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thedo0zyslider · 1 year

Text

New fic! https://archiveofourown.org/works/45323782

Flower Husbands, takes place on Jimmy's 30 day hardcore server. 3k words

When Jimmy exited his house that morning, he saw something he wasn’t expecting to see.

This server he started was only supposed to last a month. After thirty days the server would be gone, and everyone would be moved back to their respective servers. Jimmy and his fellow Emperors would go back to Empires, Bek would go back to Origins, and Martyn would go…wherever it was he went after a particular server finished. Jimmy had never figured out where his friend disappeared too, despite sharing a fair amount of servers with him.

This little hardcore server meant nothing in the grand scheme of things. It would be almost meaningless after it ended. The rivalry with Fwhip here wasn’t anything compared to the one on Empires, it felt more playful in nature. This server was supposed to be something to pass the time, and make a few good memories they could look back on and have a laugh about.

Maybe that's why Jimmy felt a lot of somethings when he saw the newly constructed wall.

The blonde stared at it blankly for a few minutes, taking in the sight. The wall was made out of pillars of wood. It was an alternating pattern of both stripped birch and stripped dark oak logs. Trapdoors and fences lined the top, making for a sort of spiky effect. The bottom was made out of deepslate, the wood carefully embedded into the stone. Everything but the deepslate near the bottom felt sickeningly familiar.

The wall went quite far, surrounding most of the little village. A few places had just a few stumps of wood placed down. Clearly whoever was working on it hadn’t had the chance to finish yet.

Jimmy walked towards the structure slowly, a sense of deja vu falling over him. Like he'd already walked to this wall before. He placed a hand on one of the finished parts, slowly running it along the wood. It had been so careful, one could even say lovingly, stripped. Jimmy took a deep, ragged breath as it finally clicked to where he knew the wall from

It was the exact same wall from Third Life.

Now it had been well over a year since Third Life, and they’d ventured back into those games two separate times since then. The group was about to have a fourth go if what Grian said was true. Jimmy liked to think he’d moved on, and for the most part he had! The wall had taken him off guard is all…

“Tim!” Jimmy stopped staring at the wall, like he was snapping out a trance. He let his hand move away from the structure and fall back to his side. The dirty blonde looked behind him to see Martyn, who’d called his name, walking over. He must’ve just woken up for the day.

“Good morning Martyn!” He greeted, smiling his usual wide smile.

“Morning!” His friend responded, before looking between the wall and Jimmy. “Why are you standing in front of this random wall mate?”

“Ah well, I woke up and it was just..here” Jimmy trailed off, his gaze now back on the familiar structure. He felt something in him twist with longing, a feeling he hadn’t felt in a while.

Martyn noticed whatever look the other currently had on his face, puzzled for a moment. It took him a few moments to make the connection. The man had maybe seen the original wall once or twice in Third Life before it’d bene burned by Joel. His loyalty to Ren and Dogwarts during the game meant he hadn’t interacted with Tim much. Not in a friendly way anyways. He’d certainly hadn’t stopped by for many visits back then.

“...oh” Martyn said softly, looking the new structure up and down. “Who do you think built it?’

“Scott.” Jimmy’s response was immediate. Besides him and Martyn, Scott was the only other person on this server who’d been in Third Life. He was also one of the three people currently not at odds with the little starting village. Besides, he doubted Owen or Bek would somehow accidentally build the same exact wall that Scott had built.

“Ah.” Was all Martyn said in response. “You good mate?” Jimmy felt his concerned gaze on his back.

“Yeah, yeah I’m good” The blonde forced a small smile onto his face. He knew Martyn gave him a look, and knew exactly what look it was. But Jimmy paid no mind, simply bidding his long time friend goodbye and starting his chores for the day. He ignored that the wall felt right, that it felt like it belonged. He decided to go mining and forget about the wall all together! Today was going to be productive! He knew he was lying to himself, he wasn’t fine.

He really wanted to see Scott.

______________________________________________

Jimmy returned to the village a few hours later, inventory full of stones and ores from a mining expedition. He’d needed diamonds, and sadly hadn’t been the most successful. He maybe had enough to make a chestplate and some boots. The trip had also been a great distraction. It was hard to think about a certain something while trying to stay alive in a cave.

Jimmy sighed as he emerged from his mineshaft, brushing the dust off himself. He made a mental note to get a fortune pick, or ask Martyn to mine the diamonds for him again. He could also get a fortune villager, but that was something Jimmy didn’t have the patience to do today.

He tried his best not to look at the wall as he walked. It was a challenge, as it seemed to consistently be in his peripheral vision. Though trying not to see the wall seemed to bring him face to face with its builder.

Scott was working on one of the unfinished parts of the wall Jimmy had seen that morning. Jimmy stopped, not knowing if to approach his friend or not. He has to know what he’s doing right? He’d wanted to talk to his friend, but didn’t know what to do now that he could.

