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It had been a month since Judelow confessed his crush to Sharpness.
A month since poor Spongs was held captive and basically threatened away from Sharpness.
Nothing much changed.
At first.
At first, it was only a shared touch here, a quick kiss there. A small peck on the cheeks at night, and comfortable cuddles when one of them was sick.
It was simple.
And it was boring.
But then, as is often the case with Judelow and Sharpness, nothing ever stayed boring.
The unspoken possessiveness between the two first reared its ugly head when Sharpness decided to go out with Saparata and Cow to grind resources for Jude’s own trap.
He wasn’t even gone for much time!
Yet Jude still followed them, and would have trapped Sharpness’s companions, had it not been for Cow knowing where all of the rabbit’s traps were.
But Sharpness wasn’t entirely innocent, either.
When he had caught wind of the rumor that a certain TaiMC had approached Jude with the offer of an alliance, he nearly blew up spawn in his anger.
It took an hour of convincing from Jude not to release his stash of tnt on spawn, and even then, he only agreed because Jude’s base was at spawn as well, and would likely get damaged as collateral.
Instead, he merely settled for repeatedly killing Tai while simultaneously threatening him with all sorts of slow deaths until the poor voidling was too scared to even come within 10 blocks of Jude.
Of course, the possessiveness was endearing.
But it was also, really, really inconvenient.
Especially for the rest of the server.
Judelow whispers to you: can we reschedule our pvp practice
Sharpness glances at his communicator, narrowing his eyes. Jude was the one who requested the practice; in fact, he had basically forced Sharpness to agree to the lesson. Not that Sharpness had any complaints.
It was strange for Jude to be backing out of something he had previously shown much interest in, so Sharpness was suspicious.
You whisper to Judelow: why
After a couple seconds of no response, he pressed on.
You whisper to Judelow: ANSWER ME WHY
Judelow whispers to you: jeez chill i was messaging parker
Sharpness’s eye twitched at the mention of Jude’s best friend.
He didn’t have anything against Parker. Nothing personal, at least.
But he definitely wasn’t being dramatic when he thought that Jude spent way too much time hanging out with Parker and not cuddled up in their bed with Sharpness.
Judelow whispers to you: listen, someones bitch ass on the server is going around griefing all of our traps
Judelow whispers to you: we have to find them and kill them before they get to our more complicated ones
Judelow whispers to you: thank god whoever pulled this shit was too stupid to go for the bigger ones, so far the only ones me and parker found destroyed are the simple kb traps and the 5x1s
Judelow whispers to you: hello???
You whisper to Judelow: fine. wtv.
Judelow whispers to you: bro im sorry but i need to do this with parker
Sharpness stuffed his communicator back in his pocket, annoyed by Jude’s excuses.
Suddenly, as he was sulking alone in his and Jude’s base, a sinister idea popped into his head.
What if he was the one that griefed Jude and Parker’s traps? A big one?
Not with ill intent, of course. But if he was the one that ‘discovered’ the griefed traps, maybe Jude would start paying more attention to him again, just like how it should be.
At first, Sharpness dismissed it. He wasn’t that much of a bad teammate. And how could he stand to destroy a trap the love of his life spent so much effort into making?
But the idea didn’t let go. It persisted, dark, tempting, whispering in his ear.
It wouldn’t cause much harm. Jude was smart enough to fix it up quickly, especially if Sharpness only messes with a couple strands of redstone.
And he could even frame another person on the server!
But he was getting ahead of himself.
Quietly, guiltily, Sharpness opened his waypoints and found the nearest 7x7 falling sand trap.
As he put on his elytra, ready to fly over to the trap with invisibility pots, a few pieces of tnt, and a shovel, something nagged at him.
This wasn't right.
He was purposefully sabotaging Jude, all for what? A little attention?
No. Not a ‘little’ attention. A *lot* of attention.
The needy, possessive part of him won against the small, moral part left. It smothered the remaining feelings of guilt, instead being replaced with an overwhelming sense of envy.
After a few minutes of silently gliding around, he finally arrived at the sandy beach Jude had set up his trap.
Digging into the waypoint, he took a moment to admire the complex redstone surrounding him.
All around him were carefully measured lines of redstone, intricate circuits, and purposeful pistons, extending and retracting.
It felt surreal, the amount of care put into the masterpiece he was about to destroy.
With slightly trembling arms, he reached into his inventory and pulled out a single piece of tnt.
He can do this. It’s only a piece of redstone. Sharpness had griefed countless bases and traps, this is no different.
But it was. All the other contraptions he’d destroyed in the past had been lifeless. Cold. As if the creator didn’t care or put much effort into it.
But this was different. This trap felt like it was living. Breathing. The sheer amount of soul and creativity in it took Sharpness’s breath away.
