Significant Changes: Four scenes re-worked. Some have been moved or shifted.

Original chapter length: 1,654
Revisited chapter length: 3,630

"Regular dialogue" [Faunus speech only]

Chapter 28

Nighttime was beginning to be a new adventure in bravery in Ruby's life. As a woman with newly vested and romantic interest, she was quick to melt under Blake's gentle and guiding hands. Ruby's head was swimming. It all felt so good. Blake's body pressed up against hers in a heated kiss that stole her breath away. She was starting to love it, the feel of those sharp teeth that toyed with her lower lip, tugging ever so gently to ask for entry.

The kiss growing deeper in mind-numbing fervor when the shallow tease of Blake's slightly rough tongue toyed with her own. The sensation was thrilling, very new still, but exciting all the same. Blake's affections were as human as they were cat-like. Her kisses, which were most definitely human, came with the sounds of purring, which was surely not.

There was a sense of feral, untamed passion in the Faunus, eyes slitting in the darkness and gleaming in the shadows.

Ruby was always careful where her hands wandered, fingers trailing tentatively across fabric and heated skin. She focused on the kiss, of Blake's body pressed against her own. The heat pooling, the feeling of arousal. She began to sink into the emotion of the act entirely, until she startled herself, seeing cat's eyes looking back at her again.

Ruby cursed in a small sound as she broke the kiss breathlessly. Eyes closed as she clung onto Blake as though life itself depended on it. It was so intense, too intense, too soon.

There was something about the fingers on her hip, knowing Blake's nails could become sharp claws in an instant. It was unsettling in combination with the softness of the rumbling in Blake's chest, and that catlike gaze. Those predatory eyes were the last straw. Ruby understood it was inherently natural. Something that Blake's body seemed to do on its own when otherwise occupied. Blake would never hurt her, not with her claws, or her fangs.

That was the logical conclusion, but, seeing those feral features would take some getting used to.

"Do you need to stop?" Blake asked, feeling Ruby nod wordlessly into her shoulder. It wasn't the first time this had happened. That had been the other night when Ruby glued herself upon Blake's lap in a refusal to move. "I didn't hurt you, did I?" She felt more than heard the muffled response that no, Blake hadn't hurt her.

It was hard to believe, especially when a shiver tore through Ruby's spine like butter.

"Ruby…" Blake's voice was gentle, ever so much so. "What's wrong?"

It was obviously the wrong thing to ask, because she felt Ruby tense up even more. Curling inward, both into herself, and into Blake. Very carefully, lost with what to do, she pulled away enough to glimpse into silver eyes. What she saw there concerned her. Laced within those metal pools there was nothing short of anxiety, guilt, and something else. An emotion that Blake was very intimately acquainted with herself.

Shame.

She huffed out a small breath, letting Ruby bury herself back into Blake's embrace once more. They stayed like that for several long, agonizing moments. "I don't know why." Ruby began when she pulled away, the statement obviously coming from an internal struggle. Something that was itself a tornado. "I don't… Your eyes… I…" Ruby shook her head. "I wasn't expecting them to get like that."

She blinked several times in confusion before it dawned on her. "Aroused?" Blake voiced, feeling as though she was dancing along cracked eggshells.

"Oval slits...like..."

"A cat." Blake finished for her gently. There was nothing more than fact in her tone, simple and unguarded.

Ruby nodded, those pools of molten gold had already returned to normal. Ruby desperately wished they'd stay that way. "It's…not just that…it's everything else too. I'm not used to this. To myself, or to you, or to any of this."

"But you do get that way too." Blake observed, the evidence was clear as day to her nose. It was in the salty, heady scent that ghosted along Ruby's skin, a fragrance all its own. Like fire crackling and snapping beneath the other soft scents Ruby had inadvertently picked up going about her day. "What do you normally do, once you are?"

"I wait for it to go away." Ruby told her. "I try not to be."

