Breaking Through the Bottom of the Bottle
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Five years after Beacon, Jaune's still going home alone as often as not. An unlikely encounter with Yang may have just the solution- drinks, company, and a hell of a lot of pickup lines.
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Disclaimer: I don't own RWBY. Duh.
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It wasn't long before someone slipped to the empty space to her side. Not Jaune- who was approaching yet another woman- but someone who might have been him six, seven years ago. Young, limber, and the same sort of blonde… but with a different sort of confidence, and a swagger Jaune had never had and long stopped pretending to by then.
"Hey beautiful," the new guy began. "Can I buy you a drink?"
She gave him another measuring look. "You even legal?" she couldn't help but asking. Seriously- the guy looked like a kid.
"I got an in with the bartender," he claimed before wagging his eyebrows. "And definitely legal. So the offer stands- what will you have?" he offered again.
"Nothing exciting. I'm cutting off the alcohol tonight," Yang claimed, indicating her nearly-empty strawberry sunrise.
The kid- seriously, she couldn't shake the image- nodded agreeably. "Fair enough- night's funner when you have a clear head for it," he brazenly stated. "Pops- another one for the lady," he called, taking her explanation as agreement.
Yang spotted Jaune talking to yet another someone else, and shrugged to herself. Might as well pass the time.
"You a huntsman?" she asked, pegging him as the type. Fit, fearless, and young- confident enough to dare, brave enough to be bold, but inexperienced enough to be caught staring. Modest as her jacket was compared to how low she used to wear, it hardly hid her assets.
"In training," he admitted, before realizing he probably shouldn't have. He rallied with bravado. "I've seen my share grimm," he humble-bragged. "Know what my favorite thing to hunt is, though?" he asked.
"What?" Yang asked, humoring him.
"Cougars."
It was clever, she'd give him that… or at least a small chuckle. "Not bad, if you wanted to imply I'm old enough to be your mother." She wasn't, but he had implied.
"Nothing wrong with a bit of experience. Or a lot," he suggested, wagging his eyebrows in a way he no doubt thought was attractive.
Seriously. Kids.
"True," she agreed, "but if you're interested in a piece of a meat, zoo's down the road," she dismissed, turning back away from him. He frowned- no doubt upset his clever joke hadn't been so well received. She enjoyed the silence, and the drink he'd bought her, as he rallied, before letting her eyes wander the bar. Yup, still failing… she winced in sympathy at the sound of a slap.
The girl who did that was probably going to need an ice pack. Jaune's aura, like a lot of things about him, was big.
"That your brother failing with the ladies there?" the kid asked, resuming the conversation.
"Hardly." It surprised her, but then maybe it shouldn't have. They were both blondes, after all, and Jaune hadn't exactly stuck around.
"He must be a real idiot, then, to neglect a pretty thing like you. Any family of yours would have to be something else when it comes to love."
Kid was so young he didn't even notice the tension in her glove. "You don't even know the half of it," she neither agreed or disagreed, before considering herself. Maybe there was more in these drinks than she thought, to ramble like that.
Kid didn't care though. Kid didn't know her better. "You could do better than him," he said, leaning against the bar and looking at her meaningfully. No doubt 'better' meant younger.
It wasn't the first time a kid had tried to pick her up. Probably wouldn't be the last. "And what would I get from you?"
"Nothing but a good time tonight," the kid promised, possibly not realizing he'd been insulted. "Besides, aren't you curious? There are 256 bones in the human body- tonight, you could have one more."
"That all?" Yang asked dryly.
He blinked. "Well, what are you hoping for? Someone to kiss you and whisper sweet words in your ear the morning after?" the kid asked, before realizing she was already tuning him out. He followed where she was looking, and his mouth dropped a little. "Wait, really?"
Yang didn't respond, leaving him free to continue assuming things as she watched Jaune finally start an animated conversation with some pretty thing.
"But he's- just look at him, he's clueless," the guy protested.
"And honest. You'll understand the appeal when you're older," she half-heartedly dismissed, even as Jaune leaned in close and whispered something in the young woman's ear. Idly Yang noticed her hair was black, and short.
"He doesn't even know you're watching," the kid realized. "No way he'd be striking out that much if he had a clue."
Yang took a long drink from her strawberry sunrise as the pretty girl laughed at something Jaune said.
"He hasn't even looked your way once," kid continued. "He wouldn't even notice if you stepped out for a good time. Hell, he's probably expecting you to. What do you say?"
Yang put down her glass with a sigh. "I'd say the two of you have something in common, then," she said.
"Yeah? Like what?" the kid challenged, looking more offended than he had any right to be.
"An inability to take a hint," she said more directly than before. "Not interested, kid."
He rolled his eyes- a familiar gesture tonight. "I'm not asking for your life or your love, just your time and body," he said, also more directly than before. "Just one night, and then I'll never talk to you again. You have a fun time for once, I get a good story, and everyone leaves happy. What have you got to lose?"
"Time tonight with a friend," Yang said bluntly.
"Time well wasted, lady," the kid jeered, looking past her and no doubt at Jaune. From the corner of her eye, she could see the girl leaning closer to Jaune, tracing a hand higher and higher up his leg.
Yang sighed. Time to break out the big guns.
"You're not my type, kid," even if he might have been nine or ten years ago. Luckily for her tastes had matured along with the rest of her. "And I doubt I'm yours."
"I'll beg to differ," he disputed, openly appreciating- or leering- at her figure. "And other things too, if you want."
She didn't. "Here, let me show you my nutcracker impression," she said, reaching over. But instead of the bar's free peanuts, or what he was already protectively shielding, Yang simply reached into her glass and pulled out a few ice cubes. She held them up in her gloved palm for him to see.
