Chapter Text
Ruby took a swig of her girlfriend's beer. It was sour and gross, and made her burp immediately. Reese smirked at her.
“You look like you just ate a whole lemon,” Reese said, taking her bottle back. She absently scooted her skateboard back and forth with one foot. Ruby faffed at her.
“That's cuz it's gross,” she said. “It tastes like pee. Like, actually.”
“You familiar with that taste?”
“Everyone knows what pee tastes like.”
Reese took a swig, letting out a hot hiss through her teeth as she passed it back to Ruby. Her smirk turned cruel. “I don’t.”
“Yeah well not all of us can—”
Reese's smirk broadened. Ruby realized she was nearly shouting, and very hot in the face. “Not all of us can what?” Reese taunted.
Ruby's mouth went tight, which she tried to hide behind another swig of the pissbeer. After more smirking and more nudging from her girlfriend, Ruby eventually eked out, “Squirt.”
Reese barked out a laugh and leaned back, nearly tipping fully from the short concrete wall they sat atop. When she finally stopped hawing and sat up straight again, she pushed back a frond of sweaty, sexy green hair from her bangs and looked at Ruby again. Her smirk evened into a grin. “Yeah, well, that stuff's not even pee anyways.”
“What?” Ruby blinked hard, shaking her head. “Yeah it is. It tastes like pee.”
“Not pee.”
Ruby narrowed her eyes at the girl. Reese was alight with confidence. Ruby, longing to shatter it, whipped out her phone. About eight seconds later, she shoved the screen in Reese's face. “See? Pee!”
“See pee,” Reese repeated, not even glancing at her girlfriend's phone.
“This is serious!”
Reese smiled at her, downing the rest of the bottle. “This is literally so not serious.”
“Well— shutup!”
Ruby faffed at her again, but Reese grabbed her incoming wrist and yanked her in for a deep, alcoholic kiss. Ruby melted into it, and soon enough she had her arms around Reese’s neck, with Reese’s hands sliding up under her shirt. Bursts of panic and arousal burst low in her belly, shooting north and south respectively as a smooth, warm tongue languidly swiped over Ruby's bottom lip. Her eyes shot open.
Nobody else was at the skatepark. It was remarkably dead, even for a Monday night— or a Tuesday morning, depending on the time.
But, just as suddenly as arousal had pooled inside of Ruby, Reese pulled away, smirking. She wiped their shared spittle off her mouth, then swung her legs and kicked off the wall, both hands in her hoodie pocket as she landed goofy on her board.
Ruby focused on the board to hammer down the want inside her; of course Reese wasn't going to have public sex with her, and Reese wasn't beholden to the fact Ruby could easily get very aroused. Really, she should consider it a blessing that she got much at all— Reese was ‘Not a sexual person’, which, as she often had to explain, wasn't a fault of Ruby or Ruby's anatomy or Ruby's general Ruby-ness.
(Or she just didn't want to name it, because it would make her girlfriend feel all the more a transgressor.)
Unfortunately for Ruby’s stifled libido, Reese was still an absolute tease— and very good at being one, after only one year of dating. Worse, she knew it, and she reveled in knowing it, judging by the way her eyes flashed down to the strained shape in Ruby's pants. She grinned with triumph and pride, board shifting back and forth beneath her as she playfully rocked her hips left and right. Ruby, for her own sake, ducked her girlfriend's teasing gaze and focused on her board instead.
Reese's skateboard was weathered at the edges and loose in the trucks, with little green wheels (‘for better tricks’, though Ruby couldn't tell any difference) and spots worn in the grip tape where she plants her feet. The deck was bright green with a Pollock splash of neon blues and pinks, all a backdrop for the giant ‘A.C.A.B.’ Reese had stenciled on in black, blocky print. The nose had a big score where her board once slid out from under her and careened into a sharp metal corner; Reese claimed the damage didn't warrant a whole new deck yet, but Ruby could feel something nasty just waiting to happen every time she rode on it.
Ruby pushed herself up and scooped her longboard under her arm, holding a breath. She watched Reese lazily kickturn herself to a trash can where she tossed the empty beer bottle away. Glass shattered within, the sound echoing through the night and making Ruby wince.
