Chapter 3: In This Essay I Will Be Exploring the Relationship Between Smoothbrain and Cup Size

"So, how do I laser beam monsters with my eyeballs?"

— 5 —

I held my hand out in front of my face and watched it shake. It made it impossible to shave this morning, leaving my mug covered in a blonde, downy mess like a newborn chicken. Coupled with the sweat that just wouldn't stop,I felt filthy on every level. Originally I hoped to shower it off, but an hour after a stretch in the hot water, I hadn't completely dried off.

I couldn't deny the reality any longer.

Alcohol withdrawal is a dangerous thing. I had no idea how much I was really drinking before this all began. My therapist had told me that apparently I had absolutely no proper grasp on how to stop drinking. My alcohol use disorder had depended on the fact that I would completely binge myself, and felt like nothing, and considered it just a mild evening. A relic of my college partying days and a current effect of all my friends being functional alcoholics.

Shit like that happens in the Army.

I was just unfortunate enough to get caught.

Whatever. Cold turkey Jaune could handle this.

As usual, I got up way before my alarm at the kind of hour only consummate depressives woke up at. Team BASS still slept.

A blonde girl from Memphis was staring at me from behind when I rubbed the steam off the mirror, this victorious little smirk on her kissable lips. "When I sober up, don't tell Simone about this," she said to me. I spun in an instant, swinging my fists to brain that devious little bitch.

My fists hit empty air. The sudden motion sent me tumbling to the floor. Tore my stitches from Grimmbles the Irish Beowolf, too. The wound bled in somehow smug protest. The sweat wouldn't stop; I gave up trying to get dry enough before applying the gauze over my chest. So, still wet, I had half crawled, half stumbled my way outside into the common area kitchen here in the dorms.

Hands shook too much to get food into my mouth. And actually trying to overcome the feeling just made me nauseous. Not that I had anything in my stomach to throw up besides maybe some coffee. Hadn't really been able to eat anything since going sober.

"Huh. That's not broccoli," a pipsqueak's voice said. "And here I thought I was going to have to burn the microwave."

Covering half my face with my palm, I looked up from the chair I was sitting in. Ruby Rose stood in front of me, leaning forwards to examine me, hands clasped behind her back. How could I miss her coming in the room?

"What's good, short round?" I tried. It came out like a croak.

She stepped back sharply. "Ew. You're not sick, are you?"

I grunted. "Do me a solid?"

"No. Liquid is about as far as I'll go with you."

I allowed myself a smile. "Perfect. Glass of water, please?"

Those silver eyes watched me skeptically. I half expected her to deny me out of hand, but to my vague surprise, a minute later and she was back with a paper cup of water.

"Thank," I said, hoping I'd be able to keep the water down.

"Welc," she replied without thinking.

"All I get is half the word?"

She shook her head. "You only gave me one thank. I require at least two for a full word."

Despite myself, I smiled. "You're a brat."

The little teenager frowned. "And you're bleeding."

Instinctively, I put a hand to my nose. The moisture there was just sweat. Funny, since recently, I kept getting these feelings like I was going to get a nosebleed. Figured it was only a matter of time. Back in the deserts of Arizona, where they trained special forces in preparation for Afghanistan, nosebleeds had been a constant factor of life. I became convinced I was no longer able to produce mucus, only scabs.

Not that I was special forces. I hadn't even signed up for airborne school. The Agency didn't actually have a need for those types, at least not as far as my need to know.

Then again, maybe I was. We all used to say that you had to be at least somewhere on the spectrum if you managed to survive in military intelligence.

Ruby shook her head and tapped herself on the chest.

"Yes, I see. Completely flat. Very impressive."

She scowled. "And you're naked."

"Boxer briefs and bandages on my chest legally count as a full wardrobe," I said with a huff.

"And the blood?"

"I understand it's a natural part of becoming a young woman. Ask Yang."

She pursed her lips. "Stop being a weirdo, Jaune. Your chest is bleeding and you know it."

With a noise somewhere between a sigh and a groan, I looked down. The sudden motion of my eyes made me nauseous again. I had to shut them tight.

Ruby seemed to interpret that with a concerned sound. "Pyrrha says your Aura is borked. You need to see a doctor?"

"Oh, sure, yeah. Just tell everyone I'm a cripple, Pyrrha. Very cool."

"You're not answering me."

"When do I ever give a straight answer?" I bit back with.

The half pint just frowned down at me. "Get up."

"Why?"

"Because you're a lot bigger than me and I can't exactly just drag you across campus." She hesitated, before stepping forwards and offering me her arm. "C'mon, I'll help you. You need to get that looked at."

