Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/5121287.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      F/F
  Fandom:
      RWBY
  Relationship:
      Blake_Belladonna/Yang_Xiao_Long
  Character:
      Blake_Belladonna, Yang_Xiao_Long
  Additional Tags:
      Experimental_Style, You_may_want_to_grab_snacks, Or_make_multiple_visits,
      yes_it's_one_chapter_long, I, i_dunno, gayer_than_the_fresh-fallen_snow,
      Non-Explicit_version_posted_to_FanFiction.net, taking_place_in_the
      mythical_annals_between_volumes_two_and_three, or_maybe_one_and_two, or
      who_knows
  Stats:
      Published: 2015-11-01 Words: 84349
****** Binary Stars ******
by AProcrastinatingWriter
Summary
     It doesn't take much for a flirtatious friendship to become much
     more. Just a lot of time. And a really long conversation.
     And a really long "conversation."
Notes
     Before you begin reading this monstrosity, I feel you should know
     that it is, as tagged, a very experimental writing style.
     Specifically, it's one best described as "all of the metaphors." I
     understand if this is not to your taste. It might not even be to my
     taste; I dunno because I've spent the last four and a half months
     writing and editing this thing and am frankly done with it for the
     immediate moment.
     The only other thing you need to know is that, as tagged, but as a
     last warning, if you want a non-explicit version of this fic you can
     find it posted on my fanfiction.net account. I hope you'll like at
     least one version of all this.
     Anyway, go ahead, I hope you enjoy.
See the end of the work for more notes
Some days, Blake Belladonna just didn't feel like going out on a day-long
shopping spree. Some days, she felt like being alone.
Today was actually neither of those days.
Though, to be fair, it had started as the second one, despite the entreaties of
her teammates. No matter how many sales Weiss insisted would be going on this
weekend or how (genuinely) tempting Ruby's offer to buy them all milkshakes
might have been, Blake had turned them both down. She was certain the team
could find some way to have fun without her. In fact, she theorized they'd
findmore.
But then Yang looked at her funny for a few moments, like she was inspecting
some system of scales – Blake and her dreary school uniform and equally dreary
outlook on one side, everyone else she might run into that day on the other –
and announced that she was going to stay home and keep Blake company.
That was about the point that the flapping butterflies in Blake's stomach had
started making hurricanes in her head.
She'd read books that started just like this. She'd had dreams that started
just like this. They were gooddreams. They were mediocre books.
But her reality was like this, too lately – her days were full of Yang like
holes were full of saplings, and every day seemed like something new was . . .
growing, to put a shear to it. Blake was self-aware enough to liken it to the
way she acted whenever she became engrossed by a novel, hiding away to turn
another page, discover another secret, fill up her heart with literature and
emotion.
It was an interesting feeling, reading herself. Having someone read her,
sometimes. Especially since Yang didn't seem like the academic type. Or the
type to slow down, for that matter. Or the type to let Blake lie in her lap
while playing with her hair. Or the type to have long, drawn-out, heartfelt
conversations, either, but that was reading ahead in the story.
Despite Ruby's insistence that today was a beautiful day, warm and sunny and
perfect for getting milkshakes, the girl who might have been nicknamed The
Charge of the Light Brigade instead retreated, and the team split up into
partners to attack the day. Yang took off the gauntlets she'd planned on
wearing out, Blake let loose the ribbon hiding her ears and retied it around
her arm, and both of them might as well have stripped down naked for each
other.
Dust, if only.
But this was fine, too. There may have been a world of milkshakes and handbags
and other peoples' money outside the door, but there was so much more here,
where the sun didn't reach. There was a good book, and warm hands, and a state
like being in a dream, which seemed more and more like reality each day at any
rate. A reality like dreams, like books, like her thoughts – it was a private
reality, one Blake might as well have built for herself, one hidden away within
the darkness. Just her and Yang Xiao Long. Maybe just a glimmer of light, then.
Let others enjoy the sunshine – Blake would always, save certain special
exceptions, prefer the night's shade.
. . . possibly, with the way that pun walked into her head like it owned the
place, she'd been spending too much time around Yang as it was. Ah, well.
Better company than the White Fang. Certainly better than being all alone.
                                    0-0-0-0
"Hm hm hm hm, hmmm, hm hm hm hm, hmmm . . ."
The literary concept of irony was familiar to Blake – most literary concepts
were, if only through osmosis and repetition. The Fang had been more interested
in teaching codebreaking than cliffhangers, though they did show a certain
expertise in poetic justice.
"Hm hm hm hm hmmm, hm hm hm hm hmmm . . ."
Blake was, in fact, familiar with irony in the same way most people are
familiar with airplanes and lawnmowers, in that the familiarity did not stop
irony from being an incredibly distracting noise to her literary mind.
"Hm hm hm hm, hmmm, hm hm hm hm, hmmm . . ."
And ironically, of all the songs in the great wide world of Remnant that Yang
could have chosen at that moment in time, lying in bed, gentle coaxing fingers
running like calligraphy brushes through the inky locks of Blake's hair, she
chose to gently hum You are My Sunshine.
"Hm hm hmmmm, hm hm hmmm, hm hm."
"Yang," Blake's tone was gentle, but insistent, a practiced pitch that could
throw anyone and anything off-balance. "You know that's really distracting,
right?"
Almost anyone and anything, really – Yang seemed to be specifically immune. In
fact, judging from the (gorgeous, gorgeous) grin plastered across her face, it
seemed that the first time Blake had tried that tone on her had been a
vaccination of sorts. "Sorry, Blakey." She couldn't sound less sorry if she
were writing the apology on a ransom note. "But I just can't help myself!
You're like . . . oh, you're like my own little pocketful of sunshine! That's
it!"
Yang's hugs could outperform an Ursa - possibly even kill one - probably had in
the past – but Blake was much more durable and also maybe secretly enjoying the
sudden sensation. "Well, first of all." Blake spoke through half a breath and
half a smile, which somehow made a whole. "I'm anything but sunny. Second of
all, you never call me 'Blakey' for no reason, and you're being awfully
affectionate." Yang's arms loosened, and Blake attempted to pass off her
diamond disappointment as a cubic zirconium sigh. "What do you want?"
Please say me please say me please say me please say me chanted a particularly
obstinate voice in the back of her mind and the forefront of her thoughts. And
upon further reflection, perhaps "obstinate" wasn't the word for it.
"Persistent", perhaps, or "driven".
. . . she'd done too much lying to herself as it was. "Horny". The word was
"Horny".
Yang interrupted her train of thought just before it crashed into the city and
exploded. "Heh. Wow." All of Yang was bulletproof, including the smile. No way
a bout with embarrassment was going to keep it down, for Long. "You're really
good at seeing right through me."
"Sunshine does tend to illuminate things," Blake's head dipped, avoiding an
embarrassing situation by the space of about one yellow top. She really needed
to remove herself from Yang's lap one of these days.
"Alright, alright!" Yang laughed – more like lit – in reponse before letting go
of Blake completely, at least with her arms. Her gemstone gaze still held Blake
captivated. "I wanna see what you're reading. I see you reading it all the
time, so it's gotta be really good."
Blake, master of avoiding suspicion as she was, shifted away from the lap of
luxury slowly enough to avoid taxing herself unnecessarily."And you thought you
could accomplish that by annoying me until I . . . ?"
"Hey, I caught glances!" Yang's smile turned before Blake's very eyes – not her
smile. Her eyebrows moved subtly, and the entire character of her smile changed
from silly to seductive. Magic tricks, then. "Not like you were reading it all
that closely anyway."
That right there was a feeling. A familiar one. Like a stack of blocks falling
to the ground, and the cheering of onlookers. Blake always lost when team RWBY
played Jenga at game night. "Pardon?"
Yang and whispering were like milk and honey, and tonight was apparently like a
very vigorous spoon. "You liiiiiked being pet, didn't you? When was the last
time you turned the page? Ten minutes ago?"
Blake shrugged. Sometimes, there was no stopping the sun, only rocking the tan.
"Your hands are surprisingly soft, and pretty gentle too. Celica's doing a good
job."
"That and the healing factor," Yang returned the shrug, as was only polite. And
then her grin multiplied in magnitude, spreading a shockwave over her face that
lifted her eyebrows a, relatively speaking, good few hundred feet on her face.
"Which means it's not just my hands that are soft; it's all of me."
"All of you, huh? I dunno." Yang's defined-like-the-word-"the"-in-the-
dictionary abs, fully on display since the day Blake met her, had been begging
to be touched for quite some time now. Blake, at that moment, decided to
finally have mercy, though she made sure to make contact fingernail-first to
remind them who was in charge around here. "You feel pretty . . . firm . . .
here."
There was a game they played, Blake and Yang, and not one fit for RWBY's game
night, either. It was probably dangerous. It was certainly sexy. It wasn't
Twister, even if that game did fill all the qualifications.
Calling the game "sexual chicken" might have been crass, but there wasn't
actually a better term for it. The future was as obvious as an oncoming diesel
engine, even if Blake had her afterimages and Yang could probably suplex a
train given the proper motivation. It was as inevitable as a glass of wine in
an alcoholic's hand. It was as bright and stunning as a firework, and right now
the only thing to do was watch the trail of green streak through the air and
wait for the right moment to see the burst and hear the cry of freedom.
Blake wasn't oblivious. She couldn't be, with a nose sensitive enough to
identify pheromones, ears trained enough to hear a rapidly accelerating
heartbeat, eyes designed to see in the dark, and most elusive of all, basic
common sense. She reveled in the little intake of air she was sure Yang thought
she didn't notice. She drank in the amethyst lakes of her eyes swallowing up
the pebble of her pupils. She memorized the shape of Yang's worried lip, and
imagined that she might do a much better job of biting it. It was absolutely
common sense; if it were any more obvious that Yang wanted Blake like Blake
wanted her, there would be a sign around her neck that read, "Broody feline
Faunus with self-esteem issues get in free." Flashing lights and everything.
So sexual chicken, it was.
But the problem was, and the reason for it was, the bars shut down in the
morning. At some point or another, usually around two AM and when people were
the drunkest, if the stories were at all correct, the barman would say,
"Aright, you don't have to go home, but you can't stay here."
Yang would say, "That was a lot of fun. Uh, it's not gonna change anything
between us, right?"
And Blake wouldn't have a home to return to.
But on a lighter and a darker note, it was also something more elemental, more
physical than that. Fun. Desire. Masochism and sadism, girl who absorbed
kinetic energy and girl who wore ribbons as a fashion accessory, probably. That
old joke, "Why do I keep hitting myself with a hammer, because it feels so good
when I stop," right? Except, not exactly that. Something close, but not like it
at all. Something like . . .
"He paused at her catch of breath," Yang's voice was a breathy whisper, and
hello, "Choosing instead to stare into her eyes. She trembled beneath him, but
made no move to continue. This was the part that would make or break the
evening. They always said, it wasn't the act, but the . . ." That smile could
seduce a bride on her wedding night and leave the groom appreciative.
"Anticipation."
Ah, yes, that was the word Blake was looking for. Anticipation. Six months of
tasting Yang on her tongue and refusing to swallow. "You caught a little more
than a glance, then." Was that as husky a voice as Yang's could be? Blake sure
hoped so.
"Steamy stuff, Blakey," Yang was uncomfortably – too comfortably, really –
close, now. "Didn't know you liked that kind of thing."
"It's funny," Blake pretended she hadn't noticed. A little bit like standing in
front of an explosion and acting like the back of her clothing wasn't on fire.
"And the rest of the plot isn't half bad, really."
Yang's smile dropped off completely, and her eyes were suddenly someplace so
far away it looped all the way around the globe to sneak up behind Blake and
steal her wallet. Maybe even her heart. "That why you're still running your
hand over my abs?"
Blake blinked. Well, cats always found a way to land on their feet – even she
couldn't avoid all the stereotypes. "You were petting my hair for a while,
there. I figured it was only fair."
"Ah, makes sense. And it rhymes!" Yang tilted her head, but the way she smiled
it was Blake who felt off-balance. "And all's fair in love and war, right?"
Love and war. Yang's eyes were artillery shells, her smile a minefield, her
soul the whistling fall and consuming blast of an airstrike, and her curves
nothing less than global thermonuclear annihilation. So Blake wasn't entirely
sure she could tell the difference between the two right at that moment.
Between all that and the petting, because who said war was hell, Blake was just
about ready to surrender.
But she'd never admit that, of course. Yang might surrender soon, too.
Besides, even if Blake had wanted to, there was quite suddenly a feeling like
being on a deserted island coursing through Blake, and there was no way she was
going to be contacting the world from here.
Not a deserted island from the real world, all mosquitos and rugged life, but
someplace warm and sunny, the ocean lapping up on the beach and with coconut
milk readily on hand. Someplace away from the rest of the world, with a sea
breeze sinking into the skin. Someplace no one would bother her.
No one but Yang, who was humming something just as tropical, something that
deserved steel drums in the background, as her fingers pressed between Blake's
ears and the most sensitive part of her scalp, rubbing intently. Suddenly,
taking off her bow in the privacy of her own room seemed like the biggest
mistake Blake had made that didn't have the White Fang's logo emblazoned on it.
Dust, those digits of hers were dexterous . . .
A little too dexterous, as suddenly the pressure on her head ceased and Blake
felt her book slip out of her hands. "Yoink!"
Blake brought herself back to reality one focused blink at a time. She'd had
years of training, sometimes in the field, to resist torture, emotional
manipulation, and rhetoric techniques. All of it was apparently wasted against
a good petting. She was surprisingly okay with that. "Yang." The "authoritative
voice" was usually about as effective as her "gentle, insistent voice" but she
had to try something. "Give that back."
Yang snickered, a noise like stirring cake batter. Not in the literal sound,
but in the feeling. A bit of effort, applied in a surprisingly sweet direction,
given the raw materials to work with. "Turnabout's fair play, Blake. That's the
most basic rule of friendship with Yang Xiao Long!"
Ah. If that was how the rules went, Blake could get involved in a philosophy
like that. Especially if it involved rubbing Yang's . . . ears . . . in return.
"Well, at least tell me which one this is, then."
"Que?" Yang asked, not quite flippant, but flipping. "Ooh, hoo, hoo, what have
we here?"
Blake could go for the feelings of sounds, too. Here was a gun cocking. "Love
or war, Yang. Which one is it?"
For the second time in as many minutes, Blake wished she was still wearing her
ribbon. Not out of vulnerability, or embarrassment, but because it had a hidden
camera tucked into its folds and the look on Yang's face was priceless
perfection. It was also somewhat short-lived, as the book slipped from Yang's
fingers, bounced off her grasp once, then twice, and finally righted itself in
an exaggerated hug that Blake was sure the novels appreciated deep in their
kerning.
"Uh, wh, what are you . . . thh." Yang's fingers turned pages with more speed
than her sister's usual sprint, and now who was it that wasn't actually doing
any reading? "That's not what I meant! It's just, you know, one of those – ow!"
"Papercut?" Blake raised an eyebrow, more a signal than an actual expression. A
"Beware of the Cat" sign on the fence of her face. "The pen really is mightier
than the sword, I see."
Yang paused in sucking on the offense against her person, and Blake tried not
to be too disappointed about it. "Heh. Don't you mean the pun is mightier than
the sword?"
"That's all my mind has been fingering upon." Blake regretted it as soon as she
said it.
Well, no, not really, not when Yang blushed like that, like a libidinous
cocktail of hormones and excitement injected directly into Blake's racing
heart. "Ah. Huh. Quick on the draw today, heh. Or, I guess I should say quick
on the claw?" The smile dropped from her face like a hot pan sans an oven mitt.
"Oh, wow, that was totally a Faunus joke, wasn't it? Oh, geeze, I would never –
I mean, if you said it was okay, I guess, but uh, you didn't say it was okay -
oh man, Blake, I am so -"
"Yang," Blake stopped her before she reached Remnant's mantle. "It's okay if
you're just . . ." Wait for it. "Kitten around."
The effect was so immediate as to make quantum entanglement look snailish.
Yang's laughter rose in pitch and descended in placement, ending up somewhere
inside the mattress (sorry thing that it was) Yang lay herself on. Blake wanted
to imagine she was prostrating herself before a superior punsmith. "You win,"
she gasped out, muffled as it was, and well, now it was Blake who was blushing.
"You're the punniest person in the room." She spun over, landing on her back,
and it was the first time in her life Blake had ever considered something both
exactly like a puppy and also cute. "Congratulations, Blake – you've beaten the
master."
"Thank you." Blake would accept her award with every ounce of magnanimity and
humility she felt it deserved. "It was extremely easy."
Yang sat up under cover of another chuckle like a miniature symphony.
"Someone's sassy today."
"You take my book, you reap the consequences." Blake tapped her fingers on her
thigh, a miniature drumroll to build up to the bad idea that was forming in her
head. Perhaps the book was not yet out of reach, even if Yang was leagues above
her in just about every aspect (besides, of course, puns). "The papercut hasn't
healed, I notice."
"Yeah, never could quite get the hang of fixing up these things. The one kind
of injury too insidious for my glory to overcome!" Blake hadn't realized, until
that voice, that Yang was a comic fan, but it made enough sense. "Wanna kiss it
and make it better?"
Well, at this rate, Yang was going to end up one step ahead of her. "I've got a
better idea," Blake said, carefully leveraging her words to move herself
forwards. "But . . . close."
"Uh . . ." Yang swallowed thickly, acclimating to the sudden change in air
pressures as Blake leaned in towards her. Or, possibly, just nervous, but Blake
honestly had a harder time believing that could be the case. Either way, her
hand moved of her own volition, taking Yang's wrist in her palm and warming at
her pulse. "What are you doing?"
What was she doing, now that Blake thought of it? Scratching, she supposed. Not
Yang's arm, though that had a certain dark thrill to it on its own, but
scratching the surface of something. Something new, old, borrowed, tinged with
a sad blue. There was an itch at the back of Blake's mind; had been for a while
now. Maybe, six months of time. Scratching it. Scratching it just once couldn't
hurt, right?
Possibly, she was being too quick on the claw.
But the look on Yang's face as she leaned in told her she was far too late to
be doing anything as sensible as stopping herself, so she leaned forwards,
thought of a million things she'd like to say, resolved to say none of them,
and let her smile cheat for her. "I'm giving you your consolation prize."
She refused to break eye contact, and it might have destroyed them both.
Her taste buds made contact with a warm copper candle, and Yang's breath caught
like a hook in Blake's brain, tugging, painful, a release from the ordinary and
entirely too dangerous to fathom. Fathoming was for suckers anyway, because
there was something life-changing just on the tip of her tongue, a vision of
the future with blood as the medium, and Yang's eyes were wide enough to see,
maybe, into Blake's very soul, and she felt every glance and searing stare as
she drew her tongue, slowly, carefully, certainly, around Yang's fingertip . .
.
"Oh, sweet High Auras, yes." Yang wasn't precisely known to be spiritual. The
thought that Blake might be considered a religious experience nearly brought
her to her knees.
"Mmmm," Blake wished she could truthfully say the groan was affected, but she
could literally feel Yang's pulse pounding beneath the her skin of her palm,
and there hadn't been much she could do to stop herself. "What's the matter,
Yang?" She poured, lemons and sugar, and received a pucker of lips as her
reward. "Afraid of getting your fingers a little wet?"
"Fuck," Yang articulated, and Blake very nearly did.
Instead, she dipped her head, taking Yang's entire length into her mouth –
probably not a good time for Ninjas of Love to be sneaking into her thoughts –
and then slooooooowly dragged her lips back up, keeping a careful eye on Yang's
own wandering orbs all the while. A slight pop, another go-round of her tongue,
and a smile she justly classified as clever. "What was that?"
Yang was never "controlled", but she never needed to be. She was always so
certain of herself, the ultimate argument both for and against the concept of
free will, an immovable object in motion, which Blake had come to learn was
slightly different than an unstoppable force. But here and now, Yang was
stammering, tripping over herself, giving herself papercuts, and now . . .
completely uncertain of what to say. "B – B – Blake, I . . . I. Oh."
Blake let her eyelashes flutter like butterflies in flight as she pressed
Yang's wrist to her cheek. Maybe it was a tad too much, but in for a penny, in
for a pounding. "You're clutching my book pretty hard, there." Her observation
only made things worse, precisely as planned. "Isn't there something . . . else
. . you'd rather be doing with your fingers?"
If anything could be too steamy for Ninjas of Love, maybe that was it, judging
by the way the book went flying away from Yang to land on the middle of their
dorm room floor. Twitchy fingers, a bit lip, and a mess of hesitation and
anxious energy would have revealed her heartrate even if the pulse next to
Blake's ear (such sweet music) wouldn't have. "You have no idea -"
Later on, Blake would look back at this moment, wonder at what precisely was
running through her head, and then decide that the kiss to the wrist had been
too much.
But embrasser it was, followed swiftly by partiras Blake stood, hoping Yang
wouldn't notice the quarter-second of a lingering trace her fingers left
behind. "Very kind of you, Yang."
"I, uh, s-sure? What is . . ." Yang was gaping, behind her. Blake was too
practiced in The Art of Xiao Long to think that she was doing anything but. " .
. . what?"
Blake bent to the book like molasses, slow, sweet, dark, and (quite unlike
molasses) presenting herself in the best light she knew how. "Well, not as kind
as you could have been." She sighed, navigating her way to the passage she'd
left off at, or at least a reasonable enough facsimilie that Yang wouldn't be
able to tell the difference from the outside. Like Blake intended on reading,
anyway. "You could have bent the spine, treating it like that."
Three. Two. One.
And speaking of bending spines and being treated certain ways, Blake found
herself being grabbed roughly and thrown wholesale against the dorm room's
wall, formerly gentle hands now pinning her arms above her head in a grip
gravity would envy. The book dropped to the floor like it didn't matter – it
never had, of course – and Yang growled.
No metaphor could match the reality of Yang growling, and if there was a
simile, Blake would like to see it. No words could match the way her fingers
pressed, vengeance, into Blake's wrists, or the way her face came inches from
Blake's own like she'd imagined in her head a million times but much more
threatening and about seven million times hotter. Yang's eyes slowly drained of
the blue half of their tint into a volcanic fury that, if looks could kill,
might classify as both the last thing Blake would ever see and certainly the
way she wanted to go.
Well.
Well.
Well, the slight and welcome pain in her back meant this probably wasn't one of
Blake's more lurid dreams, though it might still possibly have been one of her
most lurid dreams. Perhaps, possibly, she had pushed Yang a tad too far. And
maybe, just maybe, it would be fun to push her just a little bit further. "Is
something the matter, Yang?" Keeping up that controlled tone of voice was like
steering a lifeboat in the middle of a hurricane, her heart was beating so
fast.
Fingers tightened in a grip that was likely the talk of all the titanium
girders in town, and Yang leaned in a little further (and here was Blake,
thinking she didn't have any room left to move in). "You're going to pay for
that one."
"Is that so?" Blake totally-on-purpose allowed her eyes to trail a path over
Yang's blazing brilliance of a body, basking in the summer sun. "What exactly
do you plan to do to me?"
The way Yang looked at her was evil, and probably very illegal, too. It should
have been illegal, at the very least. "What do you think I'm going to do,
Blake?"
Yes, make me, take me, do horrible, awful things to me, I shan't tell a soul,
what the hell am I thinking?
What was Blake thinking, precisely? She had given Yang an inch and was now
staring down such a long and winding road that it was becoming harder and
harder to think straight. In fact, it was growing progressively easier to think
very, very gay. "I don't have the foggiest idea." She had several crystal clear
ideas to match Yang's eyes and succubus smirk, but not a single foggy one, no.
Yang stepped, rather than leaned, utilizing a slightly-too-warm knee to nudge
apart Blake's thighs and begin making very new and exciting memories for the
young Faunus. The rest of her traveled upwards, pulling her mouth and its warm,
damp air next to Blake's ear, pausing to make certain she was paying attention.
If she, either she, moved even a nanometer, everything was going to change
between them, and quite possibly the dorm room wasn't going to survive the
transition. Certainly the bed and/or this wall wouldn't.
"I'm going to leave you alone."
Her presence evaporated like all those lurid dreams at the first sign of
sunrise, leaving Blake just about as awkward, confused, and wet. Yang was back
across the room, a spring in her step (and her backside, noted that same
treacherous, libidinous portion of herself from earlier) and humming that same
old tune. For the rest of her life, Blake would remain unable to think of You
are My Sunshinewithout the weather getting slightly damp, so to speak.
Apparently, this wasn't just a one-player game Blake had been playing. An odd
thing to be smiling at, given the circumstances, but two heads – four hands –
two tongues – were always better than one. Yang was probably worth about three
times as much as any of those things
Of course, it would help in their game if the next move to make was more
apparent than progressiveness in faunus-human relations. It was relatively
simple to catch Yang off-guard, but that was only because she specced for
offense, to use a term from that odd game the boys played sometimes.
Benders and Brawlers, she thought it was called? Yang played too, occasionally,
had this character who could control all four . . .
At any rate.
Blake took a small step forwards, testing the waters with her big toe.
Pleasantly warm, sure, but she could see the approaching waves just fine from
here. "So, were you still wanting this book then, or . . . ?"
Yang laughed, and her heart was in it, and that almost ended the game in her
favor right then and there. "Oh, no way you're playing this one off!" She stuck
her leg out, the same one that had been between Blake's legs only moments
before, and the only thing that could possibly distract her from that fact was
what Yang said next. "I could bare my thigh in a thunderstorm and it wouldn't
be as wet as it is right now!"
. . . alright. Yang had been bluffing, from the look of things. But the fact
that Blake had to actually consider the possibility was a practical pair of
Aces. Perhaps this one was just out of her depth, then, but Blake believed it
could yet be salvaged. "I hear water on the knee is a serious medical
condition. You might want to make a doctor's appointment."
"You gonna be my nurse?" Yang waggled her eyebrows, and Blake swore if it was
anyone else . . .
"Down, girl." The eyebrow thing was symbolic; Yang's enthusiastic ones were
matched by a single subtle movement of one of her own. "I'll have to be your
anesthesiologist if you keep that up."
"You're gonna have to try a lot harder than that to top me." Yang's demeanor
could only be described with the phrase "she fell into sin". "Or to get on top
of me, for that matter."
"Seemed remarkably easy before," Blake tossed the book in one hand – being
truthful, she wasn't even sure which one it was. "Just had to start reading and
you practically offered me your lap, not to mention musical accompaniment."
Keeping at it was the key; and there, at last, was the lock. "You never really
did answer why you were humming that song in particular, you know."
"Well, duh." Bluntness was so integrally a part of Yang that Blake had come to
associate it with the color yellow. "It's because you're my sunshine, Blake!"
Well, now that was worth a raised eyebrow. Blake would have to start being more
conservative with them in the future if Yang was going to be saying things like
that. "Alright, I'll bite. What do you mean by that?"
"It means you light up my life!" Yang enthused, as if her own goldy locks
weren't substituting for the setting sun outside the window.
"Obtuse metaphors are Professor Ozpin's shtick, Yang." And hers, even if they
stayed locked up safe and sound from the vicious beasts known as literary
critics, generally. "Try again?"
" . . . you're hot?"
"Yang."
Yang groaned like the teenager she technically was, but it caught halfway
through and turned into the laugh that Blake had missed dearly for all this
time it hadn't been around – dozens of seconds' worth of the utmost anxiety and
agony. Truly tragic. "It's not that hard to figure out, is it?"
Blake noted the blush, shrugged casual, like she was a world-famous actor and
the whole world was watching her being interviewed. "Maybe I just want to hear
you say it out loud."
. . . maybe that was actually true, come to think of it.
Yang scoffed, and even that had a certain cheery quality to it, like a counter-
rhythmic pulse of EDM in a classical music hall. "Or you're just a sadist."
"That too." Some things darkness would only exacerbate, rather than hide. Some
things were black enough to stand out against the night sky. "But either way .
. ."
Her sighs sounded happy, too – was Yang actually real, or was she some sort of
Jungian shadow of Blake's made manifest? "Alright, fine. Blake Belladonna, you
make me the happiest person on Remnant, and I dearly wish to spend the rest of
my life with you. Marry me."
"Oh, this is so sudden." Blake's monochrome monotone, though untested since her
pre-Beacon days, was still running like a dream. "Whatever will your family
say?"
"'Get it, Yang'," Yang's grin could have stopped a tank. Well, the fists
attached to the grin, but Blake would bet on the grin itself holding its own
too.
Blake's scoffs were more like gunshots than music: more precise and deadly, but
maybe not as much fun to listen to, barring special occasions. "Are you
allergic to being serious?"
"You know how I'm going to answer that," Yang's hands met her hips like the way
that Blake's lips wished for, and they tilted in a way that made her think
maybe she just wasn't worthy of such lofty aspirations.
"With a smile on your face." And your hooks in my heart."Unless you can think
of something else your mouth would be doing?"
"Hmmmmmm," Yang's was too heartfelt a person to really be having trouble with
the thinking process. "Nope. Nothing." There was a trick to Yang's eyes, Blake
was sure; how else could they still look so appetizing half-hidden like that?
Must be the same spell that was layered over the rest of her salacious
silhouette. "Unless your book wants to give me some ideas?"
"After the way you threw us around?" Blake still had her sense of impropriety,
after all. She'd chosen to ignore it for the duration of this conversation, but
in all technicality. "I'd be surprised if it bothered to give you a second
papercut."
"Fair enough," Yang's shoulders shifted; she didn't precisely "shrug." That
would imply she didn't care. "How about you?"
"Oh, I'll give you a 'papercut', alright . . ." Blake's anger was a painting,
exquisite, evocative, but not actually anything real beyond paint and canvas.
Nor, really, was it intended to be seen as such.
Yang, meanwhile, was the dream-crafted critic every artist painted in hopes of
finding and perhaps, on lonely nights, imagined inviting up to their personal
gallery for a "private viewing." "Looking for an excuse to suck on my finger,
huh? Man, Blake, didn't peg you for having a blood fetish. Makes a lot of sense
in hindsight, though." In other words, she took what Blake offered and inspired
her, against what meager better nature she might have possessed, to soar to
ever-greater heights. Closer to the sun.
"Mm hmm." Which brought Blake's thought processes full circle. "Meanwhile, you
seem to make a habit of yanking people around. Why exactly am I your sunshine,
Yang?" She brought her hands together, book in between, as if by channeling the
power of Ninjas in Love she might up her Charisma stat enough to convince Yang
to answer her. "Seriously. I want to know."
Yang was quiet for several moments, which Blake supposed was a period of time
she should cherish for its rarity, if not its taste in music. Finally, she
sighed. "I sort of already told you." She shuffled a tad, rolled her shoulders,
let her hair catch and refract the setting sun – maybe that last one wasn't on
purpose, but by all the stars in the sky did it look like it was. "You . . .
make me happy, Blake."
Oh.
Oh, my.
Hearts skipped beats and skin tingled with sudden bursts of flame and the world
seemed to shift on its axis, and still Blake stood there, absolutely certain of
what she had heard, and overjoyed. The only mysteries left were why, precisely,
and a gentle wandering wondering of exactly where they were supposed to go from
there. So, when Blake said, "Pardon?" it was less a question and more a
stalling tactic, please ignore the growing smile on her face.
Yang laughed, rich and a little dirty, like someplace Blake could grow crops
in. "Man, you're really gonna drag this one out of me, aren't you? I don't
think I'm getting a choice in the matter."
"You don't have to say anything you don't want to. Ever." Secrets were things
of broken glass and diamond, rare, beautiful, valuable, and dangerous – and you
couldn't always tell where one quality began and another ended. Some secrets,
released, were just like a poisonous gas: a slow death sentence. "I wouldn't
dream of it."
Yang genuinely considered this, if her face was any indication. It usually was.
"Nah," she finally said amidst an air of resignation that hopefully wouldn't be
polluted with metaphorical hydrogen cyanide at any moment. "This one's been
coming down the pipeline for a long time now." She sat down on the bed, looked
up with a smile, and motioned for Blake to come over.
This wasn't at all the situation Blake had hoped for those things to occur in.
But Blake made her way over nevertheless, silly sayings about cats and what
curiosity did to them setting up shop at the tentpoles of her mind. "You really
don't have to -"
Yang silenced her with a look, and now that she knew she had that power, she'd
probably use it a lot more often in the future, shoot. ". . . do you honestly
not want me to?"
Yes, yes, curiosity kills them. It would kill her to find out. "If I'm being
honest?" She heard satisfaction brought cats back. "Yes. I do."
Yang nodded, slow, beginning the clockwork process of whatever this
conversation was slowly becoming. "Okay," she said at last, shifting gears and
position and possibly the universe, for all Blake knew. Sometimes it felt like
Yang was at the center of everything; heliocentric. "I've . . . been trying to
figure out how to say this for a long time, now." Like a flower growing from
snow, Yang's smile was lovely and inexorable, despite attempts otherwise. "Let
me tell you, it isn't easy figuring out the right words to say to a person with
two sets of ears."
"So I've heard." Blake realized only after she'd said it precisely what she
said, and improvised a quick twitch of her more cattish features.
"You know, when I say things like that, people get mad at me, but when you say
things like that they think you're adorable." The flower bloomed. "How is that
supposed to be fair?"
"I don't make the rules; I just break them." Blake wasn't sure where these
little quips were coming from; maybe from the intense desire to avoid thinking
about exactly what was going on here.
It was so easy to make Yang laugh, and yet every time it happened, Blake felt
so accomplished. "Oh, wow. That right there is why I adore you."
Blake didn't, wouldn't ever, pressure Yang on the precise phrasing she'd just
used. People weren't coal, and diamonds were far less valuable than souls.
"It's a gift." She eyed the bed like it was a trap she planned on springing,
making note of the precise position of knives and slings. "May I sit down?"
"Plop your head into my lap, for all I care." Yang's good cheer could signal a
ship over a thousand miles of water. Blake heeded, docked properly, but chose
not to rest her weary head quite yet. Instead, she simply sat down next to
Yang, feeling for all the world like she was embarking on a journey – by bus –
to a destination – who knew where – that was going to be thrilling, terrifying,
and other near-synonymous adjectives. "Okay, so, like, don't clog up the pipes
while I'm saying all this, alright?"
Blake had heard, someplace, that if at any point you ever felt like you were
dreaming, to check the locations of nearby objects and see if any of them have
disappeared or moved inexplicably. This sentence was so very strange that she
at this point checked her alarm clock for object permanence. As a side note, it
was apparently 7:43 in the evening. "Huh?"
Confusion was contagious, if a doctor's only evidence to suggest anything about
the condition was Yang's face. "Because of the pipeline thing?" The sickness
cleared up as if by divine intervention. Sheer nepotism, as far as Blake was
concerned. "Right. Sorry. Not my best shot at being poetic!"
"Ninjas of Love you aren't," Blake confirmed, as if Yang wasn't her own unique
novella of blazing imagery and persistent passion.
"That cuts me deep." Yang looked so serious as she said this that, just for a
second, Blake believed it. Then she broke into a grin, and all possible worries
were melted like so much snow with the gentle heat of it. "What I mean is, I'm
about to take you for a long, wild ride on Bumbebee. Metaphorically speaking.
So buckle up and no backseat driving."
"Much improved." Blake took a moment to deconstruct the symbolism. The girl was
a workout, both literary and libidinous. "So what you have to say is important
and a little strange, so I shouldn't interrupt?"
Yang's face twisted like it was tasting lemons and deciding the best way to
describe them in her food blog. "Basically. It's like . . . I dunno. It's this
whole huge thing, you know?" Genuine uncertainty didn't suit Yang, and that
somehow seemed to extend into a slightly more befuddled world around her, as
though she were casting off the offending outfit. "I don't have a clue where I
should even begin."
"I hear beginnings are good." The words came out before Blake could stop them,
change them into more matching clothing, or at least something suitable for the
season, and send them on their way.
Yang snorted, Blake resisted the urge to giggle at it, and the world kept
turning on its new off-skew axis. "If you want my biography, you'll have to
wait in line like everyone else." She laid her face in her palm, and Blake had
never seen Yang actually look tired before, come to think of it. "Sort of a . .
. lifelong thing."
"Lifelong?" Blake considered this, except not really. One must keep up one's
appearances. "I think I can stick with you long enough."
"Blake Belladonna, mistress of the smoothest moves." Yang Xiao Long, mistress
of the sideways coup d'oeil. "You realize you're not exactly making this easier
on me, right?"
"I guess I just can't help myself around you," Eventually, she supposed, Blake
was going to run out of feet to place forcefully into her mouth. "Sorry. I'm
interrupting. I'll be quiet, now."
"Nah, I'm just pulling your leg." Well, Blake had to get the foot back out
somehow, and who better than Yang to help her out with that? "Being honest, I
don't think I could go through with this if you were just sitting there all
shhhhhh."
Blake let herself giggle at that one – of all the witticisms, the physical
comedy, the genuine moments and cheesiest jokes, and she chose to reward Yang
making funny noises? Matched the rest of their relationship, at least. "Glad I
could help, then."
Yang hummed, and privately Blake imagined that Yang was turning the key to her
motorcycle's engine, and the only thing Blake as a passenger could do for
support was wrap her arms around her stomach – woah. Thoughts. Not appropriate
for the situation. "What I have to say is very important, and I don't want to
lose track of it or . . ." She sighed, sinking just a bit deeper into her
bedsheets, and Blake wondered if maybe there were exercises one could do to
make their bodies that expressive. "Or chicken out. So I don't mind if you want
to say something, but let me say my whole piece before you start really talking
about what's on your mind, okay?" She laughed, coughed, something between the
two, and Blake marveled at how even that could sound attractive coming from the
right chest. "Man, I sound like a jerk, don't I? You're always a really good
listener; I shouldn't be telling you to clam up or whatever."
"It's absolutely fine," Blake responded in a voice like falling leaves, slow
and predictable, a gentle breeze with a crunch at the end. "You deserve to say
what's on your mind. I'm listening. I promise."
Yang stilled like the words were an incantation. It might have been, because if
previous data was any predictor for the future, there was no way Yang would
ever go still on her own. Either way, the spell broke into tiny little pieces
with only the smallest breath, in and out, twice over. "You remember I told you
about my mother disappearing, right?"
Blake nodded. Then, realizing Yang wasn't actually looking at her at the
moment, she said: "Absolutely. I wasn't quite so sleep-deprived to forget
something that important."
Instead of something like 'coulda fooled me, Ms. Laser-Dot', as Blake had been
expecting, Yang simply waited a few moments before continuing, her voice closer
in tone to crystal than her usual volcanic roar. "Part of me wondered if it was
my fault she left, maybe. I know, that sounds ridiculous; it is ridiculous, I
mean, I was like, what, six at the time? Nothing I could have done." She shook
her head, like a summer breeze under a cloudy sky. "That was what I figured,
and that kind of, sort of, hurt the most. I didn't even matter, when it came
down to it."
Yang was clutching her own arms as if they'd keep her anchored to the world,
and Blake wondered when she had come under the impression that Yang was
invincible. "Helpless," she mirrored, in word and in memory.
"It was the worst thing I'd ever felt." Yang's voice shouldn't ever shake like
that. "I wanted to do anything I could to make sure I never felt like that
again. So at first I tried throwing myself into looking for her, and you know
how that turned out. After that, I realized that . . . as much as I loved my
mom? As much as I wanted to see her again? What I really wanted was to hold on
to what I had left. And it sort of just hit me that if I didn't want to be
helpless, I had to be the opposite." That everlasting smile couldn't be held
down for long, it seemed, though it was a bit unsteady on its feet standing up
again. "That's when 'anything I could' became 'everything I had.'" She paused,
and so did Blake's thoughts. "That isn't, like . . . weird, is it?"
It wasn't a particularly difficult question, but Blake considered it carefully
nonetheless. She'd had enough of the taste of her own feet for one evening.
"People react to loss in different ways. Some cling more closely to those
around them, some dwell on the memory, and some . . . " Have cat ears. " . . .
some draw into themselves and shut out the world. I'm about as far as you can
get from an expert on what's 'healthy'. But." A million smiles, a million
pieces of joy – surely Blake could return the favor just this once. "I've never
met someone as kind or as caring as you are. I hear that, generally, that's
supposed to be a good thing."
Yang's head ducked away not quite quickly enough for Blake to miss the
cherrybomb glow of her cheeks. An evening's worth of carefully careless words,
lingering touches, and death-defying stunts of seduction hadn't given her
nearly as strong a sense of the word "explosive" as that simple stated fact.
"Heh. Might wanna try looking in a mirror sometime."
"What do you mean by that?" Blake's face scrunched up like a failed exam
between confused and angry fingers.
"Hey, you're smart, too. You'll figure it out." Yang tilted her head into her
hand, and Blake recognized the need for a resting place. "But, yeah, I just try
my best to make people happy, you know? Every day's a battle and every smile's
a victory; that's my motto. Only . . ."
Blake tried to stay silent, let Yang come to her own conclusions. But the
noiseless air she'd always found peace in now seemed stagnant and heavy in her
lungs, and she'd never had quite the fortitude to hold her breath. "Giving all
of yourself means leaving none for yourself."
Yang seemed to be having trouble breathing, too, judging by the shaky breath.
"Some days, I don't feel like I'm even there. Those days, I don't know where
I'm going in life or why I'm going there, or even where I don't want to go. I
like stuff fine, I like not doing stuff fine, I dislike doing some things, but
I don't really . . . know. Not a thing." A hand through her hair, and Blake
noticed by the lack of light languishing in those locks the sun had finished
setting. "Like, honestly, yesterday, my brain just stayed in bed all day."
Blake remembered the slight slump of Yang's spine, the tired droop at the
corners of her eyes, the listless energy that ran like she was a leaky faucet
to to nowhere in particular, and worst of all, the artificial way she seemed to
snap back to normal whenever she thought someone was looking. "I noticed. I
didn't want to pressure you about it, but I noticed." Actually, that was the
worst part: Blake was the only one who seemed to.
"You looked concerned," Yang murmured, and the small smile on her face shaped
the words into something spellbinding. "Your ears kept twitching whenever you
looked at me. I was kind of worried you were gonna blow your cover."
The idea of accidentally ruining everything she'd been striving towards her
entire stay at Beacon didn't seem all that important to Blake at the moment.
"Even then, huh?"
Yang didn't answer her question. Well, not immediately, at least. Blake was an
expert foot at that particular song, dance, and hesitant two-step. "I always
notice. It's kind of my thing, you know? We . . . sort of established that."
She looked at her, and suddenly Blake was nothing but a speedy-beating heart.
"But you're the first person to notice when it's me."
There were, of course, advantages to not wearing the ribbon. For instance, it
wasn't infrequently that Blake's ears – the upper ones – got hot, burning even,
and the black silk covering them didn't exactly allow for breathing room. It
could happen when the weather was hot, when Blake ate too much, when she was
stressed, or (most relevantly), when she came within a whisker of blushing.
"I'm trained to look for weaknesses." A quick smile and a hand to her cheek
should hide her own strawberry sunrise, right? "I figure I should use that sort
of power for good."
The sudden, soft pressure on Blake's shoulder let her know that Yang had chosen
to rest her head there. It was a gentle, soft notice, the kind that came up
slow and reasonably, so as to not incite panic. It was still incredibly
frightening, given the context. "Mmm." Blake had often thought she could feel
Yang's smile before, but now it was a literal statement, and now it was a spike
of adrenaline and errant daydreams of the future. "This isn't crossing a line
or anything, is it?"
It took Blake a moment to register the sentence, and when she did, there
weren't enough hands in the world to hide the glow on her face. "After lying my
head in your lap and feeling your knee between my legs?" She paused, less for
purposes of consideration and more for dramatic effect. "Possibly, but I think
it's a bit late for protests on my part."
Yang snorted, and the brief puff of air on her skin affirmed she might as well
have been back at the wall, waiting for a culmination of . . . some sort or
another. "I don't know how I'd keep going without you, sometimes."
That was a cold bucket of water of a statement. "What?"
"Not literally. Probably. But it feels like it." A turn of the head and a brief
sensation of eyelashes fluttering, and the world may have stopped spinning
after all. "Like I'm a stranger in my own head. Sometimes. I just get so
wrapped up in people's problems, and what they think of me, and what I'm
supposed to be doing, that I get . . . buried in it. 'Here lies Yang's sense of
self; we barely knew her.'" A shrug, like a pebble, and Blake felt the ripples
wash over her. "I dunno. I guess that's why I've always kind of been an
attention hog. I just wanted someone to tell me who I am."
"Yang." There wasn't much more to be said than that.
"I never really stopped looking for . . . for anything, I guess. Not for
myself, or for my mom, or for . . . anyone to understand me. A place, a reason
to be, another person to keep fighting for." A warm finger traced a path up and
down Blake's arm, and Blake followed it as though it might lead home. "You
know, it's sort of funny." As Yang spoke, Blake idly noticed the synchronicity
of their breathing. How couldn't she have? "All these years searching, and it's
you who ends up finding me. Through the back of an Ursa."
Yang's head lifted, and the loss of the weight on her shoulders left Blake
feeling more burdened than ever. "Are you saying what I think you're saying?"
Her face have must been worthy of a snapshot.
Yang looked her straight in the eyes, and the stars out their window could not
possibly have made more beautiful constellations. "I don't need anyone to tell
me who I am when I'm around you." She beamed less like sunlight, and more like
the ideal of sunlight, perfect, golden, brighter even than her eyes. "When
you're there, Blake, I . . . I remember. I find parts of myself that I never,
never knew I had. Strength, bravery, joy. Everything that had been hidden in
the shadows for . . . as long as I've known myself. That's what you light up,
that's why you're my sunshine. I remember who I am, and I know who I want to
be. I might not know exactly where I'm going, but I do know who I want with me
on the journey." The hand on Blake's arm drew into itself across her skin, and
as Yang gulped, Blake truly understood for the first time what the process
behind drawing up one's courage felt like. "I'm in love with you, Blake . . .
and I don't think I'm ever gonna stop feeling that way."
There were a good chunk of sentences that had been circulating in the back of
Blake's head for many years now. "She's actually a faunus", "it's all your
fault", "I always knew you were a monster", etc., etc. There was a list of
phrases, more a list of charges, that went on and on and on and on and on, and
any single one of them, spoken aloud, would utterly and completely destroy her
entire world.
But suddenly, like a breath of air and a sky of light at the end of a drowning
man's long and painful swim, the impossible happened.
Blake found a sentence that could save it.
And for every snippet of snark and sarcastic remark uttered that evening, she
didn't have a clue what exactly she was supposed to say now.
Yang coughed in a way that made Blake retroactively expect a tumbleweed. "Well.
That's out in the open."
"How long?" There was something, possibly a dissertation on why the phrase
"something was better than nothing" was only an old wives' tale.
"Uh . . . forever?" Yang ventured, after looking around for, presumably, hidden
cameras. "I uh, thought I already said that, bu-"
"No, no, I mean . . ." Blake mapped the logic's route in her mind, just to make
sure it was even within a reasonable distance of this conversation, before she
let herself speak again. "How long have you felt this way?"
"Oh!" Blake had met lamb faunus that looked less sheepish than Yang did at that
moment. "Wow, completely misunderstood that one. Uh . . . would you believe me
if I said 'no clue'?"
Blake let her head tilt, because, who knew, maybe that would make everything
else look level for once. "Huh?"
"There was never a moment where I thought about it and said, 'holy cow, I'm
head-over-heels for that super-cute kitty I hang out with all the time.'"
Yang's mouth turned upwards as she scratched her cheek, possibly trying to
scrape off their red with nonexistent fingernails. Maybe she could do the same
for Blake later, if she was going to keep handing out compliments like that.
"Actually, there totally was. There were kind of a lotof moments like that. But
none of them were the moment I realized it for the first time, you dig? Heh. I
don't think there was a single time where my heart suddenly screamed in my ear
about it or anything, so much as . . . so much as . . ."
"A process." Blake supplied, in return for one of the many favors Yang had done
her in the short time they'd known each other. "Like growing a garden. Nothing
is ever really 'grown'. Just growing."
And as if that sentence had completed some impossible task, instead of being a
mild observation about the effects of sunlight on petunias and daffodils, Yang
flopped back onto the bed with a wintry sigh and an evergreen smile. "You know
what?" She asked, in the tone of Archimedes having just stepped from the
shower, "I think maybe I always knew. Right from when I met you. It was like
you were a part of me, you know? But you were another part I kept forgetting,
and I only remembered how to get back when you lit the way for me." A chuckle
like nectar from the sister of a rose. A sunflower smile, Blake might say. "I
guess, when it comes down to it, that's what I mean to say by humming in your
ears all the time. You're my sunshine, Blake. You light my way."
The static cleared away, the melodies revealed the elegant underlying
structure, and it was Blake's world that lit up with light and shook with
sound. "No one's ever told me I'm 'sunny' before."
Yang sat back up, realizing, perhaps, the task hadn't been nearly as complete
as she'd thought it had. "You've got this sort of sexy brooding loner thing
going on, buuuuuut you're lacking in the actual 'gloom' department."
Blake barked a laugh, and immediately recognized the irony. "Imagine the
world's biggest storm, swelling with its own self-importance." She looked to
Yang, and hoped something in her own gaze might communicate a picture through
the distance between them. Like the stars in Yang's twilit eyes. "Then you
might have something approaching what I was like before coming to Beacon."
Yang was silent for a time. Then a time-and-a-half. Blake tried not to worry
about it, and let her work at her own pace. "I adore every moment I spend with
you."
Blake had learned a long time ago to make certain she listened carefully to
statements with no discernible cause. It was the only way to discern. "I can
tell." She almost said 'me too', but this was Yang's time to shine, not hers.
Sunny day similes or otherwise. Blake would get her turn at the confessional.
"I'm honored."
"I mean it. When we hunt together, it's like nothing can stop us, but when you
look at me, it's like I stop in my tracks. Except my heart, which goes all
pitta-patta-pitta-patta, but you probably already guessed that." In turn, Yang
had a certain narration to her that was all her own, and Blake could read it
for hours. Utterly fascinating. "Every move you make, you make like you meant
to do exactly that, like you've already got everything figured out and the rest
of us are all just trying to catch up with you before you ascend completely
into the heavens. I mean, I've never met someone who can say stuff when they're
quiet before, but you do it all the time." She paused, and Blake wondered if
Yang recognized the volumes that span of breath wrote out plain as day. "Not to
mention, you're way funnier than I am."
Blake blinked, as she stumbled upon the sheer disparity between that thought
and reality, leaping the gap just a quarter-second too late. Then she blinked
again, further falling with the realization that Yang was expecting her to say
something observant about this strange pathway she found herself on. "Although
I've given up on my days of blowing up railways, for the most part, I'm going
to have to cut your train of thought there. I'm wittier than you?"
