A/N: Had a bit of inspiration strike to write out this one today.
Happy Halloween!
"Ruby! Slow down for a sec, will you!"
Yang's younger sister turned with a pleading grin on her face as she dragged her towards the large house, "C'mon Yang! I wanna go in the Haunted House! Everyone else is here already!"
Yang sighed tiredly and glanced over at the third member of their group warily to gauge his expression.
Jaune Arc was a bit of a mystery to her right now, and not in a good way, as far as Yang was concerned. She sort of knew him from school, since they were in the same Grade and he was best friends with Pyrrha Nikos, but they'd probably never said more than three words to each other before tonight.
Which was why she was very surprised that her sister, Ruby, had brought him along as the 'new friend' she'd been telling Yang about. Yang hadn't been expecting a boy two years older than Ruby.
He looked like he had a resigned expression, as if he was used to this sort of thing. Yang wasn't sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing yet.
Finally, they reached the door to the house, and Ruby led the way in. It was a big two storey farm house, with a big storage shed connected to the side. The owners' family set up a Haunted House in the shed every Halloween, and people came all the way from the City just to go through it.
As it turned out, one of Yang's friends, Blake, was related to the owners, and she invited their group to come and hang out at the house together and go through the Haunted House.
Speaking of, Yang spotted her friend as she stepped into the house, sitting on the couch talking with Sun and Neptune, she looked over and gave Yang a smile and a wave.
"Fire! Thank goodness!" Ruby practically sprinted across the room, landing in front of the wood stove that was burning in the living room.
"You guys are the last ones here, so we can probably go through now if you all want, the line is pretty small at the moment." Blake said, getting up from the couch, "Nice outfits, by the way" she added, giving Yang's Cowboy costume a once over. Ruby was, as always, Little Red Riding Hood.
"Thanks, you too kitty cat!" Yang teased, taking a look at Blake's Cat Woman outfit. Her friend just rolled her eyes.
Ruby got to her feet at the fire, "So can we go in then? I've been waiting all night for this and Yang was super slow!" Everyone chuckled while Yang turned Pink, "Just because you're a little ball of energy doesn't mean we all are, Ruby!"
"Well yea, but even Jaune was faster than you, and he's Jaune!"
"Hey!" Said boy protested, the first he'd spoken since he'd gotten into the car.
Blake waited for the laughter to die out before answering, "Yea, but we can only go in groups of two to four, the pathways get too crowded with more than that."
"Ooh, we could all just buddy up then, right?" Nora asked, breaking into the conversation and dragging Ren into it by the arm at the same time.
Immediately Yang's eyes shot between Ruby and Jaune, and she decided she needed to shoot down the buddy up idea right away. It didn't matter how many times Pyrrha told her Jaune was a nice guy, there was no way she was letting him go into a Haunted House alone with her little sister.
"Maybe we should go in threes or fours instead? That way we'll take up less time going through." She suggested, praying someone would back her up on that.
"Yea, that's a good idea, we wouldn't want to hold up the line too much." Yang nearly flinched, as of all people, Jaune was the one helping her keep an eye on himself.
Nevertheless, everyone else agreed, and split up. Ren, Nora and Pyrrha would go first, then Ruby, Jaune and Yang, and then Blake would go with Sun, Neptune and Weiss last, since Blake had helped setting up the scares and knew the layout already.
When it came to their turn to go in, the doors had barely opened before Ruby dashed off ahead of her and Jaune, yelling happily.
"Ruby wait up!" Yang shouted, sighing as she got no response.
"She'll be fine," Jaune said consolingly, "Probably."
At this, Yang couldn't help but shrug, as she and Jaune headed through the haunted house themselves.
"I know, she's never really been scared of these things, but I'm going to worry either way."
She could make out Jaune smiling in the dark, "Yea, she reminds me a lot of some of my sisters in that way, always running off and making me worried sick."
Yang could have been punched in the gut with how she reeled back in surprise, "Sisters?"
Jaune's head turned her direction, "Yea, you didn't know? I've got seven of them." Her eyes bulged out, and he'd said that Ruby reminded him of them? She could barely keep up with just Ruby! "It's how I met Ruby, actually." He admitted.
"Really?" she asked, leaving him to explain.
"Yea, she had a project with my sister Ginny and came over to work on it, we talked a little bit when they were in the kitchen and ended up talking about comic books, sort of just hit it off."
At this, the wind came fully out of Yang's sails, as she realized how dumb she'd been tonight, glaring at Jaune when he wasn't looking because she thought he was after her baby sister. Here he was just making a new friend, and with how much trouble Ruby usually had talking to people on her own, Yang should have been ecstatic about it, not worrying and being mistrustful.
Her thoughts were interrupted as the first scare went off, and a clown jumped out of the darkness at them with a creepy booming laugh. Yang was so caught off guard she practically leapt back, yelping loudly and ending up bumping into Jaune behind her, who started laughing quietly as she tried to compose herself.
"Not a fan of haunted houses?" he teased in a low voice.
Yang turned red and threw a light elbow back at him, "Shut up, it just caught me off guard cause we were talking."
"Alright, I'll be silent as the grave then, that way you can show off how tough and unafraid you are."
She glowered, looking back at him sharply, "Don't make me murder you, Jaune."
"See, that's the Halloween spirit!"