"Why do you even care?" I said, suddenly angry at her. "I thought we hated each other."

Fuck you, but was that pity in your eyes? Get fucked, short round. I didn't need that from you of all people.

"Jaune!" she snapped.

"You're still in your pajamas!"

She grabbed my arm, the one with the hairline fractures from the dust incident. I suppressed a sudden yelp as she leaned back to pull me to my feet. It made me drop the cup. I practically flinched into a stand.

My legs were shaky. Enough that Ruby had to briefly flare her Aura to catch me from falling and help hold me. The short little thing draped my arm over her shoulder in a way I couldn't help but feel emasculated by.

"Can we just go back to fighting over broccoli and the microwave? I really don't have—I don't—it's a long walk."

"You're a jerk, we have to help each other somewhere, right?"

For a moment, I saw another girl in her face. Actually saw it. Someone I had helped and abandoned in equal measure a lifetime ago. Dinah. Someone I was just as sure as I'd actually never met as I was sure I had.

I blinked hard, willing the image to go away.

"You do seem to get stabbed in the chest a lot," a ghost whispered into my ear in that backcountry Memphis accent, running slender fingers over my shoulders. "Kinda sucks. I'd offer to stitch it up for you, but you know how that went for us last time."

Shut the fuck up, Simone.

"Sink," I said quickly, desperation changing my voice. My eyes shot open. "Sink, now!"

To her credit, she didn't ask. Helping to carry my weight, and still glowing red, she led me to the sink. Or I dry heaved my empty guts out for a solid minute. Spitting into the basin. she turned the faucet on for me, and I washed down the yellow bits of bile and foamy spit. The water had tasted far better going down than it had going up.

"Thank you," I croaked. "I… I mean that, Ruby. You didn't have to. But you, I… owe you. Sorry. For everything. Jesus, I'm such a fuck up and now all this and I don't deserve…"

Something unreadable flashed in her eyes. "You good?" she asked, then shook her head. "Can you stand there for a moment?"

I made a hoarse noise. Only to inhale sharply as the girl disintegrated into a stream of rose petals. I stood there for a moment, hardly able to process what I was seeing. Intellectually, I understood you could do this. But seeing it in person kind of just broke my eyes. Human beings weren't supposed to do this. Trying to play back the image of her flesh twisting into bits of red flowers made me dry heave again.

A moment later, the petals danced into the room and materialized as a tiny girl with silver eyes wearing a face mask.

"Shit. They got Covid here too?" I asked.

"I don't want to catch whatever you got."

Somehow I didn't make a condom joke. I considered that progress. "I think I need a mask too for that to work."

She blinked. Then remove the mask and put it over me. It smelled, predictably, like roses and strawberries. Way too close to food for my comfort.

"My dad once explained it was like pissing on yourself," she said thoughtfully, seeing my face. "If some guy comes up to you and you're both naked and pees, you're both now covered in it. But if he's wearing pants, then at best he does piss himself, and you can just laugh. You're dry and he's not. That's how germs work."

"I'll be sure to piss myself in moderation just in case," I said.

She nodded sagely, as if that was exactly what she wanted to hear. "C'mon, Jaune. Let's get you to the doctor."

— 6 —

"Ah," the obsequious, Atlesian looking boy manning the office's front desk said. The purple coat over the expensive cut of cloth beneath made me think he was a pimp at first. "Ruby Rose, blood type O negative, registered organ donor. What can I do for today?"

"Hi," I said with a shaky wave, My other arm trapped around Ruby's tiny shoulders. Neither of us had gotten much better dressed, save for some shoes, undershirt, and sweatpants. "Here too."

The boy didn't look much older than me. Too much youthful color in his sandy-blond hair. Was he a student too? I knew they had student employment all over campus. But the physician's office at this hour?

"Yes, I know," he said. "Jaune Arc. Blood type A positive, potential future unwilling organ donor. Your appointment isn't until tomorrow afternoon, and isn't with the physician. Therapy is down the hall. Figured you weren't showing up this early for it."

I frowned. "Okay, Mr. Walking HIPAA violation."

"It's Oleander, and the only HIPAA I am aware of is the hippogriff Grimm. I believe your run in was with a Beowolf." He folded his hands on his desk, atop the book he'd been reading before we showed up.

"Why are the boys in this school a buncha creeps?" Ruby asked.

Oleander shrugged. "I prefer to think of myself as well-researched on my fellow students."

She compressed a sigh. "We're here to see the doctor. His stitches are coming out." She gestured at her chest, then mine after a pause. "Also he's shaky and all sweaty and it's getting on me and that's gross."

