Weiss stared into the mirror. Even drunk, she could recognize who stared back:

Someone who was about to have sex.

Honestly, it was terrifying. In the adjoining master bedroom, she had left Ruby to 'get herself ready', but she was getting herself ready for sex. With Weiss. Ruby Rose was going to let Weiss Schnee have sex with her.

But the terror, while potent— while definitely there— was fighting an uphill battle against the fact that Weiss was going to have sex. You'd think, having nearly crested her second decade of life on this Earth, pussy would have at some point found its way into the girl's purview— but no. Not any besides her own, that is. And this one was distinctly not her own. And this one wasn't just somebody else's— this was Ruby. Rose.

Ruby Rose, the Vampire, the Jar-Born Malevolence, the antithesis to everything Weiss was supposed to stand for. Ruby Rose, whose major was in Mechanical Engineering— how the fuck did she remember that— Ruby Rose, who had come just for Weiss; Ruby Rose, who had Bound herself to Weiss; Ruby Rose, whose death was Weiss' future; Ruby Rose, who wanted to have sex with Weiss Schnee— for what? Because she thought she liked her?

"She does," Weiss whispered at her reflection, buckling— even in defiance— before its sneer. "She— she does."

When was the last time she'd made herself pure?

"Last month—"

So she hadn't mortified herself since that thing started climbing all over her? Who knew what residual Malevolent essences it'd left on her over time. She was little more than a desperate frog, and Ruby was going to boil her alive.

"Tha's stupid."

So says the drunk. How quickly we forget why we restrain ourselves when petty carnalism is on the line.

"'M'nna kill'er either way," she slurred wretchedly at herself. "Might's well… get som'n out of it."

And what would she tell father?

'You okay?'

'I don't think I've ever seen you smile this much.'

'You look super pretty, actually.'

'I'll keep you safe.'

'I'll never hurt you.'

'I'm Bound to you.'

"Father? Father?"

'Can I hug you?'

Weiss scoffed. "I'm not telling him a goddamn thing."

Weiss plopped herself down on the lid of the toilet and took out her phone. She opened the browser.

howy

hotwo

She grunted.

How to

How to what?

How to have sex

No. Wrong question.

How to have sex lesbian

She speed-read an article— mostly fluff and what she could only assume was a misplaced manual for a game of Twister— absorbing word associations like 'clitoris' and 'gentle', 'clitoris' and 'slow', 'fingering' and 'cautious', before she backed out of the page, frustrated.

She did not want restraint. She did not want 'making love', she wanted 'fuck'. She retreated to the search bar.

Lesvian fuck

Porn. That was just porn, some of which she recognized, but one word flickered in the corner of her eye just long enough to parse with her inebriated brain: 'dominates'.

It wasn't a video she recognized. It was a production, too, but it's not like she was watching it to get off. No, she could never get off to this— this was too valuable. This was a treasure trove.

She watched the video in 4x speed, skipping through it, catching the parts that mattered most, pausing on frames, putting her face basically on the screen to look as close as possible. Some of the things wouldn't be possible— most, actually, but Weiss understood the tiniest bit more. And who says you can't learn about sex from porn?

She finished the video, absorbing every detail she could at that speed, at that level of drunkenness. Her eyes unfocused, and she could see Ruby like that: stretched out before her, a perfect body that begged for hands, for teeth, for a human bite so much less ineffectual but so much more meaningful. And Weiss didn't have to fear. The girl was a Vampire. Vampires were durable.

Weiss removed her dress, sighing at the way the cool air met her underwear-clad body. She strode to the door. She opened it. She stepped into the bedroom.

And there was Ruby, tucked up against the headboard, holding the covers all the way up to her nose. Apocalyptically cute. Seeing her reminded Weiss of the game Ruby didn't know she was playing.

Weiss squashed her confidence and shuffled to the bed. She slipped under the covers. As soon as she did, Ruby's not-warm, not-cold body was on her.

What was most surprising about the instant affection was that, despite it being obvious, Ruby had skin. Ruby had the softest, most supple, most perfect and beautiful skin that Weiss had ever seen, and now that skin was touching her. Ruby was meeting Weiss face-on, her eyes hot, her skin— her skin was on her skin. Ruby's legs were shuffling against hers. Ruby's soft waist was flush with her own, flexing and unflexing against Weiss'. Ruby's perfect hands were touching her shoulders, drifting down to grip her upper arms and pull her in as Ruby Rose, her moonlight gaze lidded, met her lips to the Huntress'.

