Chapter 7: It's Called Hentai and It's Art [ASMR] [F4M] [NSFW]

"This is filth. FILTH!"

— 14 —

Getting home late on a weekend wasn't something I was used to. Mostly because the past weekends I had, Fridays included, been all alone with nowhere to go. The rest of my team had been in detention. And I had to wonder if they always came back this late, or if I had just really been working until this ungodly hour of my own accord.

I opened the door, and jumped a little as I saw Blake. She was sitting on her bed, nestled somewhat under the covers, using her sparse pillows as a backrest. As soon as our eyes met, she gave me what I almost imagined was a smile, and folded her book shut, which, with those cat eyes of hers, probably meant she was able to read with just the moonlight. Blake removed her earbuds, and said in a whisper, "Your timing's awful. You're ruining the best part of the book by being here."

I removed my shirt and tossed it onto my bed. Working on my socks and shoes, I said in the same whisper, "Ah, got to the porn part?"

"It's not porn!"

I gestured vaguely. "That's the one I bought you way back when. You really think I didn't skim through the good parts?"

Blake curled her legs up into an almost fetal position, glaring at me. "So that's why this part of the book is sticky."

I laughed, only to cut the noise off shortly as I glanced at Weiss. With little cucumbers over her eyes, there was no way she could hear us with her headphones on. Some kind of local equivalent of Beats by Dr. Dre or whatever. Knowing her, it was probably some kind of self meditation guide for how to best be a racist. Remember to use the hard R. Only cool kids use the R. People say nice things about you when you disparage the poor.

Meanwhile, from my experience, Shamrock was one hell of a heavy sleeper. She, right now. I basically needed to invoke chemical warfare to get her up.

Opening the little closet to find the part I had cordoned off for myself, I paused. I went through some of my outfits and other miscellaneous accoutrements. There was something hiding under a couple of my bags. I hadn't really gone through most of them. A waste of space, mostly. Objects I figured were mostly sentimental from the vague blurriness I felt at the corners of my perception whenever I held them.

I felt the ghost of Coco's hand slapping my ass as I pushed one of the duffle bags aside. There, resting at an odd angle on the ground beneath them, was a guitar. Mine. I searched my mind, and recalled that Jaune in the show had once tried to seduce or ask Weiss out by playing the guitar at her.

You can't be a well-rounded Huntsman if all you do is hunting stuff.

The thought came with such clarity that I half expected Coco to appear beside me, the newest in my long repertoire of psychoses. But it was just a particularly pertinent memory, like those of Lisa.

I looked down at my hands. They weren't as soft as you might imagine. A couple of curious calluses suddenly made a lot of sense. I only knew how to use my sword and shield because of the inherent muscle memory of this body. And while my grandfather had taught me a little bit how to play acoustic guitar, that had been a subjective decade ago.

"Think you could play?" I mumbled under my breath to Jaune, reaching out my hand to take the guitar.

"What?" Blake asked.

I emerged from the closet, carrying the guitar. "I said, you could just get the audiobook version. Less sticky. Easier to fall asleep to."

In a weirdly soft voice, almost like she was complaining in church, she said, "Wasn't trying to fall asleep."

Setting the guitar down beneath my bed, I looked over my shoulder at her, frowning. "Then what?"

She didn't meet my eyes. "Detention didn't last this long for us."

Oh.

We didn't say anything for a moment. We let the words hang like aerials.

I swallowed. "I… appreciate that."

Blake scrunched up her cheeks, as if about to retort something. Claim that it wasn't for my sake. That a part of her wasn't worried I had been out late doing something unknown. The whole tsundere shtick. Instead, she just nodded.

"Yeah," she said.

"Yeah," I repeated.

Neither of us knew how to continue the conversation.

About a subjective couple months or so ago, I'd had a girlfriend. The story had played out the same way it did with most women in my life. Stole her heart. Then done my own thing with her as a secondary concern. Until whatever we had had together died just as quickly as it showed up. Accused of being cold, distant, and unemotional in the long term. It had been her story all along, and I was ruining the plan.

Until I murdered her.

I sat on my bed, pressing my fingers into my eyes until I saw spots. Eric had the same problem. When it came to people, I didn't really get them that well. No, that's not correct. I understood and got along with people exceptionally well. Some of them even genuinely liked me as a person. It's just a matter of digging deeper into that, that it fell apart. Women especially. What the fuck do you do when it comes to girls after you get along with them? We date. We sleep together. And a month later she never wants anything to do with me.

Already, every time we spoke, I had this feeling like Blake would start seeing right through me. Every time things got heavy, she would realize part of me was going through the motions, scrambling through poor excuses, and reveal that I had genuinely no idea what the fuck I was doing or saying.

I had been out late for my own reasons. Trying to prove to a bunch of military fucks that I could compete on their level. And here Blake was, staying up late, just to make sure I actually got back. It was a small thing. It was subtle. It proved her care was genuine.

