Work Text:
"Ack!"
A twig crunched under Qrow's boots as he came to a stop. He turned his body half way to see Ruby behind him.
The two of them were out in the forest behind their house. In it's depths existed a few clearings that Qrow and Taiyang used to train the girls. The one Qrow and Ruby used was a little deeper into the forest, but it was free of the craters Yang and Taiyang had created in almost all the others.
"Little hung up there?" Qrow questioned, voice filled with amusement as he watched Ruby.
Her cape had snagged on a branch and the tree was putting up quite a fight in it's attempt to keep it's bounty. Ruby was squirming every which way in her attempt to free herself.
"Help me," she whined as she wiggled.
"Yes, yes." He took the few steps back to her, feet crushing the undergrowth beneath them. As he reached around her, trying to get her released without ripping her cloak. "I can't believe you got stuck. How many times a week do we come out here?"
"Shut up," she complained. Her cheeks were flushed with embarrassment that had him letting out another laugh. "It was an accident! And this is a new cloak! I'm not used to it yet."
"I know," he said. His lips curved in a smile as he pulled the fabric away. "I'm the one who bought it for you after all."
When he let go of it, it fell back to her. It swept around her body in a swirl of red.
The way it moved around her gave him a view of the angry red line crossing her arm.
His eyebrows furrowed as he reached out. He gripped her by the elbow, lifting her arm high enough that he could examine the mark. "When did this happen?"
"Huh?" Ruby turned her attention to the mark. "Oh. I don't know. That branch must have hit me before it grabbed the cape."
"Well be more careful," he chided. He lifted her arm a little higher, bringing it close to his lips.
He hesitated for a moment.
There was something brewing between him and Ruby recently. He was seeing Ruby as less of a girl and more of a woman, something new was forging itself in their late night weapon building and afternoon training sessions.
Qrow had been trying his best to put some distance between them, but it was hard to stay away from her. Maybe it was a little pathetic given her age, but for a very long time now she had been the person he was closest to. She was the one who understood him the most, who didn't ask him to explain his actions because she understood and shared a great many of his eccentricities. Often they showed their understanding through physical affection, Ruby hanging off his arm when she was pleased with something he had done or him tugging lightly on her earlobes when she was being particularly talkative and he needed to get a word in.
Putting a stop to that was hard. He honestly wasn't sure it was what he wanted either.
"Qrow?" At her voice, he glanced up. She was watching him, her head tilted with question. "Are you going to kiss it better?"
"Of course," he murmured, shaking his thoughts from his head. He pressed his lips against the angry scratch on her upper arm. "There you go, little red. Can you make it to the clearing without getting captured by anymore renegade branches?"
She gave a light laugh as her arm fell back to her side. He saw her reach over with one hand, lightly touching the place he had kissed. "Yes."
"Come on then."
They fell into step with each other as they continued on their way.
Qrow barely faltered when he stepped into his bedroom to find Ruby lying on his bed. It wasn't exactly unusual for her to wait in there for him when she wanted to talk to him.
She was still dressed in her uniform, so he assumed she'd been waiting for him since returning the house. She had her back against the mattress with her arms spread out while her knees hooked over the edge. She was staring up at the ceiling with a frown on her face.
"Hey Ruby," Qrow greeted. He unbuttoned the top few buttons of his shirt as he crossed the room to sit next to her. As much as he enjoyed teaching at Signal, he didn't necessarily like the restrictions of the professor's dress code. He considered it a small victory that he didn't have to wear a tie. "How was your day?"
She made a small sound half where between a hum and a sigh.
He knew instantly that she was here for some reason other than just to talk about something that had been on her mind or ask him to bake her something for her sweet-tooth.
He turned to her, focusing all of his attention on her. He shifted so his knee bumped against hers, touch had always anchored the two of them. "Ruby, what happened today?"
They didn't lie to each other. There was never any need to, they trusted each other deeply and they knew the other would understand anything they were told. So Qrow knew that what Ruby said was the truth and it stopped his heart cold in his chest.
"I kissed a boy today," she said. She didn't look at him as he spoke, still staring at the ceiling. "Roux. He's a year above me."
Qrow knew the kid, but not well. He didn't take engineering so the only times Qrow had seen him was in the hallways at Signal or when he came to see Qrow for some brief weapons maintenance, which he did for any of the kids that were having trouble. He seemed excitable, passionate and easily riled up. He could see why Ruby would be attracted to him, even if it made his stomach churn.
He was still formulating a response when Ruby said, "It sucked. I wish I hadn't done it."
