DOUBLE UPDATE!

Chapter 4 – And add you to my Tapestry…

=(✦)=

Jaune Arc, with her at the movies.

I'm not sure what we were thinking in the first place. If we were meant to be in love for only a week, was it meant to be fake but as best as we could make it? Or as real as any proper romance, doomed to all the heartache that losing that love brings? Regardless, I'm coming to find that what we have is the furthest from fake.

She clutches my hand tightly as we watch a movie under the shrouded dark of a theater.

It's not even a horror movie. She's long since conquered her fear of beasts and so a family movie with a tense action sequence has her bursting out of her cheeks with trepidation. She's so animated when she's lost in her own little world. The black and red shades of her hair dancing and intermingling like windswept velvet.

It isn't a date. My family is here, and so are the Marigolds. Me and Ruby are ostensibly here as friends, but when she apologizes for squeezing my hand too tightly and kisses my cheek before she tunnel-visions back into the film, I feel like we've only gotten closer, not further apart.

When the movie ends, we're all marching like a small army into a family restaurant down the street. Not a fancy one with glass walls or musicians, but we occupy seven booths in a what can aesthetically be a considered diner – where a jukebox plays and the waitstaff are on rollerblades like we're a millennium back in time – and it feels like we've all gotten comfortable with each other.

"Haven't seen a jukebox that old or… well-kept," she says. "Must be worth a fortune."

"It keeps getting stolen, actually," I tell her. The polished, gleaming metal is like a beacon under the fluorescent light at the end of the room. "Someone botched the theft of the first real one, and dropped it on the pavement as they were getting away. Owners got it back, polished out the damage, and bolted it to the ground. Not that a dozen idiots haven't taken the cue and stopped trying." I lean in and whisper, "I even know one of them. She's in the booth behind me."

I'm flicked at the back of the head by someone from the booth behind us. Sable grumbles at me but I laugh it off.

Ruby looks down at our cheap breakfast-for-dinner meal, then to the coffee and dust stained tiles, the dingy disco ball at the open floor, and the one rat that the cashier swears is actually a pet, then at me. "Y'know, sometimes it sounds like you were just born here. You've always got a story for every corner of this city."

"I grew up loving Argus from afar. Coming here every once in a while felt like stepping into another, more exciting life that I could only have scraps of at a time. I ended up absorbing everything I could about it until I finally earned enough to just live here."

She's stirring the straw slower now. "Must've been nice to have a place like this."

"Didn't have a place like this yourself?" I ask.

"Vale, once upon a time," she answers, which surprises me. The big cities always seem to have too much going on in them. Argus, by comparison, is cozy. "Until I actually started living there during my academy days, but it's always so busy. I grew up in Patch, an island off the coast, close enough to see continent's mountains from the docks just beyond the sea. I thought it was everything I wanted it to be – and to be fair, it was – but it was also other things. More and more, and too much at the same time."

"I know what you mean," I tell her, looking at the calluses in my hands. "I used to work the fields back at my hometown, a little farming community called Cove. Not many luxuries there outside of passing traders with crates of ice cream and secondhand electronics. I also thought the cities were where it was at, but that was till I found Argus on our trips through Mistral." I look around us at the familiar polish and general lack of which, staring at the booth tables that have familiar nicks in places (some of which I've carved myself) and at the cashier who has been the same gruffy old man of marbled wrinkles caught in his quiet little smile since I was a kid. "I kept pushing my family out of the city so we could get here sooner."

Sable leans in from the booth behind us and hovers over my shoulder. "He was a nuisance about it, too," she says. "Kept nagging at us to cut plans cause we could do more here, instead. He even let us tease him about his little girlfriend for it."

May leans in from over Ruby's shoulder, giving me a look. "I still haven't quite forgiven him for that. He traded coming here a day early with putting me in a dress and my maid's thick makeup."

Henry doesn't turn around but we hear him all the same. "I had those dresses pressed every other night under my father's nose." He chuckles. "It was the most rebellious thing I'd done then. What a thrill it was…"

Joan, my twin sister, leans over my other shoulder. "May showed up in the same dress for the third day in a row so we took her shopping." She snickers, cheeks pulling wide with mischief. "Fun times in the dressing room."