The passion Jude puts into all of his projects, how it didn’t look like he was merely going through the motions of building a trap he’d built a thousand times before, but how he genuinely seemed to care about each and every single piece of redstone placed.
That was what he had loved about Judelow, even before the alliance.
Sharpness took a deep breath.
It would all be worth it. For Jude’s attention, for him to just spend more time with Sharp.
He stepped forward and-
Heard the dreadful, familiar clicking noise of a pressure plate.
Quick as a snake, a net was thrown over him from the ceiling, tying him up tightly.
Sharpness was left to lay uncomfortably on the stone ground, unable to move his limbs, and completely stuck.
Fuck.
After about ten minutes of struggling with no avail, he heard noises on the surface.
Straining his ears, he heard Jude and Parker’s voices.
”…got the notification that the trap was activated!” Jude was saying.
”We’ll finally meet the idiot who’s been causing us trouble for the whole day,” Parker’s voice joined Jude’s, equally excited.
”Who do you think it is?” Jude muses.
”Probably Luigi or Spongs, this was definitely another one of their pathetic attempts to rage bait us,” Parker answered.
At this point, the two trappers’ voices were getting decisively closer, and Sharpness was still as far away from freeing himself as he was when he was first caught.
”I mean, we’ll find out now,” Jude says.
Above him, Sharpness heard the sound of sand being shoveled, then stone breaking. His heart dropped into his stomach.
After what seemed like both a century and a second, sunlight finally poured into the trap he was in. Jude’s familiar blue rabbit ears peeked down, followed by Parker’s yellow hoodie.
”Sharpness??” Jude asked incredulously. “You’re the one thats been griefing all our traps?”
”No!” Sharpness exclaimed too quickly. “It’s not what it looks like, I promise!”
”Yeah, you’re just tied up in our trap with a piece of tnt in your hand for fun, I guess,” Parker snorted.
”I thought you were better than this!” Jude scolded playfully, but beneath his annoyed expression, was one of hurt.
Sharpness recognized his teammate’s sadness immediately.
And it gutted him to know he was the cause of Jude’s unhappiness.
Jude pulled out his communicator, staring at it for too long.
“Sharpness-“ he started, but his voice broke off. Jude steeled himself, burying the hurt, put on an indifferent expression. “Sharpness, if you wanted to betray me, there are better ways.” His voice was colder than he remembered.
”Wait! Please, this is a misunderstanding!” Sharpness panicked, renewing his struggles with the net around himself.
”I see no misunderstanding. Anyways, there’s no use in struggling with the net. It’s reinforced with netherite and enchantments. You’ll hurt yourself.” Jude approached Sharpness and untied him, and stepped back. Even in betrayal, he still cared about his ex-teammate.
How pathetic.
He turned around, ready to leave. He wasn’t interested in spending another second with the apparent snake of a teammate he had.
When he had first joined Strength, he knew how dangerous it would be. How you could trust no one. How even the closest allies could become the greatest enemies in the blink of an eye.
He knew this.
But Sharpness was different. At least, it seemed like it.
His heart overrode his usually logical mind, convincing himself that Sharpness would never betray him.
That their bond of love was too strong to be broken by pixels on a screen displaying one extra strength point.
“Jude…” Sharpness’s voice trailed off in desperation. “Please, listen to me. Please, I promise, I’ll do anything!”
The trapping, trust-no-one part of Jude’s mind told him to keep walking away. To go back to the base and lick his wounds. To protect himself.
Unfortunately for him, Sharpness held too much of his heart for that to happen.
He glanced back, motioning for Sharpness to speak. He was unconvinced, but Sharp could see in his eyes that Jude was just as desperate as he was for a logical explanation that didn’t involve betrayal.
“I…I was jealous you were spending the day with Parker instead of me,” Sharpness started.
”What does that have to do with anything?” Parker asked, unimpressed.
”Well, when you told me someone was griefing your traps, I thought…” Sharpness cleared his throat. “I thought if I ‘discovered’ one of the traps griefed, you’ll pay more attention to me,”
After a beat of tension filled silence, Jude and Parker spoke up at the same time.
”Oh, you can’t possibly believe this-“ Parker was cut off by Jude’s laugh.
”Yes, I do believe him. My boyfriend would never lie to me!” Jude interrupted.
Parker rolled his eyes but allowed himself a small smile.
Sharpness was clearly relieved Jude believed him, and pushed himself off the stone floor to stand up.
”Alright, now that we figured out who isn’t the one griefing our traps, we gotta go find the real culprit.” Jude declared, already climbing to the surface.
“Coming!” Sharpness called up, already following Parker up.
“For the record,” Parker glared at Sharpness but there was no heat. “You can have Jude. He smells of slime blocks anyways,”
Sharpness burst laughing while Jude sputtered out excuses.
Oh, how he loved his boyfriend.