Ruby set her own board down: a long dancer with a crux of red grip tape against black, and a deck painted with horned stems and red roses in bloom— her own work. The wheels were a ghostly, transparent white, and the low silver trucks still shone like new.
Reese pushed mongo towards Ruby, making long, lazy kicks that would look a lot stupider if she didn't skate like she'd been birthed on a bed of grip tape. She circled her girlfriend. Ruby watched pale moonlight and amber lamplight take turns dancing across her round, sun-kissed face.
Reese Chloris was a handsome girl, roguish and ever-smirking, with dark green eyes that turned black in the night, and a stripe of eye black across each cheek. Her hair was a jagged sheet of green that hung long over the right side of her face— a sidecut she'd shaved herself, though the shorn left side was hidden under the purple hood of her big, saggy hoodie. The hoodie itself was big enough that it fell beyond the short inseam of her pants, making it look like she wasn't wearing pants at all. Her knees were padded with black guards, and her sleeves were pushed up past similar elbow guards, both of which were covered in dings, scratches, and other justifications for their use. She wore checkered slip-ons, the soles of which Ruby had seen her superglue back together on multiple occasions, and it looked like they were probably close to coming apart again.
Reese blew a tired raspberry past her thin, pink lips. “I'm bored,” she said.
“Wanna come to my place?” Ruby blurted— faster than she meant to, spurred by memories of Reese’s hands and Reese’s mouth. Trying not to sound a pervert, she added in haste, “Yang’s there! I'm… pretty sure.”
Reese was smirking, as always. “It's two in the morning.”
Ruby blushed. “Er, right.”
Reese shuffled her shoulders, nearly tipping off her board as she swung her backpack off and around her front. She recovered, stopping next to Ruby, and revealed the contents of the bag.
“Youuuuuuu wannagotagging?”
Ruby blinked. “What?”
“Tagging,” Reese restated, rattling all the spray cans in the backpack. “Graffiti. Art. El vandalismo.”
Ruby let out a long sigh. “Reese…”
“Come on!” the girl whined, impatiently rocking on her trucks. “I've been so good, its the least destructive thing I can do to get that rush!”
Ruby rolled her eyes, a denial on her lips.
Reese hopped off her skateboard and took Ruby’s shoulders, pushing up on her tiptoes. Ruby was taller, on and off the board, but she always felt small when Reese got in her face like this. Small, and horny.
“Just one,” Reese bade, words hot against her girlfriend’s lips. “And I can give you something—” her hand found the hem of Ruby's shirt again, fingertips snaking up the toned plane of her stomach. “For being bad.”
Ruby stifled a gulp— failed to stifle a gulp, and felt fingers of heat reaching down as if Reese’s touch could bypass flesh and pluck at her nerves directly. Reese’s eyes tracked the bob of her larynx. Ruby could almost believe the hunger in those eyes was real.
“F-fine,” Ruby shakily relented. “Just one. And not anywhere bad. And it's gotta be small.”
Reese dug her nails in as her hand retreated. She glowed, triumphant, and smooched Ruby graciously on the lips before pushing off again. Ruby followed like there was a leash on her neck, cruising smoothly down streets and sidewalks, bleeding her speed with easy carves and tricks. Then, when they hit a hill that left Reese eating her dust, Ruby popped her board into a slide that bore her into the world anew.
She drank the wind, breathing in the smell of concrete and old asphalt, and shook her hair out into the breeze. She left the world behind in a blur, stagnant houses and buildings, flickering light poles, decrepit bus-stop benches all stunned still at the freedom of this girl— the gall of it. When she was on her board, she left the whole world behind. Nothing could catch up. Nothing could touch her. It was, for once, a solitude that didn't make her feel alone. The kind of lonesomeness that didn't dwarf her, make her feel weak, chided by the eyes of the world. Like being alone wasn't a bad thing. Like, when she was alone, she could be whoever she wanted. Do whatever she wanted. Look, wear, and sound however she wanted, and nobody would bat an eye. There wouldn't be anybody to bat an eye.
