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The sound of a news broadcaster echoes throughout the entire workshop, only marginally quieter than the rhythmic tinkering of a man hard at work. Various clinks and clangs fill the large, empty space, the high-rise ceilings of a repurposed industrial warehouse giving even more room for both the noise of the broadcast and the notorious mercenary-for-hire’s work to echo around its walls.
“...Reports say that the villain group The Resistance has been spotted in the Eastside Districts of Strength. Citizens of Eastside are recommended to stay indoors and immediately evacuate large, open city streets to not become accidental casualties in the line of fire. According to our members on site, the elusive leader of the Resistance Lorekeeper is currently facing off against the King, the number one superhe—”
The sound of the TV crashing into the floor breaks the comfortable white noise with a loud crack, the reporter’s voice abruptly cutting out as the broadcast stutters.
Jude’s head shoots up from where he’s been hunched over his own blueprints. He doesn’t even need to pay attention to the incessant buzzing of his power to immediately spot the cause of the commotion.
“Hey, I was watching that, you know. Just because you’re awake now doesn’t mean you can just act up all you want,” Jude rolls his eyes as he straightens up in his chair, wincing at the cricks in his back as he stretches. “Is it because Tai’s on screen? I get it, but you don't have to break the monitor over it. You know his face’s gonna get burned into the damn thing now, yeah?”
He levels an unimpressed look at the far end of his workshop, at his only somewhat unwilling guest— who had just kicked over his haphazardly scrapped together broadcast setup and was now undoing the binds on his wrists with his teeth. Honestly, for someone who didn’t know that the feral cat of a man lying on Jude’s floor was one of the city’s most beloved (or beloathed, depending on who you asked) vigilantes-slash-mislabelled-villains, the scene might almost come off as cute— after all, Sharpness didn’t exactly have the sort of face that inspired fear in the hearts of his opponents. He looks unfairly pretty even now, trussed up and pouting on a dusty warehouse floor.
Still. He did kick over Jude’s fucking TV. “Hey. Are you even listening to me right now?”
“No,” Sharpness grumbles with the grace of a grumpy cat, except with the rope still held between his teeth, his response comes out more as a bit of a, “Nu-ouh.”
Well. Rude.
Still, though, Jude’s a gentleman, so he waits until Sharp has spat out the remaining rope to continue their relatively one-sided conversation. “Awh, are you mad at me again, princess? You really can’t blame me this time, you know, I didn't even bait you into that trap—”
“You made it for me. It was in my escape route, you fucking bitch,” Sharpness growls. “I know you know where those are because you’re always stalking me for some reason—”
“I’ve never in my life attempted to go after you— or any of your idiot friends, for that matter,” Jude corrects lightly. He doesn’t say anything to disprove the stalking thing or the fact that the trap was, in fact, made specifically for Sharp— mostly because they’d both know he’s bullshitting anyway. Instead, he turns his attention onto the TV as he makes his way over, making sure to stay well out of the way of Sharp’s now freed hands (and teeth). “Unless they somehow managed to cross onto my patrol paths, but that’s a different story. Speaking of which— I thought you’d want to hear about the stuff they’re doing right now, but I guess causing property damage is more important to you today?”
Some manner of cognisance flashes in Sharp’s eyes. “What are— oh. Right. We’re supposed to be doing a raid today.”
“A raid? On where, the Shieldless HQ?” Jude raises an eyebrow. “That’s kinda risky. Didn’t they just tighten security?”
“Yeah, but they replaced their old stuff with your stupid traps,” Sharpness points out, and— hm. Right. The last time Jude had brought Sharp over to one of his warehouses, he had very conveniently left out a stack of blueprints on the table that detailed all of the security details of the Shieldless Headquarters. He hadn’t thought it’d actually come in useful for Sharp, but he supposed it would just be another thing to hold over the vigilante’s head.
“And what do we say to that?” Jude grins, cackling when Sharp spits at him. “Manners, princess. See, I helped you guys!”
“You kidnapped me on the day of the base raid,” Sharp frowns. Hm. Fair enough. “And my fucking wrists hurt. Can’t you get better restraints next time?”
“I’m sorry that hiker-grade rope isn’t comfortable enough for you, princess,” Jude shrugs. “I’ll spring for steel next time. I heard they’ve got this nifty new power suppressor cuff on the market, so with luck, my TVs will be safer the next time you come around.”
