#at least not my main picket fence timeline fics

[skimmingmilk]

Any Shadow and Tails hcs?

Sorry this took a minute, anon! I had written up several headcanons a few days ago and then my browser crashed and I lost everything I wrote ^^;; it took a minute to find the motivation to write them up again. 

I wasn't sure if you only wanted headcanons of Shadow and Tails in relation to each other, or if you wanted separate ones for them as well, so I tried to think of a little of both! 

Shadow:

Though black coffee is his drink of choice, Shadow also enjoys a cup of rooibos tea when he's looking for something a little more relaxing. Decaffeinated coffee doesn't quite do it for him. And he only drinks his coffee hot. He judges Rouge whenever she gets an iced latte.

He's very good at painting nails, but only Rouge knows this. She's the only one he'll offer to do it for - and it's always in exchange for something like intel or tech. He learned how for the bad days where Maria couldn't keep her hands steady and got frustrated. He'd paint her nails so she could feel pretty.

Shadow likes Barry Manilow (this is mostly a joke xD …mostly). But seriously, I do think he enjoys listening to a wide variety of music though. He was limited to what tapes they had on the ARK, a lot of it whatever the scientists and Maria liked listening to, so he enjoys experiencing different genres of music just to get a feel for them. He doesn’t necessarily like all music, but there’s something to be said for just experiencing it, even if he doesn’t like it. He’s also intrigued by live music, especially since Maria was just starting to learn to play guitar when her parents sent one up with the supply ship for her twelfth birthday. That was the only experience he'd had with live music until arriving on Mobius.

Tails:

Though he drinks coffee, he does it out of pure necessity. His taste buds are still a kid's, after all, so he loads up his caffeine with sugar, flavored syrups, whipped cream, and marshmallows. When he discovers cold brew, he finds that a bit more palatable since the beans aren't made as bitter by the heat when roasting them, but he still needs flavors and cream. He actually prefers energy drinks if he’s looking for a caffeine boost, but coffee makes him feel more grown-up. Yes, even with the marshmallows.

He doesn’t read as much fiction as Sonic, but he does have a pretty large collection of comic books and graphic novels. There are some series he’s followed since he was little, which offer a bit of stability/familiarity for him when not much was a constant in his life aside from Sonic and fighting Eggman.

When he was little, Tails begged Sonic to teach him guitar. He was quickly embarrassed though, because it wasn’t something he took to naturally. They made a little progress, but as he got older he stopped asking for lessons as much, so Sonic assumed he lost interest. But sometimes when he knows Sonic’s not going to be around for a while, Tails will take out the guitar and practice by himself, though he never tells Sonic about it.

Shadow and Tails:

Shadow doesn’t actually have beef with Tails. When Team Dark came across Team Sonic in Sonic Heroes for the first time since the events of SA2 and started fighting, Shadow identified Tails as their aerial support and would save his teammates from falling into the jungle river. He also picked up on the fact that Sonic’s battle tactics focused primarily on protecting his team, and that he was holding back from full-out attacking Shadow. Part of him wanted to see that blue hedgehog’s full potential, though he couldn't really pinpoint why at the time. So it was a strategic decision to take out Tails first by kicking him in the head, nothing personal.

Scratch that, Shadow does have beef with him whenever he catches Tails drinking cold brew (this is also a joke lol, if he didn't fight the kid over putting marshmallows in his coffee, he's not gonna fight him over cold brew).

Tails has better accuracy than Shadow with a firearm, but Shadow is a quicker draw and has a faster reaction time. They both prefer to use non-lethal ammunition as a method of stunning opponents, though the Tornado and Cyclone do have lethal weaponry systems, however, since Tails often needs as much firepower as possible when going against Eggman’s air fleet. But those are just robots, so it's okay!

Tails is one of the few people who knows Shadow’s “birthday,” or at least, his “creation day.” He learned it by going through G.U.N.’s files when Amy asked him to, because she really, really wanted to know when his birthday was. He only looked it up after she promised not to throw a party for Shadow (she wasn’t going to, Tails, she just wanted to get him a card and a little gift!). Rouge is the only other person who knows his birthday - also from G.U.N.’s files - but she knows Shadow doesn’t want to be fussed over too much, so keeps everything low-key as well.

I think that's enough for now! I feel like I'm not as good at writing up headcanons independently as I am incorporating them into fics, but I hope this was along the lines of what you were looking for, anon! If you have more specifics hcs you're curious about, let me know :)

Thank you for the ask!