May is several shades of red.

Ruby's laughing with them and her amused smile tells me she's gonna pile on me with them. I'm happy they're getting along so well. "Look at 'im," she says. "Not even the least bit sorry."

Cause I'm not. I sit back with a pleased grin on my face because I loved every inch of Argus, and I cherished every minute I was in it. I had a lot of fun back then and – though they're trying not to show it – everyone else did too.

"And I'd do it all again."

=(✿)=

Ruby Rose, musing on his city.

Argus means a lot to him. When he takes me down the pier and points out little spots where he's carved a dozen stories out of – a little booth with cheap sweet potatoes and cheese, a stool where a fisherman always sits with a story to tell, a tackle shop where a dog used to call out to him (her grandbabies are adorable) – I can't help but wish I'd been there with him.

How differently could our lives have been if we'd grown up together? He tells me he wasn't a very well-liked kid. Just another face in the crowd of boys, unremarkable like the rest. But I feel like we could have been friends. That we were dorks and I'd have flocked to him regardless.

I lament that I'll never know what it's like to fall in love with him that way, but when I hold his hand and gingerly lay my head against his broad shoulder, I'm glad I can at least do that now.

"What's on your mind?" he asks me.

There are a dozen ways to answer him. I settle with the complimentary. "I would have liked to grow up with you. I think I might have liked you then, too."

He hesitates to answer, a firm 'no' testing at his lips but he bites it back. Perhaps for my sake. Maybe even for his. "Maybe," he says instead. "What would you have liked about me?"

"I think you can be sweet."

"A dozen or so boys from my class could be called that too."

I take the deflection as a challenge. I could say a number of things. I think he's handsome, compassionate, open-minded, but to pare down his every feature is like breaking him down to a checklist. Numerable things that dictate what a person is to the world but not what a person means to me personally. What he was when he was a kid and who he is now, I realize, aren't factors that no more tell me why I love someone than how it was with Oscar. And it isn't that either of them aren't good-looking, comfortably warm, sickeningly sweet, or enticingly strong, but that they've carved out a place for themselves in me.

Jaune isn't replacing Oscar. The place either men have in my heart will always be exclusive to them. And when they leave my life, that place will never be filled but always left hollow without them. So for the time that I have him, I have to nourish Jaune's place in my heart for as long as he's around to fill it.

"I think I like the way we mesh together," I say, and he doesn't offer a retort. He's looking at me, paying attention. "I like that we're at the right place, at the right time. Just when we needed each other. I like that it's so… unreal that I'm only just finding you now." I snake my arms around his, holding him close till I can feel through the dense cloth of our hoodies. "I think I would have liked you because no matter what, I think we would have ended up in the same place. I think we were meant to collide and fill each other's spaces in the way we do."

"What… What makes you say that?" He asks, breathless, waiting for my answer like it will solve a myriad of his own unspoken questions.

"You made me feel like it was okay that I broke up with him. That it was just another stop in my life and that I don't have to feel like all the time I've spent with him was a waste." I hold tighter, as if my confession will wake me from this dream and he'll float away without me. "That it's okay to be a little broken-hearted cause it helps shape who you are after." I look up at him. The heavy uncertainty I'd harbored has ebbed away. Because I'm no longer adrift now that I've moored on the easy coast that is all of him, the city he loves, and the people in it that he brings with him. "And I can't tell you how much it means to find someone like me. I was so lost before coming here but now it's like I've found my footing again before I've even realized the floor was falling out from under me."

"That's a lot of high praise for one night on the town." He tries to keep it light but I can see the way a revelation ripples over him like he's coming to terms with something about us. Like I'm a quake that has unsettled his walls and now I'm sinking through the cracks till they fall apart.

"It's not what you do, Jaune." My eyes are insistent. Trying desperately to communicate my thoughts.

His tone shifts. "I know…" he utters, quietly, reverently. The smile that dances on his lips is only a touch sad. I don't know what he's hiding behind it. If I had known him for longer, could I have?

When we come to the end of the pier, the night is stolen by a carnival in the plaza whose lights swallow the stars as if the day is trapped in cages of steel rides and tucked away under multi-colored tents.