Weiss instinctively inhaled, only to drag Ruby's own sigh of pleasure into her lungs. The breath, Ruby's breath, was warm. Obscuring. Like breathing in a fog, one which sucked her down into a good-smelling mire that Weiss didn't want to escape.

The bed was soft. Ruby was soft. Soft, soft, soft was the world— even her treatment. No longer the rough press of a thigh against her core, nor a hand rubbing through her panties, Ruby wasn't even touching her there. Ruby was just touching. Her hands drifted from Weiss' upper arms, fingers splaying over her shoulder blades, plying the muscles beneath her fingertips, moving on to probe the spinal erectors. Weiss curved back just so she could feel them, or so her body could be more on Ruby's body, or as a cat-like reaction to pleasure— or something, or something.

"Weiss," the girl whispered into Weiss' mouth. "You're so strong."

Weiss pressed her lips into Ruby's again, because she couldn't hear that.

But Ruby moved back to her arms, squeezing the taut muscle to prove her point, and she separated this time to whisper, "You're pretty."

Weiss kissed her to tuck those words away. Ruby moved her body, her whole body, against Weiss', skin on skin, breath on breath, lip on lip. Her hands loosened, drifting down Weiss' biceps, her elbow, her forearm, her—

"D-don't."

Ruby's touch leapt from its trail, skipping straight into Weiss' hands. She interlaced their fingers, then pushed until Weiss was on her back, beneath her. Weiss puzzled at the sudden wrath of pleasure that writhed in her sternum, the unwelcome delight of looking up, rather than looking down as planned— in the video, the woman on top looked… angry? Why was Ruby smiling? Was she stupid? Or was she just as clueless as Weiss was?

Why did it feel like Ruby' upturned lips were cracking Weiss' heart in two, spilling all her everything outside her own chest? The Vampire's hooded gaze was its own Deepwater Horizon, displacing Weiss' soul with blessed and toxic hydrargyrum. Their hands were still together, and Weiss realized she was breathless. Her face felt aflame— everything felt aflame— but between her legs was a desperate, clawing, unattended need.

Ruby kissed her again, right hand freeing itself from Weiss' left to cup the Huntress' cheek, thumb brushing a path that tingled with gentle warmth. Weiss' own hand gripped Ruby's side, nails digging as she pitifully rocked her hips. Her lips let out a whine, traitorous, but that was only one of the caesarean betrayals as each part of her corpus, one after another, laid a knife in the stubborn bastion of her soul.

Because Ruby was there, and Ruby had her, and Ruby didn't look down on her the way Weiss would look down at her— at Ruby or herself: the former with supremacist disgust, the latter with narcissistic shame. Ruby looked down at her like she'd been waiting every day of her life to see Weiss again. As if it were their first meeting after years of absence, one endured as if Weiss had left them as friends, not as victim and abuser.

Ruby sat up straight. Her eyes left Weiss', but never the Huntress herself. Instead, they absorbed every inch of her. Weiss squirmed beneath her scrutiny, feebly covering herself, but Ruby pushed her arms out of the way. "Stay still," Ruby gently insisted, as gently as she did everything else, as if the corded, muscular Huntress beneath her were glass that would shatter at a raised voice.

Weiss realized it would not be so horrible, being glass. She could break, and damn the Vampire to a lifetime reassembling her pieces, drawing its attention away from its hunger. And when Ruby completed her, she could break again, fall apart right in her hands, so she'd have to dislodge the shards from her skin and reassemble Weiss anew.

So she did stay still. If she were glass, she'd let herself be admired just once— horrible a creation she was. It was almost more shameful that someone like this Vampire was what it took to find appreciation. 'Almost', because being seen, being observed by those eyes, obliviated her sense of judgement; she found herself wholly unbothered.

She didn't know what anything was anymore, because Ruby was looking at her in a way that eyes simply couldn't, that none had, in places that weren't for others to see. Ruby was looking at her like she was a living DaVinci, a breathing Michelangelo.

"S-stop… looking at me… like that."

Ruby grinned. "Why."

"I'm… not—"

Ruby put her palm on Weiss' mouth. "Shut up, Weiss," she said softly, in the same way people on TV say 'I love you'. "Don't say that, okay? Whatever you're about to say."

