Significant Changes: The scenes in this chapter are all new. I hope that it's made more special by the journey these two have been on up until this point.
Revisited chapter length: 4,895
"Regular dialogue" [Faunus speech only]
Chapter 34
[In.] Ace mews unhappily.
"Come here Ace." Blake calls from the living room.
[In!] Her tiny hands slapping against the bathroom door.
"I said come here." Blake tells her as the mewing continues. The sound isn't uncommon, but Blake finds it curious anyway. She makes her way down the hall, noticing the annoyed look aimed at her. Red eyes glowering as her demand isn't met instantly.
[Kin.] As mews again, as though the woman towering over her is somehow stupid. [In.]
"That's enough out of you." Blake said, scooping her up and places her on a hip. "Ruby, how long to stay in there?" Blake calls, tapping at the door with an upraised brow. She rarely locks the bathroom, mostly because none of them tend to do it. A single bathroom for four huntresses promised a lack of privacy on any given day. It became of force of habit to share the space, so long as someone wasn't actually using the toilet.
"Until I'm ready to get out." She calls ambiguously over the running water. The sound of the shaving gel squirting out of the can implying that she's going out of her way to clean herself up.
Blake just chuckles to herself as she steps away from the door, taking Ace along with her. Ruby is the least stringent when it comes to body hair. It isn't that she doesn't maintain herself, but more than anything, it doesn't bother her to have it. Weiss obsessively removes anything that could even be considered a hair on noticeable places, and Yang at least shaves up to the knee and under her arms at all times. Ruby spends more time away from the comforts of home by nature. No hot shower means no shaving, and no shaving means body hair. It's why she always covers herself completely when going into the wilds.
Idly, she can't help but wonder if Ruby's perhaps just a little worried about their promise for today. Blake could easily recall that her legs were certainly smooth the night before, and the same held true under Ruby's arms. She's always kept pubic hair, trimming it short and neat, but, it had always been there. Her ears flick curiously towards the bathroom, she can't help but wonder if Ruby will remove that, too.
She wouldn't be surprised if she did. Humans were a bit more finicky by nature, intimidated by body hair. Many considered it unhygienic, but Blake had no such worries. She kept herself in carefully groomed condition too, of course, but her views were nothing like a human in that regard. Quite the opposite, in fact. She found carefully groomed body hair attractive, as most Faunus did. Then again, she suspected that was simply part of her nature. Faunus of the feline variety, particularly males, often had copious amounts of hair adorning their large chest and arms. It was a sign of power and virility, two attractive traits for anyone seeking a male to mate. While other Faunus males had their own ways to display themselves, feline Faunus were always much larger than their female counterparts.
Blake set Ace down on the floor to play, her mind on the woman still in the bathroom. Many of the traits that Blake found attractive in women, were traits Ruby possessed. She was smaller than Blake in every dimension, and mostly mild mannered. Her cheery disposition accommodated most social environments, and her tender displays of affection were the simple sort. Nothing too extravagant, and more special for their sincerity.
From a purely primal perspective, Ruby fit the bill too. Her scent on her cycle wasn't overwhelming. She was certainly fertile, able to carry a child if she wanted to. She would make a wonderful parent to any possible offspring. Her voice was pleasant to the ear, as her body was easy on the eyes. Her scent when aroused was a gentle aroma, it would make any claim that Blake made on her easier to accomplish, and likely to linger.
Privately, a small part of her wished that Ruby had been born a Faunus. A primal part, one that defied logic.
From a purely biological perspective, if Ruby had been born a Faunus, most males would have sought after her in a heartbeat. Matriarchs would have sought her for their sons. Patriarchs would have gone to great length, trying to prove themselves worthy and capable of extending the family. Parents would do this all for the chance that their child might have a successful mating. They would have gone out of their way please Ruby's parents, fingers gifting luxuries that Faunus normally didn't purchase to prove that Ruby would live a comfortable life if she chose a mate from the hopeful family. Lesbian couplings were far more infrequent, but Blake suspected the ladies who did have such an inclination, like herself, would be equally interested in Ruby Rose.
Considering Ruby's temperament, if she were a Faunus, she likely would have had the inclination to be docile towards her mate. Eager to please, and instinctually driven to welcome her mate's advances. She would likely be less prone to aggression, and less willing to get into territorial disputes. Even if she had been born a predator Faunus, she likely would have kept her claws clipped, and her teeth to herself. She would naturally commune together with others, seeing fit to communally raise the children of her kin.
In short, Ruby would have been the perfect mate for any cat Faunus and their social group. A most welcome addition, and one highly prized at that.