They continued on, and it seemed that Ruby had forgotten about them completely in her quest to explore the haunted house, because she still hadn't returned.
Yang wondered if she was already done, and if she'd just ran so fast that she probably missed half the scares in the place, but her musings were cut off again, this time by an ominous laughing that sounded like it was coming from every direction.
She started glancing about, hoping she could spot whatever was coming before it happened, but just as she turned to face forwards again a pair of skeletons dropped down from above, the high pitched laughter starting up again as they hung in front of her on their nooses. Yang flinched back and let out a muffled sound, which was quickly drowned out by the laughs of the skeletons as well as Jaune, who was trying to stifle his giggles.
Turning to Glare at him, she relented a little, "Okay fine, I really hate haunted houses, I'm really easy to spook, you happy now?"
Jaune managed to quiet himself, smiling. "Yea, it's nothing to be ashamed of, just wanted to see if you'd admit it." He made a gesture with his hand before continuing. "Want me to go first the rest of the way? I used to have to go through these places with each of my little sisters when they were younger so they wouldn't get scared, so I'm pretty much immune to it all now."
Yang felt herself not, and Jaune stepped past her and started walking slowly, looking back to make sure she followed.
"You sound like quite the brother." She mentioned quietly, trying to make some conversation, maybe so that she could make up for how she'd been treating him all night.
She felt rather than saw him shrug, as she was staying close behind him, looking out from the side. Pride be damned, he'd made the offer to go first and she wasn't stupid enough not to use his wide frame to her advantage.
"Just sort of came natural, I guess, they're my little sisters, it was my job to protect them, still is. My other sisters, the older ones, they did the same stuff for me growing up."
"Must be a hectic household with eight kids."
Jaune laughed a little, "Our parents loved to complain about it, but really they got themselves into this mess." He joked, "they didn't always have time to look out for all eight of us equally, so it pretty much became the norm that we looked out for each other, no matter how much we annoyed each other."
Another scare popped out, a few mangled arms reaching through holes in a wooden door to try and grab them, and Yang moved a little closer behind Jaune's back. If the boy had anything to say about it, he kept it to himself.
"I can't imagine, I can barely keep up with Ruby most of the time, and she's only one sibling."
Jaune shrugged again, "It sort of goes both ways, I had to look out for more than one sister, but they all look out for each other too, so it balances out."
They went on in silence for a few steps, before Jaune spoke up again.
"I think I see the exit, Yang." He said. Yang peeked out from behind his back hopefully.
"Finally. I want to get out of here and kill Ruby for leaving us."
Jaune snorted, "I wasn't that bad, was I?"
Yang looked up at him, "No that's not what I – "
That was the moment that one last scare decided to barge in, literally, as a werewolf swung open a door on the side of the pathway, coincidentally the side Yang was looking past Jaune on, and she let out a scream, jumping back and grabbing out instinctively.
The werewolf receded after a moment, closing the door with it, and Yang relaxed, feeling comforted by the warm hand she'd grabbed on to. Then, of course, her brain caught up and realized the only person with her was Jaune, who was currently looking down at their hands in surprise.
Yang quickly let go, as if she'd burned herself, turning a dark red and stuttering out an explanation.
"I'm sorry! I just, we – I usually go through these with Ruby or Blake and they know I hate this stuff and they're okay with it and – " she went silent again as she felt him grabbing her hand again and holding it in his. She snuck a quick look at his face before looking at the ground again to see if he was about to tease her, but he looked unusually serious, at least for Jaune standards.
"Relax." He told her, quietly. "If holding my hand will help you get through this, then hold my hand, Yang, it's no big deal."
"Okay" she answered quietly, ashamed of how a haunted house could make her go from confident to a nervous wreck no matter how many times she went through it.
Jaune must have noticed her expression, because he bumped shoulders lightly with her, "Hey, don't worry about it, some people just have stuff that gets them for some reason."
She looked over at him as he continued, "Like, I can go through a thousand haunted houses with no problem, but try and get me on anything more extreme than the Ferris wheel at an amusement park and I'll probably faint just from the anxiety."
He then grinned at her mischeviously, "And I bet you know as well as I do that Ruby can run through these things like a candy store, but she hides in the bathroom if there's a spider anywhere else in the house."
Yang smiled slightly, "Got to experience that, huh?"
"Hardest I've laughed in months."
She grinned, imagining how Ruby must have reacted to that, before sighing, her mouth settling into a faint smile. "Thank you, Jaune."
"No problem Yang." He returned, giving her hand a squeeze, before coming to a stop, "We're at the exit, by the way."
Yang looked in front of them to see the exit door, and she let out a whoop of relief, reaching out and shoving the door open with both hands, letting go of Jaune's.
She stepped out into the cold and saw the first group and Ruby waiting for them, and Jaune walked past her, greeting Pyrrha's group before Ruby shot up to him and started shouting excitedly about all the things that were in the haunted house, gesturing wildly with her arms. She saw Jaune grin and add in some of his own enthusiasm about it, before looking up and giving Yang a small smile over Ruby's head.
She returned the smile, turning to wait for Blake to get through with the rest of the gang. She definitely needed to re-evaluate Jaune, as he had definitely proved himself to be a good person for Ruby to befriend.
In fact, Yang felt like maybe she needed to try hanging out with him a little bit as well.
Provided he told nobody about what had happened in that haunted house, since if he did that she'd have to kill him.