Chapter Text
Sharpness’s hand falters for a moment; fingers that were previously threading soft, fluffy hair halting in their movements. Blinking once, twice, then thrice, he wonders how exactly he ends up in this predicament—haphazardly sprawled across the bunny’s lap, with his arm resting around his waist in a leisurely grip.
Papers were strewn messily around them, their purpose entirely forgotten in favor of whatever they had going on at that moment.
Staring down into the purple abyss that was his teammate, ex-teammate, lover?
‘…’
It was complicated...and also totally not important to him at all, yup. Why would he of all people care? Especially regarding labels? Nope! That was some knockoff, Walmart Sharpness conexion.
And maybe that knockoff had the same name as him, who was also letting the end of the duo live rent free in their hand, wondering if it was a mistake to have pulled the backup trap. And maybe those useless thoughts that the knockoff had also led to a few of his deaths on the server.
He snorted, the sound small and miserable. Oh who was he kidding? No amount of internal conflict would have changed the outcome of what happened that day. He could spend the rest of his lifetime regretting what he had done but that wouldn't change anything. He was quite acutely aware that even if the duo reincarnated into a thousand different universes, memories with or not, they would somehow always end up in that same position—in that same stupid crit out chamber where he’d hear the maniacal glee of the trapper as the he would crit him out, stealing his strength.
Before he could continue further with his philosophy, his inner ramblings were promptly cut off with a loud whine, as Jude was apparently too busy trying to disappear into the crook of his shoulders.
Sighing, Sharpness decided to leave his analytical thoughts for another day. He wasn't cut out for that life anyways.
Going back to his ‘duty’ of personal scratcher and massager, he decided to busy himself with other things while endorsing the bunny's whims. Eyes trailing down, finally deciding to take a good look at the trapper who was currently in bliss, he watches the purple fluff beneath him grind and click his teeth in content, with his ears languidly laying against the back of his head while his tail was twitching rhythmically against Sharpness’s thigh.
His cheeks betrayed him, coloring his cheeks a soft rosy red that was thankfully not visible to Jude who was obliviously enjoying himself.
If anyone decided to walk in on them at this current moment and take one glance at the utterly domestic display in front of their face, they would rub their eyes raw and pinch their arms to see if they were hallucinating.
Out of everyone that was on this smp who they would expect to see be this disgustingly romantic, they would be at the bottom of the list or perhaps not even be on there.
Not that Sharpness was complaining! Not at all.
In fact, despite the mildly uncomfortable position, that would surely cause back pain the very next day, he tilts his head forward, resting his chin atop Jude’s head between the ears and in the process, moving his hands to fiddle with the ends of his hair instead.
Despite the light thumps of protest from Jude at the new arrangement, he lets out an exhausted sigh recalling how he got here in the first place.
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
After he rolled around his bed for the nth time, Sharpness sighed, finally having given up on the idea of sleep after trying to do so for the past, who knows how long? His scratchy throat triumphed its victory by making every gulp and swallow a pain in the ass as it forced him out of bed.
He groaned and his body protested loudly—knees creaking like a broken cabinet hinge—as he pushed himself upright towards the edge of the bed. His vision blurred in retaliation despite the slow, lethargic movement. After his vision mostly came back, he focused his vision as his eyes trailed to his nightstand and towards the alarm clock he was given by Jude as a ‘peace treaty’ alongside a few other trinkets.
The alarm clock made his mouth tick up an imperceptible amount; it was just like the bunny to give him a purple, rectangular, digital clock with his signature ears protruding from the middle of the device.
And that tiny tick immediately disappeared along with the rest of sleep that had lingered on him, as he stared in disbelief at the time. The clock read…4:42 am?
“What the—” he muttered groggily, cutting himself off as his throat scratched itself painfully as a warning. His mouth warbled in confusion.
He was used to sleeping easily for long periods of time quite easily despite the dangerous nature of the server. He even knew about the server's secret nickname about him, 'sleeping beauty.'
He rolled his eyes at that nickname. Anyhow, the nickname drilled into people's skulls not to mess with Sharpness’s beauty sleep, especially not after what he did to Tai.
With a tight-lipped smile, he pushed himself from the bed and across his room. He took as long as possible as he wasn't in the mood to fall face first into the ground as his body could betray him. His body never worked after the 16 hour mark, a small weakness that hadn't been exploited by anyone yet.
