Of Berets and Bunny Ears

Submitted by: Thatrandomdude

The air was filled with the off-key lyrics of boisterous carols as Beacon students went about their daily lives. They had just been granted their annual winter break, and everyone intended to enjoy it to the fullest. Students were animatedly talking to their teams about their plans, each and every last one seemed to involve going home to enjoy the company of family and a homemade dinner. Everyone wore smiles with their winter apparel, laughing along with the general spirit of frivolity in the air. Everyone, except for two members of Team CFVY. These two members, who represented the female half of the team, were sitting quietly at an outdoor cafe table under an overhang, enjoying mugs of freshly-brewed cocoa.

"Hmmm..." Velvet sighed, cupping her hands around her mug as she gazed out across the frosty white expanse of the quad.

"I know what you mean" Coco replied, a slight grin on her face as memories came to mind.

"Just like last year" Velvet agreed, taking a sip of her cocoa and smiling. "Yatsu really should be a barista."

"Was that intentional?" Coco smirked, she had said much the same thing herself at a similar event that happened at the same time last year.

"Mhm~" Velvet giggled, and Coco's grin grew even wider.

"That was a good year, wasn't it?" she mused, taking a sip of her own heavenly cocoa.

"I remember it like yesterday" Velvet smiled melancholily, staring off into the distance.

"So do I" Coco agreed. "We had just finished Port's midterm exam..."

[One year ago]

"What a relief!" Coco exclaimed, stretching as she walked down the hallways of Beacon with the rest of her team. "I honestly thought I was going to fail that!"

"You studied harder than the rest of us combined" Fox pointed out, deftly slipping past students even with his blind eyes.

"If you don't include Velvet, then maybe you're right" Coco partially agreed, throwing a grin back at her shy teammate. "You practically lived and breathed Grimm Biology for the last two weeks."

"I didn't study that hard..." Velvet replied shyly, looking down in embarrassment and blushing slightly.

"Not that hard, she says" Coco grinned. "You spent nearly every waking hour out of class in the library, and a considerable amount of nighttime hours as well. Face it honey, you're a regular egghe-" The rest of Coco's sentence was cut short as she slipped on a patch of ice, falling spectacularly into the snow.

"Are you alright?!" Velvet asked hurriedly, kneeling next to her fallen leader.

"Mphahphmun..." Coco replied, spitting snow as she flailed herself upright. "Ack! And I just had this dry-cleaned..."

"She's fine" Yatsuhashi noted, patting Velvet's shoulder. He grinned at the comical sight of Coco wildly checking her expensive outfit for water damage.

"Say that after YOUR favorite winter clothes get irreversibly damaged..." Coco growled, trying and failing to pat herself dry. "Seriously, this scarf alone cost alm-" Her complaints were cut off by a well-aimed snowball plowing straight into her face.

"Alright, who-?" Coco demanded, wiping off the snow just in time to see Fox's arm arcing downward, another snowball colliding with her designer sunglasses a second later. "Alright! THIS MEANS WAR!"

With that defiant yell of rage, Coco promptly bent down to form and throw her own snowball. Unfortunately, Fox was a lot more observant than people gave him credit for, and easily ducked out of the way. The snowball struck Velvet in the chest, and she fell down out of surprise. Yatsuhashi, one of Velvet's oldest friends, promptly picked Fox up and hurled him bodily into a nearby snowdrift in revenge. From there the situation devolved into a grand snow war, with more and more students joining in as time wore on.

[90 minutes later]

"N-N-Nev-v-ver ag-again..." Fox chattered, wrapped in every sweater and blanket he owned.

"Y-You started it!" Coco retorted, similarly attired in her much more fashionable sweaters and blankets.

"Guys..." Velvet murmured, reaching a hand out to try to stop her friends from arguing before sneezing in an absolutely adorable fashion.

"Cocoa's ready" Yatsuhashi, seemingly unaffected by the freezing ordeal he had just gone through, announced. He placed a huge mug of steaming cocoa in front of each of his teammates before claiming one for himself. The members of team CFVY all took a sip of Yatsuhashi's heavenly brew and collectively sighed in contentment, their resident tank was indeed a culinary god.

"You really should all shower" Yatsuhashi pointed out politely, taking another small sip of cocoa.