"Why?" he asked, though he was already thinking about all the ways he could manage to kill a student without getting caught.
"The whole time I was kissing him, I kept thinking about how I really, really wanted it to be you."
Qrow's mind ground to a halt. He hadn't been expecting that. He'd thought Ruby hadn't enjoyed the kiss because it had been forced on her. The only thing that came out of his mouth was a soft, "What."
"I really wanted to be kissing you," Ruby said. Her voice was filled with a sadness that had his chest squeezing painfully. "And I can't understand why it wasn't you I was kissing because I love you and I know you love me too. Maybe we've never said it, but I feel it all the time and I don't understand why I can't have it."
A pause followed.
It took Qrow several moments before he swore inside his head. To hell with this, he decided.
Keeping his distance had been because he thought Ruby would be happier in the long run but clearly it was just making things worse. For both of them. And he couldn't see any improvement on the horizon with how far gone they were on each other.
This wasn't just an infatuation or a crush or attraction.
He loved her and she felt the same way.
He said, "Ruby, sit up."
He waited to be sure she was going to do what he asked before sliding off the bed.
He crouched down in front of her, settling between her knees. He raised his palms to cup her cheeks in his, using the grip to keep their eyes connected when she went to look away from him. "I am absolutely in love with you, Ruby. Don't ever doubt that. But you are so young and you have so much of your life left."
"It's not much of a life without you," she objected. "It's just miserable."
"You will always have me," he promised. He stroked his thumb over her cheek, felt a rush of affection when she leaned into the touch. "But you can't have me like that until you've grown a bit."
"Why not?"
"Well, the law says so for one," Qrow remarked. When Ruby's lips turned down in a frown, having been pressed in a thoughtful line before, he gave her cheek another stroke. "Don't make that face. You know it's true. And you may think you know what's going on here, but you're still only fourteen. There's so much you need to learn before you tie yourself to another person. About the world and about yourself."
Ruby was silent for a moment. After a while she said, "My feelings aren't going to change."
"I didn't think they would," he stated. He pursed his lips for a moment, feeling a fight brewing in her eyes. Before she could start it, he said, "We'll talk about this when you graduate from Beacon."
"That's years away!"
"Exactly," he said. "You won't graduate from Beacon until your twenty-one. You'll be a little more mature then and I'll be a lot more comfortable with the whole robbing the cradle thing."
She seemed to be turning his words over in her head. At last she said, "You promise?"
He couldn't help the small smile that tilted his lips up. He gave a short nod before leaning forward, brushing their noses in a light eskimo kiss. "I promise."
Despite his promise to wait, Ruby's confession seemed to open the floodgates for their relationship to grow more physical.
Ruby always seemed to be touching him somehow when they were together. When she visited him while he was grading papers in his office, she would card her fingers through his hair as she pointed out errors over his shoulder. She would demand piggy back rides or cling to his arm and force him to carry her that way. If they were out walking somewhere, Ruby was pretty much guaranteed to be tucked under Qrow's arm and pressed against his side as she waved her hands around excitedly.
Nobody seemed to notice the extra contact. Ruby and Qrow had always had a very physical relationship. There had always been hand holding, whether because she was dragging him somewhere or he was trying to make sure she didn't get swept away in a crowd, and a lot of sitting together, when they watched movies Ruby always curled up to Qrow's side and when they sat at the dinner table with Yang and Taiyang it was always with their knees knocking against each other.
When they were alone, Qrow took to kissing her. They were chaste touches, and never on her lips, but they were kisses none the less.
He brushed his lips against her fingertips after they worked on one of their weapons, careful of any oil covering her hands. He kissed her forehead when she made a particularly ridiculous comment, his hands shaking with laughter as they framed her face. He pressed a kiss to the nape of her neck when she bent over the kitchen counter and complained about the heat, her cheek pressed against the cold granite counter top.
At first, he worried that the kisses would cause Ruby come sort of pain. That she'd be upset with him for giving her just a little bit of what they would have after telling her they couldn't be together more than they already were until she was older.
Instead, Ruby seemed to flourish with them. She held each brush of his lips against her skin close to her heart, a reminder that Qrow was going to wait for her.
There were fingers stroking through Qrow's hair, small and nimble with blunt nails that scratched as his scalp.
He let himself drift in the area between sleep and consciousness, knowing instinctively who the hand belonged to.
He'd been gone on a mission for close to two weeks. When he'd finally gotten back home late last night he had collapsed on the couch, too exhausted to drag himself to his room. The petting felt nice after the mission he'd had, relaxing and calming. It anchored him, reassuring him that he was were he needed to be again.