"Ruby?"

"Yes, Jaune?"

He takes my hand and pinches the ring, caressing my knuckles as his eyes rise like an uncertain sun greeting the inevitable dawn.

"Are we in love?"

=(✦)=

Jaune Arc, confronting his relationship with her.

Ruby never answered my question, but I don't think I was any more capable of answering it myself. Falling in love with her isn't the issue, it's saying it out loud that is.

Perhaps in defiance of our own uncertainty, of the looming question without an answer, we'd resorted – again – to the carnal. Our doubts dissolving as we bury ourselves in each other's flesh, gasping and moaning into the confines of my one-bedroom apartment. But the moment of passion is fleeting and reality keeps us awake.

It's like we've taken a step back, losing progress, and it's that frustration of losing momentum with her that forces me to confront what we are. To bring it out in the open.

She asks me before I can do it myself. "Do you think it's even possible?" she asks. "To fall in love so quickly?"

The words tumble out of me, as if someone else is saying them. "I think we're proof that it's true." I surprise even myself at the affirmation.

It's there, at the tip of my lips. If I could just say it, I might will what we have into existence. But the words are harrowed and burdensome. Thick like tar.

I sit up, my world shifting like gravity's upset with me. I feel dangerously on the edge, and since I can't orient myself, I don't know if I'm close to falling. I want that certainty, to be rid of any hesitation, but I'm afraid.

And she is too, with the way she snakes her arms around my waist. Her head rests on my back, steady breaths trailing up to my exposed neck.

She squeezes. I think I love you, she seems to say.

I smooth one hand over hers. My other hand claims hers and rubs the discolored gap where my ring was.

I think I love you too, is what I hope this gesture tells her.

She squeezes tighter, eliciting a frustrated sound from her. But I'm afraid.

I turn around and put my forehead to hers. So am I.

=(✦)=

Jaune Arc, cancelling his plans for tomorrow.

I had reservations for a fancy restaurant. Had this whole day planned for my last turn this week and now it just doesn't feel right. Love, now that it's real, now that it's genuine, is not something you pluck out of romcoms. Those stories often tell of a love that is always – in a way – perfect. Where it ends clean and they only have one fight before their lives are inextricably left to be flawless now and forever onward after the credits roll. But what is love like then? When you don't get cut to black at the end of a scene?

When I was with Pyrrha, love seemed exactly like it was in the stories. Just a series of happy memories, small and large, with a disagreement or a somber moment sprinkled in. Where it was just perfect enough to drown all the tiny little stains in the flood of everything else. But without it – without her –I have to see what love is without the easy handicap of a first love that seemed to go on forever.

The café door opens with a jingle, May coming into the room and marching towards me like a harried engine, chugging but somber. She is the very picture of an old friend's concern. Her hair is undone, her frown tight against her strong cheeks, and even her cardigan carries wrinkles that tell me she was up too early for this.

When you're nocturnal, seven AM is still too early to leave the house, it seems. "I think I'm a little mad that you don't look worse," she says, slipping onto the seat across from me.

"I clean up when I have to go out in public," I say. "The world doesn't need to know I'm having a bad day."

"Right," she huffs, tucking her bag between her feet because she's still afraid of getting suddenly robbed. I Don't see her do it but I know she's looping the strap around her leg. "And here I am looking frazzled while you look like you're carved like marble."

I get up and pull a comb from my sling bag. I expected May to pull a stunt like this so I always come prepared. A tiny fire dust cell heats the synthetic teeth enough to straighten hair. She lets me run it through her locks so I can even out the misbehaving strands. "Not my fault you forget to clean up."

"Since you called me here, I get to blame you all I want."

I don't argue. I'm too thankful to even tease her. So I work on her hair and let my motions become meditative. Minutes pass and now her hair is a river of cascading crystalline blue, but I don't want to stop. "I kind of like your hair standing on ends."

"Like a mess? Why?"

"It reminds me of when we were younger. Before you had to get all proper. Before the sequined blue dresses and the many, many ballroom dances." I'm still afraid she'll step on my toes. She and Ruby had that in common.