"I've been keeping track of our little tit-for-cat tonight. The score is 5 to
4, your favor." Then, before Blake could gather her thoughts, Yang gently took
them – and the conversation – back out of her hands. "I'm good with puns, but
you're good with them too – you're good with everything. I mean everything.
You're smart . . ."
"You make the highest grades out of the four of us," Blake said. It was maybe
not the best time for it, but she recognized a contest when she saw one.
Yang raised one brow as she turned to look at Blake, and the battle was on.
"You kick butt . . ."
"Who was principle in knocking Roman and his mech down about six pegs?"
"You're calm, cool, and collected . . ."
"You're passionate, powerful, and put-together."
"You're sexy as hell."
"Says the gorgeous girl with the body of the goddess of athleticism."
"No no no no, I gotta stop you there," Ah, this was certain to be good. "Look,
if Ember Celica and Bumblebee were to have a June wedding and produce a super-
sexy-robo-lovechild, you'd be, like, twice that child's hotness on the hot-o-
meter."
"A lovechild of Ember Celica and Bumblebee," Blake repeated, if only to give
her brain time to reclassify Yang from "sunflower" to "celica"; obvious, in
retrospect. "Are we talking about you, here?"
"Well, duh," Yang's voice matched the flex of her upturned arms: toned to
perfection. "Have you seen these guns?"
Do not, under any circumstances, touch the bicep, Blake. Don't do
it."Frequently."
"Sun's out, guns out," Yang recited with all the solemnity, rhyme, and sheer,
unbridled joy of a young child's poetry recital.
"Okay, but technically the sun went down a while ago." The metaphor sideswiped
Blake, and her Mercedes of thought was forced to take an early exit. "Wait. If
I'm the sun . . . are you trying to say you show off for me?"
"You know it." Yang could easily have been mistaken for a childhood daydream
with that kind of mischief written on her countenance. "What, like you don't,
bend-over-and-pick-up-my-book-real-quick?"
Breathe in, breathe out. If with proper meditation one could control one's body
temperature, surely Blake's practiced mind could imagine the heat wave rising
in her cheeks was only a passing summer breeze. In some respects, it was. "That
was a special occasion. You stole my book. Desperate times . . ."
"Call for disparate measurements?" Perhaps it was Yang who was really the more
catlike between the two of them. At this moment, she certainly looked like the
cat who'd gotten into an entire lake of cream, somewhere off in Candy Land.
And, possibly, for that pun, she deserved it. " . . . a masterstroke."
Understatement, along with sneaking, poetry, and gloom and doom, was one of
Blake's many finely-honed talents. "Did you come up with that off the top of
your head?"
"More like the top of the bed," Two knuckles' raps against the headboard gave
rhythm to Yang's statement. "But yeah."
"Well, either way, that was actually pretty impressive. 5 to 6. Bonus point.
You're in the lead." But there were more important things to consider than who
was winning at the moment. Game called on account of . . . explain. "And
leading us away from our prior conversation, I notice. I believe you'd been
trying to say, perhaps, one last thing to me?"
Yang's laughs were so vibrant, so colorful, so real, like a aurora borealis,
that any attempts by her to fake a laugh were immediately spotted by their
similarity to Blake's choices in fashion. "Ha ha ha ha!" Like that one, for
example. "No, that was, like leading up to stuff, not away from . . ." She
stopped on a luen, face stooping to pick up a smile she'd lost somewhere back
along the way. "Yeah, okay. I'm still terrified."
"I've been listening, and I've understood every word you've said. But I have to
confess, it's still a little difficult to imagine you being scared of
anything." It was what terrified Blake more than anything else: ghosts. Not the
spirits of the dead, but the living without spirit. The idea of Yang terrified
was so antithetical to everything she was that a thousand horrors – some
perpetrated by her own quick claws – were far easier to imagine than her
retreating from anything. "What's got you so worried?"
Yang was quiet as a grave, and Blake prayed that there wouldn't soon be
raindrops on her tombstone. This was probably counterproductive, considering
that statement was entirely "self-important storm levels of gloom" worthy. "The
thing I like best of all," Yang briefly resurrected, then sank back into the
cold, hard ground. Then, like some mild manner disappearing into a superheroic
countenance, she turned her usual radiance up to full blast, rising fully from
her earthen bed in accordance, Blake was certain, with some prophecy or
another. "I'm getting there, trust me. Just getting a running start!"
Blake felt like the world's biggest fool for having worried. "Take your time.
I'm not going anywhere." Yang's huff and puff signaled that she was getting
ready for a homewrecker. "Lifelong, remember?"
Yang's laugh shook the scene, and she needn't have bothered with blowing the
house down. "That's kind of the point." She barreled onwards before Blake could
get a leg up, and tripping was, perhaps, inevitable. "The thing I like best
about being with you, Blake, is the challenge of it."
At some point when Blake wasn't looking, Yang had apparently ceased to be
straightforward. Something quantum, perhaps, and gosh darn it Schrodinger and
his pet of all things had to both pop and not pop into her head. "You think it
might be a good idea to rephrase that?"
"Hmmm . . ." Yang drew her mouth into a pout and Blake couldn't help but keep
coming back to lemonade, for some reason. "Nope."
"Figured." Sad news, Schrodinger: your cat was dead.
But Yang could bring life anywhere. "There's a thrill to being challenged
that's better than riding the fastest motorcycle in the world. Trust me, I
would know. And it is knowing, you know? Knowing how much you have to improve
in order to call yourself 'better'. You and me get in little contests all the
time, like who can think of more puns, or who can kill the most Grimm, or who
has the best comeback, or . . ."
"Who can play utter havoc with the other person's sexuality the most
effectively?" Blake was justifiably proud of her innocent eyelash flutter:
she'd been born with it, lost it at an early age, and practiced for years to
get it back.
"Wasn't gonna bring it up unless you did, but yeah, that's probably my favorite
game we play." Yang looked over Blake's form like she was eyeing a new dress,
and Blake quite suddenly felt very in fashion that season. Frill her up as much
as necessary, so long as Yang's body touched her silken skin. "You're really
good at it." Look who was talking.
"Oh, and here I was thinking your favorite was chess." Yang's concentration and
desire to win focused like laser sights over a tableau of black and white
waiting for her to make a move? Perhaps it was Blake whose favorite game was
chess, come to think of it.
"We did get to be partners because of that pony piece, so maybe." There were
moments in Blake's life that made her days worth going through, such as every
time Yang opened her mouth.
But that was enough horsing around. "It comes down to sparring." Blake
understood. She wanted to believe she always did, if Yang would only open her
mouth. "The games we play aren't just games, are they?"
"Yeah. The games themselves aren't really important. It's just that you keep
giving me opportunities to play." She moved her hands like she was building
something up, either in her head or clockwork, fragile, in front of her. "It's
like this: normally, when I lose a race on Bumblebee or a spar or whatever, I'm
pretty sore a loser about it. Stuff goes 'boom'. But every time you pass me you
look back like you're expecting me to be right behind you, and all of a sudden,
that's where I'm going with my life. Right behind you. Blake, you don't just
make me want to live up to you." Another look, like a world where honey might
be made from amethyst gemstones. "You make me believe I can actually do it. I
love you, Blake. Really. I've thought about this for a long time, now." Stars
fell. "I've just been so scared of losing what makes our time together special
that it stopped me from telling you sooner."
And there was the point Yang had been getting at for – understandably – too
long. "I meant what I said, I promise you that." Blake tried for one of Yang's
smiles, something comforting, kind, careless of one's self. "Life. Long."
Yang showed her how it was done. "I know. But you have enough masks to keep
track of, and plus, I'm sort of selfish." The smell of warm chocolate chip
cookies transplanted into a touch might match the way Yang's fingers, gentle,
felt upon her cheek. "I want you to show me how you're really feeling, even if
that hurts me, and this isn't the kind of thing you hear without changing how
you treat someone, you know? I really wanted to hope that maybe we could keep .
. . playing around like we do. Making each other better. Even if you don't like
me like that."
The needle of Blake's thought process slid across the record of this
conversation, and with a sound like a horrifying realization, Blake noticed
that these cookies were, in fact, oatmeal raisin. "At the risk of sounding
redundant: huh?"
Yang's hand, regrettably, withdrew, leaving Blake to focus fully on the
miscommunicated map of her heart that was unfolding before her. "It's sort of
obvious, you know?" Her voice, tinged with that sadness, was reminiscent of a
cloudy day after the snow had fallen and the sun was just starting to break
through. "You wear your heart like a ribbon in your hair. Trying to hide things
with it."
A small black cat of a faunus writing lovelorn words three years ago would have
killed for a simile like that. Had killed for less than that, if indirectly. "I
. . . have to admit. This isn't quite where I saw this conversation heading."
"I get called a lot of things, but predictable isn't one of them," Yang said,
while somewhere in the background, Blake was now wondering how many other of
Yang's smiles to her this evening had been so hollow, so false, so leaden with
well-meaning false cheer. So painful. "Really, I just wanted to clear the air.
Say my piece; I've . . . made my peace. It's hard to turn someone down,
especially someone you turn up with. I understand, really."
Blake wasn't sure she understood anything about Yang nearly as well as she
thought she had. "I don't recall us ever 'turning up'." There was a distinct
lack of anything more intelligent to say than that at that point in time.
"Work with me. Work with the puns." There would someday be a moment unruined by
odd sentences and too-quickly turned phrases, Blake was certain. But it didn't
look as though it was going to be today.
"I thought there were puns everywhere if you knew how to look?" Like quicksand,
Blake's now-sluggish thoughts hardened when struck – though she wasn't quite
used to having to strike them herself. "No. Wait. Hold on. That's entirely off-
topic, I . . ." This was probably not the reason that Hunters and Huntresses
were taught deep-breathing exercises, but this conversation suddenly felt as
impossible as beating back the darkness that threatened her entire world. In
some symbolic senses, it was exactly the same thing. "What makes you think I
don't like you like that?"
". . . ah, I gotcha. Wanna know where you slipped up. I can dig that." She was
digging something, alright – possibly Blake's grave, the way this conversation
was threatening to kill her. "Knowing I was in love was a movement, and so was
realizing you didn't like me like that. You never seemed like you didn't like
me as a person – I know you do – and I never heard you talking about anyone
else or anything like that. Saw you looking at Sun a couple times, though.
Plus, I also never heard you talking about me, or saw you looking at me, or . .
." She laughed, and it was real, despite everything, and Blake wasn't sure she
could have managed. "Gosh, Blake, we've tried to seduce each other so often,
and you're unflappable. I can't even get you to blush."
All at once, their games didn't seem nearly as fun anymore. "Well, I mean, I
was trying not to blush, and there . . . was the scratchy thing," she
attempted, in the same way a man at the bottom of a canyon "attempts" climbing.
"Eh, that doesn't really count, though, does it? It'd be like you licking my
clit and calling that a victory." A breath of silence was just enough time for
this to sink in, and then Yang opened her mouth and destroyed Blake's entire
sense of balance once again. "Heck,I pretty much tried that! You didn't even
stutter!"
Blake debated with herself how wise it would have been to say that rubbing her
ears was nothing like that other thing, and also how truthful. In the end, all
she could find to say was: "Was stuttering what you were going for?"
"Maybe call it a last ditch attempt to see if I was wrong. Maybe I finally
wanted to win something, say I was doing better than you, show off. Little of
column A, little of column B." This sense of resignation fit Yang like one of
her little sister's sweaters. Too tight, too uncomfortable, far too revealing.
"No, actually, the reason I did it was to bring you back to me. That's the real
reason I know you're not into me, because you're not ever completely there. We
hang out all the time, and we have fun, but you're always focused on something
else besides me. Like studying, or training, or . . ."
The tumblers in Blake's head fell into place with a click, the lock on a heavy,
solemn tome was unsealed, and the situation could be read plain as day. "Or a
book. Something I find more engaging than massage or song or . . . or you." She
could have phrased that better, she realized even as she said it.
"Yeah." There was density to her affirmation, like the entire force of the
conversation had been compressed into that single word. Heavy. "I don't blame
you, trust me – you've got your own thing you like doing. I'm not trying to
guilt you or say you're doing wrong by me, but . . . I don't know. I just think
. . ." She shut her eyes like a book that ended badly. "You probably deserve
someone a lot better than me."
The silence enveloped them like a numb, frostbitten winter's day.
"I'm a big girl, you know." Yang spoke as if she feared one tone out of line
might trigger an avalanche, an eternity of silence and cold. "I can take
rejection."
"Is that why you sound like you're about to cry?" Blake asked, as gently as she
could manage, and she suspected nowhere near gently enough.
Yang's breath came in shaky, as though she was uncertain there was really air
there for her at all. "I promised myself, if I could ever just build up the
strength to talk to you like this, then I wasn't going to make you feel
guilty." She didn't realize the power she held: a solitary sniffle could
shatter Blake's uncaring facade and too-caring heart alike. "Not the first
promise I've broken, I guess."
A night of casual, intimate touches, and suddenly Blake didn't know what to do
with her hands – but she settled for settling, a palm on Yang's (all too
apparently) weary shoulder. "Don't cry just yet, okay? Not until I've had my
chance to respond." She only hesitated for a moment before grabbing Yang's
chin, turning her head with gentle insistence to let amber and amethyst alloy.
It was somewhat selfish in and of itself; she wanted to look at Yang as much as
she thought Yang needed to look at her. "Not until it's all over."
Yang didn't respond immediately, searching for something in Blake's face like a
desert dweller searching a cave for water. "Sure." A swallow, an expression
hollow as a crab's shell with something pinching living inside it. "Right on.
Gotta keep fighting, right?"
"I've never known you to give up before," Blake said. Her lack of action had
been the poison, so she swore she'd be the anti-venom. "Though apparently
you've come into the practice of making assumptions. You might think we have
this little game we're playing solved, but you only have half the pieces
available to you. You've said your piece, now let me say mine, and we can
puzzle out where we go from here some other day." She smiled, and hoped it
reached Yang. "Do you think you can do that for me?"
A pause. Like the space between throwing the knockout punch and the ref
confirming that you hadn't, in fact, just hit a little too hard. "I dunno, I .
. ." Yang sagged to a stop. Blake, in turn wondered if she'd made the wrong
move – wondered when she'd gotten so deep into this at-play mentality that she
even thought of this as a series of moves. Then, at last, she closed her eyes,
breathed in deeply, and held it, and finally, Yang smiled gamely. "Alright.
Anything for you."
"Thank you. I hope I'm worthy of your faith." Blake leaned back into her
memories, like a warm blanket in front of the roaring fire that was Yang Xiao
Long. She'd beat this wintry weather yet. "I've never been much of a talker, so
either this shouldn't take too awfully long, or else I've got way too much
bottled up for either of us to be comfortable. Still, if you'll allow it, I'd
like to sculpt a tale for you just as involved as the picture you've painted
for me today. To mix my metaphors." She smirked, and leaned her head away as if
the action shifted her entire balance. It was enough of a smirk to do that, if
smirks could. "I apparently need to practice my authoring skills, anyway."
"Floor is yours." Yang could accomplish with the subtlest shift in facial
expressions the same thing that one of Blake's smirks could, if smirks could.
"Ceiling, too, if you want it."
For lack of a witty retort, Blake sat in thought for a few moments. "You know I
was part of the White Fang. But I haven't been forthcoming with the details, so
far. I think maybe it's time for that to change – just a little bit." Her heart
in her chest felt like, of all things, a hot air balloon, weighty and ponderous
but slowly lifting. Just how heavy was the load she'd been carrying?
"You sure?" Yang always promised she'd be the first to fall in battle –
protecting someone, most likely. She'd never said as much, of course, but Blake
could recognize the signs – the self-sacrificial attitude paired with the
reckless personality.
"You deserve to know." Blake could make sacrifices too. She'd been born into
it, as a matter of fact. And in point of that same fact: "My beginning . . . I
never knew my birth parents. In all aspects that mattered, I was raised by the
White Fang to punish the Schnee's sins. From the age I could lift a sword, I
was trained to be, I suppose, an assassin."
People called Nora bouncy, but as energetic as she could be, "I know you're
talking more like eleven or twelve, here, but I'm imagining a four year-old
swinging around a black sword and talking about how they're gonna be the best
ninja ever someday, and it's freaking adorable," There was no question in
Blake's mind that it was Yang who was best able in their circle of friends to
bounce back from anything.
"You're not as far off as you think. Make the sword a sign board, and you're
right on the money." There seemed to be some sort of sale on sudden
realizations, as well. "My formative years were spent staging peaceful, if
angry, protest, which explains a lot about me in retrospect, I'm sure."
"Like the flag thing!" Yang had just seen a two-for-one sale, it sounded. "On
our first day in class! I always wondered where you got it from."
If Yang really wanted to see what Blake looked like when she was off-balance,
that would be the way to do it. Either that or something involving that wall
and finishing what she started, but admitting that would have both set the
blushbomb off early and put aside any possible chance of them finishing this
conversation in a reasonable manner and amount of time. "I thought that was
something everyone would do to support their teams. Cheer them on." Wicked
words danced on her tongue, and she ejected them from the gathering hall before
she quite realized what she was doing. "You were imagining something with pom
poms, perhaps?"
"A cheerleading outfit?" Yang fidgeted beneath the idea, and the innuendo was
almost too natural. "Actually, uh, I was sort of thinking a baseball uniform
would suit you the best. Maybe some holes cut out in the helmet for the ears .
. ."
And that was, to put not too fine a point on it, something of a curveball. It
was also something entirely off-base from their current conversation, but Blake
filed it away for future reference at any rate. "I see." Just in case. "I'll
keep that in mind."
"Uh, thanks." Yang coughed into her fist with enough enthusiasm to make Blake
reflexively check her other hand for memory-erasing devices. Which was silly.
Because if Yang had any memory-erasing devices Blake wouldn't remember finding
them after the fact. "Continue!"
Blake gathered her thoughts like seashells, ocean-carried memories of things
long since dead. "I can fault the White Fang for a number of things, but child-
rearing isn't actually one of them. They provided for me, kept me safe, taught
me about the world, and even taught me valuable life skills. Besides the
poisoning and jumping around fighting everyone things."
"Like how to seduce people?" Yang asked, very nearly on cue, all things
considered. "Later on, I mean. Because there's no way you came up with some of
that stuff you did on your own."
It was like a wave crashing over Blake's consciousness, washing away all of her
hard-earned seashells. "You're not going to let that die, are you?"
"If by 'die' you mean . . ." Well, if Yang was going to be that effective at
keeping things alive, the gentle art of assassination could go die in a ditch.
"Duly noted." Blake would pay a silver dollar not to let that happen again.
"And, no. They didn't teach me about that at any point. That all was more . . .
instinct than anything."
Yang's gaze was not withering. Heat was withering. Too much starch was
withering. A poorly cooked fish was withering. This look was dead on arrival.
"Instinct? Really?"
Blake scratched the back of her neck like it might agitate some different words
into coming out. "And books. Lots of books."
"I figured." Blake would never have called Yang insufferably anything, but this
was about a 9.5 on the smug-o-meter. And worse yet, she was cute when she was
smug.
Not even remotely fair.
Still, life wasn't fair – the fact that someone like Yang seemed to be
interested in someone like her was proof enough of that. Nothing really for it
but to work with what you had. "The White Fang wears masks for a reason, as
obvious as it might be to say. Anonymity has always been our greatest
strength." Like Grimm.
"Like secret agents," Yang supplied, an invitation to a child's party, written
in carefree handwriting. A surprise party, evidently.
" . . . exactly like that." While Blake had long been certain of her genre and
embraced the conclusion that had been written,Yang was a fairy tale ending, and
worse, she was contagious. Even the Big Bad Wolf ended up alright in the end,
when she was around. "But it was more than just a matter of strength for us,
which is quite possibly why the Fang is so good at it. Oftentimes, being able
to keep your cards close to your chest was the only thing that kept the
organization from folding."
"So they taught you how to keep secrets." Yang was going to steal her glory at
this rate – there was a twinge, judging by the data between four different
ears, that meant she was beginning to cotton on to the situation. Like when she
started murmuring aloud at the numbers in their hyperkinetic physics homework
started adding up, and Blake had never quite realized the extent of a
mathematical curiosity she was. "Bluff."
"And go all in, if necessary." Blake could play the numbers game. She could
play a lot of games. In fact, "It's more of an apt metaphor than you may
already think it is. Not just poker, of course, but risk and sparring in
general. I was too young to understand what was really at stake, in those early
years, so they fell back on the oldest parenting trick in the book." Blake let
her chin rest upon her hand, an acquiescence to the rising tension in her back
as she approached her point. "Everything they taught me was framed like it was
a game of some sort."
Yang's nose scrunched, and somewhere very deep down, Blake had a brief but
definitive battle with the urge to take a picture. "Like hide and seek?"
"Keeping people from finding our meeting places." With her big toe, Blake
traced the old, familiar hallways and secret passages – all different now, she
was certain – in the carpeting. "Making and reading codes were puzzles,
tactical simulations were brainteasers. Parades aren't really games, of course,
but they were close enough for me to take part in the protests and sort of
understand what I was supposed to do." This was like finding a forgotten box
three years after the moving vans leave, and finding it full of old pictures of
all your friends. "And I was good at most of those things. Not all of them,
particularly not espionage or the use of, pardon the pun, catspaws. Well, of
course you'll pardon the pun; what am I saying? But I was good at most of them.
And I loved all of them with all my heart."
"It's how you grew up," Yang spoke like someone who had just discovered an
underwater cave system while scuba-diving: with awe constrained until the
surface could be reached. "Playing games was how you interacted with your
family. The whole world!"
"Hidden sees hidden. It was one of our basic philosophies as an organization."
There was a wist to the waste, a purpose in a time of chaos, and even now Blake
had to smile at the idea that there was a treasure to be discovered in every
word everyone said. "Ninjas of Love expresses the same philosophy as 'Looking
underneath the underneath'. We all knew, as a general rule, that we meant more
than just what we said or showed." Shame, ever the uninvited guest, crashed the
party at this point. "That probably also explains a lot about me, in
retrospect."
"Like why you're so quick to pick up on stuff," Yang said, as if she'd just
said 'Faunus are equal to humans' or some other very basic and objective truth
that Blake was entirely prepared to go to war over. "And so considerate."
If only Yang didn't make such a habit of striking her speechless, then Blake
might be able to articulate precisely how amazing it was that she seemed to do
so on a daily basis. The incongruity of what she knew to be true about herself
and the amazing person Yang somehow believed her to be was such an odd
mismatch, like when one set of her ears picked up on something at a pitch her
other ears couldn't, that her heart was able to break in and start shooting off
bottle rockets before her brain could even begin hiding the matches.
"Yang Xiao Long," Blake was sort of used to keeping her voice monotonic, until
moments like these, when suddenly, she was anything but, all daring and
chocolate. "You absolute flatterer, you."
The usual over-the-top attitude seemed to melt away from the heat in Yang's
cheeks. "I guess I'm kind of making it hard for you to say what you need to
say, huh? Sorry."
"It isn't as if I mind, you know." No, she didn't mind at all, as in, she
didn't seem to be using her mind properly every time Yang did anything
whatsoever. And even worse, somehow, she was beginning to like that. "You're
basically the first person to ever say anything like that to me."
"Ah, heh heh . . . wait, hold on." Yang questioned things like stoplights
questioned traffic, so Blake braced herself. "You said that the White Fang
taught you all that stuff about secrets and games when you were a little kid.
Weren't they all, like, hippies and stuff back then?"
Ah. Yes. Heavily revelatory conversation left unfinished. Yang really did have
that kind of effect on people. "Well, no. Not really. They were far more
peaceful than they are now, but to tell the truth, the difference between the
White Fang of before and the White Fang now isn't as wide a gulf as everyone
believes it to be." Blake had to be careful she didn't lose herself in her
memories, which was odd considering how many times she'd revisited them. "The
idea that humans will always believe we Faunus are inferior, the desire to take
up arms and revolt, the hate and mistrust; they didn't spring up overnight. If
anything, they were the seeds the White Fang sprung up from."
"It's kind of hard to sit back and say they're entirely wrong, huh?" Yang's
voice rang like windchimes, pushed more than played, a little hesitant,
somewhat quiet.
"Often, yes, it is." Blake tried, as a general rule, to keep movement to a
minimum. It was a leftover of a childhood not wasted, but rejected: conserve
your energy for when you need it and avoid drawing undue attention to oneself.
Here and now, though, turning to Yang felt like something she needed to do with
her whole body instead of just her head. "But sometimes, occasionally, you meet
a human that makes you believe there might be something more to tomorrow after
all. Someone with a good heart, a listening ear, a fantastic sense of humor,
and strengths both loud and quiet. But that's getting a little ahead of myself,
even if I've yet to get ahead of you."
"You mean all that?" Yang's eyes moved guiltily away from Blake's own, and
Blake hadn't even realized she'd leaned forwards. It was an inane thought, and
yet she couldn't help but feel in that moment as though magnets were entirely
unaware of their movement towards each other. "I'm just . . . trying to be a
good partner. Especially after that whole thing at the end of last semester . .
."
"Exactly." At least she was able to fight off the urge to pull a Nora on the
end of Yang's nose, instead leaning back to a proper distance. This was
supposed to be a serious talk, baseball aside. "I've spent my entire life
rubbing elbows with professional killers and hired guns, trying to avoid
causing too much friction, seeking to improve myself only so I could, maybe,
catch up to them. I suppose on some level I expected the same thing from
Beacon." She let a giggle free and, ok, maybe not entirely unlike Ms. Valkyrie.
"Imagine my surprise to find out that the best partners don't just work with
you, but alongside you. To make you better. On and off the battlefield."
Yang blinked beneath the alluring glow of moonlight, and Blake was struck by
the urge to compose a haiku. "I . . . well, I wasn't . . ."
"A bombastic girl," Blake held up her fingers, counting off the syllables. It
wasn't really necessary for her, but it would hopefully let Yang know what she
was doing. "Beautiful inside and out. She shows me the way."
Yang was silent for a moment – presumably, stunned by Blake's mastery of
wordplay and sophisticated choice of words – before bursting out into the kind
of laughter that seems to shake the room it occupies. Well, not quite shake.
Bouncy house laughter. "Blake, I'm sorry, I'm really touched you'd write a poem
about me . . ." She coughed into her other fist with enough force to leave
Blake safe from all potential memory alteration procedures, "But you're kind of
a dork. You know that, right?"
Blake was surprised to find that hearing this pleased her. She was even more
surprised to find that she wasn't at all angry with herself about that fact.
"Says the girl who, I'm certain, reads X-Ray and Vav with an almost religious
fervor."
"Holy scriptures, X-Ray!" Yang could narrate one of Professor Port's books and
make it seem exciting. "You just can't appreciate the subtlety and nuance
behind the last few issues. They are masterworks. Like Ninjas of Love!"
Laughter had always been a challenge for Blake, but as Yang had so elegantly
articulated earlier, she longer saw challenges as things to be avoided around
her. "I'm pretty sure this started out as a serious conversation."
Another laugh from Yang, another opportunity for Blake's heart to run away with
her. "I guess I just have that kind of effect on people."
"I know you do. It's done wonders for me." And some things were just too
difficult to resist. "A lifetime's worth of brainwashing, and you come along
and dirty my mind back up again like you'd been doing it all your life."
If Yang turned any redder than she already was, she was going to have people
mistaking her for her little sister. "Well, I can." Yang stopped cold like a
frozen brake pedal, unable, apparently, to quite bring the current line of
conversation to the halt it needed to come to. "I can definitely say I'm proud
of that accomplishment. Happy to be of service."
Blake felt her thoughts align, like roadways and street corners, a map back
someplace familiar. If not necessarily the nicest part of town. "I guess I
wasn't ever really brainwashed, though. If I had been, I wouldn't have ever
left."
"For what it's worth, I'm glad you did," Yang said, in the small, quiet voice
of a fifty-foot giant who didn't want to hurt anybody. "I'm glad I met you. You
and your unwashed, dirty mind."
Blake was glad Yang was there to ground her – even it was still having your
head stuck up in the clouds, even if they were a stormy gray. Yang was a silver
lining, perhaps. "I had to. I didn't belong in the White Fang any longer." What
Blake said was at odds with the small smile on her face, but they presented the
same politics to the rest of the world nonetheless. "The games stopped being
fun, but I never stopped playing them. I had to. Instead of being for the
survival of the White Fang as a whole, they were for my own." A mirthless
chuckle, like an apple from an evil queen. "I got a lot better at I Spy
subterfuge, let me tell you."
Her words reverberated like dropped pins in the ensuing silence.
"Uncle Qrow always used to tell me something whenever I got too angry, or too
scared." Yang's voice rang like a walk on the beach, slow, contemplative, and
careful of sudden jagged edges. "He said that it wasn't what we thought, but
what we did that was important." She paused. Presumably, squinting at the sun
was involved. "I don't think I really got what he was trying to tell me before
now."
"He has a point." Blake was able to get half the sounds out, at least. "When it
comes down to it, swords and signs really are all the difference between the
two Fangs. Same secrets, same members, same revolutionary zeal." A sigh through
the nose, because the mouth would be giving away too much, or something. "Same
idealistic, naive self."
"Playing the same games." When Yang whispered, it was the same as when other
people shouted, and the echo of it rang in Blake's head.
"You know, sometimes I feel like the least intelligent person on this planet."
It was a bold statement to make with people like Cardin wandering the halls of
Beacon, but then again Blake wouldn't have even known of Cardin's existence
unless she had decided to hide from the rogue terrorist organization she used
to be a part of in an academy for Hunters and Huntresses in the first place. "I
honestly thought – if you can believe this, after the sleepless nights and
threats to our lives – I honestly thought that maybe we were making a
difference for a while, there."
"'That's why we're here, right?'" Yang coaxed the words out more than said
them, a series of uncertain syllables hiding in caves made from pauses. "'To
make things better.' 'This girl's a lost cause.' Basically Weiss's entire
existence, too. Man. Right from the beginning." Her voice was a feather, light
and airy, but drawn inexorably, nevertheless, to the ground. "Life at Beacon
must have been like a million-mile guilt trip, huh?"
"I'm not opposed to the idea of penance." Blake spoke without venom, but she
wasn't unaware of the bite. "All I wanted to know was what I was guilty of."
It was the kind of sentence that occurred to people when they were lying in bed
with the covers over their head at 3 in the afternoon with all the lights off,
and Yang was far too intelligent to do something like turning on the lights. "I
wish things had gone differently for you."
"I've lost people, too. More than I can count." It was a stubborn, splintering
thought, and a thought like a stubborn splinter. Ignoring it or, on occasion,
forgetting about it, didn't change the fact that it was there, waiting to be
hammered into the cerebellum like the tiny stake of wood it was. "I promise I'm
not trying to make this yet another contest between us, but at the same time .
. . it is the truth."
"Yeah, that's . . . that's one contest I'm pretty sure I can go without
winning." At that moment, if the way Yang was speaking could be compared to
anything, it would be a pebble. One already in flight, heading towards the
water, and desperately trying to avoid ripples. "I don't think I want to be
part of that contest at all."
"Me either." Blake bunched her fists into the fabric of her tights, wondering
how exactly, or if exactly, that related to the ways cats tended to knead at
things when they were happy. If only to keep from wondering about anything
else. "They didn't die, or leave me, or the Fang, not usually. But every day,
we were told, in one shape or another form, that if the humans wished to make
monsters out of us, we would grant them their wish. Every peaceful
demonstration, every cheek turned, every kind word spoken in place of an evil
thought, and we threw it all away for the idea that if we acted like animals
we'd be treated like people."
"And they changed." Yang filled in the answers Blake had kept skipping over.
Just like when they were doing homework – only this time, the problem was that
Blake knew the information all too well as it was. "Right before your eyes."
And always right at the forefront of Blake's thoughts. "It was like a parade in
your head, celebrating exactly how terrifying we could make ourselves." The
words spilled forth like vomit. Something posionous her body needed to get rid
of, immediately. "Do you know what it is when the people you love – your family
– begin to make monsters of themselves, and insist on taking you with them
whatever dark paths they travel? What it means when images of protest become
symbols of violence and anarchy? What thoughts you begin to think . . . when
you become convinced that you, too, are nothing more than an instrument of
hate?" She paused for the space of a breath, but held her own. The gentlest
breeze could throw the entire delicate balance she'd built up for herself out
of whack, send her careening over the edge, and destroy everything she was
working towards. "Do you know what that all feels like?"
The words drained Blake like speaking a sacrificial spell, all the warmth and
life within her disappearing into nothingness, because she remembered exactly
what that felt like. It was the dawning realization of a lesson learned a
thousand times before, that outside Blake's head there was a world that was
cruel for cruelty's sake and uncaring of what smaller creatures it stepped on,
and she was just as much a part of it as anything else. She'd never make it out
there. She was too kind. For a moment she believed she hadn't prepared herself
properly, that at any second she'd break down into nothing – and then.
And then.
And then there was Yang.
And then there was Yang, like a comic book hero, to catch her before she fell,
to draw her in closer and whisper that the day was saved. There was Yang, to
remind Blake that gentle smiles and optimism might yet win the day, and that
kindness was not ever to be considered the same as weakness. Fingers atop
Blake's head and gentle humming were what had started this whole mess, and they
seemed to be what Yang intended to get her out of it with. Bless her. "I bet it
feels like dying."
Blake leaned her head back into Yang's palm, if only to brace herself for the
next sentence. "It feels worse. It feels like wanting to die."
Blake didn't truly notice the gentle pressure Yang put behind her fingers until
it was gone, and she hesitated to think of an idiom to match the situation lest
it hit altogether too close to home. "I'm sorry," she repeated the words, like
once wasn't already too much.
The smile rose from something that had burned within Blake long ago. "You of
all people have nothing to apologize for. I've made my own peace with that –
I'm trying to move on. I want to live. And, Yang . . ." At last, she breathed
in, and marveled at how her lungs and heart alike filled with the motion. "I
never feel more alive than when you touch me."
Blake Belladonna was one of perhaps three people on the face of Remnant who
could claim the dubious honor of having struck Yang Xiao Long speechless.
Blake would fill the gap, she swore, with every good thing Yang had ever done.
"When everyone around you is telling you, day after day, that you're nothing
more to people than a monster under the bed, you start to believe them.
Especially when 'monstrous things' are practically the calling card of the
organization you belong to." She shook with the effort of memory, and with the
realization of where the future was going. "But you're, in some ways, my
reassurance. Sometimes, deep down, I start to believe I might just be some
other horror hiding in the woods, waiting to prey on a world of light and
goodness that was never built for me. Then you're there. You're holding me
close, so close in your heart and with your hands that I think surely, if I
were as horrible a beast as everyone else believed, you would never . . ."
Her voice, at last, failed her. She'd never been much of a talker. And
evidently, Yang's voice was still failing her, too. The silence in the room
stung like a wall of needles, not quite piercing the skin, making movement
impossible.
Impossible for her. But for Yang, the impossible was only a suggestion of what
not to do.
She moved like honey, a nourishing, golden glide of sappy situations,
sweetness, and light. Her arms encircled Blake like an answered prayer, and
miraculously, unprecedented, Blake was met with the wild idea that someone
might accept her for who she was, ears, claws, and human failings all.
It happened every time. Every time Yang touched her. Any idea that it didn't
had only always been playing pretend.
Blake had fought that feeling like some people fight the lifeguard who comes to
rescue their drowning selves, but here and now the realization of what she had
been doing struck her like Yang's eyes, about to shed tears, and she let her
head lay on Yang's shoulder. An exhalation like the world drawing to a close,
and inhale like the next chapter.
"'Course you're not a monster, Blake." Yang could light any darkened woods,
tame any savage beast, baffle any process of thought, but she wasn't in the
practice of lying. That made Blake's heart not race, not skip, but still its
anxious beat. And listen. "Monsters don't hug people back."
Blake had started hugging Yang too, hadn't she? She hadn't even realized. Maybe
that was just further proof. "I guess I'm the one who should be saying sorry."
"If you have to apologize for that, we're all pretty much irredeemable." Blake
felt Yang's smile against her skin, like an endorphin donation.
"No, I mean . . ." All Blake's cleverness must have been used up on witty
comebacks and innuendos, the way she wasn't speaking now. "I wanted to say
something entirely different than all that, but it all got mixed up between my
brain and my mouth somewhere." She drew back once more; as nice as Yang felt
against her, talking directly into someone's shoulder blade wasn't exactly
conducive to communicating heart to heart. "Sorry."
"Nah, it's okay. That's just how people work – they get to talking and
everything just starts falling out." Yang chuckled, stopping herself halfway
through, and Blake nearly had to bite her tongue to keep from asking her to do
it again. Her own or Yang's? Either. "Unless, you know, you've been practicing
for weeks in advance to make sure you don't screw everything up when you
finally start making your grandiose speech."
Forget either of their tongues, for Blake had advanced to biting down her own
lip to keep the laughter from spilling out. Nothing was funny – everything was
funny. Something like that. "And then the person you're talking to can't stop
themselves from saying every tiny thing that comes to mind because they can't
handle how serious the conversation is becoming?"
Yang could do sarcasm just fine. Where Blake indicated it with her tone of
voice, Yang used a sincere tone and conveyed her intentions with body language.
"Well, you know, sometimes things happen that are entirely out of our control,
Blake."
"Like the way your hand keeps wandering up to run through my hair?" Blake
flicked her upper-left ear against Yang's index finger and decided to pretend
she had meant to do so.
Yang's eyes widened, overfilled like a flooding pool of lilacs and water, and
suddenly Blake remembered unshed tears. "Oh, sorry, I thought – your hair's
really – I can stop, if you -"
"No, it's okay. More than okay." Blake took in as deep a breath as she could,
as though her vocal cords were operated by air pressure alone. "In fact, it's
about the only thing keeping me from having a breakdown right now. If I'm being
honest."
If fire could consider something carefully, it might look a bit like Yang did
at that moment – feel a bit like her palm against the top of Blake's head.
"Alright, I gotcha." A smile to stoke the flames. "Set fingers to fun."
Blake was tempted to say that sort of thing was supposed to happen later in the
evening, but . . . "I had more I wanted to say." It was as much a reminder for
herself as it was for Yang. "Think you can give me one more shot?" It was as
much a request for herself as it was for Yang.
"I'm dying to hear what else you've got to tell me." Yang was going to kill
Blake too, at this rate. Her gravestone would read "Warmed to bursting by the
twinkle in Yang's eye."
"Alright. I'll make my first entreaty to hold on to life just a little longer,
then." Blake's eyes fell more than looked over Yang's entire form, and she
wasn't sure herself whether she'd slipped up or dropped into her proper place
in the world. "And as for the other . . . could you . . . maybe? . . ."
If Blake was going to be forgetting her lines, Yang might as well move ahead in
the script. With slow, deliberate movements like a metaphor Blake might think
of when her heart wasn't pounding so loudly as to drown out her own thoughts,
Yang brought her other hand down the length of Blake's back before wrapping an
entire arm, crafted like a piston but cushioned with pillows, around her waist.
The otherwise occupied hand atop her head splayed across the back of her mind,
and with little more than a nudge Blake felt herself be drawn nearly into
Yang's lap.
It wasn't being a perfect ninja that Blake had always dreamed about with the
last part of her imagination protecting her childhood. She dreamed of being a
pirate, of being someplace unjudged by laws, man, or nature, of wooden ships
and treasure chests and adventures without concern. Perhaps it was quite silly
to think of something this intimate in those childlike terms, but Yang felt for
all the world, lying against her as she was, like clear skies, warm weather,
and the open sea.
"Mmm." It was the third law of motion more than any conscious choice on Blake's
part as her arms wrapped, fit, around Yang's neck, like lock and key to the
chains that had been anchoring Blake in place. Freedom; that was the crux of
it, the crossroads of it, the kisses and hugs or Xs and Os of it. "Thank you."
"No problem." It was odd, the way a statement of magnanimity could sound so
much like a statement of gratitude. At least, the way Yang had just said it.
"Now that I've done that, what was that second thing you were going to ask me
to do?"
"For you to stop being insufferably smug for three seconds." Forget the claws,
no matter how quick; this situation necessitated a whip. Bad Yang.
Bad Yang, as Bad Yang usually did, chortled with all her strength. "Aw, come
on. You love the smug hug."
"I believe we had established that I was the poet here?" It was the testing toe
in the warm bath after a day spent shoveling snow. "I hadn't taken you as a
plagiarist."
"I've got a reputation to protect as a non-dork. I can't be seen writing
trochees or whatever." And there they were, the jets in the hot tub. Or maybe
something to do with friction and silken sheets would be the better turn of
phrase. The thing to note was, the agitation was more about warmth and comfort
than anything else.
"I can honestly say that amongst the people I call my friends with blond hair
and D-cups, you are the least dorky one." Blake pulled over to let Yang's
laughter pass by. Pass through. Pass through her by route of the places she and
Yang's bodies touched with a feeling like a strawberry sundae tastes. "Despite
the possibility of driving this conversation into a rut . . . thank you, Yang.
Really."
"You're welcome." There were millions of minuscule muscle movements attached to
one of Yang's smiles, even one as small as this one. In that moment, Blake
decided she was going to put a good deal of effort into memorizing each and
every one of them. "You sure you wanna keep going? We can stop for now if
that's what you want. Upsetting you was so low on my list of things to do
today, I actually had to move it over to my list of 'things I never want to
actually do'."
"I'm sure. You need to hear this, and I need to say it." Blake only realized
after she'd inhaled the scent of wildflowers that she'd moved in closer, laying
her head down on Yang's shoulder. She looked up to Yang's face and told herself
it was an apology instead of an attempt to draw even closer than she already
was. "I think I'll have to do the rest of this from down here, though. I'm very
tired, all of a sudden."
"That's . . . not going to be a problem." Yang feigned calm in much the same
way, Blake suspected, as she might feign cowardice. Without the slightest hint
of insincerity, save that she would never do such a thing in her entire life.
"In fact, that's going to be the opposite of a problem."
"Good to hear." Feel, really. The acoustics were so extraordinary from this
position that Blake felt she could reach out and touch them. Touch something,
certainly. Some work of art with a "do not touch" sign attached to it,
metaphorically speaking. "Hopefully your muscles don't overly muffle me."
Yang's arms tightened, and she settled back – like she was riding her
motorcycle, even if that meant Blake was the vehicle in this situation.
Hopefully there had been enough hairpin turns and death-defying stunts for one
evening. "Reading you loud and clear, good buddy."
Blake held on for the ride, and watched her thoughts as they raced by, a blur
of possibilites. "People give the Ninja books and its spinoffs a lot of flak,
but they've always been one of my guilty pleasures." One slowed down to wave,
and Blake figured, why not wave back. Maybe she could ask directions. "To quote
someone I'm very fond of, I'm going somewhere with this, I promise."
"This someone sounds like an extremely wizened and radiant young woman." Yang's
Glynda Goodwitch impression fit her to a T – which, considering her initials
were "GG", meant Yang was extremely off the mark. "I'll allow it."
Speaking of guilty pleasures. Rolled eyes and widened smiles weren't typically
considered to be matching accouterments, but Blake had always felt that a
slight twinge of her ears neatly completed the ensemble. "I found something in
Ninjas that was lacking in other books, and believe it or not, I don't mean the
gratuitous sex scenes." It was like a stalactite looming just over her head,
doing nothing else, the way she felt Yang distinctly not say anything in
response to that. "The dialogue is often clunky, and they tend to meander, but
I always appreciated their vivid and descriptive use of metaphor. Nearly every
other book I've read does nothing but fall back on age-old aphorisms like
'familiarity breeds contempt' or 'absence makes the heart grow fonder'." It was
a breath of air – it might have been a sigh, but it might have been a laugh.
Whatever it was, it was entirely beyond Blake's reckoning. "I can tell you from
personal experience that all those expressions are one hundred percent untrue."
"You're still talking about the White Fang, aren't you?" Yang's voice belied
astonishment that wasn't actually there, like someone who had gotten an
invitation to their own surprise party. "Them and their tired old aphor-whatsit
of 'kill all the humans!'"
Blake giggled, because to do otherwise would have been to refuse hot cocoa
after falling down an iceberg. "The only good man is a dead man," she boomed
her recollection of their rallying cry, but soft, like explosions a
considerable distance away. Sometimes the distance was all that made the noise
bearable. "And then, I guess, their plan was for the lesbians to inherit
Remnant."
Another wave of laughter like a sugar high, like comfort food. Yang was a
bakery made manifest. "Blake, you're absolutely wonderful. If anyone ever tells
you any differently, come find me, and I'll knock their lights out. They
obviously weren't very enlightened anyway."
There was a dearth of thoughts worth smiling over out there – but that was one
of them. "That's exactly what I mean, though. My absence from the White Fang
wasn't anything to grow fond over. In retrospect, leaving them was the best
thing that ever happened to me."
"Me too." Yang said it thoughtlessly. Not without care or consideration, not
harmfully, not with selfish intent. Without thinking. Like she didn't even have
to.
Blake ducked her head, smiled into Yang's shoulder, and tried to hold her
tongue – if only she could stop wondering whether Yang tasted as sweet as she
acted. Like a bakery made manifest. "The way you talk, I'm starting to wonder
if you keep a shrine to me hidden under our bunk bed."
"Blake, you are my shrine." Yang's enunciation could damn an angel and,
possibly, save Blake's soul. "What time do you open up for worship?"
Blake wasn't quite sure what piece of her was still resisting, but it wasn't
working. Not the way Yang could beat down doors and break windows and let the
sunlight in. "Still trying to cheer me up?"
"Whatever keeps the gloom away." Yang blew words like bubbles, iridescent and
carefree. Ready to pop at any moment. She deserved so better than to be
speaking hollow words.
Blake bit her lip nearly hard enough to make it bleed, and oh, to have Yang's
lip intercept the blow. There was, after all, still a part of Blake, perhaps
feline in nature, more likely human, that believed there was an art to
violence. There was a subtlety and grace to any knife, and a dance of
expression and interpretation unique to its wielder. But most importantly, she
reminded herself as she slowly moved upright to look into Yang's crystalline
orbs, there was a craft involved.
Playing ninja.
She didn't need to think about what she wanted to say anymore.
"At first, leaving the White Fang was just like leaving home, if home was a
place that used the word 'traitor' and was known to cook with poisons. It was
like tearing hooks out of myself and watching the pieces I left behind rot
away, a stinking reminder of how I hurt others and hurt myself. After some time
passed, I looked within myself and looked to other people, and in those places
I found my missing pieces. I began healing. And absence did end up making my
heart grow fonder, but not of the White Fang. The longer I stay away from them,
the easier it is to keep staying away from them, like the opposite of an
addiction." The smile Blake wore upon her face would be her killing blow. "Like
the opposite of you."
Yang even blinked in bewilderment beautifully. It would be enough to make Blake
envious if it wasn't enough to make her dizzy. "Okay, I'll admit it. You caught
me off guard with than one." She smiled like a landmark, something to slow down
and appreciate even if you weren't in the business of getting directions. "I
know I'm pretty radical and all, but how exactly am I habit-forming?"
Being caught daydreaming in classes where she already knew all the answers was
good practice for this moment, Blake surmised. "Around you, I take regular hits
of the chemicals 'endorphin' and 'dopamine', both known to be brain-altering
and addictive in nature." She dropped the academic act with as much efficiency
and debaucherous intent as a night out clubbing. "You're both a bigger rush and
a sweeter taste than chocolate, I'm willing to bet."
Yang smiled like an improvised weapon, as though her real smile were just
somewhere out of reach. Perhaps she'd been exaggerating before – between that
and the short little intake of breath, surely this was what catching her off
guard actually looked like. "Says the world's . . . swirliest . . . piece of
marble cake. With chocolate frosting!"
"And you believed I got my best lines from reading books." Blake moved her hand
to Yang's cheek and began a slow circle, watching with fascination as Yang's
eyes slowly sank shut. "But the best part of me has always come from being with
you, Yang. Every quip, every move in battle, every good night's sleep and
scratch behind the ears." She rubbed her nose against Yang's own, if only
because it was just about the only way she could stop herself from doing
something requiring much more commitment. "Every piece of me I left behind in
the bloodshed, you found, picked up, and asked me if it was mine. You put me
back together again. The new and improved Blake Belladonna."
Yang opened her eyes and looked around just the slightest bit. Like a sleeper
slowly awakening, and then realizing with a start that they were still
someplace they'd always dreamed of. "You really mean it." She didn't ask, but
stated, with a voice shaking to match the hand she brought to Blake's cheek.
"Aw, Blake. How could I not?"
"It isn't just that, though." Blake treated the touch as a treasure, hording it
for herself with a palm as gentle as she could manage atop Yang's own. She'd
avoid kissing the wrist this time, though. For now. "When I came to Beacon, I
was emptied out completely. Everything was new and unfamiliar, and I tried to
find anything I could to latch onto that might be like a reminiscence or a new
start, or anything at all besides just . . . gloom. I was so certain I was
going to spend the rest of my life lonely, but you refused to let that happen
to me. Never would have guessed that gloom spelled backwards was pronounced
'Yang', and yet . . ." A squeeze, a brush of one body against the other like
jigsaw pieces testing their fit. "Here we are."
"We're practically familiar territory at this point, huh?" For a few moments,
Yang only stared, as if inspecting Blake for defects. No, not defects – clues.
Blake was so used to thinking of them as the same thing. Not the holes, but the
pieces that fit into them, the promise that they'd work out this puzzle
together. "You know. If only because we keep exploring."
"Honestly, I never want to stop." There was so much uncharted territory,
because Yang was more than a world. She was a book. Could memorize every
sentence and find something new when reading again. "Familiarity and contempt
are as far apart as East and West, when it comes to you. And you were the only
thing in Beacon that was ever close to familiar. You and your smart mouth." A
smart mouth, a brilliant smile, and a tongue clever enough to match her own.
That kind of mouth could swallow up all of Blake's fears with a single
predator's smile. Including her fear of saying too much. "With a smart brain,
to match."
"Getting familiar with you was the smartest thing I ever did." There was an
offer, many years ago by Blake's reckoning, to go out for milkshakes. Yang's
voice was sweeter and thicker than the most scrumptious vanilla treat.
"Although to be honest, 'familiar' is starting to sound like it's not a word at
this point."
"It still sounds perfect to me." Blake drew a finger in a spiraling shape –
she'd draw how her thoughts were drawn by Yang, further in, collapsing on
themselves, a wild rush to a perfectly calm center, and then depth. "Then
again, most every word sounds perfect coming from your mouth."