Blake bit the inside of her cheek. It was probably too soon to ask, but the question bubbled and twisted itself outward and into the freedom of the air. "You don't touch yourself…at all?"

Ruby shook her head. "I don't…"

"Why not?"

"It's…" Ruby doubted there was a right way to explain, finally she settled with a shrug. "I don't know, maybe something's just wrong with me."

Blake frowned, brows crunching up in confusion. "Nothing's wrong with you…" Blake said pulling her close once more, feeling her shiver in response. "Ruby, I promise, there's nothing wrong…"

"I get that." Ruby said quietly, embarrassment in her tone. "I've tried, but I think to myself that I'm alone. That I don't want to be alone. If that's true, trying to fiddle with myself is stupid, so what's the point?" Ruby asked with a shrug. "Then I get stuck thinking of it all. The stuff I always hear, like that I have to be able to love myself before I love others. Masturbating is healthy, everyone does it, and I should do it too. That the person I choose to be with will never know what I like, unless I know what to tell them..."

"Well…" Blake coughed, she'd heard Yang and Coco spout some similar things in the past. Blake knew she most certainly had, especially during a few choice fights when Weiss had barged into the dorm unannounced. Living in a dorm had made personal time a luxury, and there was no avoiding that. The arguments were natural considering that four women were forced into sharing a single dorm. Ruby had seen and heard many of those arguments, even the ones that weren't aimed at her. "Well, it is sage advice, I suppose."

"More like one big laundry list of social pressure." Ruby said despondently.

"Mm. It can be." Blake replied. "Ruby, this is a common anxiety. It's not just you. Plus, not every bit of advice is going to work for everyone, and I certainly never touched myself before I lost my virginity. Mind you, I was much younger. It's like you said, we all start somewhere, or we don't start at all. Before, it just wasn't a positive experience to you."

"Well, I guess I've beaten that into my head hard enough that I started to believe it…"

Blake had no idea what to say to that. She'd never had someone lacking confidence in that department, and facing that down now was a new battle of wits.

"I should want to feel aroused by you, right?" Ruby asked darkly. "But, I'm already nervous, and then when your eyes turn all…" Ruby shrugged, looking away again. "My reflex is to stop, because what if you're…not you? I started thinking about that, and freaked myself out."

"Is that was you glued yourself to me after we kissed that first night?"

"Yeah."

"So I did scare you…"

"It wasn't you." Ruby insisted. "It's me. I'm just an idiot."

"Did it ever occur to you that Faunus manage to scare themselves over their own instincts all the time?" Blake asked her softly, watching as Ruby shook her head. "We do, more often than you might think. Honestly, I'd be more worried if seeing me like that didn't bother you on some level at first."

"I don't want to be bothered by it." Ruby announced in quiet protest.

"As comforting as that is to hear, it's probably normal for you to be discomforted by it. I don't know that for a fact, but, I can make the educated guess that it is…" Blake trailed off, wondering how best to phrase it. Nothing came to mind. "I'm a predator Faunus, and that takes some getting used to. Even I manage to surprise myself sometimes, that's what happens when instinct doesn't fall in line with rational thinking. Don't push yourself too far out of your comfort zone for my sake. I don't want that."

"I will get used to it." Ruby said. "Like everything else."

"I don't doubt it…" Blake said, propping herself up on her side, chin and cheek resting in the palm of her hand. "More importantly, don't think so hard about all the other stuff. It's not as big a deal as everyone makes it sound. If I can hold you in my arms whenever I want, that's enough for me..."

"But the marking thing..."

"Can wait." Blake told her, amber eyes sliding away to look at the rumpled sheets around them. "I'm in any hurry, and I don't want to be."

As huntresses, they were in their prime, but keeping up a rigorous training routine didn't hurt either. Yang made a point to spend much of her time in the gym, it was her favorite place to be along the wall. It just so happened that Pyrrha also visited with the same frequency, though her visits were usually shorter.

"So, is she tall, or short?" Yang asked, trying to pry information out of her friend.