"You'd rather the boy in a dress than the woman who hung on your arm?" she asks, chuckling. She's trying to tease me but I can feel the heat of her cheeks on my hands as I run them through her hair.

I make myself stop before I settle back into my seat. "I'd rather the simplicity of running around a back-alley playground. Who you were and who you are makes little difference to me."

"Thank you…" she whispers.

I wiggle my comb for her before I stow it away. "Always got your back."

"Not for – nevermind." She smiles, laughter slipping out of her. "You're a bit of a dolt, you know that?"

"So I've been told."

May doesn't let an awkward silence fester. Her hand snakes out under my own and holds it. She's always had trouble calling me by my first name – said it made us sound too familiar even though she's practically my best friend at this point outside of my inner circle back in Haven – but she's never had trouble making physical contact. Somedays, when things are at their worst, it would be the only way she'd communicate.

"I'm scared," I tell her, the words lending weight that only grows heavier the more my mind tries to mash all of it into a coherent sentence. "She feels so right, you know? Maybe it's all this fleeting romance but I can't help myself. She brings a whole heap of things into me. Experiences both familiar and new. And I know for a fact that I'm in love with her but it's so much like being with Pyrrha again and I can't help but feel like it's all going to end the same way."

"Arc, it wasn't your fault."

"I know it wasn't…"

"Then why do you beat yourself up like it was?" I don't answer. Can't. The way she stares at me peels away my artifice, and – she's right – it's a wonder that I don't look more like a mess.

"No. Don't answer that," she presses. "I already know the answer: Because she was beautiful girl you loved and when you had to break each other's heart, you hated yourself every day for it." There's a melancholy dipped in the way she moves closer, almost desperate to pull me into her orbit so I can see her for whatever it is that's writhing inside of her for me. "And now, finally, someone else comes along who makes you forget that you were ever afraid of hurting someone like that ever again."

"May…"

"Stop. Please." Her smile is sad, a look that is unfamiliar on her. She's always been strong, a rebel without a means to be shaken, so it takes me aback to see her so suddenly vulnerable. "I'm not here for your excuses cause that means we aren't going to make progress. So!" – she pulls up the menu – "let's order something overpriced and start this morning out slow, alright?"

Her hand slips away from me.

Take things slow? I consider defiance because I don't have the time to. I've only got three days left with Ruby and every moment we spend apart becomes another inky blotch to the memory we're supposed to make perfect.

But that's just it, isn't it? We tried to slow things down at the cave and everything felt right. We went to the movies and hung out at a family restaurant and it felt like progress. But the minute we thought we could pick up speed again, we backed out because of course we did. We were afraid when we started. That bit hadn't changed.

So, I let the answers come to me in time instead of trying to parse all of them right this second.

"Where's the damn waiter?" May hisses. People are staring.

"This is a café, May," I tease. "You go up to the counter."

She buries her head in her hands.

"May?"

"Just order my sandwich while I dissolve into the floorboards, please…"

=(✿)=

Ruby Rose, tearing through a race track.

Other-Dad taught me how to drive, and even though he got me started on a car, I inevitably gravitated to riding sports bikes once my sister handed me the keys to hers when she had to start driving family vans. So, on an expensive bike that will cost me a year's salary at my dojo if I crash it, I drive with abandon down the closed track and smell the burning rubber through my helmet.

There's a knot in my gut that I'm fighting to undo, but the wind whipping over me is only cooling my neck. And since Jaune's been nothing but warm, the wind just feels like it's freezing the knot instead.

I make a hard turn, tilt the bike with me till I'm nearly touching the road as it zips beneath me. This is the third time I'm making this lap and the adrenaline I get with every run is diminishing each time.

I don't even make it to the finish line. I slow at the pit stop and rip off my helmet.

Sable Arc jogs up to me. Her slicked back hair looks like it had been windswept and frozen in time. "Not doing it for ya?" she asks.

"Not like I thought it would," I tell her.

She takes my helmet out of my hands and throws it to one of the pit crew. "Take five! I'll be taking her to the lounge so we'll rev later. Gale, Ripley, scream down those tracks with your teams! I wanna feel that lounge rattle!"