"Well . . ." Color rose, rubies in Yang's cheeks, and possibly it was a sign
for Blake to try strawberry shakes the next time she went out. Two straws,
even. "I think every part of you is absolutely purr-fect."
"How long have you been saving up that line for?" Blake could bank on Yang
being there to make puns. Even if the rest of the world crashed and burned."
Yang's giggle was like a pattern of lights – they were playing a soft, slow
song at the local disco. "You don't even know."
"Probably. But what I do know is how I feel around you." Blake knew how she
felt around Yang. It was a sensation that had yet to lose its novelty. "I feel
like I'm safe. I feel like trying again. Around you, Yang . . . I feel like I'm
at home."
The look on Yang's face was the look of someone who had unknowingly lived
underground their entire lives, and then, upon hitting the surface, had been
immediately struck by lightning. " . . . you mean that?"
"More than anything I've ever said." The dam had cracked open, and Blake stood
just beneath it. The outpouring flowed overhead, rather than really from her.
"I've always believed that home isn't a a place, or even a person, but an ideal
worth fighting for. And as strange as it may sound, this back and forth between
us feels more like home than anything the White Fang ever said was true. No
matter how much bouncing we do off of one another at whatever speeds and
angles, I always feel like I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be. Right next to
you." There was only one cliché left in the bag – and it was the most basic and
truest of them all. "I take back what I said earlier about leaving the White
Fang. You're the greatest thing that ever happened to me."
Yang's expression looked, for as non-romantic as the concept was, as though
she'd ordered a mild curry and bitten into the hottest pepper in the world.
She'd always been capable of handling spice, but the surprise was a bit much.
"So why didn't you ever say anything like that?"
"I'm scared, too, Yang. I'm scared of losing these silly conversations, of our
games and contests, of moments like this. But most of all, I'm scared of losing
the one thing that makes me feel like I might be worth something." It was a
dark enough future that even acknowledging the chance seemed to dim the world.
Only Yang still seemed bright. "I've always been taught – by experience - that
nothing lasts forever. As much as I don't want to believe that, I'm terrified
of that possibility." Something in her voice cracked – which was good, because
Blake was finding she needed something to breathe through. "I've already lost
everything once."
"The memory clogs you up, doesn't it?" The words sounded like Yang had to dig
them up from somewhere, all heavy and covered with grime. "Like some kind of
gunk in the back of your head. Your heart starts beating faster like it's
trying to pump it out, but then all that happens is that you . . . choke on
it."
That was what partners were for, Blake supposed. Helping take the weight of
immeasurable darkness off of your back through combined strength and
understanding. "When everything in your world can become a living nightmare
with only the smallest change, you do everything you can to make sure nothing
changes outside your control. The games we play are fun, and I don't want to
lose them either, but . . . I was scared of what they were becoming, I think.
Something more than a game, something that I couldn't quite comprehend." And
then, upon the three hundredth swing of the pickaxe, Blake hit something
valuable – worth her time. Yang was still there, she realized. Even now.
"Actually, I know we were still playing a game, but I misunderstood its stakes.
I didn't stop to think about what I was actually doing, how it affected me, how
it affected you, or most importantly, why you were going along with it at all."
Yang's grip around Blake's waist tightened briefly, before slackening again.
Blake was sure it was a metaphor for her thoughts. "Yeah, but . . . why would
you, you know?"
"Because you're important to me, and you deserve more than compliments – you
deserve consideration." She deserved a castle and a litany of loyal subjects,
but Yang's potentially royal heritage wasn't at all related to the present – or
peasant – matter. "And I didn't think. I didn't think about your feelings at
all. What I thought was that I was playing your libido, not your emotions. No
one should ever have their feelings treated like a game piece. Even like a cute
little pony."
"Heh. Such a good thief you didn't even realize you stole my heart, huh?" Yang
could steal things, too – the words right out of Blake's mouth, for one thing.
"Maybe you could look at it that way. But I'm trying to move past my past, and
put my general tendencies towards skulduggery behind me. Some things are too
precious to simply say 'oops' and return, no harm done." Blake's brow rose like
a hand in class. After a teacher asked who was responsible for defacing the
picture of the Headmaster in the hallways. "And I think matters of your heart
are slightly more serious than accidentally swiping a pen at the bank."
Yang dipped her head like she was ducking the thought, but the look on her face
made it seem like she was just catching it underhanded."Yeah, but I can see how
you'd make that mistake. Pens and your heart are like peas in a pod."
Blake reran that sentence through her thoughts a second time. It didn't make
any more sense to her. If anything, it made less. "Really? This should be
interesting. How so?"
"They're both tiny, focused on written works, and black as coal." Yang blazed
brilliance and everything burned to ashes – if only it were real, and not just
special effects. Excellent scripting, admittedly.
"Everything I've done for you, and this is the thanks I get." Blake could have
made her voice more monotonic than she already did. She also could have jumped
up and acted convincingly offended enough to make Yang think she'd taken what
she said seriously. Neither of them seemed like worthwhile uses of her time.
" . . . also, I was pretty sure they both belonged to someone else besides me."
Yang and the word "dejected" went together like the beach and heavy rainstorms,
and yet there it was. Muddy sand and water in the air, a day-long vacation gone
wrong.
"Someone else?" It was like looking away from a movie at the climax to check
one's phone for routine texts, but Blake searched her memory. Or at least the
parts of it that didn't involve aiding a clandestine organization with their
rebellion, which left comparatively little scrolling through her contacts to
do. "Oh. Of course." Might as well give this one to Yang, then: her name in
Blake's contacts may have been "Goldy-rock-your-face" but there was, after all,
a little heart next to it. "I know you believe everything in the world revolves
around puns as opposed to the sun, but Sun isn't actually myonly sunshine."
"I know for a fact puns make the world go 'round; you just have to keep your
eyes open for them." Yang gulped, obviously still nervous. The stars,
astonishingly, did not fall from their places in the heavens, and the whole of
Remnant remained unflooded. "And uh, I . . . I'm starting to wonder if maybe
your heart belongs to someone else besides him, anyways."
The butterflies were back from their southward migration, it seemed. Blake
hadn't noticed before, but things did indeed seem to be heating up again. "Pens
and puns. Maybe your heart's simpler than I thought it was."
"It's only ever wanted one thing." Yang got that look on her face, sometimes.
Blake had last seen it when the girl with boundless optimism was attempting to
fold one thousand paper cranes. The time before, when she was buying a teddy
bear for her little sister. Sometimes, Blake wondered if maybe the world felt
like it was made of glass, to someone with superhuman strength. Potentially
sharp if you treated it too roughly. "Just took me a while to realize what that
was."
She could turn Blake's perception of the world upside down with a single
sentence. It would take Blake an entire poem to say the same thing. In fact.
"You know, your heart and an ink pen are pretty similar, too."
"How's that?" Two words. Angel-esque visage. Two more.
Blake allowed the answer to dangle for a moment, like a little red laser dot in
a library. Lasers didn't typically dangle, of course, but the mind worked
strongly enough in idioms that they became a bit literal, sometimes. Like every
word from Yang's mouth seemed like a message from Heaven. "They both make it a
lot easier to write poetry." As evidenced.
Yang seemed taken aback, which meant less that she had nothing to say and more
that she needed a good running start to get out to the front again. "You mean
like haikus?"
"Haikus, sonnets, limericks, freeform verse . . ." Blake gave Yang a look that,
previous to meeting her, had only been reserved for constellations and
fictional characters. "I'd call you my muse, but muses are fleeting, and you
have this habit of sticking around." A shrug, not to say she didn't care, but
to say she didn't care that she did care, which was such a new sensation to her
she felt she'd have to commit crimes against literature if body language hadn't
had certain untranslatable expressions. "You show off by striking pose, I show
off by writing prose – and I think we have the same goals in mind. Either way,
words just fall out of my mouth around you."
"I haven't caught any of them." Yang said, with a grin on her face that seemed
to signify one of the pastries she'd just handed you had been licked.
It took a second for the pun to hit Blake, but it was worth it. "Well, I never
said where they landed. Tell me: I used to belong to an underground rebellion
of troublemakers whose very survival hinged on their ability to keep secrets.
Do you think, if I really cared about it, you guys would know about my reading
Ninjas of Love?"
"Eh? Well . . ." Yang had a habit of pulling the corner of her mouth with her
finger when she really thought about something. Besides being adorable, it made
Blake think about other things that lip could be doing. "We'd probably have
turned up something eventually. But . . . no." She paused, like the end of a
move in Dust and Dragons where she realized she could play another card in her
hand at no penalty to herself. "Not fast, anyway."
"Yang, I'm about to tell you a secret that I've never told anybody else." Well,
two of them. But one had a tinge of immediacy to it, and the other a slathering
of inevitability. The inevitable could be held off a little longer.
"O-ho." Yang was many things, but she wasn't a gossip by nature. She'd worked
hard at picking up the trade. "Sounds juicy."
"Positively overflowing with the liquids of impropriety." It wasn't Blake's
best idiom, but everything else she could think of involved come-ons, mostly
revolving around the word 'juicy'. "I do genuinely enjoy reading Ninjas of
Love, but I don't reallycareif people know that about me. What I really care
about getting into the wrong hands . . . is my diary."
"It's not even hidden, is it?" Yang got outraged like a volcano got outraged.
She didn't. Not really, despite all appearances otherwise. But then again,
volcanoes didn't pretend to get outraged, either. "You just knew if you
pretended to hide the Ninja stuff we wouldn't go looking for it! I bet it's
chock-full of all your dirty little secrets, too!"
"Absolutely. And it would be a disaster if anyone got hold of my thoughts. My
journals are my friend who keeps the secrets I cannot tell anyone else." The
words were truthful, but that was no reason for Blake not to treat them with
impropriety. In fact, it was all the more reason to do so. "My past, my
identity as a faunus . . . my sordid fantasies."
"And what you think about me." Yang didn't even inquire as to what sort of
naughty daydreams she had. It may not have been a common occurrence, but she
could be just as distracted as Blake by too-rational thoughts, a raindrop
leaving its downwards drop for the slower, more interesting patterns in the
leaves it encountered. " . . . poetry. You wrote poetry?"
"I know." Shock. Scandal. Riots in the streets. Cat faunuses and heiresses of
the Schnee company living together. Mass hysteria. "Not only am I a huge dweeb,
but now you've got physical evidence of it as well. My reputation as a non-dork
is completely shot."
Yang tried to hold back her laughter, though Blake wasn't sure exactly why.
Maybe for the same reasons she did. Either way, it didn't last for long, and
the chuckles seeped out sweet and thick, like sap. "You're not serious. There's
no way."
"What's wrong with self-expression?" Plant a seed and wait a season, and then
watch the time-lapse, and Blake's sentence might be comparable, the way it
started off amused and nearly grew into something similar to genuine reproach.
The shape of the tree, though – the target of her recriminations – that was
less capturable on anything as simple as film.
"Nothing, nothing. Really. It's just . . ." The last few chuckles leaked, knock
on wood, and Yang proved her skull a wooden one with a light tap on her head.
"For a second, I thought you were writing poetry about me, or something. That's
just ridiculous."
"Oh, Yang." Autumn came. The leaves fell from the tree of rebuke, and Blake lay
her hand – upside-down, against gravity's wishes, but lay nonetheless – to cup
Yang's chin. "What on Remnant could be wrong with you?"
". . . really?" Yang sounded like a young girl who had never heard of Aura or
Semblances, trying to fight against hope with the idea of magic tricks. "Me?"
Blake nodded. She had to let go of Yang's chin to do so, lest she unconsciously
make Yang nod too, which would have done quite a good job of ruining the
effect. "Of course."
There was a moment where a sword, knocked from a hand, might hold itself
suspended in the air, before, inevitably, it would come spinning downwards to
land, in accordance with dramatic tension, hilt-first in a living hand or
blade-first in a dead body. Yang seemed to be experiencing one of those
moments. Completely silent.
"Why?" The sword fell. It landed flat-first, on her head, which just went to
show.
"You vibrate at a certain frequency." Blake moved quickly, before any jokes
involving the word vibrating could be made. But hopefully not before they were
thought up. Word choice wasn't always a complete accident. "It makes the
strings up in my mind . . . twang, if you'll excuse the brief foray into
country music." Blake shrugged, because sometimes the word choice was a
complete accident, and there wasn't anything she could do about it. "I can't
help it, I guess you could say."
"Could I hear some of what you wrote?" Yang usually asked for things like it
was Spook's Evening, an enthusiasm to be met with an obligate response. Here
and now, though, she seemed afraid of being tricked instead of treated. "If
you're okay with telling me, that is."
"I wouldn't have mentioned it otherwise. Let's see . . ." Trying to find the
right poem wasn't like trying to find a needle in a haystack. It wasn't even
like trying to find a needle in a needlestack. It was like trying to find a
specific page in a library where every book was dedicated to the exact same
subject. With a time limit. "It's not very a good, but I did pen a sonnet. You
up for that level of commitment?"
Yang's grin landed askance on the framework of the world, and something shook.
"I'm down for anything, so I guess that means I'm up for anything too."
There was a breath of time in which actors breathed, just before they entered
the stage, and not much else happened. Stage fright, it was called, and like
most things with a name there was a procedure to fight it. Determination
meeting nervousness could take on many shapes and rituals – deep breaths, brief
chants, a quick prayer or quicker run of lines, everything rational,
irrational, but always comforting. There were many ways for any actor or
actress to make sure they gave a good performance despite the icy lance of fear
stabbing into their heart. Every one was unique.
Blake didn't know what hers would be, but if this moment were any indication,
it would involve twitching her cattish ears repeatedly. "Okay." Twitch, twitch.
"Okay, then." Followed by a deep breath, and she stepped out onto stage . . .
"From shadows I'm revealed, my deeds all done
In name of nameless fury, and of hate.
But home's not where the hate is, little sun.
You, Beacon's light, led me from dark estates.
My mind, beset by terrors of the night,
Saw fears vanish like dewdrops in the morn.
The sunrise comes, the nightmares flee from light,
A new day for the lovers left forlorn.
A world so cold it freezes every heart,
And yet she is not gelid; no, she burns.
I cannot capture with this artless art
How truly my frostbitten being yearns
For light and warmth, a moment in the sun.
Yang Xiao Long, I say her name, and done."
Opening nights, fickle things that they were, tended to lean towards either
uproarious applause and the thrill of victory, or else thrown tomatoes, in
which case there was at least something to eat that evening. Here, however,
there were no accolades or plant grenades to accept. Only a silence that
practically roared, an extremely loud quiet.
But one must consider one's audience. And Blake had never known Yang Xiao Long
to be stunned out of commenting on a work before. Somehow, that idea seemed
worth the approval of the entire world.
"You really mean all that." Yang seemed uncertain, but not questioning.
Uncertain about whether or not to be questioning, perhaps.
Blake looked at her for a while. Looked at her, hair rich and golden as a
treasury and twice protected, cheeks like pearls chiseled into a mouth like a
gateway. Looked at eyes like waking up in the middle of the night, feeling
oddly refreshed. Looked at arms like safety nets to catch Blake after her
neckline's plunge. Looked at legs like rock formations worn smooth, the raw
force of nature given polish and restraint. Looked at abdominal muscles like
complicated machinery, at shoulderblades like simple pulleys, and marveled at
the precise nature of proper mechanical wizardry. Looked at Yang. " . . . I
don't know why I bother writing it down." And looked away, because there was
only so much spontaneous wordcraft Blake's brain could take before it convinced
her to do something entirely untowards, which could very well take upwards of
six hours to complete. "It all sticks in my head, just like you tend to. You
amazing girl."
"No one's ever written poetry about me before." It was the truth, and it was
whispered. It was almost as if speaking too loudly would make reality hear,
realize it was in the wrong, and adjust.
Blake smiled, a soft dip she hoped would be as subtly seductive and affirming
as an impression in a bed from where a lover had slept the previous evening. "I
cannot fathom why. You make it frighteningly easy."
" . . . Blake." Yang wasn't always the explosion. Wasn't always the dynamic
movement with the shotgun blast and flex of bicep at the end. Sometimes, like
now, she was waiting on – begging for – the proper trigger. "Do you . . .
you're not playing around with me, are you? Do you really mean that you . . .?"
There it was. The edge of a cliff, and elementary physics. No turning back.
Once more, steeling herself against the sights she knew were to be coming,
Blake looked into Yang's eyes, and found herself entirely unknowledgeable and
unprepared. Across a gap a couple inches long and a few million light years too
wide Blake looked deep into violet eyes, and gathered from the latticework
beneath the petals the very workings of the universe. There was a revelation
there, one she sensed Yang was sharing with her, and the end of a millisecond's
musings Blake caught a glimpse of eternity.
And believed that she, too, might be a part of it.
Impossible was only a suggestion with Yang around, Blake reminded herself. She
made up her mind, and it was just as Yang described. All the words just started
falling out.
"I grew up in a world of hate. A world that hates people like me, and a
household that hates the ones that hate us. My family, for lack of a better
term, didn't hate each other, but we hated together, and the hate was more
important to us than anything else. More important than who they were, who we
were, than what tomorrow might be. Hate was all I ever knew, all that filled my
soul." The memories were like a wave and Yang was like a surfboard, and Blake
didn't care how awkward or screamingly bad that sounded just so long as she
didn't drown. "And then I came to Beacon. And there you were. And you gave me,
and you give me, nothing but love." A tear down her cheek. She was leaking.
She'd spent so much time trying to plug those holes, and it was a smile that
cracked her wide open in the end. "What kind of person would I be if I did not
give you the same in return?"
"You really . . .?" The shaking sob split Yang's expression like an atom, with
just as explosive a fallout. Yang had promised she wouldn't cry until it was
all over, and here and now she made good upon her word. "You actually – I
didn't, I didn't actually think, I couldn't – I know that's what you've been
heading for all this time, but I just, I just couldn't believe that -"
"Please, do believe." Blake said, looking for wisdom in their pool of shared
tears. "Believeme. You're special, Yang. So . . . beautiful, you transcend even
yourself, like a galaxy bursting from a single star." She smiled, like a petal,
fallen, but still alive, and somewhere nearby, there were flowers. "I don't
write sonnets and haikus for just anybody I meet, after all."
Yang made a noise – not a sob, or a laugh, not even something like both or like
the child of both, but something caught between the two attempting to combine
into a singular auditory sensation. "No Ballad of Ruby Rose planned for anytime
in the future?"
"Not even the Song of the Schnee." Then again, if there were any way for Blake
to definitively denounce her Fanged roots . . . no, now wasn't the time to be
thinking of octaves and rhyme schemes. Even as a distraction.
"She'll be so disappointed. She always wanted a song written about her." Yang
was probably talking about Ruby, not Weiss, and definitely not in any state
where elaboration should be pressed. Other things, possibly, but not
elaboration. "I, I still. Mm." She bit her lip and shook her head, the
struggling signs of a drowning victim fighting against the lifeguard who came
to rescue them. "I still can't wrap my head around it."
"I'm not going to say anything as cliched as, oh, 'you're the reason I get up
in the morning'. But as long as we're talking about how we really feel?" A
pause to let the question settle, like suds in the bathwater. Lavender, Blake
thought. To match Yang's eyes. "Oftentimes, you're the reason I don't just go
back to bed."
"Yeah. Be a shame to . . ." Yang's words . . . stopped. An unfinished painting.
Just, nothing past a certain point. Not even an idea. Not even color. "So what
happens now?" Except a whisper of white. "Where do we go from here?"
The answer seemed so obvious – plain as the look on Yang's face, teary but
hopeful – that Blake half suspected a trap of some sort. "We're sort of doing
things backwards, aren't we?"
"I always look at the last page of a book first." Yang trembled, a little. Not
beneath the weight of the words, but beneath their sudden absence, Blake
figured. The poor girl. "It's kind of a bad habit of mine."
"I think I can find it in the depths of my inky black heart to pardon your
transgressions." Please. If mercy was worth its weight in gold, then Blake had
a goldmine set aside for this girl who shone even brighter. "That is, if you
can find it in your novel soul to forgive me for being . . . ruthlessly
forwards with you. Especially today."
If mercy was valued as gold, then laughter could only be platinum – and Yang
had apparently found a deposit, somewhere deep beneath the teary waves.
"Please. Like I wasn't practically groping you back there." A look on her face,
like she'd just seen a shark, and comprehended the meaning of the cut on her
foot. "Aaaaaaand I just realized how deep into it we got with each other, oh
wow."
"It was me who started this whole thing." Feathers could fall on fields of
spikes without significant harm to either party – it wouldn't be hard for Blake
to treat the subject with some gentleness. "Too scared to do anything but let
you make the first move, too enamored to wait for the game to start. All you
did was, well, play along."
"Don't suppose you've ever heard of the phrase "do not escalate" before?"
Yang's smile was shaky, but not unstable. Like a gelatin. Except the watery
base was a tad saltier, and sadder. Or, happier. Something. Mm. "Pretty sure it
was on the last quiz Goodwytch gave us."
"Nevertheless." Blake grasped one of Yang's hands in her own, less to feel her
palm in her own, and more to give Yang something steadier to hold onto. But
both were good. "Whether or not you're at fault, I know I am. And I should ask
you, when it comes to this kind of thing. I should have been asking. For this
in particular, I know I need to, even though I'm relatively certain of the
answer." This might be the moment that would break their world wide open. One
hand cupped Yang's cheek while the other hand tightened around her own. Like
trying to keep the planet held together. "Yang. Is it okay if I kiss you?"
Yang's gaze passed through Blake like lightning, and it was only the thought
that she'd sparked the idea in the first place that kept her grounded. Then,
she broke into beaming, and it was as though every cloud in the sky had
disappeared at once. "Yes. Please."
Game, set, match – draw. Blake was only too happy to share the winner's cup.
One pair of lips met each other after an eternity sending each other
flirtatious emails, and Blake and Yang, finally, mercifully, mercilessly,
kissed.
The books had said there'd be fireworks, and they were completely inadequate in
their descriptions. This was beyond reason, beyond Dust, beyond Blake's biggest
hopes and dreams. This was more than a transient burst of beauty and color,
even a series of them; this was a constant, expanding heat bigger than anything
Blake had ever known. There was a star, a supernova, touching her lips, and
Blake felt like unto a goddess to be able to taste it without burning. How long
had Yang been keeping herself contained, superheated like plasma in a cold
night sky, to let a feeling like this pass between them now, at their
culmination?
The answer was as obvious to Blake now as the shape of Yang's lips. Too long.
She'd been too slow to kiss all Yang's tears away. She'd remedy that now.
She kisses even better than I dreamed she would.
After an eternity that was altogether too brief for Blake's liking, they
separated, slowly, hesitantly, like a slow-motion capture of a drop of water
clinging to an icicle. Their lips separated, at least – their bodies remained
in close contact with each other, whispering assurances to each other with each
inhale and exhale to do this again sometime very soon. And somewhere, Blake was
certain, there were the proper words to say. Somewhere very far away from the
look on Yang's face and the redness in her cheeks, which meant it was somewhere
Blake didn't want to be right now. But still. There were words.
"Great googly moogly," Yang said, and oddly enough, those might have just been
them. One last sniffle, like the straggler at the back of the bus, seemed to be
all that was left of her earlier tears. "That was . . . something."
"Something incredible." Blake wasn't sure how she was saying anything without
the assistance of her brain, but then again, perhaps tonight had been occupied
with altogether too much in the way of thinking already.
Yang's smile broke through, and it was enough to make a lost soul adopt belief
in fate and prophecy. Certainly, something of cosmic import had just occurred.
"Where, uh . . . ahem." She said, wiping away the last few tears before they
managed to reach the ground. Close enough. "Where'd you learn to kiss like
that?"
Blake ironed out her face, if only to see how this next line would (dead)pan
out. "Reading. Lots of reading."
Yang laughed, clear as a sleigh bell ringing and twice as shiny bright. "I'm
gonna have to check out those books some time."
The smile overtook Blake like the sunrise overtakes the twilight. No less
peaceful, beautiful, or special – only a different shade of bliss and intimacy.
"I can't imagine you have anything left to learn from literature." She licked
her lips, whatever word it was to describe the delicious aftertaste to Yang
Xiao Long just at the tip of her tongue. "Was that . . . your first kiss, too?"
Yang's eyebrows, not having been used to waggle at any innuendo in the past
half an hour or so, evidently got bored and decided to practice their magic
act, disappearing somewhere in Yang's (brilliant, golden) hairline. "That was
your first kiss?"
Blake shrugged, nonchalantly, paying no heed to how the action was counteracted
by literally every other movement of her body at that point in time. Including
her right hand, which had splintered off from the rest of Blake's organization
and begun setting up territories along Yang's back. "Well, every time I met
someone cute in the White Fang and found we had a lot in common, they'd start
talking about how they planned to blow up a train or kidnap someone or take
over the kingdoms and crush humanity beneath their heel. Things would kind of
fall apart after that."
"Guess I'd better reschedule that heist I had planned for Friday, then." Yang
constructed sentences like shelters, warm, safe, cozy and entirely unexpected
in the life of a runaway like Blake. A place where people could laugh and mean
it.
And laugh Blake did. At least, until there was a gentle tug at Blake's hips,
and then she stopped to vocalize something different. With a noise like a
drunken finger over the rim of a wineglass, she let Yang bring her in even
closer. Not that she was certain how Yang managed to find room to bring her
closer – not that she was complaining. "Another heart stolen by the infamous
Long gang?"
"Like you're stealing my lines?" Yang could give looks like aphrodisiacs, like
romantic evenings over candlelit dinners, or worse yet, like the one she was
giving now – looks like she thought the world of Blake. "And you go around
calling me a plagiarist."
"Or stealing glances." Blake drew the tips of her claws across the back of
Yang's neck, appreciating the wine red echo Yang met her ministrations with. A
single note that could carry an entire lullaby. "It's hard to be original when
you have eyes like an amethyst universe enveloping you."
"'I take back the 'dork' thing," Yang's voice was pitched like slow jazz in a
smoky, private room. "It's actually really hot when you write poetry."
There were entire romantic sonnets written by some of the greatest poets who
ever lived that Blake would pay less attention to than a single sentence like
that from Yang Xiao Long. Sentences like that, especially spoken that close,
were crashing lips and possessive marks just waiting to happen. Sentences like
that . . . "Sentences like that make me want to write more poetry."
Yang beamed like the stars reaching down to touch the surface, and Blake
realized belatedly that it wasn't only a clear blue sky, but the whole context
of every sky she'd ever seen at the curl of Yang's lip, the crinkle of her eye.
"You're poetry incarnate."
"You're going to get yourself in a lot of trouble, one of these days." Blake
let her knuckles move like oils over the warmth at Yang's cheek, if only to
watch the explosions left in their path.
"Thrillseeking's what I live for, Blake." Yang whispered, and the sudden drop
left Blake dizzy, breathless, and not thinking entirely clearly. "So why don't
you tell me what kind of trouble you had in mind?"
Blake knew then that she and Yang were one misstep, one clever tongue, one song
and dance away from doing something entirely too hasty and entirely too
overdue. She'd have to choose her words as carefully and lovingly as Yang was
stroking her leg. "You never did answer my question about whether that was your
first kiss, you know."
That . . . wasn't what Blake meant to say. That . . . was a trainwreck. That
was a disaster. That was just like her.
"Huh? Oh!" Yang was too busy recovering her sense of direction to notice that
Blake was attempting not to bury her face in her hands. At least, Blake hoped.
"Well. Kind of."
It was like angrily slamming a door only to find it made a squeaking sound upon
impact. "Kind of?"
"Kind of not." It would have been an infuriatingly vague answer if it wasn't,
in all honesty, what a question like the one Blake had posed at that specific
point in time deserved.
"I wasn't aware kisses were quantum; uncertain until observed." The mystery of
Schrodinger's cat was solved: it could revive itself.
"Well, okay, if you want to be extremely literal about it, then I've been
kissed a few times before. It's just . . ." Then Yang was leaning in close
again, finger tilting up Blake's chin to make their eyes meet, smirking like
checkmate, and somewhere in all of it Blake forgot how precisely to breathe.
And thenYang spoke again, and the timbre of her voice put breath and life back
in her. "It's just, after the way you did it, I'm kind of wondering if any of
that stuff even counts as kissing."
It was official. If Blake was ever in charge of choosing a disaster relief
team, Yang Xiao Long would be relieving her of command immediately.
"Was . . . was I really that good?" Blake was too high on cloud 9 to be doing
anything like grounding her thoughts.
Yang's eyes softened, heated, like gemstones melting into magma. "It wasn't so
much your technique as you just being yourself. But yeah."
Blake's pulse pounded like fluttering eyelashes and sweet nothings, more speed
than force, a reminder that she was yet alive. "I suppose I'll improve with
experience."
"Here." Yang cradled Blake's face with both hands, and the rest of the world
suddenly decided to give them some privacy. "Let me give you some pointers."
Yang kissed Blake – they didn't kiss each other. Blake kissed back, certainly,
but it was like attempting to hug a wave. You couldn't hug more or harder than
it could, even if you got an armful.
But this was more than a wave. It was an enveloping twist, a circle and stab, a
calm desperation with no care for oxymoron. It was re-entry, hot, a roller
coaster, wild, a cannon, unstoppable. It was all of what Yang Xiao Long was,
concentrated into a singular point, transcending Blake's defenses, a divine
revelation. It was all Blake could do to groan in response, to twine her arms
with Yang and attempt to keep her from leaving too soon, to let her eyes fall
shut and her ears droop to shut out anything that wasn't the girl she was
kissing. It was a loss of control.
It was heaven.
It was, again, over far too soon.
Yang moved away like the perfect words forgotten between the bus stop and the
writing desk, and Blake groaned at the injustice. How dare she do that. How
dare she give Blake a sense of self-esteem, an idea that maybe she deserved
Yang, and then . . . and thentease her like that, all sensuous curves and
clever tongue and troublesome ideas. How dare she be the most beautiful thing
on the planet, like an oasis, and the world was a desert. How dare she change
Blake's life for the better and make promises about the future like she wasn't
already overwhelmed with ecstatic fulfillment.
How dare she make Blake fall in love, forever.
But most of all, how dare she stop kissing Blake.
And as though clairvoyant, Yang smirked, eyes hooded, breath heavy, like every
idle daydream Blake had ever chastised herself for having. "Think you've got
the gist of it?"
"Yeah, okay. I think I get it. " Blake's next sentence was a painting. Not a
masterpiece, but a necessity, a splatter of color when shape and form could not
express the proper emotions. "You don't mind if I practice, do you?"
Then Yang was smiling against her lips, and everything was right with the
world.
Well, almost everything. The only thing wrong was the niggling feeling at the
back of Blake's brain – the part where she kept her psychosis, darkest
fantasies, and collection of stray thoughts she'd never share with the world –
that told her she could be doing better. Only thing to do about that was start
pressing back.
Like Blake hadn't been doing so already for the last couple months.
And like the last couple months, she was met with nothing but filthy
encouragement, hands like the most comfortable pair of magnets insisting on
attempting to meet somewhere at the center resting on her hips and pulling
forwards, because Yang was quick and delightful and knew what Blake wanted, and
Blake rested her own hands like, she was sure, begging questions on Yang's
shoulders, because she was intelligent and knew she needed a lot of leverage if
she wanted to be doing something like moving the entire world, and they kissed
with the intensity of an empty night sky burning with the sudden rush of heat
and light that was the sunrise, and morning had come, and the mourning was
over, and Blake felt so alive.
There were probably things out there that felt better than Yang's lips moving
in concert with Blake's own, but Blake couldn't even begin to guess what they
were. Something about the way Yang kept smiling against Blake's breath seemed
to say that she would be finding out later tonight, though.
Yes. That sounded incredible.
They kept kissing, the sensation strong enough to knock Blake into next week.
And next month. Next year. Three years from now, further, all the way into
eternity. Blake felt it, the kiss, but she felt somewhere within her the echo
of every kiss they might share. The tops of rollercoasters, wind in her hair,
or replacing that wind with water, a kiss in the rain. Sunlit beaches for a
background, or in front of their graduating class of Hunters and Huntresses, a
photo for the local news and the yearbook and definitely the wide world of the
net. Slow, sensual kisses existed in the same space, for just a moment, as
quick teases at parties, as kisses hello and goodbye, as good lucks and
aftershocks and all the moments in between. Every single kiss possible flashed
at the forefront of Blake's mind.
And then Yang licked her lips, and all of a sudden, Blake was shoving all those
memories out of the way so she could have some privacy, for once in her life,
hello, yes, please, she opened her mouth and groaned like her hinges were
creaking to do so, and, what else, returned the favor. Or retaliated. One of
the two. Maybe both. Probably both.
Palms were pressing further into her skin, and Blake had never hoped for
bruises before in her entire life.
Like two vines intertwining around each other were their tongues, the lines
between cooperation and competition blurring and shifting at iceberg speeds of
deceptively slow quickness as they each sought for dominance one moment and
protection the next. Or perhaps they were like slightly misshapen gears,
drawing out metallic moans of effort, shaping each other through sheer dint of
force into the shapes they each needed to be. Or maybe they were like opposing
armies, full of banners and passion, or a secret meeting giving coded messages
to each other, or maybe like a billion different things clipping through
Blake's mind at a speed she never imagined possible, like light given
incentive, like the computational power given to the brain when letting an
imaginary friend do some of the thinking, like an infinitely thin razorblade, a
thought's edge, pressing into her where one tongue touched the other, and Blake
reached out for more, more, mor-
"Ow!"
It was a sentence like a bookmark, in that it signaled the stopping place, as
well as a good one to continue, later on, when people weren't screaming for you
in the metaphorical kitchen of life.
"I'm so sorry!" The connection was as instantaneous and clearheaded as one of
her kisses with Yang wasn't, especially because one of her kisses with Yang was
the problem in the first place. Which sounded like a ridiculous sentence – like
saying too much tuna fish or too much money or too much Yang in generalwas
somehow a problem – and yet: "M-my tongue's rough, in some places, and, oh
Dust, I completelyforgot to warn you about that!"
"Hey, it's fine." Some people had winsome smiles. Yang had a win-all smile. "I
know you're used to moving your tongue quickly. Trust me, I really want to keep
going." Yang put her finger up to her lips while she pouted, and her
cheerfulness put on a nun's habit in order to disguise itself. "Just be more
gentle with me, ok?"
"I'll show you 'gentle'." It was a tone like untying a black ribbon, revealing
a secretly bestial feature. Or, at least, that was what Blake was going for.
"I was really hoping you'd say that." Yang's eyes hooded in such a way as to
make Blake wish that hood was the only thing she was wearing. "No, but
seriously, maybe ease off the throttle a bit? I know that sounds sort of out of
character for me to say, but I'm pretty sure that a profusely bleeding anything
is not conducive to . . . whatever it is we're going for here tonight."
"Absolutely." Blake tried to wrap her head around the idea of "whatever it is",
but she kept imagining Yang's thighs being wrapped around her head instead.
That was a picture with staying power. "Besides, hurting you is the last thing
I ever want to do."
"Huh. Here I figured you'd be all about the kinky stuff." The gleam in Yang's
eyes almost lit her up well enough for Blake to see the thoughts behind them.
Vaguely shaped like noisemakers and party favors.
"I think we can safely save whips, chains, and dressing up in ways society as a
whole would probably frown upon for some other dark and not-so-lonesome night."
Blake twisted the words on her tongue, like tying a knot in a cherry stem. And
on that note. "For now . . . let me try that again."
"Anytime." Yang's tongue could tie knots in cherries, too. Yang's tongue could
probably tie knots in cherry soda.
Soda fizzed, of course, but this time Blake didn't let the carbonation go to
her head. This kiss was a test of the emergency liplock system, not a ravenous
exercise in seeing who said "ow" first. In point of fact, this kiss, slow
tongue probing centimeter by centimeter into Yang's open mouth like it was
exploring a cave, was specifically designed to avoid that word by any means
necessary.
Even restraint, the most hated means of all.
"Not too rough still, is it?" Blake's voice was full of concern, yes, but it
was more like a concerned pinata than anything else. Someone would have to
break it open to get any real emotion out of it.
" . . . I actually kind of like it." Yang looked down at her mouth like she'd
asked it a question and was surprised by the answer. "Like, I went to a spa
once for my birthday, and I got this really great deep-muscle shoulder massage?
I know it's a weird way of putting it, but it sort of feels like that for my
tongue."
"Hmm. You never struck me as the type of girl to enjoy being pampered." And
Blake had been struck by a lot of things, when it came to Yang. Thoughts
crashing like cars all around, lips crashing like stars hit the ground . . .
there was a song in it somewhere, but there was a song everywhere in Yang.
"I take good care of my body, thank you very much." Yang's face turned from
silly to seductive as fast as she expected their first date was going to go.
Assuming it hadn't already happened somewhere up the line, of course. Things
were so mixed up. "I could take good care of yours, too, if you wanted."
"Tempting." Very tempting, actually. It would be very easy – lie back, close
her eyes, smile a bit, and nod, and Blake could let Yang take her wherever
either of them wished to go. But the easy way wasn't always the right way, and
the best things were worth putting effort into. Yang was one of those best
things. Blake planned on a lot of "effort". "But didn't you once tell me that
there was a difference between slowing down and giving up?"
"So slap some slow-motion sugar on me." Yang's lips pursed, ready to enclose
valuables, and her eyes knapsacked, ready to head out on adventures, and her
eyebrows raised, not like anything in particular but certainly enough to make
Blake laugh, and enough to make her lean in close, but then, that was
everything Yang did.
"One dollop of whipped cream, coming right up." The last few words were spoken
nearly against Yang's lips, and if there were a better metaphor for flirting
with death, Blake wasn't sure what it was.
It was like flirting with death, because this kiss felt like a meteorite
impacting the world, landing first of all, besides the atmosphere, on Blake's
head. It was a powerful, ginormous thwack of unknown and unknowable feelings,
certainly, but the main thing was, Blake could see it coming. Begin to prepare.
The first few kisses had been something like near-death experiences, too, but
more the moments themselves than the buildup. A sense of separation from the
self, a blinding ecstasy, an indescribable idea that everything was finally
going right for once, and all the while there finally found Blake's place in
the world, only for her to realize that her place in this world was a place
somewhere outside normal day-to-day life. Heavenly, in a word.
There was a joke in there somewhere about Yang being divine, but Blake was a
little too busy being smooched to articulate exactly what it was.
But this kiss was a tad different. Or rather, it was the same, but Blake had
been adjusted to fully experience it. Before, the brilliance, the orchestrated
performance, had blinded and deafened her, and all she could feel or smell or
taste was a sort of flurry she could only define as Yang. Or, more accurately,
Yang, Yang, YangYangYangYangYangYangYang. But the novelty had worn off, leaving
only the excitement, the ecstasy, the warmth, the softness, the acceptance, the
exploration, and the unbridled sense of joy behind, which left just enough
mental space for Blake to recognize that she, in fact, existed. And, more
importantly, what Yang was doing to her at that moment.
Yang's nose brushed up against her own like a surreptitious romance novel, a
passerby at a party and a wandering hand to match a wandering eye. Her hair
tickled the edges of her face, as if to illustrate precisely how ridiculous
that thought was, even if it was true. Her arms held Blake so tight, so close,
it was as if she needed to check and make sure Blake was still there. And her
lips . . .
. . . Yang apparently thought Blake would enjoy her sucking on her lower lip.
She was absolutely correct.
If there was anything to compare it to, besides an out-of-body event, it would
be a sense of battle awareness, which was of course directly related in any
case. The first few battles, if a person had good instincts, they survived and
figured out what they did later on after their recovery nap and three plates of
food. After that, they began to understand a little about what they were doing.
After that, you could begin thinking about the best way to approach things.
Blake moved most of her hand away from Yang's back – a single finger left on
lookout – and followed the path of Yang's spine to its inevitable end, cupping
the back of her head gently, but firmly, as though holding an egg with the
potential to end the universe. She leaned Yang's head just a tad to the right,
tilted her own left, and managed to find the one point where the angles met, so
she could deepen the kiss – if such was even possible, at this point.
Yang's shaky moan in response was almost enough to send her heavenwards again.
Blake gave Yang a smile, and felt her return the gift in kind.
And then Yang's hands moved to Blake's shoulders, she pressed her own body up
against Blake's, and perhaps there was only so much gift-giving Blake could
handle in a single evening.
But it wasn't like generosity, and it wasn't like a battle, either. It was like
dancing, more than anything. There was no competition – not really, even if
Yang kept stealing away the position of lead and Blake kept swiping it back –
only the ebb and flow, the request and response, the quick darting movements
that slid without apparent transition into the graceful dips and curls that
brought vision and feeling to the song dancing in their heads. Yang pressed
into Blake's body – inside partner step. Blake hooked her leg around Yang's
hips – a gancho, perhaps, or a lock step. The swirl of Yang's tongue around
Blake's and the answer of Blake's eager lips blurred with Yang's hand (not just
her fingers, but her whole hand) tangling in Blake's hair, with Blake's fingers
hooking just a centimeter under fabric, she wasn't sure where, time was
meaningless, only the tempo mattered, it was as though they were dancing
underwater, weightless and careful andfree.
Which meant, eventually, they were going to have to come up for air.
It took a bit of convincing on Blake's brain's part – I know this seems like a
pretty awesome way to die, but if you let yourself breathe, you can get way
more kisses later – but they did finally separate, drinking more than inhaling
the air as Blake's gaze looked around the room for something more interesting
to gaze at than the apple of her eye – fruitlessly. Blake wasn't ashamed; the
problem was in fact the opposite: she was too eager. They'd start the whole
business over again if she let herself look too soon.
But eventually, once she'd managed to reduce her air intake to small sips,
looking was what she did. It was like staring at her own reflection, if looking
in a magic pool that made every aspect of herself more wonderful and beautiful.
Swollen lips, clothing slightly askew (especially her coattails; apparently
that's where Blake's fingers had scurried off to), hand over heart and eyes
shining as though lit up from within, Yang looked at her like . . . like . . .
Well, like she was uncertain. Not unhappy – no one with that kind of smile
could be unhappy, and anyone with that kind of blush was right out – but
uncertain.
"You look pensive." That was a good word, though Blake wasn't sure where it
came from. Her brain sure didn't seem to have come up with it.
If a wine snob dropped the snob, rolled down a hill covered in sunflowers, and
picked up a loving selflessness, they might somewhat resemble what Yang looked
like at that moment. "I'm trying to put my fing – erm, my tongue on how you
taste." Blake had never thought that someone smacking their lips could be found
sexy, and yet eroticism demanded Yang make several repeat performances. "Kind
of like . . . not coffee. Related to coffee. Coffee beans' . . . way hotter
older sister."
It was not the first time Blake had been compared to a plant, but usually the
phrasing involved wallflowers. Or, well, the deadly nightshade. Usually the
second one, actually. "Is the word you're thinking of 'mocha'?"
"Blake. Don't degrade yourself like that." Coffee snob it was, then – or at
least, as much of one as Yang could pretend to be without frothing into
laughter. "I mean, there's nothing wrong with milk and sugar – I like a caramel
macchiato as much as the next girl - but nothing compares to the sophistication
of pure black coffee." Her voice began dropping, and heating, and deepening,
like a slow elevator ride with the proverbial cute blonde from accounting. Ah,
Ninjas of Love. "Dark, steaming, rich in taste and texture . . ."
"Bitter?" Blake couldn't resist jabbing the Emergency Stop button.
"Nothing extra needed. Just you." Yang smiled like she was showing off an
engagement ring, all beating hearts and far-off thoughts. It was enough to make
Blake wonder at her warming warning - how could degradation be possible when
Yang looked at her like she was the world's most personally precious gemstone?
"Although, truth be told, I wouldn't mind a little 'cream' in my coffee . . ."
That line shouldn't have worked. Boy, did it ever. "I'm glad you're drinking
this all up, then." The doubt coiled in her heart like a rattlesnake, an
agitating sound filling her mind. "You . . . like the way I taste?"
Yang killed Grimm for a living, and she was good at her job. "I'm thinking of a
word that starts with the letter 'e'. Guess what it is!" One little snake
didn't stand a chance.
Blake giggled into her hand, like the schoolgirl she always tried to deny to
herself she actually, genuinely was. "I'm hoping you're thinking of 'ecstatic'
and not 'eeeew'."
"I was actually thinking of 'energizing' to go with the whole coffee thing."
Sometimes, occasionally, Yang managed to say something to convince Blake all
over again that she wasn't just an idealized figment of her imagination. "But
'ecstatic' is way closer to how I feel right now, so good job!" Yang's gaze
dipped down to Blake's lips like a dumbbell released, and Blake noted the slow
effort of them coming back up again. "Is it okay if I ask . . .?"
"How you taste?" Blake colored the question with rouge, or, really, colored the
rouge with the question. "Hmmm. I'm not sure how to describe it. I think I
might need another sample before I make up my mind."
Yang, Blake was beginning to notice, treated kisses like promises: easily and
cheerfully given, enough so that it always caught her off guard how seriously
she took them. It was about all she could notice through the thick haze of
hormones, warm arms, and tiny gasps, but it was something, nonetheless.
"Think you've got the picture in your head, now?" Yang asked, once the Dust had
settled. Not dust, but Dust, the crystalized potentiality. Dust which, Blake
vaguely remembered, was an intoxicant when inhaled in large doses. And, Dust.
"That depends." There was, of course, such a thing as playing coy, but there
was also such a thing as playing with fire. Then again, "playing with fire"
basically described every single one of Blake's interactions with Yang over the
past two months, if not even longer. And Blake had yet to be burned. "What was
the question?"
Yang laughed, and kissed Blake again, and it was impossible to choose which one
was more important or more wondrous. "Tell me what I taste like, Blakey."
Between the lingering gaze over Yang's entire form, the fingers tapping against
her own lips, and the slow, lustful smirk, Blake was sure she was doing
absolutely everything she could to titillate without actually touching Yang.
Though if something else occurred to her . . . "I don't think I can really call
it a taste. Saying there's a taste implies that I don't feel it in my whole
body."
Yang's fingers skimmed across Blake's stomach, and there was the burning – but
not the pain. Only the heat, only the licking flames, only the smoky look in
Yang's eyes. "Believe it or not, Blake, I know you're teasing me. You'd better
be a lot more careful about trying to distract me." And then her lips were at
Blake's lower-left ear, and the devil on her shoulder could sit there and
observe, because clearly it was only a rank amateur. "It might work."
Blake curved backwards, like a bowstring, and words like Cupid's arrows came
wondrous and unbidden to her brain, from her heart. "There's a feeling I get
before I go into battle, or an exam of some kind." Her voice was small, just
wide enough to traverse the gap between them, as if she was trying to keep a
secret from the rest of reality.
"What kind of feeling?" Yang asked, the only star in a smog-choked sky.
"It's this tingling, electrical sensation. All over me, like a second skin.
It's like being on a tightrope over a sheer drop – but not because I'm scared
of falling. I've never been much of a thrillseeker, after all." Not until
recently, anyway. Not until her golden opportunity to indulge Yang's fantasies,
and her own. "I'm eager. I'm ready. I know I'm too . . . I'm too good to fall.
I know I'm worth the life I've been given. I am certain that those moments,
where I feel sparks over my skin, are the moments I prove I'm worth something.
Those are the moments where I get to stop hiding in the shadows and step into
the light. Those are the moments where I do something incredible." Like the
period at the end of a chapter, a gentle touch nonetheless indicating the
largest possible pause, Blake straightened back up, placing her hands on Yang's
shoulders and touching her forehead to Yang's own. "Are you with me so far?"
"I'd follow you anywhere." Hesitation had never been one of Yang's qualities,
but that moment, that sentence, was proof enough for Blake that she was still,
somehow, in the habit of holding back. The world must have seemed like half-
tempo to her, Blake realized, and her heart skipped a beat to think on that
idea that maybe she was the only one capable of playing at the same speed.
"Imagine that feeling. Focus it." Blake commanded no more of Yang than she
would ask of herself. She fit as much of that feeling as she could into that
sentence, compressed it into a black hole of a command, inevitable with
gravitas. Almost as inevitable as the closing distance between them. Almost as
inevitable as . . . where was this night heading? "Focus it into a single
point, as small as you can imagine. No, smaller." Yang's chuckle could break
the bonds of a black hole if she wished, Blake was certain, but she kept it
small and contained as Blake's own voice. "Put that feeling at a single point
on your lips, right at the forefront. And then, as I grow closer, let it
intensify . . . build . . . overwhelm you until you can barely think of your
own name."
Blake. It was Blake Belladonna. She was Yang Xiao Long – and easier to
remember. And those two names were all that mattered.
"In short, Yang, you taste like . . ." Blake's voice took on a familiar tone
and inflection, though in truth she didn't feel like could ever imitate Yang.
"Anticipation."
Yang was stillness's antithesis. More than that, she was its archenemy, seeking
to erase all traces of stillness from the face of the planet. She was always
moving, making others move, dashing and dancing and punching out miscreants
like stillness, like calm, like underachievement. But now she was still. Now
she was quiet. Now she was . . . smiling? "I'm not the only one who tastes like
that, you know." Arms stronger than the nightmares wrapped around Blake's
waist, holding her together. "I just figured the way you made me feel went
without saying."
Alright. That made up Blake's mind. Yang Xiao Long was not leaving this bedroom
with her clothes on.
. . . no. No, that wasn't actually what Blake wanted. That was something
entirely different. Still, the point remained: she knew exactly where this
night was going, now.
But . . . just so long as they were talking about anticipation. "It's honestly
amazing to hear you say that, Yang." Blake wasn't normally fond of sticky
situations, but as she leaned back and Yang's arms refused to let go of her
completely, she felt she could make an exception. Just this once. "But I never
said that was all you tasted like, did I?"
Yang's face flared with surprise and heat, like the meteor that suddenly finds
a planet standing in its way. "Ahh. Alrighty, then." The arms evaporated from
Blake's sides, and she had just enough time to mourn their absence before
realizing that Yang was intending to prove her unstoppable nature. "Lay it on
me." The bandana around her neck disappeared like layers of ice experiencing
reentry, except, in reverse order, and laying on Yang was indeed a very
tempting prospect.
Blake had seen Yang's bare neck before, of course. But this was her first time
seeing it privately. There were things you could do to necks, in private.
Things with moans in them. "Long ago, it is said, before men and monsters,
there were gods and goddesses."
