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Ferre is waiting at the foot of the throne when Clown returns.
Clown stops a couple paces away, and it’s the lack of blood on his faux-smile that tells Ferre Clown did not kill anyone.
“You’re late,” Ferre says.
“Oh my god,” Clown mutters. “Flame said they let you go hours ago. Why didn’t you come back.”
Ferre shrugs. “Parrot put a tracker in my inventory, so I was trying to lure them into a trap. It was taking a while, so I figured he wasn’t coming for me.”
Clown sighs, turning on his heels. Ferre rolls to his feet and follows.
Their fortress is empty of any of their soldiers, and Ferre asks, “Where is everyone?”
“Flamefrags.”
“Ah.”
They go up the spiral stairs. Clown doesn’t say anything. He is always like this on Unstable, as opposed to when they dick around together outside the server, free from the story’s grasp on their psyche.
Ferre says, “We should kill Parrot for good.”
“Yes, we should.”
“When I was captive, Parrot and Flame seemed to disagree quite a bit. It’s a mess over there. Flame is looking for Wemmbu; we can dangle that to get him to betray them.”
“That already happened.”
“Oh.” They think alike, after all. He is kind of bummed he missed the action. Judging by Clown’s demeanour, it didn’t go too well.
When they reach Clown’s room, Clown turns to him and says, “Take off your armour.”
Ferre had re-geared at an outpost on the way to trap Parrot. He narrows his eyes behind his mask and says slowly, “… Okay.”
He drops the last of the netherite to the ground. Clown unsheathes his sword. Ferre laughs.
“Come on, Clown,” Ferre says, holding his hands out to his side, bare of weapons. “You’re not gonna ban me.”
Clown says, “You know taunting me will just make me want to do it more.”
“You’re no fun,” Ferre pouts. “At least get angry at me. At least shout, man. You’re just gonna execute me without a good fight? Who even are you anymore.”
“You want to fight, Ferre?” Clown does begin to raise his voice then, and with that Ferre knows he’s got him. “You want me to get angry? Well, I am angry. I’m fucking furious. Branzy is a liability, but at least he doesn’t play on this server anymore.” Clown makes a noise of frustration, pulling a hand over his fake face. Clown must see the smile tugging at Ferre’s mouth below his mask, however, because he lunges and lands a crit on him.
“Hey!” Ferre yells, back slamming into the wall. Fire eats at his skin, but he doesn’t equip a totem, just so he can see Clown douse him in water before jabbing a finger into the slash across Ferre’s chest.
“You’re not supposed to be a liability,” Clown says, and the finger digs painfully between flesh, eliciting a raw gasp from Ferre. “You’re not supposed to get held hostage. You’re not supposed to lose, Ferre!”
“Hey, they fucking ambushed me, you ass,” Ferre swears breathlessly. The faith that Clown won’t kill him wars with the primal thrill of danger, sending blood rushing to his head—and elsewhere.
“And you’re supposed to be better!”
“Lay the fuck off me,” Ferre says, grabbing Clown’s wrist to stop the finger from further wriggling into his open wound.
“I know you still think this is a game,” Clown says lowly. “I know you don’t take this server seriously. You think building an empire is easy? You think anyone can just do it if they don’t have the name ClownPierce?”
Ferre doesn’t bring up the story’s presence, looming over them even now, because that doesn’t usually end well. He can play along with the story—he always has fun on SMPs as long as he fight, after all, and he takes their business very seriously actually, despite what Clown may say—but playing along doesn’t mean taking shit from anyone either, even if it’s from the player holding his leash.
“Look, Flamefrags is one thing, but Flamefrags and Theo?” Ferre scoffs. “Theo was like, mega-carting me, bro. What did you want me to do?”
“Win,” Clown says.
“Your faith flatters me. But I’m not winning an unprepared fight against Theo with a carting kit and Flamefrags as backup. I was holding my own pretty well waiting for you to come.”
“And I did.”
Ferre inclines his head. “And you did.”
