Archive of Our Own

Atlas is a mess, from the day RWBY lands on the ground, crawling with Grimm, to the moment they leave the city behind, ragged and in Ironwood’s commandeered airship, the second relic firmly locked in Ruby’s arms. Despite the harsh desert climate and fierce students of Shade Academy, Vacuo is a relief. Team RWBY is safe, and they’re together, and they’re seeing their old friends from CFVY for the first time in years, catching up, trading stories. Getting drinks.

Yang plunks two on the table in front of Coco. “Strawberry Sunrise?”

Coco raises her eyebrow. “Non-alcoholic?”

“Please.” Yang smirks, sits down, takes a long sip through her straw, and tastes the harsh bite of rum. 

“Thank goodness,” Coco says, with feeling. They clink glasses and drink.

“I had one of these the night I met Velvet,” Yang says thoughtfully. “Hold the hooch. One was for Blake.”

“You went virgin for Blake?” Coco asks, light disbelief. It’s not like Blake is a partier (Yang grins, to think about Blake, wild and out and social... dancing... and okay, maybe this thinking is starting to veer towards wishful), but she’s not a teetotaller or anything. 

“Hey,” Yang shrugs. “It was our first semester! And I was. You know. Feeling stuff out, still.” 

“Oh yeah?” Coco knocks back her drink. “And how’s feeling Blake out been? Still going virgin?”

Yang chokes on her drink. “Dude!” She breaks into a coughing fit.

Coco cocks her head to one side. “So you’re not dating Blake, then?”

“I’m not—” Yang coughs. “—I’m not not dating Blake. I’m—”

“Fooling around?”

“No! Damn, Coco.”

Coco holds up her hands. “Okay, okay, I’m sorry! I’m just—I haven’t seen you in awhile, and you two always sort of had a thing, and you came in holding hands—”

“I know!” Yang sighs. “I know. Tell me about it.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Really?” Yang’s thinking about how Coco has never really been the touchy feely type before.

“Maybe I’ve changed,” Coco replies, reading Yang like a book.

“What could change you?” Yang asks. Coco is the most stubborn, the most singular person, that Yang has ever known. She remembers being young at Beacon, in awe and trying to hide that awe so that she could still play it cool. Yang had wanted to be as strong and as fierce as Coco Adel one day.

(And hey, what do you know?)

“Time. Distance.” Coco props her heeled boot onto the rung of the chair in front of her. “The love of a good woman.”

“Velvet.” Yang says so without needing to ask. Coco and Velvet weren’t a pair the last time she’d seen them, but there’d been a shift, obvious and ineffable, when they’d greeted them at Shade. Some invisible tether, like Saffron and Terra Cotta-Arc, Nora and Ren, Yin and... well, you know the rest. 

“Velvet,” Coco agrees. “She’s... it’s been amazing. But I’m still asking: What about Blake?” 

What about Blake? Yang’s not stupid. She knows that they’re edging towards something. She doesn’t know why it’s so glacial. They’d been busy. Things had been crazy. But things had always been crazy. If anyone were tempered to find the sweet moments in high pressure chaos, it was Yang and Blake. But Yang... 

“I can’t get started,” Yang says, finishing her own thought.

“Don’t be stupid. Starting’s the easy part.”

“For you,” Yang retorts, feeling a blush start to creep up her neck.

“Come on,” Coco says, blithely. “You must have moves. You can use them when it means something, too.”

“I don’t have moves,” Yang says stiffly. She knows how she comes off. She likes how she comes off, even: Fun, approachable, confident, impulsive. It smooths her path sometimes, helps her walk a little more lightly. But it’s not all of who she is, and girls... girls have managed to slip through the cracks. They’ve never quite snaked through her sunsoaked personality. Yang can’t parse how to tend it.  “I don’t even know how to have moves,” she admits.

“Yang.” Yang’s not sure she’s ever seen Coco look taken aback before. “Are you telling me you’ve never kissed any girl?”

“I guess I’m old fashioned,” Yang says. “I think you should take a girl out before you kiss her.”