"Ruby." Her name slipped from his mouth in a purr as he pushed his head against her hand.
"Hey," Ruby murmured. Her voice rushed over him, just as calming as her touch.
"What time is it?" he asked.
He heard her clothes rustle against the couch as she turned, presumably to look at the clock on the wall behind her. "Around six am."
"Only slept three hours," he observed with a groan. He didn't have to ask to know she had been up for that amount of time. She'd always had an incredible ability to know exactly when he had returned his mission. "What have you been doing?"
"I worked on homework for a little while ad then I watched a movie," she said. "I ended up over here after I put the case away."
"No one else is up yet?"
"Nope. It's Saturday after-all." Her fingers itched towards his ear, scratching above it. If he hadn't been so happy just to have her touch again, he might have been making sarcastic quips about feeling like a dog. "How was your mission?"
"Exhausting." Finally opening his eyes. He had to tilt his head back to see her, as she sat on the arm of the chair in her pajamas. He reached up and wrapped his fingers around her wrist. He pulled her hand away from his hair, careful to let her untwine them so it didn't tug on his locks, and brought it to his mouth. He pressed a single kiss against the center of her palm before meeting her eyes. "Take a nap with me."
She didn't hesitate to pull from his grasp and slide down onto the couch with him.
They'd taken a lot of naps together when she was younger, but she was bigger now and the squeeze was a little tighter. It took them a moment to get comfortable before finally settling with her back against the couch, ensuring that if one of them fell it would be him, and their legs intertwined. Her head rested on the inside of his upper arm, while his other one looped around her back.
Wrapped up together as they were, the remaining tension in Qrow's body leeched out. He drifted back into sleep feeling warm, safe, and happy.
"Professor! Incoming!"
Before Qrow could react to the warning, a heavy weight slammed into his back. He took half a step towards his chalkboard to re-balance himself as arms and legs wrapped around his body.
He could hear his students laughing as they packed their things away. They were his fourth year engineering students. It was a small class and Qrow cherished each one of them. He had had them all for the entirety of their time at Signal, mentoring them and watching them grow into the people they were now. He was proud of them regardless of whether they were going to battle school to become a hunter or a technical school to learn more and make weapons professionally. He was like that with every student who stuck with his classes for as long as they had.
And seeing how long they'd had him, they were all more then used to Ruby's shenanigans. Even before Ruby had come to Signal, she had been appearing in his classes whenever she was out of school for some reason. She had preferred sitting in Qrow's classroom, watching him help his students build weapons to listening to Taiyang's lectures.
"You bunch of traitors," he accused as he spun around. Ruby's laugh rung in his ears as she clung tighter to him to keep herself from being thrown off. "You're supposed to warn me before she does this!"
"Sorry, Qrow!" one of the girls called, though there was an amused undercurrent in her voice that made it clear she wasn't sorry at all. "She shushed us all the second she popped her head in the door."
"I wish a shush was all it took to shut you lot up," he answered. He called out, "Remember to have your materials lists ready to turn in tomorrow! I need to see what we have and what we need to order."
There was a loud murmur of assent from the group.
As they filed from the room, Qrow moved over to his desk until Ruby was over it. She untangled herself from him as the last students filed out.
"To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?" Qrow questioned when he heard the door shut behind the last student. With Ruby sat firmly on his desk, he pressed his palms against her thighs and leaned against her.
She shrugged. "I thought we could have lunch together."
"Not eating with your friends today?"
There was a moment before she admitted, "I didn't have anyone to talk to. We kind of got in a fight earlier."
Qrow knew how much Ruby struggled with the other students at Signal, even the ones she considered herself close to. People weren't as passionate or enthusiastic as she was. They all loved their weapons, but they didn't understand the way Crescent Rose was an extension of Ruby. They couldn't reconcile the thrill she got from a fight with the girl who simply wanted to help people.
It was a problem Qrow struggled with himself. There was no one among his coworkers who were properly equipped to handle his personality and the few friends he had were so far away that they were practically unreachable. Still, even they didn't seem to exactly understand Qrow's eccentricities so much as they merely accepted them.
The only person who truly understood him, who embraced his oddities and even enjoyed them, was Ruby. He knew he meant the same to her.
He slid his hand down to squeeze her knee. "You've got me."
"I know."
He leaned forward, kissing her on the forehead. He slapped his palms against her legs when he stepped away. "Come on. If you're going to spend your lunch break in here, you might as well come into the workshop."
The kisses stop. Not because they don't still want each other, but because Ruby goes to Beacon two years early and Qrow goes on a mission for Ozpin.
