LSP set down another wood block and sighed overdramatically. She glared at her handiwork and let out a groan at the stupidness of it all. She'd been tirelessly slaving away building the best, most beautiful, most princess-worthy house in the world and this was all she had to show for it.
Three blocks. One of them was a dirt block that had already been there before she came. None of them were even touching.
"Whatever," LSP said flippantly, "When it's finished it's gonna be so wow, everyone's gonna wish they never kicked me out of the gravel gang. I like, totes deserve a break."
She was building her house in the middle of a grass plain biome because that way her house would stand out as the most beautiful thing around. It would definitely become a nationally renowned landmark, but it did mean her immediate surroundings were boring. She floated around in the grass looking for entertainment until she spotted something.
It was only a tree but she went to investigate anyway. Maybe it was an apple tree! LSP hadn't eaten since she left her gang and her hunger bar was running pretty low, so she made a beeline for it.
She reached it and started punching up at the leaves when she noticed something. There was something… obnoxiously yellow coloured standing next to her. She slowly turned and saw a creature dressed in a grey work uniform, with what looked like a rectangular lemon for a head and a nose exactly like the Ice King's (or gravel_boyxx420 if you called him his gang name), standing and staring at her.
She stared back. Neither of them said anything or moved.
"Soo…" she said eventually, "are you like… a super ugly new mob, or something? Are you gonna attack me? Do I need to get my totally cool diamond sword out?" that was a lie- all LSP had was a stick.
"Nnnnngh…" said the creature, "I am… not aaaa mob. I am… angry…"
It wasn't a mob so it was going to attack her and LSP was way too cool to talk to this loser. She just muttered "Whatever." and went back to attacking the foliage.
"NNGH NO NO NO!" The yellow thing swatted at her while screaming, "MY TREE! MY BEAUTIFUL TREEEE! You are nngh damaging my royal property… how dare you."
"Oh I dunno," LSP just floated out of reach of his hits and started rooting around at the top of the tree, "how dare I."
Lemongrab screamed until his rectangular eyes nearly popped out of his head at this unacceptable behaviour. Did she have any idea what he'd had to go through to get that tree? How much bonemeal he'd lathered all over it only to be given apples instead of lemons? It was absolutely unacceptable! But unacceptable or not this tree was his and he wouldn't stand for some floating purple thing attacking it.
"Whhhyyyy do yoouu… seek tooo harm my precious little tree!?" he yelled at her.
LSP popped her head over the leaves. "Because I'm hungry for apples, dumdum. Now go play your stupid little games somewhere else."
Lemongrab narrowed his eyes and made aggravated noises. Not only was this thing senselessly attacking his tree it was insulting him. But he had learned what its motive was, and maybe if he gave it what it wanted it would leave. "If Iiii give your… disgusting self an apple… will you promise to go away?"
"You have apples?" LSP said hopefully.
Lemongrab nodded enthusiastically. "Yes. Yes Iii do. I have many mmm morsels. I have pie. I was pied for my apples."
"You have a pie?" LSP shot back down immediately. "Gimme gimme!"
"On one condition!" Lemongrab sternly held up a yellow hand to stop her and looked at her seriously, "You must give mee your word that you will leave me and my tree in peace."
"Yeah yeah okay sure fine who cares." LSP said quickly and made grabbing motions with her hands, "Now gimme the pie!"
Lemongrab gave LSP the pie Treetrunks had given him and she devoured it. There wasn't a single crumb left. LSP patted her stomach with satisfaction but her happiness was short lived. She'd had a snack and that meant one thing, her break was over. It was time to go back to the incredibly boring task of building her house.
"If only I could get someone to build it for me… " she lamented to herself.
Her eyes fell on the yellow guy still glaring at her. Lemongrab had given her a pie, and pies came from ingredients, ingredients had to be crafted. LSP's expert detective skills told her this meant he owned a crafting table. And where did people keep their crafting tables? In their houses. And if he could build one house, then he could build hers too.
"Yes," she smiled evilly, "if only…"
"Soo…" she said sweetly, "what's your name?"
