Buying Honeysuckle


It was at this point in her life that Yang had pretty much given up. She wasn't going to go as far as commit suicide - that was an overstatement - but she was at a loss. How had the years gone by so fast? After she had graduated highschool with her 200-something class, she decided that she was going to take a gap year and just work. When that year passed, she insisted for one more year to her parents and continued working at a grocery store. After several years of this, she learned that Ruby was already about to graduate college, and she had to come to terms with reality. Yang Xiao Long, valedictorian of her class, well-known in the community, volunteer for local charity Helping Hands, star athlete for Beacon Senior High School, was broke.

"Now look at me," Yang muttered to herself as she hovered her thumb over the link. "What's wrong, Yang? Can't click it?" She clicked the link anyway and stared dumbfoundedly at what lay before her. A beautiful woman was leaning against a slightly older man with a dashing smile, and the two portrayed a loving, mutual relationship. Yang was hypnotized by the site's promotional photos, then shook her head. Time to get to work. She hit the link to sign up and started filling out the form.

The first part was easy. All she had to do was say that she was a woman, she was a sugar baby, and she was looking for women. She added her email, and the website cheerfully redirected her to another page. It asked for a username as well, which Yang thought was pretty useful. Slowly, she began to relax as she typed in something quickly and added a couple of pictures from her Instagram. She hoped her username wasn't too bad. Or cliche. What usernames did they look for the most? Yang quickly decided to move on and put in her birthday (only the year would be displayed, but she put in a different month and day just in case), and her location. After that she put in her physical attributes: she was 5'8", fit and curvy, and she was Human. She glumly added that she was only a high school graduate. Single. No children unless you counted Zwei. Not a smoker, but she did occasionally drink socially. No preference when it came to politics.

'What are you looking for?'

Did she want to travel? Did she want to have sexual relationships? Did she want to want to have shopping sprees? Did she prefer Humans, Faunus, or was she fine with both? Was it an online-only relationship, or would she be willing to meet up? These were only a few of the many questions that she had to answer. Yang wasn't sure exactly how to answer all of them, either. Was she passport-ready? Did sugar babies travel internationally?

Yang answered as many of the questions as she could, skipping some, and finally made it to the last step.

'Talk about yourself!'

She was 24 years old, and she enjoyed working out, taking care of plants, and she liked fashion. She was into anime and she liked EDM music, but she also liked all kinds of music. Her favorite color was lilac, and she liked dogs (but she liked all animals). Yang did her best to make herself seem approachable. She hit enter, and she was in.

Before going on this site, she wouldn't have expected it to be in a dating site format, but that's just what it was. Yang scrolled through several profiles, expecting the many women and couples she found. Once in a while she saw a man and ignored him. What boggled her the most, however, was the fact that there were so many rich people around her. Ⱡ300,000 a year? Net worth Ⱡ2,000,000? Yang whistled lowly as she continued to scroll, suddenly feeling intimidated. This was insane. Maybe she shouldn't have gone on this site. Yang lingered for a while longer and closed the tab once she had enough. Her stomach growled.

"I wonder if Ilia left any pizza. Pyrrha and I need to order more from now on," Yang grumbled as she stood up and went to the fridge. Unsurprisingly, there was no pizza. 2 boxes clearly wasn't enough for them now, especially since they had a new roommate who practically inhaled food like Kirby.

At least Ilia was good at paying her rent and keeping her space clean. Otherwise there would have been a nice, peaceful discussion with the redhead that certainly wouldn't be about the chameleon Faunus.

As she heated up a pot of water on the stove for some quick and easy beef ramen, she felt a buzz in her pocket.


Blake Belladonna was by no means a sociable person… at first glance, anyway. She preferred to keep to herself most of the time, but every once in a while she liked to hang out with friends.

That, however, was the problem. She liked to hang out with friends, but she kept to herself. That wasn't completely her fault, though. Being the daughter of a prestigious family meant that she had responsibilities to attend to.

"Weiss, I'm tired of this life," Blake muttered as she rested her head in her arms.

"Mhm," Weiss answered. "Believe me, I know. That's why I stopped." Blake pulled her head up and looked at the ex-heiress.