Except, she wasn’t alone. She had a girlfriend, her old board loudly rattling along the old, bumpy street as she pushed to keep up with Ruby’s longboard. Ruby hadn't meant to leave her behind again. She just couldn't help it; speed was in her nature.
Reese tapped her bare head, chiding Ruby for sliding without a helmet, but Ruby just tapped her own bare head to admonish Reese for skating no less recklessly. They giggled at each other. For a little bit longer, Ruby let her girlfriend lead the way.
Then, in an upper-class neighborhood, in front of a big, blocky white house that looked like it was valued way too high not to be in its own plot of acreage, Reese slowed to a stop.
“Reese?”
Reese held up a hand, her smirk flashing. She flung her duffel bag around the front again.
“Reese, this is someone's house. What kinda ‘praxis’ is this?”
“Sometimes you gotta let ‘em know:” Reese said with a casual shrug. “We know where you live, and we can touch you.”
“You really shouldn't—”
Reese extracted a can of spray paint, as well as a black face mask and sunglasses. “You should stay at the sidewalk,” she advised her girlfriend, “there’s probably cameras.”
Ruby balled up her fists, but Reese was already swaying towards the house, humming a chorus with the shake of her spray paint. She watched the girl approach a large, flat white wall and start arcing across it with her can, making rapid strokes and tight corners as she outlined a tag in what felt like record time. She filled it quickly: PIG, in blocky green text. Then she looked back at Ruby, shook her can, and started another one.
“Reese!” Ruby hissed, but Reese wasn't listening. Hiking up her hood, Ruby kept her head down as she stomped towards her girlfriend. She hissed for her again. Reese flicked her wrist, filling a corner with more neon green. Ruby growled.
Reese did not neglect her, but she did have a nasty case of selective hearing. Ruby reached for her. Her fingers wound into her girlfriend’s hoodie. Reese turned, stricken. Her mouth wedged open.
Three sounds, neither of them Reese's voice.
First: doorknob turning.
Second: cans clanking to the ground.
Third: Reese's feet, pounding away.
And then, a fourth sound that jolted Ruby back into her skin: “Stay right there!”
Ruby froze, her body jerking just enough to catch the speaker in the corner of her eye— or, more accurately, the only thing about the speaker that mattered: their gun. It was harsh black and formless against porcelain white hands, porchlight a starfall gleam across the midnight finish of the metal. The barrel did not tremble, did not quiver; it pointed somewhere that Ruby just knew would leave her instantly dead.
“Pull your hood down.”
Ruby jerked her hood back, shaking so bad it felt like she'd vibrate right out if her skin. A breeze prickled the sweat at her neck, cool fingers threading up into her scalp. The chill twisted down her spine. She shuddered.
“Turn around.”
She turned: legs first, then body. Slow. Robotic. Her eyes remained fixed on the gun; the person behind it was just a silhouette filled with white.
“Oh,” said the gun. “Aren't you pretty?”
Ruby watched the finger on the trigger, waiting for the twitch that would unmake her.
Then the gun moved— a sudden jerk to the side that made Ruby squeak, her eyes slamming shut and tightly curtaining her world in anticipatory darkness. Ruby whimpered, unable not to twitch and tremble with fear, until after a beat whe realized she wasn't yet dead. Her lids stayed shut for a moment longer, just in case, before they slowly wedged open to narrow slits.
“Well? Come on,” said the voice again— not the gun, but its wielder, though Ruby still couldn't keep her eyes off the barrel to behold the woman behind it. “I've got something nice on the stove.”
Finally, the words got through. Ruby blinked. Her arms slowly drooped down to her chest, then her sides. “Whuh… I'm sorry?”
“You'd better be,” the woman said, a sneer in her voice that quickly faded back to monotone neutrality. “And you're going to make up for it by joining me for dinner. You have a lovely voice, by the way.”
“P— pardon?”
“That's right!” the woman cooed suddenly, as if congratulating a dog. “I'll pardon you! Such a sweet, smart girl.”
Ruby opened her mouth, but the gun suddenly aligned with her forehead again and sucked all the words out.
“Inside. Now.”