"Like you?" Yang tilted her head, and, suddenly, there was another curve to her
body, another line of muscle laced with feminine softness, a gentle slope to
rest upon, to trace with the mind's eye . . . it was like watching waves at the
beach, Blake finally realized. Gentle, straight lines to curved, the sense that
they could destroy you at any moment, drown you in them. They all connected
together into a single ocean. Yang. "You never did answer my question about
worship, you know."
"Hush, you." Blake would not let herself be outdone by a glorified headrest.
Even one as glorious as Yang's neck. She had seams, too, and thread to undo,
but if she had her way it would be Yang falling apart as she unwove the ribbon
on her arm, as she wove her tale. "The gods were like mankind, but also not
very like them at all. They were larger, for one thing, said to be wiser and
more powerful than the later dawn of mankind. But they were also lesser,
limited by natures they could not change, and unable to comprehend the concepts
of time, fairness, or mortality."
Yang matched Blake's lazy loops with spiral patterns knuckled into her thighs,
and Blake wondered how anyone could ever think Yang couldn't be subtle, or sly.
"What about love?"
"The gods claimed their domain was more than man's, and they had no time for
the affairs of those below." Blake pulled the ribbon off all at once, and maybe
that was what performing a striptease felt like. Just a little bit. "Our love
was only a pale reflection of something much greater, to them. Our greatest
inventions, only toys. Our crowning achievements, worthy of scorn, or perhaps
indulgence, as one would a child."
Yang had a habit of hitting conversations with pats on the back, for
encouragement, that were actually strong enough to knock them flat on their
faces. That only made it all the more noteworthy when she put a metaphorical,
gentle, guiding hand on the story's shoulder to say, "You're talking about
humans and faunuses, aren't you?"
Blake swiveled her head. She wasn't aware her head had a swivel function, but
there it was. And there were the markings on her wrists left by pulling on her
ribbon too tightly. "What makes you say that?"
"I'm not saying that humans are better than faunus!" Yang rushed to catch her
conclusions. "Just like the gods weren't actually better than people. They saw
themselves as being better than the people, but they weren't. Just different."
Her voice dwindled as she spoke, like a sales price dropping on an unwanted
product. "It's the same way as humans think of faunus."
Blake moved with as much speed as she could to lay a kiss on Yang's cheek –
then even more, shooting out of her afterimage to finish the kiss on her other.
Twice as much the cheering up, she hoped. "I can think of at least one who
doesn't think that way." She tried one of Yang's grin on for size, and found it
to be an extraordinarily good fit, if a tad tight. "In fact, I find the way you
think to be very impressive. Most people don't pick up on the subtext in that
old fable."
"Fairy tales are kinda my specialty." Yang was blushing so thoroughly that for
a second, as silly as the notion was, Blake thought she'd kissed Yang's cheeks
a shade too forcefully. "I used to read them to Ruby every night. It's . . .
sort of interesting, being on the other end."
"'Happily ever after' won't rest solely on your shoulders as long as I'm
around." Blake had never meant a sentence more. She didn't think she could mean
something more than she meant that. "But first my little story must come to a
conclusion."
"Proceed, madam." Yang and posh went together like honey and truffles. They
didn't. But Yang, being honey and not particularly caring what it might be
attached to, as it knew it was destined to be oversweet, tried it anyway.
Speaking of foodstuff. "The gods did not work like you or I did. They needed no
air, no water, and no food like you or I know. They sustained themselves not on
the food of mortals, but on ambrosia, the nectar of the gods. A mysterious
substance, all things considered. Some say that ambrosia was beyond human
reckoning, maybe some ancient Dust no longer found in this world. Others say
that the nectar was metaphysical, the consumption of belief or raw possibility.
Whatever the case may be, such food was meant for gods, not mortals, for if any
mortal attempted to partake, they would be the one to end up consumed."
"I get it now. You're trying to say I taste like ambrosia." Yang's eyes were
like napalm, a burning in them that stuck with you. "And that I'm too much for
you to handle."
Blake pushed her hair back behind a human ear, tracing the edge of her lobe
like it was a road on a map. A suggestion for what to do next. "No, actually."
The second part, possibly – Yang was very much like going fishing and catching
the Leviathan. "To be perfectly honest, I still can't quite tell what you taste
like." Blake opened up the bedsheets of her subconscious, and allowed the
memories to snuggle up and share warmth. "But I know if the gods had an inkling
of how good you taste, they'd feel like they got the raw end of the deal."
Yang looked for all the world in that moment like a chamelon. An awkard pose
held, a stare capable of stripping paint. A slow, slow shift in shade,
beginning as a light pearl and ending up with a red Blake could only describe
as 'rebellious rouge, shade 47'. "Geeze, louise, Blake." Yang was the only
person Blake knew who wore embarrassment like it was a ballgown – outside
Yang's norms, sure, but breathtaking and elegant. It was the way she showed it
off even as she tried to hide it, the lean away that only emphasized the angle,
the covering of the eyes when the crimson cheeks, corset and the shaky smile,
satin, were so much more interesting. "The best I could come up with was
'coffee beans'!"
"Coffee beans' way hotter older sister." Blake supposed this was how fashion
designers felt seeing their models walk the runway. Except, of course, with
much more heat coiling in the belly. "An important distinction."
"How am I supposed to top that, though?" Yang didn't peek through her fingers
so much as not bother moving her whole hand aside. She wasn't . . . playing
coy, was she? "You're, like, playing symphonies at my window, and I'm painting
graffiti on your bedroom door."
"I once belonged to a subversive anti-establishment organization, and you think
I don't enjoy graffiti?" It was a bullet of a question, which might have been
disastrous if Blake hadn't been using a water pistol. One painted up nicely and
lovingly customized, but still. "I loved the coffee beans description. It was
very flattering. Full-bodied. And the barista was very cute, too." There had to
be a point, Blake supposed, where they were able to stop themselves. She only
knew that it wasn't going to be tonight. "I only went as far as I did because I
was trying to live up to the standards you set."
"You make expressing yourself look like the easiest thing in the world." Yang
sat up, and for a moment, she was a silhouette, even to Blake's night vision.
Some trick of the light. Some idea of what she looked like with only curves and
smiles to wear. "Like, suddenly I believe magic is real, because, listen,
you're casting spells. Right in front of me."
Blake raised both eyebrows, because one didn't seem like quite enough. "Are you
actually complaining, or are you just trying to be sneaky with your
compliments?"
"Mostly the second one." Yang grinned like a watermelon rind except, as Blake
could attest, much yummier. "Little of the first, though. I mean, I'm already
jealous of your hair, your brain, your voice, your legs . . . why not add mad
writing skills to the list?"
If Blake addressed any of that, they'd go over a waterfall of compliments in a
barrel together, and end up somewhere so far downstream from where this
conversation was they'd have to start confessing their love to each other all
over again. Best to just keep paddling. "We have different approaches, that's
all. I tend towards the verbose and descriptive. The flowery, if you will. You,
on the other hand, have a sharper, more succinct wit that I couldn't match with
a hundred hours of focus and creativity. Snappy."
"Put us together and we're a snapdragon!" Yang leaned in close and sudden to
say that, a work of art displayed in gilded frame and attached to a set of
rockets. She was close (and fast) enough that Blake prepared herself for
another atomic bomb of a kiss. What she got instead was a pun. Somehow, that
seemed just as satisfying.
Blake gave Yang what she guessed was her satisfaction, too – she giggled. "See?
That's exactly what I mean."
There comes a point at which boiling must cease, and Yang had apparently
reached it. Still dangerously warm, still quite steamy, but the bubbly
atmosphere seemed to pop as she settled into a smaller smile and a far-off
look. "Nah. I mean, yeah. You're right. But it's still sort of hard to compare
the two."
It was as obvious to Blake as a missing arm meeting fire that Yang wasn't just
talking about their abilities to turn phrases anymore. Sentences like that were
heavy enough to leave holes in your head, holes where reassurances and good
cheer could echo until they lost all meaning besides babbling. Sentences like
that chipped away at self esteem in ways that didn't matter until you looked up
and realized it was all gone. Sentences like that were a cage constructed for
one's self.
Blake, at one point, picked locks for a living. "Then tell me a story." A hand
as sure and steady as her thoughts turned Yang's head, by her chin, like a key,
to stare at her own reflection as in a lilac pool. A moment like an exclamation
mark extended into ellipses, and she moved forwards, and forwards, just close
enough for Yang's slightly hurried breaths to ask her questions that made her
cheeks warm. "See if I like it."
An unfallen snowflake, a crystalline structure held in suspension, the quartz
jewel by which the rest of the timepiece kept whirring around it – they were
all correct, all the same description of the same moment held in time. This
one. This split second where Yang held her gaze, like a spell, on Blake's own.
And then, Yang kissed her. Like a snowflake falling, a crystal shattering, like
a timepiece falling apart, a glorious moment of reality being broken and the
spell taking its proper place as part of the universe. Though not actually,
perhaps, a snowflake, but a snowball, a tiny thing the size of one's thumb,
done as quickly as a closed palm or a clenched fist. Or, a quick kiss.
Yang's presence left like an exhalation – though out of the lungs, the air was
still right there, waiting to extend your life another breath. She wasn't even
a centimeter away.
And then she kissed Blake again, and it was like pushing the snowball down a
30,000 foot snow-covered mountain.
There wasn't much Blake could do to avoid being overwhelmed - it's very
difficult to avoid an entire avalanche from only a centimeter away, after all.
That was precisely what that kiss was: an avalanche. A chill up the spine and
an unstoppable force shortly followed by a warm, sluggish, irresistible feeling
you could curl up in and sleep forever.
And then Yang's arms wrapped around Blake, her neck and her waist, and like a
desperate rescue the world opened up to clear skies and fresh air, her entire
existence becoming aware of something something that had always been there like
it was something entirely new, because Yang deepened the kiss. Leave it to Yang
to show Blake the skyline of her thoughts for the wonder it was, and all with
one or two movements of her lip.
All Blake could do in response was make some sort of silly moany noise that was
probably meant to be Yang's name. Then her brain got completely scrambled.
Not scrambled like eggs. Scrambled like radio signals, or coded messages, or
something beyond Blake's ken, which was kennier than most as it was. Everything
she was saying to herself seemed to be getting misinterpreted, her desires for
control translating into an arched back and a golden name whispered against
liquid lips, her hands taking the excuse to rebel, to push forwards in quite
the literal sense, her hips deciding they wanted to dance, too, and there was
really only one kind of dancing that hips got involved in . . .
It was at that moment that Blake realized what the problem was, or at least the
part of Blake not occupied with touching as much of Yang as was physically
possible. Her signals were getting crossed because of simple over-
communication. Most of the time, Blake thought in sentences, and Yang made her
think in paragraphs, in entire pages. Maybe the girl was the literary type
after all.
There was no greater thrill than opening up a new chapter in a book, they said.
"This jacket needs to come off." Even now, even with a fog as thick as tar soup
covering Jaune's forehead clouding her mind, Blake managed to find literary
critique somewhere deep within her.
"Lots of things need to be getting off around here." They probably constructed
the Pearly Gates and Yang's pearly whites from the same material. But from
opposite ends of the "sin" spectrum. "But we can start with the jacket, sure."
"Is that an invitation to finish what we've started?" The devil on Blake's
shoulder must have been practicing her ventriloquist act, because that couldn't
have been her own voice, all husk and silk and kitten's claws. "Or are you just
planning on pulling on my heartstrings until they break?"
"Let's just say I wouldn't mind if you wanted to go a little wild."Yang just
walking around, being herself, could start a fire, possibly several of them.
That sentence, however, could have started a fire when it was cripplingly wet.
Blake felt like she was proof of that, to debauch the metaphor. She'd never
considered herself a forest, before, but the way the fire spread from the pit
of her being up to her fingers, like an eruption to reshape a continent with,
Blake felt like so in retrospect. Because now, she was only the warm yellow
light of the embers left behind.
Embers and fire, emboldened and golden. Being Yang seemed to be as contagious
as trees coming down with cases of emblazoning.
For instance, Blake had never been a fidgeter, but Yang's clothes suddenly
seemed far too restrictive on her. Fingers flittered like the flame, and
Blake's mouth worked to vent the excess heat into her partner, which was a bit
like trying to stop a tree from growing with water and fertilizer, but who
cared about logic at this point because Yang's jacket had a single button on it
and that was far too many buttons for any jacket to ever have.
If this what letting yourself lose control like, it was no wonder Yang smiled
all the time.
But then, in so many ways, Yang had always been more in control than Blake. She
gave herself over to her passions, but didn't let herself be ruled by them. She
gave those who deserved it miles where others might give inches, but didn't let
those who didn't deserve it take a single step out of bounds. She knew herself
and her own heart, which was more than Blake could ever say about the faunus
that she was.
Being Yang was contagious, and Blake suddenly found herself just as in control
of Yang as Yang was. Her mouth gave way by inches, by miles, her heart opened
up her arms and let a too-messy jacket slip off her shoulders, and her
passions, oh, the way she moved. A pair of thoughts spread, like fire, to the
rest of Blake's head, a couple questions like suns in orbit around some concept
even closer to her heart.
Where might Yang let her touch? Where did Blake want to touch?
The answer to the second one, at least, was as simple, effortless, accidental,
and monumental as falling down the longest staircase in the world. Every inch
of Yang was a temptation, like a treasure horde in a temple, and despite the
possibility of rolling boulders, Blake felt an undeniable urge to pay her back
for a million scratches behind the ears. With, because some things were obvious
and straightforward, a fair amount of interest.
Undeniable, except, she denied it, if only half an inch away from twirling a
golden strand around her fingers. Some things shouldn't be messed with. Some
things were important.
"You're allowed, you know." Yang spoke so quietly, Blake wasn't sure she'd
actually heard her at all. She wasn't normally prone to auditory
hallucinations, but then again, she wasn't normally prone to seeing stars or
getting tunnel vision, and there Yang's eyes were right there. Tonight was full
of unreal sensations.
"Are you sure?" Blake had been stung by hope so many times she'd thought she'd
built up an immunity. Yet here and now, she tasted the tell-tale traces of its
venom on her breath and in her tone.
With a hand the talk of all the clamps around town and a gentleness that metal
could not comprehend, Yang took her turn at guiding Blake's hand, softly
pressing it against her head, within her goldy locks. The exchange rate between
actions and words being what it was, Blake wasn't surprised by the sound of
fireworks. "You're special to me. I don't want you to be scared of doing
anything around me." She blushed, and perhaps atomic bombs and volcanic
eruptions were more accurate descriptions of the noises between Blake's ears.
That, and the heat. "Or with me, for that matter."
Gold fell through Blake's fingers like she was an adventurer reveling in a new-
found treasure chest. In some respects, of course, she was. But in other
respects, she hadn't found this treasure, or taken it for herself. Quite the
opposite. "I'm honored." If the whole world was this soft, Blake didn't see any
way anyone could ever be hurt.
"That feels . . . kind of nice. Like your hands are telling me a bedtime
story." There were theories, of course, that space was an infinite expanse that
was, in some way imperceptible by human senses, getting bigger all the time.
Until now, when Yang's blush somehow got brighter than it already was, Blake
had never really understood exactly how that worked. "Just, uh . . . I know
this kind of goes against what I said, but, er, don't pull on my hair or
anything like that, okay?"
Blake lay a kiss as soft as the hair she was holding on the top of Yang's head.
If the old fable about spinning straw into gold was true, this must have been
what gold turned into when it was spun. "Only if you promise you'll kiss me
until my lungs give out."
The "absolutely" that left Yang's mouth seemed redundant, even if technically
the kiss that it promised happened second.
And oh, hearkening back to old stories, was it a kiss. Once-upon-a-time worthy.
Yang kissed her like Blake was in a fairy tale, and she was afraid she'd
disappear at midnight or fall victim to some curse, and true love's kiss was
the only protection they had. Philosophically speaking, it might even have been
true, though Blake was beginning to suspect that she'd had the exact opposite
ideas from reality about which parts of the old standby stories were to be
considered real.
Yang's hair gave her fingers a feeling like walking on warm water.
But the impossible left those fingers satisfied, which meant that wanderlust
was slowly creeping over the rest of Blake's body. Even then, though, the
furthest and most thorough wanderers had to settle down eventually, and that
feeling chose to take up occupation as the tingling on Blake's lips. Since Yang
had been kind enough to undo her bandanna earlier . . .
Of course, that whole train of thought was less a plan of action and more
solving a locked room mystery with only a line of excessively flushed skin to
answer the question of where Blake found herself and why she was there.
Somewhere in the process, a generous portion wound up in Blake's mouth and
suction was applied, a sound so small Blake tasted it beneath Yang's skin
rather than heard it and a fumble of fingers flying to the back of her head,
tips just below catty ears serving as all the encouragement she needed to keep
going – Yang accomplished more with a sound even Blake couldn't hear and touch
she was on the edge of feeling than the White Fang did with years of
brainwashing.
There was a feeling in Blake's mind that was slowly overwhelming her, like
molten gold pouring between the cracks in her neurons, brilliant in its blaze,
and dense, so very dense. The feeling wasn't telling her she had to do
anything, but its presence made certain things suddenly seem like the best
portion of philosophy ever conceived of by man or faunuskind, and Blake took
care of the rest without really discussing it amongst herself.
Like biting down, for example.
And Yang, with a cry to the heavens that reverberated at the planet's heart,
put a noise to that great, wide feeling as she bit. "Oh!" she cried, tenuous
but certain of it, like a master's fingers fluttering across piano keys.
Fingers fluttering across black and white, forcing musical tones from tension.
Thinking like that might kill Blake – if the noises Yang was making didn't do
the job first.
"Blake?" There was a growing bruise on Yang's neck, and Blake was unmarked. Yet
the only person Yang's voice held concern for was her partner. If there was a
descriptive text any more emblematic of Yang, it probably started with the word
"suddenly" and ended with some type of comparison to a large explosion. "I'm
not hurt, I promise. I actually really liked -"
"Make that noise again." The weight inherent to Blake's own voice surprised
her. It was like attempting to pick up a dollar bill glued to the sidewalk and
finding you had just somehow picked up an entire city block. The only thing
more surprising was the sparks the friction lashed from between her tongue and
her teeth.
Yang smiled, and suddenly there was a large explosion. "Make me."
Blake did more than make her. She marveled. She marveled, as her lips met
Yang's own once more, on how a single part of someone's body could be so very
much. A thousand smiles, a million in potentia, and each frown as rare and
meaningful as a four-leaf clover in the bouquet of a lover. Yang's was a mouth
connected to an endlessly fuzzy mind – not Yang's own, but Blake's, because
that mouth was like a shot glass, with no glass bottom anywhere in reach of an
eternally thirsting tongue. They were ne'er do well lips – or close, at least.
They seemed to be doing pretty well at the moment.
They were a world and a comet alike, a burning, blazing, blitzing crossing of
the sky, holding the intelligence and wit of an entire universe beneath its
melting structure. Blake wondered, as she probed, if her lips seemed as cosmic
as Yang's practical horoscope's worth of constellation, all teeth and gums and
starlight.
But even though the entire universe seemed to have collapsed and left all its
potential energy dancing between the two of them, something in Blake's mind
rebelled, maybe just because that was what Blake tended to do whenever things
seemed strange and overwhelming, like the sky was falling in, or like Yang had
kissed her six, seven times now. But there was something specific – something
floating free outside of universal collapse. Something itching at Blake's mind
like crust in the eyes come the morni -
Eyes. Morning. Light.
That was it.
"Yang, wait, hold on. Before we do anything. I just remembered something." Eyes
like morning light woke Blake, just as she always dreamed they would. Yang's
orbs glowed, alright, but not literally, which was the core of the current
situation. "You're human."
Yang blinked, repeatedly, like watching a video of the sunrise at a rate of one
frame per second. "Well, I know I can be rather foxy, but I didn't think there
was any confusion about it . . ."
"No, I mean, you're not a faunus." There was a hole here. There hadn't been a
hole here before. Blake had the sneaking suspicion that she was holding a
shovel. "Well, that's not what I – ugh. Okay. What I'm trying to say is that,
unlike me, you don't have night vision. And in case you didn't notice, like I
didn't notice, we've been sitting in the dark for at least half an hour now."
"Oh, that makes a lot more sense." The words fell from Yang's mouth like a drop
to the grass to look up at the night sky. With just about as much sudden
pontificating. "Still kind of funny, though. Bet I'd be a dragon faunus."
"I don't think those exist." Although Blake figured Yang would probably find a
way to be one, anyway. Really, it was a surprise the girl didn't have scale
plating and a treasure horde as it was. "The long and the short of it is, there
are two people in this room, and only one of them can see right now. That
hardly seems fair to me."
"Eh, it's not like it's perfectly dark in here. Things are a little blobby and
black, but I can still kind of make stuff out." Another lovely slideshow, where
all the slides were out of order, judging by the picturesque expressions on
Yang's face. "It sounds sort of bad, huh? But really, it's no big deal if you
want them off." There was the right slide, at last – and judging by the
expression on Yang's face, it was nothing short of pornographic. "I can just
feel my way around."
"I don't really care one way or the other, to be honest." Blake's shoulders
didn't get a lot of practice shrugging – her talent for it was as natural as
her talent for stoicism. Not natural at all, that was to say. Both were
essentially domino masks to hide her face when things got too hot for the blood
beneath her cheeks to handle. "After all, you're likely to do a lot of feeling
around either way." Or at least Blake hoped so. The blood beneath her cheeks
needed some practice of their own.
"Caught me red-handed." Yang raised her red hands into the air, and away from
Blake, which was just about as disappointing as if she'd been moving ice cream
cones out of her reach. Then again, it did give Blake the opportunity to see
her arm muscles in motion, which was enough to convince her that removing
Yang's jacket had been the greatest notion she'd acted upon this entire
evening. About time some of her ideas were good ones. "But I'm gonna catch you
red-cheeked one of these days. Though, now that we're talking about it . . .
you aren't embarrassed?"
Blake snapped out of attempting to connect licking ice cream cones and Yang
Xiao Long in her mind, which was different from what she usually did in that it
wasn't different at all, actually. "Isn't feeling around the goal of the
exercise?"
"No – well, yeah, if we do it right." The look on Yang's face granted Blake
very limited psychic powers to let her know exactly what Yang was thinking at
that moment: it was sort of hard to do it wrong. "I mean, I just thought you
were being shy. It was kind of cute, actually."
"Shy?" Cute? "Ah-ha. Well, I'm sure you'll be happy to know that I have
absolutely no problems with you leering at me as often and as openly as you
want. In fact, I sort of like it." With a smile like a warning sign Blake knew
Yang would ignore, Blake leaned forwards. Slowly, but certain, a lever to
control a rudder that controlled a ship that was on a voyage to a far-off land
where she and Yang could play all by themselves. "A lot."
"Ooh. Kitten likes to show off." Yang gave out nicknames like keys to her
house, or maybe her heart. Very few people got them, but those who did had a
place to crash when worse came to worst, no matter what. Blake, the faunus's
heart leapt like children on trampolines at the thought, had received two of
them.
"Only for you." The words were a negligee, all lace and seductive softness and,
yes, even some showing off. "You've already seen everything in my head, after
all. Why shouldn't I want you to see the rest of me?" The suspicion crept up on
Blake like an old friend - one she was too scared to leave behind in case no
one else wanted to be friends with her. "You do want to look, right?"
"Is that a real question?" Yang's voice didn't quite touch upon disbelief, but
there was some definite flirting involved there. Both with disbelief, and with
its close cousin Blake Belladonna. "If it is, the answer is yes. Also, duh.
You're like liquid sex, Blake."
If Blake were liquid, Yang was solid: dependable, strong, less likely to change
to outside pressures. But still some state of sex, of course. But that seemed
like it would be weird to say, so instead Blake said, "I'm glad to hear that."
"I'm really glad to say it." Yang was also the embodiment of the person who,
directing air traffic, decided to start dancing in order to see what patterns
in light they could make with their marshalling wands. Put it another way,
"solid" was not the same thing as "unmoving", and philosophy had a lot more to
say about semantics than it thought it did.
It was enough to make a black cat grin – enough, in fact, to enter a black cat
in a grinning competition and come second only to certain Cheshires. "Well, now
I'm curious." Blake lowered her head like a sunset, and wondered vaguely if the
sun ever needed to look for extra light. She felt, in a pinch, like Yang could
provide. It'd be a red light, of course, but she'd provide. "If that's the
case, why didn't you ask if you could turn the lights on?"
Yang started. Maybe like a vehicle starting, or maybe like an eruption. Either
way, there was heat involved: Yang's cheeks burned even brighter than she would
in battle, and the rest of her expression melted like lemonade ice cubes on a
hot day. "I don't wanna do anything that makes you feel uncomfortable."
Hmm . . . lemonade. Was that what Yang tasted like? Lemonades's 'way hotter
older sister' perhaps? No, not that. But closer. "You're a very illuminated
individual, Yang Xiao Long. And awfully sweet." Blake kissed Yang as quickly as
she could get away with – as in, literally get away, because if she'd held it a
moment longer Yang would have had to hold her captivated. And that would be
absolutely terrible. "Now, about 'illumination' . . ."
"Huh?" Yang was evidently giving Blake a preview of what she'd look like when
she hit the legal drinking age. Beautiful as ever, to judge, if a tad less
steady on her . . . everything. The phrase 'smile, shaken, not stirred' should
really enter the lexicon. "Oh! Oh, right!" She turned on the lamp, which,
metaphorically speaking, was just about everything she ever did, was, and
embodied. Not a source of light, but the reason one's own light became real,
electrified, instead of just some impossible idea.
The difference between night and day, as far as Blake was concerned, was mostly
irrelevant. Blake's night vision was like a filter on a camera, shading
everything, but keeping the definition and color balance. Things didn't really
look different as much as they looked similar, like seeing the same facial
structure in all the girls in three generations of a particular family,
possibly one that dealt in Dust and bigotry. Put it more simply, when it came
to most things, Blake didn't really care about lighting.
But Yang Xiao Long was made for the limelight.
The night was fine. Not fine as in mediocre, but fine as in wine. Yang was
curves a faunus with complexes could get drunk to forget on, and smiles as
wicked as devil or wicked as a skateboard trick, and tap-dancing eyes that made
Blake's heart join in on the dance floor.
In the day, she was all that and polished to a shine. Literally, a shine, a
glow around her that might have been more than the light her body reflected –
it seemed odd to Blake that she should cast a shadow. Yang was a gem.
She was about as still as a gem was. Crystallized, frozen, unmoving, other
synonyms listed off until Blake could find the right one because stillness and
Yang were like tears and a hot cup of tea with, of course, a bit of honey. It
was true that Yang usually did go a bit stiller when looking at Blake – like
she had to dedicate extra processing power to take all of Blake in, and she'd
be lying if she said she didn't enjoy the idea – but she never froze over, like
winter, like everything this sweet Summer's stepchild would never ever be.
Her eyes. Gemstones. Beautiful, shining, priceless- but absolutely motionless.
A single point, just above Blake's belly button – that's where they were
looking, and nowhere else at all. They were the only things that moved more
quickly when Yang looked at Blake; the way they raced over her form always made
her heart race in turn. Yang could do a lot with Blake's heart with a glance,
apparently – including stop it, just as they'd stopped.
"Is something the matter?" A hug seemed like too much, like dropping a boulder
in a pond and wondering where the ripple went as the wave began falling on your
head. So Blake instead let her hand envelop Yang's, like a hug in miniature.
"If you want to stop, we can."
"No, I wanna go, it's just . . . this is gonna sound really weird." Yang face
burst once more with red, and Blake was struck by memories of summer evenings
and chasing fireflies. She always thought if she followed them long enough,
they'd lead somewhere. Maybe she was right after all. "Promise you won't burst
out laughing or anything like that?"
Blake barely managed to stop herself from saying "I would never laugh at
anything you'd say." Someone needed to be editing her thoughts better. She
clearly wasn't doing a good job. "I promise. What's wrong?"
It wasn't a look like Yang had let down her guard. It was a look like she was
only just now realizing she'd let down her guard about half an hour ago, and
couldn't quite figure out how to get it back up again. "I'm scared that if I
touch you . . . I dunno. It feels like . . . if I touch you, I'm gonna . . .
break something."
There was the lost ripple – or, perhaps, there was the pebble, and Blake took
care of the ripple on her own. "You didn't seem to have any trouble with it
before." Blake treated the words like a sword, wrapping them in foam. They
would harm too easily, otherwise.
There was a bit of silence – like a beat of silence, but less musical. And
then, with a look on her face and a swallow in her throat like she'd just taken
some sorry medicine, Yang passed Blake the cup. "It was just a game, before."
The reality of the situation could have at least had the common courtesy to
knock before it broke the doors down between them and it. But then, reality
never could be called "decent", and it certainly wasn't in the practice of
giving out warnings. It just sort of shows.
But as tangled as the situation suddenly was, yarn could only distract from
sturdier things for so long. Considering the inconvenience of it all wouldn't
do anyone any good. ". . . you're right." With a hand as certain and insistent
as the inconvenience of reality, Blake grasped Yang's wrist. "Here. I want you
to feel something for me." She led Yang to her heart with a smile, which was
basically just an extension of what she'd already done. "And I don't mean my
boob."
"Wow. Did you sneak one of Ruby's 'special' sundaes when I wasn't looking?"
Yang's good humor melted like an ice cream bar, leaving only concentration
intense enough to, well, melt ice cream. "Your heart feels like a jackhammer."
"I keep myself hidden, sometimes." Blake had to move quickly from that slightly
shadowy sentence, lest Yang point out that 'sometimes' was an understatement
the way 'likes the color black' was an understatement. "Unflappable, I think
you called it. But when it comes down to it, I could never really hide my heart
from you." And Blake might as well show Yang her teeth, while she was at it. It
was technically a smile, though the hammer of her heart rattled its edges. "I
don't think I actually want to."
"You're trying to get the gunk out." There was a tone of voice people used when
they figured out puzzles. There was also a tone of voice people used when they
looked in the back of the books to see what the answers were. Yang's voice was
the second one. "Just as scared as I am, huh?"
Blake nodded, a single percussion tap on the rhythm of reality. "You're right.
This isn't just a game, or some fantasy between the moments we get to spend
together. This is real. And that's . . . wonderful, beautiful, extraordinary.
But it also means that there will be consequences for this." She considered her
next sentence, like she considered how she'd leave the White Fang. In the end,
there was nothing to do but to do it, and there was no real way to say it, but
to say it. "Your sister may be the leader of our team, but you're my partner.
You're the one I believe in more than anyone else. You're the person I trust
the most. And no matter what, I will always have your back, and I'll always go
with you into battle." Blake smiled like an unfurling banner, and stood by for
Yang to lead her charge. "That's why being scared doesn't matter to me anymore.
I believe in you."
" . . . that doesn't sound right." Yang looked away. She always did,
eventually, and it never felt like quite enough, and it was always
disappointing. But this time, there seemed to be something furtive in the
aside. "I-I mean . . . it doesn't have the ring of truth, you know?"
"If you don't think this is a mission we should go on together, at least not
now, then I understand." Ah, yes, Blake's heart was worse than drumming, now.
Now it was itchy and drumming. Fantastic. "It's your call."
"No, no, hold on. Hold on." Someone had nudged aside the needle on the
phonograph and started scratching the record. Yang seemed like the likeliest
culprit. "You're looking from completely the wrong angle here. Self-sacrifice
is supposed to be my thing."
Blake blinked, belying brainy bewilderment. "You've left me somewhere far
behind you on the highway, Yang. Please pull over."
"Here." Before another word was said, Yang grabbed the wrist that wasn't
occupied with anything except keeping Blake's hand attached. Delaying words
even further – there was evidently some sort of construction project happening
on this highway – she placed that attached hand just above her breast. It was a
heartfelt imitation. "Grab my boob; we're going on an adventure."
"I . . ." Blake chuckled. Sometimes life left her with no other options. "I
suppose it's only fair. You get to cop a feel, I get to cop a feel."
"Shhh." As opposed to taking her hand off of Blake's chest, Yang bent down
towards her hand in order to press her index finger to her lips. And in that
moment, Blake realized she'd never actually taken her own hand off of Yang's
wrist. "We're having a heart to heart."
Heart to . . . Blake felt her ears twitch, like a bug trying to tune into the
internet with its antenna. She'd thought that heartbeat she'd heard had been
her own, but . . . no, now it was clear. A second rhythm, a shadow of the
first, less corporeal but sixteen times as thick, stretching ahead of the first
pulse into the horizon like charcoal at mach 7. "How can you stand it beating
that fast?"
Yang's smile inflated like a hot air balloon. Adventure, indeed. "Guess what
makes it beat like that. If you're right, I'll tell you. It's like a game!"
"Another one?" Blake's tone of voice was dry, in the same way a planet
comprised entirely of one large desert stuck in orbit around a planet comprised
entirely of water was dry. "And here I thought we'd led each other into
disaster often enough."
"Just one more, promise." One more game or one more disaster? With Yang, it
could be either. With Yang, it was probably both. With Yang, Blake couldn't
ever quite resist. "I'm feeling pretty generous today, so you get three
guesses."
"You're nervous?" Occam's Razor tended to glance off of Yang's skin like, well,
most things, but with two extra guesses and confirmation that, despite all
appearances, Yang was in fact capable of feeling fear, it was worth the time to
sharpen the blade.
"Strike one." Like a pop fly in low orbit, Yang's voice crested and didn't show
any signs of coming back down. "That's part of it, but not the main reason. Try
again! You've still got another two guesses to go."
" . . . you're excited." If the fingerprint-shaped bruises forming on Blake's
hips could be classified as proper citizens of her body at this early stage in
immigration, then yes, the vote carried that Yang Xiao Long was very excited at
that point in time.
"Closer. Also a part of it. I mean, come on, look at you." Yang said it like it
was something to talk about over breakfast, something easy and certain the
brain didn't really have to wake up for to think about. Something nearly
objectively true. "Give it another shot."
This question was a stumper, and though Blake considered herself a
knowledgeable lass, forestry was not her strong suit. Branches were more for
libraries and paper better served in books, in Blake's experience . . . oh. Oh.
"Oh my gosh," Blake struggled to get the words out. She needn't have sabotaged
herself further with the giggling, and yet.
Yang was much better practiced at cheerful insistence than her sister. An
entire legion of pokes with a marching chant of cheerful "Huh?", backed by
artillery shaped like cheerful smiles, was easily outmatched by the one-
syllable army of Yang's "Hmmm?"
Of course, of course, of course. Far worse than merely obvious. Yang was going
for cliche. "You're in love."
"Ding ding ding! We have a winner!" Yang shrugged, it matched oddly well with
her smile, and Blake wondered if possibly being able to feel the movement of
her shoulder muscles beneath her palm was the intended prize. Honestly, it
could have been. "My heart always beats this fast when you're around. You just
kind of get used to it."
"You know, if you wanted to test out your pickup lines on me, you didn't have
to go through all this trouble." The realization of what Blake had just given
her partner permission to do drove by her brain like someone riding the bicycle
she'd neglected to chain up three blocks back. Nothing really for it but to
think, "oh. Whoops."
"Really? Huh. I'll have to remember that for next time." Yang's goofy grin
didn't fall off so much as it went into hiding, a prime suspect in the frown
like an inquisition that was marching upon its steadholdt. "But right now,
though, I need you to answer me something." The bedsprings creaked as Yang
leaned forwards, a small reminder to Blake that her yellow-petaled flower of a
face wasn't actually the entire world. "Is your heart only beating that fast,
right now, because you're afraid?"
The penny dropped. "No." Rapidly followed by the nickel. "No, of course not. I
mean, that's part of it, but I didn't mean to imply . . ." And then, at last,
the rest of Blake's wallet. "But I did. I did imply. And maybe part of me meant
to, too."
"Life is about more than facing down fears." Yang had always liked fortune
cookies. Blake was beginning to become fond of them, too. "And hearts are
basically what keeps life going. You have to listen to everything it's saying,
or you don't know what's happening in your life."
Blake turned this over in her mind. It looked about the same from the bottom
side, just a bit backwards. "So . . . you want to keep going, then?"
"Kitten. I know what I want, but it's not aboutwhat I want.This is about what
we want. Together." The hero rose, triumphant, the dragon was slain, the
princess was rescued from her plight, and Yang beamed, once upon a time, once
more. Somewhere in her eyes, the sequel was being written. "That's what being
partners means."
"Yang." A lifetime of absorbing words like an organized ink blotter, and that
was the only word Blake could find to say. Everything else seemed to be hiding
inside the lump in her throat.
"I love you, Blake." There it was again. That impossible sentence. "And I love
you for a lot of reasons. Your passion, your kindness, your brain, your
patience, your cute little kitty ears and way cuter butt."
It was like having a butterfly land on your nose. Blake could act annoyed, but
deep down she couldn't help but marvel at the moment, and moreso that it was
happening to her. "All this time and you're still trying to make me blush?"
"You kidding? I'm not ever gonna stop. It's real easy, if all I have to do is
tell the truth." Yang's eyes were soft and softer and softer, like purple dye
spreading through the ocean. "I love you so much, Blake, but the thing that
makes me stick to the idea . . . the thing that makes me think it would work,
you and me?" Her voice was softer too, now, like a bed in and of itself,
someplace private she and Blake could lie down together. "You always know what
to do. You always know who you are. The entire world tries to beat you down,
and you stand up and say 'no', because you know what the right thing is." Her
smile spread like the view from opened curtains on a penthouse suite, and
somehow, Yang always made Blake think of someplace far off that was still,
nonetheless, a home. "You're one of a kind, Blake. You're everything I ever
wanted to be."
There was a war going on in Blake's brain. What life had taught her, hard
knocks and deep cuts and more dead and wounded than most people could imagine,
fought against a single girl with a smile that could disarm a nation and a
Semblance built for combat. And Blake was losing. Or . . . winning. Maybe. "I .
. ." It was less that her preprogramming won, and more a final charge on dying
horseshoes. "I'm not anyone special."
"You absolutely," a kiss on one cheek. "Positively," a smooch on the other.
"One hundred and ten percent are." A peck on the forehead, to complete the set.
Some collectibles you couldn't put a price on. "That's why I know you'll make
the right choice. You always have." What was that look on her face? A promise
of some kind. Blake was certain she knew what, if she could just . . .
remember. "So look past that fear. Look past your concern, and whatever it is
you think you're . . . supposed to be doing. Look past the fact that you're
really turned on, even – I know that part's super hard with your hand on my
chest and all, but . . ." Yang let go of her wrist, seeming fearful that might
actually be true instead of simply more banter. Blake couldn't help but hold
her hand there, so, maybe it was. "Tell me what you want, Blake. Deep down,
past everything else. That matters just as much as what I want."
For a few moments, there was a reverberating quiet, like the absence of sound
left by the cessation of a booming horn and the quieting of a marching army.
Then there was the sense that something was about to happen, like a tingling
sensation in the Aura just before a firefight broke out.
And then . . . and then . . .
"I want your fingers beneath the fabric of my shirt." The sentence glimmered
like gold, heavy enough in Blake's hands that her whole body seemed more
sluggish for the weight. It seemed the centerpiece of the entire evening, a
brick like that. "I want to feel you groan my name against my lips. I want you
to trace patterns on the small of my back. I want to see your hair spread out
across my pillow. I want you to come undone. I want to hear all the different
ways you can say my name." But she couldn't slow down, not now, not when speed
was the most important thing, not when she couldn't afford to give herself a
chance to think about things, not when Blake always, inevitably, led herself to
the wrong conclusions. "I want to go to the beach with you. I want us to draw
our own constellations in the night sky. I want anniversaries and birthdays and
fighting and making up and building a life together." Her heart so fast, so
full to bursting, it felt like one long beat, Blake drew breath in heaving
pants. She felt lighter, somehow. "I want to believe in the future again. I
want you, Yang."
And then, hands over each others' hearts like they were swearing an oath, Yang
moved in to kiss her again, and Blake met her as close to halfway as she could
manage, and together the prison walls finally fell down. Freedom, sure, blue
skies, yes, fresh air, wonderful, but Yang's mouth . . .
And then, hands over each others' hearts like they were swearing an oath, Yang
moved in to kiss her again, and Blake met her as close to halfway as she could
manage, and together the prison walls finally fell down. Freedom, sure, blue
skies, yes, fresh air, wonderful, but Yang's mouth . . .
Blake was crying. Two or three tears, but crying nevertheless, and Yang reached
up to wipe those tears away, by intuition, one could only suppose. She was
crying, and she wasn't ashamed of it.
The separated, as slowly as they could manage, or maybe even slower than that.
One more second, that's all they wanted. Maybe it was all they could bear. "I
want you, too." It was totally unnecessary of Yang to say – she'd made the
message clear enough. At the same time, though, Blake truly needed to hear it.
"I always have."
"Heh." It wasn't quite sardonic laughter that Blake managed to stammer out, but
it did have some sard on. Much closer to something genuine, but also nowhere
near as close as Yang deserved from her. Or, Blake supposed, she deserved from
herself. "And here you are, worried you're going to break something."
Yang had bent forwards to kiss Blake, and rested her forehead against Blake's
own now. So she had to look up, as if Blake was something Yang dreamed of, but
could only find in the indistinct shapes in the clouds. "Don't worry. I
promise, if there's one thing in this world I'd never ever ever break, no
matter what? It's your heart." Maybe she wasn't looking up, come to think of
it. Direction was relative, after all – and that sure looked like a galaxy
swirling twixt her eyes. "Trust me on that."
"I know. And I do trust you." Blake had smiled for effect, had grinned for the
sake of distraction, had twisted words with the curl of her lip. She'd smiled
for others, for Yang, before, to show she was happy, to reassure and cajole.
But there and then, she smiled because she just couldn't help herself. "That's
why I've given it to you. For safekeeping."
"Possibly the best thing you've said all night." Yang might've actually said
the words, or Blake's brain might have merely seen the look on her face and
done some translating. Blake didn't really care which it was, because Yang was
leaning in again, and if nothing else, Blake was good at pattern recognition
and, she hoped, kissing back.
The feelings came almost too easily, and the memories almost too vividly. They
ran tongues over each others' own like trying to get a sense of the sea with a
pinkie toe on the shore, with the niggling feeling that if either of them
really wanted a beginning of a grasp on it, all it would take was one wave and
an allowance. So deep.
Gosh, Yang kissed like a dream. A lucid dream. Blake could control the flow of
it, if she concentrated. And even in the sadness of waking up, there was the
sense that world Blake had made for herself would be waiting for her when she
fell back asleep.
Yang blinked – presumably, getting rid of the sleep from her eyes. "So. Turns
out all I ever needed to do to understand what you were feeling was grab your
funbags." Yang didn't move an inch. Not even a muscle. Somehow, Blake could
still tell she was restraining herself from making boob-grabbing motions.
"Don't sell me so short." Now this smile, this smile, Blake wore like low-cut
jeans. A girl liked to show off, now and then. "I grabbed your lady pillows,
too."
"Well. Grabbing boingy bits aside, along with thinking up new names for them,
because I'll be honest, I'm fresh out . . ." Yang clearly didn't want her
countenance to look so confused, but didn't seem to have much choice in the
matter. Like her face had painted itself into a corner. With radioactive paint.
"I still haven't got a clue what I'm supposed to be doing with my hands, here.
You're like this big wide-open beach, and I've never built sandcastles in my
entire life."
"Don't sandcastles tend to be pretty transient real estate?" Well. Hadn't
everything, this far?
"Yeah, but watching the big wave come in and destroy everything is half the
fun!" If someone's face could be described as frolicking, Yang's face would be
described as an entire festival. She lit up at night, and even the silly games
of catch the goldfish and test your strength suddenly seemed entirely too
romantic to be real.
"Pffft." All of a sudden, Blake was considering living in a carnival. Who could
care if the food was too fattening when, ah, the rides. "Okay. I see where you
were gong with that one, now."
"Cowabunga," Yang managed to make the single word sound like a love poem. Maybe
someday Blake would get to that level of sophistication of speech. In the
meantime, there were always other things she could be doing with her mouth.
"Soooooo, yeah. I dunno. Got any pointers? Besides 'be yourself and have fun'.
I, uh, sorta figure that goes without saying."
Perhaps, but Blake was already having trouble just doing that. "Well . . ." She
looked in her mind for anything that might be relevant. Some things seemed
right, but only when looked at from behind. A request to turn, and, no, she was
certain the correct thing to say didn't have a mustache. "Not really. Ninjas of
Love, sad to say, has left me woefully under-prepared to face the real deal."
Blake made a note to herself: unless trying to sound dominantly sexy, stop
referring to sexual activities with Yang – or anybody else, as much as she
didn't plan on it anytime in the future - in the same way she'd refer to
fighting some sort of Grimm. "Which, I suppose, can only mean that we both
should be following your advice."
Yang was briefly surprised, but recovered like a champ – specifically a world
champ, of the "recovering from surprise" competition. "Gonna have to be more
specific than that. I've had a lot of humdingers over the years." 'Humdinger'
was probably number nine or so on the Top Ten List of Least Sexy Words. Yang,
like a lot of other inadvisable things, pulled it off with bodacious aplomb.
"I should be telling you what I want." Blake lay out Yang's cards on the table,
like some game of poker in which they were both blatantly cheating. "And you
should do the same for me."
"Huh. You're right. I'm right. I'm a genius!" Yang snuck a kiss more quickly
than Blake had time to respond to, which was a shame, because she'd thought up
some pretty good ideas. "You're a genius."
"And they say opposites attract." Blake fidgeted, like a wind-up toy, and
realized upon release that she was only spinning her wheels. "Um . . . okay.
Wow." She could almost heart the whirring noise in her ears. "I always thought
. . . when I thought about this . . . I wanted you to start with . . . my
neck." A touch of her finger at a point near the back-left side, because that
was where the whirring was coming from, maybe? "Right back here."
"A massage?" Yang's smile stretched into her fingers, somehow – Blake could
feel the cheerful way they wriggled. "I could do that, no problem."
"Not a massage. A, er, hickey." Blake shouldn't have been saying that. There
were public indecency laws to consider. No, it didn't matter that she and Yang
were in the privacy of their shared bedroom – and at that moment, it hit her
that they shared a bedroom, and Blake moved forwards just to avoid thinking
about that. "Or maybe, just, you know, lips and tongue in general . . ."
"Well, if you insist, I think I can definitely put 'necking' on my list of
things to do to you." Yang's voice was tucking in under silken sheets with a
low fire going after a long, exhausting day. Very, very diplomatic about the
idea of Blake just staying in bed, no matter what happened. "How about the rest
of me? Anything in particular you want me doing?"
" . . . besides 'me'?" It was the obvious course of action, saying that. So was
striking a nail with a hammer. Some things just weren't that complicated.
"Yeah, but, you know, we're working up to that." Oh, Dust, Yang couldn't have
picked a better thing to say. "Working youup." And Blake took it back.
"Oh, definitely." Blake had been going for coy and slightly sarcastic. It came
out like something Yang would say. "Uh. Stay up there for a while, but you can
move . . . this is . . . actually happening. You can move down when, you know,
you want to. Your hands can. Uh." Blake considered. If she really endeavored to
list all the things she was perfectly fine with Yang's hands doing, they'd . .
. this was Friday evening . . . they'd miss all their classes on Monday, and a
significant portion of Tuesday as well. "Well. I guess this is the part where
you tell me what you want."
"We both know I'm not as good with words as you are. Pretty sure I'm gonna have
to showyou instead of telling you." Yang's laughed as if pure catnip could have
a noise, but something in the concerned look she gave Blake after left her
sober as a professor with a hangover. "If you don't mind. I mean . . . if
that's what you want."
"Oh, Yang." It wasn't as thrilling a sentence as some, but in her short
experience with carnivals, Blake tended to find the teacup ride much more
exciting than the roller coasters, in any case. Put more simply, it was
actually sort of nice to be worried about like that. "I mind so little, I think
I might not be thinking at all."
"Hey, that's cool. I don't think very much either, and I get through stuff just
fine!" Like a battering ram made entirely out of personality, Yang was.
"Not having to think does have its appeal." Blake tilted her head, as though
trying to let her thoughts just leak out of her. Showing her neck off to Yang's
hopefully hungry mouth had absolutely nothing to do with it, except maybe
everything to do with it, of course. "I don't suppose you'd be willing to
distract me?"
Someone must have lit something in Yang's mouth on fire for there to be that
much smoke in her eyes. "Your wish. My command."
Yang would be a prodigy in the world of championship darts, Blake felt, because
her lips moved to her neck and, erm,bullseye. Her hands, seemed to agree,
engaging in a series of victorious celebrations that the newspapers would
undoubtedly call 'scandalous' come the morning and that Blake could only call
'insufficient' at the moment.
Well, she'd call it insufficient if she weren't busy saying Yang's name in a
way that would almost certainly get her banned from any public location and a
fanblog by the morning after.
Either way, possibly the way Yang's hands kept moving up against the undersides
of her breasts, the roll of her hips, the base of her neck, but never any
further, made Blake think that she was undergoing karmic retribution. It was a
fitting punishment for all the conversation topics she'd gleefully avoided,
whimsical wordplay a fine shelter against the slings and arrows of the world –
but not against affection. Not Yang's, at least.
Battering ram of sheer personality, she was.
One with teeth, the glowing – no, growing – no, both – bruise at the back of
Blake's neck would gladly bear witness to. Truly, it was one of the world's
injustices that the Beacon uniform would cover up any evidence of Yang's
rightdoing.
So right. Every time Yang's mouth grazed her flesh, it left stardust, and each
lingering, luscious lavish of lips was a nova in disguise, and with each
starburst across skin that felt more now than ever like the stars blooming on
the canvas of the night sky Blake felt more like there was a pattern to them,
and surely this must have been how the gods made people into constellations,
and Yang was certainly divine enough to do so, and, and, and . . .
. . . and there was always an 'and' with Yang. Other people were kind, sure,
other people were beautiful. But Yang was kind and beautiful. She was warm and
accepting. She was funny and caring. She was heartfelt and silly and determined
and unstoppable and she could do anything she set her mind to, and she
listened, and forgave, and triumphed over evil just by existing and sang to the
heavens that she was here, she was here, they were all here, and, and, and . .
.
And.
And she was kissing Blake, leaving stardust on her skin.
There must have been someone more deserving of miracles than Blake, out there
in the wide, wide world. But the way Yang kissed – with her whole body, not
just her lips, something desperate and wild and everything Blake had never
allowed herself to be – she could almost believe she deserved something good.
Something real, really, really real, something that didn't ring empty in the
hollows of her heart, someone who'd hold her just like Yang was holding her
now.