He frowned, looking like me actually having a valid reason for being him had pretty much ruined his morning. "I presume you want to see Croaker because the nurses have all filed restraining orders on you?" he asked.

Ruby gave me a look.

"Just, give me somewhere to sit until I can get this fixed," I said.

"He is asleep at the moment. It may take some time to rouse him."

"We're fine with waiting," Ruby said quickly, like she knew he was going to say that. Been counting on it, in fact. "We'll get a note. They won't mind if we come to class late. Or miss it entirely. This is important."

"Ruby," I said slowly. "Whose class do we got first this morning."

"Professor Port's," she said. Then, suspiciously: "Why?"

Ah. Suddenly her bout of altruism made a lot more sense. Kind of had to commend her. This scheme to avoid the worst class in school had several layers going to it.

Oleander eyed us evenly the entire time we spoke. I got the distinct impression he was trying to intimidate us. Well, it wasn't going to work on me! Ruby, if you wanted to get out of class, you only had to say so.

"Fetch the doctor," I said. "We can wait."

"The girl can go to class. I will find you somewhere to sit," he said, standing up. He somehow made it sound like he was reluctantly giving me a favor, instead of his damn job.

I shook my head. "No, she's my plus one to the prom. I need to keep her around because these hoes ain't loyal."

Ruby scowled. "Also he suffered a brain injury and probably can't find his way back without me."

"I choose to believe that," Oleander said.

"Which part?" she asked, slightly desperate. "Because we're not dating. I have a reputation to uphold!"

"Thank you, Ruby," I said. "Very cool."

She stuck her tongue out at me.

Oleander didn't press the issue. Instead, he led us to a room in the back. I took a spot on the examination table or whatever it was, idly looking around at all of the posters warning about common sports injuries and the dangers of smoking.

"But we're not dating!" Ruby insisted as the boy left us alone to find the doctor.

She spun around and pointed at me. "We're not!"

I laid back down on the table. "I'm in some mental gray area between 17 and 25. Way too creepy to consider, kid. I don't even look at you that way."

That somehow seemed to be the entirely wrong answer, judging by her sudden change in expression. Bitches be crazy this time of year.

"I'm cute as heck!" she protested. "My sister told me herself. Only thing cuter than me is Crescent Rose. And that's only because .50 caliber is in this year."

"What's Crescent Rose?" I asked.

"We have combat class together. I say it there all the time. I've only told you like a billion times! You're telling me a boy as fully armed as you can't remember my gun's name?"

I looked down at myself. My weird transforming shield sword combo was still strapped to my arm, my somewhat possibly stolen pistol, XO, holstered at my hip.

"I've only ignored you like a billion times," I said. "Besides, people who name their guns are psychopaths."

"No!" she said petulantly, folding her arms and giving me some kind of pouty face. "I named my gun and I'm the only one of us not going to therapy. I bet you're only going because you're such a weird freak!"

Fuck you, Oleander, and this world's flippant disregard for HIPAA.

"I love Crescent Rose and it loves me. And I'm the only one of us that's normal!"

"Even weirder to name your sex toys."

She gagged. "Ew!"

I sat up. The wax paper on the table stuck to my sweaty back. "You keep talking like that and I'm going to force feed you broccoli! No, no, I'm finna sneak into your room, find your cinnabons, hollow them out, and fill them with broccoli! You'll go to bite them, take a bite, only to have your mouth filled with healthy macronutrients!"

Ruby gasped in horror. She briefly turned into a cloud of roses before reappearing in the corner of the room. "You wouldn't dare!"

"And the best part is, I won't do it to all of them." I jumped to my feet, feeling my chest wound start to suck. "Just some of them. So you'll always be living in terror, never knowing what the next bite entails!"

"Stop it, stop it!" she screamed. She looked about ready to start hyperventilating.

Which was the perfect opportunity for the door to open and the big doctor to enter the room. He wasn't quite as tall as Ozpin, but he sure filled himself out far better than that man. Maybe a couple inches over me, wearing what looked like a white doctor's lab coat over something black.

His dark blue eyes regarded Ruby at first. Lingered on her for a long, uncomfortable moment like he was seeing a ghost, before looking at me. I expected to have to start screaming about this not being what it looked like. Instead, he somehow managed to look tired and bored. A notable change from the expression he'd been suppressing a moment ago.

"Alright, kid," he said to me in the tone of a man who had given up decades ago and was just carrying on through inertia. "Before we can get this show on the road, we need to begin with a couple of preliminary examinations. Starting with a non-negotiable prostate exam."