Something about that pleased Blake right down to her very core. She would never admit it, not even once, but she felt it deep in her bones. She couldn't even explain why it gave her such a deeply seeded pleasure. If she were asked, she wouldn't have been able to explain. Yet, the feeling remained, and she couldn't help the purr that resonated in her chest.
Faunus or not, her instinct told her that Ruby was a very fitting mate indeed.
The mating needed to be flawless. If she was going to mark Ruby, she had to do it right.
It needed to be perfect, and that required time without Ace around to interrupt things. Blake felt a little guilty as she passed the little girl off to Nora. Ace thought nothing of it as she launched herself at the huntress. Nora meant all sorts of fun, plain and simple. She was one human who didn't mind playing rough, and that was one of the few reasons Blake was willing to let the little girl out of her sight.
"Thanks for this." Blake said, smiling mildly Nora allowed Ace to crawl onto her back and cling onto her. She never did seem to mind the sharp little claws and tiny teeth that frightened away most humans. If anything, Nora would take great joy in being the babysitter. She only hoped that Ren would be able to keep up with the two of them. "It really means a lot."
"No problem." Nora said, putting a hand behind her back to keep Ace from falling on her behind. "So are we keeping her all night, or just the day?"
Blake thought on this. The idea of having an entire night without the child to worry about was temping, but it was also a bad idea. "We'll come get her before bedtime. I don't think she'd go to sleep for anyone else."
"She probably would if I tired her out enough." Nora shrugged. The sound of a can opening called to the small Faunus on her back, and Ace jumped down to the carpeted floor and scampered towards the kitchen. "She must be hungry."
"She always is, especially whenever she hears the can opener." Blake said with a soft shake of her head. "Anyway, I wouldn't want to torture Ren with her boundless energy. Cat Faunus are naturally nocturnal. If she gets off of her bed schedule even a little, it might mess it up for weeks. I don't want to break the routine if I can help it."
"Alright, well the offer is open." Nora shrugged.
"Nora, breakfast is ready." Ren called from the kitchen.
"Right, chow time. If anything comes up, I've got your number." Nora said, eager to get to her own meal.
"I won't keep you then." Blake nodded. "Thanks again."
Blake walked back to her own home with her hands in her pockets. There she could see Ruby cleaning up the main room from the window, and slowly climbed the steps to enter inside. "I'm back."
"That was fast, I thought Ace might put up more of a fight."
"Are you kidding? She saw Nora and couldn't get out of my arms fast enough." Blake laughed while she began to pick up some torn up bits of fluff on the floor. Another mangled sock meeting its untimely demise. "Sometimes I wonder what Nora lets her get away with whenever she's watching her."
"Well, she always comes back messy somehow, that's for sure." Ruby replied as she put the rest of the toys away. She sat down on the sofa, sighing as she sunk into the soft material. "Well, she's gone for a bit. We have the house to ourselves…"
"Yeah." Blake agreed nervously. "I suppose we do." She promised she would mark Ruby, but she had no idea how to really go about that. Her last time marking a person that way was years ago, faded along with the memories of the man she had done it with. As much as she wanted to, she couldn't help feeling an edge of worry creeping into her thoughts. After throwing the sock away, she sat down beside Ruby.
That was all she did. Just sat there, letting the quiet fill her ears until it became too much.
She took a few small sniffs, trying to mask what she was doing as she searched for any sign that Ruby wouldn't be receptive to her advances. She found none, but, she also noticed that Ruby smelled unusually clean too. Likely the aftermath of the long shower. Scent wouldn't help her, not this time.
It was strange, she decided. Trying to set the mood on command wasn't easy. Instead of it growing organically like it usually did, there was a weight in the air that felt unnatural. Blake adjusted herself where she sat. She knew they had to talk about it more carefully. "Ruby…" She began almost timidly. "If I start marking you as my mate, I'm going to want to do it all the time. Every time the scent fades, I'm going to want to put it back. You know that, right?"
"To be honest, Blake, I don't." Ruby said, turning a bit to look at the Faunus woman at her side. "I'll never really know how that feels, will I?"
"Probably not." Blake murmured softly.
"Then, I'll just have to go along with it."
"I am very prepared to make a few sacrifices in this relationship." Blake told her, her amber eyes cutting across the room before meeting that earnest face she loved so much. "I knew going into this that there was always going to be some sort of divide between us that we just can't bridge. It's one of the reasons being with a human is almost taboo in some circles. If marking you is something you don't want me to do, I need you to be honest about that."
Ruby scowled gently at the remark, edging herself up from her sitting position to look at Blake curiously. A few more moments of scrutiny later, and she got up to straddle Blake's lap. She took one of those catlike ears between her fingers. Her thumb stroking it softly. "Why can't that go both ways?"