And then she slowly, deliberately, closed her hand into a fist. The ice cubes snapped apart, crackled under tension, and popped, and one small fragment popped out at the end. Cracked ice and a hint of water dripped out of her palm, watched by a paling face.
"Excuse me," Yang said, letting the ice drop and beginning to take off her jacket. "It's a bit hot in here."
More than one head turned to watch, eager to see what was under the jacket. And more than one winced when they did. The kid wasn't looking at her figure with lust- he looked at a more distal part of her body, his face paling in horror.
"Well, now that you've talked me out of my jacket, what do you think of me now?" Yang asked, an old and familiarly fake smile on her face once more as she took off her gloves.
The kid didn't respond. He was still staring at the scars more than halfway down her right arm, where Adam Tauros had cut it off and changed her life forever. A smooth black prosthetic extended, giving an obvious contrast to her fair skin and doing nothing to hide the scars from the surgeries.
The kid looked at her, anything but lust on his face. "You're- you're-" he began, paling.
Yang put on a practiced smile. "Why yes- I'm Yang Xiao Long. Huntress, Beacon grad, and veteran of that nasty business with Cinder and Salem a few years ago. I'm also-"
"A cripple," he spat, as if she were diseased.
"Really? I never noticed," Yang lied, not even feeling a desire to throttle him as she looked at her often covered arm. She twisted experimentally, showing off the full, inhuman, range of motion of the prosthetic hand. "I prefer 'the One Handed Heroine' myself. Funny story behind that, actually. But it's not so bad, you know," she shared conversationally, bending her wrist to an inhuman degrees. "Not only can I rip off my own arm and beat someone to death with it- more than once, no less- I can set the strength to whatever I want. No matter how soft," she said, gently picking up a glass about as wide as a thin neck, "or how hard."
With a squeeze too fast to see, the glass shattered. Pinkish-red liquid dripping out between the fingers of her fist.
"So, now that I've broken the ice," she began, false honey in her tone as she appeared so cheerful that her eyes were closed and she wouldn't have to look at his face, "still want to take my time?"
He was already pushing away from the table. "You can keep it," he said, clearly trying to get space. "And you can keep him, if he'd ever have you- you crip," he spat again, as if it were the worst curse he could muster. He turned away, stepping away as fast as he could.
And bounced off of a far more formidable blonde's mass. He didn't fall, though- Jaune's grip on his shirt kept him from falling, even as his feet slid out from under him. Jaune's hand didn't falter- even when he was one-handedly holding the kid up off the ground, and then practically curled the boy to get a better look at his face.
"What," Jaune asked, looking very unhappy indeed, "did you call her?"
Eight, nine years ago the kid might have beaten Jaune. Eight, nine years ago the kid might have been Jaune, had Jaune ever been the sort to be bothered by such a thing. But he wasn't Jaune- he was just a kid still working on one day becoming a Huntsman worth the name, while Jaune was a veteran who'd made his name in the worst conflict to wrack Remnant in a generation.
There might have been shame, but not much surprise when the kid broke under the pressure directed at him. Unmanly tears might not have flown, but they weren't too far behind the babbling when Jaune started to repeat his question.
"Let him go, Jaune," Yang finally called from the bar, where she'd just begun cleaning up the mess on her hand with a napkin. "He was just leaving, weren't you kid?"
The kid couldn't speak. He could only fervently nod his head up and down when Jaune glared at him.
A thought occurred to her. "And he was going to pay for everything as an apology for this mess, wasn't he?" she added.
A pause. A glare from a larger, stronger, more masculine blonde. More fervent nodding.
Yang stepped away from her stool, smiling as if nothing was the matter. "See? All's good. Let's all kiss and make up," she suggested, before wagging a finger of flesh and blood at the two. "But no kiss for you, buster," she said before bringing her lips to Jaune's cheek and whispering something only he would hear.
"Let's get out of here without any more of a scene, alright?" she asked quietly.
"Fine," Jaune said, still not entirely appeased. "You can go," he said, releasing the kid from his grip.
Releasing the kid meant dropping him on the ground on his butt. He picked himself up and ran, though a quick word sent him running to pay the bartender instead. Yang smiled to the watching public in her most disarming way.
"Well, we'll take our leave. Have a good night, everyone, and remember to have a designated driver!" she called out before leading Jaune to the door. One hand- the natural one- gripped his arm tightly as she guided him out the door.
And if that grip was strong enough that it would have left bruises on a normal person… well, Jaune had the aura to take it.
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End Fifth Round
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Author Note:
Minor feels writing, activate!
Not too much to say that wouldn't be better saved tomorrow. I am heartily amused at the level of paranoia in the reviews so far. Some have guessed at the twist of the story... but they won't know who they are until later. Mwahaha.
Almost wrote a bit too much about story pacing, but it was wasted. Bottom line, if you're wondering why rounds 3 and 4 were split rather than one combined larger chapter, it was pacing control. By splitting as two normal-ish segments, rather than one, the perception that it seems longer builds a sense of continuity of the scenes and character development- in this case, (re)establishing Jaune and Yang's friendship after round 2's conflict and depiction of a breakdown. That reestablishment is vital for setting up the climax of this chapter, where Jaune stands up for a friend rather than be avoiding them. It's not the sort of affect that can be conveyed with one larger chapter. It's often rate, not amount, of information received that determines your perception of something, and that was the effect I was going for here. Cool part of planning popcorn fics like this.
But, enough about that. Since people have been claiming winners and losers since the first chapter, who won the fifth round? Yang? Jaune? Nameless hunter kid? You decide, in the reviews, along with your thoughts!