Her pit crew scatters and cheers whilst her… apprentices (?) Gale and Ripley scramble to get theirs together for their run. It almost looks like Sable owns the track but, really, she just likes taking charge.

"Don't you have a manager or something?" I ask her when we're already on the steps up to the lounge.

"Pfft! And let someone else dictate when I can take a break?" Her confidence wanes. "Not a chance…Fuckin'…fuckin' never again."

"Sable?"

We stop at the landing. No one can see us and we hear twin engines roar to life through the cement walls.

"My manager was my ex, is all." She isn't smiling, which doesn't suit her at all. I've come to find that Sable is grafted from adrenaline and joy. Somber fits her like me in heels – not at all and asking the wrong question.

"I'm so sorry."

"Not as sorry as she was." She marches back up the steps and into the lounge.

When the door shuts behind me, I'm greeted by an expanse of a maroon carpet, thick curtains, and a one-way glass wall that faces the rumbling track. It almost fools me into thinking that Sable is rich, but she doesn't show it. Nothing about her outfit matches the room at all. Her hoodie is torn in places and worn in others. Her khaki shorts are faded with tiny nicks along the hem of their pockets. Her shoes are matted in little paint stains that will never go away.

She either cares little for her outward appearance or has given up on trying to impress. Either way, she is dressed in her rich history and takes it with confidence to rival the moon. Confidence I wish I hadn't left behind.

Plopping onto the couch, she pats the seat beside her. When I sit, the race cars whizz by again but their noise barely breaches the room. When they're gone, the silence feels palpable, oppressive. I am alone in here, and Sable's faraway gaze doesn't help.

I'm pinching my ring finger again. The discolored gap is like the ghost of an old romance, leaving its mark like a phantom ring. I first got it during a month-long mission in Vacuo, the heat turning my skin a shade darker but not there. As if Oscar's ring kept a piece of me the way I'd always been no matter how much our experiences changed us.

What does it mean now that the ring I have is Jaune's?

"Sorry," Sable says with a laugh that's too awkward and forced. She doesn't seem used to taking an apologetic tone, like it doesn't fit the way she moves, how she speaks, or even who she is. "Like I said, I'm not very good on the advice sort of thing. Me and Jaune have that in common, you'll find."

"It's okay," I tell her as I zip down the racing overalls she put me in. My skin breathes easy under the cool air of the room. "It's nice to just have an ear sometimes or, better yet–" I gesture to the track below and the machines that roar over it, "–a distraction."

"I should try though." She fixes me with a concerned look. Her eyes are an ocean blue, like his. "Tell me what's bugging you."

Telling her isn't something I wanted to do. The minute she offered I ease off with a ride instead of a chat –the smell of burning rubber to cinder my troubles – I had hoped it would have been enough. "I'm scared," I say, words tumbling out of me as if they're trying to escape any lie my mind tries to hide them behind. "He feels right. Almost like we fit.. Even thought we'd make fast friends the moment we met. Hell, I even slept with him that night and I'm not usually one to jump bones on the first day."

"Woah." Sable looks at me as if she's seeing me for the first time. I guess I do kind of look innocent once I've got all my scars tucked away. "Didn't take you for that kind of gal," she says. "You look a little, uh, virginal?"

I chuckle. "Do I?" I give her a lopsided grin.

She stares at me, her expression changing rapidly. "Yeah, no, nevermind. With a smile like that and eyes that big, it's no wonder my brother fell for you."

That opens a pit in me, gaping and vast. "I fell for him too." The ache spans the hole. "I think I really have and I don't know if leaving will destroy me more if I kept loving him or tried to move on."

"Already in too deep, huh?"

I realize I haven't told her about the deal me and Jaune made but she seems to know all about it. She doesn't question anything I say. "He told you, didn't he?"

"The gist of it, yeah." Her laughter then is bitter. "I knew he'd go in with all his chips on the table. Part of me wondered if he brought you along in the hopes to reveal any bit of your flaws so he'd stop what was growing inside of him." She looks me up and down, locking to my eyes and I know she can see them glow. "But then I realized he wasn't like that at all. If he knew he was going to fall for you, he'd do everything in his power to nurture that. Stopping isn't in his nature."

