Work Text:
JudeLow is entirely in his zone, even if his zone currently feels a bit hollow.
He’s wedged completely flat on a mechanic’s creeper, engulfed in the underside of a high-performance racecar. He maneuvers the heavy wrench, ignoring the emptiness in his stomach. Waking up late was entirely his fault, but he still blames his manager, TaiMC, for being a bureaucratic nightmare about clock-in times. Safety glasses fogging slightly from his warm breath, JudeLow twitches his bunny nose, trying to ignore the hunger.
He is seconds away from finishing this grueling repair when the world violently shakes.
Someone kicks the soles of his boots.
JudeLow’s ears instantly pin flat against his skull as the top of head collides with the racecar’s oil pan. He squeezes his eyes shut, his nose twitching in irritation.
He doesn’t even need to slide out to know who it is. Only one person kicks his boots with that specific sort of entitlement.
Grumbling under his breath, JudeLow grips the edges of the creeper and rolls himself out from beneath the chassis. He rips off his safety glasses, ready to snap, but the words catch in his throat.
Sharpness is standing over him, arms crossed, bathed in the golden slant of the morning garage light. His long hair is completely down today, spilling over the shoulders of his riding jacket with its red trimming. The sun catches on the silver studs in his eyebrow and nose, and when he smirks, JudeLow catches the glint of his tongue piercing.
It is a wildly distracting look.
JudeLow hates it.
“Get your ass up,” Sharpness commands, motioning towards the garage doors. “My baby is making a weird clicking sound in second gear, and the next qualifiers are in two days. I need her perfect.”
JudeLow rolls his eyes, pushing himself up to his feet and dusting off his pants. “Stop calling your motorcycle baby, Sharpness. It’s genuinely weird. You’re a weirdo.” He grabs a rag to wipe the grease from his hands, deliberately not looking at Sharpness’s hair. “And you’ll have to wait a minute. I just have to finish one small fluid line on this racecar, and then I’m done.”
Sharpness scoffs, rolling his eyes so hard that the sound is nearly audible. “A minute? You’re making me wait a whole minute for a stupid car? Unbelievable.”
Despite his dramatic whining, Sharpness stays put.
JudeLow sighs, sliding right back under the racecar. He assumes Sharpness will at least have the decency to remain quiet for sixty seconds.
He is wrong.
“I am so incredibly pissed off,” Sharpness says, his voice echoing in the empty garage. JudeLow reaches up for his wrench, trying to tune him out, but Sharpness just keeps yapping. “The first qualifiers yesterday were an absolute joke. Total garbage.”
JudeLow reaches for the final fluid line. “Oh yeah?” he calls out, pitching his voice to sound oblivious. “What happened?”
“What happened? You’re a bitch, you know that? You’re supposed to be my mechanic, you should know what happened!” Sharpness fumes, kicking the tire of the racecar in frustration. “Some stupid, nameless guy stole first place right out from under me. Didn’t even have the balls to show his face to the crowd afterward. Or to me! Just loaded up his bike and vanished like a coward.”
Underneath the car, JudeLow’s bunny teeth dig into his bottom lip to keep from smirking. Sharpness is being loud, noisy, and annoying as hell, but JudeLow finds the background noise weirdly motivating.
Fueled by a mix of hunger and pride, JudeLow snaps the final fluid line perfectly into place.
JudeLow slides out from under the racecar, still lying flat on his back. Instead of standing up like a normal person, he uses his feet to scoot the creeper backward across the concrete floor, aiming himself toward Sharpness’s glossy black motorcycle parked in the adjacent bay.
Sharpness looks down at him, unimpressed. “Get off the damn wheels, Jude. You are lazy as hell. Your legs work. Use them.”
JudeLow huffs, his bunny ears twitching defiantly, but he listens, grabbing the edge of a nearby workbench and pulling himself up.
Standing at his full height, JudeLow clears Sharpness’s headspace by a solid inch—a gap that widens significantly when his tall ears are factored into the equation.
Judelow looks down at him with a flat stare. “The creeper is efficient. You wouldn’t understand.”
Sharpness groans, shifting his weight as the heat in the garage finally gets to him. In one smooth, fluid motion, he unzips his jacket and shrugs it off, tossing it onto a stool.
Turning his back to Sharpness’s distracting presence, JudeLow steps closer to the motorcycle, his eyes inspecting the gears—but as he adjusts his posture, Sharpness moves right beside the bike frame.
JudeLow glances sideways to see what he’s doing and immediately freezes.
Without the jacket, Sharpness is just in a tight, black tank top, exposing the silver glint of hip dermal piercings cutting into his low waistline.
Judelow’s empty stomach does a traitorous flip that has absolutely nothing to do with hunger.
