(Winter Hunt updates Tuesdays and Fridays)
Farmdale
Yatsuhashi took a while to get back with the ice. Velvet turned as he entered, noticing an awkwardness to his walk, his brows furrowed in deep thought. She watched him as he shuffled over to the bed, holding out the bucket of ice.
She took the bucket from him and sank a hand into it, dropping a few cubes into a towel to set on Fox' exposed ribs. "Hold this," she told fox, then turned back to watch Yatsuhashi. "Thanks, Yatsu."
The big man grunted and plopped down on his bed, staring at the far wall.
Velvet shared a concerned glance with Fox.
"Something going on there big guy?" Fox asked, holding the towel to his ribs.
Yatsuhashi grunted again, then turned to look at them. "Sorry, what?"
Velvet found her eyes narrowing a bit. "Is something wrong, Yatsu?"
"Oh. No," he shook his head. "Just tired I guess." He flopped back onto the bed to stare at the ceiling.
Velvet watched him breath for a moment, and then her eyes shifted to the door.
Coco went out the door just after he did. Just why did she leave? I don't remember her saying anything.
She frowned, and then the frown turned into a worried scowl.
"Yatsu… What did Coco say to you? She wasn't scolding you again, was she?"
On the bed, Yatsu's eyes widened. "Uh, no, no she…"
"Yatsu. What did she do?"
A redness crept up his neck and onto his face, which he turned to the wall. "Nothing important."
Velvet stood up abruptly. She turned and looked down at Fox, patting him on the shoulder. "You're healing fine. Once your Aura has fully recovered you should be right as rain."
"Velve…" Fox held out his hand toward her.
She turned and walked out of the room, making it down the hall to her own room before the tears began to flow.
Beacon
Laying in bed, she could smell Coco when the girl came back to Team CFVY's dorm room. She could always smell Coco when she was near. It was a mixture of subtle perfume, clean laundry, and the lightest hint of something that was uniquely Coco. It was a smell Velvet had quickly grown fond of.
Coco's usual aroma was present, though muted by an eventful day. Her perfume had mostly faded away, to be replaced by a story of the day's events. She could detect the familiar smell of Coco's sweat, probably built up during the fight and not yet washed away. Alcohol overlay this, a strong odor, making plain Coco's overindulgence. But on top of those, sharp, pungent…
Unmistakable.
She could smell the distinct scent of a woman. Girls didn't make that scent. It was a 'gift' that came with puberty. Breasts bulged, hair grew, and certain new emotions caused the creation of certain new and exciting fluids. Fluids that came with a particular odor.
Coco had been aroused. Quite a bit, based on the strength of the scent.
Velvet felt her belly grow warm, low down inside, followed quickly by a tingling, pulsing a little lower, a surface level demand reacting to a deep down desire.
Velvet quietly cursed her Faunus sense of smell as it triggered an all too familiar, but unwelcome response through sheer instinct. She opened her mouth quietly, trying not to breath through her nose, willing the reaction of her body away.
She heard the click of the bathroom door as Coco closed it, leaving behind only the strong scent and the needs it awoke, still strong in spite of her denial. She lay there, awash in the smell, fighting the urges it created, willing them away, wishing for the dampness she felt to dry and the 'itch' to cease. She lay there.
Fighting.
Weakening.
And then succumbing.
As the sound of the shower splashed through the closed door, Velvet's fingers slipped down the soft, peach fuzz covered skin of her stomach until they reached the elastic of her waistband. Only a slight hesitation occurred, one last small struggle for victory over herself, and then her hand crept down inside of her shorts and began addressing the tingling, moistened thing that Coco's arrival had awakened. So addressed, the little button grew, as though pushing itself into her small pinches, pushes, and pullings.
