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Eggman heavily crossed the threshold of his bedroom, sighing deeply and muttering something into his mustache. He had just finished working on the blueprints for his latest invention, which this time was surely going to wipe his archenemy off the face of the Earth. The time on the digital clock glowing on the nightstand had long since passed midnight and was creeping toward morning.
He didn't like working late — after all, he was smart enough to understand the importance of a daily routine. But when the workload forced him to stay up at night, Eggman would guzzle coffee by the liter, forcing his aging body to run on fumes.
The man casually tugged at the ribbon tied in a flimsy knot, and the burgundy silk slid off his hunched, broad shoulders, revealing his sagging hairy chest and massive belly. He was left in nothing but black cotton boxers — an elegant yet comfortable piece of clothing. Without looking, he tossed the robe somewhere in the direction of a chair, hoping it had landed there. He was too tired to waste even a fraction of his precious mental resources on such trivialities.
Despite the caffeine now flowing through his veins instead of blood, drowsiness finally caught up with the scientist, and Robotnik tiredly opened his mouth in a long yawn. He stretched, leaned side to side, his brittle joints cracking. Lately, his lower back pain had been making itself known more and more often, which, unsurprisingly, was to be expected from someone with such a sedentary lifestyle.
His head was throbbing, and even a hot shower before bed hadn't helped him fully relieve the tension. All his thoughts were focused solely on the soft feather bed, fluffed by his robot servants — so soft, so desirable, prepared especially for him. Eggman sweetly anticipated his head touching the down pillow, how he would place his dark glasses on the nightstand with a sense of accomplishment, close his wrinkled eyelids, and the relentless buzzing in his head would finally fall silent.
But as his gaze swept across his bed, he saw his mustache droop in disappointment. His eyes caught something that instantly shattered his alluring dreams of deep sleep. Not him again!
Sonic lay curled up like a large cat, his sharp blue ear-tracking devices occasionally twitching in response to the ambient noise.
Eggman grumbled angrily into his thick mustache, noting that Sonic had once again shamelessly settled right in the middle of the bed, and on top of that, had bunched up all the blanket beneath him, hiding his coal-black nose in it. The simple-minded rodent fancied himself a forest creature and made himself a little nest. How predictable and foolish!
Still, he didn't want to touch that blue cat-like thing any more than necessary. The steadily rising and falling ball of fur, quietly snoring, might have looked sweet and harmless while asleep, but with the right motivation, those quills — more like tiny chainsaws — could cut through metal.
So, Eggman would simply accept this fact and give in, deciding to lie down on the edge (as usual, really).
Ivo could no longer remember exactly when finding Sonic asleep in his own bed had stopped surprising him and had become something mundane, almost routine.
Two enemies who would normally tear each other to death sharing one bed. It sounded like nonsense — and in practice, it was. He knew Sonic was very different from the average Mobian thanks to his speed, invulnerability, and untamed power, but he hadn't expected his way of thinking to be so different, too. And to be precise, any passerby who met Sonic on the street would call him, to put it mildly, not of this world.
Eggman even felt a strange kinship with him, because an extraordinary genius had never fit into human society either.
As Eggman realized after a couple dozen similar incidents, Sonic was trying to infuriate him by being in his private quarters. Was this some kind of game? Was he testing his patience, his boundaries? Eggman suspected that Sonic might be an adrenaline junkie and capable of doing completely reckless things just to see what would happen, but he never thought it would manifest in this kind of context.
Robotnik was always amazed at how the rodent was somehow so sure that he could sprawl out on the mattress without any fear of being incinerated by some death ray come morning.
If he wanted, Eggman could strangle him in his sleep or order the Badniks to grab him, strap him to an operating table, and dissect him to finally find out how this blue hedgehog worked.
Eggman could have done all of that, but then the reasonable question arose: "Why?" That would have been underhanded and tacky. The doctor had his standards. He liked to achieve results through thorny paths so the taste of victory would feel sweeter.
So, maybe dark intentions regarding his defenseless sleeping enemy did surface in his mind, but those thoughts were always nipped in the bud.
Sonic probably realized all of this, too, and that was why he was so confident in his own inviolability. After all, they had spent a good half of their lives fighting each other and knew each other's habits like close friends.
However, returning to the question of how it all began, Eggman could make some guesses as to what had caused the shift in their relationship.
Robotnik vaguely remembered one of their battles when they found themselves trapped for a long time in a desolate winter landscape. Sonic had badly injured his leg and couldn't run as fast, and all the doctor's vaunted technology had been dismantled by the hedgehog into scrap metal.
They had been forced to declare a truce and reluctantly cooperate to survive the cold winter steppe. Eggman was waiting for Orbot and Cubot to send a rescue team for him, and Sonic was waiting for Tails to arrive in the Tornado. There was no point in continuing their feud and making their already dire situation worse.