The implication dawns on Coco immediately. “You’ve never asked a girl out before?” She looks at Yang over her sunglasses. “You?”

“It’s not that weird!” Yang flares defensively. “I always had to look out for Ruby, and when my friends at Signal all started asking each other out, none of the guys felt right—”

Coco grins. “Big surprise there.”

“I know.” Yang’s smile, a mirror. “And then I came to Beacon...” 

“And then you met Blake.”

“And then I met Blake,” Yang agrees. “And nothing has felt so right since. But I never used to think... I didn’t think she... except, lately...” Yang shrugs, helplessly. She can’t always find the words.

But Coco, as careful as she is fierce, knows where to press. “What changed?”

“We...” Dark memories flicker over Yang’s features. “We killed someone together.” Yang frowns. “That’s not what I meant. I mean, we did, and that is when things changed but it was more like... we overcame this big, shared demon together, and something... I don’t know. Uncorked.”

Coco says nothing, only listens.

Yang lets out a breath and goes on. “Blake told me weeks later that when Adam saw me, that night at Beacon, it was like he’d locked onto a target. He knew that attacking me would hurt Blake more than anybody. He knew it. We’re more than just partners. We’re more than just friends. We’re...”

“Ineffable?” Coco supplies.

“Yeah.” Yang sighs. She thinks she might be starting to ramble. “I think that before Beacon fell, we were just figuring out how to say that out loud. But Beacon did fall, and she left, and I...” Yang trails off, and her eyes trail towards her prosthetic arm. A part of me is gone. But it’s not even that which complicates Yang’s thoughts, not really. It’s the awful myth that comes with it.

“Killing Adam didn’t bring us together,” Yang says, steady and clear. “That’s a horrible way to put it. But I think it solved something. I think it helped us find our way back to where we almost were two years ago.”

Coco crosses her arms and cocks her head. “But you’re not. Together. You just said so a minute ago." 

“I know.” Yang drops her head into her hands. “I don’t know what I’m doing anymore. It’s like we’re more than friends, but we’re still friends, so we don’t know what to do about it.” Yang lifts her head, peers at Coco through her bangs. “How did you and Velvet get together?”

“Oh!” Coco laughs. “She wrote me a love letter.”

“She what?”

“Yeah.” Coco smile turns softer, tenderly close to misty. “She’d had a crush on me since we were kids at Pharos, I guess. When we first met, she couldn’t stop blushing every time I looked at her. It was adorable, and I must have always sort of known, but I was... busy.” 

Light bounces off the lenses of Coco’s aviators, and Yang feels a warm tremor. She knows that Coco means with other girls. At the Vytal Festival, Yang had heard rumours that Coco had dated all of team NGDO. And stories of the broken hearts she’d left behind before settling down still littered the corners of Vale.

“Anyway,” Coco continues. “I think Fox put her up to it. Or maybe Yatsu. Both swear it was them.” Coco looks thoughtful. “Now that I’m saying it out loud, it was definitely Yatsu.”

She and Yang laugh together. “And that worked?” Yang asks. “Pushed through the awkwardness, made you see her differently?”

“That’s not it exactly,” says Coco. “It’s not like I didn’t know she was pretty and talented and sharp before. Just the right amount of bitchy.” Coco grins, and then softens. “But she could be so shy...” the tiniest shred of vulnerability slips into the twitch of her lips. “It’s a lot to ask, with your teammate, to go all in like that when you don’t know what you’ll be getting back. It’s not like you can block them on your scroll and move on. It’s not like you’d want to.” Coco shrugs. “I guess I needed to know she was all in, too, and could say it herself. And would say it herself. And then it was like a light switched on.”

Yang goes quiet, echoes of We’re protecting each other, and I’m not going to break my promise going through her head. “I think she knows,” she says softly. “I think we both know.” Abruptly, Yang makes a face. “I am not writing some sappy letter.”     

“Please. Neither would I.” Coco stands up and offers her hand to Yang. “We’re women of action.”

