Author's Note: Hello all, I just had a quick little idea that I wanted to post – it's in continuity, but it's fairly brief, so I'm calling it another short – and it's a little light relief and introspection that I thought would be a nice breather after how heavy things have been lately, so here you go I suppose; as always, please feel free to share your thoughts.

Blake invited Mina to sleep in her bed that night, not quite satisfied with the brief – and interrupted – cuddling session earlier. Humiliating as it had been to have Weiss walk in on them naked, but surprisingly understanding as the Heiress had been – and more to the point, willing to speak of it to no one, Yang and Ruby especially – the pair had both quickly dressed and the rest of the day had gone by without incident, although Blake couldn't help but think that she'd never quite live this one down. Still, when Yang and Ruby came back to the dorm, Weiss was true to her word, and apart from an entirely innocent question from Ruby upon seeing Blake's persistent blush, the subject never came up, and Blake managed to persuade her team leader that it was nothing before turning back to her book for the rest of the afternoon and Mina departed for the gym. By the end of the night though, Mina had come back, and they were able to resume their quiet time under Blake's covers, albeit dressed in their nightclothes now.

Mina's workout must have been particularly tiring today though, as within a few minutes of lights out, Mina was asleep with her head nestled on Blake's pillow. Blake herself on the other hand, found difficulty getting to sleep, even well after all of her other teammates had long since drifted off as well; her thoughts continually raced between embarrassment at the afternoon's events and relief that, at last, now things seemed as though they would be alright. Lightly she placed a kiss on Mina's sleeping forehead and took a moment to appreciate the expression of contentment on her face, idly wondering what Mina was dreaming about - or if she was dreaming at all – heavy sleeper that she was. Eventually though, she decided that she would make another attempt at chapter three of Carolina Fox, and so carefully slipped her hand under her half of the pillow to pull the volume without waking Mina.

It was an old book, it's hardback cover showing the six years of wear during which she'd owned it, and probably decades more of careful, though persistent, use besides. She smiled again as she remembered how it was that she had come to own this book in particular; it had been a gift from Mina for Blake's twelfth birthday, along with a few others. A sweet little story actually; one of the grown-ups had given Mina a few Lien, and upon remembering that Blake's birthday had been coming up, Mina had, albeit with some assistance from one of the other, slightly older children in the organization, gone straight to a thrift store and bought an armload of the biggest books she could find in the bargain bin. Of those which she'd received, Blake had forgotten most of the titles, but three stuck out in her memory, mostly because they remained her favorite books to the present day: Carolina Fox, Humility and Equanimity, and… Blake let out a guilty sigh, Ninjas of Love… The lattermost being a somewhat ironic selection seeing as firstly, it had been around then that Blake had first started to wonder if – just maybe – she thought of Mina as more than a best friend, and secondly – perhaps more presciently – Mina had been given the money with the intent that she should go out and buy her first real bra, which made that particular stroke of coincidence peculiarly apropos…

Blake shook her head, banishing the thought; she preferred not to stew on precisely which circle of hell was reserved for those who – as mature adults – allow themselves to fantasize – even with a focus on lovers they'd known all their lives – about twelve year olds. Not that that had stopped Blake when she herself was twelve, after having naively read Ninja's of Love thinking that it must be just like Carolina Fox because it was just as thick… Mina of course had had no inkling of the nature of the books she had given Blake – only that Blake liked books, and she had thus selected the biggest ones from the one Lien discount bin on the premise that bigger books meant more to read – a thought that, while sweet and technically true, had resulted in practice in two literary classics that Blake struggled with comprehending at the time, a treatise on economics & political economy, two philosophical dissertations, a handful of cookbooks, and one six-hundred-twenty-seven page volume of shameless pornography…

To her dying day, Blake would insist that Carolina fox had been her favorite part of the gift, but as to which she'd learned the most from, well… that was a much… more difficult question… Carolina Fox helped shape her young mind in favor of gender and racial equality, but Ninjas of Love brought her attention to certain more… base preferences… Humility and Equanimity helped her form her ideas about such abstract ideas as fairness and loving her neighbor, but Ninjas of Love proved considerably more forthcoming when it came to how exactly one made love to a fair maiden… although upon reflection perhaps that last comparison hadn't been quite relevant…

Blake swallowed thickly, as though she could digest her embarrassment and make it go away. She and Mina had a very open – and physical – relationship, and had done so for nearly three years, So why is this still so embarrassing…?

It was one thing when she'd been twelve – and had freshly finished a book which she probably shouldn't have had until she was eighteen – to be embarrassed by the idea; she hadn't really understood what she was feeling, and Ninjas of Love was probably one revelation too many in that regard at the time. Suddenly every night that Mina would crawl into bed with her as a kid had – for Blake – become a temptation to test whether or not Mina would react like Fujiko if Blake 'accidentally' touched her the wrong way… Shame always won that particular contest, Blake was glad that she could assert in retrospect, or at least it had until Mina's sixteenth birthday, and Blake had finally let herself… experiment…

Blake delicately ran her fingers over the thin fabric of Mina's negligee as she thought of it with a slight smile, even as her cheeks rouged at the thought. Their first time hadn't been anything so… vigorous as Ninja's of Love, but it had marked rather definitively the point when their lives together had taken a significant step forward, and there was no longer any doubt that they were just emotionally dependent friends pretending attraction to spare each other's feelings after a few rashly spoken words and a life-affirming kiss on the side of some train tracks after barely making it out alive. No, after that night, Mina was genuinely hers, and any last slivers of doubt were pulled – from Blake's own mind at least – when she'd given herself back to Mina not so long after.

"…Dearest…"

Blake was startled from her reveries by Mina's groggy voice, and her hand reflexively withdrew from where it had been resting at Mina's waist, "Shhh… Go back to sleep; I'm sorry that I woke you..."

Mina looked up at her with heavily lidded eyes, nodding slowly before letting out a little yawn, "Very well… but I don't mind you coming closer if that was what you wanted…"

As Mina's head settled back onto the downy pillow, Blake'S little smile returned, and she set her book down, unopened, before rolling onto her side and cozying up with Mina, already drifting back to sleep, acting as the big spoon, "That sounds nice, actually…"