Work Text:
There are some experts, and they’re quoted at length in the field guides that all students at Shade are required to read, that argue the desert only is livable between the hours of five and ten and seven and twelve every day. They’re wrong, of course. Coco’s read all the manuals cover to cover and none of them touch on the actual problem, the real problem everywhere anywhere they’ve been.
There is no such thing as a poor environment, just poor clothes.
And okay yes, the lack of water for miles and miles is also concerning. And yes, they will die if they don’t find some soon.
(At least none of them are uncomfortable. Coco read up on light breathable linens and convinced Yatsu that ditching his deep affection for northern Mistrali wool and silk blends was a poor idea in this heat. Fox has just taken off his shirt and Velvet – Coco glances over at her behind her sunglasses as she stares out over the rolling dunes – well, Velvet is dealing with this in her own way. Her own way being the cause of endless distraction for Coco, what with her crop tops and shorts that barely cover the curve of her ass and her boots laced loosely at her ankles.)
“So. How screwed are we?” Coco shifts her weight, boots sinking into the sand. There is nothing for miles in any direction and they’ve sort of crashed their airship and broken the radio.
“Pretty screwed,” Yatsu says.
I put our odds at fifty-fifty, Fox adds in their heads.
“Don’t be so –” Velvet sighs. She rubs sweat from her temple, ears drooping. “Yeah, we’re screwed.”
Yatsu pulls out his scroll and brings up a compass. “Do we know where we are?”
Velvet leans over his shoulder, cupping her hand so she can see the screen in the bright sunlight. She prods her finger at the screen. “We’re about thirty clicks north of the city.”
“That’s…” Well, it certainly wouldn’t be pleasant, “…walkable.” Coco tucks her hair behind her ear and spins in a slow circle. Shielding her eyes against the glare of the sun that threatens to burn her retinas despite her sunglasses, she takes in the wreckage of their airship.
“Not without water.” Straightening, Velvet holds up the lone canteen from the pack Yatsu managed to toss out of the airship before they all bailed. “This is half empty, there’s no way we can all make it that far. Maybe one of us…”
“Two,” Coco says. She doesn’t want anyone wandering alone after their last misadventure in the desert. She looks to the boys. “Fox, you should go – you know these deserts the best of all of us and can probably make the best time out of all of us. Ya--”
“Wait.” Cutting her off, Yatsu looks down at his scroll again. He turns slowly, orienting himself, before he points. “If we walk half a click that way, there should be a small oasis – or at least the map says there might be. We should see if there’s water there, and then, if there is, Fox and I can go and y’all can stay.” He glances at Velvet. “Is there anything else we could put water in?”
“Nothing that I would trust to hold up against a Ravager fight.” Velvet slings the pack over her shoulders. She rolls her shoulders, settling it. As she shifts her feet, a small trail of dust rises from her feet. “We shouldn’t stay here.”
Grimm surely will come to investigate the wreck. Coco nods. “We shouldn’t linger.”
The oasis is a handful of trees that provide blissful shade against a shady outcropping of rock pockmarked by the wind. They circle the whole structure twice to ensure there are no caves and no signs of grimm before Coco feels she can relax enough for them to go find the water source.
When they find it, Velvet goes very still. “This doesn’t seem like Vacuo.”
A land stripped bare of anything worth having doesn’t have places like this within a day’s journey of the kingdom’s capitol city. Against a lee in the pitted rock stands a low, shallow pond. A collection of yuccas and palms cluster around the far shore, desert scrub in partial bloom covers the ground. The shade alone is a welcome sight, and the high sloping surface of the rock, the blooming flowers and buzzing of insects around this source of life seems almost alien. Almost like home.
“It doesn’t,” Coco agrees. À cheval donné, on ne regarde pas la bride, her mother would say. “Let’s not look a gift horse in the mouth. Is there a water testing kit in that pack?”
There is. The pack’s Yatsu’s old one from back at Beacon, which explains why everything in it seems more suited to Vale’s green mountains that Vacuo’s sand and rock. Velvet tosses the kit to Yatsu. He strips off his boots and wades into the water. At its deepest, it comes to Yatsu’s knees. With his trousers rolled up around mid-thigh, he cuts a comical figure, lowering the vial into the water and corking it only to shake it vigorously.
Careful, Fox sends. You’ll break it if you shake too hard.
You come out here and do it then, Yatsu’s reply to Fox rattles about their heads. “It’s drinkable,” he concludes a moment later.
Coco checks her scroll. “It’s thirteen-forty-five now, do you want to wait until dark to head out?”
It’s doable if we go overnight. Less chance we die of heatstroke. Fox rubs his chin. However, the dunes south of the city could slow us down.
“Does it being November help at all?” Coco takes in Fox’s grim expression, Yatsu’s deepening frown as he sits on the shore with his feet still in the water, and Velvet’s blissed out expression as she kicks off her boots and settles in beside him. “Longer nights?”
“We’re so close to the center of Remnant that that won’t matter much.” Velvet pulls her hair up off her neck and twists it into a messy bun on top of her head. She sits back on the heels of her hands and meets Coco’s gaze evenly, expectantly. Coco’s cheeks feel warm. “I miss weather. Anything’s better than this never-ending heat and sunshine.”
They all miss Vale.
“This is what we’re stuck with for now.” Coco taps her fingers on her chin. “We’ll wait for dusk and you two can go for help. Fox, does your scroll have enough battery?”
Won’t need it as much if I’m with someone else. Fox sounds pensive, echoing in Coco’s head. I’m at about seventy percent juice though. I’ll be good unless we run into some grimm and I need to run battle mode.
Coco nods, tossing Fox her spare battery pack. She powers down her scroll and moves to unlace her boots. She's not above sticking her feet in the water in this heat. “It’s settled then.”
