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Kissing Yang should be sweet, Blake thinks.
By all accounts, it really is sweet. It’s tender, and it’s intimate, and it’s everything Blake had always fantasized about the moment she realized it was her lips she wanted against her own. She sinks into how soft Yang’s lips are, second only to how soft her skin is, buzzing with warmth under the light graze of her fingertips. Locks of golden hair fall against her knuckles, sizzling with sparks that send Blake reeling with heat as they kiss.
She’s often thought about what it could be like for this to finally happen. There have been plenty of nights where Blake would lie awake, imagining the taste of Yang on her tongue as she would drag her own finger across her lip, wondering if maybe she tasted like the aroma of sweet citrus that her aura expressed. Yang’s not even her first kiss, and she’d always shudder with excitement at the thought of their lips finally meeting.
So, yes, kissing Yang is sweet. It’s sweet and it’s exhilarating and when she curls her fingers against Yang’s jaw to bring her closer, prompting a low moan of approval from Yang, she revels in what feels like the culmination of all their shared heartbeats and whispered promises.
But it’s the subtle taste of salt between their lips from the tears Yang had shed just moments before they kissed that keeps her heart from truly soaring like she would have imagined for their first kiss.
“I don’t wanna break your heart too much more.”
The past few days have been nothing short of tumultuous and terrifying, and it’s not a stretch to Blake that they’re all shocked that they came out of it alive. Between the monstrous, hulking Grimm that had stalked them through the night - with its growls and its drive and its piercing, familiar silver eyes that have left her and her friends haunted - and nearly losing not only Nora but Penny as well as the two flickered between life and death, light and dark, there’s so much that still needs unpacking in her own mind.
When they’d all reunited, a held breath between them had been let out, though whether from exhaustion or relief changes depending on who’s asked; Ruby’s answer is uncharacteristically void, flat, weighted by years of unspoken fears and nightmares kept locked in her sleeping mind. There’s too many reasons for the tired rasp in her voice and the sleep that tugs into dark circles under her eyes, but there’s so much more to unpack that they’ll get the time to soon enough.
“I know this’ll be hard for her, and she won’t say it is.”
Yang’s breath had been relieved, and tired, and afraid, and wracked with unshed tears all at once as she’d collapsed against Blake and held her close. Blake remembers the buzz of citrus she’s loved since before she’d ever met Yang washed out by an ashen stench, bits of black bile clinging to her jacket only adding to the smell. She remembers the heat of her skin - something once passionate and protective - sizzling against her cheek and under her palms, flaring with the tremors between each hiss of breath.
And she remembers the way Ren had looked at them, with a knowing look flowering briefly in his pink eyes before being directed away to see Nora by Weiss.
“I don’t know if I’m going to see you all on the other side.”
Blake kisses Yang again, digging her fingers into the fresh crescents filling out again where her nails had been just a moment before. Yang shudders and breathes a stuttering breath between them before the cool metal of her hand presses against Blake’s side and stirs fresh memories in her skin. She clings to Yang as if pulling her from some endless inferno. She wonders if that’s what Yang would have felt had she not come back, and it’s that dreadful possibility that tightens Blake’s grip, draws lines of heat that she hopes burns hotter than that inferno. Maybe it’s selfish, Blake thinks. Maybe she’d rather Yang find oblivion in her arms.
It had all been a blur after they were left alone in the cold blues of Schnee Manor, though Blake still supposes the cool shades are enough to chill the heated tension between some of their friends and soothe the still-crackling sparks in Yang’s hair. There’s some faint image in her head of weathered hands curling against Yang’s head and cupping her jaw with gentle and frugal care, stroking her thumbs along her wet cheeks and baring her soul to Yang in a way that had brought memories of cold air and wet spray against their bare skin. Yang had found her like this once, taken her by the shoulders and cared so deeply, and Blake had made her promise that day once over, and she would make it every day forevermore.
And so she’d held Yang with all the weight of her promise anchoring them together again.
Amidst the tender curls of her fingers and the hitched breaths Yang had coughed up as her tears streaked her flushed cheeks, Blake only barely remembers the choked words Yang had tried to speak until digging her face into the side of Blake’s neck, apologizing over and over again for this and that and every thing that Blake has already forgiven her for.