The place Coco takes them to is a total dive, but she swears its cutting edge in Vacuo. It’s every cowboy dream that Yang has ever harboured: Dim lighting, sawdust floors, scattering of old locals nursing drinks at the bar and swapping war stories. Coco, Yang, Blake, and Velvet walk in, and Yang immediately raises her eyebrows at Coco, who lowers her sunglasses.

“Sometimes you don’t want bottle service,” says Coco. “Or fog machines.”

Yang groans. “You’re never letting that go, huh?”

“They’re tacky.”

“They’re sexy!”

Coco rolls her eyes. Velvet and Blake exchange a look and a grin.

“I liked the fog machine,” Blake says loyally. “It was a good dance.”

Yang smiles at Blake, appreciative, plunging into memory. A dance, not so many years ago. A wink, a promise. Yang can remember the first time she twirled Blake in her arms like she’s still living it, the soft, moon-drunk floral of her perfume, the dark, lush sweep of her hair. A key turning open a lock, solid and meant to be. Yang had watched Blake for the rest of the night, watched her laugh with Sun and Neptune, watch her seek out Yang, standing on the balcony, and give a tiny wave. Another piece of them had woven itself into place that night, touched by romance, touched by fondness, touched by yearning. Touched by maybe.

“Philistines,” Coco sighs, and the moment of reverie is shattered by giggles.

Yang and Blake look away from each other, but Blake looks back, just once, as they follow Coco to a corner table, flirty and over her shoulder. Yang gets butterflies, clichéd and undeniable. She falls into the seat next to Blake, and their knees bump under the table. 

“So this is the hot spot of Vacuo, huh?” Blake asks, once she’s settled. She takes in the room, one eyebrow raised. “It’s a long shot from Atlas.”

Yang snorts. Atlas had been so icy and austere that it had been oppressive, and maybe that was the point. Vacuo smelled like sand and danger, and Yang can feel herself molding into its settings with greater ease already. She knew (she would come to know) that Shade Academy had its own intentions, vicious and competitive, but at least they wore their teeth on their sleeves.

“There are flashier places in the city,” Coco admits. “But I like it here. Reminds me of the spots we find on mission.” Coco smiles at Velvet, soft with shared memory.

There are stories about all of them, Yang thinks, not just hers, not just Blake’s. Not just RWBY’s. It’s hard to remember, under the weight of their mission, the two relics glowing on Ruby’s belt, the vicious, mythic might of Salem. But life goes on, and lives still need to be saved, even if they exist underneath the mantles of fate and the gods instead of driving towards them like a wedge. These are the people who CFVY helps, who are served by Coco’s swagger, by Velvet’s compassion, by Yatsu’s steady kindness, by Fox’s wit. Yang thinks that the world is lucky to have them.

“Any standouts?” asks Yang. “Seems like CFVY has been out on missions a lot.”

Velvet shrugs awkwardly. “We help where we can. It’s dangerous in the desert.”

“Not everyone gets to swoop across it in an airship,” Coco adds pointedly.

Yang bristles. “We had our share of fights to get to it.”

“Ever get swallowed whole by a desert worm?”

“Ever fight a four story mecha?”

“I heard you didn’t even do that,” Coco retorts. “It was Ruby and Weiss and JNR.”

“Oh, that is right,” Yang says thoughtfully. “I guess that’s right about when I was driving my motorcycle over a cliff like the most badass human alive.” Yang sits back in her chair and smirks, like, Top that, Adel.

Coco’s mouth opens automatically, the comeback already rolling off of her tongue. “Well, have you ever—" 

“Sweetheart.” Velvet cuts Coco off and lays her hand over Coco’s on the table. “Do you two need to go outside? You might start knocking over tables if you swing your dicks any harder.”

Coco melts into a blush. Yang is startled into a laugh. She hears Blake giggling next to her, and glances at her sidelong. “You, too?” Yang asks.

“She has a point,” Blake says, nodding towards Velvet, whose head is bent towards Coco’s now. She takes off Coco’s sunglasses and puts them on, wrinkles her nose, and Coco rolls her naked topaz eyes. Neither notice Blake and Yang watching them. “They’re pretty cute now, huh?” Blake adds quietly.