"I am Lemongrab." he said curtly, "third of my name and still annoyed. When will yoouu be leaving? "
LSP ignored this last part "So… Lemmy- is it okay if I call you Lemmy? Well duh, obviously, who doesn't want cool nicknames from me? Anyway are you good at building stuff?"
"None of your business." Lemongrab didn't look at her and just kept mysteriously staring in the other direction. LSP knew all about this sort of aloof behaviour, she did stuff like this all the time when she wanted people to think she was cooler than she actually was; he clearly just wanted to hide his building skills from her.
"Okay okay." she kept pushing, "So, I have this super cool thing that you should totally check out."
"Cool?" Lemongrab asked, "You found… ice?"
LSP let out a greatly exaggerated fake laugh. "Lemmy you're too funnyyy! I bet you get invited to like, sooo many parties. And nah I just have an interesting thing. I think you'll like it."
Lemongrab rubbed his hands together as he considered whether to go with her or not. Noone had ever told him he was funny before. Even if he didn't exactly understand what he'd done that was so funny. "Nngh. Okay. Take me tooo thee… interesting item."
LSP led him to her building site and pointed at her miserable 'house.' Lemongrab stood for a moment and then said bluntly "What about this is interesting?"
"I'm like… building a house but I'm just no good at it..." LSP said in her usual dramatic way, flailing her arms all over the place while Lemongrab watched in confusion, "but I bet you're really good at building. Oh I know!" she pretended to have suddenly had an idea, "I bet you're thinking the same thing right- yes LSP I WILL build your epic house for you!"
Lemongrab's heart sank as he realised why she'd really called him over here. "No." he said in a deadpan voice.
"Whaddaya mean no?" she huffed, "This is the chance of a lumping lifetime."
"No. Nein. I will do no house building for you, purple creature." With that Lemongrab turned and walked away from her. She quickly floated after him.
"Heey… come on…" she pleaded. Lemongrab frowned and walked a little faster, but she just hovered next to his head and kept pestering him.
"Come on don't be like this Lemmy." LSP sulked and at this he stopped.
"Don't follow me." he demanded angrily. "Leave mee and my tree alone. And…" Lemongrab's tone changed from angry to hurt as he said, "and don't call me Lemmy."
LSP blinked in surprise. "Hey don't be upset-"
"But I am… upset." Lemongrab muttered at her, "I thought we were getting on well. I thought I had been wrong in my initial assessment of you and you were acceptable, like ice, even.
"Like ice?
"I thought you were... cool."
"Hey I'm cool I'm cool! I'm, like super cool. I'm the coolest girl you'll ever meet. Look, I'm sorry I tried to con free housing out of you ok? I made a mistake and I'm sorryyyy…" LSP said apologetically. She even brought her hands together to make an exaggerated begging motion that Lemongrab tried not to smile at, "We can build it together if you want?"
"Tooogether? Build a… house?"
"Yeah totally!" she said enthusiastically, "I can go smash some trees to get wood and you can do the like, architecture." By architecture LSP meant that Lemongrab would actually do all the hard work.
Lemongrab considered this. "You are rather good at smashing trees." he said eventually. "Okay. I will build thee… abode."
"YEEESSS!" LSP did a stupid celebratory dance. "Okay I'll go get some wood from some trees-" an alarmed look flashed across the lemon's face so she quickly added, "I promise I'll leave your tree alone though."
Lemongrab relaxed and they started building the house. As it turned out, neither of them knew much about building anything. But after a while Lemongrab was able to figure out what a house was supposed to look like. He built some walls and a roof out of the wood that LSP kept dumping on him, and he had to admit that he was pretty proud of it so far.
On these wood dumping trips LSP would stop and look at the house he was building. She'd give him a thumbs up or gush about it to him, saying confusing things like "this roof is sooo on fleek oh my glob!" and other things he didn't really understand. But it was nice to see someone get so excited and happy about something he'd made. It made him feel… warm inside.
It was dusk by the time the house was finished. LSP stood with him and admired the house they'd built (or rather, he'd built). Even though Lemongrab hadn't built any doors so all the entrances were just holes LSP had to admit it was a lot better than anything she could've made- Lemongrab had even picked some flowers and placed them around the house in a sweet smelling circle as a final touch. While she wasn't sure about it being the best, or the most beautiful house, it was definitely princess worthy. LSP squealed and pulled Lemongrab in for a brief tight hug that made him gasp.
