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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"If I see another guy wince at the sight of you, I'm going to throttle someone," Jaune warned with all due seriousness as he slid back on the stool around the bar corner from her.
"Really?" Yang asked, leaning on her right elbow and sipping from the glass held in her normal left. "I didn't notice. Maybe he just saw you come and thought he lost his chance?" she offered.
Jaune frowned, shaking his head even as he glared over her shoulder. "That doesn't stop guys from admiring," he claimed. He shook his head. "I really, really don't get it," he repeated once more, taking a sip of the drink he'd left Yang to guard. "We've been here half an hour- how come no one's come by to hit on you- us- yet?"
Yang raised an eyebrow. "You're really asking that?" she asked, not quite believing him.
Jaune blinked, maybe a bit slower than usual thanks to the alcohol in him. "Why not?" he asked.
Yang sighed a bit as she put her Strawberry Sunrise down and held up four natural fingers. "One," she began, transitioning to just one digit, "We've been drinking together for the last hour. People think we're together," she informed, not sounding particularly put off by the fact.
"And?" Jaune asked. "We're just catching up- plenty of people would try to get in on that sort of conversation. I've seen that all the time."
Yang looked at him. "They think we're together-together," she tried again.
Jaune scoffed. "If we were hooking up, I'd have taken you home long ago," he said.
Yang didn't dignify that with a response. Not visibly, at least.
"Two," she continued instead, "I'm not wearing my jacket."
Jaune blinked, and looked closer, and belatedly realized that not only was it true, but also what it meant. Her shirt was quite becoming, so to speak, but the sleeveless shirt did nothing to hide the scars and joining of flesh and metal.
He'd practically forgotten, somehow. Or cared so little it hadn't made a difference to him.
"Wait," he began, "where is it? Last I recall…" he tried to remember, before his eyes widened. "That punk," he growled, mood darkening again. "You forgot it back then." He made to stand. "Want me to run and go get it for you?" he offered.
"Not really," Yang declined. "Stay with me instead?" she asked, a mixed expression on her face.
Jaune paused, looking like he still wanted to storm back and reclaim her jacket, but sat back down with a little huff. Not at her, but for her.
"Why leave it?" he asked instead.
"It was old anyway," Yang waved off with her real hand, before a more bitter smile crept over. "Besides," she gave the more honest truth, "sometimes it's easier to just let it be obvious. Then I don't have to see them flinch up close," she said, not really looking at anyone. "If someone's willing to talk already knowing about it, it's easier, right?" she asked. "One less thing to worry about when someone approaches."
Jaune frowned, not saying the obvious. No one had come up to talk to her. To either of them, really.
"And that's reason number three," Yang proceeded with a more sincere grin, pointing at his creased brow. "Seriously, Jaune- you keep glaring like that at every guy who so much as glances at my direction, and I'm going to have to start calling you Daddy. No one's going to be brave enough to try and take me away from you if you keep looking like that," she said, though it hardly seemed to bother her.
Jaune startled a bit at the thought that he might be to blame, but then settled back down into a grump. A deliberate, snarky grump if the curl of his lips was to be believed. "Eh, if they're not brave enough to talk to you, they don't deserve the pleasure of your company."
"Flirt," Yang accused with an unaccusatory grin. "And how would you feel if no one else talks to me all night?"
"Then I'll just have to fill in. Their loss, my gain," Jaune said easily.
Yang grinned wider. "Flattery will get you everywhere, Jaune," she promised.
Jaune rolled his eyes, but considered something. "Well, glares explain you, but what about me? No one's come up to me either- what do you say to that?" he asked.
There was an answer to that- one not so different- but Yang moved onto her fourth and final point instead.
"Finally," Yang began, holding all four fingers, "our reputation proceeds us. They know who we are," she said.
Jaune stilled at that. Focused as he'd been on Yang, he hadn't been paying quite as much attention- but now that she pointed it out, he could feel it too. The sensation of eyes on his back, the turning away of heads too sudden to be natural when he made to look, and the curious gazes he could see out of the corner of his eyes. And there, on the edge, muttered whispers and the mentions of their names by people they'd never met or introduced themselves too.
"Busted," he sighed with regret. "Well, there goes anything but a fame-fan from here. Want to go somewhere we'll be a bit less conspicuous?" he asked.
"Not much point," Yang countered. "Word's probably already spread all along the pub crawl here. I'd already heard rumors of you in the area before we met- but the two of us, together? We stand out too much not to gossip about."
Jaune sighed. "There goes tonight, then," he said, making Yang frown a little before he looked at her apologetically. "Sorry for ruining your chances, Yang," he apologized.
"You haven't-" Yang began, before clearly changing line of thought mid-sentence. "You know what? You can make it up to me instead," she magnanimously proposed.
