, but not the fine details associated with sex acts involving non-traditional sexualities. It's enlightening and horrifying.
Sometimes Shadow feels as if he's playing constant catch up for all the time he spent in stasis and all the extra time he spent hiding from others. This is just another component of life to add to his "heard about it way too late" list. It frustrated and embarrasses him, but he's learning now and no one has to know of his ignorance.
Except Sonic. The cat's already out of the bag there.
Shadow clears the last hour of Rouge's search history and closes the browser, even though he's not really done learning (he's just overwhelmed). He exits his room, returns her phone and thanks her, and disappears before she can ask him anything. He's probably making a face that tells her everything, but there's nothing he can do about it.
Researching sex makes him curious. It's stupid, but it's most of what he thinks about that night and the day after. He has many more questions, and he doesn't want to voice a single one of them to anyone. Asking to borrow Rouge's phone a second time would be suspicious and he's not looking it up at a library or elsewhere in public, so he ponders.
What would sex be to him? He's not normal. He's never tried it, nor has he attempted masturbation. He doesn't know what his sexual orientation is or if he even has one. One of the factoids he read said that about a third of (human) men and nearly half of (human) women struggle with sex. Will Shadow be a part of that statistic? No, because he's not a human, but the Mobian statistics can't be that dissimilar, can they?
He wants to find out, but he recoils at his own fascination. It seems disgusting and tedious, and for what? A momentary hormonal boost? There's no way it's that exciting.
It's no matter. Days pass and Shadow forgets about it for the most part, his curiosity dwindles with nothing to provoke it. Sex is not relevant to him.
Cue the blue bastard again.
Shadow knocks on Tails's workshop door and waits, tapping a finger on his folded arms. The fox answers after a half minute, saying, "Hey, Shadow! Are you looking for Sonic?"
"Yeah. Where is he?"
"Upstairs and asleep. Don't be too mean to him."
"I can't guarantee anything."
Tails lets him inside with a snort and Shadow takes the stairs up, barging into the room that Sonic sleeps in most of the time. True to the fox's word, Sonic is dead to the world, snoring and drooling open-mouthed on his bed, laid sprawled on his front with a blanket draped over his back.
One of his arms hangs off the side of the bed. Shadow takes advantage of that obvious weakness and drags Sonic up unceremoniously. He shouts in confusion and immediately tries to clumsily deck Shadow, who grabs his flailing arm and holds him by both wrists as he gains his footing. He blinks several times and his eyes focus.
"What the- Shadow?"
"You didn't show up to our meeting spot, and I find you here napping instead. Are you losing your touch, hedgehog?"
Sonic fights Shadow's grip. "Lemme go, I was tired. And you didn't have to wake me up like that, dude."
Shadow does let him go, but only because holding him so close was making his heart pound for no reason. He looks Sonic up and down, at his messy fur and unkempt quills and sleepy face, and an unidentifiable bubbly emotion crawls up his stomach. It slithers into his throat, lodging itself there and roughening his voice. "I can wake you in whatever way I want. You were late, you'll take whatever punishment I give you."
"Uh?" Sonic blinks. "Dang, Shadow, I'm- am I dreaming right now?"
"I'll punch you if you don't get moving."
"Yep, not dreaming," Sonic yawns (Shadow's eyes linger on his dull teeth), smooths his quills out, and pats his fur down. "Cool, now I'm ready. Where we goin'?"
Shadow somehow manages to keep his mouth shut about Sonic's abysmal self care practices and says, "The interstate along East Bend, by the weigh station next to the train tracks."
He teleports away with no further preamble, leaving Sonic to catch up. To the blue bastard's credit, he shows up in a minute, slowing to stand beside Shadow. He glances around at the busy road and the semitrucks, asking, "We racing along the tracks, or...?"
"Yeah. On three," Shadow readies himself, Sonic drops into a runner's stance. "One."
Sonic grins, offers the next number. "Two."
Shadow doesn't smile back, but his stomach curls in on itself and a giddy buzz lurks in his extremities. "Three!"