"Her figure is more than adequate." Pyrrha refuted, unwilling to drop a trail of breadcrumbs so easily. Yang was smart, and Pyrrha didn't particularly want her catching on.

"Stop being coy…taller or shorter than you?"

"Shorter."

This was the new game that Yang had come up with to pass the long hours by while at the gym. Barbells in hand, she focused her training. "Makes sense, you are tall for a chick…so, eye color?"

"Unfair advantage." Pyrrha shot back. "Yang I told you, you can't ask the sort of questions that would give her away."

"Its fine, I think I've got it anyway. You've got a thing for Weiss." Yang said, earning a set of green eyes gawking at her from across the divide. "What? Not hard to figure out."

"I'm…listening…" Pyrrha said slowly.

"Well, you're not exactly a social butterfly, even if you know how to act like one. It's a chick, and it's not me…Nora's all over Ren, but she's not judgmental. You know Blake's been around the block with a few women, so can't be her. Coco's not hiding what she does with Fox and Velvet. They are so open they were notorious back in Beacon. Isn't Ruby, she hangs all over everyone in JNPR, and I've never seen you act weird when she hugs you."

"That still doesn't explain how you came to such a conclusion so quickly." Pyrrha said, sitting up from the weight bench she had been laying on. "For all you know, I do entertain other friends."

"Weiss is the only one you'll spend all night drinking a bottle of wine with. You two talk a lot, and before you go getting all weird on me, she's also the only person we all know that buries her sexuality under the rug." Yang said softly. "And between you and me, Weiss is flaming. There's not a hint of male anatomy in her porn stash. It's as lesbian and vanilla as you could get."

"I'm sure that was meant to be personal information." Pyrrha protested.

"You've heard worse from Nora."

"Then I will tell you the same thing I repeatedly tell her." Pyrrha sighed with a shake of her head. "Language filter. Use it."

"I've filtered it just fine, you're not exactly a gossip risk." Yang said, which Pyrrha had to agree was more than a little true.

"Even so, that's hardly information to be spreading around." Pyrrha chastised gently. "Suppose she finds that information very personal, you've now just aired it publicly."

"Yeah to you…but the bet still goes." Yang said. "You really should just ask her out on a date."

"Ask who out on a date?" Jaune asked, having overheard part of the conversation as he stepped out of the men's locker room.

"No one, Jaune." Pyrrha said, lairing at her friend. "Yang's being...Yang."

Living in such a small shared living space was weird when there were men around. Normally she was the one turning heads and causing shouting from across the room to put some clothes on. Bunking with someone as prim and proper as Weiss was all sorts of fun in Beacon. Yang made a habit of stripping herself down to nothing in the middle of the room only to see her female teammates flustered. Now, the tables were turned. With an upraised brow of surprise, she gawked at the eye-candy that strutted across the room as if Fox owned the place.

Yang was no longer the target of ire for the heiress…this man, however, was.

The men of team CFVY weren't shy in the least, or so it seemed. Fox tossed his towel on his bed letting it all hang out for the world to see. Thankfully, that world only currently consisted of Yang and Coco. It took no time at all for Coco to let out a low whistle, wearing a smirk that said she was more than satisfied with her man.

"Uh, Fox, you do know I'm in here, right?" Yang asked, grabbing one of her paperbacks out of her personal shelf by the bed. Not that she didn't appreciate the unexpected view, but she made a habit of trying not to ogle people who were already taken, man or woman…and Fox, he was already completely committed to Coco and Velvet. "Not that I really care or anything, but, just a heads up."

"You're not a prude." He deadpanned, pulling on a pair of boxers. "Be different in Schnee was around. No one wants to hear her screeching bloody murder again."

"Point." The blonde replied, slightly less focused on managing where her eyes wandered now that he was back to being partially covered. "But, uh, I mean, I know you can't see worth a damn, but I can. Don't know if you want me looking away or something when you do that."

