Work Text:
When Sharpness came to, it was of Jude spreading sunscreen on his nape. He was laid on his belly, with his head faced off to the side and his forearms cushioned between his face and the sandy towel. The shore of the sea stretched for miles out before the horizon was cut off with the edge of a hill. The ocean was glistening with an expanse of golden stars reflected from the sun. It's a sight he's seen so often his whole life and yet—
Jude's hands trail down to his shoulder blades and his palms press against lax flesh. His weight is grounding as he sits straddled over his hips. He didn't have to see Jude with his eyes to know that it was him—his body automatically recognized the callouses on his hands and the weight of his body weight pressing on his lower body.
Sharpness blinks slowly and tenses as he stretches his legs. He burrows his head in the cook of his elbow, shielding his eyes from the sun as he sighs into the towel, shaking away the remaining sleep ebbing at his eyes with a yawn.
Jude's wandering hands find themselves at the dip in his waist, petting and caressing his sides as he waits patiently to continue. The contact makes his skin tingle; like he's being tickled, and suddenly Sharpness doesn't know whether he wants to evade the touch or to melt against it. It's hard when fingers find their way on his lower back where they gently graze his skin. It forces Sharpness to arch his spine in protest, and it doesn't help that it was the exact reaction that Jude was to wring out of him. He only grumbles helplessly as his body sags in defeat against Jude's ministrations.
"Jude, stop that," Sharpness complains, but Jude only responds that it's not his fault that he's ticklish.
"I'm serious," he insists, and then denies that he's ticklish at all; but the way his skin hungrily basks in the attention suggests otherwise.
The waves sizzling down the shore is close enough for him to taste the sea salt in the air, but not enough to be a disturbance. Sharpness rests his chin on his back-wrists and squints at the sight of the sun against his face. Only an hour until it's blurry edge will make contact with the flat horizon, and a couple more until it fully disappears, with just the last bits of deep orange surrendering against the cool blues. It's interesting how he had managed to fall asleep long enough for the sun to travel so far, without having realized that sleep had taken him in secret. Perhaps the waves can lull anyone to rest, though.
Thankfully, Jude never seems to mind when he goes quiet all of a sudden. It leads to him waking up like this:
"Jude, what are you doing?" Sharpness yawns with a knowing smile.
Jude let's out his own shy huff of air, and replies, "Nothing, it's just that we've been out here for a while, and I don't want the sun to eat you alive."
And then his hands start to shamelessly do more than reapply sunscreen. They dig into a weeks worth of knots in his muscles, and manipulate his flesh into loyally parting ways for his knuckles to coax the stress out of his body. It burns and leaves behind intangible marks all over him. It's only ever him. Sharpness doesn't mind it, likes it even. It makes him flutter and swoon in all the right ways.
Sharpness wonders, too, if anything of him is left on his hands the same way his hands are left on him. Does his heart have any room left in any of his four ventricles to make room for the skin on his body? Does his brain file away moments like these to revisit when times are rough?
When Jude runs his hands along the curve of his stretched shoulders, he feels that the sun has already eaten him alive, because is what Jude doing not exactly that? When his heart thunders, lurches, thrashes, and begs to leave his awful body, where else can it make a home besides Jude's awaiting mouth?
He doesn't tell Jude as much as so, but remarks that his skin feels a bit too pink.
"You'll live… just as long as you don't complain about it to me."
Sharpness can't see, but he can feel—or rather, imagine the way Jude rolls his eyes at him. "I—it was your idea to go to the beach!"
The cap to the sunscreen clicks shut, and a new layer of cool cream reaches his overheated skin. "And—" Jude drawls, "—Don't forget that it was your idea to come with me in the first place!"
He shivers against the feeling of Jude's palms massaging the sunscreen into him. Either out of respect or uncertainty, it's never mentioned. The sunscreen smells like coconut oil and different herbs. By now, his nose has been trained to recognize the smell of the sunscreen as—this. Whatever it can be called.
And sure, maybe he did beg Jude a little at first. But after the second time, he never had to ask anymore. Jude calls it "spendingsummerinthebestwaypossible-beforeitends", and it entails going to the beach every evening from Monday through Thursday. Summer is his favorite season, but with autumn right around the corner—evident in the way temperatures have been declining—it's up to him to spend his days however he wishes. Of course, involving Sharpness. But he won't admit that Jude is right.