In a blast of dirt and bits of grass, they're speeding off, twin smears of sapphire and citrine. Despite only just waking up, Sonic isn't slacking. The wind whips Shadow's quills as he skates full speed on the opposite side of the tracks, legs and heart pumping. They shoot by a train, briefly losing sight of each other between the cars.
The landscape changes swiftly as Shadow and Sonic move at speeds a sports vehicle could only dream of going. Gone are the cities, greenery and paved roadways, the train tracks leading out into long, flat stretches of copper dirt. Only the occasional plateau and shrub break up the dusty, barren terrain. It's the perfect place for Shadow to make his move.
He doesn't give Sonic warning, he takes the lead, turns abruptly and lunges at the blue hedgehog. Sonic notices and swerves out of the way with a shout, Shadow rolling into a ball to cushion his fall. He uncurls and keeps up the dead sprint, heartbeat thumping and breaths quick as he adjusts his trajectory to catch up.
Sonic glances behind him and yells, "Thought we were racing!"
"You ended our session early last time," Shadow shoots back. "You're due for a beatdown!"
"As if! I'll whoop your butt, dude!"
With a feral growl, Shadow grits his teeth and gains on Sonic. The blue hedgehog zooms forward and wheels around, executing a sharp turn and heading straight for Shadow at mach speed.
They collide with a painful smack, Sonic's momentum winning out and sending them tumbling over one another into the dirt. As they roll, Shadow's head thunks against the packed earth hard enough to break a few quills, stunning him. When he blinks the fuzzy darkness from his line of sight, he's loosely draped over Sonic. He's quick to shake the disorientation and pin the hedgehog by his shoulders, looming over him.
...Um.
Shadow's mind flashes to the Wikipedia page for human sexual activity- he sees the "Kama Sutra illustration depicting human sexual activity in which a woman is on top of a man" in his mind's eye, he thinks I'm on top of him like that , and his whole body floods with a completely unfamiliar warm tingling. It lingers in his groin, and he's not so clueless as to not realize what's happening to him. He read the pages, after all.
Oh no. No, this can't be happening.
"Shadow?" Sonic asks, because Shadow's face is surely an open book right now. He jumps up and staggers backwards, away from all the burning physical contact. To his horror, there's a pulsating pressure in his crotch that grows by the second. No, no, no. "Hey man, are you okay?"
Shadow does not speak, he remembers he can leave whenever he wants. He vanishes in a flash with no explanation, teleporting himself into his bedroom and slamming and locking the door. He's panting. In a state of shock and horror, he glances down at the maroon, pointed tip of his penis emerging from its protective slit. No, come on. Why now ? Why him?
It's not going away despite his conflicting emotions. It unsheathes itself further with a twitch when Shadow thinks about the position he was just in- atop Sonic, Kama Sutra illustration, homosexuality, "You don't just try to stick your fingers in my ass without asking first", the perpetual excitement whenever Shadow meets with that damn blue hedgehog- oh, no.
Shadow stands in his room, feeling like his world is falling to pieces, and stares at his burgeoning erection. Ruddy brown, bumps lining its sides with an odd, slowly thickening knob at its base, it doesn't look like the image of the male hedgehog's penis he saw on Wikipedia. It doesn't look like a human's either. It throbs, the pressure begs for some kind of relief and he knows exactly what he can do to get rid of it. A drop of clear fluid beads at the tip and threatens to drip onto his carpet, and in his haste to prevent that from happening, Shadow grabs it.
It's... weird. Holding it feels vaguely like scratching an itch, almost. He squeezes carefully and his breathing trips before it steadies, the instinctual urge to assuage the heat builds upon itself. He's getting overwhelmed, something needs to happen or he might shut down.
Shadow takes measured inhales and exhales, tries to clear some of the steam fogging up his mind, and asks himself: Am I going to masturbate?
He knows how to. He read the "male masturbation" section on the Wikipedia page for it- men hold their penises in a loose fist and move their hand(s) along the length of it, alternating grip strength and speed. It sounds easy enough. Actually doing it is the intimidating part. Is he going to?
...Yes, he is.