In the months between their goodbye and the next time they see each other, they find ways to cope.
Surrounded by criminals who would kill him in the worst ways if they found out he was a hunter, Qrow takes to touching his lips. When he's waiting for food at a bar, he pressed his thumb into the corner of the bottom and thought about the taste of the chocolate cookies Ruby loved. When he plays cards with the men he's spying on, he plays with his elbow propped up and his knuckles pressed against his top lip as he thought about her utter lack of a poker face. When he's writing his reports for Ozpin he used two nails to pick at his bottom lip as he held back the urge to ask what was going on with Ruby, who her teammates were and how she was doing.
Beacon, Ruby found, was much the same as Signal for her. She was closer to her friends at Beacon than she'd been with her friends at Signal, team RWBY and team JNPR were a family for all intents and purposes, but there still wasn't anyone that quite understood her.
She'd gotten a message on her scroll from Qrow the day she'd arrived at Beacon to let her know he would be on a mission for a while and hadn't had contact with him since.
Mission or no, however, she couldn't handle not having contact with him during this huge period of adjustment in her life. So she sent him messages, even though she knew he wouldn't have his personal scroll on him if he was on a mission that required him to drop out of contact. The day partners had been assigned, she told him what she knew about Weiss. When they made their promise to help Blake go after Torchwick, it was him she sent her grievances too. As the Vytal festival approached, she would send him small daily messages about all the things changing around the academy.
She didn't have his kisses to calm her anymore, but she knew he would read every message she'd sent him as soon as he could.
Qrow let Ruby drag him from her dorm room. Her fingers were tight around his wrist as she tugged him along.
"Why are we in such a hurry?" he questioned, warm amusement and happiness in his chest. He hadn't spoken to Ruby in months, not since Ozpin had sent him on that mission shortly after she left for Beacon, much less seen her. Everything in the world seemed so much brighter again. "I thought you wanted to talk for a bit."
"I do, but Weiss is bringing Winter over to show her the dorm," Ruby declared. "And I don't want you starting another fight with her. Especially not in our room. I think you might end up tipping both bunk beds over."
"Yours for sure," he agreed. "I'm not going to get in a fight with her when your around, Ruby. I'd much rather talk with you than fight with her."
"Maybe you'd rather, but you wouldn't," she said. "She would say something, you would goad her, and it would turn into a fight."
He let out a laugh. "You know me so well."
She tossed a look over her shoulder, a small smile on her face and her eyes twinkling. "Isn't that why we're so good together?"
"It is."
He looked around for a moment. When he was sure there were no footsteps in the hallway with them, he tugged his arm. Ruby stumbled, stepping backwards into his chest. He wrapped one arm around her, forearm over her chest and fingers curling around her tricep.
He pressed his lips to her temple through her hair.
She let out a small, happy sigh. Her hands lifted up, settling on his forearm and squeezing.
"Missed you," Qrow said, his lips brushing the soft strands of her hair with each word.
"Would've been better if you'd called," Ruby chided.
"It was an undercover mission. I had to take all precautions." He placed another kiss in the same spot. "I thought you'd be okay now that you were at Beacon. People here are a lot more oriented then the students are Signal. A lot more like you."
She hummed softly. "More similar, but not the same."
"No," he agreed. "Not the same."
They stood like that for a moment before she inquired, "I know you said before I left that it was fine, but you're not going to back out of our promise just because I'm graduating two years early, right?"
"Nope." A third kiss to her temple, then he pulled back to kiss the crown of her head. "Three more years."
"Three years is a long time," she said.
"Could be five," he said. He let his arm drop away from her body. "Now, where exactly did you want to go since I'm apparently banned from your dormitory?"
She stepped backwards so she could tuck herself under his arm. Qrow resisted the urge to let out a content sigh. After so long away from her, it felt nice to have Ruby with him again.
"I was thinking we could go look at the festival some more," Ruby declared. "And maybe pick up some food."
"Sounds good."
"You are still on bed rest."
Qrow turned his gaze away from the window, focusing on Ruby.
She stood in the doorway dressed in Beacon's uniform, a clear sign she had come to the hospital as soon as her classes had ended, with her hands on her hips.
"I couldn't stand lying down any longer," he said, giving her a small shrug.
Cinder may have filled his chest with arrows, but she hadn't killed him. He wasn't going to spend more time lying around as if she had.
Her lips pressed, worry in the tightness of them but understanding in her eyes. She'd never been in the hospital for anything this serious, but she'd never enjoyed her visits to one either.
"Alright," Ruby conceded. "But at least go with a nurse."
