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It was her first day at her new job, a dream job, and Blake Belladonna had never hated herself more.
Correction: there was one time she’d hated herself more, but that wasn’t a wound she could ever re-open.
The fact that her ears were laying flat in shame made it much easier to pull her hat down low over her head, like between it and her sunglasses she could be anonymous enough to hide from her own guilt. Her fingers were clenched around her dirty chai so tightly that it was a wonder the cup didn’t crush in her hands as she wove her way through the picket line outside Warner Brothers Studio.
The mood was festive, especially when compared to her own. The writers of the WGA strike had been joined by their comrades in SAG-AFTRA, and with the IATSE and its stage crew workers about to join the strike, soon all the creative people of Hollywood would be united against the financiers and executives who were trying to ruin their lives in the name of squeezing out more profit for their shareholders.
Blake seethed at the injustice of it all. She’d spent days chewing through pens in writing rooms; a funny habit of hers that had been called ‘cute’ multiple times, since all her writing was actually on a laptop, but she thought a lot better when she could grind the smooth plastic of a cheap pen in her teeth. Most of her friends were in the industry, and they’d all put in long hours of sweat, tears, and occasionally blood because they loved what they did. They loved being able to entertain people and make them happy. And she knew that kind of joy had been the heartbeat of civilization since the dawn of time.
But now the money fuckers, the people she was about to go to work for , were trying, once again, to ruin everything. They were always demanding longer hours. Less safety, even less job security or time with your friends and family, for even worse residual checks. Blake had written for a couple popular shows, and it smarted how few pennies she got for the millions and millions of streams that were constantly playing around the world.
None of this would exist without us! Yet those gods-damned executives and their precious ‘quarterly earnings reports’ get *all* the money from it. It’s not like any of us are even asking to get rich! We just want a decent life, like anyone. But fuck, now they’re even trying to replace us with shitty hyped-up versions of autocomplete they’ve dubbed ‘AI’, and make lifetime digital copies of all the background people so they never have to pay them again. It’s just fucking evil!
Which made the fact that she was about to become a scab even worse.
Obviously, Blake knew her history, she’d been an enthusiastic union supporter her whole life. But when she’d finally worked up the courage to leave her abusive ex Adam, former hotshot, now disgraced and imprisoned producer, he’d made sure to wreck her career. Just like he’d forced her to destroy the best thing in her life… her… to be with him. She hadn’t worked in two years, her credit was destroyed, her car repossessed, and she was just about out of charitable friends to couch-surf between. So when the writer’s strike had left the studios desperate, and the offer had slipped into her email, Blake hadn’t been able to say no.
Even if it cost her what was left of her soul.
She swallowed hard, knowing that the hard part was coming up. So far, she’d been able to blend in with the picketers, her people , but soon she’d be at the studio gate and she’d have to cross the line. The hot sun blazed down where the studios had butchered the trees to deny the strikers even the slightest comfort from shade, but its heat was far from the main reason she was sweating.
This is it. Here’s the gate. You’ve got the pass they sent you so the security guys will let you in. No going back. Just run…
“...Blake? What the fuck?”
───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────
Yang Xiao Long almost dropped the ‘Fair Contract or We’ll Spoil Succession!’ sign she was holding.
It can’t be her!
But it clearly was. Even under her sunglasses and hat, trying very hard to not be visible, Yang immediately recognized the love of her life. Blake Belladonna, her Blakey , the woman who’d gone from being the starlight of her sky, the warmth whose comforting presence kept her sane, to walking out without a word five years ago. Just as Yang’s career as an actress had been starting to take off. She’d been devastated, and only held things together out of spite.
Yet here she was again, and… “Tell me you are not about to fucking scab!”
Blake stared at her in a state of pure shock and horror. Her drink slipped from her hands and spilled on the hot concrete, but neither one of them noticed that as Yang’s eyes flared red with the million unanswered questions burning in them. Even behind the armor of her sunglasses, she could see Blake withering, and something she’d tried hard to burn out of her stirred deep in her heart.
With a tortured cry, the woman she’d once thought she was going to marry broke down into sobs. Yang could only stare as Blake buried her face in her hands. She might have been trying to say something, but all of the clever wordiness that had made her such a great writer was lost in her tears. And then, in a nightmarish flashback to the day her heart had been shattered, Blake was turning away from her again, about to disappear.
Time slowed down for Yang. There was so much pain welling up inside of her. Blake’s abandonment had hurt her so badly that part of her knew that, until her dying breath, she’d never be completely okay again. It would be so easy to just let her go, she was obviously not doing great and letting things rest with that knowledge could be therapeutic.