"But he did. We both did."

"Which is even funnier cause I don't think a premiere huntress who does major solo jobs on the regular spends much of her time hesitating."

I didn't talk about my work either. At all. I also don't brag about my hunts so brazenly either. "How do you know about that?"

She waves her scroll. "I looked you up. Had to know who my brother attached himself to this time. I wanted to stop when I found out you were clean and all that, but then I kept reading more and more…" I'm blushing. My cheeks are on fire and I hope she doesn't throw a compliment my way or I'll squeak out a 'thank you' before I scream into a pillow. "Heh. You're just accomplished is all. You're a great catch. Explains why my brother put our ring on you."

"Is… is that supposed to mean something?"

"Don't take this the wrong way. I'm sure he wasn't thinking about asking too much from a girl he just met but…" I prepare my heart. I half want to hear this and half want to cover my ears. "He's obsessed over that thing his entire life almost as much as the old family sword. We've got heirlooms upon heirlooms, but that sword belonged to the Arc side of him. The huntsman and the hero. But the ring belonged to the rest of him. The part of him that was outside of all of those heroic fairy tales our grandparents used to tell us. The guy with the job who reveled in the unspectacular evening of a quiet night in bed."

She pulls her knees to her chest. "That was my favorite part of him," she says quietly. "Ever the little brother… I knew we'd have to give that part of him away to somebody. The huntsmen in our family will always line the walls in picture frames and heirlooms, history books and academy legends, but only the family remembers who grandpa was at home. That he was quiet and had the sweetest little laugh when all the kids acted like kids ought to. Watching us like he was relieved that there was still some innocence left in this world."

"My brother can't sign away the parts of him that make him a huntsman. His strength, his sacrifices, all the nicks in his skin will belong to the world and people he saves. That's his tapestry. What we Arcs leave behind when we're gone." Gently, she grabs my arm and pulls up the sleeve, revealing the scar Jaune had fixated on two nights before. "Just like yours."

Sable looks drained, and I can't help but wonder if she's seeing a repeat of the brother she's losing sight of in me. "The rest of him, though, will belong to you," she continues. "The boy who loves this city and trusted you with a piece of it."

"He can't belong to me." We can't be in love. Not when I have to leave.

"You say that like he hasn't already stolen your heart." I wish she hadn't said that. I pinch the gap on my ring finger and I expect to feel the engraving on his ring. Not Oscar's. I'm in too deep already. "Is it really so bad that you keep going?"

Yes.

No?

Ugh! I want to scream but I can't help but go back to that first morning, with tea in our hands and the one-week deal on the table. I was so relieved to know that I could just… indulge in this. To fall in love and feel loved without any of the setbacks. Where I can pretend that it's real and everyone can walk away without getting hurt.

Sable speaks again. "It's so easy to just gut out this deal of yours and keep dating, am I right? So why don't you?"

"Maybe cause I don't want to hurt someone I'm starting to really care about," I say without thinking. My heart's been doing the talking, I realize.

"It'll hurt when you leave."

"And it might hurt if I stay. Leaving just guarantees that I'll only hurt him once." The words sting my throat as I say it, holding back a choke.

"Pain isn't measured in instances, Ruby. It doesn't matter how many times you get it…" She looks away, hiding the pieces of herself that fall apart like chips off marble. "What matters is how long that pain stays with you."

There's something wrong with her all of a sudden. I forget myself for a moment, long enough to reach out to her. "Sable?"

She stares at my hand on her knee, before saying, "My ex – my old manager – was dating another ex of mine. They tried to steal my cash while she was my manager. I found out and started a fuss. Lawyers, press, even stirred up some noise with my friends in the business. But I stopped. I told my friends to shut up, and paid the lawyers and press to keep quiet, too. Because they had a kid. He was completely innocent, so I didn't want to ruin his life. But it was too late. He was already getting bullied at school and had to move out of town with his folks." Her sigh is deep. Cavernous. Labored by years of all that pent up guilt. I don't tell her that it isn't her fault – she already knows, maybe even heard it a few hundred times – but that won't change how it makes her feel.