"You sure?" Jaune asked, looking at her carefully. "If we split up, you might have a chance at not going home alone tonight."
That was more wrong than he knew. "There are worse things than being stuck with you," Yang said instead. "Besides, it's fun hanging out again. It's like back at-"
She paused, grin fading as she approaching the unspoken line of all night even as Jaune finished it for her.
"Back at Beacon," Jaune finished with a sigh, and an uncommonly bitter laugh. "How much do you want to bet they heard about it too?" he asked, indicating the distant but covertly curious onlookers.
Yang frowned now. "It wasn't exactly public knowledge, even with the other students," Yang tried to reassure. "I mean, there were rumors, sure, and it was obvious something happened, but Ruby never-" she began, and cursed herself again for breaking the unspoken taboo.
"Ruby wouldn't tell," Jaune finished again. "She's too nice for that," he said, fingering his glass with an undeniably melancholic expression.
There was a silence that lingered until Yang broke it.
"She's sorry, you know," Yang said.
"She never told me," Jaune said quietly.
"She didn't mean to hurt you," Yang added.
"I never thought she did," Jaune agreed, no less melancholic.
"She regrets it," Yang tried, attempting a different angle.
Jaune didn't respond at first. He closed his eyes. He swallowed.
"…I know," he managed to admit.
Yang slammed her good left hand on the table.
"Then why haven't you come back?!" she demanded, not caring about the silence from the audience as her eyes flashed red. "You know she didn't mean to- I mean, you know she wants things to go back to the way they were- you know she's not bad- so… why?"
He didn't say anything. Maybe there was nothing he could say. Despite herself, Yang's eyes were shifted between red and violet as she gritted her teeth and fought for control.
"If you just came back- if you just let her apologize-" she tried.
"Yang."
It was a single word, and simple, but one loaded with so many emotions that should never be tied to her name. Yang looked at his desolate expression, and the fire inside her died as red eyes turned back blue.
"I just-" Yang began, sitting back down and looking at the table rather than him. "I just don't understand why. Why you've been avoiding us all." Avoiding the reunion.
Jaune was also looking down, meeting her eye in the reflection on the table.
"Because I don't want her apology," he answered.
Something inside withered. "You don't?" she repeated in a questioning tone.
"Ruby regrets it. She'd take it back if she could. But I-," Jauen crossed his arms on the table and lay his head down on it. "I don't regret it, no matter how much I wish I could. It'd be so much easier if I could, but even if I found myself back then… I'm not sure if I'd avoid it, or just try and do better."
Yang softened in realization. "You- you're still…" she whispered, as if not saying it would make it any less true.
Jaune laughed bitterly. "Head over heels? Unable to let go of a wrong impression? A dumb blonde?" He laughed again. "Getting over Weiss was so much easier. At least she had Neptune, short as that was. Tell me- has Ruby found someone special yet?" he asked, looking off to the side.
Yang hated when she hated being honest. "Still married to the job, and nothing else but. There might've been a few, but… you know her, always running around too fast to put down roots."
Jaune laughed mirthlessly. "I really wish you'd told me she was happily married and raising a family somewhere," he said, and sighed. "Maybe then I could accept it rather than feel like a pining idiot."
"You can't move on," Yang recognized. Not a question, not an accusation, simply a statement of fact.
"Not for lack of trying," Jaune confessed. "I don't hate her, you know. We stay in touch. Did you know that?"
Yang shook her head. "No," she admitted. "Since I hadn't seen you since, I just assumed you two…"
Jaune snorted. "It's hardly a conversation- just every few months she sends a text of what continent she's on, and I do the same, and we let each other know if we change scroll numbers so that we don't accidentally stumble across each other. Again." He picked himself up to take a swig of his drink at the return of that particular memory. "If she called for help, I'd coming running, and vice-versa I'm sure, but…"
"You're both too stubborn," Yang said sadly, shaking her head and knowing they never would.
Jaune laughed self-deprecatingly. "That's one way to put it," he admitted. "You were there those last few months," he reminded. "We could barely talk by the end. Hell Ruby could barely stand to be in the same room as me."
"Because she felt guilty," Yang interjected. For this, for that, and for something else he'd never known, or at least never believed…
Jaune looked at her, as if she made a distinction without a difference, before he continued as if she hadn't spoken.
"And I," he continued, "I just couldn't accept being just- just-" he struggled, so she said it for him.
"Just a one night stand."
Jaune grimaced. "Yeah. That." He sighed. "You two are alike like that, you know? Brutally honest when it'd be kinder to tell a lie."
"I try to be more tactful about it," Yang defended.
"Yeah, but you still don't lie," Jaune pointed. "You just… don't always say what you're thinking."