"What? That's not true!"
"Oh—" Jude pauses and retreats. Sharpness misses the contact almost immediately, forcing himself to bite back a whine. "So the whole 'Jude! Jude! Can I come with you? Please? Oh, you bitch.' never happened? Are we just gonna forget about that?" He mocks, while his words trail off in a chuckle.
"That's not how I sound—stop."
"Oh, but yes it is."
"Why do you love to mock my accent anyways?"
Sharpness breathed a sigh of relief when Jude began to touch his skin again. It was slow and as innocent as before: tracing the lines of his scars, the natural blemishes on his skin, and the outline of his muscles. He wonders what kind of picture he paints for him to see.
"It's fun. You sound really stupid, by the way."
Sharpness snickers, finding the opportunity to tease him. "No, you love it. You just can't get enough of it, can't you?"
Jude hums in thought. And then— "So what if I can’t?"
The only thing keeping him tethered to earth was the rhythmic sound of waves droning out in his ears, and the smell of the ocean from only a short few strides away. His eyes are useless. He can't focus on the grassy hills around them, or the golden reflection of the sun leaving traces of light in every direction it can reach. Not when Jude's hands keep traveling lower and lower—before gliding back up to his neck and shoulders, rolling the clasp of his silver necklace as they move in tandem with the waves.
His head is reeling with his own thoughts running a mile a minute, and distantly, he could feel his chest shake as he laughs. It was just a joke, because that's what they do, right?
"Hm, then it seems like I just know you better than everybody else does," he muses out loud, and Jude giggles—something authentic, genuine, more than the laugh that Sharpness punched out moments ago. His own private symphony, only for him; battling a war with the sun and the sea to have it all to himself.
Carefully, Jude sprawls himself over his back with a sigh, draping his whole body over Sharpness. It feels… nice. He buries his face into the junction between his shoulder and neck. Sharpness keeps his eyes trained forward, even when his breaths begin to tickle his skin.
"You're not… worried about yourself? I can put sunscreen on you, too, if you want." Sharpness offers, but Jude mumbles something incoherent and shakes his head.
"I don't burn as easily as you, I'll be fine."
The next few minutes are spent in quiet. It's just them—the warmth and weight of Jude on top of his back—and the ocean to fill in the silence. There was supposed to be no confusion in the way they were resting with each other, without an inch to spare between them. But every shift sent a passage of electric shocks erupting his every nerve. This way of talking, without needing words, their shared language that requires nothing verbal. He's safe in a way his armor could never afford him.
Most parts of Jude he keeps in his memory—if not all. But a majority of his memory comes from nothing mental. It's all the same in his ears: when Jude laughs or talks it's like he doesn't need anything else to recognize him. Or in the way he smells—like sea salt and sandalwood, with a hint of just—him, it's all memorized in his every being.
To put it simply, he doesn't need his brain in order to know Jude. This—he keeps in his skin, in the receptors that process touch. He will know this man even with just the ridges of his fingerprints.
It's their special thing. It's blurring on the line of "borrowed time", because they've borrowed so much to the point where he's entirely unsure of whether or not they've been doing any borrowing at all. Jude never invites anyone to the beach with him besides Sharpness. That must mean he's special, doesn't it? Jude has nothing to gain from this, and neither does Sharpness. How must he make sense of it when Jude insists that they're better off as enemies?
"Jude?"
He hums in response. It's the kind that barely coherent, but shows that he's still present enough to listen. If he's even listening at all.
"I just want you to know that you're very special to me," Sharpness admits, half-mumbling out of embarrassment.
Jude doesn't reply, but Sharpness adds, "I'm just… saying that because I'm not—I'm not sure if I'll ever find the courage another time."
He doesn't say anything, because the ocean speaks for him. The way they pool into puddle of coconut-scented sunscreen and mixed-feelings speaks more than anything that can come out of Jude's mouth. He only brings his face closer to Sharpness's skin, as if he were aiming to commit his scent to memory. Or maybe he has already. Sharpness wouldn't ever know for sure.