Her hand closed on the woman’s trembling shoulder as Yang shouted “Blake, wait!”
Blake’s hands had knocked her sunglasses away from her eyes, and as she spun the faunus woman around, for just a moment Yang looked fully into those amber-gold eyes that she’d gotten lost in so many years ago. They were drowning in fear and desperation, and the two of them didn’t even need to say anything. Blake’s face was buried in her chest as automatically as Yang’s arms circled her shoulders, holding her heaving body tight as she sobbed into Yang’s shirt.
“Blake… it’s… we’ll… fuck!” Yang whispered gently into her ex’s soft ears, still flattened into her dark hair. She cut it short. It looks good on her. She still smells the same too, like jasmine and berries with a hint of vanilla . It took her back to their first kiss, when they were barely 20 and at an industry party. Some director’s carefully-manicured Japanese garden, standing in a little pagoda where the moonlight shivered beautifully on the koi pond, but they’d only had eyes for each other.
Damnit, now I’m crying!
As she comforted Blake against her, Yang was quickly becoming conscious of the people around them staring. She didn’t much care, but she knew Blake would. As the fur of her ear brushed delicately against Yang’s cheek, she whispered “There’s a little greasy spoon a couple blocks away. If I buy you breakfast, can we… can we talk?”
Blake’s whole body went tense against her, but then she nodded. Maybe it was premature, but something that Yang had kept dammed up in her heart felt like it was cracking. As badly as she still, instinctively, wanted Blake to be safe and comfortable, she also wanted answers. Needed them. Keeping an arm around her shoulder, Yang pulled them away towards a meal that had been five years in the making.
───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────
“Still with the huevos rancheros, huh?” Yang smirked as she sat back from her mostly-demolished plate of chicken and waffles. They’d had the quietest meal of their lives, neither of them having the words to initiate the conversation that they knew they needed to get off their chests.
Blake flashed a quick, weak smile, although she still couldn’t meet Yang’s eyes. She remembered them soft, like dreaming in a field of lilacs and lavender, but right now they were hard and deep as amethyst. “Some things never change.”
She immediately kicked herself for her word choice as Yang grimaced. “Some sure do, though,” the woman she’d loved, that she knew she’d never stopped loving , replied bitterly.
The faunus sighed. “I know. I know I promised you answers, and it’s on me to start. Just… give me a minute, okay?”
“Take your time. After…” Blake heard Yang muttering “525,600 times five” under her breath. “...2.7 million minutes, I don’t think a few more are going to kill me.”
“...there’s a reason I was always the writer, huh?”
Without even thinking, Yang stuck her tongue out at her, and the two women giggled. It was enough for their eyes to meet, and once they had, Blake knew it was time.
“Yang, I’m so sorry. You have every right not to care, but it was the worst thing I’ve ever done, and I’ve hated myself for it each and every day since, but I had to…”
“ Why? ” ripped out of Yang’s throat as a ragged sob. “I knew it was something you thought you had to do, damn it, but why ?”
“Yang…”
“Blake, just fucking tell me already!” It was a marvel Yang had managed not to shout. The way Blake winced at her anger and pain hurt, but that was the most control she could exert.
“It was Adam, okay?! It was because of him!”
Yang blinked. “Adam? That scumbag producer, the one who went to prison for sexual extortion? You left me for…” Horror choked out Yang’s retort as her own words caught up with her. “...wait. Blake, oh my gods, no…”
The woman across from her just nodded, trying again to choke back tears. “He’d been… he’d been after me for a while, but I always blew him off. After you got that big break on Brooklyn 99 , though, he told me that… that if I didn’t leave you and get with… get with him!” Blake spat the last word, her fists trembling as she ground her fork into the tabletop so hard that the tines bent. “He said he’d get you fired and make sure you never worked again. That you wouldn’t be able to get a job bussing tables in West Covina by the time he was done ruining you.”
Blake looked up and stared directly into Yang’s eyes, her face streaked with tears. “So that’s why, Yang. That’s why I left. I left… I destroyed us… to protect you.”
“Blake…” Yang choked, her hand flying across the table to grip the fingers she knew so well, that knew her perfectly. “Blake, why didn’t you tell me though? We could’ve-”
“No, we couldn’t have, Yang!” She shook her head vigorously. “Weinstein hadn’t happened yet. There was no ‘Me Too’ to back us up. It would’ve been a new actress and a novice writer against a respected, powerhouse producer. I had nothing but what he’d said, he wasn’t one of those idiots who wrote things like that down, and he’d have destroyed both of us.”