"A nurse would just put me back in bed," he argued. He started walking towards her. There was a bit of a twinge in his lower abdomen, but nothing that was bad enough to force him to stop.
"Then wait for me to get here," she corrected.
"Alright then." He held a hand out for her as he reached her, "Come for a walk with me. You can tell me about your day."
"Right up until we get caught by the nurses," Ruby said.
Her hand was small in Qrow as she laced their fingers together. They used to be careful about contact like this in public, but with the evidence of Qrow's near death still visible in the bandages wrapped tightly around his chest Ruby needed the touches and Qrow couldn't bring himself to fight her with the memory of her misplaced anger and guilt still at the forefront of his mind.
"I feel like we could probably outrun them."
"With you like that?" she said, gesturing her free hand at his bare chest and the bandages covering it. "I'm not feeling very good about our chances."
He gave a light laugh as he raised their joined fingers and pressed a kiss against them. "I highly doubt there's anything the two of us couldn't get ourselves out of as long as we were together."
The next three years pass in a steady rhythm.
Ruby called Qrow almost every day after class. Being separated was easier for them when they weren't completely cut off from each other. They both knew it was dangerously codependent, but since they both functioned just fine when a mission kept them from talking they dismissed it.
Every few months, Qrow would spend a few days at Beacon. Ozpin was more than indulgent on that. He could see the intentional in Ruby and despite the more personal nature of their relationship, Qrow had been Ruby's tutor since she was much younger and was the only scythe master anywhere near Vale (There was one in Mistral, but she was something of a hermit, and a pair of them in Vacuo, but the only thing Ozpin knew about them was that they were no longer Hunting).
Soon enough, Ruby's graduation rolled around.
Qrow had his elbows resting on the railing, staring up at the night sky, when he heard the balcony door slide open behind him.
He didn't need to turn around to know who it was, but he did anyway.
He'd thought she was gorgeous earlier, but in the moonlight Ruby seemed to be even more beautiful. She wore a white sundress she with a smattering of rose petals lifting from the bottom and curling up around her waist. The dress swirled around her thighs, her skin seeming to glow in the light, as she moved. She didn't wobble on the wedged sandals she wore, each step balanced and carefully measured.
"You've been out here a while," she observed as she crossed the balcony to him, tucking a strand of brunette hair behind her ear as she did. The haircut was the same, but her face had lost some of it's roundness over the years.
"It was crowded inside," he answered. He leaned his back against the railing as she approached. It was true that it was crowded inside. Filled with Ruby's whole graduating class as well as their families, the professors and several governing officials the new hunters would be working with, the room seemed to be bursting with people.
She stopped a few steps in front of him. "You didn't even try to start a fight with Winter or General Ironwood."
He shrugged one shoulder. "We can play nice for one night. This is supposed about you and Weiss."
"Today is about me," she said. Her lips, painted the same bright red as the petals on her dress, curved up in a smile. "I believe you made me a promise about today."
"Did I?" he feigned ignorance even as she stepped close to him. He dropped his hands to her waist, thumbs pressing against the swell of her hip. "I can't seem to recall."
His eyes were drawn to her mouth as she darted her tongue along her lips. "Liar."
He gave a soft hum. His thumb swiped a lazy line against the fabric of her dress.
She had grown up a lot since their promise had been made. It was clear not only in the way she dressed, but in the way she carried herself. She was more confident and less ignorant. She cared the weight of her battles on her shoulders, but didn't let them weigh her down.
Despite all the ways she had grown, she was still only nineteen.
"Are you sure?" Qrow asked as he ducked down to press their foreheads together. Between her shoes and the few inches she'd gained, it's not as much of a stretch as it used to be.
Her arms were wrapped around his neck, her fingers light pinpricks of heat against his nape. She used the hold to pull him closer, even as she gave a tiny sigh. "Absolutely. We've been together for years now, Qrow. I'm ready for that to be official. I'm ready to be your partner, in hunting and our lives."
Something that he hadn't even been aware of loosened in his chest.
"I love you," he murmured. "I love you so much."
"I love you too," Ruby said.
"One kiss," he said as he tipped his head down. His lips brushed against hers as he spoke, the touch gentle enough to not be considered a kiss yet. "Then we'll go back inside and you'll spend some more time with your friends."
Her response was whispered, teetering on the edge of begging. "Okay."
Without any further conversation, Qrow brought their lips together.
There was a tension that eased from both of their bodies as he led her through it, well aware of how little experience she had in this particular activity. Both of them let go of everything else in their heads, focusing solely on each other and the future that lied beyond this one fulfilled promise.