“They were always cute,” Yang replies.

Blake smiles crookedly. “I always knew you had a thing for Coco,” she teases.

Coco perks up at the sound of her name. “What’s that, Xiao Long? You were sweet on me?”

“No!” Yang splutters, but she knows she’s gone bright red.

“First semester,” Blake’s smile has turned wicked. “Between Yang’s thing for Coco and Weiss’s crush on Pyrrha it was like smitten by buff girls anonymous in our dorm.”

Coco can’t help but crow a little. She flexes her arm, and the muscles bulge against the sheer fabric of her blouse. “Tell me more,” says Coco. “Were we star crossed? What happened?” 

“I got to know you,” Yang shoots back.

Coco laughs and raises her glass. “To missed opportunities,” she says easily, “And terrible choices.” She drains her glass in one swallow and looks at Velvet. “Lucky for you, huh?”

“Lucky for you,” says Velvet. “I’m the only girl in the world who can bear to stand your ego for longer than a week.” 

“She really is,” Coco says cheerfully. She leans closer to Velvet, brushes a strand of hair from her cheek. “I better make sure you want to stick around, huh?”

“You’re doing alright so far.” Velvet softens under Coco’s touch. Again, it’s like they share a private world. Coco’s lips brush against Velvet’s in a quick kiss like it’s the easiest thing in the universe, and then she deftly takes back her sunglasses, leans back in her seat, and puts them on.

“Hey!” Velvet protests. “Those looked good on me.”

“You can’t have everything, honey.”

“You probably can’t even see in them in this place. I have perfect night vision.”

Coco puts her hands to her chest. “I just need to follow the light of my love for you.”

“Maybe it’s for the best you never followed up with Coco,” Blake says dubiously. “Two of you in one relationship might have been way too much.”

“Hey.” Coco shoots a finger gun at Yang. “Don’t sell yourself short. We would have been magnificent.”

“I’m sure I’ll recover,” Yang says dryly. Unerringly, her gaze wavers towards Blake’s. Their eyes meet.

And again, and always, Blake’s presence crashes over Yang like the crest and the break of a wave. Yang is so painfully, irretrievably in love with Blake that the memory of wanting Coco feels just that: A memory. Hazy, wavering, another lifetime, another girl. Parts of this are even truer than Yang knows. The cheerful, irreverent flirt she’d been at Beacon is still there of course, but it’s clouded with shadows now. Another lifetime, another girl. She wonders if this is how Blake had felt in their first weeks at Beacon. She’d arrived carrying her own shade. It made her steadier and thoughtful but also more afraid, and Yang thinks about how as the years have faded by, she’s grown to understand that more.

Yang told Coco that before Beacon’s fall, she’d been edging towards something with Blake, but the something that they are edging towards now is richer and more terrifying than any schoolgirl love story had the vocabulary for, and that much more daunting to succumb to. 

None of this translates to Blake in the soft look they exchange, or maybe all of it does, because Blake’s hand drifts across the table until her pinkie finger hooks around Yang’s. Yang stares. Their bodies, intertwined.

“I’m sure you will,” Coco murmurs, knowing and serene. Velvet nudges her, and Coco slings her arm around the back of Velvet’s chair.

They sit there, the four of them, like puzzle pieces slipping into place, the kind that are old and wooden, complementary and worn silky smooth. Velvet leans into Coco’s side, and Blake and Yang sip their drinks and savour the heady buzz of it, the tentative promise of physical touch, of skin on skin. To anyone looking, they could be anything: Not huntresses, not heroes, just four girls in love with light and laughter and love. Just two pairs, out on the town.

They get a second round, and then another, until Coco’s voice gets louder and Blake is warm and tipsy and leaning into Yang’s side, her hair falling over her eyes, shining in the dusty tavern light. If this is Coco’s plan, Yang thinks it might be working. If this is her plan, Yang thinks it must be a date.