“Even still, you could’ve at least told me!”
“Yang, you know damn well you would’ve tried to fight, no matter how hopeless it was.” Blake smiled weakly. “Because you’re a fighter. You take every challenge head-on, you beautiful blonde dolt, regardless of how futile it is. That’s one of the things I… I love about you, Yang.” She let out a shuddering breath. “Or, you’d have found a way to stop me. I know that if I’d gotten into a conversation about it, if I’d have had to argue, you would have won. And then your dream, the one you’d worked so hard for, would’ve been over before it really began.”
Yang was quiet for a moment. “You had absolutely no right to decide that, Blake. No right to decide to sacrifice yourself, to sacrifice yourself like that , for me.” Her breath shuddered with raw pain. “I’d rather have gone back to stocking shelves in rural Idaho than have you… gods, Blake, you didn’t…” She buried her face in her hands as the enormity of what Blake had decided she had to do for her slammed into her. “Gods, Blake, I’m so sorry!”
“Shhh, Yang, I didn’t- I didn’t give you a choice. I know that.”
“I know ! And I’m still sorry and I’m furious at you for it and it breaks my heart that you… that the woman I love so fucking much… did that to herself, for me.”
Blake felt her throat constrict to the point that she could barely breathe. Her fingers tightened around Yang’s hand so hard it hurt, but neither of them cared. “Yang, did you just say-”
“Of course I still fucking love you, Blake!” the blonde gasped out. “Even when I was the most hurt and broken and at the bottom of the well that I’ve ever been, I couldn’t- I couldn’t have stopped, even if I wanted to.” Her voice faded to just above a whisper. “And I never really wanted to.”
Blake and Yang’s eyes burned for each other, embers of gold and flames of violet.
───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────
The tension had been palpable for the entire Lyft ride to Yang’s apartment. They had both known what they were going to do, but had no idea how to talk about it. They were still far, far away from the easy, affectionate banter than they’d shared, but Yang and Blake also both knew what they wanted more than anything in the world at the moment.
Yang’s door had barely shut when Blake was on her, her fingers tangling in those long yellow tresses that only she had been allowed to touch, could still touch, again , as she pulled their faces together. Their lips remembered everything about each other, exactly how they fit together, but did it with the needy passion of a couple just discovering each other. Yang toyed with the idea of putting on ‘Like a Virgin’, but she was far too busy unbuckling Blake’s pants and pushing her towards the bedroom all at once.
They were in their underwear by the time the back of Blake’s knees hit the bed and she pulled Yang down on top of her. “Your sheets… are tacky… as fuck!” she got out in between kisses and Yang’s teeth nibbling her lower lip as her body slid across the orange fabric.
“You’re the one fucking me on them,” Yang growled as she fumbled behind Blake’s back for her bra strap, before giving up and just pushing the purple lace up off of her breasts.
“Damn right I am.” Blake purred wordlessly as Yang’s lips danced down her jawline to the pulse point of her neck, sucking hard enough at her warmth that she knew she’d have a mark. Blake had never been happier with the thought of a hickey. She wrapped her thighs around her partner’s torso as she slid down to minister to her breasts, wet kisses mapping the curve of her skin until Yang’s tongue swirled around the hot, hard bud of her nipple. Fingers tightening in her hair, Blake arched her back into Yang’s touch, letting go of five years of pain to embrace what she had now, what she could never earn back but was finally hers again.
Yang shimmied out of her bra as her fingers ran over Blake’s hips, gliding across the silk of her skin as she traced the bones beneath. If you asked me last night what this felt like my memories would have been fog, but now it’s like I’ve never forgotten. As much as she could have spent hours, days, moving between Blake’s breasts and feeling her body squirm and writhe beneath her, she needed her cunt more. The scent of her musk was calling to her already, mixing with her own to fill Yang’s head with things she hadn’t felt in forever, and she needed to drink it in. To drown in it.
She started kissing her way down Blake’s belly, her tongue drawing a line to the wet heat she knew awaited her, but the faunus woman started struggling beneath her. Yang looked up in alarm. “Blake? You okay?”
“Fuck yes, Yang, gods I need this, I need you , so badly!” Her eyes were wide and hazy as she sat up. “But we’re doing this at the same time.”