And so the two longtime enemies sat in the frozen tundra. The harsh northern wind howled hungrily, scattering the column of smoke rising from the burning wreckage of Eggman's technology. The white sky was thick with smog; it smelled of gunpowder. Sonic sat by the fire, lit from the burning robot, trying to warm his freezing hands. It wasn't as hard for Eggman to keep warm — besides his usual red jacket, he had a massive coat and thick leather gloves. Sonic, however, being a Mobian and a resident of warm islands, wasn't used to wearing any clothes.
They sat on a rotting log, apart from each other. The feeling of being next to the person you were usually separated from by hordes of robots, high walls, and ultimately miles of battlefield felt very strange and almost intimate. It was so odd to realize that your enemy was just like you — a living creature of flesh and blood, not a man encased in steel armor or a blue blur on a monitor screen.
Sonic shivered from the cold, unhappily sniffling with his long black nose. The scorching tongues of flame didn't seem to warm him at all, and his fingers, outstretched toward the crackling fire, could barely feel any heat.
An involuntary spasm shot through his muscles, and his teeth began to chatter. Eggman almost felt pity for the poor rodent. He planned to gloat over his predicament for a while before eventually offering him his coat in a condescending gesture.
An hour passed like that. They didn't talk — it wasn't that they had nothing to discuss; they just needed to wait out some time before parting ways, pretending the truce had never happened at all.
Sonic sneezed, loudly sniffling, and Eggman tossed a dry branch onto the fire, sending a swirl of sparks into the air.
Still without saying a word, Eggman slowly stood up and began leisurely unbuttoning his coat. Sonic twitched an ear but didn't turn his way — his attention was fixed on the heat source.
Suddenly, something huge and soft landed on his head, blocking his view of the fire. Sonic flinched and immediately untangled himself from the unknown object in irritation.
"Hey! What's the...?" he exclaimed angrily, snorting with wounded pride. His hands felt the texture of expensive gabardine in surprise, and Sonic met eyes, confused, with the man calmly poking at the fire. The vulnerability that flickered for a moment in his gaze was immediately masked by his usual smirk.
"Providing humanitarian aid to the needy?" Sonic quipped.
"Don't get me wrong, hedgehog. I just find listening to your snotty sniffling annoying," the doctor said calmly, surprisingly without his usual contempt in his voice. His tone was detached, almost defensive. As if letting even a little extra softness slip into his voice would make Sonic notice the condescension in his arrogant gesture — condescension Eggman was trying hard to hide.
The hedgehog gripped the expensive fabric and stared at it, puzzled. A real storm of contradictions was raging inside him. He was chilled to the bone, but accepting a handout from his enemy was a fate worse than death.
But despite his wounded ego, Sonic wrapped himself tighter in the enormous coat and moved closer to the fire. He felt humiliatingly tiny, dressed in clothes five or more times his size. His ears folded down in shame, and he carefully avoided eye contact with the doctor. He knew damn well the old man was smirking right now!
"Thanks, I guess," he muttered, glancing suspiciously at the doctor. He was too confused by the sudden gesture of kindness to come up with any snarky reply.
***
There had never been that hatred and genuine malice in their battles that Eggman was always talking about. There was only pure excitement and a desire to impress the opponent with one's own fighting power. It was a pure game of cat and mouse that had dragged on for years. And upon realizing this, they seemed to have discovered a new stage in their relationship.
They didn't become friends — they still fought and couldn't stand each other — but now Sonic began occasionally and covertly appearing at his base to see what Eggman was preparing for him next time. Not to stop his plans, but out of pure childish curiosity, a kind of sporting interest. Though he'd be lying if he said he didn't find the idea of spending time with his enemy outside of their battles strangely appealing.
They were both unusual enough that soon, after noticing that Sonic sometimes showed up at his base without breaking anything, Eggman simply started turning a blind eye and letting him hang around nearby.
Over time, these rare visits turned into a kind of routine, and Eggman even secretly felt offended when Sonic didn't come by for a long time to see what he was planning to destroy him with next.
And somehow, they now slept together sometimes, remembering the time spent by the fire on that freezing night.
Eggman didn't think about what exactly he felt for Sonic. He was above all those human emotions and didn't want to clutter his brain with unnecessary information. He just liked sleeping next to his archenemy and watching his peach-colored chest rise and fall peacefully with his steady breathing.
An uneducated person would call it foolish affection, but Eggman explains it as dry scientific curiosity — or at least tries to justify it to himself with that.
But none of that mattered. Chaos, how sleepy he was!
Groaning, he climbed into bed, pulling on his comical nightcap. Eggman carefully pulled the blanket out from under the prickly ball and, covering himself, lay back on the bed, arms outstretched. Already half-asleep, he felt something soft, warm, and yet prickly press against his side and nuzzle his nose. God, how that annoying hedgehog irritated him. Eggman gently placed his broad hand over him and scratched behind his ear.
Dawn was approaching. Eggman finally fell asleep with his worst enemy by his side.