The cold floor beneath his feet dropped his body temperature as he rushed to wear his red slippers. He should have agreed when Jude insisted on him getting carpets.
The room he resided in was a crude set up that Jude often loved to poke fun at—a single person bed in the corner, consisting of two pillows and a singular blanket, adjacent to it, his nightstand, where his lamp and clock lay. On the other end of the room lay an armor stand that was adorned with his classic red-trimmed netherite suit, the enchantments on his sword gleamed in the dark with a dangerous edge.
Besides the floor, he wasn't really sure what was wrong with his setup. It had everything he needed for a place that was merely for resting. He scoffed, Jude was just spoiled to decorate his room with useless amenities that he definitely wasn’t jealous about.
He exited the room and closed the door behind him with a small thud, which made him flinch as he cursed the oak door. Why the hell was everything somehow louder when he wanted to be quiet?
He sighed as he hoped that the other two residents wouldn’t wake up during his night adventure.
Footsteps that knew no stealth tried their best to walk silently across the deathtrap that was disguised as a house; he dodged hidden pressure plates and trip-wires with practiced ease as he moved through a house that he had too much of a one-to-one experience with.
He shuddered as he remembered the past, which to be fair, wasn't that long ago. Parker's tired movements alongside Jude’s feathery laughter as he woke up the entire household again at some rare ungodly hour after having fallen into another one of their traps.
Like, how was it his fault that these two maniacs booby trapped their own house!? He doesn't think he'll ever really understand what goes on in the mind of trappers.
After he had successfully made his way through the house and into the kitchen, he rushed to open the fridge and grab a bottle of ice cold water from shelf near the bottom. He closed the fridge just as swiftly as he had opened it.
...and there went his plan for being quiet as he registered the door reverberate.
To be fair, it wasn't all his fault. The soft blue hue the fridge had emitted felt as if he were staring right into the fiery rays of the blazing sun.
Well, one tiny thing wouldn't be all too bad in the bigger picture, he'd been mostly quiet anyways.
He leaned against the counter and drank the refreshing liquid in one go, his parched throat moaned in bliss. He hummed, too tired to move from where he was situated.
He was still not used to having an entire kitchen with all the equipment or concepts of leftover food, a luxury he couldn’t afford before he had teamed up with Jude (or well currently squatted in the bunny’s base). Comfort and laziness was a luxury that almost no base could afford as it was merely a waste.
Nearly everyone opted for an efficient base compared to one full of comfort, amenities and useless trinkets that would simply go to waste as they would get destroyed or griefed when the base would eventually get found. It wasn’t worth it to spend hours making a beautiful base when it was bound to get destroyed within a month at most.
No one had time to pour in hours into a base only to mourn the loss of their work.
No one besides Jude.
However, the bunny was a rare case, an abnormality that he decided to exclude from his study as it skewed his 100% grief rate. The bunny was also the only person whose base had never been griefed. Used? sure, but never griefed.
And he was going to use that advantage to its max.
Although they weren’t allied or teammates, he was pretty sure he was still welcomed in Jude’s base? I mean the guy never outwardly said he wasn’t allowed and never made too much of an effort to kick him out.
Listening to social cues? Ha— that was asking too much of him.
Anyhow, as long as the trapper never made too much of a move, he was going to stick to this base like a leech and abuse the luxury he was given and take full of every single, tiny, useless amenity he saw.
He supposed this was one of the main things that he regretted betraying Jude’s trust over.
Jude was lucky that everyone was slightly afraid of him. (He gloated at that fact.)
No one in their right minds would try and destroy a trapper’s base for fuck sake. Or well to specify, no one tried anymore. He snorted, as he remembered all the poor victims that fell for the various traps littered around the house.
Tai, Rejoice, Nufili, even Wato who was a genius, alongside a few others ended up in the same crit out chamber as each and every one of them got crit out while the trapper humiliated them and laughed with maniacal glee.
‘Huh,’ he thought, as he realized that this was why the trapper always seemingly had a colorful array of backup sets.
How the heck had he never considered that before? He thought Jude just had the most horrendous style known to mankind. No wait, he still did because he styled them in that way.
Never mind, the bunny still had outfit blindness.