Her mouth clenched shut against the vocalizations of her growing pleasure, the tingling replaced by the heat and need in her belly. She could feel her breath escaping her in small shuddering patterns as she tried to keep the sounds from awakening her roommates, the concern of their notice only sharpening the feelings her fingers were creating. Soon, even this was not enough, and her fingers sought a deeper home, her palm claiming their former duty, and she began a rhythmic, powerful motion below…
Velvet felt her nostrils flare, the first sign of something else. Mixed in with the scent of Coco, and the growing smell of her own desire, was another smell. It was almost perfectly, but subtly not quite, the same.
It was the smell of another girl mingled with Coco's.
Not perfume. Not sweat. Not even shampoo.
It was the smell of sex.
Shocked, Velvet stopped.
No. No no. No no no. I won't believe it. I won't. I…
Her mind wouldn't let it go. She could smell the proof of it. She could see it in her mind. She could picture fingers, a stranger's, pushing into that moistened source of Coco's own scent, picture a growing arousal as legs tangled, as sexes kissed, as pools of dampness mingled into a new, complex perfume.
Unknowing, her fingers and hips began moving of their own accord, soft wet noises negating her care not to gasp or moan. She twisted, twitched, slowly writhed, caught between the needs of her own ardor and the fear of being found out.
A small, distant part of herself was horrified to realize that the images only made her hunger stronger, made her thighs grow damp with transplanted moisture, that the risk of being discovered made her own fingers feel even more powerful, made her body clench, made everything crash down in overpowering waves of…
She kept her eyes averted, pretending to be asleep when Coco left the bathroom a quarter of an hour later. She couldn't bear the thought of looking at the object of her lust while she still trembled, her shaking as much a result of shame as of pleasure.
Farmdale
The tears had not lasted long. Velvet had thrown herself on the bed almost violently, pressing her face into the pillows to absorb the moisture escaping her eyes against her will. She was not a cryer. Hadn't been since the day she learned how unjust the world could be.
The worst of it was that she didn't even know why she was crying.
No, that wasn't true. She knew the reason. What she didn't understand was why she was reacting as she was. She should have been angry. Should have been jealous. She should have wanted to pummel Coco or Yatsuhashi. Her tears should have been tears of rage.
Instead she just felt… little. Diminished. Unfulfilled. Like something was missing, and it was only in thinking someone else had whatever that missing thing was that she realized how badly the lack hurt. Everything just felt… Empty.
And now she lay on the bed, her eyes staring but seeing nothing, as her cheeks itched from the dried salt streaked down them.
A knock on the door announced a visitor. She quickly realized she had failed to close the door completely as it slowly swung open. She refused to roll over to look and see who it was, but lay in her bed, listening to the sound of footprints softly cross the carpet.
"You okay, Velvet?" Yatsuhashi's voice sounded hesitant.
She didn't answer. She knew it was petty. She didn't even feel like she was angry with Yatsuhashi. But the fact remained, she ignored his question and continued staring at the wall, sniffing away a small vestige of earlier tear induced snot.
The bed sank as Yatsuhashi sat down by her feet, the springs sighing in echo to his own unvoiced expression. She could feel him sitting there in silence for a moment, then felt him twist just a bit, his hand coming to rest near the back of her thighs.
"For what it's worth, nothing really happened. Coco was scared and wasn't really thinking straight. She blurted out something kind of dumb, realized how it sounded, and then ran off." He shifted on the bed a bit. "She's probably feeling really embarrassed over nothing."
Velvet thought about that for a moment, then drew her knees up to her chest. "What did she say?"
He laughed nervously. "Something I probably misinterpreted."
She frowned, and her voice grew stern. "Yatsu…"
"Okay." She could almost hear his hands go up in surrender. "She hugged me and said she needed me. She probably meant that she just needed someone to hold her a bit, to reassure her that everything was alright. Fox was fine. I was fine. You were fine. Everything was a big happy batch of fine, and she could quit beating herself up over might-have-beens. But Coco being Coco, my brain went somewhere else first, figuring it for another of her over the top antics and interpreting it very differently." She felt the big man squirm a bit. "So yeah. I guess it was me being dumb, not Coco."