Eventually somebody (Velvet) produces a joint, and someone else (Yang) pumps her fist, and they all pile outside to press around the lights strung up against the cement bar wall, batting away moths, sparking a match. Even after sundown, the desert air is hot and stale and tastes like sand. Coco passes Yang the joint, their calloused fingertips brushing as she does. Yang breathes in and feels smoke trickle into her lungs. She breathes out again and it clouds her mind sweetly. She passes the joint off to Blake as the corners of her mouth tilt into a buzzed-out smile.

There’s revelation in the simplicity of the evening: Of getting high outside with friends under the canopy of stars. In Atlas, the sky had been clogged with militia, with high alerts, with suspicion. A night like this one would have been impossible. Vacuo is ragged and wild, but at least for tonight, it’s giving Yang the illusion of relief. She breathes it all in, feels it mingle with the pot and the stars in her lungs.

Velvet passes the joint to Coco by holding it up to her lips. She has to lift onto her tiptoes to do it, and she sways towards Coco, who catches her by the elbow. She tilts her chin, presses her mouth to Velvet’s, and exhales.

Yang watches them with something akin to hunger. The casual intimacy between them... that’s what she wants. She wants to share breath with someone like it’s the easiest thing in the world. No, not someone: She wants it with Blake. She only wants it with Blake. The pain in her chest is her heart putting down roots in soil that crumbles in shape of Blake’s name with every handful overturned. Coco traces the line of Velvet’s jaw before stepping back, and Yang yearns. 

“Hey Velvet,” says Yang, her words blurrier, stoned, “Did you really send Coco a love letter?” 

Velvet blushes. “Who told you that?!”

Yang points at Coco without hesitation. Coco shrugs, without guilt, without guile. “It’s the cutest thing that’s ever happened to me. How can I not tell everyone?”

“Some people keep their love tokens in private hope chests that nobody finds until they’re dead,” Velvet says dryly.

“Some people are boring,” Coco cheerfully replies. “I’m not.”

“She lives for the applause,” Velvet says, more to Yang and Blake than anything.

Blake smiles and leans forward. “I still want to hear about the love letter,” she admits.

“Blake is crazy for love stories,” says Yang. “What’s that one you keep rereading? Ninjas of Love?”

“Yang!” 

Velvet giggles behind her hand. “Okay, now I feel comfortable revealing my sappy backstory.”

Yang looks at Coco sidelong. “What did I say?”

“That book is like a cheesy teen cult hit,” Coco replies. “You’ve never read it? Seen the movie? Followed the memes?”

“The what?”

“Oh, honey. We have got to get you online.”

“Fat chance of that,” Blake points out. “The communication towers won’t even make calls anymore.”

“Yeah.” Coco looks wistful. The joint burns low between her thumb and forefinger, and she absently passes it on to Yang. “I miss fashion blogs.”

Quiet settles over the four of them. Each of them thinking about what in Remnant moldered last, what will decay next. Beacon, the towers, Mantle... countless lives and nameless villages. Salem grows stronger by the hour. Yang thinks she’s growing stronger, but the enemy takes two leaps forward for every one of hers. Things have changed. This is war. 

“Love letter,” Blake prompts, shattering the moment.

Everyone looks relieved. It’s enough to shake the story loose from Velvet.  “It was a couple years ago,” she says. “It was stupid.”

“It was romantic,” Coco protests.

“It was genius!” Yang adds. “You got the girl, didn’t you?”

Coco grins. “She already had me. The letter was just icing.”

“And I never would have written it if I’d known how impossible you’d be afterwards!”

“Don’t say that. I loved that letter. I wish you’d sent it sooner.”

“Yeah, why wait for Vacuo?” asks Blake. She’s still trying to get the real story, and Yang loves her for that.

Velvet looks Coco over carefully. “Coco had some growing to do,” she says softly. “I had to know she was ready to be with me.”

Coco looks startled. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You know.” Velvet’s chin sets in a stubborn line. “You know. How it was before. You didn’t respect any of us. You were always bossing me around, keeping me out of fights!”

“I was trying to be a good leader!” Coco protests. “We talked about this.”

