Looking through a playthrough of Sonic Forces because I heard that in the first level as the Rookie character, Espio took a team from the Resistance and ended up distracting Infinite to give the main group a chance to get to the space shuttle.
So far, that's all I know of Infinite and Espio having an interaction before Chaotix Case Files but that's the earliest in the game.
That's grounds to get creative.
For me, that's enough to speculate that Infinite got interested in Espio at that point, and then he pretended to be Rouge in CCF.
I like this toxic idea.
(Also, here's Silver being a supportive boyfriend 😌)