Yang sighed. Wasn't that the truth? "She trusted you," Yang reminded. "She didn't want to risk losing it to a stranger she'd regret. She wanted to lose it to a friend."
"Look how well that turned out," Jaune laughed bitterly. "I thought she wanted more. I wanted more," he admitted. He curled his fist around the glass, and threw back an entire shot. "Part of me still does, even if I know it's stupid. That I must look stupid."
"You ever consider that the rest of us might have wanted to see you anyways? Help you get over it?" Yang challenged, voice unintentionally raising. "How were you expecting to move on if you just kept running away?!"
"Like I said, I tried!" Jaune returned with just as much heat. "Ruby left a hole, and I've tried to fill it ever since. I tried just being a Huntsman. I tried keeping her out of sight, out of mind. I tried letting time heal. I've tried to forget, to give up, to get over myself and get over it!" Jaune defended, voice raising. Seeing heads turn, he lowered, his head and spoke quieter.
"I've tried to get over her, Yang," Jaune repeated, "and let me tell you- it's not that easy. When she- I fell, and I fell hard. When someone so amazing said she wanted to, wanted me to… I couldn't believe it was anything else. No way I'd be so lucky twice. No way it would be just a thing. We'd fought together, bled together, trusted each other more than I thought you could trust anyone after our quest to Haven. But when there wasn't anything more to it- when it was just luck, and bad luck at that…"
He looked at her.
"Do you know how hard it is to move on over someone who could leave you breathless without trying to?" he asked. "Not by being amazing and doing amazing things no one else could, but just by doing or saying things that maybe someone else could but no one else did at the right time and moment?"
"Yes, actually," Yang admitted, looking him dead in the eye.
Jaune paused, looking back… and believed her. He closed his eyes, trying to let the tension fade, and sighed.
"Then you know it's not that easy. Time…"
"Time doesn't make it go away. Not always," Yang finished, tentatively reaching out and squeezing his hand with her own flesh and blood.
"I've tried so hard for so long, Yang," Jaune admitted, lowering his head to rest it over her hand. "I thought- I've thought for so long now- that the only way to fill what she left would be to find someone else who could fill it. That if I could find someone- anyone- who could pull me out of it, maybe I could move on." He laughed. "Pathetic, right? Wanting to fall in love so I can move on."
"Is that what you call trying to pick up random women who don't know you?" Yang couldn't help it- she barked out a short laugh, and not particularly kind. It was bitter, if not quite mocking. "Is that what you've been doing all these years? Looking for love in a bar?"
Jaune stilled, tensing even before he raised his forehead off her hand to look at her. The shared warmth of his moment of weakness chilled as he looked at her incredulously for the hint of mockery. "You'd say that? You? Who do you think I learned that from?" he demanded.
Yang mostly hid a flinch. "I didn't think you'd take it so close to heart," she defended. She didn't think he'd take it so literally.
She'd told him he shouldn't give up. To hold out for anyone who might be willing to step in and help him move on. Someone who might, who knows, be at the very next bar, willing to share a drink and some time and be there not just that night but the morning after…
Jaune stood up, taking his hand out from under hers, almost glaring as he reached into his wallet.
"Then maybe you shouldn't have told me that," Jaune snapped. "I never seem to know when you and your sister are serious or not."
This time Yang really did flinch, even as he slapped a number of lien on the table.
"Drinks are on me. I'm stepping out to cool off. Don't feel like you have to wait for me," Jaune said, before stalking away.
Yang watched him leave, a frown apparent on her face as she watched him walk away once more. Only when the door slammed did she look at the lien, and the undrunk spirits they could buy. A drink sounded desperately good right about now, and there was more than enough to buy more than a few. She could drink by herself all night with that, maybe enough to forget stirring up that hornet's nest even… but it wouldn't be enough to forget the look in his eyes before he came back, if he ever did.
"Way to go, you dumb blonde," she muttered to herself.
With a sigh, and deliberate effort, Yang pushed herself up and made to follow.
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End Seventh Round
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Author Note:
I dunno about you, but- Loser: Yang.
Tomorrow, things change. Do they get better? Do they get worse? I'll leave that tantalizingly, and tauntingly, ambiguous... for now.
Instead, let's celebrate a milestone- this fic has found its first C2 community! The Pancakes Vault, a story collection dedicated to the greatest, you guessed it...
Naruto fanfiction.
No joke. Yay?
Also not a joke- if this chapter doesn't register as an 'update' for some people, it's because for FFN purposes chapters have to be 24+ hours apart from eachother to register as separate day updates. At 23- hours, it gets wonky. Unfortunately I have to leave early, and don't want to be dragging on later than usual. Hopefully there's no problem, but I've had it in the past.