"Oh my glob it's totally great! I'm moving in right now." She let him go and went inside, leaving Lemongrab standing outside in flustered silence.
It wasn't long before he sheepishly followed her in. LSP turned to look at him and thought about whether to shoo him away. Before she could decide, an arrow embedded itself in the wall next to her. LSP snapped her head round to see a skeleton aiming for them through the doorway.
They rapidly boarded up the door hole and awkwardly sat in the dark for a while, with the only sound being the noises of the mobs outside.
"Do you like… have any coal?" LSP asked eventually.
"Coal… coal… coal..." Lemongrab repeated as he checked his inventory.
"Yeah it's black," LSP explained, "and lumpy but not lumpy in a hot way like I am it's-"
"I know what coal is." Lemongrab said quickly, embarrassed about his echolalia, "I just… repeat words sometimes. I have to." he threw the lump of goal to her, "mother gave me some coal. She gave meeee many things…"
"Like what? Gold and stuff?" LSP asked.
"Yes. Also… trauma…"
LSP combined his coal and her stick into a torch. She set it down in the middle of the room so they were lit by a warm orange glow. Lemongrab daintily sat on the wooden floor he'd built, looking at her curiously. And maybe it was just the intimate lighting or the torchlight but LSP had to admit she found him at least a little bit cute.
"Trauma?" she asked, "tell me about it. My parents are absolute D lists."
LSP went into great detail about all the times her parents hadn't bought her the things she wanted, and told him about the few times they had genuinely hurt her feelings. They didn't have any wool to make beds so they stayed up like that all night, just talking to each other.
Lemongrab told her about how his elder brothers had been blown up by a creeper. They'd respawned as just him- his Mother said there had been some sort of error in their coding, they were, after all, her first experiments gone wrong. He was explaining all this when LSP put a finger over his lips to silence him. He froze and felt all the lemon juice rush to his face at this sudden touch.
"Listen," she said. Lemongrab realised the sounds of the mobs had died down. "I think it's safe to go out now."
LSP carefully destroyed one of the blocks making up the wall and peeked through the hole. She could see the grassy plain was spotted with zombies and skeletons burning in the sun's light and that the sky was streaked with a peach coloured sunrise. She watched the slowly rising sun and thought about how pretty the full sky must be.
"Hey." she said to Lemongrab.
"Mmm yes…" he replied
"Let's go watch the sunrise on the roof." She stated and started making a hole in the ceiling without waiting for a reply.
"But Iii did not build a staircase…" Lemongrab worried out loud only for her to smile.
"I'll carry you, stupid." Before he could say anything she picked him up and dragged him onto the roof with her. She plonked him down and felt him stiffen from shyness when she sat next to him.
It wasn't just his stiff pose that was distracting, it was the way she could see him sneaking glances at her out of the corner of her eye. "Dude," she said eventually, "the sun is that way."
"I know where thee sun is." Lemongrab mumbled, "But there is a thing I do not know."
"Um, okaaay." She said, confused.
"I-I am Lemongrab…" he said anxiously, "but yoouuu are… who?"
"Psh! I'm LSP! Everyone knows that." She proclaimed.
"El ess… pee?" he repeated slowly, saying each syllable carefully. He'd never heard such a weird name, if a bunch of letters could even be called a name.
LSP could clearly see him struggling so she rolled her eyes and explained. "It stands for lumpy space princess."
"You gave mee a nickname so… do I have to call you a nickname?" Lemongrab thought it would be nice to call her a nickname. Every time she called him Lemmy he felt a warm glow inside and it would be nice to make her feel the same way.
"I mean not if you don't want to." she said awkwardly.
"I want to." He insisted. "Should Iii call you... Lumpy?"
She made a face. "Ew no. If you really want it then… I guess it's okay if you call me princess." she told him shyly.
Lemongrab smiled and she watched as the rising square sun illuminated the bright yellow of his face. It hadn't just been the torchlight, she decided, he actually was kinda cute. "Okay... Princess."
And just like that it was a new day, with a new house and a new friend.