Yang moved to Blake's lips, one jot of light in the sky at a time, like a
thousand hillsat nights watching the stars emerge from behind the black
expanse, and finally seeing sunrise. A relief and a disappointment, all at the
same time, as she eased into the kiss like flowers ease into apples, a blooming
sweetness with seeds for infinitely more contained within it.
Of course, apples didn't usually bite down on Blake's lip when she ate them.
Who said there was no improving on nature?
But apples were as quick to go as springtime, and Yang's mouth moved from
Blake's in a near reflection of the previous symphonic movement, the only real
difference being where she decided to leave the next hickey. Blake, in
response, attempted to climb Yang's tree, wrapping her legs and arms alike
around her and being glad it wasn't literal, because that was possibly the
worst tree-climbing technique in existence.
"We really should have done this a lot sooner than we – pfftt, hee hee." It
wasn't just like Blake had been rudely awoken from a very good dream. It wasn't
just like Blake had been rudely awoken from a very good dream and realizing
that it was because someone was snoring and that she weren't going to be able
to go back to sleep. It was just like Blake had been awoken from a really good
dream by someone snoring and realizing that she wasn't going to back to sleep,
and also, that the snoring had been her.
But Yang was a morning person, and as far as she was concerned "morning" seemed
to last to somewhere around 11:30 at night. "What's so funny?" she asked, a
tragedy, considering what she wasn't doing.
The realization flooded through Blake like ice in her veins – more
specifically, melting strychnine. "I can honestly say that I do not find
anything at all funny, right now."
Yang's mouth was a precocious personality, not inclined to obey such authority
figures as lawmen, teachers, or even (Blake suspected) Yang's own brain. It
pulled a lot of stunts, and lately some of the things it pulled forced Blake to
reclassify parts of her body as "stunts" in hopes that things would progress
naturally from there. It never, however, did absolutely nothing. Until now.
Her eyes, on the other hand, narrowed. That seemed to say it all.
And then, more laughter. Funeral laughter. The kind that, by all means
necessary, needs to be stopped right that moment, and never actually will.
Yang's fingers were fluttering more focused, like a butterfly trying to make a
hurricane on purpose, and these were not the noises Blake had wanted Yang to
make her make.
Any other time, the twinkle in Yang's eyes would have been a lovely sign of a
city from a distance, a welcome home. Tonight, at that moment, it was arson.
"Blake." Yang's smile slithered like a creation myth gone wrong. "Don't tell me
you're ticklish?"
A single sentence, and Blake was embattled. The familiar analysis engine
programmed into her by a million missed bullets and a thousand hissed lessons
between them rapidly calculated her odds of success given any individual
option. There was always a way out. There was always a way out. There was
always a -
"There's no right answer to that question, is there?" Blake knew it wouldn't
help to hold herself perfectly still. It wasn't as if Yang tracked her by
movement. And yet she tried it anyway.
Like a destruction myth gone wrong, the snake returned the sun as Yang beamed
brightly. "I'd say they're all right answers!"
Yang's fingers assaulted Blake's sides, and for the first time in living
memory, it wasn't just a metaphor.
It was less that Blake's world became the dreaded Palace of Eternal Tickledom –
which was the worst thing Blake had ever thought of – and more that Blake's
world didn't have Blake in it anymore. She was orbiting it, high in the
atmosphere, weightless and uncontrolled, just enough air to keep her alive but
also so little she could barely think beyond the bubbles that were forming in
her brain.
And, of course, she couldn't stop laughing.
"Hee ha ha ha - Yang, stop it!" The laughter was a cage and the words were
attempting to reach through the bars, and Blake was, oh, an earthquake. "Pfft –
don't! No, pffhaha, no more!"
Yang often had things of this nature shouted at her when she gave people rides
on her bike. "Not really seeing a good reason to stop . . ." To Blake's
understanding, she tended to press the gas pedal instead of the brakes when
things like that happened.
"I need to breathe!" Blake threw the words like a makeshift grappling hook –
even if the lip of the edge seemed utterly impossible to pick out.
"Say uncle Qrow!" Yang's sing-songing voice, though she might vehemently deny
such, left a lot to be desired. Like mercy, for example.
"Uncle Qrow!" There were names Blake had been expecting to cry to the heavens
after some token resistance. Well, one name. Variations thereof. Point was,
Yang's uncle wasn't one of them. A few more seconds and relentless fingers
finally became relentful fingers, and Blake figured out that good grammar was
the first thing to go.
The laughter was the last.
Somewhere in between the two, Blake lost her already-tremulous grasp on gravity
and began falling backwards, only to be caught by Yang – what else was new?
"Think I'll take that as a 'Yes, Yang, I'm very ticklish'." Yang's voice melted
like butter and caught just as easily in the heart.
"Dork." Every time Blake's thoughts turned down a pathway, there was a wild
giggle blocking their way. Best to take the path of least resistance, or at
least wait until she finished giggling in a sea of endorphins to . . .
Yang decided to finish drowning her, depriving her of air with her own lips.
Well.
Only thing to do in response was for Blake to throw her own arms around Yang's
neck and cling to her like she was a life-preserver. That, and make sure to use
tongue.
It was sweet, and slow, and strong, like even more molasses than bending over
to grab books, and it seemed to be infectious. Maybe that wasn't the nicest
word to describe one of Yang's kisses with, but Blake sure felt like some sort
of syrup, the way everything eased into comfortable sluggishness.
And then, like a seed sprouting into an apple tree, Yang eased Blake back onto
the bed they were on, never breaking their liplock. They fell together – they
always had and always would. Yang kissed, Blake was coming to realize, like she
was performing a trust fall, and she performed trust falls with running starts
and swan dives. Or, at least, she did when Blake was there to catch her. And
even though it encouraged her, Blake always caught her. Or maybe, secretly, not
so secretly,because it encouraged her. Trust was oddly sexy, somehow.
Their positions were reversed, now, of course, but that was all still as true
as one plus one being two.
Blake's head came to rest on the pillow, and there was a strong suspicion in
her mind that she was about to have a very pleasant dream. It was a dense
suspicion, too, with all the heat and pressure being applied to her. It wasn't
that Yang was settling down on her, it was that Yang was settling in around
her, over her, an unfamiliar sky of perpetual sunsets, all orange, purple, and
feelings like a long, long day was, at last, coming to an end.
Hands were wandering. They weren't Blake's. Blake's were holding on, not for
their lives, but simply for the sake of not letting go. Proving a point to the
universe.
Yang bit. The universe could be pointy back. Blake had no objections to a fair
and reasoned discourse.
But hands were still wandering, neither fair nor reasonable, wandering in dark
alleys and wooded areas good hands never went alone at night – so it was
fantastic each one had the sense to bring a buddy. They'd ended up quite lost,
or perhaps that was simply the excuse they planned to use later, somewhere
under Blake's skirt, just below Blake's just below, and lifting-
Every dastardly deed Blake had ever thought of, killed, buried, made sure to
dispose of the evidence, every hint of wickedness emerged from her throat at
once in the form of symphonic movement where all the instruments were far too
hot and bothered to be out in public.
The music ended as suddenly as it began, enough so that even the sound of
needle against record was cut off, and Yang and Blake stopped dancing. An odd
club, where the dancers' next move would decide which song would play next, and
the DJ seemed to be willing to wait as long as necessary.
"Hello." Blake breathed into the stillness that followed, a word light and
heavy as a lead balloon looking for a flame. Someone had to say
something,especially since neither pair of lips seemed to be currently
occupied, anymore.
"Hey, yourself." Yang was an expert in attaching specific tones to the things
she said. Torn stockings, bright, shiny bracelets and neon scarves were
carefully, metaphorically placed to accentuate an already-outlandish sound. But
this was about the same thing as seeing Yang in a dress back at the school
dance: a package deal. The kind of reverence Yang wore couldn't be classified
as a simple accessory to her crimes.
For a few bits – beats, but cuter, which was more apt to the events transpiring
– there was more silence. Then, there was the sound of Yang's nails scratching
down Blake's board. Her belly. From there, with the class's undivided
attention, so to speak, she pressed at the inside of Blake's legs. Obligingly,
confusedly, as though someone had asked her whether or not water was wet, and
might they possibly see some proof, Blake opened up, just a little.
"Something the matter?" Blake attempted to keep her tone as neutral as a man on
a tightrope over the pits of hell on a windy day. Windier, the way Yang slowly
reached up to brush a single lock of hair aside from her forehead.
"I can control you." The first person to ever discover their Semblance must
have sounded like that. Awed, unbelieving, searching their own thoughts for
tricks, the slightest hint about where something this fantastic might have come
from. Except, if anything, Yang sounded even more amazed than all that. "I can
make your body . . . move."
Blake nodded, shallow and a little thick, like a saucer of cream. She'd never
thought of herself as something so basically elemental as to be beyond human
reckoning, but the way Yang was breathing . . . "Your hands touch me like
questions." She didn't know where the words came from. Blake only knew that
they were the right ones. "I'll always say yes."
For the space of a paragraph in a novel, Yang looked at Blake as if she were a
book of pictures, no letters, attempting to divine some meaning hidden in the
thousands of words they represented.
And then Yang smiled like an opening dam, and laughter flowed like a river,
wild, free, and refreshing. It bounded off the walls like a flood of endorphin,
and deep did it run.
And she smiled like the opening day of a malt shop with a pocket full of
allowance, bending to kiss down Blake's torso and sneaking licks of sugar-sweet
skin.
And she smiled like opening a chest of treasure, even as she opened the chest
of Blake's outfit, each button popping off between teeth, lips, and far too
flexible a tongue to be considered proper.
And Blake smiled like the cat who got into the cream, to end imagination with
the blade of apt descriptors. "About time you buttoned your lips."
Yang looked up with eyes sparkling like wine, warm like whiskey, heady like
vodka, and laughed like she was too tipsy to care who heard. "We both know I've
got a big mouth. So it's real good thing you've got two shirts of buttons for
me to work with here." A kiss, just at Blake's navel and, well, case in point.
Blake swallowed down her blush, an ability she hadn't known she'd possessed
until right that second. Tasted vaguely like green peppers. "And here I figured
you'd end up complaining about how much clothing I was wearing."
"Mmm, I'm not really in the business of complaining about stuff." Suddenly,
like turning a corner and spying an entire building where there used to be a
park, Yang's hand settled on Blake's stomach, and Yang's voice settled
somewhere in her groin. "I just . . . take care of the problem." Fingers
trailed, slowly, up the course of Blake's torso – between her breasts – up her
neck – into the spaces between her thoughts, which grew ever larger – and
halted, a slow, sensuous, sinful sort of path that Blake was barely able to
compare what she imagined Yang's legs did, the first time she got on a
motorcycle.
And if riding a bike felt anything like this, it was no wonder Yang loved
getting out on Bumblebee so much.
But Yang didn't hit the ignition immediately. She paused, and so did Blake's
heart, brain, lungs, and basically everything except her stomach, which did the
kind of excited flip that circuses built shows around. Nervousness seemed
unbelievable, and patience even more so, yet Blake had the distinct feeling
that Yang was waiting on something to finish heating on the stovetop.
Metaphorically speaking.
Then Yang popped the top button of Blake's shirt open, and "boiling" was not
nearly intense enough of a word to describe the temperatures involved.
The next button down was quick, like gravity, thrillseeking and the space
between buildings, even if Blake felt like she was the one falling, and when
Yang moved her finger to the third button – but didn't open it – it was impact.
A hot crater.
Blake was already breathing a little shallow. She could only imagine what depth
might feel like in this situation.
But then, she didn't have to imagine depth, because Yang was looking further
into her eyes than she ever had before, as though she'd been searching for
Blake all her life and found her in a stranger's body. "Tell me . . . tell me
if you change your mind, okay?" Yang's hand slid over to press again to her
heart – Blake supposed it was good someone kept track of her heartbeat. She'd
lost track of it somewhere along the way, most likely when it and her thoughts
ran away together.
"I won't." Three strikes. Blake was beginning to wonder whether the baseball
uniform was a good idea, after all. Even if pinstripes did flatter her figure.
"I mean, I will, but . . . I mean, I'm not going to change my mind." She licked
her lips, and noted Yang mirroring the maneuver. Perhaps it was symbolic. "This
is more than a dream come true for me. This is everything I ever wanted, and
everything I thought I'd never have."
Yang's smile was so very bright, photons seemed to cast shadows before it.
"Right back at you," she murmured, and maybe there was something to be said for
symbolism, after all. She leaned forwards, carefully, trying to squeeze in the
places Blake didn't already fit into, like a liquid, like ecstasy, and rested
her head in the crook of Blake's neck. "Huh. They really are the same."
"What?" Blake asked, arms slinking around Yang's form and holding her close,
because it might have been the only way to prevent the air escaping from her
lungs.
"Your pulse and your heart. They sound the same." Yang's hair, midwinter songs
in front of the fireplace woven into a tapestry, caressed Blake's body as Yang
turned her head to press a soft kiss to Blake's pulse point. "Feel the same. I
know they're supposed to and all, but it's just really cool, you know?"
It hit Blake hard at that moment, over and over again – a realization like her
double-time heart. She wasn't the only one wearing a persona often enough to
give Coco fashionista fits. For as open as Yang was, in action, in dress, in
smile, there were still parts of herself covered up - and Yang covering up was
the last thing that should be happening tonight.
"You know it's okay, right?" Blake let the words tumble out like a cheerleading
squad, hopefully just as peppy and encouraging. "You don't have to hold
yourself back."
Devil-may-care. It was a mask, slipshod and ruffled but face-covering
nonetheless, that Yang wore every day, which by transitive property meant every
day was a costume party for Yang.
"That obvious?" The way Yang's other hand splayed across Blake's back and began
coaxing the muscles there to relax seemed to suggest she was trying to
apologize. As if she had anything at all she needed to apologize for. "'Course
it is. Who am I talking to?"
But masquerades at midnight see faces fall, in more than one sense of the
phrase, and beneath lamplight Blake couldn't help but realize that since the
only reason to wear a mask was to be someone you weren't. So if the devil
didn't care, that meant that Yang almost certainly did. About everything and
everyone.
"You're talking to Blake Belladonna, the girl who's been handling whatever you
throw at me this entire evening." Ah, yes, she was handling Yang, alright. But
there were places to put innuendo – in conversations, in passes down the
hallway, in poetry and jokes and heated glances – but oddly enough, it didn't
seem as though when she and Yang were about to have sex was one of them, or at
least not at the immediate moment. Well, subversion had always been one of
Blake's favorite tactics. "And dishing it back, if you'll recall. You really
aren't going to break me."
Maybe, possibly, Blake most of all.
"I know I won't break you. And you dishing it back out does have a certain
appeal to it." Innuendo had its place, and Yang obviously knew a tad better
than Blake where that place was. "It's just, once you throw the punch you're
committed to it, right? And . . . I want to take time to appreciate you."
Blake could see it in the way Yang looked at her. Like she'd begun building the
rest of her life in her head.
"I'm impressed." Blake had never found herself too capable at being the
architect of the day after – too busy burning bridges behind her to be building
anything. "You've finally given me an idea I'm not sure I can handle."
There was a brief moment's lapse – not hesitation, so much as the throttle of
the engine – and Yang's hand shaped itself, slow motion, around Blake's cheek:
a motorcycle hugging a curve. "Find out together?"
With one hand pressing Yang's own against her cheek like pressing a flower to a
page, Blake moved upwards, far enough upwards to make Yang carry her part of
the way to a sitting position, to participate in other, more exciting hobbies.
Like building futures in her head. She'd suddenly taken quite the interest in
that one.
What happened after that was a little like placing a pebble at the top of a
mountain, looking away, then looking back to see an rockslide. Lips moved like
sewing needles, forming a patchwork quilt of tongues and teeth and brushes of
the nose. Hands moved from face to hips and then metamorphosed into hands at
the back of the thighs, pulling Blake forwards and around like Yang intended to
only wear her for the rest of the evening. A gentle push of the hips, water on
the beach, became the crashing, rolling surf, bringing the roar of the entire
ocean, focused to a single point. A kiss became tongues, became teeth, became
bodies and sweat and gentle gasps, Yang's half-a-dress plus leggings and
Blake's shoes got thrown off to the side where unimportant things went to stay,
there was a feeling like a fuse had been lit and something, sometime, was soon
going to explode.
A few moments later, the fizzle of a dud sounded in Blake's ears, and the
proceedings paused to realize they didn't have a contingency plan.
Well, not quite a lack of explosives. More like the last moment of a song,
where the sudden clarity of silence allows the dancers to realize how
intimately close their waltz has become, and they snap apart, holding each
others' gazes as though afraid they'd break, beyond repair, if dropped.
Not quite that, either. Yang and Blake separated, instantly, agreed upon, but
it was more like the dance floor in reverse after that. A few moment's silence
to adjust to the idea, and Blake ducked her head beneath Yang's chin, and was
held tightly enough to keep her beating heart under control. Nuzzling was
involved on the part of both parties.
"Have I told you lately how gorgeous you are?" Blake hoped that actions spoke
louder than words, because there were so many things she wanted to say in that
moment, and all she could find were the small of Yang's back and even smaller
circles.
"Tell me how good I look, and I'll tell you why you look even better." Yang
seemed to have speaking without words down pat, judging by the way her lips
moving against the tops of her head felt – even after she was done speaking.
"You sure you want to be putting your lips there?" The question sort of felt,
to Blake, like dipping her finger in uncharted waters. Inquisitive exploration
by technicality alone. "I definitely appreciate it - don't think I don't. I
just . . . well, I never liked getting hair in my mouth. It stands to reason
that you wouldn't, either."
"If you think a tiny bit of body hair is going to stop me from licking, biting,
teasing, or kissing every single inch of you I can get my mouth on, you must
not know me very well." True – reckless disregard for perceived reward and Yang
went hand in hand like old friends. Or, hand in hand like Yang's hand and
Blake's ears, and scratching, and descriptive language was suddenly quite
difficult for Blake. "Especially these bad girls here. Youreally like it when I
touch you here, don't you?"
Blake could really only describe what she was feeling as visiting an aggressive
sauna. Sans towel. "Well . . . not justthere . . ."
"Hence the whole, lick, bite, and tease every single inch of you stuff." Yang's
lips met her faunus ears and exchanged phone numbers, leaving Blake to fret,
metaphorically speaking, over what they were supposed to wear on their date.
"And kissing, too. Lots of kissing. At this point, nothing's gonna stop me
unless you say 'no'."
There were certain types of emphasis best described as not emphasizing at all.
Like leaving poor wet girls standing against walls without knees between their
legs. Similarly, with just as much previous flirtation and feeling, Blake left
her voice purposefully level in tone. "So nothing's gonna stop you, then?"
Yang grinned down at her in a way that made springtime seem wintry. "Sure hope
not."
As if rehearsing the big love scene at the climax of a play, she took it from
the top, her two lips on connection with Blake's feline qualities leaving seeds
of affection that made the blood beneath Blake's skin bloom. Quick as a
honeybee's flight, Yang then dipped down to those flowers, licking up the
nectar therein with a buzzing sort of glee. Spring was certainly here; Blake
could smell it on the breeze – the breath of air from Yang's mouth against her
neck that produced giggles like blades of grass over the night sky's landscape.
And then, as though Yang had done it a thousand times before – and if she were
as imaginative as Blake had found herself to be, she just might have – she held
Blake's wrist up and outwards between the lightest touch of finger and thumb,
gently leading her somewhere. Somewhere good, and a bit rainy, judging by the
peppered pecks that then landed on the skin of her neck, her breast, her
collarbone, her ear, her neck again . . .
Yang could kiss like the rain. Yes. That was it. A spring, or maybe summer
rain. Gentle, warm, but thorough, nonetheless. Affection in small batches, a
brief break from the sweltering heat, and utterly unexpected.
"So the girl who burned an entire nightclub to the ground using only her hands
invites me out dancing." Blake's words followed a slow, steady tempo that
Yang's tongue set as the kisses upon her neck slowed and deepened, her hand
fully encircling her wrist and tightening. Everything seemed to be slower and
steadier now, except for her heart, which seemed to be the hare about things.
"Somewhat surprising to find myself in the middle of a waltz."
"Hey. Gimme some credit." Yang's smile was cocky, or half-cocked, or possibly
even both, and somehow still seemed sturdier than anything else the world had
put out so far. "Even I know that if you're lucky enough to get hold of some
fine wine . . . rich . . . decadent . . ." The hottest, deepest, most lingering
kisses yet traced up to one of Blake's lower ears between Yang's words, and for
all the world it felt to Blake as though she were a girl in a bottle, being
constructed like a ship. "You're supposed to savor it."
"Oh, I know you're plenty smart. I've just never seen you take your time on
something before." Blake was so very close to some sort of edge that hadn't
been there a few moments before that even an unguarded impact of a few stray
beams of light might send her toppling into sensory overload – and so she let
her eyes flutter shut. "It makes a girl feel . . . special. Wanted." Blake
paused a moment. To give her next sentence maximum impact. Definitely not
because her brain was too tipsy to think properly, nope, no siree, no way, no
how. "Oh, and really, really horny."
The only sign that Yang faltered in her approach was the sudden rush of gasped
air across the hollow of Blake's throat. It was, however, a sign the size of
the city of lights and lust and risktaking that it gave indication to. "Say
again?"
There was, of course, the noted phenomenon of undressing a person using only
one's eyes. But this was something new that Blake was trying: a look to undress
herself with. "I'm afraid you're going to have to make me."
Another kiss, like all the others. A bit of bliss, like all the others.
Yang had always been making her, anyway – Blake was a work in progress, after
all. Barely a sketch when they first met, ink on paper and empty inside, and
then Yang gave her colors and definition and a gilded frame she could hang out
in when everything was said and done.
But then again, Blake was more words than watercolor, and by many definitions
stories were never truly completed until the were read. It was like Blake split
into thirds, being kissed the way she was – felt the way she was – read like a
novel in its steamiest scenes. Like she was being dissected, analyzed. Held up
to literary standards and not found wanting for authorship, despite the
tumultuous process the writing had been up to this point.
One hand brushed over Blake's ears almost casually, the other grabbing Blake's
wrist and guiding hand to hip, body settling sideways into the touch. A hand of
a different, more slender sort entangled itself in Yang's hair.
The first part was Blake's brain, focusing on the details, shelving the little
moments once they'd passed like pinning the memories of butterflies beneath the
foggy glass of the subconscious. It was the technical skill, the rhythm and
meter of each sentence, the proper grammar of the thing. So it kept saying
things like, Yang smells a little bit like wildflowers.
Teeth bit down on Blake's lower lip, hand making its next brush anything but
casual, as another hand crept up Blake's back, insisting on further contact of
skin on skin. The hand gripping Yang's waist tightened, the back of its partner
gliding down Yang's torso, barely fitting in the space left between them.
The second was her soul, focusing on the characterization, sampling the sounds
of reality and mixing them into an entirely new genre of music. It was the
symbolism, the messages, the phrasing of the thing. So it kept saying things
like, No. Wildflowers smell a little bit like Yang.
Lips traveled along Blake's jawline, a leg drawing itself up her own to mirror
the hand running down her side. A hand squeezed Yang's bicep, and single nail
traced the bottom portion of her spine.
Then there was her self, focusing on the feeling, emotional and otherwise,
cradled in an embrace strong enough to hold back the ocean and loving enough to
make it feel like it didn't want to go anywhere. She was the setting, the
scenery, the idea of the thing. So she kept kissing Yang, as if to say,I love
the way she smells. The way she is.
They say some books are written for a the world, some are written for a group,
and some very special ones for one specific person. Yang kept reading, and
reading, and reading again, as if Blake were her own personal book.
A very unique book: many books had dog ears, but this one . . . well, carefree
hands finished writing that sentence for Blake as they scratched, just short of
pain like other people might be just short of the horseshoe hitting the pole.
"You seem awfully fixated on my ears this evening." Blake had sworn to herself
she wouldn't play any more games of saying-this meaning-that, and yet here she
was, cooing her appreciation in blatant rebellion against the things she
noticed.
Yang nipped at the top of Blake's right kitten ear with the kind of jubilant
pride people normally reserved for cresting mountaintops. "Just checking for
halos."
"Alright, that was pretty smooth." Blake returned the flavor with twice as much
glee and, considering the golden mass she had to fight through, twice the
difficulty. Some things were worth the extra effort.
"Yeah, I know it was." Yang's sense of pride might be best summarized as a
crooked crown that refused to straighten. "But being serious? I wanna do
everything in my power to make sure you feel good about being who you are. Ears
and all."
If there was any set of sentences in the world that deserved a kiss, then
everything Yang had ever said tied for first place. Not that Blake was a biased
judge or anything – at any rate, that was one of the sets, and it was entitled
to its proper prize.
Yang kissed back, like a teddy bear attached to a moving wall, an oddly soft
but utterly implacable insistence on affection. If that was how Blake died,
then so be it - Yang's body pressed like a question, and Blake answered, and
they fell backwards together once again, more wild and uncontrolled an approach
– more of a Yang approach – than what had come before. Not onto the pillow.
Directly towards the headboards.
The noise that Blake's head made upon contact was like nothing but a
hammerblow, and her tiny "Ow," right afterwards was unfortunately similar to
its squeaky counterpart.
"Oh, Dust, Blakey, I am so sorry!" It was possibly the first time Yang had ever
shown any concern for collateral damage. "Aw, geeze. So much for making your
ears feel good . . . you okay?"
"Yang, bleeding head wounds are not conducive to good sex." Blake's face
matched how she felt – as serious as page 387 of the second Ninjas book. The
page with the bikini contest. So, not very serious at all. "I'm kidding. I'm
absolutely fine."
"You're sure?" Yang was as yellow as a rubber duck, so perhaps it was apt that
she, on occasion, squeaked like one. "We can stop. I can get some ice, or
something -"
"I'm coffee beans, remember? Not spun sugar." Blake pressed her hand once more
into Yang's hair. Like a hand-knit sweater, but spread out over a large area so
more than one person could wear it, except Yang was territorial, so only . . .
silly to be thinking along those lines. "We've had sparring sessions that hurt
a lot more than that did, and I don't recall ever being too banged up
afterwards."
Yang was beginning to calm down. By all technicality, the sun was beginning to
cool down. They were not dissimilar sentences. "Yeah, but this isn't supposed
to be a sparring match."
Blake thought, maybe, if she tried really hard, she could make her expression
look like a sprawling array of lily petals spread out over the bed. At least,
in the effective sense. "Isn't it?"
"Oh." All the features on Yang's face gathered together at the center and began
plotting nefarious things for the night. "Well, when you put it that way . . ."
She's so beautiful I can barely stand it.
"Of course, thinking back on it, we usually went up against each other in
sparring class anyway, didn't we?" A hand slipped, easily, like playing chords
on a guitar after practicing for seven years straight, between Blake's suddenly
too-sensitive skin and what little – less and less, it seemed, every moment –
she was wearing over it. Blake resolved she'd need to be more careful with her
wishes in the future if they were going to be granted so readily. Not all of
them would be as satisfactory as this one was turning out to be.
"Had to work off all of our tension somehow, right?" It was a gleaming grin,
the kind ships sank to. Not because it was hard and unyielding, something to
crack three solid feet of metal on, but because it was so beautifully tempting.
A distraction. A siren, most likely their queen, to sink ships without singing
a single syllable. "Locked together, matching each other move for move,
slamming one person or another into the mat . . . pretty sure I don't need to
go on?"
"Oh, absolutely. I've got a very good picture of it in my mind. Mmmm." Blake's
clothing was becoming almost as loose as Yang's was still tight – which was bad
for a number of reasons. Then again, there was no really bad outcome in play.
Blake was only going to lose her opportunity to steer towards the good outcome
she personally wanted. "Sometimes, though, when I wasn't up to sparring, I just
sat back and watched."
"Enjoying the show, were you?" Yang's voice rumbled, but quietly, like a
meteorite landing a good several miles away. It still shook the ground beneath
one's feet, of course, but that was to be expected with a party crasher of that
sort of magnitude. Perhaps magnitude 7? 8?
"How could I not?" Blake's voice was soft, too, but she would call it more a
feather at close range than a rock, far off. Something ticklish and playful.
"You're a symphonic movement made visual, Yang. Percussion and violins,
concussions and violence – a walking lesson on Music Theory, I swear." A single
finger traced up and down Yang's now unmoving arm. Two would have been
excessive, all things considered – including, of course, the immediate future.
"The rippling muscles were nice, too, I have to admit. It's a wonder every
single person in the stands didn't fall in love with you, I remember thinking."
Yang stilled, staring into her eyes, and something in Blake wondered what it
might take to make a siren crash into the rocks below. ". . . it might sound
sort of weird, but . . ." This wouldn't be called floundering, despite the
recent impact. Not even recovering. More like reflection. More like composing a
strategy for the next go-round. "I hoped you were watching me, whenever I
sparred and you weren't standing across from me." There was a wide variety of
noises Yang often made – some of which Blake was hoping to hear more than
others, at that point – but chuckling at herself was surprisingly not high on
the list. It happened at that point, though. "Let's be honest -"
"Les-bi-an-ish?" Oh, goodness. The puns were getting instinctual. That was a
harbinger if Blake had ever ominously gazed at one.
"Okay, that's a good one." A single lily floating, untouched, in the middle of
a hurricane. Perhaps a bit too poetic, but it was slowly beginning to embody
Yang's ability to go with the flow. Not a lily. A lilac. "But, uh, no, I was
actually hoping you were looking at me even when we were throwing punches at
each other. Besides, you know, how you usually watch people when you're
fighting them. Um . . . you know what I mean, right?"
"I understand completely." Through experience, even. Years worth of experience,
the way all the time that wasn't Blake seemed to slow like the last bit of
ketchup in the bottle every time the world zoomed in on what she and Yang were
doing together. "And yes. I watched you. Like a movie. Honestly speaking, the
staging and the backgrounds were amateuerish at best, but that lead performer?
I could drown in her."
Yang brought her mouth close enough to kiss Blake – and then, didn't kiss her.
Like snatching a book out of her hands, right down to the irrational sense of
sexual frustration the size of Beacon. "I'd do anything for my fans." Her eyes
glittered like gemstones at the top of enchanted towers, and Blake's first
instinct was to check the room for traps. "All they have to do is ask."
Two could play at . . . well. Two had been playing at, for some time. They
didn't seem to be able to stop themselves. "I thought about how strong your
arms were. About how they might feel wrapped around my body, refusing to let
go." It was better than Blake had ever imagined. "I thought about the movements
of your legs, and wondered how far someone with that kind of fancy footwork
might go to get a leg up." Farther than she'd ever dreamed – but never quite
far enough to satisfy her. "I watched your smile, all teeth and eager tongue,
and, well, I'm sure you can guess." Their lips met, and Blake supposed they
could each pretend it was the other person who had fallen into the temptation
first. An emblem of the evening.
"I dunno." Yang's mind must constantly be doing flips to be able to stick the
landing so frequently after they kissed. Blake, for her part, couldn't think
with an instruction manual on how to. Then again, she supposed Yang did have a
tad more practice in talking than she did. "Sort of hard to narrow down the
thousands of possibilities."
"Fair." Blake had almost gotten used to the butterflies in her stomach – but
every time she was just getting them settled, mischievous Yang had to set them
free to flit around her body. So annoying, and by annoying Blake meant
exhilarating. "But I think most of all, what I thought about when I watched
you?" Hands hooked under thighs like bendable diamond, all shine and hardness
and desire to put on the ears and make stay there. "Glynda's right."
Yang's blink was nigh-audible. "Wait, wha -"
Talking about sparring. That was as far as Yang got before Blake swapped their
positions with all the subtlety and grace of an ursa minor attempting to pitch
a tent. Significantly more effectiveness, however.
"You need to learn how to not drop your guard." The words dripped like blood
from Blake's fingers – and on that note, a quick mental check, and no, her
claws had not pierced Yang's skin, that was very good.
"You know, I always thought I'd make a really good supervillain." Not only was
it a casual tone, it was said in a situation most people would never use a
casual tone in. A two-for-one deal, with a very attractive saleswoman to boot.
"Not like, the planning and the mwa ha ha and that kind of thing, but I think
I'd be pretty good at general mayhem. Burning things. Punching stuff."
"You do have the seductive wiles for it." Blake didn't quite understand the
phrase "washboard abs". Yang had the texture down, certainly, but running her
claws even as lightly as she was over the creases of Yang's skin made Blake
feel not cleaner, but absolutely filthy in all the best ways.
"Exactly." There was a hitch in Yang's breathing in the middle of the word, and
it felt sort of like accidentally opening the door without knocking while she
was changing. An intrusion, a temptation, a gap in Yang's defenses, and
something decidedly erotic."Kind of jumped the gun on that, though – here I am,
making the biggest mistake a supervillain can make." Yang grinned into the next
sentence like a lean against a locker. "Letting them talk."
"Allowing me to come to my senses was your second mistake." Blake's mouth
curled, a twirling lasso – not in form, but in function. Designed to hide the
process of capture behind a seemingly needless flourish. "Your first mistake
was being too exceptionally gorgeous for me to possibly resist." Quick as a
whip, Blake leaned down and snared Yang's lips with her own, and led her in all
the directions she wanted to go.
Some part of her mind that sounded far too much like Yang tried to say "Yee-
haw", and Blake kissed Yang a little harder before realizing that wasn't
actually going to do anything to shut the voice up. At least it felt nice.
Real nice.
Yang's breath was more than hitching as they separated – Blake would dare to
call it panting, if painting weren't a more appropriate, if less literal term.
Or maybe something more solid. A sculpture of heated breaths and tiny noises.
"In my defense," Yang murmured, her voice a mosh pit in all but volume, like
little shoves between the taller, stronger breaths, "It's a lot more fun when
they fight back."
"Oh, certainly." Blake could be artistic, too. Childish as it might have been,
she was growing quite fond of finger-painting. Guess who was the canvas. "To be
fair to you, I'm still having trouble deciding which one of us to root for,
myself."
Yang giggled like a million mirrored shards– but not separate, not sharp.
Colorful, together. Stained glass. "So. World conquest. You up for it? You can
tell me what to punch and I can punch it really hard. Just us against Remnant."
Then, suddenly, like teleportation, Yang was somewhere else. Her body was still
there, certainly, but her brain was obviously on a planet so distant it could
look at Remnant in a telescope and see what it was a Remnant of. "You, me, and
those beautiful crescent moon eyes of yours . . ."
Blake had sort of been debating whether they had better have gone on a few
dates first before jumping in like this, but that sentence closed the case once
and for all. This saved time. If they'd been in a restaurant, for example, when
Yang had inevitably said that sentence inthat particular tone, Blake would have
instantly called for the check and they'd have ended up right back here at any
rate. "All the better to match the twinkling night sky in your irises." Blake,
as she was wont to do, picked a lock, one of Yang's, and wound it round her
finger like it was at all necessary to keep Yang looking at her. "But as to
your offer, I'm afraid I must decline. I've already set my sights on
'conquering' something else." Blake didn't have fangs – some faunus did. She
wasn't those faunus. It that moment, however, her lips narrowed into a
slightly-open smirk, she envied their bicuspids. "You're not getting out of
this one quite that easily."
"Come on, Blake. We just talked about how neither of us could resist a
challenge." Yang's eyes, stars and all, roved over Blake's body in such a lazy
manner she had to have been putting effort into it. "Keep smiling like that and
you might find I've got some fight left in me."
"Come on, Yang." Blake sometimes fancied herself an overworked intern with a a
pair of legs in a pencil skirt in the cubicle across the hall. Right now, that
concept was the only way to explain why Blake's brain made a rush job of it;
imitating Yang's words and tone of voice was hardly the height of witticisms.
"I have you completely at my mercy. I can do anything I want, and there isn't a
thing you can do to stop me." Like a theater major attending a job interview,
Blake dropped the dramatics. "Seductive, slightly sadistic supervillainess
aside, though? What I really want to do is what you want me to do to you. So,
what kinds of 'tender mercies' were you hoping for?"
"Oh!" Yang's manner flipped, instantly, almost noisily, like a lightswitch.
Except instead of turning out the lights, flipping this switch turned a
different light on to replace the first. "Okay, uh, so . . . I want you
everywhere, I mean, how could I not, but start up high. My lips, my hair,
cheeks, nose, general face stuff. Neck and ears sound really nice, and you
already know about my shoulders. Oh, and here too." Yang placed two fingers
from each of her hands up to her collarbones and uh, huh, sure, she definitely
wasn't pressing her breasts together with her elbows on purpose, right. "I know
I don't exactly have Schnee-worthy shoulders, but . . ."
"I prefer a little meat on my collarbones." Would licking her lips be overdoing
it? Licking her lips would probably be overdoing it. Again, her own, or Yang's.
"Everything above or around the neckline for the immediate moment, then?"
Yang sent a sly look, the same way tsunamis send water. "Well, yeah, but, you
know, I'll understand if you just can't stop yourself from exploring a little."
"My hands do seem to have a mind of their own around you." No they didn't. In
fact, they didn't have anything extra at all. They were missing something. They
lacked their usual restraint, because Blake saw fit to withhold it from them.
"Meanwhile, I seem to get stuck with your mind when I'm around you."
Yang laughed again, harder this time – hard enough for Blake to feel it rock
her hips. Something something supervillains something something talking too
much, Blake would listen to sound advice sometime when she wasn't feeling sound
and vice: Yang's laugh at her very core. "But I love sharing my thoughts with
you!" Yang's definition of a scholarly mask apparently included blinking too
much and shaking her head vaguely at nothing. It was more effective than it
should have been. "That's why all the face stuff: it's all closer to my brain,
so it's all more receptive. It's just science."
Ah, science. Chemistry, then, or anatomy? No, there was something better to say
in this scenario. "Well, that certainly makes a lot of sense. Is that why your
smile is so brilliant, then? It reflects your thoughts?"
Yang blushed like she was considering calling for a check at a restaurant.
"Sheesh, Blake." She covered her cheeks with her hands, like putting a tarp
over an explosion for all its effectiveness. Yang had said the word sheesh, for
goodness' sake. "Sort of putting me on the spot here, you know?"
"Aw, don't get modest on me now." Blake leaned to Yang's ear and held her spot
there for the span of heartbeat – well, three heartbeats, the way her own was
pounding. "We still have so much we need to accomplish." A single nip along a
lobe, a breath so tiny it might not even be called a gasp, and she unbent.
Blake wasn't sure whether she was attempting to send Yang into a tizzy or stop
herself from losing rationality, but either goal, she felt, was a noble one.
"And you know how I like to take my time on these things."
"You're going to kill me, aren't you?" Yang said, and the smile on her face
made the statement an unlikely bedfellow. Somewhat likelier, considering the
relationship Blake and Yang now shared, but still.
"In a manner of speaking . . ." Blake let the sentence hang in the air like the
illusion that the bombs weren't actually falling. "No. Just torture."
"Any chance of you taking it easy on me?" The look Yang asked this question
under, like a shield made of molten rock, would have melted any potential
weapon. Including the heart. "I hear I have a really nice smile, if that'd help
persuade you . . ."
But Blake's heart had been melted beyond retrieval by Yang a long, long time
ago, and she'd always believed in working with what she had. Of course, what
she had right now was a beautiful, willing girl pinned beneath her hips, so
perhaps she wasn't in as dire straits as she'd first believed. "Hmm . . ."
Blake pretended to think. It was an odd concept to her, about the same as
"pretending to breathe", but she pulled it off for the sake of the look on her
partner's face. "Nah." Blake pulled a Yang, or rather, pushed a Yang, as the
case evidently was, pressing her knee directly against Yang's sensitivites with
just enough force not to hurt. Not physically, at least.
Yang's mouth opened in a silent gasp, and then stretched in a noisy smile.
"Good."
There was only one response Blake could make to that, and though it might have
involved her lips, it wasn't really anything like a sentence. Her lips fought
Yang's, a sparring match very unlike all their others – and yet very much like
all their other spars, as stimulating as it was.
They kissed like live performances of favorite music, like the perfect wave,
like trick or treating under a full moon, like the best movie of the year, like
parks and sunsets and every single thing that was once-in-a-lifetime, and yet,
could happen over and over again.
But even with a world's worth of wisdom and wit to consider, there was still
more to Yang than just a too-fast tongue. She was a neck like an ivory
clocktower, bitten and tongued to mark the hours. She was hair that could
daylight savings time tips on conservation, basked in and ran through with
fingers curious about the world. She was shoulders like bridges from here to
everything Blake had ever wanted, traversed in ways secret and unknowable. She
was cheeks and chin and forehead and pulse and earlobe and all this above the
collarbones alone. Yang had asked for Blake to consider all of her, and so she
did, setting explosive charges along the foundations of her entire being and
listening for the booming groans.
Her skin tastes almost as good as her lips.
Blake had never in her entire life felt as close to anyone as she did to Yang,
right then, hands and lips everywhere she'd – and she, as well- had wanted them
to be. It was a literally true statement, but it also happened to be the
perfect description for their hearts fighting each other while their mouths
worked as distractions. They were a jigsaw puzzle of infinite complexity and
only two pieces, and figuring out how they stuck together was rapidly becoming
the picture-perfect tableau at the center of everything, now that the corner
pieces were starting to fit.
Yang was fond of punching through brick walls instead of just using the door,
on occasion. That was how her sudden movement away and grab of Blake's
shoulders felt.
"Blake, I need you to do me a really huge favor right now!" Yang's voice was
like her stride: she was tall enough, speaking in the metaphorical sense, that
she had to take half-steps for other people to keep up. Now, however, she was
running very far, very fast, and had Blake's equally metaphorical grip in the
kind of lock it would take to stymie a master thief.
"O – okay. Anything." She really meant the anything too, which brought the
sudden possibility of syrup and sprinkles to a table that had thus far been
completely vanilla. Sugar highs were a thing, and so were sugar crashes, but
for Yang she'd give far more than just her dessert.
Yang seemed just as exhausted as if her sprint had been a physical one, if only
for a panting moment. "Okay . . . Blake . . . I'm not gonna lie . . . I've had
dreams about this. Really detailed dreams, like, movies you live in." She held
a hand up, and it turned out it wasn't sugar Blake needed to be swallowing, but
her next semi-sweet, semi-sarcastic retort. "So, like, if this just is another
dream?"
"Don't wake you up?" Blake hazarded the guess. In books, cliches might have
been trite and overdone, but in real life there was a certain power for a lover
of literature to be able to follow narrative conventions.
"Immediately wake me up." If Yang looked any more serious, she'd be Weiss, and
that wasn't who Blake wanted to be talking to at this precise moment.
"Immediately. That way I can immediately do this with you for real."
Blake held back most of her laughter – nothing she'd read ever indicated that
uncontrolled giggling was anything sexy. Not from her, at least. "Well, I
surmise there's only one way to check if you're asleep or not." Two fingers
formed into a clawish shape, the head of a snake perhaps, and slithered their
way between the bedsheets and Yang's hindquarters -
Yang actually "eep!"'d when she "bit."
"Seem pretty awake to me," Blake smiled a smile even she would define as "smug"
and looked at her fingers as if inspecting them for defects. One had to be
certain of these things, lest one suddenly snap into nonexistence as their
lovers woke up from their slumber. "Unless you want me to pinch you again?"
Hesitation looked remarkably good on Yang when it was just about the only thing
she was wearing. "Depends on exactly where you're pinching."
Blake bent low and close, like a blanket with ill intentions, spreading her
body once more over Yang's. "Tell me which nook and cranny," her voice dripped
like rose-scented perfume, and Blake wasn't quite sure how she knew what
mixture to use, "And I'll make sure to inspect it very thoroughly."
Yang made a little noise. Like breaking open a bell and releasing all the
sounds it could ever make at once, at the same time, as a singular, soft
tinkling. " . . . wow." The word was as dense as a neutron star and fifty times
brighter, and the feeling behind it was as palpable as a solar flare.
Blake bent and weighed down onto, into, Yang's lips, like a cork on a glass
bottle, pressing, trying to hold that feeling in for as long as she possibly
could. Always, always, always, fireflies needed to be allowed to fly away, or
they'd just die entirely, but if Blake could just keep the little bit of light
in the darkness alive by her heart a moment more, maybe it would ignite her
glow, too.
It isn't too much to ask, is it?With all the effort and all the ineffectuality
of pretending to fly as a small child, Blake tried to make her mouth ask the
questions without sound.Just one eternity longer?
Not at all.Faith, trust, and hair that glowed like Dust, Yang responded, in any
case.
Wrestling with the idea of inevitability wasn't so bad with Yang as a tag-team
partner.
It was the air, in the end, that made them separate. Not the desperate need for
it, like the need for sleep, that Blake was getting better and better at
fighting off like she was trying to read one of her novels, but a scent like
catnip and wildflowers had a child, one excitedly rushing to meet Blake with
warm hugs and laughter and the idea that maybe she deserved it. It was either
separate or lose herself entirely, and the night was still too young to be
intoxicated, let alone intoxicating.
So Blake unfurled slowly, like rewinding time, to examine the choices she'd
made. And who had chosen her.
Fabric once skintight had shifted, and rumpled. Breathing was coming in
staggered breaths. Hair, immaculate in its conception, delivery, and raising,
now left messy and careless like freedom and boxcars. A smile as wide as the
universe. Eyes with a glinting that gold would have no choice but to court, if
amber didn't reach them first.
Yang.
Yang gave Blake a feeling. Yang gave Blake a lot of feelings, but one in
particular was sitting in front of her like a tray full of cupcakes, and that
was the feeling that Yang was like a tray full of cupcakes. It would be
gluttonous of her to take a second dessert so quickly, certainly – and yet her
eyes kept tracing the edge of the silver platter like a circling shark on a
sugar high, anxious, predatory, flirting with death from the other end of the
potential threesome.
All Blake had to do was peel off the wrapper. All she had to do was lick the
icing. A touch here, a breath there, and the rest of the evening would belong
to her and her alone – Yang would just be along for the ride.
It was a half-baked idea, but the heat rolling off Yang in waves was rapidly
competing the job.
"So, not that I really mind, but are you done undressing me with your eyes,
yet?" The question was as sweet and innocent as arsenic and lace, and Yang
looked for all the world like the guiltiest party imaginable. Blake tended to
imagine she was very, very guilty.
"Oh. Sorry about that." Blake wasn't sorry at all, and they both knew it. If
she were any less sorry, she and Yang wouldn't be having this conversation –
they'd be doing something entirely different with their mouths. "I guess it
fits well enough that the only thing that could possibly distract me from you
is . . . you." If nothing else, it's keeping in with tonight's themes.
"Oh, you don't have to worry about being distracted." Yang's tone was carefully
careless, like a kimono worn too wide with one shoulder slipping off, but
missing the heat beneath her words would be like missing the flush on shown
skin. "It's just that I figured if we were going to be undressing me with
anything, it would be your fingers."
Blake tried for a voice like warm massage oils felt, and made a soft keening
noise to express her "disappointment". Anything but, really. Nothing to be
disappointed in for miles around. "You're not going to let me use my teeth?"
"Only if you promise no biting." There was a rasp at the edge of Yang's voice
that Blake had thought her reading materials had been making up. Dust. "And by
no biting, I mean lots of biting."
"I do, on occasion, enjoy tasting of my darker instincts. Amongst other
things." Blake dragged her eyes over Yang's form like, well, like the tips of
her fingers. Or like all her stray thoughts. "It's been a while since I've had
a chance to sink my fangs into unwitting prey." As in, never, but that wasn't
very sexy talk.
Yang giggled, a whine of excitement on an out-of-control jackhammer, and
suddenly brightened. Less a lightbulb and more a searchlight landing upon a
thief, as if the golden hair wouldn't give her silhouette away. "Holy heck,
this is actually happening."
"If you need more pinching . . ." Blake bared her teeth, in preparation for her
teeth to bare, bending down to grab something between her lips. She'd figure
out exactly what when she got there.
"One for every year." There were photo-manipulation programs that couldn't give
people as radiant an expression as the one on Yang's face. "So let's get to
unwrapping your present!"
"And my future, I hope." Blake's lips touched the fabric of Yang's top for a
portion of a second so small it might be called a first. It wasn't a kiss,
anymore than a brief shimmy of hips while standing in the area coincidentally
called the 'dance floor' was a dance, but it was the vow of popping and locking
sometime very soon.
"Ooh, I like that one!" If Yang's expression lit up like a lantern in a storm
at Blake's words, what she turned into when Blake began sucking the top portion
of her breast could only be described as burning down the docks. "Oh. I like
that one too."
It wasn't a particularly complicated process, but then again, neither was
shooting a gun, really. Unless you were doing it right. The only thing
separating Blake from the average sniper – besides, statistically speaking, the
extra pair of ears – was technique. Battle for others may have been a series of
readies, singular aims, and fires like metal meteors, but for a Huntress it was
a graceful, glowing series of steps planned out in advance only about half the
time. There were a million variables to keep track of in a real fight, if it
was a good day. Finger placement was just as important as the movement of the
arms, as was the placement of the next enemy in line. The weight of a weapon
was not only a burden, but a tool – as were a weapon's firing mechanisms, ammo
type, and even basic shape and form. Everything was a way to shoot another
bullet, or something else to be shot at. Still, what all the heat and metal
boiled down to was, even at its most complicated, there was solace to take in
that the next step was usually still either aim or fire.
Blake applying her mouth to Yang's torso was just another matter of memorizing
potential triggers.
She liked the noises Yang made a lot better than gunshots, though.
And as with maintenance on any weapon, the process of stripping only truly
began once Blake had memorized the initial schematics – and the way Yang whined
when teeth finally bit down onto her top, Blake was beginning to understand
Ruby's near fetishism for the objects. Bringing that top down, however –
bringing it up would mean literally fighting tooth and nail against Yang's
hair, and Blake didn't think she was going to be the person to break the mane
event's ten-year-Long winning streak – bringing it down got off to, if not a
rocky start, an immediate speed bump when Yang's hands shot up like she was
still wearing her gauntlets to cover her . . . gauntlets.
Blake wasn't sure quite how to feel, but she shook the metaphorical tree,
waiting to see what fruits fell down. "This may be the first time I've ever
seen you being modest."
"Not shy, really. More like making sure you don't sneak any peeks before the
job's done." It wasn't so much that Yang and mischief went hand in hand as much
as Yang kept giving mischief piggyback rides. Only someone who was running and
very, very confident in their chances at winning Red Rover let their grin grow
that wide. "Sort of like making sure Ruby's done her homework before letting
her have any cookies."
"Tease." Blake's teeth gripped the yellow band before her once more – if they
happened to scrape a little against Yang's skin in the process, who could say
it wasn't an accident? - and continued with her work. If it could be called
"work."