It felt secure, having her face held that way, like she didn't have to even worry about talking. And that was a good thing. She wasn't very good at talking. Her words, whatever petty exhalations they had been, sighed out from her nose. Ruby grinned, lifting her palm, and Weiss did not say anything. She let herself be silent, still, and see-through. Was it like glass? Or like a diamond? Because Ruby looked like she was tracking the refractions across her facets.

Her eyes saw Weiss from head to toe. Then, her hands followed the same path, avoiding only the spots that didn't want to be touched. When Ruby's gentle hands reached the Huntress' thighs, Weiss didn't even think before she spread them. Even still, Ruby only laid a hand on her.

Little more than a palm and fingers pressing against her, even through the small buffer of her underwear, was like the sweet kiss of death. Weiss lowed at the touch, her chest a rumbling purr at pleasure that was middling in body— chaste, even— but rapturous to the soul. Ruby was touching her. Ruby's hands, with their black and red fingernails: they were real and they were on Weiss Schnee; they weren't Weiss Schnee's own hands; they were for Weiss Schnee, but not of Weiss Schnee. It was pure, unalloyed in the corporeal wreck of feeling, and yet in her heart of hearts she wanted to mortify the sinful, lustful indulgence.

Did she not deserve one sin?

"Oh," Ruby said under her breath, in the same space that someone like Weiss would've filled with a 'fuck'. "You're wet."

Weiss' grabbed at the Vampire's body, pulling herself up to meet her flesh against the girl on all fours above her, but Ruby treated her with gentle force— gentle was the arm around Weiss' waist, letting her down, yet forceful was the hand on her sternum, pushing her back to the bed. As if to console her and ease her obvious desperation, Ruby's hand left her chest to return to Weiss' core— where it belonged— this time kneading rather than simply being present.

Weiss squeaked. The squeak became a keening whine, then degenerated until Weiss was moaning, hips rocking against Ruby's hand of their own accord. It was shameful. It was animal. Sinful.

(Why would God make it so good, then?)

The Vampire leaned down until they were nose to nose, sliding her other arm out from under Weiss' back. She kissed Weiss between her brows. She kissed Weiss on her cheeks.

"Wa—what're you doing?"

Ruby smiled against her cheek. Weiss could feel it. "Giving you what you deserve."

"What?"

Ruby chuckled, moving down the right side of her neck. Weiss' flesh was bright and awake, every touch on the verge of overstimulation, so sensitive each press of her lips almost hurt.

"I—I—I— what—"

Weiss squirmed at the lips on her collar, then shoulder, and she yelped out of pleasure and surprise when Ruby's hand moved with a sudden bout of increased pressure, coinciding with the teasing prick of one fang against her skin. Ruby kept tracking down her arm, leaving an oddly tantalizing lick at the interior of her elbow.

"R—Ru—"

Ruby locked eyes with her, nuzzling the forearm against her cheek. By instinct, Weiss' hand wrapped around the back of her head, fingers sifting into the soft black fluff once more. Ruby purred, the sight of those perfect, pure silver eyes accompanied by Ruby's hand slipping up, over, then under the hem of Weiss' panties. The Huntress threw her head back, crying out at the raw touch.

"What are you—"

As soon as Weiss' eyes met Ruby's again, the girl pulled back, and put her lips on Weiss' wrist. On the…

On the…

PrincepsgloriosissimecaelestismilitiaesancteMichaelArchangeledefendenosinproelioetcolluctationequaenobisadversusprincipesetpotestatesadversusmundirectorestenebrarumharumcontraspiritualianequitiaeincaelestibus.

"The pain is the point."

"Did your mother— ha! As if that woman would ever respect her body enough for this."

"You don't have to use father's scourge. See this? It's a spugna. You— do that, see?"

"Just like your sister. Bah, I couldn't care less how you do it, so long as you're pure when we work."

"No? Okay, um… here! Hold out your arm, extend your wrist. And hand me that bottle of alcohol. And your knife."

"Oh. Well that's rather… visible. Hm."

"And you just go right across, just like that. But not too deep, okay? Just enough for repentance."

"Color me surprised. For once, I respect your methodology, Weiss. Let the world know, and let your faith grow."

"Then just clean it up, clean your knife, and bingo!"

"But what to do with my scourge…"

"This way it'll heal up right, so when you look you'll be reminded that you're chosen."

"Perhaps Whitley will better appreciate the classics."