Clown stares at him in silence. At least, Ferre assumes it’s a stare, because the part of Clown’s head that mimics a face is portraying such. With fake crosses that mimic a mask’s eye-holes, fake indents that mimic a wide grin, Clown’s head is the camouflage pattern of a predator tricking its prey to miss where its teeth actually are.
Clown lets go of Ferre, taking his finger with him. The sudden release of pressure from the wound on his chest has him letting out a moan.
“I wouldn’t have let them get me,” Clown says as Ferre gaps up.
“No, you wouldn’t, you slippery fuck,” Ferre says. “But the difference is that you wouldn’t have listened to me if I told you to surrender. But I surrendered because you told me to.”
Clown doesn’t respond to that. He checks the chests around his room idly.
Ferre continues, “You should have let me die back then if you’re just gonna kill me now. Then we could have gotten Parrot at least without all this being a waste.”
Clown closes a chest. Ferre doesn’t fill the silence this time, forcing Clown to either let it sit uncomfortably or to say something at all. Clown scoffs. “I wasn’t about to give you up for fucking Parrot.”
What a weakness. Ferre can’t help the thrill of it nor the grin on his face as he hums a taunt, “No, you wouldn’t have. And you’re not gonna do it now.”
Ferre doesn’t put his armour back on, despite it lying only blocks away from his feet. No one is killing him here.
“You’re making a lot of assumptions,” Clown says, and his voice has fallen back to its soft cadence, the one he uses with everyone except Ferre. Ferre’s grin widens further.
“You’re not going to find anyone else on this server who won’t stab you in the back, Clown,” he drawls. Clown makes a dismissive noise, but does not refute him. The affectation of nonchalance has Ferre drawing nearer to him and saying in a sing-song voice, “You need me.”
“I’m not letting you escape from this server permanently that easily, Ferre.” It sounds like something else making that promise through Clown’s mouth.
Ferre starts unclasping Clown’s armour, helping him out of it. “You wouldn’t even be playing on here without me. Admit it.”
“Ditto’s the word.”
Ferre hums contentedly. His hand brushes over Clown’s fake jaw, the part of his face where his real mouth would peel open from ear-to-ear when he eats hearts. Ferre’s seen him chomping down on a nether star on instinct before, searing his mouth when it doesn’t burst into a fleshy organ the way Ferre assumes it does on Lifesteal. Clown had to keep his real mouth open for hours as it healed, the inside of a creature-like maw bared to the world while his fake-face was tilted up the entire time. Ferre chuckles at the memory.
“What?” Clown asks, and his voice is no longer faux-gentle nor furious. It’s just Clown.
“Nothing.” Then, as he takes off Clown’s boots, Ferre sings, “My little baby boy, yah, yah, yah, yah, my little—”
“You and me, diamond sword kit, the arena, right now.”
“Come on, I just got kidnapped. I had a long day. Let’s just go to bed.”
“You know that excuse has never worked.”
Ferre groans. “Let’s get Parrot first then. We know where he is.”
“Ferre,” Clown says slowly. “I don’t give a fuck about Parrot. I’m bored. He’s boring. Hunting him isn’t fun anymore. Stick a sword in my gut or I’ll do it to you first.”
Ferre sighs, throwing the last of Clown’s greaves into his pile of netherite gear. “Fine.” He flops onto the bed. “One hour first.”
“Lazy ass.” Clown grunts in acquiescence anyway. Ferre smiles when he feels Clown’s weight on the bed too. “I’m still kicking your ass for today,” Clown mutters. Ferre rolls onto his side so he is facing Clown, and Clown clasps a claw-tipped possessive hold onto Ferre’s shoulder. In this position, Clown can swallow his head whole with a single bite or gouge through his skin. Ferre isn’t scared.
“Oh, you want it so bad. Say you want it.”
“Of course I want it, shithead,” Clown growls. “I always want it.”
The story is looking away from them right now, Ferre feels it in the way it is not the king of the nether speaking but rather his friend, spirited and so much more easily ticked off.
Ferre presses his smile into Clown’s shoulder. “Good boy.”
“Bitch,” Clown says. It’s fond. It’s Clown.