Part of being a competent and capable student of Beacon's lessons was turning
disadvantages and setbacks into opportunities, and the top catching on Yang's
hips or the jut of her knee or any number of miscellaneous body parts was an
opportunity nothing short of literally golden. Her hands stayed out of it – the
one time they might actually be helpful, they apparently decided they just
wanted to watch, instead – meaning that in order to undo those snags, Blake had
to be very judicious (and very merciless) with regards to how she used her
tongue, her lips, her teeth, and even her nose on one occasion. Any tracker
worth their salt and perhaps some of their pepper could have followed the
resulting trail of markings, red splotches, and wetness, and Yang wasn't half a
bad tracker herself – the roll of her back into Blake's mouth on those
occasions followed that path over and over again.
Blake had never experienced one before, true, but she felt like this was the
kind of night that left people strutting in the morning.
Eventually – it would have been done sooner, but Blake created a couple false
snags, just to draw attention off her trail – the top was bottomed, removed
from Yang's feet with Blake's teeth and tossed over her shoulder. Not Blake's
shoulder. Yang's. It seemed more entertaining that way. "Well, then." The words
popped up from within Blake like carefree days, dish soap, and makeshift bubble
wands from forks and a bit of hope. "Cookies?"
It was appropriate that Yang's laugh sounded like popping bubbles. "Ta-da!"
Yang spread her arms wide, and Blake couldn't help following the movement with
her eyes. Not of the arms. Of other things. Who in their right mind would focus
on arms in this situation? "What do you think?"
She knew she was staring, in much the same way as one knows they're falling
from orbit. Mostly by the heat, but partially from the sense of some event much
greater than one's self approaching faster than anyone could ever believe. What
could possibly compare to a view to end the world with?
But then, Blake had asked herself that before. One time, when she was so little
as to not understand what was wrong with Remnant, Blake went to a museum –
woefully lacking in Faunus art, which was what was wrong with Remnant, but that
was another story. There was a painting there, of a hyperdelic sunset, that
could only be described as otherworldly. It was a photorealistic approximation
of a photo that could never be taken, the final hours of a day that did not
exist. Blake was transfixed by it, and even at that young age, knew she was
looking at something very special. The sign next to it said "Do Not Touch", but
she had to. Just a little. Just a fingertip. Just to check and see if, maybe,
that painting really was a window to someplace different from Remnant.
She compared that moment in her memory, colored by nostalgia and the optimism
of youth, to the masterpiece lying before her, and decided that she'd never
really known art until just this moment.
And Yang didn't even have her pants off yet.
That was probably the moment when it really hit her. Through some combination
of skill, flirtation, and probably mostly sheer luck, Blake had the most
beautiful girl in all of Remnant all to herself. Absolutely breathtaking.
That all was what passed through Blake's mind. What actually came out of her
mouth was: "Holy hell, Yang."
"You can touch, promise." Yang sat up like the sunrise, speaking casually, as
if she wasn't saying things that applied a backspin to Blake's entire world.
Only she held that kind of power. "Would you believe they're actually not done
growing yet? They've slowed down a lot, but every once in a while I realize
I've gained, like, an eighth of an inch and, welp, that's that for those
shirts. Sort of why I gave up on bras entirely."
"Holy hell, Yang." Blake cupped Yang's – wow – Yang's breasts with the cautious
need of someone faced with a Do Not Touch sign, though judging by the sudden
intake of breath she was actually more encouraged than discouraged to continue
the action.
"Mmm . . .careful." Yang's lazy smile was warm enough to discourage a dragon
from trying to brave the flames. "They're sort of sensitive."
"Holy hell, Yang." Finding more to say than that would have been an exercise in
misplaced priorities.
Pointlessness, too, because there was no way Blake could find the right words
to describe what she was feeling. The emotions were easy – she was excited,
curious, maybe even whimsical – but what Blake was literally feeling, at that
moment, seemed to defy description. Soft and sweet as seven-layer cake, sure.
Full and warm, slightly heavy, like carrying a tropical storm, absolutely. Firm
to the touch but with some give, like a trampoline, it was all true.
But the problem was that none of it was enough.
They were so much more than that, as vibrant as a panorama of Blake's entire
life, large, and they felt like they anchored the world to Blake somehow, that
with the turn of a wrist or the flick of a finger, all that was would respond
to her whims. How could something so perfect exist in a world as black-hearted
as this, let alone its twin? Why would -
"Uh, Blake?" It was a tone to bend steel with. Not because it was particularly
strong or heated or anything like that, but simply because it would decide to
scrunch up on its own to save itself the embarrassment. "Not that I really mind
or anything, but you do remember there are other parts of me besides my boobs,
right?"
"Er . . ." Blake removed her hands gingerly, as if to match the red that she'd
been caught sticking her hands in. And, she was certain, her heating face. "So
there are." Other people were caught with their hands in cookie jars. Blake
Belladonna was caught just eating a cookie. She and indulgence got on like an
iceberg and the desert, in that not only were they anathema to each other, but
existed thousands of miles apart. "I am so sorry."
"Well, that makes one of us, I guess." Yang smirked, like the world's prettiest
Venus Flytrap, and Blake was certain she had been caught. "Hey, come on, it's
not your fault. After all, those are clearly the breast parts of me."
Anyone would classify a phrase like that as a march by an opposing army, even
if it was one with smiles on their faces. "I can't argue with that." Blake
didn't disagree with "anyone." However, she did take offense to the
implications. Why should an invading force necessarily lead to war? Why weren't
tea parties and simple conversation ever an option? "But . . . I'm sure you'll
agree that these cheese-grater abdominals of yours are absolutely the grate-est
part of you." And overt sexuality in the form of palms pushed up stomachs like
leading questions. That was a good deterrent to escalating warfare, too, Blake
figured.
"Now you're speaking my language." There was a thrum to Yang's voice, like
plucking a guitar string the size of the universe, with much more in the way of
melody. "Body language."
Blake kissed her, as fast she could be allowed - merely "lingering" instead of
"languid" - and tried to slip a few more sentences of Yang's language in the
meantime. "We'll just call it revenge for the ear affixiation thing."
"Halos!" Yang lit a candle and pretended that could be called indignation.
"She says, unironically, with her golden hair framing her face like the opening
heavens." Blake's own face was perpetually emerging from darkness. So much for
symbolism, she supposed. "Still, you're probably right. Which means, in all
technicality, I still owe you one." Eyelashes fluttered, like an invitation
back into the shadows for some time away from the world. "Anything in
particular you'd like to request of me?"
"Well . . ." Yang nursed the word like a favored drink, drawing her tongue over
its rim. "I know it sounds heartless of me to ask you for the shirt off your
back, but . . ."
"Only if you take it off." The words snapped up from Blake's soul so quickly
she was surprised that her aura didn't flare on their way up. "Then I might
even be tempted to throw in the jacket."
There were three steps involved in the ensuing process. There was a smile,
seeing snow for the first time. There was a wink, an envoy of something more
fundamentally true than what meager portions of reality Blake could perceive.
There was a feeling on Blake's skin, wings grown, ribbons rearranged from
chains to hold her down to instruments of freedom. And then Blake was there,
slightly truer and much, much warmer than before, even though part of how she'd
presented herself had been literally peeled away.
Blake hadn't realized how sweaty they'd both gotten. Hard to focus on the
little details like that.
"Huh. Sort of expecting basic black, but you really rock the bandage look."
Yang shot Blake a glance designed to incapacitate, by hook, crook, or sultry
look. "Then again, you'd look hot in anything, so why not bring the mummy back
into fashion?"
Blake leaned back into the scoff hiding the laughter, like a favorite resting
place in the shadiest corner of the room. "If it helps, my panties are about as
dark and featureless as the uncaring void."
"Shhhh. Spoilers!" Cheer and good humor seemed to be Yang's usual reaction to
the uncaring void, which had the marvelous side effect of causing it to care.
"No, but seriously, you think you could teach me how to do that? Usually I wear
stuff that's already sort of tight, but sometimes a girl wants some extra
support, you know?"
They were actually having this conversation? Blake and Yang were actually
having this conversation, right here, right now. It wouldn't have been any
better at any other time, but still. Best to roll with the punches, Blake
supposed. "I'd love to. As long as that's not the only thing I'm teaching you
tonight. . . ?"
Yang walked her fingers up Blake's arm, showing a remarkable ability to taunt
her with only two fingers. Idly, Blake wondered what else she could do with
only two fingers. "Don't tell me these gorgeous guns of yours weren't the only
thing you had hidden up your sleeve?"
"Take off my stockings and you'll find out where I keep mybesttricks at." The
words sizzled on Blake's tongue like a sparkler, like celebrations in the
downtime between her breathing, and maybe that was how Yang tasted? Closer.
It was certainly how Yang looked, all fire and brimstone, hold the pain and
suffering, and maybe add in an extra dash of temptation, as she bent down much
lower than strictly necessary and . . .
Mm.
Taking off stockings was supposed to be a slow process, something to busy
yourself with while the roast cooked, or whatever suburban people who didn't
have to strike at the shadows' shadows with their very soul did in their free
time. The novels Blake had read waxed and waned on the process, spending more
ink and paper on the removal of fabric than had been required of the whole of
fashion magazines in the past several years – entire pages, like scoring notes,
dedicated to the sweet silent hum that bounced around in the heroine's heady
head as nails ran along the sheen over thighs. Not to mention that, put
bluntly, stockings were fragile, as were bank accounts, and paying Beacon back
for a pair of ripped stockings would be embarrassing to a degree that would be
very easy to name the moment that Yang wasn't whipping off Blake's own like
they were a winter jacket and it was July 23rd.
Trust the girl who threw herself through space with shotgun blasts to throw
someone over a cliff, catch them at the bottom, and kiss them in the adrenaline
rush. And for it all to work.
Ah, but worse. Yang was saving all the delicacy, care, and romance-novel-style
seductive measures for the trip back up. Yang's mouth had never harmed a soul,
but it could move in ways that made kindness seem sinful. Blake had never taken
Yang for a leg-girl, but at this point, she would not be surprised. Or
saddened. Or anything, really, except aroused to whatever degree paying for
ripped stockings would be embarrassing to. Her hands were cradling (cat's
cradling, Blake would never say out loud) Blake's leg, one at her calf and one
at her upper thigh, and lips like uncovering a secret of the universe moving
upwards traced the line of lightning flowing between them, the hint of teeth
serving as the occasional spark.
It was actually quite appropriate. The lower the girl who could set herself on
fire strayed – literally or otherwise - the closer Blake came to boiling over.
Everything she is and does is beautiful.
And then, just one sideways glance and a tempted tongue away from something as
obscene as Blake had ever hoped for happening, Yang stopped the process
entirely. "Hmm." She straightened, like the scribbling at the edge of the page
resolving itself into a dream journal. "Sleeves have gorgeous guns . . .
stockings have glamorous gams . . ." Yang winked at her, to the sound of a
whistling kettle. Somewhere. Blake was certain of it. "Still not seeing any
tricks, kitten."
People sometimes spoke of their hearts racing. Blake was moderately certain
hers was winning. She could hear it in her human ears, now. "Well, maybe if you
hadn't been distracting me . . ."
"Aw, I finally got you to blush," Yang's fingers danced a discrete waltz down
Blake's cheek, and cupped her chin. "Black and white and red all over."
"You can read me like a newspaper, huh?" Blake let her mouth work as a scab for
her brain, which was out on an extended smoke break. Not a smoking break. A
smoke break. It was on fire.
"Nah, not a newspaper." The way Yang looked up at her made Blake feel both
larger and smaller than she ever had before. "More like . . . everything's been
black and white until now, and all of a sudden here you are. Vibrant. Colorful.
Gorgeous."
That made up Blake's mind for her – she needed to capture Yang's lips
immediately, or else the world's most perfect young woman would say something
else that sweet and her heart would explode. Couldn't have that.
They broke apart, like crumbling cookies, leaving chocolate chips and fond
memories as debris behind them. "Anyone ever told you that you kiss like my
favorite song?" The words had barely escaped Yang before her face put out a
reward for information on their capture. "Okay, wait, no, that makes absolutely
no sense for like, three different reasons."
"You've had ample opportunity to take the words right out of my mouth, it
seems." And the seams right out of Blake's words, come to that. Proper
sentences and clever comebacks never seemed to have proper protocol when it
came to Yang Xiao Long – always falling apart. "Give them and the heart you
stole back, and I won't have to inform the authorities." As evidenced.
As she did in the face of any other sort of authority, Yang only laughed.
"Alright, come on. Sit up straight. I know we've been listening to the same
music group for a really long time, but you need to turn around so we can put a
stop to it."
After a pause long enough to be called a paaaaaaauuuuuse, Blake did so. Blake's
body did so. Her brain stayed right where it was. "I have no idea what you're
talking about."
"You know." Yang's hand touched the small of Blake's back, and only in that
moment did she realize how jealous some of her body parts had been getting.
"Gotta get rid of the band-ages."
It was a good thing Blake's brain hadn't turned around, because that pun
knocked it for the proverbial loop. ". . . I am legitimately impressed."
"Oh, you think that's impressive?" Then there was the press of bodies together,
like Yang was tattooing her heartbeat onto Blake's skin. "I'm still just
getting you warmed up."
"If you want me to be honest?" Blake leaned back into Yang like, well, like she
was a beanbag chair. Not everything could be elegant, but some things could be
very nice. "It's hard to believe I could get any warmer."
"Nah, it's easy. You just gotta use your imagination." Soft as dandelion fluff
getting its revenge, Yang's lips landed once more on Blake's neck, and her
hands wrapped around Blake's wrappings with explosions of matter and wind
equally as soft-spoken. "And I'll make all your dreams come true."
Yang's hands, like will-o-wisps playing in the snow, trailed up and down the
sides of Blake's body. Yang's hands, so practiced with throttles and shotgun
shells and knuckles in the sides of faces, slipped fingers as cautious and
loving and defense-bypassing as a mother's lecture beneath Blake's bindings.
Yang's hands, as warm and bright as the only lantern left on the face of the
planet, began the slow process of unraveling that might just leave Blake
unraveled too.
Yang's hands – her whole body, but for various very good reasons, her hands
were what Blake was focusing on – was as smooth as glass, but warm, like the
beachfront sands glass was birthed from. They were free from cuts, callouses,
and blemishes of any sort, but Blake wasn't such a fool as to believe Yang
hadn't worked her body very, very hard in any case. Yang was a pearl, not a
pebble.
And then there was what her mouth was doing. Which, really, was a sentence that
could have been appended onto any situation. But still.
"You're undoing my bandages from now on." For as much as her voice sounded like
a canary hanging upside down and wondering why the world looks different today,
Blake was swimming in the sea of certainty.
"Anything for you." With Yang's lips so close to Blake's ear, each word was a
kiss – except, of course, more literally than usual. "Everything for you."
Yang's palm – as if red Dust came up to the surface and cheerfully said "hello"
before exploding all over everything - spread out over Blake's left breast, and
even through the bandages screw the bandages I have claws and certainly Yang's
strong enough to rip through what's stopping her nothing's stopping her just
burn them off she can do whatever she wants and -
Sometimes Blake's thoughts ran away with her. Deep breaths. Deep as the deep
blue sea. It'd take that much water to put out this fire. Honestly, it was less
"running away with" and more "been kidnapped by".
"Looks like I'm not the only one who's sort of sensitive." Yang's voice,
breathy as it was, seemed to be trying for "ghosting", but even in this sugar-
high state Blake could perceive the excited child beneath the bedsheet.
It was at that moment that Blake realized that her brain liked to distract her
with interesting rational thoughts so it could tell her body to do interesting
irrational things. It was the only logical explanation as to why she suddenly
found herself turned sharply around, one hand at Yang's own breast, the other
in her hair, and Yang moaning into her mouth, quite enthusiastically returning
the favor.
Everything else that was good in Blake's life had run out some time ago; luck
and love and even that last milkshake, all gone, all used up. But she and Yang
just kept happening.
And so did Yang's hands. Over and over again. They were events unto themselves,
and the night was as full of them as what they were: whispered secrets,
lovemaking, hidden glances, stars and starlight and eclipses. They were Blake
and Yang's relationship, newly formed, given form, unhurried but insistent,
heated and flirtatious, rambling on and on about this tangent or that, but
always coming back to the point where, with some work, things would change.
Then, with a sudden feeling of leaves falling from a belladonna, they did, the
bandages loose enough to be cast aside like so much cotton fabric. The kiss
ended by mutual agreement and no further discussion, as Yang pulled back,
stumping a lifetime bookworm with an expression that was utterly unreadable.
But focused, for certain. So focused, in fact, that Blake had to bat down her
ancestral urge to bat at laser pointers.
It was the only urge she had to bat down, though. She'd expected a need to
cover up – but under a stare that might be mildly indicated as "discerning"
Blake felt no shame. That was the magic of what Yang did and said – how she
made people believe they were worth just as much as she said they were.
Still, Blake felt like she was expected to say something to the occasion. It
wasn't every day she dropped her guard, after all. A heartfelt speech seemed
like too much, more banter seemed too flippant . . .
. . . eh, why not. "Ta-da."
Yang reached once more, but it seemed as though the potential anonymity offered
by the bandage was the only thing allowing her to do so fearlessly. Even so,
she touched, squeezed a little, and Blake breathed out gently as though it were
simple hydraulics. "Blake." Yang may have talked on and on about Blake being
the more artistic of them, but that single word, in that tone of voice, put
every masterpiece in every museum to shame. Yang did more with that one word to
make Blake feel singularly beautiful than a year's worth of painted portraits.
But it was the look on her face that really sold at auction. The look on her
face was like a nervous, unaccustomed, breathtaking entrance to a humongous
party, games and dancing and exhilaration and a sense that maybe, just maybe,
the night possibly wouldn't come to an end after all. If only the school dance
could have been like that – and maybe, upon reflection, it could have been,
with the right person. "Wow." Oh, and, also, music loud enough that it was
difficult to concentrate on anything anyone was saying. That too. "So, uh . . .
my day just got about a million times better. Wow."
"Yours too?" Apparently, Blake had spent enough time around Yang to develop a
system to respond to quips even when most of her brain was otherwise
distracted. It was the only explanation as to how she could still be coherent
when something felt this good. "What a coincidence."
"Blake, I don't think you understand." Reverence, held tense, like an organ's
highest note. Yang gave her body the appreciation Blake would have saved for a
balcony overlooking the world. "You are so amazing that I have to hearken upon
the old and deep slang to even begin to describe it. Seriously. kitten, you're
the bomb."
Blake could die happy, now. But not without a parting shot. "I'm not so sure. I
have to say, if we're trying to determine which one of us is the real
bombshell, there's no comparison to be made." It was good, Blake decided, that
she had to pause to compose herself at that moment. Besides Yang's explorations
giving her a feeling like she was made out of clay and slowly being formed into
a museum piece, the moment without words really added something to the
delivery. "It'd be like comparing apples to . . . watermelons."
Without another word, as though 'watermelons' was a post-hypnotic suggestion,
Yang's head dropped into Blake's cleavage, and she began laughing hysterically.
Blake tried not to enjoy the slightly vibrant sensation. She failed. "I like
apples!"
The quipping subroutine in Blake's brain encountered a fatal error and had to
shut down. Desperately, like taking an exam she'd forgotten to study for, Blake
began falling towards, more than looking for, any particular response. "And . .
. apples like you." No. No, no, no, no, no. Well, yes, but no.
And then Yang laughed some more, and, alright, maybe yes after all. "Hope they
like me enough to forgive me if I sneak a few nibbles?"
Blake breathed in, watching Yang's eyes watch the rise of her chest. Oh, she
was doomed. Yes, both of them. "I don't believe they'd mind that at all."
Minding was possibly the furthest thing from Blake's mind. Most everything was
the furthest thing from Blake's mind. In fact, the next few moments might have
been considered meditation – breathing exercises and an attempt to be
completely still for an elongated period of time and, mostly, a clearing of the
head.
"Radical." Something in Yang's smile suggested a mousetrap, and as teeth closed
down sudden, sharp, and deadly on Blake's left breast, she suddenly felt very
much unlike her usual catty self.
Then Yang bit the other breast, and all Blake's thoughts and feelings came
rushing back in with such speed that they produced a sound. "Ah!"
Yang released her, drawing back just enough to let Blake feel hot breath
against her chest – definitely a dragon faunus – followed by the warm salve
that was her tongue – maybe the mythical salamander, instead. Blake's neck was
next, that same tongue a series of torches in a slow, winding walk over the
slope of her pulse, like a funeral procession in honor of her modesty and
innocence.
Blake had never been happier to read an obituary in her entire life.
It was a cycle, really – something like a phoenix. Death by fire, heat, and
certainty, and rebirth as something bigger, better, and more efficiently
plumed, as Yang's lips once more made contact with her own. Blake's world was
expanded by inches every time Yang kissed her, nudged her, smiled at her, the
horizon stretching just a little further away, unnoticeable, every time they
touched. Like growing up. Unaware, until one day Blake looked around to find
herself twenty feet tall – just tall enough to kiss Yang back.
"You know, you really need to wear more revealing stuff." Yang's smirk had been
implying as such for the past couple hours, now, but it was nice that the rest
of her mouth was quite literally hot on its trail. "It's not nearly as much fun
when no one's gonna see where I bit you."
"No one except you." Blake was already thoroughly buzzed at this point, she was
certain – but what could one more drink hurt? "But if you really believe it's
such a problem, maybe you could help me with the 'less clothing' thing?"
Alright, perhaps that was one drink too many – even moving to sit on her knees
and off of Yang's lap – she could almost remember getting into it in the first
place - Blake was suddenly much less steady on her metaphorical feet.
"I like the way you think." Yang was very much like the strawberry sunrises she
loved so much. Deceptively pretty, all primary colors and cheerful attitude,
and then she went down burning and hit harder than a freight train carrying
three thousand bottles of wine. Then everything was somewhat fuzzy, very warm,
a bit musical, and, hey, where did Blake's skirt go? "Hmm. I dunno, kitten.
From where I'm sitting, it sure looks like that lace you've got on cares an
awful lot."
"Even the uncaring void carries some constellations." And to think, earlier
that day Blake had cursed herself for forgetting to do the laundry. She'd have
to apologize to her past self, later. "I wouldn't mind turning around, if you
wanted a better view."
"Mmm. Best view in the world, probably." Yang's hands crept, slowly, around the
back of Blake's legs like a fire trying to hide beneath wooden logs. "But nah.
I think we can safely that I've done plenty enough in the way of sightseeing as
it is. Besides, I've always been more of a hands-on kind of girl." There was a
kiss at Blake's navel at the end of it all. Of course. Couldn't forget the tiny
umbrella.
"In case everything that's happened this evening hasn't made it as obvious as a
thigh between the legs, I'm not exactly a stranger to getting my hands dirty,
myself." But Blake didn't feel dirty, even as a thumb brushed under Yang's
breast, even with the gasp. Not really. No one could feel dirty for playing in
the fresh-fallen snow.
Even if they did end up leaving tracks everywhere.
"Woah." Yang's palms slid over Blake's flanks, and it was more comforting than
anything, really. Comfortable. Like silken lingerie. Something intimate that
hugged to her form, but also made her feel like she was sexy, desirable. "You
really do have the perfect posterior. I mean, I knew it was great to look at,
but . . ." Yang's eyebrows waggled, and Blake was struck by the unfortunate
suspicion that she was beginning to find the sight erotic. "Butt."
Trying to roll her eyes at that moment was like when Blake tried to rub her
belly and pat her head at the same time. Except that someone else was doing the
rubbing, and that definitely wasn't her belly. Still, she managed the
impossible task. "I'm glad my tail meets with your approval." Yang pulled, just
a little, like a coquettish question with an attached offer of some steam, and
Blake could only gasp as an involuntary response. "Your very, very frequent and
very thorough approval, I've noticed."
"Oh my gosh, it's actually heart-shaped." Yang had used that exact same tone of
voice the first time she tried pumpkin pie. For some reason, Blake felt
inordinately proud. "Your butt loves me, Blake!"
Blake let the laughter proceed unhindered, and then prepared to salvage
something romantic out of something that ridiculous. She felt like she'd need
the practice for Heartswarming Day, and possibly every other day of the year.
"Absolutely. Every bit and butt of me loves you from the tips of my kitty ears
to the taps of my feline feet." Blake smiled down at Yang in such a way as to
emphasize the love her mouth felt above the rest of her body. As if there
wasn't enough of that sort of thing being planned on in the future. "Even
though you're the biggest goofball I've ever met."
That smirk Yang wore was either a friend to keep close or else an enemy to keep
closer, but either way, Blake didn't think it was anywhere near close enough at
that moment. "I think you mean because I'm the biggest goofball you've ever
met?"
"You know what?" Blake kissed Yang's nose, casual quick, like she'd been doing
it for weeks now. In her head, in a manner of speaking, in metaphorical terms,
she supposed she had been. All the better to distract her lovely partner from
the pair of hands slowly slithering up her torso. "You're absolutely right." .
. . ah, why not, at this point? Yang wasn't the only one who could be a bit of
a goofball when they wanted to be. "The fact that you have the loveliest pair
of breasts I've ever seen in my entire life certainly helps, though."
"So I'm not the only one who's been staring, huh?" Look who was talking. Yang
could do more with one lingering look than most people could do with their
hands and an entire evening free. But Blake, unfortunately, had to settle for
fingers, wrists, enthusiasm, and sensitive areas. Like, of course, Yang's
boobs. "Ooh!" What Yang's voice could do was, quite possibly, beyond the realm
of human achievement.
"I'll admit 'staring' is probably too mild a term, but at least I was covert
about it. You were practically copping a feel with your eyes." And speaking of
copping a feel, those noises Yang was making were absolutely obscene. "This
might sound a tad ridiculous, but these feel almost like marshmallows. Just a
bit less springy." Blake's mouth came within centimeters of the tip of Yang's
breast almost before she'd considered the idea, and yes, much less springy –
much more summery, much like heatstroke and sweat. "I wonder if they taste like
marshmallows, too?"
Yang looked surprised. People who first won the lottery and then were told
they'd been elected as Most Beautiful Person of the Year looked surprised. The
two were not entirely dissimilar. Either way, Yang brought herself under as
much control as she ever did with admittedly impressive speed. "Well, this is
it, then. This is how I die. Tell everyone I love that this was exactly the way
I wanted to gooooooooooooooo-ah!"
Blake released her prisoner with a smack that she hoped sounded different to
Yang, because "wet noodles hitting the wall" was not what she'd been going for.
"Yang." She'd just have to make up for it with her voice, all honey and cream
and other messy, sweet things. "How lewd."
Yang didn't reply. That alone spoke volumes.
It was as easy to get lost in Yang's body as it was easy to get lost in one's
hometown after getting a bout of amnesia. Everything Blake did, each nip at
shoulderblades and every bit of white flesh painted pink with her tongue and
every somewhat clumsy embrace or slip of fingers, was something else in her
mind saying This seems familiar; haven't we been here before? And Blake would
always respond Well, yes, but the scenery is so lovely, and I can't quite
remember anything clearly with all these distractions.
No, no. No. Yang wasn't the distraction. Yang was what Blake had always been
distracted from. Blake wasn't forgetting anything; she was remembering,
remembering excitement and what first impressions were like and even how to
breathe, because every wrong step and evil deed had stolen a bit of life from
her lungs, hollowed her out, and every brush of lips and long drag of tongue
was bringing her back home, back to life, back to clearheadedness, a world
without oxygen deprivation. Yang was a breath of fresh air.
Yang was every breath of fresh air, actually. And quickly. She was a whirlwind.
She's so much more than I deserve.
From above Blake, Yang's voice rang like a choir of angels. "So, I've gotta
say, this is a pretty awesome view." Falling angels, most likely. Succubi. Sex.
Blake released flush skin from between her lips, and considered that with the
new evidence provided by Yang's groan at the sensation, parting was simply
sweet, hold the sorrow. "It makes sense you'd say that." Another kiss to the
top of Yang's breast, and Blake regretted the decision not to have made
lipstick part of her daily regimen and routine. She'd have to remedy that the
next time they got an empty room all to themselves. "It's probably common to
all performers to find most beautiful the sight of an audience enraptured. On
the edge of their seats. Breathing baited, and heavy with anticipation." A
quick nip of the teeth at the tip, as carefully calculated and slightly rough
as Blake's tone of voice and word choice alike. "Waiting to hear . . .
singing."
"Huh. I know normally you're supposed to tell someone to break a leg for good
luck." Yang's hand cupped Blake's chin like she was completing the circuit her
brain had started, judging by the sparks. What would happen next, Blake could
see coming from a million miles away, and made no effort to dodge. "Don't
suppose we could substitute with smooching?"
"And here I'd heard black cats were supposed to be bad luck." Or, possibly,
they simply absorbed the luck from other people and released it at their
leisure. Blake certainly felt like the luckiest girl in the world as Yang moved
in closer, heedless of her words, and might have even said so, but . . .
But it was time to perform. They kissed, like the point in musical theory where
jazz met big band, and proceeded to play their little hearts out. Standing
ovation. Rave reviews. Rumors of naughty occurrences back in the dressing
rooms.
"So, weird question." Words rolled like wheels from Yang's mouth, carrying an
idea between them. Not that it was too heavy to move on its own, of course –
Yang just seemed to want to show off her wheel-making prowess. "Are your lips
made of Dust? Because I swear I explode every time you kiss me."
Blake made Yang burst one last tine – the space between her collarbone and the
rise of she shoulder would be the detonator – and then looked straight into
equally explosive eyes. "Heeding my words about testing pickup lines?"
"Depends." Yang smirked, like the world was on fire and she was holding a can
of gasoline. "Did it work?"
"Maybe." Of course. "But remember: Dust needs something to set it off before it
really gets dangerous." Blake made a show of moving her tongue from her mouth
to Yang's pulse, the kind of show that popped up in the seediest part of town
and had stars with names like "Snowflake" and "Daisy Dream", which could only
mean that the way she moved her tongue up Yang's pulse was like a routine on a
pole. "Are you gonna burn for me, Yang?"
Yang's gaze upon her own made Blake think of radical scientific ideas – surely
she'd just discovered the focal point, the center of the universe, the one
still and sure thing upon which all the rest of the chaos orbited into order.
And very hot, too. "I think I can manage that."
"Good to hear. Now let's get you out of these wet clothes." Blake's voice was
bright and hopeful as a birthday candle, able to survey the entire restaurant
from its view from atop its sugary seven-layer world.
"Uh, beg pardon?" Yang was visibly wrestling with that idea – apparently, by
only using her facial muscles. Her left eyebrow was performing quite the
grapple.
"They're practically dripping." Blake's eyes, maybe, dripping down Yang's body
in the form of a glance so significant it was oil. Like she was attempting to
peel a grape with her pupils. "Well, some of them, at least."
Yang's features brightened, which tended to happen when oils met birthday
candles. Or when Yang did anything, really. Such was her Semblance. "Oh, well,
yeah." Yang settled back on the bed like, well, like that was what beds were
made for. "True."
Blake snagged one more kiss between her giggles, as though swiping one last
hors d'oeuvre while leaving a party she'd never mention going to in polite
company, and started drawing pictures with her mouth on Yang's torso like she
was trying to convince her to come home with her.
Well, not drawing pictures, precisely, or even finger-painting. More like
sculpting, really. There were some amazing sculptures out there, precious
things of marble, strength and absolute form crafted from sheer persuasion,
more than anything. The impossible could happen – something so much stronger
and more lasting than a human could ever be, convinced to change with only the
subtlest, smallest strikes, and never the slightest trace of a raised voice or
any hesitation on the part of either party. The greatest artists, it was said,
didn't truly sculpt. The only saw the sculpture, trapped within the block of
marble sitting before them, and worked to set its truest self free.
Undressing Yang – or even getting ready to do so - felt a bit like carving
marble.
Except better, because marble didn't tend to gasp or groan when artists
lingered on certain anatomical areas for overlong. Plus, Blake looked over her
handiwork, well, mouthwork, marble wasn't nearly this chiseled. Ba-dum, tish.
"It hasn't happened yet, but I think I have a plan for what I'll do if anyone
asks me what 'art' is in the future." Blake eased the button on Yang's shorts
undone, a movement that, coincidentally, required her to press her wrist firmly
against the area just below it and apply a goodly amount of pressure. "I'm just
going to point at you and let the evidence speak for itself."
"Sure you shouldn't show off your poetry instead?" Yang kissed her way up
Blake's stomach in between words, her hands circling around to flank her flank,
and suddenly Blake couldn't quite remember why retreat and surrender were
normally considered bad things. "Or your cutie-patootie booty?"
The entirety of Blake's life had led up to that moment. In all technicality.
But even speaking in technical terms, it was something of an anticlimax. "I
think you should take it as a symbol of how much I adore you that we're still
going to do stuff after you say something like that."
"Aw, you're really gonna judge me on what my mouth says when the rest of me . .
." Yang's chuckle sounded like the crink of wrapping paper, and heavens only
knew what gift could be waiting inside. "Speaks for itself?"
Blake didn't have to bother pretending she was annoyed, that time. Not because
she was genuinely annoyed, or anything like that, just because sometimes
letting Yang know she was adorable beforehand made the payback all the sweeter.
"Just for that, I'm doing this last part slowly."
And she did do so slowly, as slowly as the wait between setting the pot and
hearing it boil, and Blake was proud of that fact, proud she didn't look until
she was done. Yang's little twitch when Blake's teeth bit into fabric made that
task surprisingly difficult, after all. Like "not having more than one cookie"
kind of difficult. Especially when they were as warm and heavenly-smelling as,
as . . .
As.
The shorts were down. And off. And completely cast from Blake's mind, in much
the same way as electrons are cast from molecules. The speed of lightning, and
utterly changing the context and meaning of what they have left behind. Because
Yang was . . . as . . .
. . . as.
Yang was . . . as . . . a lovely flower, dripping with morning dew, a fragrant
yadda yadda yadda with a trimmed, but not completely shaven so-and-so, smelled
super nice and probably tasted good too – it was honestly quite lovely, but
what was really important was what it represented. And seeing Yang's womanhood,
out on display like a gorgeous floral arrangement, meant that . . .
"You go commando." Blake didn't phrase it as a question. She wasn't that good
of an actor. "Hmm. Hello."
"Did you just say 'hello' to my vagina?" Yang was grinning her trademark
crooked grin – not that Blake could actually see it. But she knew. Though,
again, with relativity in play, it might just be the rest of the world that was
off-kilter.
"I just figured I should get to know a person before sticking my tongue in her
mouth." On the one hand, that was probably the wrong thing to say. On the
other, there probably wasn't a right thing to say, so it wasn't as if Blake had
a chance of salvaging things in the first place.
Yang's body shook, like the moments before the dangerous science experiment
went wrong, unleashing a horrifying monstrosity upon an unsuspecting populace.
A noise like an inexperienced growl, too happy to really do its job properly,
was the first crack in the glass tank, and it hit Blake's brain that A) Yang
was, for the first time since she'd met her, attempting to restrain her
laughter, and B) the way Yang's thighs vibrated against her ears felt far, far
better than it had any right to. "Blake." More cracks drifted down – Yang was
beginning to crack up. "Blakey. I love you. So, so very much."
Rolling with it. That was half of what Blake did around Yang, anyhow. "Oh, you
think you love me now?" Leaning in close enough to let Yang feel the air in her
whispers against sensitive skin – absolutely. Wrapping her arms around Yang's
hips to keep her in place – check. Not humming appreciatively at the corded
muscle she found there – less successful, but two out of three wasn't bad. "You
just wait until I get done with you."
"So much." There was so much naked need in those two words that if Yang hadn't
already been just as naked, she soon would have been. Whether by her own hands
or Blake's own teeth . . . it really depended on who got there first.
But it was Blake's brain that got there first, instead, tapping her on the
shoulder and bringing attention to something just before she opened up her
mouth to respond. It always had been, of course – Yang's kisses were loving
ambushes long before she'd ever actually kissed Blake, daydreams waiting around
the corner of every thought Blake had, like a jungle creature obsessed with
Blake's scent, waiting for lowered guards or dropped inhibitions. The slightest
deviation from a day's journey meant getting lost in territory both familiar
and strange.
Which was fine – fun – the problem was that Blake kept forgetting to send
postcards back home, so to speak.
Blake looked up to Yang. Then, with the realization that postcards weren't good
enough after such a long absence, straightened up to look her in the eye,
presenting herself as a care package. "You'll have to forgive me for the bad
timing of this interruption . . . but I've just realized something."
For a brief moment, stretched out painfully, like the space between the doctor
drawing out the needle and plunging it in, Yang only looked at her in
confusion. And then the needle slid in, quite painlessly, all things
considered, and the tilt of Yang's head alone was like the ultimate in
vaccination technology. "We can still stop, if you need to. I don't mind.
Really."
"I don't want to stop. I just need to . . . pause for a moment. To say
something." They'd been talking too much already this evening, part of Blake's
brain thought, but no, the rest outnumbered it, and despite where it had gotten
her so far, Blake was still dedicated to the idea of democracy. Best to go
ahead and say it. "It might just be because I haven't had much practice, yet,
but I have been remiss in my affections. Well, not the affections themselves,
obviously. What I mean is . . ." Blake set about collecting herself. There were
a lot less pieces than she thought there were going to be. Maybe there always
had been. "You've done nothing all evening but tell me that you love me, and I
can't remember a single time I've come out and said the same to you instead of
dancing around it with witticisms and a casual disregard for any type of actual
good conversation."
"I mean . . ." In terms of dancing around things, Yang was a grinder. Sexual,
sure, but the point was that in most cases she preferred to dance through them
and enjoy the feeling of friction. "For one thing, I love the way you talk, so
don't try and pretend it's actually some kind of hidden caveat in your complete
package."
"Thank you." For about a million different things Blake hoped she could make
perfectly clear without saying them – there was so many better things to do
then spend time making lists. "You get what I'm saying, though, right?"
"Well, I've got a lot to say about that, so, uh, just lemme get it out real
quick, alrighty? Bear with me." The way Yang said it, Blake half-expected the
sands of the hourglass to simply stop flowing; she expected the universe itself
to stop and take notice of her sitting up a little straighter. Anything for the
girl, Blake was certain, the whole thing was made for. "I know it was kind of a
big part of how we confessed to each other that I wasn't able to tell you felt
the same way about me that I felt about you, but . . . I can tell now. Now that
you've said it, it's so obvious to me. Every time you tease me with your words
or with your tongue, every time you look me in the eye, every time you stroke
my arms, every time you kiss me . . ." Her eyes flittered down to Blake's lips,
once, twice like moths to the brightest light in the world, and yes,
absolutely, Yang could stop talking for a moment and just kiss her if she
wanted, that was perfectly fine, that felt perfectly good. "You're living that
love for me now, and I can see it so clearly. That means way, way more to me
than you just speaking up about it." If a ship could stay steady despite the
ocean's waves, they'd have to call it the Xiao Long Smile. "You don't have to
say it for me to know that it's true."
Blake traced the kiss they'd just shared – not with her fingers, or her tongue,
but with her mind. It was a vivid enough path for even imagination to follow. A
short story, one might say. "Alright. Even so." Blake rubbed her nose against
Yang's own, because, oh, because it seemed like the right thing to do at the
time. "I love you, too, Yang. Now, where were we?"
"Hmm. Can't quite remember. Kind of got distracted by this really pretty girl
giving me butterfly kisses." Lots of people's smiles made other people's hearts
do flips. But Yang's smile made Blake's stick the landing. Nothing else she
knew of could claim that honor. "But if I had to guess, I think maybe you were
just about to ravish me with your tongue?"
"Maybe at first. But now, just a second." Blake's eyes dragged over the
entirety of Yang's form, slow and easy, like kitten's claws, like silken
nightgowns, like the realization that what she had just said was a pun, how
about that. "Sorry to say, I seem to be getting rather distracted myself."
"Ah-ha. You like what you see, huh?" Like any superhero in disguise, Yang
projected casual confidence and a larger-than-life grin, and like any superhero
in disguise, it was absolutely transparent to anyone who knew her. For some
folks, it was the glasses, for others it was the hair, and for Yang it was the
nervous tongue over her bottom lip and the slight clench of the fingers.
She was actually sort of cute when she was nervous.
Blake would have probably taken notice of all those things anyway, but the fact
that her pupils couldn't stop darting, drinking, everywhere they could, like
every inch of Yang was a different bar, winery, or illegal rave, made missing
any specific mix near-impossible. It also made thinking, focusing, and
breathing near impossible, as well, but by this point that almost went without
saying. "Hmm. Well, I mean, yes. Absolutely." She reigned in her rebellious
eyes by focusing on Yang's own, which was a lot like finding a ship's way in a
storm by pointing it at the nearest iceberg, except warmer. "I'm simply having
some difficulty coming up with how I'll make note of tonight's proceedings in
my journal."
"Well . . ." Yang relaxed visibly. Everything she did, she did visibly. Blake,
of all people, would know, even if she doubted Yang did. "Instead of saying I
look steamy or sultry or something, you could simply say I stole your speech
away."
"We'll go with that. All of it, actually. I like the rhythm of it." Blake
always had a fondness for jazz. Improvisation and structure, all in the same
rhythm. If anything was like Yang . . . Yang was, but jazz was a very close
second, in Blake's musical opinion. "Besides, everything that was coming to my
mind involved the word smorgasbord."
Without any warning except retrospect, Yang was suddenly kissing her again,
hand at hip and hand at spine, and there were a lot of things on Blake's mind,
but 'smorgasbord' was not one of them. She'd never understood the thrill some
people were seeking until tonight, when Yang shared so much of herself with
her, and now she could only call herself a skydiver discarding their parachute.
The landing strategy was falling into Yang, rather than onto her. It had been
working so far.
The hand on her hip moved like a magic potion, sparkling and shimmering and
mostly just defying gravity as it slid up to the space between her breast and
her collar, and Blake reeled. She didn't reel backwards, even if the kiss was
the equivalent of a drive-by with a tank and a paint balloon; she reeled in,
all too aware of the dangers of using herself as bait and hoping desperately
that everything that could go wrong would. And with a mouth full of fangs and
an earlobe hanging right there, like a dangling bell, how could anyone be
expected not to ring it, Blake would make sure that every little thing turned
out just the wrong way.
Tender flesh rolled between teeth, all that talk about sinking fangs into
unwitting prey coming back and settling in like they planned to stay a while.
Yang gasped, something strangled – no, choked – crowded out, it probably was,
by the other noises attempting to push out from her throat like they'd been
stuck in class all day and Blake's humming was the bell before freedom. Fingers
tangled in Blake's hair with so much confidence they could only be working to
hide their sudden clumsy footfalls. Not that Blake felt she could mind, really.
If there was the slightest breeze of justice hiding in the winds of chance,
then failing immortality, Blake would get to die to a noise like Yang's
gasping, a musical style so new and unique it made what the kids were dancing
to today seem as passe as trenchcoats and longbottoms.
Musical styles. That was it. Blake had been dancing – not dancing around, but
dancing to – the answer all this time.
Yang tastes like jazz sounds.
"What are you thinking about?" The words came almost unbidden, as if the
universe itself were watching the proceedings, attracted to a mind whose
workings it could not figure out. But Blake knew the truth – knew that she was
projecting her own feelings on the whole of existence. And yet, the words came
almost unbidden.
"Thinking I might wanna get myself a journal." Yang spoke with all the serious
clang of a cell door making a very good effort against the sponge cake in its
way.
"Mmm. You'll probably need to hide it away." Blake fluttered her lashes like
peacock feathers in the breeze, all brazen pride and attempt to attract. Yang
was too smart for reverse psychology, but she knew how to play along. At least,
that was what Blake was banking on. "If you're going to write about what I
think you're going to write about, I might want to sneak a glance."
"Only one?" If Yang asked that question any more cheekily, she'd grow a second
smile.
"I expect it won't take me too long to memorize the contents. Especially if you
write with your usual tact." Blake raised her eyes, and one finger, as if to
check the wind and spy the future on the horizon. "The first entry, on the
first page. 'Dear Diary . . . Jackpot.'"
Yang laughed, and Blake had to check and see if her arms had actually wrapped
around her – they hadn't. The only girl she knew whose laughter felt like warm
hugs in strong arms, safe and sound, and Blake had her all to herself. "Dear
Diary . . . I've got somewicked claw marks up and down my back from earlier
this evening. The healing factor's trying to get rid of 'em, but I'm trying to
make sure they stick around for as looooong as I can. Why would I do that?
Well, I'm glad you asked me that question!"
Blake laughed as well, and desperately wished for it to sound as huggy as
Yang's own had. The girl deserved laughter, and hugs, and – why not? - more
kissing.
She was a stronger wave, brighter, faster, but strikingly more solid, a wave
and a particle both. She was a photonic resonance and Blake was infected by her
light, the drawing of her arms around her neck and up to scratch her ears, the
bumps and brushes of her nose, the accelerated breathing Blake could feel in
Yang's chest and her own, the space between the staccato rhythms of her
heartbeat . . .
Yang had personal space issues. Not that she didn't like people touching her or
being near her; in fact, it was just the opposite. She had issues with the
concept of personal space. A blood feud, one might call it.
Maybe that was the reason that Yang chose that time to dart down and clamp her
teeth on Blake's nipple nearly hard enough to draw blood.
Blake welcomed the pain like a dissonant note on a piano, not something to be
tightened into proper tune but something to incorporate into the melody.
Something unique, to give conflict to the narrative, to make the harmonies all
the sweeter. There was pleasure to be found beneath the pain, if only one
stopped to listen.
Which was all just a really fancy way of saying, "I really like it when you
bite me."
"Good." Yang bit again, and Blake forgot to breathe – and remembered again,
with a gasp. "Really good." It was understandable why; talking seemed so far
beyond Yang that her teeth had to substitute where her tongue lacked, and, oh,
suction was getting involved now.
"Mmm. Right there, and I promise you I'll melt in your hands." As if Blake
wasn't going to anyway. Something about frozen hearts and thawing, sure, but
when it came down to it, Yang was basically very enthusiastic magma poured into
a hole shaped like a supermodel. Melting, one way or the other, was inevitable.
Yang worked – played, really, by the sound of the giggles – her way up Blake's
neck and to her lips. "Aw, but the fun's just getting started. Don't tell me
you're already gearing up to get going?"
"You have a point." Blake had a talent for understatement – which was, in and
of itself, an understatement. Point was, Yang had several points, and each one
of them tended to make Blake's back arch into them like a bridge desperate for
somebody to cross it. "After all, we have so much we still have to do, don't
we?" Blake stretched, presenting herself with all the feigned uncertainty and
miraculous nature of a card trick, and watched Yang's eyes applaud. "I don't
suppose you have any ideas?"
There was a smile like an unsheathed sword at the tender forefront of Yang's
lips, and teeth like the sword's bite. The other points. "Eh, I've got a
couple. In fact, I've put a lot of thought into it, and I've decided that you
should walk around naked all the time."
"No reason for it." Blake countered the thrust – though in a battle of mouths,
teeth and tongue, steamy looks in the eye were probably cheating. "People would
still be staring at you."
Yang rewarded her for her quick wit with soft lips on softer skin – Blake
decided in that moment that directing her to her throat was a very good
decision, and reinforced that decision with a palm placed on the back of her
head. "I can almost taste your heartbeat on my tongue." Apparently, Yang liked
her heartbeats fast.
"I can't say much for flattery." Blake breathed the words, rather than speaking
them. If Yang was going to take her breath away, she might as well get more
than empty air for her efforts. "But I can promise you that if you keep saying
things like that, you'll get everywhere."
"Yeah, but there's really only one place I'm interested in, right now . . ."
Emphasizing that word in particular was like sprinkling diamond dust on the
edge of a sword. Flashy, deadly, and entirely overkill.
In the coming days, Blake would, on occasion, without much in the way of actual
malice (she could only ever afford the generic brand on a student's budget,
save special occasions), ask herself over and over: how. Her ears were designed
to hear things coming. They were sensitive to sound. They swiveled when they
heard approaches. How did Yang's hand creep up on them?
But then again, it wasn't as if Blake could really complain about a feeling
like a three-hour-long hot shower compressed into about five minutes of
fingernails and gentle exploration. Especially not when Yang insisted on
compressing the feeling of washing her back into a scant few inches of skin on
the pulse of her neck. Leave it to her partner to surprise her in the bath.
Her and Yang in the shower. That was good. That was good.
But those were thoughts for the future. In the there and then, Yang's hand was
at Blake's breast, locking all her thoughts up in tiny boxes and telling her
she could have them back later. Just as soon as Yang was done finding out what
noises she could make, using Blake as an instrument. They were shredding noises
– not like an electric guitar, but in that every groan and gasp of air came out
sharply separated from each other, ragged at the edges, cut off abruptly.
"Yang . . ." Except that one. It had come through relatively unscathed. Things
involving Yang somehow always did.
Yang's mouth moved a lazy line from Blake's neck to her breast, like a
waterfall made of warm honey. Or maybe that was her hair – but it was probably
her mouth, judging by the buzzing, black and yellow noise that seemed to be
welling up from somewhere within Blake's chest. All the while, Yang's hand upon
her other breast worked a series of incredibly death-defying stunts in tandem
with the hand upon her head. A pulling sensation at the tip – a kneading of the
outside – a press, another pull – her index finger drawing a little heart on
the top of it.
Wrapping her arms around Yang felt a little bit like finishing a humongous
buffet. It was an odd analogy, but all the symptoms were there – the sense of
accomplishment, the delicious feeling at the back of the mind, the feeling of
fullness and satisfaction. Basically, the content with one's self and one's
life.
And then Yang's hand moved from her breast to the hem of her panties, and the
mouth on her other engulfed its nipple, and it felt for all the world like
Blake had just finished a humongous buffet just before it was announced there
was going to be an equally large buffet comprised only of desserts.
Yang's fingertips slipped in and out of the fabric's edge in time with Blake's
breaths, and just as shallowly. Every dip downwards was met with Blake bucking
upwards, and every time Yang's fingers danced just out of reach like fireflies
in the dark. It didn't wander, so much as pace, so much as wear a groove in the
floor that was Blake's patience, skimming over the flesh of her inner thigh,
roving over her hips, staying just out of reach of anything like the end of a
journey. A testament to Yang's wanderlust.
And all the while,her other hand kept scratching her behind the ears.
"This is entirely, comprehensively, audaciously, inexcusably unfair." Every
adjective was slightly higher in pitch and urgency, and the "unfair"
practically crashed through the musical scales like a bull in a novelty singing
china shop.
Yang looked up at her with eyes like dreams you didn't tell your parents about.
"Since when did either of us do anything like 'play fair'?"