"It already has." Blake told her. "More than you'll ever know. You do so much for me already."
"I don't feel like that's enough, though." Ruby told her. "It's like I'm not doing enough."
"You are."
"I'm always going to be nervous about… sex stuff…" Ruby trailed off. There was really no good way to get her thoughts out into the open. Being as blunt as she could seemed like the best way, but that didn't make it easy. "And Faunus stuff, too, I guess. It's not that I don't want you to, but I don't really have a clue what it's like either, so…"
"Marking someone as a mate is… Well, it's hard to describe." Blake wondered what the nearest thing for a human would be. She couldn't even begin to guess. "It's intimate, obviously…"
"But it's important, too, right?" Ruby asked her. "You'd probably be hurt if I said no."
It wouldn't feel very good to be denied the simple pleasure, but Blake didn't want to voice that. She didn't want to make Ruby feel forced, and the woman on her lap was a bleeding heart in more way than one. "It's easier to never do it, than to do it once and never again. So much of my life is based around the unspoken details, and scent fills all of those little details in. For Faunus, it's a way of life, even when we don't want it to be."
"Then you're not sacrificing that, Blake." Ruby said quietly, her voice a harsh whisper. "That's not something you can just pretend isn't there. It's not like cutting some of the snack food out of the budget, or something stupid like that. It's not a luxury, Blake. It's part of you. I'm not going to take that away from you."
"Ruby, I can cope without it if I must, I want you to know that."
"Think about what you're saying. Do you really want to do that to yourself, or to Ace?"
"She has nothing to do with this."
"Oh, yeah?" Ruby asked seriously. "I'm in this for the long haul, and I don't see a way around it. What happens when she grows up and finds out that even in this house, she's not safe being who she really is? What would you even tell her? That she should sacrifice herself for the sake of a human? That you even do it yourself?"
"For the right human, and the right reasons…"
"That's wrong on so many levels." Ruby could only shake her head at that idea. She hated that it was even something to consider. "It's just wrong."
"I don't want to hurt you…"
Ruby was at a loss and sighed, leaning in to kiss her when words seemed to fail. It was soft and gentle, like so many other kisses had been, and when Ruby pulled away she found herself downing in those amber pools. They looked human for now, something that probably wouldn't last. "You won't." She found herself murmuring, even as her own anxiety started to creep up once more. "I know you won't."
"I'm going to end up doing the eye thing again." Blake warns her. "And the purring thing… and a while other bunch of things that aren't-" Another kiss blows that entire sentence to smithereens, and Blake's thoughts along with it.
Blake takes it slow, painfully so. She has to.
With Ruby on her mind, and plenty of filthy thoughts rolling around in her head, it's hard to keep herself from clawing Ruby's clothes off right then and there. Despite that effort, Ruby's shirt doesn't survive. It's someplace in the hallway, tattered and forgotten, buttons littering the floor that will need to be cleaned up before they bring Ace home. Ruby doesn't have a bra on, and inwardly Blake is thankful. Otherwise, she likely would have shredded it, too.
They make it to the bedroom by willpower alone. Blake doubted Ruby would have appreciated being taken on the sofa, or the floor. Her kisses are soft when they hit the bed, the springs crying out under the weight of two bodies slamming into it.
Not that Blake rightly cares. Ruby's neck is on display, and that is nothing if not erotic.
She swallows down the lump in her throat. Feeling her eyes shift, even as she tries to command them not to.
Her fingers itch painfully, wanting to feel that supple expanse of skin that's exposed to her. She doesn't dare to show her claws, doesn't risk hurting the girl beneath her as the she slowly allows her fingers to slide across Ruby's breast. Her free hand cupping the girl's cheek as she leans into for another kiss. Gentle touches, tender the way it should be.
The way Ruby needs it to be.
"You're still dressed." Ruby says against Blake's lips when she pulls away just a fraction.
This is a truth that Blake knows all too well. The fabric is driving her crazy, and she sits up far enough to pull the shirt over her head and toss it to a far corner to be forgotten about entirely. With heavy breath, she knows her eyes have changed. She knows it, because she can feel that too. She can see it in Ruby's gaze, gunmetal looking at her inquisitively. As if studying what her next move might be.
She isn't predictable like this, the realization coming after a moment to catch her breath. She unclips her bra, casting it aside too, before returning to Kiss Ruby once more. The connection is what Ruby needs most. The feel of her lover's lips upon her own, and the wordless promise that the Faunus looming over her has not changed, not truly. Not into the beast that she might look like.