The blonde stood there for a moment, watching the blue haired man work. He watched the way the wood was stripped, how the trapdoors at the top were sometimes broken and replaced with fences. Scott had made a lot of progress, the wall almost covered two thirds of the village. If Jimmy had to guess Scott had resumed his work right around the time he went into the mines. Jimmy was glad for that, he didn’t think he would’ve been able to talk to Scott that morning.

The scottish man seemed to have felt someone watching, turning his head to glance behind him. A small smile spread across his face when he saw Jimmy, going to jump down from the small pillar he’d been standing on. The building tools and materials were placed softly down onto the grass, and Jimmy finally started paying attention when his blue haired friend was in front of him.

“Jimmy!” Scott greeted him with a wider smile.

“Hello Scott!” The blonde smiled wide, it was a genuine smile. Despite the confusing mess of emotions twirling in Jimmy’s gut. He pushed them down, ignoring them. He didn’t want to think about the implications of that damn wall.

“Why are you watching me?” The blue haired man asked, a mischievous glint in his eyes, “Am i that pretty or something?”

“N-no! It’s not that!” Jimmy ignored the heat rising to his cheeks. “I just got back from mining and got…lost in thought.” That was the weakest explanation he’d ever given. It was worse than their lie in Third Life of him killing a cow on a cactus.

“Lost in thought about me?” The other teased

“Scott!” Jimmy exclaimed lightly, aware of how red he probably was. Scott just giggled. “C’mon, you know I’m only teasing~” He leaned on the blonde’s shoulder, winking

Jimmy let out a soft laugh. “I know..” You weren’t teasing back then..

Scott moved out of his personal space, standing now a few inches away from him. Neither seemed to know what to say after that, an awkward silence beginning to stretch between them. It was as if the whole world went silent. Jimmy stared at Scott, and the other stared back at him. They both were thinking the same thing. The wall.

“So..” Jimmy started to say something, but trailed off. He was at a loss for words

“So..” Scott, thankfully, was not lost for words, picking up where Jimmy left off like he used to. “What were you really thinking about?”

“..About…about..the wall” Jimmy fumbled trying to get the sentence out, feeling himself go almost stiff with nerves.

“Ah, the..wall” Scott turned his head to the side, looking at his creation.

Jimmy’s gaze bore into the cyan haired man. Scott turned to look back, meeting his eyes. A silent exchange seemed to pass between them.

You know what it-?

Yeah, I know.

Jimmy broke the silence. “Why’d you build it again?”

“I don’t know,” Scott’s voice was barely a whisper. “This just feels right.”

“Oh. okay” Was Jimmy’s lame response. They lapsed into another awkward silence. And during that silence Jimmy thought. He thought about Third Life. He thought about the flower field, the hobbit houses they’d had. How back then he couldn’t build for shit, so Scott had made his own poor attempt at a hobbit hole a million times better. How their own houses didn’t matter as Jimmy had just ended up sharing a bed with Scott. He thought about Scott’s house made of a stripped birch. The wall made of stripped birch. Scott liked building with stripped wood. That was a fact Jimmy knew deep in his bones. If Scott was going to build, there would be some sort of stripped wood in the design. He could tell this new wall was made by Scott before he even knew it was their old wall. Jimmy knew the others' building style better than his own.

He thought about how he wasn’t sure if the original wall had stripped spruce or dark oak. It surely had to have been dark oak. They surely wouldn't have taken down Scar's whole monopoly on it just to not build with the wood. Yeah, it had to have been dark oak. His memory was just fuzzy. The only difference was that the bottom was now deep slate instead of cobblestone. Deepslate hadn’t been discovered when Third Life happened. They hadn’t had that luxury till the next season.

He finally thought about how the wall did fill right. Another wall built to protect their home, on a hardcore server. Another server where no would make it out alive. Probably.

Jimmy was momentarily broken out of his thoughts by Scott shifting closer to him. He glanced at the other, forgetting they were almost eye level. He always seemed to think the scottish man was shorter somehow. Scott was still looking at the wall, he wouldn’t turn to meet the blonde’s gaze. His last thought was about how he wanted to hold Scott’s hand.

“Where’s Owen?” Jimmy asked softly, shaking the impulse away. It was somewhat unusual to not see Owen and Scott together, the two had become best friends fast. Jimmy shoved down the tiny prick of jealousy that poked at his heart. We were like that once.

“Oh..” Scott said awkwardly. He moved out of Jimmy’s space again, moving a few feet away. The blonde ignored how agonizing it felt. Scott was standing in front of the wall now. “Me and Owen were actually gonna join the Fwheeping isles..”

“Oh,” Jimmy said, feeling his stomach drop. “When?” He asked, ignoring the stinging sensation he felt. It was as if something had physically shocked him.

“Tomorrow,” Scott responded. “I was gonna finish this little part of the wall, and leave you some materials before we left.”