Ah, that was the game. Flipping the tables it was, then.
The tables and their bodies. Or maybe they flipped more like pillows; an
attempt to get someplace cooler than where things currently were. Either way,
Blake paused only long enough after turning them over to strip herself of her
black lace – Yang didn't evenlook - before plunging her tongue back into Yang's
mouth like a dagger to the heart, vengeance implied. A hand molded itself
around – into, it was so soft - one of Yang's lower cheeks and rolled, almost
weightless, more the cause of the weight, like gravity, and she kissed, and
kissed, and kissed, and refused to relent until she heard Yang moan, too. "You
need to behave."
"Oh, I can be a good girl." Yang's eyes roved over Blake's body in exactly the
way good girls never let their eyes wander. "But I think we can both agree I'm
even better when I'm bad."
She wanted dirty talk? Blake could do dirty talk. Blake could do a lot of
things if Yang wanted them.
"I believe you. Naughty girl. You've thought about doing this with me a lot,
haven't you?" Blake smiled around the words, rather than through them – she
wanted nothing to obstruct what might only be referred to as her ultimate
reckoning. Admittedly, the careless hands running up and down her body like
liquid fire made that reckoning slightly more difficult than she'd reckoned,
but surely a thousand idle thoughts could prepare her for a single moment of
actual action.
"Like you ever leave my head." Yang's whole body was flushed, and Blake could
starve herself for a week and be unable to fully feast upon the sight. Like
Dust, volatile and shining with potentiality, and all Blake wanted was every
last mote of her. "Bending over to pick up books and fluttering your lashes
and, and, you're so gorgeous - that yukata of yours -"
"Shh," Blake pressed a single finger to Yang's mouth, pausing in her thoughts
only a moment to marvel at the way Yang went perfectly still with only the
lightest of touches. Baseball uniforms and yukata. Almost as interesting a
concept as the way Yang's voice wavered, breathy, hitting new and unprecedented
octaves beneath Blake's fingers. Like playing an instrument, really, and anyone
with any musical talent knew that the truest test of a symphony was where it
placed its silences. "There's no need to rush. We've got all night to conduct
ourselves in, and if you've been thinking of me that much . . ." She leaned
over Yang, drawing in close enough to delight in the dilation of her pupils. "I
want equal time."
Yang said nothing, only shaped her lips into a smirk against Blake's finger
before letting her tongue dart out, quick as a rattlesnake and nearly the
opposite of venomous. It was a long, slow drag from the tip of her finger to
the bottom of her knuckle, and lips wrapped around the digit for the trip back
up in perfect time with a groan Blake was positive was solely for her own
benefit. It certainly worked.
Blake attempted to murmur out a "Revenge is sweet," but she was too accurate.
Just as she'd silenced Yang with that same maneuver what seemed so long ago,
now, she too found all her words being swallowed up like clever fingers and
promises of the future. "Absolutely wicked." Well, almost all her words.
Yang groaned once more as she let Blake's finger loose, smack, and this time
Blake felt the weight of it sink into her skull. There was meaning there, now.
And heat. Blake liked heat. "Only for you," Yang whispered, and an entire song
from a siren could not compare.
But Blake pulled back her finger sharpish at any rate, intent on seeing this
through. "Yang Xiao Long," she affected her affront with purposeful
transparency, "You've been getting off on me, haven't you?"
"What can I say?" Yang's hips moved beneath Blake, and oh, oh, oh, oh. "You
really get my motor running."
"Filthy." Yang's gaze had never once wavered from Blake's own, but Blake made
certain, with her thumb and index finger, Yang's chin, and a further press of
one body against the other, that wouldn't be changing any time soon. Her other
hand occupied itself with, oh, who could guess? "How often have you been
playing with yourself and thinking about me?"
Yang whimpered as Blake's finger traced the underside of her lip, and her other
hand kept itself occupied. "Wouldn't you like to know?"
Blake's lips replaced her finger, her hand sprawling out over Yang's cheek, and
the world erupted once more with lava, with heat, with pressure and ash, with
Yang pressing desperately into her like she might offer salvation from the rain
of hellfire, instead of only exacerbation. "Please." Blake removed herself only
a moment, to give voice to her desires, if acted up a bit. "Please tell me."
Yang moaned against the returning kiss, and Blake almost lost herself to the
song and dance. A waltz, she thought. "Cheater," she felt, more than heard,
Yang say, taking the opportunity to wrap her arms around Blake's neck before
roughly shoving her over with her hips and landing astride her. Who, here, was
the cheater?
Not that Blake could bring herself to care, wrapping her legs around Yang hips
and doing her best to encourage her to move. "Tell me," Blake whispered, just a
breath away from Yang's lips, both in space and in time.
Yang likely intended to draw it out, but as she ground down on Blake the groan
was torn from her either way. "Every night, lately." Yang muttered between the
kisses she trailed from Blake's neck to her ear, a line more gripping than
anything Blake had ever read in her novels, nothing to say of the way she
shifted one hand up to play at her ears once again. "At least once. Sometimes
more. Dust, Blake . . ."
"Even if I was there?" Blake knew what the right answer to that question was,
and desperately hoped in the spaces where her mind was not occupied with
exploding stars that Yang didn't give her it.
"Especially then." And Blake's arousal spiked,launching a high-pitched mewling
from the back of her throat like the last breath of air before the world fell
in on itself. Yang responded with a sharp intake of breath and a sharper tooth
along her human ear. "I just . . . I thought of you right there, and I couldn't
. . ."
Blake grasped the back of Yang's head and let their faces meet. "If you wanted
my help, all you had to do was ask," she hoped the tone of her voice would
convey her utmost sincerity, or at least her increasingly heady desire to take
Yang and make her scream her name. "Filthy girl."
And then everything fell into Yang's lips and her own and someone, Blake wasn't
sure who, groaning like a cog in a machine ever-so-slightly out of its proper
place and desperately trying to fit back in. The whole of existence was coming
apart at the seams, and Yang was her only sense of stability, but drawing in as
close as she wanted to only made the sensations worse, better, like, something
just beyond her reach, like . . .
There was a rush of air across Blake's cheek like an alarm set at the wrong
time of morning, and Blake was mercilessly torn from the greatest dream she had
ever had in her entire life. Yang isn't kissing me anymore, Blake realized, in
the same tone of thought she might use to think, Tuna fish have gone extinct.
"Yang?" Blake wasn't certain which inflection she was supposed to use – amused,
worried, irritated, confused – so she tried for a little bit of everything,
voice trembling in the same unorthodox way that Yang was at that moment. "Are
you alright?"
It was less that Yang broke out into laughter and more that the laughter broke
out of Yang, the way the trembling exploded in sudden evolution, and Blake was
confronted with the fact that the aforementioned rush of wind was actually Yang
snorting. "I just thought of something," Yang managed to converse between her
convulsions.
Every old battlefield instinct that Blake formed rank and put up their shields,
because the last time Yang had said something like that, she and Blake had been
banned for life from Sometimes 17. "And that is?" Then again, Blake had gone
along with it. She always did.
Yang smothered her laughter the way Nora smothered her pancakes: with syrupy
sweetness. "So, uh, you know earlier? When I said you were stealing my best
lines and called you a plagiarist?"
"After I called you a plagiarist first, if you'll allow me to point out the
irony." Blake was surprised to find herself thinking clearly again. She wasn't
sure she liked it. Give her the pink fuzz around the edges of her thoughts and
the pink warmth around the edges of Yang's lips any day.
The last couple of Yang's snickers fell off like leaves in the autumn, slow,
soft, and oddly, a little crunchy. "I just realized . . . I should have called
you a copycat!"
There were a lot of things Blake could have done in that situation. Gotten
angry, questioned her life choices, stopped the proceedings entirely, or some
combination of the above. But really, there was only one winning move here, and
Blake considered herself an expert player. "Wow, Yang. You've gotta be a lot
quicker on the uptake than that. Otherwise, you'll never cat up to me."
That wasn't quite how Blake had imagined Yang collapsing into a sprawled,
trembling heap atop her, but somehow these peals of laughter were just as
satisfying as anything else she might have felt like dreaming up. Well, almost.
"But I could never compare to you, Blake." Yang regained her composure in the
same way Professor Ozpin decided to make things perfectly clear. She didn't. "I
mean, come on, you're practically the cat's meow!"
"There is nothing in this world or any other that could stop you from making
puns." Blake pressed gently on Yang's shoulder, like adjusting a house of
cards, and wasn't surprised to see her tip over in a flash of color and a
shocked gasp. A quick afterimage up on top of her, because actually moving to
straddle would have been too slow . . . heh. More copycats. That had never
occurred to her, somehow. A quick afterimage to sit on Yang's hips and Blake
somehow still felt just as warm as when she had one hundred and eighty pounds
of hotheaded hot girl riding astride her. "Is there?"
When Yang got angry, it was like a lot of things – usually, volatile things
with smoke and insurance claims – but it was never like one hand squeezing a
thigh and the other tracing meaningless patterns up the spine. Between that and
the lack of bloodred whirlpool rage in her eyes, Blake was fairly certain she
was safe from this puffed up display Yang was putting on. "If you're really
going to make me choose between you and puns . . ." Features softened like
melting chocolate, and there was the real Yang, the girl who met troubled girls
in empty classrooms and taught them things close to her heart. "I'll choose
you. But it'd make me really sad."
"I never said I dislike them." Blake placed a kiss, like a cannonball into a
pool of hot cocoa, on Yang's marshmallow lips. "If anything, I kiss-like them."
"You kiss like a pun?" Yang flipped words like coins, and left the results to
chance. It was just her way of doing things. The only thing that puzzled Blake
was how she always seemed to make sure both parties won in the end. "Short,
sweet, clever, snappy . . ."
"Inclined to make you giggle uncontrollably?" There were things like smoky
incense in Blake's mind, and she tried to breathe them out, tried to trace the
curve of Yang's cheek with a finger like a flare rod, to show her lips where
they should go next. One way or another, Blake was going to start a fire
tonight. "I could construct some anecdotes for you instead, if you like?"
"Yeah, baby. Gimme some of that wordplay." Yang's thumb made little circles in
places Blake barely remembered existing, only occasionally, sometimes when she
took a bath, and now she was positive she would never forget they existed ever
again. The only thing more memorable was the slow drag of Yang's tongue across
her upper row of teeth. "You and your clever little tongue."
Blake could craft a seventeen book series and top it off with an apocalyptic
trilogy if Yang would just make those noises for her again. In fact, why not
tell her as such? "I could write epic-length chronicles regarding your lips
alone." Close enough. Possibly better.
"You aren't just paying me lip service, are you?" There was a lulling hum
beneath Yang's words, an ocean of depth in her eyes, and Blake couldn't help
but remember the old tales she'd heard about sirens. But there was no way they
could be as beautiful as the mythical creature: the girl who cared.
There were several types of service Blake wanted to perform for Yang, "lip"
being high on the list – and between that thought and Yang's punsmithery, Blake
recalled what she had desperately been trying to get at before she got a tiny
bit distracted. Not that she blamed herself in this instance. "No, but we are
kind of getting off track here. Again." A rush of claws on – not in – the skin,
down Yang's arms and up her belly, and Blake made sure to talk as slowly as
possible. "We were talking about . . . let's see, what were we talking about
again?" She scanned Yang's form as if the answers were written there – not just
the answers to her idle musings, but the answers to life in general. "Ah, of
course. We were talking about how you just couldn't help getting yourself off
when you thought about me."
The confidence and surety drained from Yang's face, enough so that she had to
swallow thickly to get it all down. "Well. You know. Hard to control myself,
sometimes."
"Tell me again." Blake spoke as though possessed, all the clever turns of
phrase and innocent questions subsumed by some force that only cared about tone
and how best to wield it. Only the succubus in her head might let her know how
gently to press at Yang's hips, to watch for the slight lack of focus in her
eyes. And the way it was performing, it had been waiting for this moment just
as long as Blake had. "When did you do so? When I was there?"
"Sometimes, yeah." Yang's fists clenched like she was holding herself back, but
her arms raised above her head like she was setting herself free. Or, possibly,
just showing off.
"Ever in class?" Blake rolled her hips, revenge, against Yang even as she asked
the question, and one was a distraction for the other, though she wasn't sure
which was which. "Mmm. Absolutely gorgeous."
Yang's body betrayed her just the barest inch of arch, and she groaned, like
violins and violence, with the slow movement, shifting against Blake like an
engine's throttle. There was probably a metaphor to describe how good she
looked doing it, but Blake was too busy panting for breath to remember what,
exactly, it was. "No, but . . . close. Once."
"Tell me." Grinding. That was the cog-in-the-machine word Blake had been
looking for. "Tell me how I make you feel."
"Fuck," Yang breathed, and maybe that was the right word, instead. "Blake, you
feel . . . you make me feel like . . . " Her bottom lip receded into the vacuum
left by her swallowed scream, her eyelids crumpled with the effort of making
sure she didn't collapse entirely – Blake had felt the symptoms before, on her
own face, in her own private moments with only the phantom of Yang to accompany
her. "It's too much, it's not enough, it's – Blake. More."
If Yang was a city, a frontier town, wild and lawless and free, that single
word must have been her red light district. There was more raw sexuality and
burning need in the assembly of those four letters than Blake's entire library,
real and imagined. But even so, the way Blake attached her lips to Yang's neck
was less an answer to that need and more an expression of her own – maybe the
way she slowly started working her way downwards was for Yang's sake. "You
liked it, didn't you?" But maybe not. Yang's body was a feast before the
ffeast, an entire line of appetizers to lick and nibble on to prepare for the
main course, and Blake proceeded down the line with a lifelong hunger.
"I did, yeah." Her tongue darted across her lips like Blake wanted her own to.
"But let me tell you, it does not compare to the real thing."
"Why, thank you, Yang. Dirty, dirty girl." Blake let her hair symbolize her
inhibitions, throwing it over her shoulder as if it didn't even matter to her
at all. She leaned back, watching Yang watch her, and began believing she could
get used to the idea. "You've done a lot of playing with yourself, but you know
what?"
"What?" Yang spoke with the desperate edge of a girl standing on it – Blake
supposed it was her job to make sure she fell.
Far be it from Blake to disappoint her. Blake kissed the outer rim of the belly
button she managed to find between the armor plates of Yang's abs – like a lien
caught in the cracks in the sidewalk – and straightened. Some part of her, the
part of her that marinated itself in Yang and tasted like her, felt as though
the whole of the night had been leading up to this precise moment – 400 degrees
Fahrenheit. "I believe it's high time for your pussy to play with you."
There was a silence, not unlike a failed poetry reading. Or, maybe, like a
funeral. Certainly not the texture of silence you could fall asleep to, not the
only kind of silence Yang usually engaged in. This was thick.
"Yang?" Blake ventured, uncertain fingers drawing one leg open ever-so-
slightly, and Blake absolutely did not glance downwards at that juncture.
She couldn't have, because Yang distracted her -as Yang often did - by breaking
out into the warmest, loudest, most relieving laughter Blake had ever heard.
Something like gumdrops, somehow. "Oh, Dust, that was perfect," Yang gasped
between guffaws. "Marry me, Blake. For realsies this time."
Blake allowed herself a chuckle as well, more relief than anything humurous,
like laughing at the thousand-pound weight that had fallen behind you. "Ah,
well. If we're doing this 'for realsies' I guess the pressure's on, then." As
slowly as a flag – a Jolly Roger, to keep in with the theming – being lowered
down its mast, Blake sank between Yang's legs, keeping a skull-like gaze on
Yang's own face the entire time . . . or at least until she had a chance to
look upon her cargo. Something was going to be coming, but it wasn't going to
be death. Unless you went with the old, old, old slang. "Wow, Yang. You're
almost as wet as I am."
This sentence was met with a strangled gasp and a twitch of Yang's entire body,
as if something momentously sexy had been said instead of that nonsense. "I
repeat: so much."
"Love you too." Blake's tongue, attached to her head, as tongues tended to be,
sank lower and lower like the fall of man – or, perhaps, the fall of Yang –
something decadent and over the top, reaching to new heights as it strove for
new lows. Closer and closer it came, Yang panting, just short of pleas, up
above. Blake reached the forbidden fruit, briefly paused as if contemplating
the idea of Yang crying out for her as God, and . . .
"Oh!" That one word stopped the proceedings as sharply as a fresh-forged knife
in the middle of traffic. Logically, the word had to have followed the
realization – but it was so quick a response that, looking back, it seemed as
though the word itself was what stopped the procedure. A brick wall, once
built, stops more effectively and for far longer than mere construction
projects.
Yang, the unfortunate traffic in question, shot Blake a glance that might be
called 'checking under the hood.' "Something up?"
Besides Blake's heartrate, yes. "I just remembered. I never actually gave you
proper credit for earlier this evening."
"What are you . . . talking about?" Yang's voice was dusted with diamonds, but
differently than it had been before. Somewhat gentle, and fragile, but with an
edge to it. And beautiful.
"The part of our game where you slammed me against the wall, of course. I've
fought monsters the size of trains and performed heists and feats most people
would call impossible, but I have to say that was probably the most thrilling
moment of my life, thus far." Blake beamed like a floral arrangement. Overdone,
too much effort, and likely to disappear almost as soon as it was received, but
goodness, wasn't it pretty? "The knee was a nice touch. Pardon the pun."
Yang did not pardon or make peace with punsayers. She fought back. This was, of
course, how things had escalated to this point. "Yeah . . . I . . . really
knee-ded you then, huh?" It also seemed to be how the night was going to
continue.
In response, Blake chuckled, like buzzing bees – like the roar of Bumblebee -
to pollinate further flowers – to travel more open roads. "I suppose I'm being
a bit misleading. The part with the wall and the pinned arms was nice . . .
very nice . . . but it was actually when you told me you were going to just
leave me alone that I realized what a masterstroke that move was." Ah, and
stroking. Blake couldn't ease up on the throttle now. One thumb met the skin
just above what was just above Yang's roundabout, and drove down the road at a
pace leisurely enough to be called 'sedate'.
"Masterstroke, masturbation . . . I'm, I'm qualified for both." Yang's eyes
followed the path of Blake's thumb with only occasional trailblazing. Mostly in
a brief downwards direction, before returning to the warm safety of the open
trail. "But, uh, thanks."
"I mean . . . gosh." Blake was as purposefully breathless as if she were
attempting an infiltration mission. In some ways, stealth was still the name of
the game, which meant putting her other hand on Yang's thigh and squeezing was
something of a risk. Ah, but the prize. "Where on Remnant did you come up with
that idea, Yang?"
Yang jerked beneath Blake's touch like a puppet beneath unpracticed hands. "It,
uh, just . . . came to me. And, uh, while we're talking about 'coming' -"
"I know you said I seemed unflappable earlier." Momentum was the key in any
battle. Defend for as long as necessary, but once attacking, never stop. "But
trust me: in that moment, I wanted nothing more than for you to keep going. And
you knew that, even if later on you convinced yourself you were wrong. Deep
down, I would have given anything for you to just . . . take me. Right then and
there." Blake sighed, a whisper of wind, the echo of which was enough to let
anyone know the cavern they were in extended far deeper than they thought.
"Anything except my pride. I was just . . . too stubborn to relent. You are
absolutely devious, Yang Xiao Long."
"Not that I don't appreciate it, Blakey, but . . ." Yang had to stop. Probably
to keep her hips from bucking any worse than they already were. Keeping her leg
still was becoming a very difficult job. "Is right now really the best time to
–oh my gosh."
Ah, Blake had been caught out. The mask over the evil grin and glimmering eye
were useless, now, then. "Something up?"
"More like you're up to something." Yang spoke the words all clumped together,
like she was gathering them into a ball. Probably planning on throwing it at
Blake's too-suspecting head. "You're taking revenge on me!"
"All's fair, right?" Blake licked her upper lip. Slowly. She would make Yang
think of the bottom of her tongue as one of the sexiest parts of her body, and
she would make Yang like it. "Mwa ha ha."
"You're gonna make me beg for it, aren't you?" Yang's voice – and her cheeks –
was tinged with realization. And maybe just a bit of want. Which wasn't nearly
enough longing for Blake's purposes.
"Yang. Be honest with me. Be honest with yourself." Blake brought herself low
enough for Yang to feel her breath on her belly – low enough for her breasts to
brush against the inside of her steel-beam thighs – low enough to match the
reverberations of her voice. "Deep down in your heart . . . or somewhere, at
least . . . don't you sort of want to beg me for it?"
Yang's hand spread over her face like an elegant fan revealing itself to the
world. Though, all her hand revealed was everything it was trying to hide – the
money Blake would pay to see that blush was nothing short of bankruptcy.
"Maybe."
"So let's hear it." Blake's voice was soft as cotton, intoxicating as gin, and
sharp as the combination between the two. She wasn't sure how she'd brought the
voice that narrated all her thoughts when Yang was around to the surface, but
she wasn't complaining, either. It was about time that Yang knew what it felt
like to be under the effects of narrative conventions. "Convince me I should
continue."
There was a brief moment – not brief, really, but briefer than she expected –
where Blake thought if she cocked her head just right, and tilted her ears at
the appropriate angle counter to it, she might catch one of Yang's stray
thoughts. The air seemed to be holding its breath, the room had gone so still,
save for the whirring clockwork which was more likely Yang's heart beating than
her brain working. But all the same, at that turning of time's hands, time
passed.
And then, the moment ended with a movement, Yang sitting up as if she was
breaking the possibility of failure open on her back. Her head peeked from just
above her breasts, like heads normally worked from lower angles, but more so,
and the flush of her skin lent vivid color to the tableau arranged somewhere
beyond Blake's understanding. It was, if anything, like standing beneath a
volcano in the firm and certain belief that one was invulnerable to lava. A
view to die for.
And then, on top of everything else, Yang spoke, and it blew the roof off the
place – if the place was, in fact, the planet, and the roof was, in fact, the
all-encompassing sky. "Blake." It was such a gentle note, such a gentle smile,
such a gentle gaze, but with heat below it all, that the girl with kitty ears
wondered if perhaps lava tolerated cats, after all. "I love you. More than
anything."
" . . . well, damn. You win." The really infuriating part, of course, was that
Yang had used that line before. Multiple times. And it just kept working.
"I knew you were just a big softy, deep down." Yang lay back slowly, unfolding
in the way of the paper fan, or of a good book, to stretch a comparison to the
point of sheer invisibility.
"Look who's talking." Blake poked Yang somewhere to emphasize her point. She
wasn't sure exactly where – the vicinity of the hips, certainly – but it
worked. And it absolutely wasn't in any way a distraction from other any other
issues at hand.
Intimidation seemed so strange, looking at it objectively – in a lot of ways,
this was just another mouth to feed on, and Blake was, in a word, hungry. In
two words, very hungry. But this was too much food on her plate by about a
breakfast's worth; this was asking her to explore the entirety of space. Blake
had heard it described as "thirsty" but she'd never thought she'd be drinking
an ocean.
She'd described Yang as an ocean before, but perhaps Blake would have been
better off saving the comparison for this situation. For one thing, a certain
crass quality was, perhaps, appreciated by the scenario she'd, in a manner of
speaking, written herself into, and for another thing, Blake had no idea
whatsoever if she actually possessed the ability to swim.
Some things were very different from book-learning. Some things you just had to
do.
Insert innuendo here, her thoughts nudged her where she needed to go.
Blake took in a breath, partly for centering herself, partly for the sake of
hesitation, and partly because she didn't expect she'd be breathing clearly for
quite some time after this. Then, at last, she dove in.
Or, at least, ran to the edge of the diving board, stopped just short, turned
around, climbed back down the ladder, and eased herself into the pool while
chanting something to herself about all the world being a stage and her only
being an understudy.
Careful, don't use the rough part, take it easy at first, don't hurt her, can't
be too much
The first lick was slow, languid, and more than a little hesitant, all
descriptions that got lost somewhere in the constantly-shifting labrynith that
her mind usually only pretended to be. She expected a lot of responses from
Yang – the very number and spread of which was enough to give her vertigo even
with her hands on Yang's abdominal muscles, which were the sturdiest things
since, well, the rest of Yang was born. She'd hoped for an ecstatic rush of
breath and a, possibly, maybe, literal outpouring of affections to accompany an
explosion of her name into the air. She'd braced herself for an awkward silence
or perhaps a slight cough, or worse yet, "you can get started whenever you
want". She'd had gasps of breath and lurid moans booming background noise in
her mind the entire evening, and dearly wished to see them brought to the
forefront. She'd finally figured, most reasonably, that Yang might hum
appreciatively and give her some guidance, or maybe tips for improvement.
What actually happened was that, a moment after the lick had finished, Yang
said "oh."
Like she'd signed up for an eating contest and been given an entire roast
turkey. Like she'd studied vigorously for a math test and been handed an essay
examination. Like she'd dove in just after Blake and forgotten she couldn't
swim – yes, that was it, she couldn't swim, and only Blake was around to save
her.
Yang said "oh." Like she was in over her head, only now just realizing.
Blake smiled, a gorge with fangs, deep, sinister, and frighteningly toothy. And
then, quite unlike any sort of gorge at all, extended her tongue again, for a
lick even slower than hesitation: a lick of fire. Suns and magma and lightning
may try and fail, but perhaps there was still something that could make. Yang.
Burn.
"Oh, wow." Yang's voice was somewhere else, somewhere high up and looking over
an entire world it hadn't realized was there. "Oh, wow." But her body was
there. More there than ever, Blake would say, clutching her legs and twitching
her fingers as she was barely beginning to do.
Tonight was looking up. Blake did, too. It was really the only position for
something as devilish as she was suddenly feeling to be looking from – that
position being, of course. Well. "Oh, I think I'm going to enjoy this."
"I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you" Yang's voice was
falling into pieces.
But Blake wanted more than just pieces. She wanted obliteration. "You're
talking too much." Not enough, not enough, never enough. "Start moaning, or
I'll make you moan."
One side of Yang's mouth picked itself up for a better view of what was going
on, and as if to counterbalance one of her eyes snapped open in a glimmer of
smile. "Blah blah blah."
Well, didn't that just send a sunny snake slithering south Blake's spine. Words
suddenly seemed superfluous, and what they could be replaced with just seemed
super. "Warnings were given," Blake managed to make herself murmur just before
she would otherwise be talking with her mouth full.
Lick. Lick. Liiiiiiiiiick.
. . . that was how it was supposed to be done, right?
Like tasting a lollipop, except warmer and sweeter. But not literally sweeter.
After all the talk about ambrosia and anticipation, all that came to Blake's
mind when she began licking Yang was "Earl Gray Tea," maybe a tad underbrewed.
A definite peachy flavor though. Something warm and pleasant to keep you cozy
at night, but awake, too. Refined, but not overly so.
And of course, the strangest part, besides the fact that Blake found herself
critiquing it, was that it tasted better than the anticipation and ambrosia.
Yang was full of surprises, at least in all the places she wasn't full of
herself.
"Mmm, more." Well, that was in there too, of course. "Please, good, yes . . ."
Yang was a go-getter, determined, and not used to taking 'no' for an answer.
Blake hadn't been entirely sure that 'please' was even in her vocabulary.
Finding out like this was somehow satisfying, intriguing, and mystifying, all
at the same time. Like coming home and smelling fresh-baked cookies waiting for
you when you lived all by yourself.
"I'm beginning to think this could become my new favorite hobby." Blake was
performing the most classic interrogation technique, and finding it
surprisingly apt for what she was doing at the moment. Good cop, bad cop, in a
matter of speaking. The speaking was what mattered. Encouraging words, of
course, but words spoke so softly they couldn't possibly stack up to action,
and such action Blake gave to Yang – but only after she didn't give any action
to Yang. "Poetry's overrated, but, ah, music . . ."
Assault, Yang was peppered with kisses and licks, not at but around, and so
satisfying, intriguing, mystifying was the response to the escalating heat that
it made baking cookies for strangers look like a piece of cake. "Mm . . . ah .
. . ohhh!" Music was, if anything, an understatement. Was there a word to
describe sound that pulled the heartstrings? That made song pop, fully formed,
into one's head? Whatever that word was, Yang was a virtuoso at the art.
"That's what I like to hear." The moment seemed as real to Blake as a passage
in her favorite novel. Real within her head, certainly, but with the constant
knowledge that in truth only imagination and retreat from the world at large
allowed for the sensation. And yet here Yang was, less a paragraph and more the
book containing them, just as real, just as solid, just as warm and comforting
. . . and just as ready to open up at the movement of two fingers, though with
much more precise placement than any book ever required. "And this is what I
like to see." And taste, and taste, and taste . . .
For a few moments, the world was silent, save for Yang's breath, steady on its
rhythm, like a metronome, and Blake kept to the beat with each pass of her
tongue. The beat, but not the shape. Like dancing, like freedom and
exploration, like scientific endeavor, Blake shifted her passages, keeping
careful notes of how she – she, herself, Blake Belladonna of all people –
affected Yang, humming in appreciation (which Yang appreciated too) whenever
things seemed particularly pleasant. But always matching the tempo.
Everything was in balance, held in place like someone had tipped over the sands
of time and forgotten to right them again at just the right moment, and for the
span of a few hundred heartbeats Blake believed the moment could last forever.
But time and rhythms mean countdowns and cessation, and finally, inevitably,
Yang burst. "Holy Dust, Blake, I am going to build a monument to your tongue!"
Blake kissed the approximate center of mass – she nearly said something else,
very similar, to herself, but stopped just before making the worst pun she'd
have ever made – and looked up to a girl glowing so red hot she must have been
unlocking the second level of her Semblance. "Awww." It would be a much more
effective pout, Blake was certain, if she wasn't running her claws in gentle
circles over Yang's inner thighs. But some sacrifices simply had to be made.
"You aren't going to make it to my brain, instead? I thought that was your
favorite part of me."
"Your tongue's what lets me hear all the sexy stuff that's on your mind,
though." One of Yang's hands entered Blake's field of vision just long enough
to brush a stray hair from her face, and somehow or other, that seemed to say
everything. An island of care and concern in a sea of chaos. "Also: fuck."
"I suppose that's fair." This time Blake would take it from the top – take Yang
from the top – the top portion, that was. Clarification was important: Blake,
after all, was uncertain whether Yang had just given commentary or a command,
and whether she was rejoinding or acquiescing. "Just make sure you get its good
side, alright?"
"I'm not sure it has a bad siiiiii-ooohh-aaaaaahhh!" Yang's voice trembled like
an earthquake, low and potentially destructive, and the walls fell in – or
maybe that was just her thighs clamping on Blake's ears.
. . . wow, that was a good spot. Blake would chance to even call that a great
spot. The great spot. Maybe even . . . oh, so that's why they called it what
they called it. "Have I ever mentioned that I adore you?" The message was
muffled by, erm, everything, but Blake was certain it got through nevertheless.
Yang had excellent hearing, just like every other part of her.
"Feeling's mutual." Yang's legs relaxed, thighs moving away from Blake's ears
slowly, as if afraid of hurting her, and ankles wrapping around her back like
an apologetic hug. Never before had a pair of legs been shown to care about
Blake's well-being, but it would go to show that Yang's would be the first
"Super-duper mutual."
Blake didn't have a witty response to that, but then again, even if she did,
she'd have ended up doing what she did anyway: spreading fingers like a clamp,
thrusting her tongue like a knife, and seeing what generous tortures she could
yet lavish upon Yang's unsuspecting – no, too suspecting – honor. Each pass,
like reaching out for light made solid, was illuminating and warm, and that one
particular spot seemed to glow brighter each time Blake conversed with it.
That was it. This was just another conversation. Her and Yang, just like
always.
Granted, the subject matter was much more interesting than usual, but a
conversation, nevertheless.
And Blake kept up the chatter, Yang keeping up the breathy retorts, very much
emphasized by the body language of bucking hips, the occasional squeak or
giggle doing nothing to change the topic for very long. Yes, just another
conversation at the tip of Blake's tongue, another thrust and riposte, just a
tad more literal now, something with a taste to it, and certainly something
worth repeating.
But there was only so much wordplay could do; the limits of Blake's tongue were
yet to be found as she spoke, as she marked, and Yang cried in what could only
be called ecstasy, not so different from the glory of her laughter, and with
each and every lick Blake felt the wetness overflowing, the heat at her cheeks
whether Yang's or her own she didn't know, the taut muscle moving beneath
Yang's skin, the little bump that she kept hitting with her nose whenever she
put her neck into her licks -
Little bump?
Little . . . oh.
Oh. Oh!
Oh.
Well.
Dear diary: Jackpot.
"Now what have we here?" Blake knew exactly what they had there, of course, but
she needed to say something – anything – in order to stop herself from
vocalizing some inane thought about finding pearls inside of oyster shells.
"I dunno, but I bet it's happy to see you." Yang's attitude tried for cavalier
and came off more as shield-bearer, uncertain but certainly trying.
Blake let herself giggle, because she felt Yang deserved a reward. "Tell me
what you want."
"You. Fingers. Tongue." Yang's voice was actually strained, and Blake had never
compared herself to a three-thousand pound weight before. "I'd draw you a
picture, but I'm kind of sort of terrible at art. Plus I think maybe you're
more creative than I am."
"If you're encouraging me to get imaginative, you must really be desperate."
Blake kissed her just at the top of her stomach, and Yang hissed something that
the world contracted into. "I suppose we'll just have to find out what depraved
depths I can dive to together, then." Blake finally drew her tongue, lazy and
indulgent like a Sunday morning, over the driving force behind most of Yang's
actions tonight.
The sheer warmth, like Sunday morning's sunrise, threw her for a loop. The
squeak of a noise Yang made in response was the rest of the roller coaster.
There was a joke in there about riding Yang like one, but Blake was a bit busy
making her masterwork to listen to herself make it. That was what it was like,
really. Making a masterpiece. Something exhausting and proud, and worthy of
attention and respect. Something beautifully singular.
Tracing claws down Yang's abdomen was like forging the ultimate weapon, hearing
the hiss of steel from between clenched teeth. Humming against everything that
was most sensitive about her was like writing a bestselling, critically
acclaimed novel, something to put the Ninja series to shame. Alternating her
tongue against fold and nub, rough and smooth, hard and soft, was like painting
something so bright and so vivid people could hear it, hear Yang crying out
into the night as though looking for someone she'd lost, or finding something
she thought she'd never have. Removing her tongue and replacing it with a
finger, pumping like a piston, watching enraptured as Yang pressed her hand
against her own mouth with all her might, other hand against her breast and
kneading, kissing up her abdominal muscles with every intent of removing that
hand, losing herself in the muffled groans from Yang's lips as she kneaded her
other breast, feeling Yang's hand cover her own and encourage as she bit down
on her own lip . . .
Was like pleasuring Yang Xiao Long. The truest expression of creativity and
wonder, Blake was beginning to believe.
Cheeks reddening with heat and squealing whine escaping from between her
clinched lips, Yang reminded Blake in that moment of nothing more than a
teakettle. One about to boil over. Or, possibly, explode. "Mm, if you do that,
I'm g-gonna . . . oh, man, oh man, oh man . . ."
Blake nuzzled her chin, a movement she wanted to compare to the way a
songbird's singing tickled the ears. "Please don't hold back."
Yang looked down at her with an expression that looked, of all things, like a
melting ice cream sundae. Still quite sweet, and over-the-top in all the
traditional ways, but pooling nonetheless. "Huh?"
"I know we're obsessed with challenges and part of how we flirt is teasing each
other . . . but you don't actually have to impress me." Blake slid down Yang's
body, never breaking her gaze, like she was standing on a sea liner leaving
port and had left a hand at her heart as a memento. "You already have. You and
your supernova soul."
"I . . ." Muscles like those could tell anyone that Yang wasn't the type of
person who was used to their body not doing everything they wanted – and yet
she seemed so constantly surprised by how her hips moved to meet Blake's palm,
her fingers, her tongue. "You sure?"
"Don't worry." A kiss laid itself on Yang's waist bud, quick, disappearing upon
contact, like one of Blake's afterimages. "I've got you."
At last, all at once, Yang's entire body trembled, as if plucked, as if played
like a harp. "Yes," Yang cried once more, a noise like a mewling tiger, before
descending into a jungle-tinged cacophony that told every one of Blake's
instincts to conquer.
And so she did. Her tongue worked furiously to recite every good memory she and
Yang had ever made together, and her palms settled across Yang's stomach and
pressed, as if anything could possibly hold her down when she really wanted to
move. Yang was the immovable object in motion, yes – and Blake insisted that
she would be the unstoppable force brought still, collapsing in on herself. The
trembling grew in partnership with Yang's voice, a portent, a prophecy, a
message that the sky was falling in, and in the middle of it all, Blake felt
nothing but fulfillment. Wasn't an end to it all, all she ever wanted?Something
final?
Calmly, heated, a solitary finger pressed against Yang's clitoris, and Blake
flicked the switch she knew would trigger the apocalypse.
The world ended. Not with a bang. Not with a whimper.
The world ended in silence.
But fire, nevertheless. Yang exploded, nigh-on literally, her Semblance
lighting her like the suspension bridge to heaven had been set aflame.
Somewhere far, far in the future, Blake's memoirs made a note that she was
probably the only person alive to ever know what an apocalypse tasted like.
Warm apple cider, but with peaches instead, she'd say. In the then and there,
however, tastes and sensations were roughly shoved into Blake's brainstem by
the retreat – like a backwards bullet – of her tongue, which with remarkable
initiative had deduced that sometimes there was, in fact, such a thing as too
much afterglow.
Her hands stayed, though. Blake made them – it wasn't as if it hurt – the fire
wasn't literal, though it was about as close as something descriptive could be
without touching. An asymptote analogy. Even if it had hurt, it would have been
worth it - it wasn't every day one got the opportunity to hold the sunrise,
after all. "That's it." She struggled to keep her voice as soft as the gentle
caresses she – quite literally – used to ground Yang again. "Come for me."
Yang – steadfast, certain, each footstep a declaration of independence – shook
at Blake's touch, or at her words, or maybe just at her being there, any of
which sounded absolutely lovely. Once, twice, a sudden twitch, a noise like a
firecracker from a very long distance away. The glow around her body receded in
a series of small steps, like a child who kept turning around to wave goodbye
every few feet. "Oh, yes . . ." she mured, at last. It was like murmuring, but
even softer.
And then it was over.
Blake allowed Yang to rest on Blake's laurels for several moments before, in
terms of the texture of different kisses, nudging her awake. "Quite a ride,
from the look of things." And the sound, and the feel, and the taste, and the
scent, the sixth sense was probably involved in there somewhere . . .
"Well, you know." It was oddly specific, Yang's voice. If a thousand angels
could sit on the head of a pin, the entirety of paradise must have plopped
itself down on the tip of her tongue. She was attempting, from the sound of
things, to swallow it all. "Lots of foreplay. Literally months' worth."
"Well, when you put it like that, I've just got to know. At the risk of
sounding so insufferably pleased with myself that you clamp your thighs around
my ears like a vise on fire . . ." It was awfully easy to take risks when all
outcomes lay in your favor, Blake supposed. "Did I perform up to standards?"
The last of Yang's panting faded away – or, judging by the look in Yang's eyes,
were shoved into a filing cabinet somewhere with intent on later use. "You
know, I just realized something. I've never actually used the word 'exquisite'
before."
Blake's smile grew an inch – or, proportionately speaking, stretched over the
horizon like the stream of color behind a supersonic hummingbird. "Another 'e'
word."
"Exactly." Yang's smile and her gaze were both a bit lopsided and more than a
little messy. It matched her hair, and her voice, and certainly her general
sense of personality, but more than that, it matched Blake's heartbeat.
And probably her laughter, too. Blake giggled, small and soft, like a tiny
flurry in the middle of a summer day. "Do you mind if I kiss you now, or should
I go brush my teeth first?"
"What kind of question is that?" Yang was the only person amongst all of Team
RWBY to complain when homework was too easy. But even she never grinned like
that when faced with bullet trajectories and Grimm stalking patterns. "'Course
I wanna know how I taste on your tongue. That's like, the hottest thing."
"Do you mean the most erotic?" In terms of preparation, that sentence was an
underground base beneath a fortress, lined with turrets, with Yang in the
middle as both the protected object and the final line of defense. Then again,
Yang was what Blake was preparing herself for, but logic was a tad iffier with
Yang around.
"Right, right, gotta keep in with the 'e' word thing." Yang leaned up close and
fast, a testament to her muscles, so quickly that the end of her sentence made
Blake's lips tingle with the feeling of it.
As much as Blake enjoyed the feeling of what happened next, closing the
distance with just enough force to make Yang lie back down and enjoy herself,
the kiss wasn't really for her sake. Yang was the empress, mighty, glorious and
imperiously golden in her naked beauty, and this meeting of mouths was designed
to give her everything that was already rightfully hers. An attendant, feeding
her grapes. That was it.
Of course, the metaphor fell apart around the realization that Yang was
attempting to give just as much back despite their positions – but Blake
couldn't think of a better one between Yang's nibbling at her lips and her
tongue coaxing her own into action, so an empress and her grapes would have to
serve as the record.
Eventually, because even decadence and grapes must give way to basic needs such
as air, they tore themselves apart from each other. "So?" Blake pitched the
question underhand, decided at the last second not to throw it at all, and
walked it over to Yang instead with a gentle brush of golden bangs out of both
of their eyes. "How is it?"
Eroticism, now properly credited, finally got Yang to make her repeat
performance. That noise Yang's lips made when they smacked together was
probably not meant to be heard in polite company. "Speaking of 'e' words." It
was probably the first time Blake had ever seen anyone look inquisitively at
their own mouths before – odd that it would be Yang Xiao Long to question her
mouth's contents. "You ever tried Earl Gray tea before?"
With no other response readily available, Blake found that her default response
to anything Yang said was laughter, the kind that left skid marks in its wake,
the kind that blurred, the kind that left an afterimage of itself behind in the
form of a rush of air hitting the back of the nostrils from below. "Ugh. I hate
it when I snort."
"I'm sorry, did you say something?" If fears and insecurities might be
represented as a field of tarred spikes, gravelled ground, and scorched earth,
Yang's good cheer could only be called a steamroller. Moving at Mach Eight.
Must have been working on the charcoal from earlier. "I was too distracted by
how cute your laugh is. Especially that snort at the end."
There were many sentences to describe the things a soul could do – be enriched,
grow, glow, even dim – but Blake was certain that up until this point, no one
had ever considered one might shimmy appreciatively before. "You're too kind to
me." She shared a kiss with Yang, because something else souls could do was be
bared.
"Not even remotely possible." Yang didn't even wait for the kiss to be over
before responding, and the curious sensation of the words entering Blake's
mouth was more like breathing in the smoke over a campfire than anything else.
And then came the rain.
There were, of course, different kinds of rain. There was the gentle summer
rain, alluded to often but rarely seen, the reminder that no matter how the
heat may scorch the blacktop, there would always be a change in season. There
was the driving, pounding rain, the relentless barrage of water less a
rainstorm and more a tsunami sent through a shredder and very angry at what had
been done to it. There was the miraculous rain of the desert, the life-giving
rain at the end of the drought, the well-filling, spring-filling, heart-filling
answer to every spoken and unspoken prayer. There was the soft rain, the
comfort, the gentle, cold, welcoming, comisserating caresses of bared skin in
the aftermath of tragedy. There was a rain for every season, every day, every
mood, and every adventure in writing, imagination, and life itself.
Yang's hands were all of these rains, at one point or another.
But at that immediate moment, as they rolled over one another like storm clouds
to reverse their positions one last time, Yang was the light sprinkle down
Blake's spine, the pitter-patter of tiny sensations, given life only a short
time ago. Her fingers were the splash of the nearby car, everywhere at once and
then suddenly gone, leaving only a memory of exhilaration and surprise behind.
Every movement her wrists made was a sort of -
"Yang. If you don't do something soon, here? You're going to drive your cat up
a tree." Blake panted, trying to gather up enough air to say what she needed to
say, before everything didn't work like that at all anyway. "And I hope my
fellow Faunus can forgive my perpetuating a stereotype, but I don't know if I'm
going to be able to get back down."
"Just jump." Yang's smile was a sunbeam so solid, Blake might not have even
needed any acrobatics. "I'll catch you."
"If there's anyone I know would, it'd be you." Yang caught her eye, her heart,
her whispered words of self-pity. Why shouldn't she catch the rest of her, too?
"Anyone you know. . . wood?" Yang's smile was as slippery as an entire bathtub
of suds playing tag, and the way her hands were moving she seemed to be trying
to catch every one of them.
"I stand enlightened." Lay enlightened, technically, but there was very little
time for fine print when the business deal looked so very attractive. "But
still, I'd at least like to know where to aim my descent."
"You mean your . . . fall?" One time, Yang went out into the Emerald Forest by
herself, killed 27 Grimm, came back unscathed, and received a commendation for
her initiative. She looked even more pleased with herself than she did back
then.
"Yang." Blake wasn't actually annoyed, but there was a road sign saying
ANNOYANCE – NEXT EXIT just a few feet in front of her and she was entirely
willing to make a sharp right turn.
"Alright, alright, keep your clothes on." Yang's eyes often danced with
delight. This time, Blake had the distinct feeling they were preparing for a
tango, and requesting Blake's own pupils join in. "Or, you know, don't."
It was obvious enough of a quip that Blake felt she could give herself a little
leeway in the witty retort department. "My clothes are already off, Yang."
"That's the spirit!" Yang grinned, like the girl on Midwinter morning who snuck
downstairs to peek at all her gifts around 3 AM or so.
"Happy to be of assistance." Finally – mercifully – the rainstorm came to a
slow, drizzling end, leaving only a (thoroughly drenched) Blake standing
beneath the clouds, hoping to catch a glimpse of the setting sun. Something
setting, at least, as Yang dipped low, low, low down in a way to make planetary
movement jealous.
"Hmmm." Yang hummed appreciatively. Like she was drinking a glass of fine wine.
Vintage vagina, Blake specifically did not say out loud. "Shaved, huh? Sort of
figured, actually. You seem like the kind of gal to keep everything organized."
Blake might have shrugged, if her entire body wasn't coiled with the kind of
expectation found in people in line for concert tickets for coming on three
days now. "It isn't a big deal or anything. I can grow it back out, if that's
what you prefer."
"I prefer what you prefer." Yang topped this sentence off with a kiss, like a
cherry on a sundae, and somewhere deep, deep down Blake hoped she wouldn't end
up tasting like some kind of ice cream. "You're perfect just the way you are."
Yang could see Blake naked – obviously. That was the, naked, truth. And just as
obviously, she still called her "perfect." The little bit of belly fat she
couldn't seem to get rid of no matter how much huntressing she did, the slight
crook of her left ear compared to her right, the scar beneath her right armpit,
and of course her complete lack of anything resembling a hipbone. All that, and
Yang said she was perfect.
It was so simple, so superficial, so shallow – but it made Blake feel as though
she was actually worth something. And didn't that just sum it up?
Well, no. Yang was too deep for that.
She was also dangerously close to leaving Blake incapable of pushing two
syllables together, let alone constructing an entire castle of metaphorical
acumen, which was why Blake was getting words out while the getting was good.
"Don't tell me I'm so perfect you're afraid of ruining me?"
Yang slid along the length of Blake's body, coming up to look her in the eye,
and if there were a better view in the world, Blake would probably still
personally prefer this one. "It's more like I'm not sure how to give you what
you deserve."
"Quickly." Blake pointed the words, more like the familiar fish hook than any
sort of spear. Not much room for any slack in the line, she'd admit, but it
helped that the fish seemed entirely willing to bite.
"Hey, come on. We've got all night, right?" Yang nuzzled Blake. Not with her
body, but with her words. "Don't you worry, Blake. I'm gonna take real good
care of you."
Between words like umbrellas and fingers like applying sunscreen, Blake could
only arch beneath – beneath Yang – beneath understanding that she was making
love to the sun, no matter who Yang claimed was the life-giving light in their
relationship. "I know." Blake was falling beneath Yang, falling from the sky,
racing towards a tornado, dancing between bolts of lightning, challenging a
tsunami, and yet she did not, could not feel as though she was in any danger.
"You make me feel safe." She smirked, and did not care what dangers lay in
taunting Mother Nature, for dangers lay with her too; for Yang lay with her, as
well. But then, she was taunting Yang, too – and there was appeal in losing out
to danger, too. Lots and lots of "too." "No matter what kind of stunt you're
pulling."
"That means a lot to me." Little kids, Blake noticed, always drew the sun in
pictures as though it was smiling – and wearing sunglasses. Looking at Yang
now, Blake was beginning to understand the unconscious impulse. "I mean it.
But, uh, right now? Right now I'm most concerned with making you feel like
you're getting off."
"Oh, you're doing that, too." Blake offered the words like popsicles, sweet and
melty, and tried not to imagine what Yang would look like sucking on one. But
she didn't try too hard. "Trust me."
"Huh. Hmm. Nope, not seeing it." With every bit lower Yang's voice dipped into
that sentence, her hand matched, and Blake began to wonder if she'd ever known
what anticipation had tasted like before this moment. "So, as a capable,
responsible, and all around thorough huntress, I'm afraid I'm gonna have to
investigate that claim for myself."
"I'll make certain to do everything necessary for the investigations to go
smoothly." Blake could listen to Yang laugh for hours. Not in a row. She'd keep
interrupting it with kissing, after all.
"So. You ready for me to, uh, bask in your presence? Marvel at your . . .
greatness? Drink deeply from the wells of your wisdom? Dabble in my hobbies?"
Every time Yang seemed to reach the limits of how high her eyebrows could
emphasizingly creep, she surpassed them. Maybe it was a side effect of her
stretching grin. "See what kind of poetry I can write about you?"
"Yang." Blake could compare it to an intervention - Yang would go for hours if
not stopped. If ever there was a sentence applicable to any situation . . . "I
know you've been looking forwards to tasting me. Trust me, I've been looking
forwards to it too. But . . ." Her words sprawled outwards, shattering the
tableau and falling as though pushed from a window, and they left a crater when
they hit the ground. "I am so unbelievably fucking horny that if you don't put
two fingers into me and pump, then I am going to die."
"That is the best sentence I have ever heard you say." Yang said while not
putting her fingers in. "Except for maybe 'What kind of person would I be if I
did not give you the same in return?', of course. That one sort of redefined my
life."
"Please." Blake keened, the noise of creaking chains in stone walls, a noise
she'd kept locked up the entire evening.
"Alrighty, make that third best." Those TV shows in which someone said to 'act
casual' and everyone got into a pose that was anything but. That was the way
Yang's voice sounded at this moment – the way two fingers looked, poised to
strike. "No holding back, right?"