What the fuck could I do to compete with that? This wasn't how I thought about dealing with people. I was still thinking of some kind of grand gesture to finally win over Weiss to my side. To make her view me as a person like Blake did.

I needed a drink. Badly. To knock the thoughts out of my head, and clock me out to sleep all the same. Made me wish I hadn't spit out the scotch all over Qrow. That had been a week ago, nearly, and I still wished I had swallowed. It was that feeling you got whenever you got dehydrated and couldn't take a drink, you kept thinking of moments in your past where you took water for granted.

"Jaune?"

I looked up. She had crawled out of her covers, reaching out a hand in my direction on all fours. I made myself smile.

"I don't take myself too seriously, do I?" I asked.

The question seemed to take her off guard. She sat back down, legs folded beneath her. "Depends. Is not-serious Jaune going to call me 'Mittens' again?"

A hot flush of embarrassment crossed my cheeks. I shook my head.

She pursed her lips in concern. "Then, I don't know. Is something bothering you?"

My eyes went to Weiss. Blake seemed to interpret that as an answer, and nodded.

"I don't know, either." She offered me a kind of half smile, tilting her head a fraction.

I sighed. "Met some girl did today named Coco who was trying to tell me I was taking things too seriously. That was half of my problem. But the whole time, I kept thinking." I shook my head, still pressing fingers into my eyes. "When I didn't take anything seriously, just drowned myself in a black hole of hedonism to make the pain go away, I was an unrepentant asshole and I made the people closest to me hate me. For fuck's sake, Blake, I unironically like you now. I know that sounds really dickish in me, but you're cool. I just—" I compressed a noise in my throat. "Getting to know you, I feel—"

I threw my hands. "Fuck! I'm just shooting myself in the foot. I'm not making it better. I'm probably just making you feel worse."

To my immense surprise, she crawled back up onto all fours. And with an almost cat-like butt wiggle, jumped across from her bed onto mine. None of our beds were particularly far apart in this little room. We had tried sectioning off little corners to ourselves, but I didn't like that because it made the floor plan look like a swastika. Not that that symbol actually meant anything in this world, but still.

Blake sat up beside me. I could almost feel the heat radiating off her body. "Hi," she said, and I ran my tongue along my gums, unsure how to respond.

"I think it's kind of funny," she said, tucking her black hair behind her ear. "All of these speeches you try doing, and you still suck at them. You think you'd be good by now, but you're not."

I grimaced, and she just laughed. Only to quickly stifle it Weiss shifted in her sleep. But given that the girl wasn't waking up, we kind of just resumed.

"I think," she said slowly, "There's a difference between taking things too seriously, and losing yourself in a black hole. I have that problem too. I just, I don't know, I just get so fixated on something being wrong that I can't stop thinking about it. I think and I think and I think and it just turns into an obsession. Until I—"

She gave me this kind of fake smile that legitimately made me uncomfortable. Twisting her head around sideways to look up at me like something out of an old horror movie.

"I wanted to kill him, you know?" she said softly. I had the feeling I was about to star in a snuff movie, the way she was looking at me. "Cardin, I mean. I just kept thinking about how much of an asshole he was, how much I hated him, how he got away with bullying a girl because she was born the wrong species, and no one cared. It felt like only I cared, and she hated me for caring. And the only reason you cared was because I cared and—he was on the ground, and I wanted to kill him so badly. Just nail him to the ground like they do on the frontier. And the only thing that stopped me was you."

I nodded slowly. "You had a look in your eyes. I didn't know what we were thinking, but I didn't like it. Looked like something was hurting you. The kind of face you'd make before you got drunk just so you wouldn't second-guess yourself before doing something you know you'd regret sober. I would know."

Blake swallowed, the smile going with it, thank God. "I just kept thinking and then what? What if I did what I wanted to do, what I thought would feel good, and then what? Where did I draw the line? What separated me from what people like the White Fang are doing?"

"Nothing," I said.

She ran her hands through her hair, stopping to finger at her hair bow. Where her cat ears would be. "And then what?"

I reached out a hand, and then stopped. I didn't know what I was doing. Maybe going on some old chauvinistic instinct. "And then you would have still been my partner, Blake. He wasn't worth it, but you are. Even if you didn't agree with me, I still woulda done everything I could for you. Promised I'd always be there for you."

She looked at my hand, and then back up at me. And then leaned against me, our shoulders touching. It wasn't any kind of romantic connection, nothing of that nature. Blake was just leaning on me for support, literally and metaphorically. And I had to admit, I enjoyed the human touch. In a very real sense, it felt like something I needed. I leaned back into her, until our weight supported each other just sitting there. Her head against my shoulder. My eyes forward but seeing nothing.

"Everybody says that," she sighed. "You're the first person dumb enough that I believe them."

"Thanks, you too."

She laughed. This bleak little sound like the chiming of bells without anything inside them, clinking against each other in a dying breeze. "I been thinking about it ever since that day. I don't think I really understand you. But I don't think I really understand myself either."

The way she phrased that didn't slip by me. A slight word order that I would use. Like the way I spoke was infecting her. I smiled.