"Sp-Speak f-for yourself!" Fox retorted, clutching his cocoa to his chest.

"Chug it guys" Coco ordered, knowing that Yatsuhashi was right. "We're all taking showers, stat." The team lifted their mugs as one and downed the delicious cocoa, Yatsuhashi promising more once after they got back.

[Ten minutes later]

Velvet stood in her shower stall, quietly and politely cursing the fact that first-year dorms lacked their own bathrooms. It wasn't so much that she was shy, she was actually quite confident with her body and had no qualms about being seen by other girls. It was more the fact that, since she was being seen, it was only natural that she would also do a fair share of the seeing. Which, to her, was a problem. It was only with the utmost difficulty that she ignored Coco's soft humming from the stall next to hers, put out of her mind the fact that the barrier between them was merely a stiff and impermeable curtain, that if she swept it aside with her hand she could more clearly hear Coco's beautiful song, gaze indefinitely upon Coco's luxurious...

Velvet screwed her eyes shut and shook her head violently, now wasn't the time for such thoughts! She smeared some soap on a washcloth and vigorously scrubbed herself, trying to distract her mind with the simple task of remaining clean. She felt guilty for having such thoughts about other girls, and Coco in particular. The fashionista had been nothing but kind to Velvet since day one, and she didn't want to tread on that kindness or risk losing it altogether by confessing her feelings. As much as she knew that society's perception of homosexuality was shifting for the better, she also knew that there were still people who, for a variety of reasons, still disliked the idea. She sighed, briefly pausing her relentless scrubbing as she cast her eyes at the ceiling. Why couldn't Remnant be a world where the ratio of Straight-to-Yuri-to-Yaoi ships was more equal?

"I'm done" Velvet quietly announced to Coco, who hummed in response.

She left the showers with alacrity, Coco's soft, gentle humming still ringing in her ears. Why couldn't she just get Coco out of her head? It wasn't that she didn't want to love her team leader, she wanted to very much. It was just that she had no idea how well Coco would take the confession. She didn't want things in Team CFVY to become awkward, she didn't want to lose her newest and closest friends. She would still have Yatsu though, she would always have Yatsu. The gentle giant had been with her since her childhood, helping her to stay sane amidst the general swarm of negative feelings towards the faunus. Lost in her own dark reverie, Velvet barely registered reality as she threw her bathrobe-clad self down on her bed.

"Want to talk about it?" Yatsuhashi asked quietly, shifting from his bed to sit on the floor with his back to Velvet's bedframe.

"Kinda" Velvet agreed just as quietly. "I just don't know where to begin..."

She wasn't really surprised by Yatsuhashi's well-timed question, they both knew each other well enough to read the other's emotions like a book. Additionally, they were both still in the closet about being gay, neither had told anyone else their secret. They drew strength and encouragement from each other, reminded themselves that they were not alone in the world.

"It's Coco, isn't it?" Yatsuhashi guessed, his voice calm.

"Was it that obvious?" Velvet replied, a little shame-faced.

"Only because I've known you since forever" Yatsuhashi said. "You've got it bad, haven't you?"

"...Yeah..." Velvet admitted after a moment, her emotions swirling within her. "I haven't told her yet, and, well..."

"You don't think you should?" Yatsuhashi guessed, getting an affirmative grunt in reply.

"I don't know what I think..." Velvet admitted. "I know I like her and that I really want things to work out, but I don't even know the first thing about which way she leans on these matters and..."

"Calm down" Yatsuhashi suggested, hearing Velvet's voice slowly rising in panic. He waited for Velvet's breathing to slow before he continued. "Coco is nothing if not a level-headed, reasonable person. Even if she is straight, there's no reason believe that this will be a repeat of what happened at Haven."

"But what if..." Velvet protested, shuddering as she remembered her final year at Haven Academy, how it had been ruined by her botched confession to another girl, and how Yatsuhashi had somehow managed to keep the whole situation quiet.

"I know" Yatsuhashi interrupted. "But you need to confront your feelings on this, either tell Coco or let her go. Keeping them bottled up within you isn't healthy."

"I know..." Velvet agreed in a small voice, curling up on her bed. "I know..."