“Yeah, exactly. We talked about it. And you grew. And then I knew you were ready.”

“I...” Coco looks taken aback, uncharacteristically speechless. “I guess we both knew we were ready.”

There’s a story between them, one that’s untold, one that Yang can’t touch. She can feel it though: The friction eased, the love that’s bloomed. She looks towards Blake. She wants them to take that leap. They carved the path so long ago. 

Velvet has the joint, and after she tokes, she presses her mouth to Coco’s, breathes out smoke and retreats. Coco, to Yang’s surprise, turns to Yang. They’re almost the same height, and when Coco’s lips meet hers, Yang’s mouth opens automatically. The shared smoke spills down her throat like honey, like secrets, like love, and when Coco pulls away and nudges Yang towards Blake, Yang understands that she’s been given a gift. Yang bends her head, and she and Blake’s mouths collide.

It’s enough like a kiss that Yang’s knees go weak.

It’s enough like a kiss that Yang’s arms stretch out without any thought attached to them, that her fingertips roam to land light and low on Blake’s waist. It’s only an exhale, not even a breath, and it’s so much more, an unwinding spool of golden thread. Yang wants to slide her hands along Blake until they’re circling Blake’s waist, palms fitting against the smooth curves, hips pulling themselves flush together. She wants to flick her tongue out and taste Blake, feel Blake’s mouth drop open further, feel Blake’s teeth scrape at her lower lip. 

But it’s not a kiss, only an exchange. A promise, smoky and permeable. When Blake pulls away, her pupils are blown wide – but she does pull away. When Blake pulls away, her eyes are dark gold and fathomless, and they stay locked on Yang’s as the last traces of pot smoke drift through her open lips. Yang couldn’t look away if someone dared her to, if someone begged. The price would be too steep.

Eventually, Blake’s eyes lower. Her eyelashes are long enough to cast crazy shadows on the planes of her cheekbones that Yang wants to draw and memorize. Instead, she tilts her head to return her attention to Coco and Velvet.

But Coco and Velvet are gone.

“Um. Some hosts,” Yang comments. The pot, the headiness of Blake’s presence, the lingering warmth on her lips, the way Coco and Velvet have seemingly vanished into thin air – Yang is starting to wonder if this is a dream, 

“Maybe they wanted privacy,” Blake suggests. There’s a lazy cast to her voice. Stoned barfly looks hot on her, Yang thinks. Everything looks hot on her, but there’s a relaxed curve to Blake’s lips tonight, an insouciant slouch to her shoulders, that’s sending Yang up to live amidst the shattered pieces of the moon. This is Blake, unfettered. Yang won’t waste it.

“Maybe they wanted to give us some privacy,” says Yang. She raises an eyebrow and smirks.

Blake takes the bait and a step towards Yang. “Maybe so.”

This is the moment to leap, Yang is sure of it. Blake bows towards Yang like the willow branch on the riverbank, and Yang catches Blake’s face between the palms of her hands, strokes her thumbs over Blake’s cheekbones. She’s trembling with the potential of it: They both are. This is a damn that has threatened to break for years. 

Yang lowers her head and it gilds the earlier moment with a sense of déjà vu: This breath, replayed. Their mouths, collide. It means much more this time, because it’s exactly like a kiss. Yang’s blood burns gold and sings. Blake’s lips part and her tongue darts out, the tip brushes against Yang’s waiting mouth, tentative, and then sure, and then confident; wracked with longing. Yang thinks her knees might buckle. That she might slide to the ground. She’s not sure how it hasn’t happened already.

Blake whimpers in the back of her throat and it sends Yang surging. She deepens the kiss, earnest and wanton, presses into Blake, want and desire and some primal, desperate need to devour rising up in her chest. The dam, broken. Yang kisses Blake like she doesn’t need to breathe. Maybe she doesn’t anymore. Maybe she can sustain herself on the strength of Blake’s kiss, like a plant eating sunlight.

“Oh man,” Yang mumbles. “We’re – we’re making out.”