Despite how much fun it is to tease Sharpness, Jude’s definitely not going for a bulk order of new shackles— mostly because it’s infinitely funnier to watch Sharp complain instead of seeing him pout with helplessness, but also because the red of rope burns against Sharp’s pale skin makes the aching creature in his chest burn with approval. Something about it, about the reminder that this is a piece of Sharpness the public will never see just makes his mind curl with a dark satisfaction.
Not that it makes much of a difference in Sharp’s own mind.
“Go fuck yourself,” Sharp says, very eloquently, before he chucks the ball of rope that had once served as his wrist bindings straight at Jude’s face, which— of course— hits him square in the nose and has him doubling over in pain, because fuck, how the hell did Sharpness even knot it that tight? Shit, and he really should’ve seen that coming, too. Not that his intuition was any help, the typically neverending hum of his power completely quiet when it came to Sharpness specifically. “That’s what you get, you prick.”
“If my nose starts bleeding, I’m wiping it on your clothes,” Jude grumbles as he grabs onto the man’s shoulder to steady himself, ignoring Sharp’s yelp of protest. “You’re so fucking needy, princess.”
The remark was meant to serve first and foremost as a jab— but the way Sharp’s face flushes red at the comment doesn’t escape Jude’s notice either. He turns away before Sharpness can see the smile tugging at his lips, still massaging his poor nose as he looks down at his even more unfortunate TV. “Okay, fuck, how do I get this up again?”
“Remount it?” Sharpness suggests. Jude resists the urge to smack his head into the wall as he focuses on putting his stupid TV back up, pinching his nose the moment the instructions are laid out for him by his ever-so-helpful power.
This is going to be so tedious.
After what really feels embarrassingly long for a supposed tech genius— made even longer by Sharpness watching him with a at first amused, then later slightly worried look— Jude finally manages to remount the TV and reconfigure its controls, the broadcast flickering back to life after a sputtering of static. Thank god the thing didn’t break— he’d go crazy without some sort of background noise.
“—live from the scene now, it looks like our King has managed to— ooh. Ooh, that’s not— uh, wait— our Crimson Star is on the scene now! It looks like Crimson is taking on the challenge of Nihility, one half of the former villain duo the Worldenders, and as expected from our city’s top Two, he’s fighting off Nihility’s insane exploits without even breaking a sweat!”
“Pff. Tai’s ass is getting beat right now,” Sharp observes succinctly as they watch the camera footage pan hastily from the supposed ‘number one hero’ (who is, at current, getting his ass beat by Sharp’s own team leader) to his hero partner— who, actually, Jude doesn’t remember the name of. He’s a lot younger than Tai, who was already their underclassman, so he probably wasn't even enrolled by the time Jude and Sharp graduated.
Jude squints at the screen as he watches Crimson whip out what looks like one of his prototype automatons (it was probably Tai’s doing. That fucking bastard probably raided his unused blueprints storage again) and blast Nihility in the face with the full force of about a hundred explosive arrows, only for the man in white to portal himself away before the blast can hit.
As the broadcast continues to pan from each angle of the fight, Jude’s attention is slowly drawn away from the screen to the vigilante sitting on his floor, enraptured by the broadcast.
It’s not too often that he and Sharp actually get to have a conversation (or what can pass for a conversation, anyway) like this— mostly because the majority of the time, there’s always some nuisance that takes Sharp out of his grasp before he gets to actually relax. Jude treasures moments like these, where he gets to see his usually prissy, high-strung cat of a vigilante docile and distracted by the fights on screen.
Because, and this is the part that the public doesn’t see— Jude doesn’t want to hurt Sharpness.
Or, well, he does— just not in the way the heroes want to hurt him. He wants to hurt Sharpness in the way that ends with both their blood mixed into puddles on the floor, in the way that results with a pretty boy bleeding out in his lap, Sharp’s sword buried halfway between his ribs and digging in further as they lean closer to each other. He wants soft skin under his hands and pointed canines digging into his throat, nails on his back and arms and blades that draw warm, wet blood.
He knows a part of Sharp wants that too— it’s why, despite their apparent animosity, Sharp hasn’t just borrowed one of his friends’ arrow cannons and used his power to put a shot right between Jude’s eyes, or why Jude himself hasn’t just levelled the entirety of Sharp’s shoddy little apartment to the ground with him inside.