[Five minutes previously, girl's showers]

Coco frowned, unable to relax into the steaming water like usual. Her mind was occupied by thoughts of Velvet, who had been growing slowly more shy and jumpy around her lately, and she was confused as to why. She was certain that she hadn't said or done anything to offend or worry Velvet, so she was justifiably curious as to why her partner had suddenly reverted to being shy. Shrugging after several minutes of fruitless speculation, she shut off the water and toweled herself dry. It was the work of a moment to gather her toiletries back into her bag, and she strode confidently off down the hall in her bathrobe. She was rather surprised to notice that Fox was leaning against the wall next to their door, his blind eyes closed and his arms folded across his chest. She was doubly surprised when he stepped out to meet her in the hallway, raising a finger to his lips and leading her back down the hall.

"What's going on?" Coco asked in a whisper, glancing around to make sure no one saw them and got the wrong impression.

"Velvet and Yatsu are having a...heart-to-heart discussion" Fox replied, hesitating a little in the middle of the sentence. He had overhead a good deal of the conversation with his faunus hearing, and had the good taste to give the two some privacy.

"I see" Coco murmured, leaning against the wall and preparing to wait. "I assume you'll know when they're done?"

"I think they just finished..." Fox said, his ears flicking slightly as he leaned against the opposite wall and adjusted the towel around his waist. "Though I'd give it a minute or two, let them compose themselves."

"Hmm" Coco agreed, nodding.

[The Present]

"Fox still refuses to get a bathrobe..." Velvet mused, taking another sip of her cocoa.

"True" Coco agreed. "I wonder though, if it's truly because the fabric doesn't feel right against his fur. I can name at least seven girls on our floor who lurk near the boys' showers to catch a glimpse of his body."

"And I can name several more who lurk in the girls' showers to watch you bathe" Velvet returned, a smile on her face.

"Jealous?" Coco asked, smirking as she took a sip of her cocoa.

"Not really" Velvet said, taking Coco's hand in her own. "Just glad I talked to you first."

"Yeah" Coco agreed, entwining her fingers around Velvet's.

They sat there in a comfortable silence for awhile, letting the events of Beacon whirl around them as the reminisced on the past year. After her conversation with Yatsuhashi, it hadn't taken long for Velvet to confess to Coco. After the initial shock had worn off and Coco's mind had had a chance to work, she easily put two and two together, linking Velvet's strange behavior with her actions. Knowing that Velvet was literally incredibly vulnerable and literally shaking with fear of rejection, Coco had admitted to being pansexual, that she found nothing wrong with homosexual relationships, and that she was more than willing to give it a try with Velvet.

A whole year had passed since that conversation, and the two girls were proud to say that they were still together. Like any couple they had had their highs and lows, and had been forced to weather a storm of attention when a particularly talkative classmate had caught them kissing between classes. In the end, however, everything had quieted down and their unwilling example actually gave other closeted couples the courage to come out. They were happy for how well the rest of Beacon had taken the news, and now would not have traded any of the past year for any reason at all.

The picture-perfect image of the two smiling huntresses was ruined by an rogue snowball, plowing through the air and striking Coco's prized beret from her head. The two glanced up, fire blazing in their eyes as they saw Yatsuhashi already performing a flawless german suplex on the offending student, a boisterous blonde brawler who laughed as her back was rammed mercilessly into the soft snow.

"Life is good, isn't it?" Coco mused, reaching down to pick up her beret with a smile.

"Yeah" Velvet agreed, struggling not to laugh as Yatsuhashi was buried underneath a mountain of snow hefted and thrown by the glyphs of the blonde brawler's white-haired teammate. "It is."

Author's Note:

Hey guys, sorry for the long upload delay! School kinda decided to get all serious with my AP classes and midterms, but things should be better now that we're in the second semester. Incidentally, I did some research on FFnet, and it turns out that the Straight-to-Yuri-to-Yaoi ratio of RWBY stories is something like 507:1599:20 (according to stories with labeled pairings, I did not trawl through 6000+ stories to come up with a statistic with a 1% confidence level). That makes Yuri ships roughly 75% of all RWBY stories (Not that I'm against this balance, I'm just pointing it out). Anyway, have a great week guys, and show your support for the unfortunately ill Monty Oum and Rooster Teeth in whatever way you can:)