"Beacon rules, I say." Coco said offhandedly. "If you don't want to be ogled, keep it covered. If someone's walking around naked, and you don't want to see, don't look. Though trying to tell that to Fox is completely pointless."

"It's just a dick, not anything either of your two haven't seen before." He said, climbing up into Coco's bunk. "Only one I need to worry about is Schnee, and she's off with Nikos and Arc again."

"Weiss and Pyrrha, interesting and Jaune too..." Coco trailed off. "Hey Yang, do they go missing together a lot?"

"Kind of, I guess." Yang shrugged, putting her reading down. "Why?"

"Just wondering how many couples we've got going on here." Coco said honestly.

"Oh, well, they're not." Yang replied conversationally. "They're just good friends. Besides, Jaune doesn't have that kind of game. Good man, don't get me wrong, just not the kind that could keep up with two girls at once. Why were you wondering something like that anyway?"

"Well, damn, way to trample the issue." Coco laughed. "The broom closet isn't that big. If we can find some way to move the hanky-panky in here, I'm going to try for it. I figured if we had enough people in the same boat, we might be able to reach an agreement about some private time after shift."

"Oh my god." Yang gawked, humor dancing in her eyes and she tried to hold back her snickering. "You guys didn't actually use that tiny square hell hole, did you?"

"We did." Fox confirmed.

"Good god, you all must be flexible." Yang praised, wagging an eyebrow playfully. Having seen the cramped space for herself, she knew it couldn't have been easy.

"There is nothing wrong with a lunch time quickie, I have needs." Coco said in defense of her active relationship with her two lovers. "That, and…hey Yang, real talk?"

"Okay." Yang nodded, rolling onto her side, and taming her amusement to reasonable level. "Real talk."

"Velvet gets insecure about what others think. The three of us together, well, it plays into stereotypes." Coco went on to say as she pulled off her glasses, her voice even, but serious. "Because she's a rabbit Faunus, everyone believes she's the instigator in all of this. People jump to the worst conclusions because she's a woman as well. That kind of negative attention bothers her, but we all love each other, and I'm going to do my best to keep that spark alive."

"Speaking of, where did she get to?" Yang asked. "Whenever she's off shift and isn't sleeping, she busts out of this room like it's on fire."

"She's with Yatsuhashi. They've always been team partners, so they go off to bond amongst themselves. His friendship means a lot to her."

The blonde mulled it over a little, her turn of phrase absentminded. "Never would have guessed that."

"When we were just students, Velvet had a lot of social anxiety. On our initiation day, she was pushed into a weapon's locker and he ended up peeling the door back to get her out. Turns out they both ended up late to the outskirts. After Goodwitch found out why they were late, she pardoned them for being tardy and let them take the first year initiation anyway under the stipulation they paired together by default."

"Oh." Yang then gave the two love birds openly spooning across the room a huge grin. "And you two?"

"We were also late." Fox smirked cockily. "Recreational activities made us lose track of time."

"What he means to say is that we were both high as kites." It wasn't her finest moment, and her first few years in Beacon, she was known for her troublesome ways, but they didn't last. Not as a team leader, not when she needed to be sober. "I was having a toke back behind one of the trees, he started chatting me up. The next thing I know, we're both hauling ass to the meet-up point, after getting bitched out by Goodwitch, Ozpin made the executive decision to keep the four of us together."

"And the rest as they say, is history?" Yang smirked.

"Pretty much." Coco laughed. "So, back in the day, how did you end up on the same team as your little sister?"

"Well, that's kind of a long story. A fluke, really." Yang chuckled then, leaning back in her own bed. "You know what they say about being at the right place, at the right time? That's what happened with Ruby. It all started with a robbery at a nearby dust shop…"

A new week started, and the household was suddenly not quite so quiet. Yang and Weiss were back home, and little Ace couldn't have been more happy, excited, and defensive all at the same time. At first she was a purring little bundle of love and cuddles. Sadly, it didn't last. Yang was rudely awakened at dinner time when she realized the littlest sister of the family could be more than a mildly hot tempered.