Blake snorts. She kisses Yang again, once, on the lips. “Yeah.” Another kiss, and this one lingers. “We should keep doing that.”

It’s the same harmony of thought that matches them so well on the battlefield. Yang moves on reflex and kisses Blake. She presses against her until Blake’s back is at the wall. Blake sighs when her shoulders knock into the surface. Her hands start to roam. Yang responds with passion; her hand slides up the back of Blake’s neck and knots itself in her short hair. Yang tugs, and Blake moans and tilts her head back. Yang follows the newly opened path and kisses the side of Blake’s neck, the hollow of her throat, retraces her steps back to Blake’s mouth.

Their hands are everywhere now; their kissing, wilder. Yang feels the contours of Blake’s waist, her hips, cups her hands around Blake’s ass and drags her closer. Blake answers by hitching a leg around Yang’s hips, and when Yang lifts, by wrapping both legs around Yang’s waist. Blake bucks against Yang, and Yang thinks about how they’re just skin underneath it all and how she wants to map the span of Blake’s. Blake lets out tiny noises when Yang pushes or grinds that make fire jolt through Yang until her head is swimming with it, with desire, with how sweetly they grapple. 

If she could string thoughts together, Yang been would be wondering why they haven’t been doing this forever. Yang wonders how she ever stopped herself from grabbing Blake and kissing the ever-loving crap out of her, because now that she’s here, she wants to drown in it. Blake’s mouth, Blake’s breath, Blake’s scent, Blake’s artless collapse into lust. It strikes Yang down and to her core. This is love, blossomed. This is a symphony, complete.

Between the wall and Blake’s thighs and her own strength, Yang finds she can keep holding Blake up with one arm, and she lets the other hand stray to cup Blake’s breast and scrabble at the buckles and zippers of her clothes. Blake is not easy to undress. Maybe that’s a good thing. If Yang could tear Blake’s clothes off and have her here, she might. She would. She settles for feeling what she can, feels heat rise up in her when Blake rolls her hips against Yang, rolls her tongue in Yang’s mouth.

What if she tried, despite the odds? Divested Blake of her coat, dragged down the long zipper of her jumpsuit, laid her bare and sucked a nipple into her mouth...

Yang’s so, so lost in it that when a shrill wolf whistle sounds, she springs about three feet in the air. Blake drops, and both of their heads snap in the direction of the sound. Yang smooths down her hair. Blake’s looks like hell, but she doesn’t touch it. It’s crazy hot, Yang notes.

Rounding the corner are Coco and Velvet, strolling towards them with their hands woven together. It’s not hard to guess where the whistle came from: Coco wears a shit-eating grin. 

“Oh hey there, lovebirds,” she calls.

Blake blushes and ducks her head. She combs her fingers through her hair.

Yang breaks into a wide smile. “Hey.”

“That didn’t take long,” Velvet quips.

“Where have you two been?” Yang asks pointedly, like the answer isn’t plainly: Somewhere else.

Coco smirks. Moonlight glints off of her sunglasses. “It’s such a nice night,” she says blithely. “We thought we’d go take a look at the stars.”

Yang had the same idea: She’s looking at the stars in Blake’s eyes, the stars in her mouth. She wonders when she ever would have kissed Blake if Coco hadn’t taken them out here, and when she doesn’t know the answer love for Coco, confident and brash, swells in Yang’s chest. She wants to buy Coco a drink. Every drink, for the rest of her life. She can still taste Blake’s sweat on her lips.   

“And Coco has all the subtlety of a freight train,” Velvet adds.

“Hey.” Coco nudges Velvet with her hip. “You weren’t complaining a few minutes ago.” 

“Who’s complaining? Subtlety... highly overrated. Hate the stuff.” Velvet squeezes Coco’s hand, and Coco smiles and leans in to press a kiss to Velvet’s temple.

And this time, there is no crackle of envy, no sting of saudade. Yang floats downstream and takes Blake’s hand, and Blake holds back tightly, like Coco and Velvet, easy and sure.