"People get hurt all the time," she says, unfurling from her knees. Ostensibly forcing herself not to hide behind them. More confidence I wish I could take for myself, even if it is uneasy. "I don't want you to think you'll be any less a good person if you break my brother's heart. I've no doubt you'll get hurt just the same. Pain is an inevitable part of our lives, so is learning to live with the consequences of all that shit we stir up."

I don't know what she's trying to say. If anything, I'm a little more worried than I was. I don't hold it against her. She already told me that she wasn't any good with this stuff.

But then she gets up and walks to the glass wall that looks over the track. She places a hand on the surface just as the sound of race cars approaches. They rattle the glass and she laughs.

The engines don't leave. They're at the finish line and she's staring at the racers.

I join her side and she points to Ripley, a brown-haired teenager who doesn't look like he should be behind a wheel. Gale, his opponent, jumps into his arms and they spin, laughing.

"That's him," she says simply.

It takes me a minute to realize what she means. That's the son of her exes. "You apprenticed him?"

She nods. "Even though people tell me I did the right thing, I still wanted to make things right with him. So I did."

"I'm hurting your brother either way," I tell her, the admission feels like poison.

"And he's going to do the same to you and neither of you will be to blame." She takes my shoulder. "But that doesn't mean I don't think either of you will do something to make it right anyhow."

She walks off and I stare down at the racers. Ripley and Gale are in love, you can tell at a glance, and it's strange seeing it laid out so simply. They likely met on this track under the same tutelage and it all blossomed from there.

Maybe asking if love could come so quickly was the wrong question. Asking if what we had was real would have also been the wrong question.

Maybe questioning it in the first place was the issue all along. Maybe there was nothing that needs answering. Maybe all I have are fears I've let myself forget just to be with him.

So maybe it's time I stop being afraid.

=(✦)=

Jaune Arc, with May at the pier.

May wanted to tell me something important but hasn't said a word of it yet. I've been waiting patiently for hours.

She drags me out to the old tackle shop. Beside it is an even older steel gate that leads into the home where the lights are on and splintering light into the shadowed front yard. Pups sleep quietly in the grass cradled in between their parents and three aunts. One of the pups is still awake and it clambers over an aunt, stumbles into a very old uncle who only sniffs the air at us before going back to sleep.

"His name's Chicho," May tells me when I pet the pup through the gate's grills.

"Why Chicho?" I ask.

"Rod's baby daughter was trying to say 'cha-ching!' and failed miserably, but it stuck onto the dog so now it's one of those scrapbook memories." She kneels down to pet him too. She scratches him in the right spots – behind the ear and on his chest – and the pup's leg twitches happily.

I know for a fact that May doesn't much care for domestic gossip so she wouldn't have known any of that from the grapevine. "Sounds like you're you close enough to be invited to dinner," I say.

"I've been, once or twice. Henry fishes now, so I sometimes come here when it's my turn to do errands."

"He fishes?"

"Only to impress the more well-off folk here. You know them; too humble for golf. Henry even started ice fishing!"

"Please tell me he doesn't do it alone."

She chuckles, patting the pup one more time before getting to her feet. "God knows I wish he did," she teases, not meaning it at all. She'd be too worried for him. "I hate fishing."

"It's not that bad."

"You fish?"

"With a spear. Pyrrha taught me to hunt on the river, standing on stones. I prefer it over using a line."

She starts walking down the road. I follow as the sun wanes in the distance, the shattered moon already visible.

"Sounds exciting," she says.

"It is. Wanna try it?"

Her lips thin. She tries it laugh it off. "And get my clothes wet? I'll pass."

"It won't matter if you're in a swimsuit."

Her lips thin again but it holds this time. "I…"

"It's just me and my family," I maintain, squeezing gently on her shoulder. "You've known us forever."

"I still don't know, Jaune…"

There she goes, saying my name again. "I won't push. But we'd welcome you. You've nothing to be afraid of."

She nods.

Her footsteps thrum in rhythm on the wooden dock boards. We used to make terrible music with it, but with only percussions it was terrible and limited. "Remember when I fell off the edge?" I ask.