…Not that he could explain that to anyone but Sharpness.
“Oh, shit— Jude, look,” Sharp exclaims, his eyes glued to the screen. A subtly vindictive smile rests on his lips as onscreen, Tai gets flung through the wall of the Shieldless Headquarters, the entire window screen shattering atop the man in a shower of broken glass shards from the force of the throw. Jude winces in sympathy— even if he and Tai aren’t exactly the best of friends, Jude’s been thrown through a window once or twice too, and it really just isn’t the best of experiences to have.
“I didn’t know Lorekeeper could do that?” Jude questions. He’s… pretty sure he can’t, actually. The few times he and Lorekeeper had met face to face (mostly because he had dragged Sharpness away for one reason or another and Lorekeeper had decided to take it upon himself to get his teammate back), the Resistance leader had given him the impression of a cautious man. Though, to be fair, what part of that was his natural personality and what part of it was the side effect of having to wrangle Sharpness all the time, Jude couldn’t be sure.
Sharp answers him a moment later: “He can’t. That was, uhhh… Onryo, I think. I didn’t really see it clearly.”
“Oh, shit. I didn’t know he was back on the scene,” Jude whistles. Lorekeeper’s former right hand before Sharp stepped onto the scene, it’d been a good few years since Onryo had mostly disappeared from the public eye— around the same time that Sharp had defected to the Resistance, actually. “What’s his whole deal again, anyway? I forgot.”
Sharpness levels him with an unimpressed look. Jude raises his hands. “Can’t blame a guy for trying, can you?”
“You can go raid Tai’s files yourself then. I’m not leaking my teammates' powers or identities to you.”
“Right, like you kept Cow and Flank’s identities secret?” Jude laughs, though he quickly regrets it a moment later when Sharp’s hand comes to strike him in the back of his knee, knocking him flat on his own face. He manages to catch himself before he eats shit, but it doesn’t erase the bruise on his pride. “Ow, ow, fuck— oh, come on, I’m just teasing! God, princess, I swear you’re harder to deal with normally than you are in a fight.”
“What the fuck does that mean?” Sharpness hisses, and— despite already having received a broken nose and broken dignity today— Jude decides to push his luck further. It isn’t his fault, really— Sharp is just too easy to tease.
“Nothing,” Jude says in a sing-song voice, in exactly the manner he knows Sharpness hates. “I was just thinking I’ve probably spoiled you too much.”
Sharp raises an eyebrow, then motions toward his legs, which— hm. They’re still bound? Jude was just teasing, but… maybe he seriously has spoiled Sharpness too much, if the blond still holds this much trust in him.
God, and to think— a year after Sharp had first defected, when they’d finally met again, he had thought Jude would kill him.
“Okay, well, what do you even want me to do about those?” Jude sighs dramatically, folding his arms over each other as he lowers himself to the floor, clearing away a pile of papers to plop himself back down by Sharp’s side. “You’re just going to try and stab me if I untie you.”
“No, I’m not,” Sharp says, his doe eyes wide and practically sparkling, a pout pulling at his lips as he attempts to court Jude’s sympathy. Jude has a feeling this very face has won over his teammates far too many times to count— because, to be frank, it’s almost worked on him a number of times, and this face happens to be the only danger his power ever wants to warn him about (when it comes to Sharpness, anyway. It works just fucking fine with everyone else). “Please, Judey? It hurts. I don’t want it to get infected.”
“Rope burns ca—” Jude’s power cuts him off in the middle of his speech, immediately fact-checking him because god forbid he wants to fuck with Sharp a little more. “....an’t get infected. If you treat them properly.”
Sharp’s face tells Jude he doesn’t believe him for a moment, but thankfully, he lets it drop. “My leg fell asleep.”
“You’ll live.”
“I need to go back home soon to feed Tom!”
“I’ll let you out by the time the broadcast is over.”
Sharp sits up. There’s a sparkle in his eye that only spells trouble for Jude, as per usual. “Really?”
“Yeah, I’ll— oh, fuck, wait, that’s not what I fucking meant— SHARPNESS!” Jude has to scramble up from his sitting position to lunge for Sharpness, who really is all too mobile for someone whose legs are still tied together, before he can pick something else up to try and knock down the TV again. It ends with him pinning Sharpness down in an only slightly awkward position, half-sitting over him with his arms caging the other to the floor, a sheepish smile on Sharp’s pretty face.