"You had a good reason to leave. On the other hand, I'm fine with my life, but I just get so tired of being busy all the time."

"And that's why you ended up breaking things off with Velvet?" Weiss said.

"No, that was because Velvet wanted to get more involved with her college."

"Same difference. You were both busy. That sort of relationship doesn't work out if you're both busy." Blake bristled a bit at the way Weiss said 'that sort of relationship,' but didn't address it. On the outside, it really did seem to be a bad thing, but Blake saw it more as a… service. A transactional one. She was honest about what she wanted from the get-go, and her sugar babies were as well. Blake had tried to explain to Weiss many, many times that sugar dating wasn't about sex and that it was not a fetishtic relationship (well, it could be). Blake was just far too busy to be able to tend to an actual relationship, and sugar dating was convenient for both parties. Blake paid for someone to take out on dates, and the person in question received money. It was an easy system.

Blake chose to open her scroll and look through the site once more. She was incredibly picky with her girls. Most of them said the same things. They were young, in need of money, and they were looking for fun. Blake ignored them and refreshed her feed, looking at the newcomers. Slut, slut, bot, normal, normal, slut again, and another bot. She paused as she glanced over a normal profile. Firebaby247. Gods, that was so cheesy. Blake smiled, appreciating the girl's humor, and clicked on it now that her interest was piqued. Surprisingly, the blonde was her age, and she wasn't in college.

"Did she finish, or did she even attend?" Blake murmured to herself.

"What?" Weiss called out.

"Just talking to myself," Blake explained to the petite woman. "I'm looking again."

"I thought we were hanging out," Weiss complained. Blake ignored her and read through Firebaby247's profile. She was a newbie at this, as far as Blake could tell. The profile had an innocent vibe to it. Blake decided to pay the Ⱡ5 and message her.

'Good afternoon. How are you doing today? I saw your profile picture, and I noticed that your eyes are just my favorite shade of lilac. I absolutely adore them.' Sent.


Yang showed Pyrrha the message as soon as Pyrrha had come home from work, and the two stared at it in disbelief. One was dumbfounded on how the other had the balls to go through with what was once a joke between two broke friends, and the other was dumbfounded by how quickly she had received a message.

"You're insane," Pyrrha said, shaking her head. "And she's your age? She's doing something right with her life, unlike us,' the tall woman joked. Yang gave Pyrrha a look, and Pyrrha cleared her throat.

"Right. Well, I don't know Yang. I'm not one to judge, and I won't judge you if you go through with this, but… you do know how this looks, right?"

Yang bit her lip and closed the message, then opened it again. The dark haired woman wouldn't be able to see if she read it or not, and Yang had 24 hours to respond to the message before it expired. The brawler was still a bit wary about the website even with all of its safety precautions.

A piercing ringing cut through the silence. Yang watched her scroll light up, not even bothering to answer. Pyrrha watched her with grim viridian eyes, knowing exactly why Yang wasn't answering. The two sat in silence until the scroll finally stopped ringing.

It was quiet and tense for a few seconds before Pyrrha took Yang's scroll and looked at the message again.

"You know, it's basically like dating, right?" Pyrrha offered. "Meet in a public place, get to know each other, all of that. I don't know when you'll discuss payment plans, but surely the woman would know what she was doing. Her profile seems to be genuine. And-" Pyrrha's mouth opened into a soft 'o.'

"What is it?" Yang asked.

"She's a Faunus."

"So? What about it?"

"Hm. She just looked familiar to me. Maybe I've seen her somewhere. What do you think?" Yang took her scroll and looked at the profile picture again. She saw the ears, which she had completely missed before, and she noticed that there was a tiny mole near her armpit that was almost unnoticeable, but other than that she didn't find anything familiar about the woman.

"You're just comparing her to that cat Faunus that works at the roller-skating, you racist." Pyrrha was miffed.

"I am not a rac-"

"It's a joke, Pyr. Geez." Pyrrha looked like she wanted to defend herself again, but the two were interrupted by the sound of the front door shutting.