She punches me in the arm and I laugh at her. When we were teenagers, I dove when I fell and popped out of the other side to see how she'd react. May was always serious and grumpy back then, and it was worth it to see her do anything but scowl for a change. I mostly just wanted to rile up my old crush. We were dumb kids back then.

"Idiot…" she grumbles.

When we reach the end, we watch our reflections in the water. The sun sinks into the ocean ahead.

"When are you going to tell me what you've been meaning to say?" I ask.

"Words don't cut it, actually."

"Shouldn't you try?"

She looks at me, distressed. "It doesn't work like that."

She looks back out into the ocean and takes steady breaths. I expect a scolding or some sagely advice, anything that might make things with me and Ruby clear, but all I have is her breathing slowly. I don't know what I'm meant to be doing other than watch her and wait patiently, but I've known May for too long to not have all the patience in the world.

"Alright," she says before turning back to me. Her expression stern. "Close your eyes."

I do so. "May, if you push me into the wa–"

Her lips taste exactly how I remember them. Tangy and a little salty, too. Just like it was at the back alley playground.

I open my eyes and see her brimming with confidence that is doing nothing to hide how deeply red her cheeks are.

"May…"

"None of this is ever cut cleanly, Jaune," she says, smile burning as it strains against her cheeks. "You're always gonna get hurt and you're always gonna hurt somebody. You can't be afraid of the pain. Not anymore." She doesn't cry but her eyes have a wet sheen that brings her heart floating to the surface. "It's part of being in love, after all."

I don't love her. I did, once upon a time, but that was before Ruby, before Haven, before Pyrrha. The look in her eyes tells me that she knows that. There really was no way to come out of any of this clean, huh?

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be," she says. "I don't think you've realized how brave you've been. You could have said nothing that night and let this week turn out the way it would have. But no. You asked her if you two were in love. You wanted to know if what you had was turning into more." She takes my hand and squeezes it. A gesture that is nothing like her but is everything like me. She knows I need this. "Despite yourself, you pushed your fears away for long enough to confront what you have with her."

"But it's stupid," she continues, laughing. Wiping her cheek to clean an empty tear. "You asked a question you already knew the answer to."

She's right. I reach for my necklace and thumb the trinket hanging off of it. The chain doesn't burn and I don't feel old aches with Ruby's ring. Just new ones. Ones that lament that I've spent an entire day without her. I've been so afraid of being hurt and hurting her that I've forgotten how deeply she's sunken into me and made everything feel right.

It's funny, falling in love all over again. I feel out of my depth but… also excited. Something pleasant runs up my neck and fills my cheeks.

"There's that smile," May whispers, biting her lip before walking off. I follow after her like I always did back then, a lost boy in a beautiful, trailing after nothing as they'd hold all the answers if he followed for long enough. And as the sun sets, it's like the part of my past finally finds closure. For her and for me.

"Hey, Jaune?"

"Yeah, May?"

She's trying very had not look at me when she speaks. "If by the end of this, you find yourself having room in your heart for me…" Her smile is honest, aching in all the ways she does. "Maybe ask me out for real? Just a suggestion."

=(✿+✦)=

Jaune Arc and Ruby Rose, finding each other again.

They bump into each other on the bottom floor of his apartment building. No words pass between them, just gormless gawking and a few awkward laughs. They step into the building, side-by-side, and walk up the stairs. But the landings are empty and the air is quiet. So it somehow becomes intimate.

Their fingers reach for the other's. First, it's her pinky hooked into his. Then the hands weave together. Then it's clear they're both stiff and nervous.

There's so much to say here. So much to get out of the way before they plunge back into each other's arms but the words feel meaningless now.

When their hands clasp together slowly, the grip is loose and weightless. But they're magnetized and gravitating to each other. Like rogue planets caught in each other's orbit, it's almost mesmerizing the way they start moving in sync. Up the flights, down the hall, into the door.

The TV's on a Spruce Willis flick. He pulls things from the fridge and she fishes out some blankets.

They huddle together as all tension fades away, feet tucked into the sheets as they laugh and gasp and shout and laugh again.

Without thinking, he kisses her head. She giggles and, similarly, finds herself kissing his cheek. Their grooves fit together. The unanswered question fades away.

It's so easy to call something love. It's another when it just is.