Wordless, Yang rolled over and laid back on her bed, watching as Blake slid her black panties off. Her underwear didn’t match, neither did Yang’s, neither of them gave a shit at the moment. The soft chestnut skin of Blake’s thighs was quickly astride Yang’s face, her knees pressing against the golden silk of her hair while the entire, naked, luxurious length of her body laid on atop her own. The warmth and slight stickiness of the sweat already beading between them brought so much crashing back to both of them as Blake shoved Yang’s underwear out of her way.
And then they were tasting each other for the first time, again.
Both women’s bellies pressed together as their backs arched at the touch of each other’s tongues. Touches that quickly became hungry consumption as they both dove into each other’s need with feral passion. Blake moaned as she felt Yang’s heat blossom under her lips, her hips already starting to buck beneath her. The slide of Yang’s inner thighs across her cheeks left them deliciously sticky with arousal. Her own loins began to grind as Yang pressed her hot mouth against her folds, her tongue both an intimate memory and a fresh new discovery as it found her clit and rolled it. Blake’s whole body heaved and tightened against Yang’s hands on her flanks. Her belly had been burning up with need even before their lips had met, and while part of her wanted to draw this moment out into infinity, to make it feel like she had never been anything but one with Yang, her beloved Yang , Blake knew she was already hurtling towards her precipice.
It may have been five years, but having Blake’s body against her again made Yang feel like they’d never been apart. At the same moment, the length of time they’d been separated hurt with how long it had been, and Yang was desperate to do everything in her power to bring them back together, to make them so close that that painful memory was squeezed out from in between them. Her lips dragged along the entire length of Blake’s slit in between hard, strong flicks of her tongue, making the body in her arms, that she remembered every inch of, spasm with press and twist. The sensations they were unleashing in each other bled together in the hormonal fog that had suffused Yang’s brain. It was a spiritual experience, a worship of each other’s bodies they were experiencing together as they prayed in each others’ altars and took the communion of how desperately they needed each other. Yang’s entire body felt like it was being wound tighter and tighter around the essence of Blake nestled in her belly, and in her carnal frenzy she didn’t know if she could even survive it snapping. Or if she even wanted to.
Their cries as they unraveled together were muffled against each other’s skin and their striving to prolong and heighten each other even as their own capacity for thought disintegrated in a warm haze of dawning afterglow. Moans and screams tampered down to whimpers that trailed off to heavy breathing, and Blake had rolled off of Yang and turned herself back around to nestle her head into the crook of her shoulder. Her ear pressed against Yang’s breast followed the hammering of her lover’s heart as it slowly settled, as their breathing normalized together.
“I’ve missed you so much, sunshine,” Blake murmured as she wrapped an arm around the love of her life and held on.
“I’ve missed you too, Blake. And I’ve loved you the whole damn time.”
“Gods, every day, I’ve loved you too.” She gently kissed Yang’s flushed pink skin. “Never, ever let me go another day without me telling you that, okay?”
“Never, ever, sugarplum.”
───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────
Blake pumped her fist in the air as another car laid on its horn supportively while driving past the picket line, to the cheers of herself and her fellow strikers. She wiped the sweat off her brow and smiled warmly at the people around her. This is where I belong! she purred contentedly to herself. It’s blistering hot and we’re the underdogs, but I’m on the right side with my people.
She yelped as something ice-cold touched her back, spinning around just in time for Yang to plant a kiss on her lips. Blake’s surprise turned into a smile as their mouths lingered together, her heart swelling with joy that Yang was hers and she was Yang’s . Again. Like it was always meant to be.
“Your green tea lemonade, miss,” Yang grinned and tried to hand her the giant cup, already sweating with cold droplets from all the ice inside.
“Thanks sunshine! But ooo, can you rub it on my back again first?” Blake turned back around, and Yang was happy to oblige. The faunus shivered at the chill, but the icy water dripping down her spine felt so good. “You’re a lifesaver. In more ways than one,” she smiled as she accepted the drink and sipped thirstily.
“Anything for my Blakey,” Yang smiled and wrapped an arm around her waist as she kissed her head, right between her ears in that magic spot only she’d ever been able to find. Blake sighed as she leaned into her.
“No, really, you’re a lifesaver. Letting me Uhaul with you after one night? That’s got to be some new kind of sapphic record.”
Yang snorted, then shook her head softly as she smiled down at her. “It’s not like we set a record for moving in together, Blake. It was just you coming back home.”
Blake’s fingers tightened on the collar of Yang’s vest as she stood on her toes and kissed her again, saying all that she needed to say.