And then there was a feeling that Blake really couldn't describe as anything
other than solved, and absolutely, there was no more holding back. Not of her
voice, certainly, which ripped its way out of her throat like something from
the unexplored Grimm country, black, spiky, and wild. "Yang . . ." She never
knew she could feel so full and so hungry at the same time, but Yang had always
been paradoxes, like right now, how Blake wanted this to keep going but she
wanted it to end, "Yang!"
It was sensory overload; or rather, not there, but near.
"Oh, yes, there," Blake whispered against the idea of the thumb, like a
whirlpool, dragging her down into its depths with circular motions. Somewhere
on the horizon, claws bore down Yang's back, and at the furthest edge of the
world legs twined with legs like honeysuckles vines, sweet and clinging.
The barest trace of a feather might set Blake off now, the gentlest wisp of
wind, the softest of touches or even softer glances just might prove themselves
too much to bear. And what Blake got instead was Yang biting down, hard, on her
pulse. Canines had always given Blake trouble.
Blake cried out, pressing hands to head and breast as if she had any right to
simultaneously hold close and push away. There was a noise to the cry, of
course, but she wasn't sure what it was over the fizzing sound in all four
ears.
"Yes, yes, please, Yang, more . . ." Because there was fizzing – because it
was, to come at it from a different route, as though Blake were a soda can,
some type of dark flavor, certainly, that had been shaken vigorously for about
six hours, and could now only wish for the feel of a finger touching her tab.
All she was getting was a tongue licking up the moisture on the outside of the
can. Slowly.
"Oh, fuck yes." Blake was finally opened, a leg between the thighs – but it was
her leg, and Yang's thighs, and somehow it seemed so much harder to tell where
each of them began and ended. Oh, yes, she was soda, because her blood, beneath
hands that defined the word 'relentless', was bubbling, and sweet, and
expanding to fill her, a blastwave of pressure being held back by the thinnest
bit of aluminum.
"More." She had reached the point, fingers at her backside and squeezing and
faster curls of knuckles within her.
"Yes, that feels so good . . ." It was too much. Far too much. She couldn't
control herself, kissing down Yang's neck, feeling heavy breath upon her palm,
at Yang's breasts, letting tiny groans feed her own like sparks fed fire as she
moved her thigh against something hot, wet, and suspiciously Yang-sounding,
over and over again.
"Ohhh." Sensory overload. That's what it was.
If only it could last forever.
But she couldn't keep a hold of anything; not even as a distraction, not even
her own memories. Her world was a multifaceted maelstrom of darkened details
illuminated in flashes by the lightning that struck whenever Yang lay her hands
upon her. It was the details that Blake had to focus on, else she be swept up
in the storm and carried off somewhere so far away from herself it might as
well be Menagerie. The mouth pressed against her breast was every present of a
smirk Yang had ever given her, and the pumping of her fingers brought back
memories of battle, of grace, of speed and momentum and smiles wider than the
trail of destruction Yang left behind her. The brush of hair against her thighs
was a sleeping form, an example to follow on the nights the moon kept singing
Blake awake. The curl of her fingers was puns and quips and heartfelt
confessions, the drag of her leg the mischief she managed to make, the pumping
was faster and faster and faster, it all blended together like a tempest in a
snowglobe, all white swirls obscuring somewhere familiar, like home, the one
she'd never had, it was all the same thing folded in on itself over and over
and denser and denser, this moment right now -
"So close." Some part of Blake, tucked behind Blake's conscious mind like the
dirty magazine behind the pillow, knew what she couldn't possibly. Blake was
building towards something. The best part of the story. The climax. The
revelation.
And then fingers and mouths and brushes of golden hair disappeared like someone
had ripped the book right out of Blake's hands.
Blake's face shot up – open – faster and louder and more explosive than a
cannonball, a split-second of literary rage that was stopped by the sight of
Yang's face – the only face that could stop a cannonball in its spiral path –
the only face Blake would ever forgive tearing away a book from her.
She looked as though she was watching the universe being born.
Every wandering star in Blake's head pulled into a singular galaxy at the
thought. Order and peace from the depths of formless chaos, and a single kiss
upon the cheek for the first twinkling in someone's night-turned eye. "I had no
idea you were such a tease, Yang."
"Blake, I – holy hell, you're incredible. I . . ." Yang fumbled for words when
she was otherwise occupied, Blake was beginning to notice. Blake was beginning
to like. Like watching a house of cards fall, over and over again. "I'm sorry,
I know you were close, it's not fair to you, but I just, I need, I need -"
Blake silenced her with about the only thing she could that didn't involve
iambic pentameter – a kiss. Those were better than sonnets anyway, she figured.
"Since when did either of us do anything like 'play fair'?" She leaned back
again, slowly, languidly, like she was lying back on her deckchair, embracing
the sun's warmth. Hopefully Yang enjoyed the sight of her in her "bathing
suit". "Together. I'm game if you are."
There was a brief boxing match in Yang's mind between her own need to provide
and Blake's permission to do otherwise – Blake could follow the match by the
buckling of Yang's forehead. She'd never seen Yang crease before, but if ever
there were a time for pressure to induce folding . . . "Okay." The fingers
slipped rapid out from within Blake like spent shells, and Blake put some
effort into preventing a disappointed noise. That would be the last thing Yang
needed that didn't involve Blake spontaneously disappearing out from under her.
"Tell me when it feels good." Yang moved her body to mirror Blake's own,
splaying her legs around and over and under Blake's as she settled their
centers close together.
"It feels good." Blake spoke instantly, on contact, as involuntarily in
appearance as though she had been burned. In appearance.
"Hee hee." For most people, two hees in a row could have only been sarcastic.
For Yang, they were a sign of restraint, about as common as a "Beware of the
Tyrannosaurus" sign on the roadways. "No, I mean, when it feels really good."
"Like now?" Blake was casual, like she didn't have a pretty girl pressed up
against her about as intimately as possible. Like eating ice cream and sitting
on a bench. If some happened to drip between her breasts without her noticing,
oh well.
Any genuine irritation Yang might have felt was not only buried in a shallow
grave, but probably snuffed out in the first place, by her over-exaggeration.
No peeve could survive an environment as harsh and unforgiving as that of
childishness. "Am I gonna have to do something about that smart mouth of
yours?"
"I wish you would." Blake carved the tone out of the slow giddy feeling boiling
the back of her mind, mixing metaphors with all the casual disregard of someone
who had much more important – and enjoyable - things to focus on.
Yang. And, a miracle in progress, movement.
Yang was every precious thing that had ever been and ever would be.
She was smiles like pearls, precious gifts on an anniversary, one perfect shape
for every thought, slow and sweet, she'd ever have about Blake. She was eyes
like perfume, intoxicating, an unmistakable signal she'd entered the room, a
subtle invitation to come back into the dark places with her and explore each
others' secrets. She was hands like frankincense and myrrh, holy relics, a sign
of coming salvation and the saving of souls. She was hair like gold, laughter
like gold, an existence like gold, worth her weight, height, breath, being,
every single word and thought in purest gold, melted down and reshaped into the
key to Blake's heart.
Well, not just her heart. Though apparently, some other places took a lot more
turning of locks.
"Okay. It feels – oh - feels good, now." Her voice shook with each thrust like
a wineglass beneath sound, and at any moment Blake thought she might shatter.
"A-amazing, even."
"Absolutely incredible." Yang's response took the form of faster thrusts and an
entwining of fingers – like the entwining of their legs – like the entwining of
their thoughts – like the entwining of their lives, now. She might have said
something, certainly, but that wasn't her real response. "You feel so good
against . . . oh, fuck."
"M-more." Masks crumbled into dust, ribbons falling from ears, facades fading
into the wind like they were never there at all. "Oh, yes, please, more!"
Yang was, to turn a phrase, a gem.
Then again, maybe Yang wasn't the gemstone. Maybe Blake was. Or rather, one in
the making. A diamond, still quite rough. Heat and pressure were being
thoroughly applied, and through the new, ecstatic sensation Blake couldn't help
but feel as though she was being polished to a shine, formless carbon dust
coalescing into something sturdier and stronger than steel.
Yang's hand clenched on her thigh, and Blake wondered what a diamond would
become if the heat and pressure kept increasing. Perhaps a star? Like a diamond
in the sky?
"This really does feel . . .so good. Definitely in the top three best things
I've ever felt." A pause for breath, a tongue across the lips. Yang was coming
unraveled, and Blake wanted nothing more than to pull on the strings. "Thinking
even in the top one."
"Feels pretty good from this end, too." Blake spoke as though breathless,
mostly because she actually was. And if this was what drowning felt like, air
was severely overrated. Possibly even poisonous. "Ninjas of Love . . . mmph . .
. did not prepare me for this."
"I don't . . . I don't wanna sound gr – ah - greedy, but . . ." Some people
were all talk, but Yang could never be quite so static. At that particular
moment she was all ragged breaths, a series of caverns she was desperately
trying to fill before they swallowed up her faculties completely. At least,
Blake presumed so, because she was making some of the exact same noises. "Can
you kiss me, too? I think I . . . need . . ."
"Oh, Yang." Blake's voice broke through the fog in her head like a lighthouse
beamed, like she was sure she was beaming now. "That may be the best idea I've
ever heard."
They put everything they had, in terms of souls and strength and body parts,
into the kiss, and it wasn't a far leap from there to the point where they got
lost in each other.
Their tongues met as old friends on a new dance floor, swirling and writhing
around each other with speed and surety Blake hadn't suspected either of them
possessed, and a delicious feeling that must have been like being drunk slowly
settled in from the tips of her ears to the bottom of her feet. Yang, a world
unto herself of light and life and dreams the size of the sky, was all that
Blake knew, all Blake remembered existing. She was born here, she would die
here, and Yang sucked at her neck, and . . . Blake . . . nearly forgot her own
name.
She wrapped a leg around Yang's back. She would not let herself be separated
from reality ever again, not now that she knew what it was.
It was transcendental. Their heartbeats hit each other like particles in a
collider, and something fundamental drove Blake onwards and upwards, leveraging
her body into Yang's and pressing, pressing, pressing herself against the heat
she found there, like nuclear fusion done with enthusiasm. Building towards
something, combining as one, if only for a moment.
Heat. Sweat. Drive. Yang.
They were even now racing towards an unseen finish, Blake set the message from
the back of her mind aside for later sorting and sending.
Heavy breaths laced with lust and fleeting touches with uncertain, greedy
fingers. A keening noise paired with fingernails down the spine. A reckless
charge of flesh and warm breath.
Tongues.
Blake pressed her tongue, roughly, the rough part, against Yang's breast, and
savored the slow drag across her skin. "Oh,Dust!" Yang cried out from someplace
private Blake had built for herself long ago, someplace she hadn't expected to
find someone else. "Blake . . ."
Like a punch from a shotgun, like a blast from a fist, like Yang always tended
to do. With the barest of movements, that word broke down something in Blake,
and the realization ran into her as though it was a bike messenger, dropping
valuable messages that had never been meant for her eyes.
They wanted to put Blake in a cage. A small one, plastic, with a handle on top
and a metal door, and the only other component the humiliation of knowing they
only thought of her as a pet in need of obedience training. They would force
her there, with hate and taunts and jeering and dangers, so the only safe place
in all of Remnant was the small box on the sidewalk they'd set up for faunus to
sit in the corner and beg affection from. It wasn't a wound bleeding out, this
life, or a disease that ate away at the mind or body. It was just a pressure.
Constant, never-ending, slowly crushing – and Blake was not the type to become
a diamond in the rough. She was too empty to do anything but crumple.
Yang made pressure for Blake, too. But hers was different. The rest of the
world pressed against her, claustrophobic and evil-eyed, seeking to annihilate
her existence. Yang pressed outwards, from somewhere within Blake, pushing her
best qualities to the surface to fight back. The quiet, stoic girl in the
corner became the center of attention, the most marvelous wit in the room. The
gloomy girl with a dark past became the joyful girl with a bright future. The
girl who shut herself off became the girl who opened herself up. The girl with
a ribbon in her hair became the girl with cute little kitty ears.
And it culminated here and now. Lightning struck Blake over and over – no,
coursed through her, from her – with every upwards thrust. Heat rose, but
comfortable, completing, and Blake felt like she was drifting even as her
intent focused to a real, if turbulent, shape. She felt as though she was a
mile off the ground, and in that moment Blake knew for certain who and what she
was.
She wasn't a pet. She would never be a pet, no matter how much the world of
Remnant wanted otherwise. Blake Belladonna was a storm, dark but lit with
jagged light, soft but driving with winds like turbines, beautiful and deadly
and, yes, very, very wet. And she was finally herself, for once in her life.
All it took for her to realize it was Yang saying her name.
"Thank you so much." Blake's voice wasn't quite like the falling petals. It was
the falling sensation, but with a bloom at the end of it. Rewinding the
footage, perhaps.
"For what?" Those two words may as well have been Yang's bonsai trees. Careful,
slow, constructed peacefulness at the middle of a chaotic world.
Someday, Blake swore to herself, she'd pay Yang back a thousandfold. For now,
though, all she could say was this: "Saving me a dance."
Those must have been the magic words.
There were fires. There were fireworks. There were volcanic eruptions. There
were stars and supernovas and big bangs, and an entire chain reaction of
flaming intensities, each one more impossible than the last.
And then there was Yang Xiao Long, who with a roar of unrestrained passion that
would put the greatest literary minds to shame burst into real, literal golden
flames along her entire body, and drove herself fully one more time into Blake.
"Ohhh!"
The heat of the moment bore Blake aloft. "Oh, fuck!"
It was a series of cascading, upwards movements that burst from somewhere
within Blake to the tune of a silence surrounded by instruments. Like the first
time she'd ever done a backflip. Like climbing a tree. Like riding a wave – two
waves – three waves. Like jump pads and no certainty of landing. Like a series
of afterimages, springing from one to the next, climbing up an exhilarating,
impossible staircase to the sky.
It was like more than that. It was like flying. It was like freedom. It was
like dancing unscathed among the lightning.
It was precisely like walking through fire and being unburned.
This was the making of Remnant, or else its destruction; this was the place
where the ground met the sky, where water and fire formed steam. It was a
boiling ocean, an endless expanse of heat and sea and sky. It was someplace
private, special, Blake had long ago built up for only herself – and now found
Yang there, moaning her name.
Their special place, then. Theirs and theirs alone.
"Blake!" Yang's voice cracked the atmosphere like an atomic bomb, but wavered
like heat haze, for all its strength.
"Yang!" The feeling swelled in Blake – no, the feeling made Blake swell, move
past the boundaries that were her physical self, extended her into greater
awareness of her surroundings.
There was a sensation like shattering stars.
. . . and the storm passed, leaving two girls with big, bright eyes staring at
each other as if to ask without words why they were no longer forces of nature,
balanced precariously against each other, prepared to destroy the world and
retake it for themselves.
And reality began to settle back in, messy hair and bite marks and heavy
breathing and damp spots and altogether too much sweat. Suddenly, and how
appropriate it would have been if the clock had just struck midnight instead of
9:30, the bed they'd been lying on, luxurious and far larger than anything they
could ever need, was a bunk bed again, barely holding both their frames. It was
almost like someone had poured cold water over the entire evening, especially
with how drenched both Blake and her partner suddenly seemed.
Speaking of her partner. Yang blinked rapid, incandescent, most likely the
morse code for 'huh', if the expression on her face was an accurate translator.
"Did I just explode?"
And in response to that sentence, Blake broke out into laughter like breaking
out of jail, every snort and coughing noise taking the opportunity to flee with
her as she used Yang's hair as camouflage for her daring escape. Yang's
laughter – rich as seven-layer cheescake – went out on a spending spree around
the town shortly after, running into the escaped convict in a seedy bar and
beginning a whirlwind romance that would end with them stumbling into each
others' bed for the night.
They fell together. In love, in lust, and towards the pillow this time, landing
in a heap that, all the giggle fits and tiny kisses and cuddle piling that it
was, could only be called a love nest. The chuckles and guffaws didn't really
die out, so much as they went to sleep, and Blake was only too happy to tuck
them in, pulling the covers up over her and Yang with a feeling like turning
the last page of one of her favorite books.
I just made love to Yang Xiao Long. Holy Dust.
"I never . . . that has never happened, I . . . no matter how . . . how hard I
. . . " Yang was blushing. Blake could hear it. Not in that her voice sounded
slightly different as a result or anything, but in that her faunus ears could
pick up the minute alterations in blood flow right underneath her cheeks.
Astounding. "That was your fault."
"Well, I should certainly hope so." Smooth and hot as melted butter. It was
good revenge for having been knocked flat as a pancake, Blake decided.
As if Yang had specialized pun-detecting senses which let her acknowledge their
existence even when she had no way of hearing them – and that would just figure
– she chuckled. "That is so embarrassing. That cannot have happened to anyone
else in the history of ever." Like a hand reaching out to grasp Blake's own
beneath the bleachers, Yang made the transition from mortification to concern
so slow and tiny, so absolutely hidden, that no one but Blake could ever
possibly notice. "I didn't hurt you, right?"
Blake shook her head, specifically in a way to make certain her hair lay
artfully around her shoulders as she gazed into Yang's eyes. How deep into this
was she? "Even if you had, it would have been worth it." Blake reached a hand
out to brush aside a stray lock of hair from Yang's forehead. Perhaps she
should ask for lessons. There was, it seemed, an art in artlessness, after all.
"Like biting into the first bite of pizza before it cools down all the way."
Not exactly her sexiest metaphor.
"Not exactly your sexiest metaphor." Right?
"A thousand pardons." One for every time Blake should have kissed Yang, but
didn't. "Unlike some people I could mention, I can't be phenomenally attractive
one hundred percent of the time."
"And yet somehow, you still always are." Yang's finger glided over Blake's
cheek like a stray thought – uncontrolled, but gentle, and likely a very
pleasant idea. "I mean, we just got done with some pretty hardcore girl talk,
and I still really want to kiss you until you don't know which way is up
anymore."
]Blake steadfastly refused to pay attention to the cheering squad doing
calisthenics in her chest, instead focusing on her schooling – that was to say,
schooling her face into a neutral stance. "So what's stopping you?"
Nothing, apparently. Wow.
After a few eons of blazing speed and starlit conversations, the rest of the
universe faded away, leaving only the disappointing Remnant behind as Yang
moved just an inch or two from Blake's body. "Man. I just realized: we are
incredibly goopy right now."
Blake was too busy remembering who she was to do anything like make brilliant
observations. "You're right," was about all she could manage. Then one of the
memories she was trying to chase after made a sharp left turn and exited her
mouth like it was a hole in a fence. "The books never bothered mentioning this
part."
Yang drew Blake into a friendly hug, with benefits, like the way it lasted
beyond what most hugs did, or the light line of kisses up her chin and cheek,
or the feeling of bare biceps pressing against her back. "What do you think?
Cleanup can wait until morning?" Or the way, when Yang's voice dropped to that
familiar seductive pitch, Blake could feel it rumbling in her chest. "After
all, we're just gonna end up getting these sheets dirty again anyway . . ."
"Actually, I was thinking we'd better go ahead and do it now." Blake let her
words warm and pop like bubbles in the bath and, ah, how apt. "We could save a
lot of water and time if we . . . showered together."
"I like that idea." Of course she would. Yang would have cannonballed into a
hypothetical bathtub offer, if it had been made. Blake couldn't truly say she
minded the thought of cleaning up after. "But snuggles first, okay?"
Blake settled her head underneath Yang's chin as arms drew more tightly on her,
and there was really no other word for it than belonging. "Mmkay."
Well, no. Belong wasn't the word of the moment, not really. Because this moment
of stillness was a picture, a snapshot, the last frame of a movie reel, the end
of a story chronicling a lonely life. But every ending, as it turned out, as
the cliché had warned them, was a new beginning. Pictures might have been worth
a thousand words, but Blake had always been stoic and soft-spoken. 'Mmkay', as
odd as it sounded, was a word that could withstand the world.
Let others have blindingly lengthy fits of ecstasy and eternal bliss as their
purpose in life. Things turning out okay in the end was all that Blake had ever
wanted, all that she'd never believed she could have, and all that she been
given.
Mmkay.
And then Yang was giggling, because she couldn't stand there not being an
epilogue – a first chapter.
"So, uh . . . " Yang chuckled like the rustling of pages, and Blake was certain
that if she looked over she'd be in danger of falling all over again. "How're
those heartstrings holding up?"
Blake couldn't help her laughter, even if it did make catching her own thoughts
much harder. And she'd just managed to get a hold of her breath, too. "They're
singing, Yang. Absolutely singing."
Perhaps, but the room was silent, save for labored breaths and, finally, a
pleased hum. "Not exactly sure what that means, to be honest." Yang's smile
surely lit up the room, for everything seemed brighter even when Blake wasn't
looking at her. "But . . . it sounds good."
Blake snuggled into arms like trees and a body like the Earth itself and
nuzzled under Yang's chin, forgoing laughter entirely – there were better
options in play, anyway.
There was a tiny bit of breath, as though the earlier panting and groaning had
forgotten something and said "goodbye" on their way back out. "Blake? Are you
purring?"
Blake felt like she was going to wake up in the morning transformed into a
beautiful butterfly, the way Yang's arms cocooned around her. Which sounded
silly, but then, so had a lot of things, lately."Your fault." Still good.
"That's . . . wow." Yang sounded for all the word as if she'd woken up in a
new, fantastic world of unknowable wonders. "You have no idea how awesome that
is to hear you say."
Blake snuck a kiss, quick as a bullet and about as metaphorically deadly, on
Yang's collarbone. "I hope it's as awesome as you made me feel."
"Geeze," Yang sounded genuinely embarrassed. They'd stretched far enough into
unfamiliar territory that night – what was a bit more? "Was it really that
good?"
"Singing heartstrings."
"If you say so." Yang was playing with Blake's hair again, and Blake guessed
somewhere along the way she had to have done something right.
"I do say so. There's a special place in my heart just for you." Blake's finger
tapped on Yang's nose at the final word of it, like she was typewriter – a
million unsaid words waiting to be brought forth. "Maybe even two of them."
"You have two hearts? I didn't know that." The many of Yang's teeth Blake had
already seen a million times decided to introduce her to the rest of the
extended family, and so Yang's grin grew past its normal enormity. "Makes sense
in retrospect, though. You've got way too much goodness in you for just one
heart, after all."
Blake was certain of Yang's typewriter status, now. The only problem was the
lack of white-out anywhere on hand. Only thing to do when typos happened was
pretend they were always supposed to be that way and press forwards. "You must
not have been paying attention in our Faunus History lectures, then." And press
forwards she did, like an army attacking a storybook, an advance in absurdity.
"All faunus have two hearts."
Yang's face – absurd though it sounded – seemed to shift into some sort of
crystalline structure. It always did when she was bewildered. Beautiful,
somewhat fragile, and suddenly slower and sturdier than it had been just
moments before. "Wait, what?"
Blake could act casual while palming a knife. She could school her face into
that of a schoolgirl, all ditz and eager attitude, while constructing
assassination plans in her head. She could act the part of the fool to
perfection, even as she worked to overthrow an entire system from within. But
there and then, it was all she could do to stop herself from giggling and
giving away the game. "We need both of them to pump all the extra blood. It's
the only way to deliver oxygen to our extra body parts."
"You're messing with me, aren't you?" If one could peel away crystals and find
extremely suspicious fruit at their center, that would be an apt description of
the look on Yang's face. Since one couldn't, there was no apt descriptor, and
she was merely on-guard.
"Perish the thought. I'm telling the plain, unvarnished truth." A small
tittering erupted from Blake's mouth. The traitor. Taken in by a pair of pretty
eyes. "Cross both my hearts."
"You are totally messing with me! Aaah!" If they weren't both lying down, this
hug Yang was giving Blake would have lifted her six inches off the ground or,
metaphorically speaking, about seven feet. "I'm so proud of you!" Somewhere in
the wide, wide world of Remnant, there was a hurricane going on. Being in one
of Yang's hugs felt like the exact opposite of that.
"On a list of odd things to hear while you're laying in bed with your lover,
'I'm proud of you' ranks pretty highly, I think." Blake took comfort in Yang's
broad, strong arms, because there really wasn't much in the way of choice.
"Oh, sorry. Here, lemme try that again." Yang coughed, and if ever there was a
sound like aiming a cannon felt, that would be really, really close, though not
exactly it. "Oh, Blake. I am consumed with lust."
"Perfect. Absolutely perfect." Blake's ears twitched, like excited children
raising their hands in class. Attention-seekers, they were, at least tonight.
"Don't you mean purr-fect?" And attention they would have. More than anything
else so far, Yang's fingers on Blake's scalp left her unable to compose in her
usual style. All she could think was good, yes, and the occasional thank you.
"Well, I suppose I do now." Blake's tone bordered on exasperation in much the
same way that Vale bordered on Grimm country – despite the two's proximity,
they really had nothing else to do with one another. "Didn't you already use
that one, though?"
"Figured after three weeks waiting, I could use it twice." Yang's shrug let
Blake know she thought that it was inevitable, and her gaze let her know she
thought they might have been inevitable, too. "But hey, if I could wait for
this, I can wait for anything."
"I suppose it's time to itemize my list of reasons I love Yang Xiao Long with
both of my hearts, then." A blistering list of lingering looks and thoughts
held close to the heart. Blake hadn't bothered writing it down, though. It was
too long, for one thing, and much harder to forget than her poetry. "You've
certainly given me more than enough reasons to make additions in the past two
hours alone."
"Gimme a couple more hours." Somewhere in the world, far from the hurricane,
there was a sunflower dripping its nectar. Apparently, Yang was capable of
sympathetic magic. "You might just have to get yourself a new journal."
"I suppose we'll just have to find out, then." Blake chuckled. It wasn't that
there was something funny, it was just that to find things humorous in the near
future, she sometimes needed a running start. "Though I have to admit, this
isn't exactly how I imagined all this playing out in my head."
Yang beamed at her, and for all the creaks and crevices inherent to Beacon's
construction and the thick curtains blocking the windows, Blake could swear
there were stars shining upon her head. "Too many Ninjas?"
Blake snorted, an elegant sound, like a wet fish attempting to escape through a
hole the size of a quarter. "Yang swept Blake up in her arms, a smooth and
effortless motion like picking a flower – and removing flowers seemed to be
what she had on her mind. 'I can no longer contain myself, Blake. I must have
you, immediately, this instant.'"
Yang was howling. This was the kind of laughter people three thousand years
from that moment would record in their myths and legends. Raw material to make
an entire world with. Probably somewhere around the tropics, with suntans and
string bikinis. "No, no, it's more like . . . She opened the door, and was
assaulted by the sight of Blake, knuckle deep in her own crevices, panting her
name. 'Hey," Yang said slyly, 'Need some help there?'"
Blake raised an eyebrow in a specific way she never had before. Associating a
word or sentence with a particular movement of the body was an adequate
mnemonic device, and the greater a possibility of reminding Yang she said that
at a later date, the better. "I didn't realize you were an avid reader of the
Ninja series."
"Please. Buxom, blonde, and good at sex?" Yang preened, like the reflection in
a mirror one had just spent three hours polishing to a perfect shine. "I'm
practically a protagonist."
"I can't say you're entirely wrong." Blake had, in fact, been thinking the same
thing. Probably for a lot longer, admittedly, but the same thing nonetheless.
"What else? We're two strangers, and the hotel only has one room left . . ."
"Ooh, even better," Yang enthused, which, speaking relatively to how she
normally spoke, meant she was doing somewhere around 90 in a 25-mph zone. And
about to hit the rockets she'd stolen and strapped to the sides of her bike.
"We're both the stars of our school's volleyball teams and we're also the only
two people left in the locker rooms."
Blake laughed, her heart feeling like it might, despite all evidence to the
contrary, race alongside. Then again, it had been doing a good job keeping up
so far this evening. "It's your birthday and I 'forgot' to get you a present. I
guess I'll just have to do, won't I?"
"I dunno exactly what, but there's gotta be a line about unwrapping somewhere
in there." Yang hugged Blake so tightly she could swear she felt her soul. It
seemed an odd time for it, but Blake wasn't about to start complaining. "Oh,
gosh, you've even got the ribbon thing going on."
"Clearly, it was meant to be." Blake was as serious and proper as Yang doing a
bad job impersonaitng someone who was very serious and proper. Probably Weiss.
"You, me, and 85,000 words of absolute nonsense."
Yang laughed, and picture coalesced in Blake's head of being buried in sand at
the beach, underneath a cloudless blue sky. "This is great stuff. We should be
writing it down so future generations can bask in our glory." Somewhere deep
down, a jealous part of Blake decided that she was to be the only one who ever
got to do any basking in regards to Yang.
But there were more important things to discuss than something as obvious as
that. "If you'll let me throw in just one more corny line." Something in
Blake's head realized that she wasn't going to be able to settle for only one
more, of course – corny lines were her potato chips, too salty, too good, and
not at all healthy for her. "I'm really glad it didn't happen the way it does
in the books. All at once, clear-cut, without the awkward stopping places and
too drawn-out conversations. That kind of thing. This feels more like . . ."
The words tasted so sweet, Blake took a moment to savor them. "This feels more
like a story we wrote for ourselves. Our thoughts. Our ideas."
"Our happy ending." Yang handed Blake the world on a platter of pixie dust –
all Blake had to do was believe.
"It isn't over yet." Maybe if Blake gave her cynicism what it wanted one last
time, it might go away and leave her alone for a while. It wasn't fair of her
to expect Yang to keep chasing it off, after all. "We could still technically
be a tragedy."
Yang kissed Blake like she was reaching back in time, seeking to draw a memory
forth from someplace she'd left behind. Blake felt she could do no less that
help her find what she was looking for. A payment for burning her cynical side
to ashes. "Too late for that."
Place period. End chapter. Skip the editing, just for now. Settle in on Yang's
shoulder and close eyes, just for a little bit.
Well, just until Yang starts writing the epilogue's epilogue with her giggling.
Effortless, perfectly graceful prose. "You're not going to believe this." The
laughter entered Yang's voice like it owned the place and had familiar spots to
fit inside the furniture in.
"You've made a habit of causing unbelievable things to happen before my
disbelieving eyes." Then I saw her face, na na na na, now I'm a believer . .
."Hit me."
"It's, like . . ." Yang's laughter was like the rain in the desert that was
Blake's life, she could swear up and down the savannahs it was so. "I literally
just got done bursting into flame in the middle of your legs."
"Well, I can definitely believe that." In an alternate universe, somewhere
where words were currency, the main export of the island nation of Belladonna
was sarcasm. It was still almost true here. "I was there, after all. Quite
intimately involved, I should say."
"Not what I meant." The first mark of genuine annoyance the entire evening,
like the pom-pom tip-top bit of a ski cap marking the hiker buried under an
avalanche of affection. "I was, you know, leading up to stuff!"
"Alright, I'll be gentle." Blake showed mercy, which seemed somewhat out of
character. She'd been more than merciless for the past few hours, after all.
"What were you leading up to?"
Yang tittered, which might have been appropriate considering Blake's vicinity
to certain not-fully-explored territories, but pointing that out would have
been crass. "You're really warm. Way warmer than I am."
Blake blinked, once, and like that was a switch for the grandiose machine
pumping out tiny bobblehead figured that was her brain, erupted into giggles.
And a snort, because apparently she was back to being merciless, even to
herself. "I suppose that is somewhat ironic." A last few bit of laughter and
the cogs were whirring again. Soon there would be enough tiny figures of Yang,
smiling crooked from all the bobbing their head was doing, to go around. "Not
too hot to handle, I hope."
"Not too hot. Not too cold, either." Yang, of course, as a country, would
export mostly puns and import mostly dramatic speeches, but with the nation of
Belladonna she'd share a roaring trade of tiny kisses. Like that one. "You're
just right."
"You're pretty swell yourself." The swell of the storm, perhaps – certainly, a
signal to Blake's own thunderclouds forming. "Figuratively and, if you plan on
snuggling my naked body all night, quite literally, the cat's pajamas."
"Blake, you're perfect. You're absolutely perfect." Sometimes it seemed like
Yang didn't portray emotions so much as ride them in a rodeo. See if she ever
fell off. At least that was how Blake pictured it. It seemed to be what was
happening now; laughter as ringing as four bells attached to a wheel rolling
down a thousand-foot hill slowed, as if hitting mud beneath its treads, and
gave way to a look that could only be called oddly serious. "I mean it. You're
perfect for me in every way."
Blake battered this idea about in her head like, well, like a cat, playing with
a ball of yarn. "If that's true, it's only because of you in the first place. I
owe a lot of who I am just to talking with you."
"Maybe that's true." Yang shifted, just a little, and Blake could swear the
fabric of reality bunched up like a blanket to make room. "Because sometimes I
could swear that one day all my deepest fantasies decided 'I'm gonna take a
nice long walk and think about heavy stuff' and bam, there you were."
"I do enjoy the thought of me making all your fantasies come true." Blake's
giggles could roll down hills, too, it seemed, though her hill was shorter and
covered in flowers, among other differences. "You deserve it. Special girl."
"You know, when you say it, I can sort of believe you." There was a fragility
to this smile, certainly, but there was a fragility to glass, too, and Yang was
no less sharp or strong for needing a moment not to break. "What I'm having
trouble believing, though, is that . . . is that you're real. Is that this is
real. Like, I know we did the whole pinching thing earlier, but it keeps
sneaking up on me that maybe we just didn't pinch hard enough?" Yang looked in
Blake's eyes like they were across a chasm, and she was having difficulty
deciding whether or not she could make the jump. "I never thought I'd end up .
. . like this. Anything but alone. Not lonely, but by myself."
"Never while I'm around." Blake gave out promises, in various sizes, like they
were sticks of gum or fish or slices of cake or even like big heavy books. The
thing was, she usually gave them out like they were the last stick of gum, last
fish, last slice of cake, last book she had to read. In that she didn't. Until,
now . . . "I can promise you that."
"That's the whole point." If sneaking could be defined as moving head on
towards somebody faster than they could react, Yang snuck a kiss. "I figured I
wouldn't ever end up with anyone in particular, and I was kind of fine with
that." Her voice wasn't distant, precisely, but it was traveling. "I'd have my
share of fun . . . maybe a bit more, you know, lots of cute people out there .
. . but in the end I'd grow old by myself, never settling down or having kids
or anything like that." Her eyes twinkled, like a spirit of mischief had
claimed godhood of the unfounded world in Yang's eyes. Before someone else
snatched up the prime real estate. "Maybe get a cat to keep me company."
Blake laughed without restraints. It was a dangerous thing, removing your
restraints on a roller coaster like Yang Xiao Long, but Blake heard cats always
landed on their feet. "How does it feel knowing that all your dreams are coming
true?"
"Honestly?" The path of Yang's pupils traced nothing short of a dryer letting
the question tumble inside her head. It was easy to tell, because of how soft
and warm the words came out. Yang was sort of like the fabric softener of life,
in that she made everything a little easier and smelled vaguely of wildflowers.
"It feels like I'm in some sort of fairy tale. And I know you're the author
because every little detail is perfectly in place."
"I appreciate the compliment." Compliments were small rarities to Blake –
pennies on the sidewalk. Yang was like finding out every penny she'd ever found
had been left purposefully as a trail to a mountain of cash. "But to be honest,
if I were the author, we'd have either gotten together much sooner, because I'm
impatient, or much later, because I'm an angsty teenager who lives on the
suffering of other angsty teenagers."
"Far as I'm concerned, the only angsting we're going to do is when we don't get
in line early for Pudding Day in the cafeteria." As if Yang weren't the type to
cut lines – and the type to let Blake go ahead of her. "You deserve a better
genre than angst, and I'm gonna give you all the romance and comedy you could
ever dream of."
Blake had long ago locked up her heart, thrown away the key, and trusted her
skills at thievery to get her through any time worth taking heart in. Never had
she thought that someone might get all the way in just by walking up and asking
nicely. And yet the tumblers moved, one at a time, but rapidly, one with each
word, something in the aorta or perhaps the left ventricle creaked as it
opened, and Blake remembered what it was like to love again.
The strangest part of all, of course, was that all this had already happened
two hours, two minutes, two weeks, two months before – and would probably
happen all over again tomorrow.
It was enough to make Blake want to take shots at the impossible, herself.
"Think we have a chance of going on forever?"
"Wouldn't put it past us." Something in Yang's smile reminded her that flowers
could, strange as it seemed, still grow out of the ground where volcanic ash
scattered. Once in a lifetime, perhaps. "We're both kind of stubborn, after
all."
Thanks to her feline eyes, Blake saw a lot of things in the darkness: movement,
shape, color . . . Yang, now . . . but at that moment, lying in the presence of
impossibilities and rethinking what they might be, Yang acting as a signal
flare to guide her, she saw something entirely out of the ordinary even for a
Faunus to find sneaking in the shadows.
"Something just occurred to me." She found the truth.
"Huh?" Yang's mood lent textures to the air, like temperatures. When she was
happy, the world seemed a bit easier to move through. When she was turned on,
each of Blake's breaths was laced with pheromones. When she showed interest in
something, like she was now, everything seemed to tunnel in on her smiling face
– though that last one seemed to happen a lot anyway. "What's that?"
"Earlier today, I was wondering to myself why I felt so comfortable taking off
my ribbon around you." Blake picked the words up and carried them out, one at a
time. Not because they were heavy, but because she'd finally seen how to get
them in order and just one wrong move could be an entire avalanche. "At first,
I thought it was all the time we've spent together, but I spent a lot of time
around a lot of people and all that ever did was make me tie my ribbon a little
tighter each morning. So maybe it wasn't that, but how close we were becoming.
Or maybe it was that you seemed to accept me for who I was."
"Or maybe the lack of fabric with your head in my lap was your subtle way of
trying to hint that it was okay if I let my hand wander a little while I was
massaging your scalp?" Yang poured the words, rather than said them, a thick
brew of heat, caffeine, and healing energies that could only be tea. Blake felt
it fill her, warm her, from the toes up, and with a sudden jolt she was alive.
Definitely tea of some kind, and now Blake was remembering where else she
tasted tea, and suddenly words were very difficult. ". . . maybe." Blake was
pretty sure that was a word. Possibly even the right one. "But at the same
time, not really. None of those answers sounded quite right, even if they all,
you know, played parts. I don't even feel comfortable taking it off when I'm by
myself, really. But when I'm around you . . ." Blake trailed off in imitation
of her own thoughts. They did that sometimes, wandered off by themselves and
brought back interesting things to play with. And if imitating her thoughts had
led her to Beacon, to Yang, to happiness in the first place, why not continue
holding her own mental state as a role model? "That's when it finally hit me.
What made you so special to me. I didn't expect to find an answer to my
question, but I did."
It was an odd thing to call her when Blake had been getting drunk off of her
all evening, but Yang seemed sober. Seriously so. Straight-edge, even. "What
did you end up finding out? If you wanna tell me."
"I always felt like I couldn't take it off, even when I was all alone. I just
didn't feel comfortable." They weren't words to smile at, and yet Blake felt
her two lips bloom. Perhaps, contrary, her garden grew with tea, not water. Tea
and girls who knew nothing about gardening. "But lying here in the darkness
with you, it hits me that even though I seem like a person who likes solitude,
I've never really been alone before."
"Is this some kind of riddle?" Her words climbed up the musical scale like they
were seeking a vantage point to look for rests, or possibly treble clefs. "I'm
not really good at those. I put all my points into punsmithing."
And Blake put all of hers into stoicism, and yet she seemed to be botching all
her rolls to avoid guffaws this evening. Huh. She'd picked up more B&B lingo
than she'd realized. "N – well. Yes. But I've already solved it, if only by
complete accident."
"Hard to believe you can do anything by accident." It was odd of Yang to say
so, when her hands were such obvious safety nets in the acrobatic routine
commonly called life. Odder, when Blake found herself falling on purpose.
"Every time I've thought I was alone, I was actually incomplete. Missing
something. And though I learned to ignore it so well that I forgot the feeling
was there, it gnawed at me." It was a familiar sensation, but from the other
side of a change in time and circumstance. Blake suspected she might feel the
same if she ever came back to visit Beacon as an accomplished Huntress, right
down to the sense that things maybe hadn't been as bad as she'd thought, even
if they were better now. "Or . . . sanded me down. Like it wanted to shave off
every place that the good things were supposed to fit into me before I got the
chance to find my place in the world."
"You deserve so much better than that." Yang's voice was sad, but certain.
There was a painting of a samurai withstanding a sea of youkai on a hill
overlooking a town, somewhere in her words.
"And I got something better than that." Blake realized a scant word into her
response that she hadn't even tried to deny that she deserved better. Already,
Yang was having an effect on her. She didn't know why she expected differently,
because, after all . . . "Because now, somewhere soft, still, and maybe a
little bit sensual, I've found the missing parts of me. My triumph, my hope, my
optimism. You." Blake gazed upon Yang like she was a million years in the past,
the first fire the world ever created. "When you're with me, I feel like I can
truly be by myself. As strange as that sounds."
"We're two sides of the same coin." Yang crackled with light, warmth, and joy.
The only strange thing about it was the lack of smoke. "You complete me, and I
complete you. Right?"
"Right." Blake looked over the contours and clashes between her body and Yang's
own, and tried to get used to the idea she'd stumbled upon. "Two parts of the
same whole." It was surprisingly easy, really. "I'm the Yin, and you're the . .
."
" . . . Yang." And there was the pun, from the look on her face, that Yang's
entire life had been building up towards. The next look on her face seemed to
express a realization that what her entire life had been building towards had
come and gone. "Wait a second, doesn't that make me the sun? What about all my
sunshine talk a while ago?"
"I didn't really want to say anything, because it seemed so important to you.
But between the two of us, you're the one who literally glows white-hot with
passion." Those were some of the best times, Blake reflected. Like packing a
giant into a human form. Like falling stars walking the face of Remnant. Like
symphonies given flesh. Oh, how Yang could glow. "Besides, can you really see
yourself as the moon?"
"Well . . ." But Yang could dim, too. Sometimes that seemed impossible, but
then, every so often, she'd shrink in on herself a little, and Blake would have
to remind herself it was true. ". . . you like the moon."
Blake traced Yang's face with her eyes, and then her fingers. But always with
her heart. "And I like you." No, that wasn't enough. "I love you, in fact."
That didn't seem like enough, either, but Blake didn't have anything else to
give. "So there is that, I suppose."
Blake's words must have cooked properly in the heat of the moment – Yang, too
seemed to find them worth savoring. Her fingers running gentle patterns without
direction, like careless constellations down the trail of Blake's spine, seemed
like more than adequate compensation for whatever small favor Blake had done
her. "I know it's kind of a strange question to be asking at this point, but .
. . do you want to be my girlfriend?"
Blake could have told Yang she already knew the answer to that question. She
could have pretended to think about it. She could have made some joke about
how, well, they were already partners in one sense of the word; what was one
more? She could have articulated how much nothing in the world could possibly
compare to the opportunity she'd just been given. She could have said or done
almost anything and everything, and any and all of it would have been entirely
appropriate to the situation at hand.
But sometimes metaphors and poetry and clever turns of phrase just aren't
necessary anymore.
Blake kissed Yang on the lips. Blake said "Yes." Yang smiled. That was all that
was important. That was all that had ever been important.
That, and the fact that the door to their room had just slammed open loudly
enough to break the night's silence into individually wrapped pieces, which was
the kind of sentence that only made sense when you had about six gallons of
adrenaline and an ocean of mortification flooding your brain. "We're back."
Weiss, in her usual fashion, had to remove the shades of self-aggrandization
before she could see what anyone else was wearing to an evening's events. Or,
in this case, not wearing. "You wouldn't believe the sales they – oh my
goodness."
"Toooold yoooooou," Ruby sang, precisely like the soundtrack to a horror movie
creeping up on the two teenagers lying naked in bed. This was not how Blake
envisioned stardom to descend upon her. "Those two have been spending way too
much time together lately."
                                    0-0-0-0
In the general chaos that followed, the only things able to be determined were
that A) Weiss was going to rent a hotel room for her and Ruby for the evening,
and B) Blake was "gonna be the bestest sister-in-law ever!"
The noise Ruby makes when hit by a pillow at high speed had been determined
long ago, but it never hurt to check up on these things.
                                    0-0-0-0
The cool night air contrasted against the warmth of Blake's body, and Yang
wished things might remain balanced that way for the rest of eternity. Blake
looked beautiful. More than looked, she felt beautiful, every dip and curve a
turn for Yang's mind to race around like a motorcycle, exhilaration and
adrenaline spiking the taste of dewdrops and rock candy yet lingering on her
tongue. A thrill, a meaning, a rush of air and breath of life.
And gorgeous. So absolutely gorgeous – dark satin and whispered shade and
honeyed words and perfect pearls given flesh, and life, and more kindness and
strength than Yang knew what to do with. Still flush with effort and racing
heart, even now, even asleep and the best was that she was smiling, purring,
dreaming of –
Yang wanted to believe it was her.
She'd put her yakuta back on, and despite a small, insistent, cloying,
opportunistic, well, heck with it, the word was horny, voice in the back of
Yang's mind, it suited her sleeping form, slightly messy and hanging loosely
off one shoulder. So put together, even as such a mess as Yang had made her,
and in all her wise decisions and careful considerations Blake had chosen her
to kiss, to hold, to make love.
Well, not really that last one. At least not like people meant it, anyway. They
may have had sex a few hours ago, but they'd been creating love for far longer
than just tonight.
Yang never believed she could find herself content in stillness.
A thumb and four fingers down the black length of her hair, like silk, like
liquid obsidian. "Your hair's better than mine. I'm so jealous."
It would be an inane thing to say even if her partner – in more than one way
now, of course - were awake, but that didn't seem like a good enough reason not
to say it. And it was true, besides. Blake had everything Yang didn't and
everyone claimed she did: the quick wit, the beautiful figure, the smile to
launch a thousand ships, the wonder and optimism and happiness. The heart big
enough to save a world from itself.
She was her sunshine, her only sunshine.
Yeah. Blake was her sun, and she . . . her moon.
. . . no, that didn't sound right, thinking about it now. The moon was a big
old broken thing hanging in the sky, and although Yang might have had problems
she was a long way from "broken", thank you very much. Plus Blake had a point
about that whole "glowing with passion" thing. In retrospect, it was sort of
obvious.
But then, a lot of things were 20/20 hindsight when Yang's life was all about
charging forwards. Like how relying on her Semblance to win a pumpkin-carving
competition was going to cause more problems than it solved. Or the fact that
relying on your Semblance to make cookies was more likely to make cooked
houses. Or the fact that relying on your Semblance to . . . well. There were a
lot of nails that particular hammer could drive through six feet of steel, and
that in and of itself was the problem.
They'd nicknamed Yang "collateral damage". Blake could probably come up with a
better one.
But there were other things obvious only after the historical fiction. Like how
of course Yang wasn't going to be able to find her mom with nothing but her
little red sister and her little red wagon. Or the fact that, no matter how
hard Yang tried, not everyone was going to like her. Or how far away Beacon
really could be from home, sometimes. Or . . . or how fast everything went when
you didn't try to keep up with it all.
Yang wasn't quite so foolhardy as to try riding a motorcycle backwards, except
that her life felt a lot like that sometimes. Everything behind her, so
obvious, plain as day. Everything in front of her, she could only hope everyone
else was quick enough on the uptake and quick enough on their feet to get out
of the way. Because there was no way she was gonna be able to tell what was
going on.
Until now. Because Blake had her back, which in many ways, meant Blake was
right in front of her, to tell her what was going to happen next. That had to
be it, because suddenly Yang could see the future crystal clearly, and it was
warm and real and bright, and Blake. Because Blake loved her.
She loved her.
Blake said Yang was her light, her sun, her needs and wants and everything she
ever wanted to be. She said Yang was beautiful, intelligent, kind, and, and
sexy, and then she proved herself with whispers and touches and gasps between
stolen kisses, and Blake said that she needed Yang just as much as Yang needed
her.
She loved her.
And it was so obvious, in retrospect. Almost as obvious to Yang, now, as the
fact that Blake didn't blush with her cheeks – well, she did, but when she
really blushed, she blushed with her ears. Yang didn't think even Blake knew
that about herself.
So maybe it really was the other way around. She was the sun, and Blake was the
moon?
Didn't sound right either. Didn't have the ring of truth to it. Couldn't be
right. After all, the moon was a still big old broken thing, and Blake was . .
. gosh. If Yang was yet unbroken, Blake was all but unbreakable. Immune to
collateral damage – but that didn't mean Yang wouldn't take a second thought
for her sake. So what were they, then . . . ?
A memory leapt out at Yang like the second Ursa from the bushes after she
rustled up the first one all on her own. Something age-old, from back when
science class was just as much fun as learning how to hunt Grimm.
A binary star. Two suns, each one brilliant in their own way, orbiting around a
common center of mass. Though, apparently, tonight, they'd both gone supernova.
Guess you could say that her and Blake's love was written in the stars.
Blake shifted, and Yang froze, guilty, awed. The moonlight gleamed in her hair,
and for a split-second Yang believed if she titled her fingers ever so slightly
she might catch some and keep it for a cloudy day.
Blake made her believe in miracles. Blake made her feel like she was a miracle.
Something incredible. She could never see it, but Blake possibly could. She
looked at her like she might, looked at her like she was the first breaking
beam of sunlight after a weeklong rainstorm, breathed her name like it fit into
a song that had been incomplete her entire life, came undone beneath her clumsy
fingertips, and Yang believed in miracles like fairy tales and hope and happy
endings, and possibly even in herself.
Blake snuggled a little further into Yang's arms, and that just about did it.
Poetry was exhausting, even involuntarily, even with such a ready subject quite
literally at hand. There was a time when even she had to give up the fight,
after all. The sun must set, and the moon – or the other sun, as it were -
would rise soon enough.
Yang moved, carefully, put the last of her energy into being as sure and
graceful of her movements as her girlfriend, what a word, what a world, and
placed the gentlest kiss she could allow herself on Blake's head. Right between
the ears. Maybe a kiss could serve as an angel's crown, she thought.
"Singing heartstrings." Yang completed the final stanza. With, of course, a
flourish. "Think I get it after all."
She surrendered.
End Notes
     So you've made it to the end! That means you either enjoyed my fic,
     or got far enough into it that you realized if you didn't finish it,
     it would be a complete waste of your hard-earned time. If it's the
     second, I'm so sorry.
     This fic has been, in part, an early Christmas gift to a Tumblr user
     dcgcharlie - one of the first people to ever really believe in my
     writing. Well, the first one who wasn't . . . obligated to.
     At any rate. Have a good day!
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