"I Love You" (and other Sonic & Tails Stories)

Break

Original story by myyla

"...What exactly am I looking at?"

"What do you think? I brought all the pieces, just like you asked."

Tails looks up from the pile of junk on top of his desk. Instead of the meticulously crafted communicator that he'd poured his heart and soul into – the one he'd spent three weeks miniaturizing until it fit inside Sonic's gloves, with a veritable swiss-army array of features – he sees a large pile of everything but the actual communicator pieces. His eye twitches. "This isn't the communicator."

"I know that. It's currently in pieces." Sonic taps the desk, where a few pieces rattle near his index finger. "These pieces."

Tails's eye twitches

"I know what I built," Tails says. "I know every part that goes to it."

"Yeah. Which I brought."

"Sure. Maybe. Maybe a tiny fraction of this pile actually belongs to your communicator," Tails says, endlessly patient, though he strongly suspects Sonic is messing with him. He has to be. Right? He has to be messing with Tails because they've been fighting, and Sonic's only ever a jerk about his inventions when he's sulking. Which is a completely different and unwarranted type of sulking compared to what Tails is doing. Obviously. "-Except I know for a fact that your communicator not only doesn't contain a giant spring – it physically couldn't contain one. Which I know you know, because you still beat me at Tetris. You know what pieces fit with other pieces."

Sonic unexpectedly beams. He sits on the edge of Tails's desk, shooting finger guns at him along with a wink that Tails is so not in the mood for, and says, "You'll get there someday, champ,I believe in you."

"Sonic, this isn't even the type of material your watch was made of. There's no way this will fit together-"

"How do you know until you try?", Sonic asks. Before Tails can start sputtering in disbelief, Sonic just leans forward and ruffles his hair. "You're giving up way before you've even tried fixing it. I think if you work hard and believe in yourself, you have a real shot at-"

"This isn't right!" Tails bats his hands away, as he was actually irritated now. "You broke your communicator almost as soon as you got it – fine. But some of those pieces were almost irreplaceable! I can't just make it new, especially not with the wrong pieces!"

Sonic winces at the interruption. He cringes, then starts to clean out his ear. "Well...almost doesn't mean it's impossible, right? With some TLC, it'll be okay, maybe even better than before. What's that saying, a broken bone grows twice as strong-?"

"So you admit you broke it! Why did you bring me all the wrong materials? What did you do to my communicator? I worked really hard on it, how did you break it this quickly?", Tails asks quickly, as we both freaking out and trying to contain his immense anger.

Sonic's ears droop. "It's not like I did it on purpose, just to make you mad", he finally says, looking off to the side. His nose twitches, and he scratches it with one finger, still avoiding eye-contact. In other words, all the tell-tale signs of a liar. 

Tails kind of wishes he hadn't let Rouge teach him about that now. 

"I dropped it in the middle of fighting some badniks...accidentally. You know this, I called you right when it happened. And when you said to grab everything, I really did grab everything. Just in case", Sonic reasons.

Tails lets out a very long sigh. He remembers that call, but then he also remembers noting that Sonic was not nearly upset enough about the broken communicator, but then he also remembers feeling so irritated and awkward during the call that he had just wanted to end it as soon as he possibly could. He now regrets trying to end it quickly, but he also wishes he had an end-call button for this conversation, too.