Chapter Text
“It’s unbelievable how quickly he falls for your traps! There was so obviously a skulk sensor beneath the ground.” Sharpness scoffed, blatantly confident due to his teammates newly gained strength.
“Yea, yea, as if you haven’t fallen for your fair share.” replied Jude as he distributed his redstone-filled inventory into a chest.
He paused for a while, longer than necessary, over a stack of observers, counting them twice before placing them down. He was sure of how many he had, but he felt like giving his hands something to do kept his thoughts from drifting back to how absurd this alliance was.
It’s been a few days since Jude decided to team up with Sharpness, already making a small impact on the server. The best trapper working alongside an incredible fighter quickly caused a power imbalance, bringing the two of them to both have a strength level of 5. Still, their achievements were nothing to gawk at. Their achievements seemed more like coincidences, as nobody truly believed the two were working together. After all, Sharpness had killed him 6 or 7 times, so their friendship was extremely strange. Sharpness had essentially moved into Jude’s base, as well. Prior to this new alliance, he hadn’t made a base; leading to his habit of going house to house to pick up materials. His inventory was already stored in a chest safely in Jude’s base, so there was no real reason to live elsewhere. It was undoubtedly strange that he let him take residence here, yet, it worked.
Sharpness thought for a moment prior to defending himself. “...Not something as obvious as that, but alright. Anyways, we haven’t done much other than kill a few people. We should plan something, like raiding someone's base.”
Jude turned around to look at him. “You’ve been going into other peoples bases. The reason I was able to get you to team up with me is because you tried to scam me… by using items from my own base.”
“But, that was a set-up. I wouldn’t have done that if you hadn’t asked for a Turtle potion.”
The two of them stared at one another silently, not quite used to engaging in casual conversation despite their team-up. The silence was awkward and stretched out. Jude braced himself for a defensive insult or string of curses which never came.
Sharpness brushed off the argument, then exclaimed he was going to grab food from Jude’s farm. It was surprisingly unevenly done. The seeds were a mixture of carrots and wheat which were all growing at different speeds. Jude listened to the dull snap of crops being harvested from the other room, most of them weren’t fully grown, so Sharpness was literally just plucking out seeds. He pinched the bridge of his nose. They were approaching a food famine, and no safety precaution were followed to avoid it.
“Dude, I know we’re teaming but could you at least plant the seeds back if you’re going to do that? Make it larger as well.” he ridiculed, partially in disbelief that his teammate was still an egotistical leach.
“This is why we need to raid someone else. I haven’t crafted a single hoe during my time on this server, and you would never need to craft one again as your little wheat farm would be put to shame by how wealthy we’d get.”
“Sure, i’ll humour your idea. Who would we rob?” said Jude, shortly after shooting him a skeptical glance.
While being nicely decorated, their newly shared base wasn’t really large enough for two greedy players. Every chest was unlabeled, messy, and far less efficient than a shulker box. Furthermore, the pathways between furniture felt narrower than Jude remembered. It had been built for one player, certainly not for sharing.
“Obviously someone who can’t handle the two of us.” Sharpness circled around the room like a hawk as he pondered, slowly but eventually sitting right beside Jude, causing his seat to shift downward. “How about Dragon?”
“Nah, no reason for Dragon to catch a stray. Besides, not sure what we’d steal from him.” he replied, shifting awkwardly from the lack of room on the small couch, causing it to creak like a chest opening. Despite their thick armour, he definitely could feel the warmth and weight of another person settled comfortably beside him. Unfortunately for Jude, it’d feel tense if he were to stand up now, so he stayed sat beside his teammate.
“Alright, then Tai? I doubt he’s ever avoided a trap of yours.”
Jude adjusted his position again, inching to the other side of the seat. Initially, he was settled quite close to the middle, leaving him pressed up against the other man. Now, his leg nestled beside the arm rest of the couch comfortably. During their idle conversation, Jude noticed two things. Firstly, for all of Sharpness’ untrustworthy and leech-like behaviour, he hadn’t equipped his axe once since sitting down. As well, he began to manspread, which caused him to once again press against his thigh. Until now, He was honestly anxious he’d be a victim of a hit and run, but these somewhat eased his nerves. Turning to look right at him, Sharpness nearly breathed on his cheek as he spoke again.
“I also don’t think there's any trial chambers near spawn, so it’d be a pain for him to get a mace again.” commented Sharpness, voice dropping subtly.
“His base is huge, and I’ve made a trap in there before, so I think our plan would be flawless.”
Jude hesitated before turning to agree. He could feel Sharpness’ attention on him without looking. It would’ve been easier not to meet his eyes to keep staring straight ahead and pretend his mind was plagued by an unfortunately messed up wheat farm. But, avoiding it felt weirdly submissive in a sense. After all, the polite thing to do is to look back at your teammate.
“Right. How about we get it ready for next time he gets on?”
Jude swallowed. Slowly, he turned his head just enough to meet his gaze, creating ‘adequate’ eye contact.
“You know what?” he said after a beat, forcing himself to look Sharpness in his eyes. “I agree with you… for once.”