RWBY: Remnant's Blond Bard

Chapter 4

Juniper wasn't blind to the fact her son was changing.

With six older children before him, she'd experienced the growth spurts and changes – sometimes those were inches upward and sometimes they were inches outward, with much complaining of chest pains and embarrassing trips (for her daughters, anyway) to the closest shop to try on bras. At least that was something she didn't have to worry about with her only son, and she'd enjoyed letting Nicky handle the birds and the bees for once. Wonders never cease, he hadn't even mucked it up so badly.

A good mother didn't have favourites and Juniper considered herself a good mother, but Jaune was her only son and that sometimes meant she paid more attention to him because he was different from his sisters. Because of that, it wasn't difficult to see the changes coming, even after he sprouted to almost six feet a year or two back and she'd thought they were over. Her little boy was turning into a man.

And what a man he was turning into! Sheesh!

She wasn't the only one to comment on how handsome he was looking lately. The older women she hung out with wouldn't stop talking about it in a way that really made her feel uncomfortable. It always stunned her that mothers could talk about another's son in terms of how handsome and happy they'd make a girl one day, but if a husband were to say the same about someone's daughter then it'd be time to call the police.

Juniper hadn't liked it when they did the same with her girls and had lamped one old bitch for saying it was "such a shame" when Saphron came out as gay, but it somehow felt a lot more predatory toward Jaune. Mainly because it was sometimes hard to know where the line between joking compliment and thinly veiled interest lay when a woman of some thirty-five years said, "I'd love to take him home and make him call me mommy." The other women had laughed like it was such a good joke, and it might have been if they'd just left it there, but they kept going until Juniper had wanted to pick up her chair and beat them to death with it.

Damn it, Jaune. You couldn't have waited until you were eighteen to suddenly become hot?

Her son was hot. There was no other way of putting it. He'd always been handsome to her – biased as she was; all her children were beautiful – but he'd been boyish and gangly like every teenager. Oh, she'd always known he would grow up to look like her Nicky, and even Nicholas hadn't looked good when he'd been at Beacon. It had taken a few years for him to mature out and start growing some facial hair and develop some muscles and stop being such a teenager. Juniper had preferred men even when she herself was a teen.

Jaune, on the other hand, was looking increasingly airbrushed.

That was the only way she could describe it. His skin was so smooth and clear – practically unheard of in a boy his age – and his face looked ridiculously angular. He had the look of a model in a magazine who had been touched up with post-photography editing, except in real life.

And his sisters weren't blind to it either.

Jade and Hazel had been raiding his bathroom while he was out to try and find what products he was using so they could steal it, and Sable couldn't stop showing pictures of him off to her friends. Except Becky, who she'd had a falling out over due to the other girl asking if Jaune wanted help with his V-Card.

Who knew sons could be so troublesome?

Not that Jaune was, of course. Her little baby was doing charity work, defusing a robbery, busking to raise money for kids in need. Juniper had run out of squeals. Her weekly quota of motherly pride was expended, and she'd dipped into her overdraft as well.

"You've got that pensive look on your face again." Strong arms wrapped around her from behind and settled over her stomach. "What's wrong?"

"I'm thinking about Jaune," she said, leaning back into Nicky. "He's changing."