“I’m sorry for what I said, and I’m sorry that I left you.”
She clings to Yang, clings to her like she might never let her go. She dreads the inevitable day it will happen, or maybe she dreads all the endless parts of their lives she would have missed had that day been today. Yang’s kisses turn slow, gentle, burnt out from war and love and speeches about loss and regret and finality. Blake takes them, not wanting to untether herself just yet. There’s still so much of Yang to meet again, so much of her to put back together, so much of her she’s held breaths waiting to see again.
She remembers how she’d guided Yang through her sobs, moving her to an adjacent room with a bit more privacy than the foyer for Yang to parse her own fears and regrets as she’d let her aura lap away the deepest gashes and tears in her body. She remembers wordless comfort - Yang had always loved the silence of Blake’s comfort almost as much as the tenderness of her touch - and she remembers that when the worst of her wounds had healed and the most pained tears had dried away, Blake had kissed her.
She’d kissed her, and Yang had kissed her back with ardent desperation, clawing at her shoulders as if to let go would split them apart once again (though, Blake only suspects this because of her own fervor to cling to Yang’s collar, Yang’s cheeks, Yang’s hair that had sprung with a glowing heat under her fingertips).
The weight of this first kiss feels so colossal and yet so light after the past few days. They’ve been coursing towards this inevitable moment since the day their eyes met and entwined their lives, but with the sky above still alive with flame and smoke and ash and the wounds of battle still fresh, there’s so much more to unpack.
“I love you.”
There’s a message, saved to Blake’s scroll she’d received in the middle of the night before the raucous explosion she thought had changed the course of her life forever, to unpack.
Blake pulls away, panting and breathless, and lets herself see Yang. Her eyes burn red - not the crimson Blake is used to in her passion, her fervor in battle, but from the tears she'd cried and the ones she's still holding back - and her kiss-swollen lips tremble. The gold keeping Blake's heart together nearly splinters, nearly gives under the weight of what she knows Yang won't speak of, hiding the words in a passionate kiss.
Blake can hardly blame her; the last time she spoke them was on the edge of oblivion, her conviction burning into her skin like an iron-hot brand.
"I love you."
They had been words spoken out of desperation, or defeat. A heartfelt eulogy to something felt between them for years yet that had gone unspoken until the void called for her.
But Yang's alive now. Battered, yes, her skin torn and scraped in ways even aura might not fully heal. Rattled, undoubtedly, if the tremors of her hand are anything to go by. Unsure, probably. Coming back from the brink of death can hardly be easy.
Yang stifles a quiet sob and pitches forward; Blake puts her fingers to Yang's lips, and Yang stops immediately against her touch.
"Yang," Blake begins, her voice barely a whisper, as if to raise her voice might cause Yang to shatter - and her own heart with her, "we need to talk about this."
"Do we have to?" Yang murmurs. Blake would rather it not be necessary. Any other day, kissing Yang would be beyond blissful enough.
This isn't any other day. "I love you" hammers in her mind like her heart hammers in her chest, and she's not sure whether it's sorrow that paints her words or relief. Her fingers press deeper against Yang’s lips, not in an effort to quiet her but rather to ground herself to what’s tangible, what won’t pull her into another daze of tired bliss and reprieve. She needs this for what she’s about to say, and she suspects Yang might as well.
When she’s lucid again, cleared from the smoke and shadow of her own mind and all the beautiful memories left in her skin, she runs her fingers along Yang’s jawline, curving behind her ear as her thumb kneads between her lobe and jaw. “I got your message, Yang.”
Yang’s muscles tighten, and her skin sparks. Blake watches her eyes flood with crimson for the briefest of moments before they glaze over and she presses them shut. “Blake,” is all she manages, and it’s a painful croak Blake can feel scratching in her throat.
The faint glow of teal from outside does nothing to conceal the single tear that streaks down her cheek and onto Blake’s sleeve before immediately drying into the fabric. Blake wishes it weren’t so hard to talk about what had happened, but that message haunts her just as it had haunted her when the sky was alive with light and the ground rumbled with the aftershocks of what she would later find out was the destruction of the monstrous Grimm that had nearly taken Yang’s life.