He shook his head in disbelief and slight amusement before he suddenly stopped in his movements. His head snapped upwards, towards the right, as he observed the soft glow of light that trickled outside like a cascading waterfall of said bunny’s room.
‘Did he forget to turn off the lights again?’ He pondered to himself before he snorted, ‘silly little bunny.’
This gave him an incentive to finally move from the spot he was situated in, his back surely had red marks from how long he had leaned against the counter. (Maybe it was a bit dramatic as he'd been there for thirty minutes at max)
He shuffled towards Jude’s room slowly to not accidentally wake the light sleeper.
Hands stopped on the metal handle as his ears twitched; was that a sound?
Scratch, scratch, scratch. The sound of graphite hitting paper continued in a rhythmic motion, as it spilled out of a room like a guilty suspect who just gave themselves away. He clicked his tongue in disapproval before he quietly opened the door.
**
Jude thumped his foot in frustration, the sound deafened by the thick gray, velvety carpet that threatened to swallow him whole. He sighed in exasperation, as his pen smoothly cut across his paper.
“No, can’t use that plan either, it would be way too obvious.”
His body twitched as he physically schooled himself from chucking the pillow that was lying on his lap as a temporary table that supported his main blueprint alongside other papers.
It wasn't worth the hours he had already wasted on these useless sheets.
But when his hands tightened around the pen with a death grip while he sliced another plan in one continuous swoop, the urge...heightened to say the least.
Instead, the pen blotted at the end and tore the page with how hard he had accidentally dug the pen into the paper.
Both his ears flattened sideways in his demise, while his body slid further down the footboard that he had been using as support. His back cried in relief, finally being released from the monotonous position he’d forced it to be in for hours.
And he immediately regretted it as his pillow tilted sideways from the jerky movement. Papers slid off the pillow, twirling like ballerinas before landing on the ground as far away from him as possible
…
This world loved to play cruel jokes.
He didn’t notice how his hands going slack as his favourite mechanical pencil rolled off in rebellion and now laid beside his left thigh. Meanwhile, he was busy as he glared dejectedly at the sheets of paper as if they had a mind of their own to get as far as possible from him
“These papers were already useless sheets of nothing, now they pull this?” He muttered aggravated as he pulled his lips pulled taut.
He was too tired to pick them back up and decided to change his focus to the main blueprint and the few sheets he had left. Eyes scanned the blueprint as he tried to find more faults in the design and how to remove flaws and improve the concealability.
‘How'd I not notice this before?’ He pondered as he found a major flaw in his current plan. He scribbled the old details out before adding new ones.
…
…
…?
The blueprints stayed in their place, unchanged. Jude rubbed his eyes confusedly as to why his blueprints were rebelling against him. It took him far too long to realize he was writing on air.
He grimaced, “maybe pulling three all-nighters in a row wasn’t the best idea.”
More papers slid off as he patted the ground around him, trying to find his mechanical pencil. The carpet felt his viciousness, followed by the floor, the underside of the bed and even the red slippers—
Jude blinked slowly.
Red slippers?
His gaze dragged slowly upwards, as black filled his vision.
Up.
up.
up… and finally,
Magenta eyes met blank olive ones.
What stood in front of him was a pale figure, unmoving, the eyes stared into his soul with an intensity that sent shivers down his spine. Blonde hair cascaded down the ghost’s shoulder, strands that had been messily sent in every direction, with one particular lock that was caught in its mouth.
The face was half covered, his dim-lamp on the opposite end of the two.
…
They both stared at each other.
Jude blinked, the other stared.
Jude moved slowly, the other stood still as a statue.
Jude knew he wasn’t particularly religious but if anyone saw what he did on the street or perhaps the windows on the building opposite to theirs, they would promptly shut it before praying to every God they could think of.
Because, “What in the ever loving fuck—” Jude shrieked, launching his pillow at the intruder who hadn’t murdered him yet.
He prayed for his blueprints that were sacrificed in this tragedy, hours of work going down the drain in an attempt to survive his own horror movie. Any remnants of sleep that had lingered from his all-nighters were promptly thrown out the window as one hand clutched his heart while the other held onto the footboard as if it would swallow him and save him.
“Jude what the hell!?” Sharpness shrieked before chucking the pillow next to the bunny’s face, the remaining papers being slaughtered.
Jude sighed and buried his face in his hands; his ears swivelled from being pinned straight back to flop languidly against his face as he let out a sigh of relief.