What Coco hasn’t expected is for it to be awkward with Yatsu and Fox gone. Velvet wades out into the center of the oasis pond and stands with her arms wrapped around herself, staring pensively up at the rapidly appearing stars overhead.
Coco pulls down another dead palm frond and breaks it over her knee, tossing it to the pile she’s collected. The fire by the banks of the oasis crackles merrily, leaving Velvet bathed in warm orange light. She pulls down one more bough, and, finding it far too green, tosses it back into the low scrub that grows around the palms. Collecting the pile, Coco dumps it next to the fire.
Velvet’s voice cuts across the lee of the rock, whispering in the wind. “I thought we decided to stay together.” She looks over her shoulder. Her ears cast long shadows over her reflection in the pond. “The four of us against the world.”
And maybe, Coco wants to tell Velvet that if it were her choice they all would have gone. And maybe, Coco wants to tell Velvet that she’d risk anything for her team and go alone – but Fox and Yatsu would make quick work of the distance between here and Vacuo, if not a settlement closer. “I’m sorry I sent them away,” Coco answers. “I just – we’ve only got one canteen. We’d die if we all went.”
“It was the right call.” There’s a low splash and Velvet turns to walk out of the water. Coco stiffens, her hand groping in the semi-darkness for the stick she’s been using to poke at the fire.
Water streams down Velvet’s legs. She stands for a moment, waiting for the perfumed air of the midnight jasmine bush – just opening in the growing dusk – until her legs are dry enough to pull her socks back on.
Coco pokes the fire with a little more force than intended. The burning balm frond flaps helplessly before collapsing in on itself.
“I just hate that it was the right call. That this desert keeps making us make these calls.” Velvet settles down next to Coco and busies herself doing up her boots.
The melancholy that creeps into Velvet’s voice tugs at something deep within Coco. The part of her she’s put away to examine in the quiet moments in the bunks back at Shade, when the weight of the team’s safety doesn’t feel like a thick blanket pressing down on her shoulders. The part of her that wants to make sure Velvet never seems sad like this ever. That’s she’s always smiling, always laughing, always as bright and vibrant and full of life as she is in these moments where her skin glows in starlight.
It is everything Coco can’t say out loud – she’s got an image to maintain after all.
Nudging her, Coco tilts her head into Velvet’s personal space. She reaches up and tugs off her sunglasses. “It isn’t all bad, is it? We’re together, right?”
“Sometimes I want to trade all this sand for Atlas’s cold chaos.” Velvet picks the mud and dust caked on the toe of her boot.
Coco huffs out an almost laugh. “At least there the airships aren’t prone to falling out of the sky as soon as the breeze hits them wrong.”
“At least you’d hope not.” Velvet runs her fingers through her hair and glances over to Coco, forehead resting on her palm. Her brows furrow, into the halfway to confused look she does sometimes when someone’s surprised her. “Coco – I –”
“Mn?” Coco’s fingers twitch. She pokes the fire. She can’t reach for Velvet, can’t tangle their fingers together, because the words will be falling out of her mouth unbidden. But oh she wants to, especially when Velvet’s looking at her like this.
The fire crackles and pops. Velvet’s fingers tangle up in Coco’s, gently pulling the stick from her hand and letting it drop into the void between them. Her ears brush against Coco’s cheek. She leans across that void and kisses Coco gently, sweetly. When she pulls away, Velvet’s smiling prettily and Coco reaches for her, doesn’t let her pull back. “What are you doing, Velvet?”
Don’t you know who I am?
“In the desert, everywhere is liminal – you know that’s one of the first things Headmaster Theodore said to me? He told me that I shouldn’t expect to stay in one place very long – that the whole of Vacuo is just one never ending transition.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.” Coco says dryly.
Velvet’s cheeks darken. “We’re waiting to be rescued, maybe I wanted to take a chance in this particular liminal place.”
Coco casts her eyes around the oasis. Even in the dark it’s beautiful. The stars overhead form a band across the night sky. Birds trill and crickets chirp. The dark shadow of a bat flits across the sky. “It is a beautiful one, isn’t it?”
And if this were Coco, this is where she’d say some dumb line to get herself another kiss. But this is Velvet and that means something different. So instead Coco waits, sits with the tickle of Velvet’s breath against her cheek. Sits with the fact that she wants to kiss Velvet again and what that means when it’s Velvet and not just some girl at a bar back at Shade.
But Velvet’s kissing her again and the world full of sound seems to drown out to only the rush of blood in her ears. “Wanted to do that for a while.” Her breath is warm against Coco’s cheek.
“I never dared even dream about you feeling the same.” They’re sharing the same air and it doesn’t matter because all Coco wants is this. Her fingers thread into Velvet’s hair and she leans forward, catches her lips once more.
The shattered moon hangs low in the sky at this time of year, and there, under the starlight, Coco says everything she’s wanted to say.
In the morning, when the low humm of airship overhead awakens them, Coco stares up at the sky and wonders if perhaps this, too, is liminal. If they’re transitioning into becoming something more.
Wakey Wakey, Fox sends. There is no eggs and bakey; but there is a questionable collection of energy bars.
I hate you, Velvet grumbles in response.
Lying is unbecoming of a lady. Fox’s laughter echoes in their heads.
So’s kicking your ass. Velvet sits up, squinting in the bright daylight. She shields her eyes for a moment before she turns. Her shadow falls over Coco’s face and she’s bending, pressing her lips to Coco’s cheek. “Good morning.”
“Not very responsible, falling asleep out here without setting a watch,” Coco says.
Their fingers lace together. Velvet hums, draws their hands up into the space between them “Is this ok?”
“Yes,” Coco answers. “It’s very okay.” She fishes out her sunglasses from her pocket and puts them on. “Let’s hit the road.”