Blake sinks herself into the kiss, let's herself enjoy that because everything else rolling around her mind is a storm of desire that hasn't been properly quenched in ages. The last time she could truly recall such a moment was when she was beneath Adam, her trust in him was all that she knew. It was a younger time, when she mistook true love for chasing chemicals. When that high was all she knew, because love was not a fully formed concept in her young mind, and desire was the selfsame as lust.
This, Blake realizes, is not the same.
Her need to touch Ruby, the need that such a thought conjures is not that of sexual congress, or wonton mindlessness that comes from the passing seasons. This, Blake realizes as she maps out the contours of every single blemish, scar, and subtle imperfection, is something much greater. When Ruby lifts her hands to pull her closer, there is a sense of feeling complete. Something not won over by achieving an orgasm, but rather, achieving the one thing she craved most of all.
Ruby Rose as her mate.
A woman's slick arousal is a tenuous thing. Gifted because the body itself asks for satiation beyond measure. Each soft moan a response, a calling all of its own. One that the mind itself often doesn't understand. Fractured haze following the release of biological impulse, rationality dying a slow death beneath instinct. Drifting into that state of mind, is to some degree, a measure of trust. Blake knows that with every ounce of her being, and when there nothing more than skin between them, she realizes anew that the divide between them will never lessen in the slightest.
Human and Faunus, two entirely separate beings, building a life together by choice is not for the faint of heart.
For Ruby it is all new. Every move Blake makes is completely intentional. Not an ounce of effort wasted where she does not want it. Ruby's fingers, her reciprocation is not the same. She has to wonder as her fingers touch along Blake's skin, just what she can possibly leave behind. What etchings can be written into the woman's skin, if any? How long could it possibly last, if at all? Neither of those considerations are a comfort when Blake is both more experience, and driven to want to be claimed in return.
What of herself, if anything, could Ruby possibly return? What would a passing Faunus notice? What would Blake?
She has no idea, but as Blake touches every inch of her, there is only one thing this could be. Only one name for the act comes to mind. They are making love, forging their emotional bond in a way that is so completely different, yet utterly the same.
Beyond that, there is clarity. A floating expanse of timid realizations popping like bubbles upon gratification.
She had never once experienced an orgasm, freighting to the senses for as uncontrollable as it is. She had never once felt that before. Never needed to truly attain it, and in some small way, never wanted to. On her own, there was no point. Prior to Blake, there was no reason.
Laying on the bedsheets now, wetness coating Blake's lips, and knowing exactly where those lips had kissed her in an entirely new way made Ruby's head spin. She smelled like sex, plain and simple. Their sheets smelled of sweat and arousal. Ruby couldn't put her finger on why that seemed so strange given what had just happened. Something about that begged her to kick that sheet off the bed just to be rid of the damp patch that she had made in her coupling with Blake.
The Faunus said nothing as she crossed over to the other side of the bed, an offering for Ruby to curl into her and find her breath and her feelings from beyond the murkiness of what many called bliss.
They didn't move from the bed for hours. Rolling one way, then another. Holding each other, and letting go. Conversation flowing sporadically, sweet little nothings, and plenty of small oddities. There were times when Blake tucked her nose into the nape of Ruby's neck and took a deep breath. As if she were inhaling the woman the same way a smoker did a cigarette. The slow exhale following was one of peace.
Yet Ruby had to wonder. Compelled beyond belief. "What do I smell like?" Her voice was soft against the air.
"In a word…" Blake murmured, her voice equally as quiet so as to not disrupt the serenity she didn't think she would ever find. "You smell like us." It was the easiest way to explain.
A combination of sexual pheromone that lessened slowly into something that mingled the both of them. That scent fortified by hygiene products, laundry detergent, and other materials of daily living. Proof of their life together in the same house, the same bed, and the same physical release.
A human's nose would never interpret that.
Humans laid claim another way. A different way. Marital vows and an exchange of rings were their way to prove that they were taken. A mutual choice announced proudly, just like mates who mutually marked. A wedding band was the human symbol, something a Faunus generally had no desire for. Changing a last name legally wasn't impossible, and mates would take a family name that way if kingdom legalities required it.
Still, she couldn't deny in that moment, she wished she had a simple band upon her hand. A token that demanded to be heeded by all humans. A statement that the person wearing it already had a spouse, their generic word for a mate. To Blake, the human terminology didn't matter.
Instead, she wondered if that applied to Ruby. She wondered if the woman beside her even made that logical connection. Even if she did, would she even want to? Marriages were legally binding in a way that mating simply wasn't. It was a question for another day, and one that Blake didn't think it right to ask for.
Privately, though, it was nice to dream about.