"Treasure them, Weiss. They're proof of who you are."

Ruby yelped when Weiss pulled her away by the hair. She turned up to meet the Huntress' eyes, gaze pitiful and beseeching, eyes a glowing mockery of heavens that her Malevolent soul will always covet. Like she'd been trained, Weiss wrapped her legs around Ruby's torso and twisted, upending them fully. Ruby's air huffed out as her back hit the mattress hard, but as soon as her eyes were open again, Weiss had grabbed her hands and pinned them against the headboard. Their orientations were reversed: Weiss on top, straddling Ruby's chest between her legs, and the Vampire beneath where it belonged.

Weiss glared down at it. The animal, it tried to mock her tongue, blabbering, "W-Weiss— I'm sorry, I didn't—"

But Weiss would show it true voice. "I command you, stay," her words boomed, making all of Ruby's muscles visibly lock up. It squirmed against its own body's bindings, but the Vampire had made her own bed. Now she was going to get fucked in it.

Weiss's hands touched her wrists, ensuring everything was as it should be, that no Malevolent magicks had erased the repentance there. She laid fingers on each faithful rung. She knew them well enough to be sure of an absence.

Her eyes never left the Vampire.

She watched its muscles tense and squirm beneath its too-perfect, too-smooth, too-soft, Vampiric flesh. She noticed a lack. "Where is your rosary?" Shaking her head, Weiss answered herself the next moment. "You're still glamoured."

Ruby's eyebrows pinched up in guilt. Good. The thing deserved guilt for what it'd done to her. How it had corrupted her.

"The talismans. Off, now."

Ruby grimaced. "B-but the charm—"

"I will learn about it."

And she wanted to see the beads, the little burns on her skin. She wanted to see how the rosary tied together. The crosses, which ones dangled and which ones were in line along the rosary. Perhaps she could learn the purpose, or the make, or the look on Ruby's face when she threatened them.

"Weiss," Ruby's voice squeaked. "You're scaring me."

She looked at her.

AVE MARIA

"Tests show a degree of mental instability."

"As I thought—"

"But, she is otherwise fully capable. Even you have to see that, Jacques."

"All I see is a liability."

"Like Winter?"

"How dare you—"

"And now you defend your kids— you made them! You trained them! You were exactly like this when Winter started, and look at her now!"

"Do not speak of my children."

"Oh, please. Have some fucking pride."

"You think you can convince me to castrate my own legacy? God… I'm going to have to rely on Whitley, now."

"Train the girl, before I appeal to the Parley."

"You could never swing that, the American Parley is too young."

"Hm… you're right. Maybe I should appeal to the Knights Templar instead."

"You wouldn't."

"Why in the hell would you ever think that? I want that girl more than you do. What I'm doing here is called common courtesy— you have a week. Train Weiss, or I. Will."

"Get the hell out of my house, James."

GRATIA PLENA

"Is it too difficult? Is it too hard for you! Pick yourself up, you idiot!"

"I— I can't see—"

"You're not supposed to see, you stupid girl! Blindness is the most simple cure to your susceptibilities— did you mortify today?"

"Yes!"

"Filthy little liar— show me!"

"Yes, sir!"

"Not enough. Go to your room. Come back when you can think straight."

"Yes, sir!"

"And come back clean, this time! Your cuff is still stained."

DOMINUS TECUM

"I… can't do it."

"Why not?"

"I— he's—"

"It."

"It's— looking at me."

"And?"

"It's surrendered. Defenseless. Aren't we supposed to— to forgive? Turn the other cheek?"

"Sister— dear sister— we are."

"Then why—"

"For humans. Is this thing human?"

"I-it was, right? Or, it used to be?"

"Once. No longer."

"I… I don't think—"

"There. But next time, you won't have time to hesitate."

"Yes. Of course. Thank you, Winter."

"What would you do without me?"

"Weiss?"

A hand— on her cheek— how— "No!"

The hand slammed back into the headboard. "It's okay, we don't have to—"

Her teeth ground against each other. Winter's voice was in her ear, urging her to calm down. Father's voice was in her other ear, demanding she act. Only one of them was dead.

"Down."

The Vampire, with effort, scooted its body down the bed while keeping its hands above its head. "P-please talk to—"

"Quiet."