"I know you're the kind of girl who would want to kill someone, want it really badly, but could never do it. And forced to make that choice, would rather abandon everything in your life than forsake your morals."

She was quiet for a moment. "When I was growing up, my mom told me to never wear my heart on my sleeve. People would see that. They would use it against me. So I should keep my heart buried deep in my chest where it belongs. Where even if it bled, it would just be internal. Just be my problem."

I adjusted my shoulder, trying to make it a little bit more comfortable for her head. "My mom punched me in the face because I got drunk and then I wandered off into a swamp and bit an alligator. We have a lot in common."

She didn't want to laugh, but it came out anyways. "You always know the perfect thing not to say, and then you say it anyway. I hate you, Jaune."

"Would you rather me just be a sad-sack punching bag?"

Blake gave me a serious expression. "But that's what I mean. What you were talking about earlier, that is. There's a line between being so serious it's an obsession, and knowing when to be, I don't know, I hate saying it like this, but a human being."

"You're no less human than I am. Probably more so. I stand by that." I sighed. "My older sister, Indigo, called me while I was working. I work through my detention. Up there in this IT server room in the CCTS Tower." I pointed upwards at nothing, unnecessarily. "And all this time, I couldn't help but think that I wasn't the same boy she thought she knew, the boy she loved as a brother. I'm just some fuck-face wearing his skin. I'm Jaune, but I'm not. The same person that my sisters and my mother and potentially my father knew, raised, and love, I'm not him. And every time Indigo tries to be there for me, part of me just, I don't know, it can't handle it. It feels like she's faking being nice to me, because that is just who she is, how she expects herself to behave around the boy named Jaune Arc."

She put her hand over mine and squeezed. "I saw… people back there. In the hospital, I mean. This cowboy, this soldier, and you. And then there was you you."

Reflexively, I flinched away. She held her position, letting me take my hand away. But she kept leaning against me. After a moment, I sat back up, unwilling to let her just fall without my support.

"Yeah. That."

She took a big breath, puffing up her chest. In a masculine tone with a nasal twinge to it, she said, "Ah don't me done care none bout ya girl's problems. Ya girl ain't fidna talk about it, I don't me will hear me hwat. But I is me a-there for her all is same."

I couldn't help myself. I broke down laughing. "Just what the fuck was that, girl?"

She punched me in the shoulder. "I'm pretty sure that was an exact quote from you."

"I don't sound me like that none!"

Blake gave me a look so flat that it achieved true level and ruined Morty's life. "Yeah-huh, you do. And if you don't want to talk about it, that's fine. There's things I don't want to talk about. Believe you me, as a frayed bundle of neuroses pretending to be human just the same as you are, I can understand. The least I can do is respect that back, Jaune. You're kind of my only friend like that."

I looked away, my eyes going to Weiss on her bed. She had rolled over slightly, knocking her headphones off.

"You're kind of my only friend, period."

"Yeah, what he said." She winked. "Gosh, I hate you. How come every time we talk we get all mushy feely girly?"

"Because deep down you can sense that I know how to paint my nails and you don't."

"Pfft! No one paints their nails better than my dad. Who do you think taught me?"

"I think your dad might be gay."

Blake gasped, her hands going to her cheeks. "Oh no! How am I going to tell his wife!"

And there I was again, laughing with Blake. It took me a while to compose myself. Mostly because I was trying to keep my laughter quiet, which we both seemed to agree made it only funnier.

"Thanks," I managed to say. "I don't know. I feel like we didn't really accomplish anything, but I still feel better."

She rolled her eyes. "Pretty much sums up every conversation we have these days. I'm getting pretty sick of these heart-to-hearts. Maybe next time we talk, how about we just call each other names? But not Mittens. That one sucked."

"But I liked Mittens!"

She stuck her tongue out at me. "Never gonna happen." Blake stretched out her arms over her head and made a little moan. All before getting that look in her eyes like a cat about to make a jump, staring at her bed.

I grabbed my bunched up shirt and threw it right over her head as she made the jump. She made a noise in the back of her throat as she completely missed and face planted into the ground, sliding under her bed.

Blake stood up in a huff and bared her teeth at me. Before throwing her shoe right at my face.

I let out a little yelp as it hit paydirt. Only to realize that the quick glow of my Aura had blocked it.

From her bed, Weiss inhaled deeply. Blake and I both realized we were probably about to wake our teammates up. So we settled in for just flipping each other off—I started it, and she reluctantly returned it with two fingers raised. All before we settled into bed ourselves for the night.

And you know what? I honestly couldn't even tell you what the hell she and I had talked about this entire half hour or whatever. But for the life of me, I felt better.

Maybe, just maybe, with all the effort I had put into trying to fix myself, Blake and I did deserve each other. As shitty, awful, mentally handicapped friends who consistently made each other's lives worse, but still friends.

a/n Anyone else ever notice Jaune is shirtless in like half of his scenes in this fic? Literally Mr. Fanservice. Victim of the female gaze.