"Visiting from Haven, actually."

Ruby had liked her voice.

It was quiet and smooth, and something about it seemed familiar somehow.

She'd felt comfortable.

...

"...Ruby, was it?" She paused in a way that felt meaningful somehow and then smiled slowly, honey-sweet. "That's a pretty name. Very pretty."

Ruby opened her mouth, but couldn't choose any one of the many things she wanted to say.

She wanted to ask if she really thought so.

She wanted to ask her what her name was, anyway, because she hadn't caught it?

She wanted to tell her her name was pretty too, no matter what it turned out to be.

She wanted to ask if she needed help walking back to her own dorm.

Ruby would've asked, would've felt a little bit extra grown-up for doing so, but a palm cupping her cheek made everything she'd been thinking about melt into a nondescript puddle of letters and the outlines of sounds. Her mouth hung partway open like a fish as the other hand joined the first, thumbs rolling over the curves of her cheeks slowly, once, twice, three times-

"U-Um!" Ruby squeaked, but was only met with a sultry chuckle.

"My, what plump cheeks you have-" She smiled in a way that somehow maybe didn't look as kind as before as she pressed and pinched at them a little harder, tugging them from side to side. She angled her head slightly to arrest Ruby's wandering eyes with her own, her voice coming in lower, huskier, "-all the better for a little squeeze, right?" Before Ruby could answer, she pinched harder and tugged her head into nodding a few times.

"Good girl."

In a second, she was pressed back against the wall of the hallway outside her dorm, and everything was-friction and sliding, sensations that were impossible to describe as anything but heaven and hell rolled into one.

Their bodies were touching, and she was sweating.

"You're running a fever, Ruby." She assessed, matter-of-factly, running a hand over her forehead as the other slid to the base of her neck, fingers fanning around her throat.

But to Ruby it felt more like her skin was just getting hot where she happened to be touching.

"Breathe. Breathe in for me." Ruby hesitated, but she did not. "Now."

Ruby sucked in a frightened breath, only to have it cut short with pressure-she couldn't do anything, she already felt light-headed-

She tried to move, do something, anything, but the hand at her throat was tightening slowly, inexorably, and her cheeks flushed with heat as the hand on her forehead slid down over her eyes, covering them.

The hand slid off her throat, dragged off onto her chest over her heart, and Ruby gasped raggedly before the sound was cut short again, by lips over lips, hot and slow and dangerous-

"Your heart's beating fast-" Her whisper was like silk falling to a plush, velvet floor, her lips never all the way leaving Ruby's, and steady fingers began flicking the buttons of her uniform open, one by one. "-Poor thing-" Even without being able to see it, Ruby could all but hear the cruel smile that accompanied her next words.

"-did that get you hot?"

"Ruby! You out there?"

She was dropped, abandoned, instantly, and she was gone, saved by her sister's voice.

She didn't know it hadn't been the first time.