One leg lifting after the other, Weiss shimmied off her underwear. Ruby's eyes flicked down, dilating despite the look of worry over her features, and Weiss could see a slight relaxation to her body. As if she'd been wanting it like this all along. As if she'd known her place since this started. As if her comfort had been a lie— a service, done only such that she may receive.

And if she wanted to receive, Weiss would give. She would give until the girl had enough of that blessed grace, drowned in the baptism.

"Talismans. Off."

Ruby could not object verbally, though her eyes let out a 'But—'

"Now."

The Vampire folded instantly, her fingers drifting to the right shoulder before peeling off an invisible slip. The glamour snapped away, replaced by reality in an uncanny instant, and there was the rosary: a harness of godly silver, just as blasphemous a presence as her irises. It hugged tight her slender body, criss-crossing over each arm, each leg, the lines meeting at her torso and forming a sparse spiderweb of silver knots.

The Huntress shoved a flat hand down hard on the center of her upper chest, right at a knot of beads, forcing the girl's air out and making her wheeze. Weiss' arm pressed, uncaring of how hard Ruby's chest fought to rise. Her palm observed that the metal was warm and real. Her mind pieced together that the glamour made it intangible, since she hadn't felt it on her skin. Her eyes noticed the other two parchment slips.

"Talismans. Plural."

Ruby's eyes bugged out, her jaw straining against the bid of silence, but she couldn't resist for long. Soon enough, Ruby's hand was flicking up. Ruby's fingers were pinching the parchment. Ruby's wrist was twisting the last talismans away.

Jacques Schnee had punched Weiss many times in her life. He had stabbed her on numerous occasions. He had shot her more than once. "So you won't be shocked by the force," he had said as justification to each one, almost in the exact same way every time. "Can't have you being so hysterical in a fight. If you're going to die, you'll do it with the Sign of the Cross on your hands, and a Hail Mary on your lips."

The shotgun blast hitting her vest had nearly thrown her off her feet, leaving a bruise beneath like a hydraulic press had punched her. The pistol round hitting the meat of her shoulder had knocked her back like a sledgehammer, then the pain had sent her to the floor, writhing and bleating.

The knife always drove into her, ramming in despite it being a precise blade, despite the blow being clean, despite her being used to the pain— it always felt like a displacement.

The punches were punches. Jacques had hoary, angry fists, striking as if to brand every knuckle's exact location into Weiss' memory. Winter had punched her too, in training, but she punched with a boxer's restraint. Klein, their family butler, even tried, but he had a soft heart and softer hands.

The charm hit harder than anything Weiss had felt before. Bullets, knives, fists, the sight of Whitley following their father from Winter's funeral, leaving Weiss alone with the headstone— it was nothing. Not even a drop in the ocean. The world was sucked away around her, vision tightening beyond something so wide as a tunnel— Ruby became a pinprick, and everything else was weight. Ruby and weight. Ruby and weight.

And yet, that was where everything bunched up— all the feeling in the world, forced into a bottleneck. Weiss' mouth wanted to command Ruby to die, but her fingers wanted to be pierced on her teeth, but her hands wanted to pull Ruby's muscles from her bones, but her tongue wanted to find that groove again, but her mouth wanted to fill with meat, but her teeth wanted hair and bone, but her body wanted to fuck until they were both dead and bloodless. All the rancor, the voices screaming at once, the surge of feeling, the need— it was all pulling in different directions, all at once, and taking her nowhere at all. It all melded into static, into background noise, into a cacophony so loud that it became a deafening bell-toll.

All that was left was the ringing, and the Weiss, and the Ruby at the end of the tunnel. Ruby, with those eyes, just as huge and watery as they always were. Only now, they looked at her with fear.

What was she doing?

She fell off the bed, even though her body needed her to stay— to finish the job. Her mouth might have said something, or it might not have, but she scrambled back to the door regardless. She left the room. Her feet took her to the bathroom for her old, slightly bloodied clothes, and she walked to the kitchen without breathing. She got her things. She got in her car. She went home.

Weiss Schnee sat on her bed.

Her phone rang. Ruby Rose.

She did not answer. She simply stared at the name until the ringing stopped, and the screen went black.

After a time, her phone rang again. Father.

She picked up.

"Come home."

"Yes, father."

"It's a Code One."

Code One. What she always wanted. "Understood."

He didn't hang up. That wasn't like him. And his voice— strain? "We found them."

"Who?"

Not the strain of stress— rather, an audible grin. "We're going to avenge your sister."