Chapter Text
"Ruby, you're almost eighteen, will you stop playing with your food?" Weiss piped up as Ruby caught each piece of sushi in her mouth after juggling them successfully. She never understood how her near-eighteen-year-old team-mate managed to get away with such things, aside from Blake's unwillingness to intervene and Yang's boisterous laughter encouraging the Reaper. Somehow, all these years after, she did sound almost disappointed if Ruby didn't take this opportunity.
"Weiss, admit it, it was fun to watch!" Ruby replied with overwhelming levels of excitement as she grabbed her chopsticks and broke them apart. She munched another piece of sushi with them, before she stopped to watch the shape of them. "Blake, I know what I could use next year for Halloween as fangs for a Dracula cosplay!"
Blake looked up from her overflowing sushi plate. "Huh?" Her ears contorted themselves in such a manner that they showed her curiosity and confusion, despite having a hunch as to what Ruby had planned. Yang interjected before Blake could say anything, this allowed the cat faunus to start demolishing her sushi pile, starting, as usual, with her fish sushi pieces.
"Do it." Yang knew how little encouragement Ruby needed to do something, so keeping her words short and sweet, sour if anyone asked Weiss, made the encouragement all that more effective. "If it's what i think it is, do it! I'll take pictures."
Ruby fumbled with a piece of sushi on her plate before succeeding and vacuuming the piece down her throat before she spun them about in her hand, needle ends pointed away from her, before tucking the broad ends under her upper lip and holding them there with her sheer will. A small hiss with her hands raised like claws drew the table into various degrees of laughter, Yang's drawing the attention of nearby customers.
"Weiss! Look! I'm a vampire!" She proudly proclaimed. Blake looked over with a degree of surprise before she cracked into quiet laughter while Weiss facepalmed, desperately trying not to laugh at her young partner's display of madness. "They call me Countess Dracula, huntress of the Anima Plains!" Weiss broke after the doltish proclamation, laughing almost as loudly as Yang was when she wasn't squeaking.
Half the restaurant were looking at the four of them as Blake tried to drown her embarrassment in sushi, albeit to no avail. "Guys… can you reel it in? It's getting awkward…" To this day, Blake never dealt well with large groups in restaurants, especially when her team-mates had the audacity to draw the attention of every patron with their laughter, although this time, something wasn't quite sitting right with her. As a last-ditch effort, she lightly kicked Ruby's foot to draw her attention. A more successful venture as her eyes snapped to the faunus in curiosity before tears lightly welled in Blake's eyes.
"Blake, I'm s-sorry. I d-didn't realise it was--"
Blake subconsciously pawed at Ruby's hand, holding it atop the table before she calmed herself. "It's not you, Ruby… some of these sushi bits were a little too much and my stomach hurts. Might be the sauce as well." She was more surprised by Ruby's reassuring hand holding, though she had grown to accept it and even love it when Ruby was the protective one of the group.
Weiss and Yang looked between themselves and their respective partners as Ruby and Blake sat there with their hands interlocked at the table. Yang knew Blake was interested in Ruby, yet neither of the Freezerburn pair had realised that Ruby had asked Blake out on a date a few weeks earlier, which Blake accepted, leading to them being in a relationship. "Ruby? Blake? You two okay?" Yang enquired.
Blake nodded, still a little teary-eyed from her sore stomach, while Ruby tried to console her. "Yeah, just a stomach ache. We should head home, it's getting late."
Weiss nodded shortly in response while Yang waved a waiter over. "Check, please," the blonde brawler quickly requested.
Ruby stopped as she looked at the waiter, the pair looking at each other with utter confusion and embarrassment as Ruby sat in her seat, chopsticks still in their fanged position. "Erm… I'm not a vampire?" Ruby muttered, still wary of what he was thinking.
The waiter shrugged after a few seconds of stone-faced silence. He handed the group a check for seventy lien, each of them putting a twenty lien card on the check plate. Once they got up, Weiss spoke up to the waiter. "Keep the change."
***
Once the team had left the restaurant, Blake held herself up somewhat on Ruby and Yang, her stomach ache causing her to struggle with walking back to the small house they rented. While the walk, in theory, wouldn't take long, it had doubled in time due to having to stop twice.
"Erm, I don't feel so good…" Blake muttered before she darted to a nearby trash can to empty her stomach into it. While it wasn't a pretty sight for any of the girls, it did help Blake recover somewhat. She returned to the group after she wiped her mouth with a napkin.
"Are you gonna be okay, Blake?" Ruby sounded worried for Blake as she spoke, showing she truly cared for her faunus team-mate and lover.
"Y-yeah, I think I need to try and rest tomorrow, sorry Ruby," she countered. She knew that whenever she was ill, she had to sit out from any group activities, this time meaning she would have to cancel her date with Ruby.
"It's okay, we can spend the day watching movies and having a quiet one in. I can also buy something to--" She stopped short as she saw a bakery that was still open, loaded with cookies. "Ooh! I had no idea there was a cookie store here!"
"Ruby, will you focus?" Weiss scolded.
"Hey, I haven't had any cookies in a while, and I wanna try these new ones here!" She calmed herself down for a moment before she wrapped her arms around Blake's waist and looked up at her. "I promise I'll be back at the house."
"I'm holding you to it, Ruby. I love you," She responded, embracing the younger woman before they all parted ways.
"I love you too, Blake," Ruby broke the embrace with Blake after she kissed her on the cheek. "Weiss, Yang, I'll catch up after I'm finished here. I'll be okay, trust me."
"If you're late back, you'll need to make your own way in, sis," Yang responded, prompting Ruby to quickly flash her keys to reassure her. "We'll see you back at the house."
Ruby nodded as she entered the bakery, her eyes lighting up as she saw the massive variety of cookies. There were chocolate chip ones, blueberry cookies, even a very intriguing bunch that looked like vampires. She spent a few minutes just eyeing them before the shopkeeper appeared from the back.
"Hello, dear, welcome to Magnolia's Cookie Emporium. How may I help you?"
Ruby jumped back as Magnolia spoke, almost startled by the older woman. "Erm, hi. Can I get four of the vampire-shaped cookies, please? I never knew this place existed until today."
Magnolia lightly chuckled. "I only opened up last week, dearie. Four vampire cookies will be three lien ninety-six."
Ruby looked happy with the price, happily paying with a five-lien card and signalling that Magnolia could keep the change. With a polite smile, the older woman placed the cookies together in a paper bag and handed them to Ruby.
"Have a good night now, dearie."
"Thanks, you too." She happily skipped out the store as she drew her wireless headset, the same one she wore when the dust store was robbed all those years ago. The walk back was long, allowing the music to play as a handy distraction.
In the shadows nearby, a suspicious figure watched the young huntress as she headed back down Vernal Street, headset on and blasting lo-fi music. Ruby was blissfully unaware of her soon-to-be attacker following her as she munched on a vampire shaped cookie. Being unarmed didn't help her either, after all, she didn't expect anything.
Watching her closely, the figure followed her as she turned onto Atlas Street, taking its opportune moment to strike as the lights dimmed, taking Ruby by surprise. Little did she know that a vampire had struck, its fangs breaking the skin on her neck and draining her, not by enough to kill her, but enough to turn her...