Shadow decides it's not helping to be standing in front of his door. He lets go of himself and waddles awkwardly to his bed, sitting and almost taking hold of his shaft before he stops. He halts and looks at the palms of his gloves- they're dusty, that's unhygienic. He peels them off and sets them aside, his hands hovering over his erection.
He just has to touch it. And he'll probably reach orgasm, and it'll go away. With a tense intake of breath, he grabs it again. Same vague "scratching an itch" sensation.
Okay, so... up and down. Loose fist. Unintentional repeating thoughts: Kama Sutra illustration, Sonic, his confused, flushed face and labored breathing. Homosexuality, anal sex, "That's consent 101", atop Sonic, above him, would he want to be inside me like that?
Shadow is disturbed by the searing blast of arousal that drops in his abdomen like a stone and settles in the base of his pelvis, the organ in his hand twitching. That's gross, that's not what that orifice is meant for... but would it feel good? Do I have a prostate like other men do?
He's far too terrified and disgusted to try that idea. Instead, Shadow very cautiously strokes a few times as per what the Wikipedia page said, the sensation of mild relief intensifying before disappearing when he stops. The bumps on the sides of his erection are wet, he's pretty sure that's not normal.
He tightens his grip and makes the motion again, and that's... more. It feels good- it feels great, actually, his slickened pawpads and the fur on his hands dragging on his engorged skin. Shadow hesitantly- he's heard this term before, but didn't make the connection as to what it meant until now- jerks himself, the pressure in his groin gradually tightening as he does. He gasps involuntarily, hips raising to meet his fist in a clumsy buck.
Shadow doesn't know what the orb at the base of his penis is. He quickly discovers that squeezing it is incredible, and when he does he lets out a loud, extremely embarrassing, voice cracking "Ooh!" that he really hopes Rouge isn't home to witness, her ears work too well. If she's home and overhears him, he's going to disappear forever.
His worries about his roommates vanish when he massages the bulb, the unusual, clear fluid oozing from his tip and the bumps coats his palm the more he touches it. Shadow slaps his free hand over his mouth when he makes another accidental noise, his eyes rolling back into his head on a hard squeeze. Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit.
That building intensity is reaching a peak, and he knows what it is- an orgasm, the solution to his problem. Panting against his hand, Shadow lets go of the inexplicable ball on his penis. He's not finished exploring, he's discovering something amazing and he isn't ready for it to be over. The masturbation page on Wikipedia mentioned "edging"- stopping and starting to enhance pleasure. He doesn't need to enhance his pleasure, this is already more than enough, but ending this so soon is undesirable.
Shadow sits there and breathes, watching his penis throb and drip liquid onto his thighs, the fur on his fingers sticky and swiftly drying in the cool air of his room. He wraps his palm around it when the blaze has dampened to a slow burn, gently stroking. Up and down, up and down, up and down. Fuck, it's so good, why is it so good?
Anal sex. Homosexuality. Sonic.
"Mmf!"
Shadow's hand falters and he bites his palm hard, the stinging pain distracting him from his oncoming orgasm. He lets go of his penis, realizing that "edging" is not going to happen when he's so wound up. He's bound to get close the second his mind wanders, and his mind is wandering a lot at the moment.
Sonic beneath me, Sonic panting, sweaty fur and messy quills, Sonic inside me-
The heat sat heavy between Shadow's hips bursts without any more stimulation. He's not even touching himself, just gasping into his hand and thrusting his hips as whitish-clear semen spurts from the tip of his penis onto his flooring and his legs. Tears prick his eyes, he shakes and his fur and quills undulate, each ecstatic pulse stronger than the last until it tapers off, leaving him exhausted and satisfied.
It takes a few seconds for his mind to defog. Shadow swears under his breath as his rational thoughts make a comeback. Oh, no. This is so bad. This is awful. How do I forget about this? I can't be attracted to Sonic, I don't want him inside of me.
His softening penis gives one final, weak dribble of fluid at the idea of performing anal sex with that damn blue hedgehog, and Shadow stares in horror at the mess he's made.
...How the fuck is he supposed to act normal when he meets Sonic next week?