"Ruby," Yang said slowly, "Please tell me that was a fucking joke."

Ruby rolled back on her feet. Yang's eyes were blown wide. She didn't flinch.

"Please tell me you're just fucking with me to get back at me for public humiliation," Yang droned. When Ruby didn't respond, she grabbed fistfulls of her hair and let her jaw drop as she turned to look back up at the apartment building.

In a moment, she turned back to Ruby, mouth spilling with incoherent expletives. The first words Ruby could understand were, "Holy fuck, Ruby!"

Ruby shuffled. Yes, now the consequences were manifesting in her mind.

"Statutory rape with a world-famous criminal!" Yang exclaimed. Ruby's head whirled in search of people whose attentions were caught by that statement. No one.

"Whoa," Ruby interrupted. "He hasn't laid a-it hasn't gone that far." She held her hands out as if she were a criminal herself, begging not to be shot.

"Ruby, what the fuck? Do you really think he gives half a shit about you?" Yang shouted. Ruby winced at how loud she was getting, but she didn't think anyone could actually hear.

Ruby wanted to defend herself, to say that yes, she did, but she knew that there was no convincing Yang on this subject. Ruby shifted, putting her hands in her jacket pocket.

"Does he know how old you are?" Yang sighed with the resonance of resignation in her voice.

"Yes," Ruby answered diligently.

Yang groaned. "Fucking hell."

Ruby bit her pursed lips in anticipation of what she would say next.

Rubbing the bridge of her nose, Yang continued. "How old is he?"

"Twenty-one." Ruby pulled her hands out of her jacket and crossed her arms.

Yang shook her head. "We can't do this here. This is at least an hour-long conversation that needs to happen in private, not in the middle of the street with hundreds of passers-by just waiting to eavesdrop on a newspaper headline."

"It wouldn't make the news," Ruby protested.

Yang shook stray hairs out of her face as she zipped up her jacket. "I can picture it: Roman Torchwick, notorious thief working with the White Fang, rapes aspiring young student granted early admission to Beacon Academy."

Ruby rolled her eyes at Yang, who looked at her with an expressive, "Do you get it now?" look on her face. "Okay, I see your point," Ruby admitted. "Can we go home now?"

"We're talking about this when we get back. And you need to decide whether or not you're telling your teammates about this." Yang started ambling down the street without checking to see if Ruby was following her. The stress was apparent in the way she carried herself, the way she looked relieved when she took her eyes off her sister.

Ruby sighed, and followed her down the street to the subway.


The subway car slid down the bumpy railway, Yang and Ruby holding onto the bars that reached from the bottom of the car to the top. Ruby remained seated; Yang stood over her, still deciding whether she was angry, disappointed, or both.

Ruby kept her head down in a show of modesty, but the feeling of disgust slowly crept on her as she wondered what Yang might have been thinking.

The car being empty except for them, Yang began to ask her the questions she wanted to ask earlier. "Can you at least explain to me how this started?"

Ruby twiddled her thumbs in her lamp. "That night at the club. He was injured so badly that he went unconscious. Neo was the only one there, and she practically begged me for help to carry him out the back entrance.

"Back entrance? I thought there was only one," Yang asked, confusion contorting her facial expression.

Ruby nodded. "I kind of just felt guilty from there, and when she texted me again, I came to help."

"That's why you got out of the building so late," Yang pondered. "And that's why Neo texted you. But how does that spawn romantic feelings?"

Her first thought went to the way he could just walk around the house shirtless, no qualms, no inhibitions. Especially when all he wanted was to get rid of her. Ruby blushed. "Uh," she stuttered. "I saw him a lot more than I had previously implied."

"Well no frickin' duh," Yang laughed sardonically. She still wasn't smiling at her. Or really looking at her, to be entirely honest.

Ruby closed her eyes and exhaled slowly, listing her head towards the floor of the car. "I trust him," Ruby declared.

Yang groaned. Those were clearly not the right words to say. "I would hope so if you're going over to his house so often."

Ruby's head sank lower. "He's just...so sweet."

Yang covered her eyes. "He's a sociopath."

"That doesn't explain why he's been such a gentlemen," Ruby reasoned.

"Ruby, stop," Yang muttered.

"He practically kicked me out just to-"

"Stop, I don't want to hear it," Yang snapped.

Ruby looked up. Yang had placed both of her hands over her ears. She was right-there was no convincing her.

"Just give me time to think," Yang pleaded.

They both remained silent the whole way back to Beacon Academy.