“What is it with you today and destroying my furniture? You’re not usually this fussy,” Jude pants as he calms his beating heart, raising an eyebrow.
Look, Jude knows it sounds kinda ridiculous— yeah, the guy he just kidnapped should be a bit fussy over being kidnapped— but really, Sharp was usually pretty easy to please, so long as Jude paid him a bit of attention. It was like seeing a usually docile cat start to leave scratches and bitemarks all over furniture, a total 180 shift in Sharp's normal behaviour.
Sharpness attempts to give him the silent treatment, but fails after only a minute or so— unsurprising, considering his attention span is about that of a newborn’s— biting at his bottom lip as he turns away from Jude’s piercing gaze. “I’m bored.”
“What do you want to do, then?” Jude slowly lifts himself off from where he was just previously hovering over Sharp precariously. “I don’t exactly keep a monopoly board around here, you know.”
That gets a snort out of Sharpness. “I dunno. I was supposed to be on the mission today, but then your stupid ass trapped me, so I guess Tai’s getting his ass beat by everyone else instead. So… we could spar, maybe?”
“You just want a chance to stab me, princess.”
“I don’t even have a sword on me right now!” Sharp protests, pouting again. His stupid fucking doe eyes were going to be the death of Jude, seriously. “You probably fucking stole Excalibur off of me, like you always do.”
“If I didn’t steal your sword, I wouldn’t exactly be talking to you right now, would I?” Jude huffs. “Look, how about this— we can make a deal.”
“...What?”
“One kiss,” Jude starts, fluttering his eyelashes as if he thinks he’s being cute, “and I’ll let you stab me with one of those daggers I know you have hidden in your bodysuit.”
Sharp’s eyes narrow, a small smile flitting onto his face before he remembers to wipe it off. It’s this little game they play, where Jude provokes and Sharpness pretends he doesn’t want the closeness as much as they both do. A game, where they can pretend the people they’ve become still slot together like puzzle pieces— where Jude can hold Sharpness close again and pretend nothing has changed since they graduated the Academy, hand in hand as the strongest hero team of their year.
“I don’t knowww…. I think you owe me more than that.”
“And what would that be?” Jude asks, already smiling.
Sharpness answers with firm hands wrapped around Jude’s neck, one hand loosening in their grip to reach up and tug at Jude’s ear. He winces at the not-so-gentle treatment, but he’s not exactly going to complain when, in the next second, warm, wet lips collide with his own. Sharp tastes exactly how Jude remembers— honey and milk, with a dash of warm cinnamon.
Jude’s biting down on Sharp’s lip before the man underneath him realizes it, his hands fumbling around until he can fit them around Sharp’s hips, making sure not to let the rope rub his ankles raw as he flips Sharpness around to have him sitting atop his lap. It’d be a more comfortable position for both of them if he undid the rope, probably, but Jude isn’t about to let him go now, not when the taste of Sharp’s blood is filling his mouth and the sound of his breathless whimpers echo against the ceiling of the warehouse.
He doesn’t ever want to let Sharpness go— not if he can help it.
When they pull apart, lips bitten raw and cheeks flushed, it’s Jude who goes back in first, kissing around and below the dip of Sharp’s throat, teeth pulling down the neck of his bodysuit to allow access to pale, unblemished skin. Sharp hums at every light nibble and nip against his throat, the beginnings of a breathy laugh tickling Jude’s nose as his teeth scrape lightly over porcelain skin.
You’re so beautiful, Jude wishes he could tell the man underneath him. He wishes he could kiss over every scar the years have left on Sharp’s body, every burn and bruise and the marks of the city they’ve both grown to hate.
But—
“I missed you,” Sharp whispers, like it’s a secret neither of them can bear to have repeated aloud.
He knows it isn’t permanent. Not while Tai still stands at the top of his gleaming empire, sitting on a mountain of their classmates’ corpses.
“I missed you too,” Jude replies, just as quiet, and he welcomes the cold sting of Sharp’s dagger in his ribs.
When he wakes up, it is evening and Sharp is gone, a heavy wrapping of bandages around his chest being the only sign of his presence to begin with.
(And yet—
he still tastes the blood and honey on his tongue.)