Sharpness, oblivious to JudeLow’s internal panic, crosses his arms and continues talking. “I’m just saying, that first-place guy probably isn’t even that cute under the helmet. Sure, he had pretty big biceps, and yeah, okay, he looked decently strong, but that’s literally it! He’s a nobody.”
JudeLow forces his eyes away from Sharpness’s hips, focusing intensely on the motorcycle’s handles to keep his composure. His teeth dig into his lower lip.
Big biceps? Strong?
JudeLow hides a smirk. It’s satisfying to know Sharpness was thoroughly checking him out on the track without even realizing it.
“If you know you can beat him in the next qualifiers, why are you still hung up on him?” JudeLow grumbles. “Besides… you’re probably much prettier than whoever is underneath that helmet, anyway.”
The garage goes dead silent. The clinking of tools in the distance is suddenly incredibly loud.
JudeLow stiffens. He didn’t mean to say that out loud.
Sharpness pauses, his furious rant stopping immediately. A smirk spreads across his face, and he takes a step forward, closing the distance between them. JudeLow has to look down a bit just to meet his eyes.
“Oh?” Sharpness says, his long hair brushing against the front of Judelow’s shirt. “You think I’m pretty, Jude?”
JudeLow’s face flushes, his ears pinning themselves flat against his skull in a desperate attempt to hide his embarrassment. “The—the clicking sound! I think it’s a loose clutch cable. Let’s look at the secondary gear—”
“Don’t change the subject,” Sharpness chuckles, stepping right into JudeLow’s personal space, trapping him against the motorcycle’s frame. “Do you think I’m pretty?”
Cornered under Sharpness’s intense gaze, with those hip dermals on full display and that long hair framing his face, JudeLow loses the battle. He whines, covering his burning face with a grease-stained hand.
“Fine! Yes! You’re beautiful, okay? You’re loud, and you’re a weirdo, but you’re beautiful,” JudeLow blurts out, his voice muffled by his palm. “Now let me fix your stupid bike!”
Sharpness’s cheeks flush a lovely shade of pink, but he doesn’t back down. The blush only makes his smirk look even more dangerous. “Beautiful, huh? Good to know my mechanic appreciates the view.”
“Shut up,” JudeLow says, shoving past Sharpness to grab a socket wrench, his heart hammering against his ribs.
He drops to one knee beside the motorcycle, desperately trying to focus on the clutch assembly. It is an incredibly minor issue—just a slightly loose cable guide—but his hands are clumsier than usual.
It doesn’t help that Sharpness refuses to give him space.
Sharpness leans back against the adjacent workbench, and as he stretches, the thin fabric of his tank top rises.
JudeLow’s eyes track the movement, catching sight of dark ink creeping up Sharpness’s spine and spilling over his shoulder blades. It looks like a massive, intricate dragon or a set of wings, disappearing beneath his long hair.
Between the hip dermals and ink, JudeLow is practically short-circuiting.
“Like what you see, bunny?” Sharpness purrs, leaning down to meet JudeLow’s wide-eyed gaze. He taps one of the silver studs on his hips. “You’ve been staring at these for a solid five minutes, and now the ink? Careful, you’re going to drool into my engine.”
“I am not staring,” JudeLow lies through his teeth as he aggressively tightens a bolt. “I am merely assessing your… your chassis.”
Sharpness laughs. “Right. Sure. Whatever helps you sleep at night.”
JudeLow forces his hands to finish the cable adjustment, snapping the protective housing back into place. “There. Done. Your baby is fixed.”
Right as JudeLow goes to stand up, his empty stomach lets out a massive roar.
The teasing smile vanishes from Sharpness’s face. “Holy shit. Was that you, or did the engine just throw a rod?”
“It was nothing,” JudeLow murmurs, gripping his wrench.
“You’re starving,” Sharpness says, his eyes softening as he takes in JudeLow’s slightly sluggish movements. He reaches out, his hands brushing a strand of loose hair behind his own ear. “Tell you what. Let me take you out for dinner tonight. Real food. My treat.”
JudeLow looks up at Sharpness, utterly defeated. “D-Dinner?”
“Yeah. Pick you up at eight?” Sharpness smiles softly, stepping into JudeLow’s space one last time.
Before JudeLow can even process the words, Sharpness leans down, pressing a kiss directly to JudeLow’s cheek.
JudeLow’s ears shoot straight up into the air in pure shock.
“See you later, bunny,” Sharpness winks, grabbing his jacket off the stool. He swings his leg over the motorcycle, fires up the roaring engine, and glides smoothly out of the garage bay into the bright morning sun.
JudeLow stands there in the middle of the shop, his hand slowly rising to touch his tingling cheek.
It takes a full three minutes before JudeLow’s brain starts working again.
He blinks, looking down at his empty hands, then out toward the empty street.
“…Wait,” JudeLow whispers to the empty garage, his ears dropping in sudden realization. “That bastard didn’t pay me.”