"Hey guys," Ilia called out from the other room. "I brought Mistrali takeout if you guys want some. I got a lot, so if one of you could please help me get the rest from the car, that'd be fantastic. Also, the cola is mine."

"I'll do it," Yang volunteered, rising from her seat. The topic forgotten, Yang went to the living room to help Ilia, and Pyrrha went to her bedroom to change out of her work clothes and take a shower.


"So what are you going to do?" Ilia inquiried as she reached over with her chopsticks and nabbed an egg roll. She crunched on the fried food and moaned slightly. Pyrrha glanced at Yang, using her spoon to scoop some white rice into her mouth. Yang picked at her noodles and sighed.

"I really don't know. It was a funny idea last night when we were drunk, but now I can't believe I'm considering it."

"You did more than consider it," Ilia pointed out, proceeding to finish off the egg roll. The Faunus chewed a few times and swallowed. "You set up your profile already. And got a message. Did you get any more after her?"

Yang picked up a bunch of noodles, only to lower them and rest her hand on the edge of the paper plate.

"Two more, actually. One was another woman all the way in East Vale, and the other one was a bot, I think. Or a really creepy man pretending to be a woman. I can't really tell. The East Vale lady is racist, though. She literally wrote 'Only looking for Humans, not animals' on her profile."

"Ew, gross," Ilia replied, her nose wrinkling in disgust. "Gods I hate people like that."

"I can't believe people like that still exist," Pyrrha said, stretching her arms and groaning. "But I suppose some people are unwilling to change. A shame, really, when we're in a time of progress."

"Yeah… Hey, anyone wanna play Eclipse after dinner?"

"Not me, I have a morning shift at the gas station," Pyrrha said.

"I work a double shift at the orphanage," Ilia chimed in. "And I'm dead tired from those twins today. You know what they did to their sister? They tried to convince her to drink a bottle of lemonade, but they put pee in it!" Yang burst out into laughter, and Pyrrha looked disapprovingly at the blonde.

"I'm sorry, it's just… that was actually smart! How did you find out, Ilia?"

"The bottle was warm," the chameleon Faunus dryly responded. This time Pyrrha had to stifle her own laughter.

"Well, maybe the little shits weren't so smart after all."

The three roommates lounged in the living room for a while until Pyrrha announced that she was going to bed. The two bade good night to the redhead.

"Hey Yang, are you going to say yes?" Ilia asked, half an hour after Pyrrha had gone to bed. "I know you're going through tough times now. I know that I've only been here for a couple of months, and we haven't known each other for as long as you and Pyrrha have, but I just wanted to let you know that I'm here for you." Yang appreciated the gesture, and her eyes softened.

"Honestly, I don't know at this point. I'm a little bit scared." Yang laughed a little. "I mean, me, scared? It's laughable, right?" Ilia shook her head.

"This is different from boxing and bungee-jumping and whatever other crazy things you've done. You get a kick from thrill seeking, don't you? But this is a business relationship, and you're the product that's being bought."

"I'm the product, huh?" Yang echoed. Was she able to be a product? A sweet girl who had to be interested in this woman, go on dates… and get paid for it?

After Ilia excused herself to retire for the night, Yang was still pondering her next move. She had already denied the other requests. The ball was in her court, and she didn't know what to do with it.

Reply.

Ignore.

Easy money, or uncharted territory?

Was it easy?

It wasn't.

Yang pressed the 'Enter' key and went to bed, putting her trust into Fate's hands. If she responded, great. If not, Yang would find some other way to get rid of her debt.

She'd shower in the morning before her shift.


A/N: Hello again! It's been a while, hasn't it? I've been getting back into the RWBY fandom... slowly but surely...

Anyways, I present to you "Buying Honeysuckle"! It took me a while to figure out a name for this fic, but after a few minutes of debating, I decided this would fit this sort of AU. If you've read "Side by Side", thank you for reading it! That fic was my baby, and my pride and joy. However, I wanted to move forward and branch into a new AU. Unlike SbS, in this AU there are Faunus. Yay for Blake's cat ears!

If you ever want to reach out to me, you can always PM me here on FF, Tumblr, or Twitter. Same username, same Kisaramix. And as always, feel free to leave a comment/review/criticism/greeting!