"Yatsu…" She sniffed, her nose threatening to start running again. "Thank you for trying."
"Trying?"
"To lie and make me feel better." She surprised herself by truly meaning it. Yatsuhashi tended to being quiet and evasive, rather than being one to lie, even if it was a little fib to smooth things over. That he would go so far to make her feel a bit better was surprisingly heartening to her, though it didn't go so far as to take her current numbness away completely.
She heard the big man sigh again, acknowledging his defeat. "You really like her, huh?"
Her ears rubbed the pillow as she nodded. "Yeah. Stupid, huh?"
"Uh, what?"
She sighed, and rolled over so she was facing him over her knees. She quickly attempted to scrub some of the salt away, knowing it would accomplish nothing to improve the puffiness and redness around her eyes. "She likes girls. I've known that for a while. She likes boys too. And that's okay. I just always hoped that, since she liked girls, she might…" She stopped and shook her head. "You know, never mind. It's not important."
Yatsuhashi twisted around, letting one knee stay on the bed while the other leg slipped off the side of the bed. "It is important." He sighed and leaned forward, resting a large hand on her much smaller knee. "I'd like to hear more, if that's okay."
She hadn't thought she wanted to. But then the words began coming out, unbidden. "She was my first friend here, you know. I mean, even before the team formed, she came over to talk to me. I was sitting there, in my shorts and PJ shirt, over in a corner by myself, and she came over.
"I was sure no one would. I mean, there I was, one of those scary Faunus. It's not like I could even hide it from people in regular clothes, let alone in pajamas. So everyone was going to stay away, and I'd spend the night by myself. But then, there she was."
Velvet felt her lips curl up in a small, hesitant smile, much like the one she'd worn during the events she was relating. "She just came right up to me, held out her hand, and said, 'Hi. I'm Coco. I dig those shorts. Very cute.' I almost died on the spot."
"Of embarrassment?"
Velvet's smile spread. "They were pretty short shorts. I don't think I'd realized quite how much I'd outgrown them until I knew someone had actually been looking. But Coco didn't say anything about it. She just spread out her sleeping bag next to mine and talked with me well into the night. She was just… cool. About everything."
Yatsuhashi nodded, a small smile of his own flashing as he watched her.
"So once I figured out that she liked girls, I just kinda… Well…" She shrugged.
"Fell for her?"
Her smile slipped away. "Yeah. Pretty hard. Dumb, huh?"
Yatsuhashi looked away, his eyes studying something on the floor that she couldn't see.
"No. No it's not dumb."
They lapsed into silence for a bit, there. It wasn't quite a companionable thing, as both clearly were lost in related, but still separate worries. But neither seemed to be uncomfortable with it, either, until...
"Look, Velvet…" Yatsuhashi was facing her again, and his hand was gripping her knee tightly. He wet his lips a moment, as though composing his thoughts. She found herself staring, something intense in his gaze capturing her in an almost hypnotic fashion.
"So, we've known each other for a while. Fought against Grimm together, studied together, ate together. We've shared the same room, been through thick and thin together. We've even been, well… sharing body heat lately." His face, previously serious, took on an awkward look, and suddenly his other hand was scratching the back of his neck. "I guess what I'm trying to say is that, well… You mean a lot to me. You really do. And, well… Velve, I really think I… That I..."
The big man trailed off, and Velvet cocked her head, watching him carefully. She felt a small flutter in the pit of her stomach as a butterfly shifted about inside. A tiny portion of her brain tried to get her attention and warn her that something very important was happening, tried to get through to her just what this might mean.
Yatsuhashi's shoulders slumped, and his hand slipped off her knee onto the bed. He sighed. "I just… Look. I really think I know what you're going through. Don't…" He stood up and turned toward the door. "Don't give up, okay? On Coco."
Silently the man walked through the door, closing it behind him. Velvet lay there, staring, her attention caught by the fading warmth on her knee and feeling, somehow, disappointed.