“Ever thought about applying as a main character of a horror movie?” Jude questioned as he deflated, adrenaline dying quickly while sleep slowly poured back in.
Sharpness simply raised his eyebrows at the question.
The blonde crouched before him, his ring finger squished his cheek, “Why are you awake at this ungodly hour? Go to sleep, little bunny.”
“Same could be said about you, princess,” Jude retorted.
With their faces inches apart, he felt Sharp’s exhale on his face before he was promptly yanked onto the others lap.
…He definitely didn’t let out a squeak at that, nope, not even if he felt the blonde’s expression morph into amusement despite not looking at him. Nope.
Annoyed about his blueprints, the scare and whatever this was, he switched their positions, the world rotated too many in these past few seconds for his tired body to handle, his vision spun a little.
He sighed, the rest of his sleep seeped back into skin with full force as the blonde cradled him with his warmth. He was aware that Sharp asked him a plethora of questions, but his voice turned to static as he tuned him out. Instead of even trying to hear the questions, he promptly shoved his face into the crook of Sharp’s neck who sighed before hesitant hands scratched the base of his ears which made Jude melt instantly.
(The rest went as normal to when Sharpness stopped his movements)
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Despite his thumps of protest and whines, Sharpness, the asshole he is, refused to treat him further.
“What do you want?” Jude inquired, his voice slurring half way through his questioning.
Feeling a ghost of a smile on his head, Sharp’s voice spoke slowly and smoothly like honey, “Go to sleep, we have a lot to do in the morning. The drowned aren’t easy to kill.”
“It’s just a little lon—”
“Go to sleep Jude.”
Thumping his foot one last time, like a falling rebellion’s last act, he let out a long sigh, admitting his defeat.
“Alright…”
Sharp enjoying his little feat of victory, hummed happily. Which—fine wasn’t that bad until his heater—deciding to take away every last thing he had going for him, also decided to get up.
Eyebrows furrowing and lips pulling into a tight-lipped line, he watches as Sharpness slowly pulls himself up and away from Jude. The blonde dusts away non-existent particles from his shoulders and knees before offering a hand to the bunny.
Forcing himself to school his expression before Sharpness gets a look at his crest fallen expression, he takes the offered hand with a light grip before he’s getting pulled to his feet.
It was kind of odd really.
Calloused hands from years of combat practice held his own with a feathery light grip as if Jude was a fragile creature that would fall apart with the lightest bit of force; the soft action was tinting his cheeks purple.
Everything was so, so confusing.
In front of everyone, they would both pull the facade of being the perfect definition of what everyone would call ‘rivals.’ Yet behind closed doors and soft moon-lit nights, rough hands would take care of him with a gentleness he didn’t know the other was capable of.
He knew whatever they had going on between them wasn’t normal, not for friends, not for teammates and definitely not for enemies.
Not wanting to go into an existential crisis about what they were, he did what was best at, ignoring his problems.
Instead his eyes began trailing to the mess around him, observing the mess with a fake despondent expression at the papers strewn everywhere, the once tidy room, now the aftermath of a war zone.
“Want help?”
Humming at the others proposal, he pretended to think about it for a good minute. The word yes was on the tip of his tongue, only being held back by him biting down on it. Anything to keep the blonde near him for as long as possible.
On one hand, the help would be gladly appreciated while on the other, he also knew his tendency to over share personal details the longer the other was around him. He was acutely aware that allowing Sharpness to linger longer was most definitely a bad idea.
His heart, however, wasn't thinking as logically as his mind was. With how loudly it was thumping, he embarrassingly pondered if the other could hear it. Thankfully, Sharpness being a saint for once, waited patiently. Not a single complaint was uttered at Jude's lackluster reactions.
‘He’s never been patient with anyone else,’ his mind uttered to him traitorously joining his heart.
Yeah, he needed this guy out right now and he definitely wasn’t trusting his voice to do so. His mind barely registering the slow left and right motion of him shaking his head, hair dancing around before settling down.
The next few minutes were a blur, ending with him beneath his blanket with the blonde flicking his lamp off and leaving the room quietly.
Listening to the sound of footsteps slowly fading away, Jude promptly rolls to the side of his bed, reaching under his bed to grab a hidden flashlight. As much as he adored his princess, no way in hell was he sleeping before finishing his blueprint.