Two by two they return to their table. One by one they take their seats, chairs edged together in pairs. Blake sits so close that her thigh presses against Yang’s, and Yang thinks it’s not enough: She wants to climb into Blake’s lap, climb into her skin, her heartbeat. She’s still keyed up and humming from kissing Blake outside. She puts her hand on Blake’s knee and squeezes, and is rewarded by Blake biting her lip and her loaded sidelong glance.

“Who wants another round?” Coco asks. “I’m buying.”

The responding chorus is infectious and enthusiastic, and Yang jumps out of her seat to help Coco at the bar. She looks back: Blake is watching her walk away, which makes Yang’s pulse throb. 

“Can’t get started, huh?” Coco teases.

Yang shrugs helplessly. She can’t stop smiling. “Must have been those desert stars.”

“Must have been.” Coco’s tone is laden with insinuation. It doesn’t take much. She leans over the bar and orders eight shots of tequila while Yang continues to glow beside her with giddy, swollen lips, sneaking looks over her shoulder at Blake every twenty seconds.

“It was easy, once we got there,” Yang says. She’s not sure she’s making sense, but Coco nods in understanding, hands Yang four shots, and picks up four more as the bartender sets them out on the counter.

“Good. You two have serious chemistry. That’s a terrible thing to waste.”

Yang knows she’s smiling dopey. “Thanks, Coco.” And then, more thoughtfully: “Seriously... thanks.”

“Please. I just set the mood.” Coco smirks. “And I didn’t even need a fog machine.”

Laughing, they return to the table and parcel out the shots, two apiece.

“What are we toasting to?” asks Velvet.

Blake and Yang share a long look. Blake has her shot glass held aloft; the rim of the glass pressed to the swell of her lower lip. Yang can’t stop staring, can’t stop thinking about kissing that spot, lemon and liquor and salt. 

“To happy endings,” murmurs Blake. She tips the drink down her throat, and the others follow suit. 

Coco picks up her second shot. “And to thrilling sequels!”

This time, everyone laughs and clinks their tiny glasses together before downing them. Yang slams hers onto the table when she’s done. Her tongue, her throat, her chest is burning. Her cheeks feel warm and flushed. And she is so, so happy.   

Across the table, Coco brushes the corner of Velvet’s mouth with her thumb. “Salt,” she says, like she needed an excuse.

“You missed a spot,” says Velvet.  She tugs Coco towards her by the collar of her shirt and kisses her.

Coco leans into it, her lips curving into a smile. “Thanks, babe,” she says when they part, cool and smug and snarky. Velvet rolls her eyes. The soft love between them sizzles.

“To a great night,” Yang says with absolute drunken sincerity.

“We don’t have any more drinks,” Blake replies.

“Then I will drink in... the sight of you,” says Yang. Absolute drunken sincerity.

To her credit, Blake laughs, charmed. Coco and Velvet smile like two proud gay moms. And Yang, emboldened, tilts in towards Blake and kisses her.

The ghost of their earlier passion lingers, but this kiss is sweeter. Less hectic, more contained. A promise of comfort and domesticity that makes Yang’s heart flutter, the golden day to the sultry night of crushing Blake against the wall and feeling Blake’s thighs squeeze around her. Yang cups Blake’s cheek and presses their foreheads gently together for a breath before they pull back.

It’s late – later than any of them realized, and when the bartender rings the bell for last call, Yang jerks her head in surprise. Back at Shade, Ruby and Weiss would have gone to bed hours ago. Fox and Yatsu too, she thinks, a silent nod towards Coco and Velvet and CFVY. The days ahead would be tough: The third relic misplaced, the trail cold and murky. Headmaster Theodore had greeted them with impassive suspicion – but after Ironwood, that hadn’t come as a surprise to any of them. In the days to come, Yang had a feeling that reprieves like this would be few and far between.

But tonight, oh, tonight, the four of them will devour the opportunities that are handed to them. Coco and Velvet, Yang and Blake, alike in love, alike in bearing the weights of Remnant.

Huntresses, all of them – but tonight, at least, they are allowed to be girls.