“Okay, cool, thanks!” Jimmy forced yet another smile. Internally, the dam he’d been building up all day burst into pieces. He choked down the waves of emotion best he could, but he knew Scott could probably see it in his eyes. He’d always been told he was an open book, no matter how hard he tried to hide it. He was a loud person in general. Jimmy felt his emotions loudly. He loved loudly too.

The blonde stared at Scott, in front of his new-their old wall. His past lover standing out against the woods and deepslate. He remembered how he’d claimed to declare his love for flowers, not Scott, on the first day of Third Life. He remembered how Scott had worn the poppy he’d given him in his hair, how they lived in the field of flowers. He remembered how Scott had called them husbands, proudly declaring it to the whole server. He remembered dying first, to Tango’s game, and then later the same day to a Grian redstone trap gone wrong. He remembered how Scott had told him what not to do, yet he accidentally set off the TNT regardless. How Scott helped him recover his lost items. He remembered his failed Chick Chance shack, a way to earn much needed diamonds on a server with limited diamonds, with limited resources. He’d never quite understood how BigB had gotten so many back then. That's the only way this new place seemed to differ from Third Life, they weren't bound by a world border here.

He remembered the pufferish of peace, how it had been their peace offering with Grian and Scar, how Grian had warned them to not trust his red-life ally. He remembered how that alliance had ultimately got them killed, how maybe they should've kept to themselves just a bit more. He remembered burning the Dogwarts Banner in front of Ren and Martyn, knowing joining the alliance would lead to Scott being put on an altar. He remembered dying a third time in Grian’s bunker, hearing his husbands scream as Skizz shot him down. He remembered his grave built atop the hill. He remembered spectating from beyond as Scott avenged him. He remembered the cyan haired man dying alone in the same desert he had. In the same way he had, in the heat of battle and at the hands of the Red Army.

He remembered when Joel lied about burning the same wall they stood before now, lying about it and leading to a day-long search for the culprit. The only difference between then and now was that there was no death game, there was no Joel to burn their wall down. It was just them. And Scott was leaving

For Scott to build the wall again, then to leave as if it meant nothing, hurt Jimmy more than it should have. It felt like the last two games. In Last Life they’d barely spoken, they’d gone from husbands to friends. Jimmy had died first again, but Scott wasn’t there to avenge him. No one had been, how he’d done that to himself. How he betrayed even Martyn. He remembered how a few months ago on Double Life they’d been like feuding exes. How he was happy with Tango as a soulmate, but still wondered if they could’ve been paired up again. Why Grian and Scar were forced together again, and if Scott could’ve been linked with him instead of Pearl. He remembered how he and Tango argued with Scott and Cleo, saying they weren't “real soulmates,” whatever that meant. He remembered how Scott had paid for Joel and Etho to kill him. And how they had killed him. And how Scott and Martyn and the rest of the quartet laughed when he died first again and taken Tango down with him.

And he remembered Empires, and how they were still something there. He thought about Scott had left a poppy and a note in Rivendell’s embassy in the Codlands, “This feels right.” He remembered how after Third Life they’d gone on a date, an alliance making meeting as Jimmy had called it. Scott had made him cake, and given him poppies. The blue haired man had made a whole tunnel of love, he’d gotten another pufferfish.

He remembered how the world ended before they could go anywhere. Jimmy remembered how he ended the world.

And now they were doing Empires again, and Scott was a colorful trickster instead of an elf, and how he was a sheriff instead of a cod. He remembered Scott’s flirting and handcuff jokes that ultimately meant nothing.

Scott had built their wall again, and he was leaving. He’d remade what was once theirs just to leave. It hurt more than Jimmy could put into words. He shoved it down again.

“Well, see you around. You can take the materials for the wall from my old house” Scott said, jostling Jimmy from the memories. The way he looked at the blonde held some kind of emotion. Jimmy couldn't tell what though. He could recognize the man’s building style, but not what he was feeling. It’d been far too long since he’d been able to do that. Scott could still guess his though..

“Right, thanks. See you around.” Jimmy let out a small wave as Scott turned his back. The blue haired man walked away, not looking back at Jimmy or the wall. He was presumably going to find Owen.

Jimmy stood there, blinking. He remembered his inventory was still full of stone and ores from his mining trip. Right, he had to empty his pockets. But before he did that he walked towards the materials Scott had left in the grass. The start of the interaction felt like a lifetime ago.

The wood and deepslate was buried in a chest in his small house. He thought about building the wall more, but never touched it unless Martyn was working on it with him. It made it feel more like the villages, not theirs. It wouldn’t be finished before the thirty days were up. He thought someone lit it on fire at one point, but things got hazy past the fifteen day mark. Maybe he’d died before it went up in flames.

But before that Jimmy woke up everyday. He looked at the wall, and then he looked at the cute village house, still with a touch of the signature build style, where his old flame used to live. He felt his gut twist every morning and he pushed it down.

He had work to do.

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