The blues of Atlas paint small rings in her lilac eyes, and Blake knows what every one of Yang’s looks mean. She’s so scared, and she’ll never admit, but when she looks at Blake like this she doesn’t need to. When she melts into the tender embrace of Blake’s hand, her lips hovering so close to her palm as her deepening breaths smooth over years-old calluses and wrinkles, Blake knows exactly how scared Yang is.
Dawn is still hours away. Blake can’t make it through another one with these nightmares already stalking her waking hours. She has enough ghosts to deal with, after all.
“I’m glad you told me,” Blake says shakily, and at least it’s something to start this discussion with. She watches Yang’s eyes dart up to her at the admission, and already the tightness in her chest and throat feel like it’s coming undone.
“It’s not exactly how I wanted to,” Yang admits, her voice weighted by sadness. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. You have nothing to apologize for.”
“But I do.” Her voice barely raises, but it comes out quick and defensive, and Blake aches at how quick Yang is to deflect. “Blake, I abandoned you all, and I said all those awful things to Ruby…”
Blake shakes her head and pulls closer. “You didn’t abandon anyone, Yang. You did what you thought was right, and Mantle may not have made it without you and the boys helping out.”
Yang’s lips press into a stubborn pout. There’s something she’s damming behind her teeth, something she’s still not saying. It’s unfortunately characteristic how Yang will draw the doubts and regrets from others but not allow herself that same patience and forgiveness. Blake’s been there before, too. She has her own ghosts that rush through the cracks in her skin where gold has yet to fill, and she’s spent too many nights suffocated by all the shadows she wouldn’t dare shine a light on.
She pulls closer still, close enough to take Yang’s lips against her own again in a chaste kiss, inviting her to open up. Countless words have already been shared between their kisses, but Blake knows there are more to share.
Resting their foreheads together, Blake lets her eyes flutter closed. “You’re here now. You’re here now, Yang, and I was so scared that you wouldn’t be. When I got that message, I-” Her voice catches in her throat, the memory still fresh in her body, the twisting of her gut and pallor of her skin so immediately familiar, “-I was just glad I could kiss you when you showed up on the other side of that door.”
Silent realization flashes across Yang’s features, and her cheeks flush a dark pink. “Blake,” she stammers, suddenly shy despite all the passione they’d shared just moments ago, “we kissed.”
“We did,” Blake affirms. “And you said you love me.”
“I did.” Yang’s jaw tenses against Blake’s palm, but Blake stays steadfast in her consolation against the rapid thrumming of Yang’s heartbeat in her neck. “And I do. I don’t know what I would have done if I’d died before I got to tell you. I wouldn’t want to put you through that.”
Blake nods solemnly, and in a way she understands. After all, in those few hours where she thought she’d lost Yang she’d experienced so much and so little at once. Ghosts she’d long-since exorcised had returned to her periphery, taunting her with wilting, blackened words about what she’d lost, prying at every runnel of gold she’d melted into herself to spill more dark bile into her weightless, hollow heart. She’d already lived a life where Yang Xiao Long had died, and in those few hours she’d wished for the universe to consume her in that same blaze so that they might get to try again in some other life. Oblivion to consume them, and their lives remade in their first shared glance in a life away from this world. It’s what she’d wished.
She’d gotten her wish in some way, at least. There’s new life in Yang’s eyes now, and it’s still so familiar to her. How many times have they been here, she can only wonder, but her ghosts have been burned away and the hammering beat against her palm matches the one in her own ears and chest, and Blake knows they’re somewhere different now. Somewhere they’ve danced around for years, never dipping much further than light teases and soft smiles and quiet nights where their lips had almost met under argent moonlight before their own fears had pulled them apart.
But they’re there now, and Blake wonders how she can even find the words for it.
She says all she needs to, all that she’s said before and all that she will mean every time hereafter, with another kiss. And another. And another, to make sure the message gets through Yang’s waning anguish.
“I love you, too,” she says with every fibre of her being, pouring what gold she has left into her passion, whispered words melting into that molten love that she hopes stays until their lives are remade again.
Yang takes her again, salt once more blending between their mouths, but Blake doesn’t mind. They’ll have plenty of time for sweetness later, when they get to laugh at Yang’s corny jokes or sigh in each other’s embrace and build so many memories to cherish for whatever lifetimes are to come.
Right now, Blake lets Yang cry, and she kisses every tear away, solaced that she has any to shed at all.