— 7 —

Ruby sat in a chair across the room from me, huddled up in a nearly fetal position. One arm wrapped around her legs, the other viciously guarding her prize.

The physician, Croaker, had half-heartedly offered her a bowl of those generic doctor's office lollipops as some form of compensation or whatever for being here. When she asked if there was a limit, the man had shrugged.

She'd stolen the entire bowl.

Whenever I looked over at her and her bouquet of sweets, I half imagined she was going to flip me off victoriously behind the physician's back. I could see it in her silver eyes.

"Your mother," he asked her, going over my paperwork or records or whatever. Ruby perked up. "She have eyes like yours?"

Ruby nodded a touch eagerly, though she didn't look exactly happy. "Yeah. She used to go to Beacon, too. You, uh, you know her?"

The physician didn't reply for a moment. Until he gave a quick nod. "Summer Rose, right?"

She smiled. But I didn't miss she suppressed a slight wince. "Guess you were a student here too, huh?"

"I've been a physician all my life," he mumbled. Somehow I doubted that. At least in part, for some reason.

"Oooh! You ever patch her up, doc?"

The big man shrugged. Honestly, he didn't look old enough for that. I estimated him to be in his late thirties at most. If Ruby was 15, then her mother went here somewhere between 16-20 years ago, by my reckoning. Even presuming he was 40, he'd only be a little older than Ruby's mom at the time. Not nearly old enough to have been the school's doctor.

Ugh. Thinking. This is why I drink, to avoid it. I start reading into things.

"Yeah, you're right. Mom was the best. I bet she never got hurt. You probably just knew her from being so awesome back then."

I cleared my throat. "Uh, hello. Still here?"

Croaker sighed, removing the stethoscope from my breast. His breath smelled of a mix of coffee and the incredibly enticing aroma of cigarettes. "Yeah, yeah, hold your hippogriffs, kid. Honestly, the girl here probably saved your life. Your heart rate and blood pressure is all kinds of bad. Alcohol withdrawal is fucking serious."

"I'm here for the chest wound, not another lecture on poor life choices."

The man eyed me. I didn't like his eyes. They reminded me a little too much of one of my unhinged drill sergeants in basic training, an infantryman always wearing sunglasses to hide his eyes. When he took them off, you could see a broken man with a double digit body count, who talked about shooting children and killing civilians to protect the other brothers he ever knew. He got that look especially when talking about Ruby's mom.

"Sweating, shaking, nausea," he said, ignoring me. "Have you been hallucinating?"

"No more than usual, doc."

He nodded. "Looks like a mild case of withdrawal. Bad enough that I want to keep you for observation throughout the morning, maybe the day. Got a couple of mild treatments to deal with the symptoms, but for the most part you'll just have to wait it out. Mostly I just wanna make sure you don't start seizing up on me."

"And the wound?"

Croaker held up a clipboard. "Says here I'm not supposed to give you any sort of painkillers and should avoid anesthetics. Not to mention I suspect mixing those with your current symptoms would be a touch on the lethal side."

"I don't need them. My lungs are killing me from inhalation, I have a hairline on my arm, and I can barely laugh or talk without bleeding from my chest. Just, do whatever you gotta do."

Didn't look impressed or anything, the doctor. All he did was cast his eyes towards Ruby, who was now on her fourth lollipop. "Are you really trying this bravado schtick in front of her? Hey, girl, are you impressed by how manly he is?"

Ruby gave a single laugh. "No."

He gave me a well there you have it gesture.

I shook my head. "This shit is killing me. I don't care about her or her uncomfortable ability to destroy lollipops in seconds. I don't care if you can't put me out for the thing. Just do something, please?"

Croaker gave me another measured look. "Hey, pajama girl. Take your scroll out. You want to record a video of a teenage boy screaming like a bitch?"

"Will it mean I get to skip class today?" she asked, focusing on the most important detail.

"I'll write you a note excusing you for the whole day if the video is good enough."

Ruby hopped to her feet, lollipop in mouth, scroll in hand. "It's a deal, doc!"

I hated my life.

a/n Ruby for best girl in this fic. She and Jaune had a more combative sibling shtick going on than anything. I kinda dig it. Even if it's a minor thing, him trying to set things better with her is progress.

By now, you might be seeing some recurring side OCs if you've read A More Flawed Gem. Cards from a couple chapters ago, and now Doc Croaker. Exact same characters, with more or less the same backstory. I like to think of it as an expanded Cinematic Universe. Stuff you'd see in Gem of them you'd see here. Even if Jaune is self-centered crack, the world is bigger than just him.