[Mine.] Ace snarled at Yang, guarding the plate she wanted for herself.

"Sooo, uhhh that's a thing…" Yang murmured to herself, giving Blake a confused glance. "Erm, now what?" She asked, watching the little girl take a hand full of mashed potatoes and cram them into her mouth.

"Food aggression." Blake said with a shrug. "Just take your plate back."

The blonde raised an eyebrow, looking at her lost dinner plate. Ace seemed leased with herself, plucking a few peapods and crunching down on them. "So what do you want me to do? Just take the place away so that she starts snarling at me again?" Yang shook her head. "Yeah, I don't think so."

Ruby reached out, swiping the steak, pea, and potato plate away from the tiny apex predator, ignoring the snarling that resulted as she swatted the girl on the behind. "Enough now, that's not yours." She put the plastic plate with smaller portions in front of the little girl. "This is yours."

"And to think, she used to be such a sweet little girl." Weiss replied as she enjoyed her own meal. "The family resemblance grows more prominent by the day."

"Hey!" Yang barked. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"That she's just as rash and emotionally charged as you are, Yang." Weiss told the blonde. "It's not entirely a bad thing you know…you just both have your moments of being impossible to reason with, let's just put it that way."

"She's been doing that recently. Her teeth are sharp little things too." Ruby added. "She going after yours because it's so rare I think. Weiss and I only like ours a little bit pink."

"Rare? This is what's known as medium-rare, thank you very much." Yang laughed. "I'm not the one who wants my meat mooing. Blake's meal is practically raw, and Ace isn't going after hers, now is she?"

"That's because she isn't stupid. This is my plate and if she even thinks about touching it uninvited, she'll be in for a world of hurt. She knows that by smell alone." Blake grumbled. "Anyway, you people don't know what you're missing." Blake said, lobbing off half of her steak into a big chunk. "Watch this." She said, holding the juicy chunk of rare steak out for the girl.

Acer hesitated, looking at the meal. [Mine?] she asked, ear flicking as her head cocked to the side, edging closer to the food in front of her.

[Yours.] Blake reciprocated with an inviting tilt of her head and her own flick of an ear. A soft chirrup sliding from the back of her throat adding the final clue to the unspoken puzzle.

Ace launched herself at the hunk od steak without restraint, growling in pleasure as she tore into the meat happily.

It was a bit disturbing the first time any human saw what a Faunus was truly capable of, and Weiss had no way to articulate her confusion well. "Well, that's just a bit…"

"Animalistic?" Blake said sarcastically.

"I was going to say uncouth." Weiss shot back. "Teach her to use utensils, like a normal child."

"She'll get there." Blake said, unconcerned as the small Faunus made a mess of herself, and the food. "First we need to get her used to eating food from her own plate…which would work better if Ruby wasn't so intent on overcooking everything."

"Yeah, but…blood is gross." She protested, watching as Blake smirked, rolling her eyes.

"Ace doesn't seem to think so." Yang replied, crinkling her nose. "She's going to need a bath after that."

"Well it's your turn Yang." Ruby told her with something of a grin. One that held only the faintest bit of pity. The factuality of it all reminding Yang just how unhappy Ace would be at the sight of the water, soap, and the brushing of her hair in the aftermath. "Blake and I are going to a movie tonight, so you're on your own."

"That's fine, Weiss and I can hold down the fort."

"Don't look at me." Weiss said with a shake of her head. "I'm going to go play mahjong tonight with Pyrrha, Ren, and Jaune. You're on your own."

"Well, crap…at least send Nora over to keep me company."

"I think that went without saying." Blake deadpanned. "If you two hype Ace all up before bedtime, I swear to god, you're dealing with the aftermath. I'm not coming home to a toddler on a sugar rush ever again..."

Weiss blinked before giving Ruby a menacing glare, fork stabbing into the side salad with vengeance. "I don't know how, and I don't know why, but I know you're to blame for that statement, Ruby Rose..."