RWBY Rarepair Exchange

An exchange for most varieties of RWBY rarepairs! Run by mod R (they/them).

[rwbyrarepairexchange]

RWBY Rarepair Exchange 2025 Sign-ups!

Welcome to the fifth RWBY Rarepair Exchange! Unfortunately, this exchange will mark the last exchange -- at least, until Volume 10 releases. My passion for RWBY has faded in the last couple years, but I wanted to make it for one last round until the story continues. Let's make this round great together!

Before you sign up, make sure to read this year's updated Guidelines & Schedule!

SIGN-UP FORM

(And happy @rwbyrarepairweek!)

[harhar1102]

Chapters: 1/3 Fandom: RWBY Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Weiss Schnee/Nora Valkyrie Characters: Weiss Schnee, Nora Valkyrie, Background & Cameo Characters Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Salem (RWBY), Centaurs, Centaur Nora Valkyrie, Hurt/Comfort, Angst, Fluff, Enemies to Lovers, Humor Summary:

Nora kinda sorta hates Weiss. Weiss kinda sorta fell in love at first sight.

What ever would happen when they meet and Nora begins to warm up to her?

———-

@harmonylight I believe this is for you! I’ll get the rest out during the week … enjoy this first bit! ;)

@rwbyrarepairexchange

[theriveroflight]

Top of the World (T, 3k, Sunflowyr)

“I take it that guy wasn’t a huge asshole, then?” “He was pretty nice,” Yang says. “Quiet. Interesting. He seemed to know what he was looking at. That was the really interesting part.”

Or: an Olympics AU, where Yang does judo and Ren does sports climbing and they meet because of archery.

Written for @harhar1102 for this year's @rwbyrarepairexchange.

Read the fic on AO3

[rwbyrarepairexchange]

RWBY Rarepair Exchange 2025 Sign-ups!

Welcome to the fifth RWBY Rarepair Exchange! Unfortunately, this exchange will mark the last exchange -- at least, until Volume 10 releases. My passion for RWBY has faded in the last couple years, but I wanted to make it for one last round until the story continues. Let's make this round great together!

Before you sign up, make sure to read this year's updated Guidelines & Schedule!

SIGN-UP FORM

(And happy @rwbyrarepairweek!)

[rwbyrarepairexchange]

Today is the last day of sign-ups! I'll be closing them around 11 PM EST, or in 15 hours.

[rwbyrarepairexchange]

Five days left to sign up for this year's exchange!

Sign-Up Form | Guidelines & Schedule

@rwbyrarepairs

[rwbyrarepairexchange]

2025 Guidelines & Schedule

1. Under no circumstances are you permitted violate the Do Not Want list of your recipient. This rule is the most enforced, and breaking this will get you banned from the subsequent exchange or exchanges depending on the extent of the violation.

2. Fics must be at least 1500 words, and artwork must be complete.

“Complete” means completed to your ability; every artist has a different style, and thus this just means finished to the artist’s ability. Black/white pieces are allowed if they meet standards of polish.

3. Life comes up, and you may need to drop out. Please let me know before the drop-out deadline if this winds up applying to you. New this year: posting will now be over a period instead of a single day; you can post anytime during the week.

4. NSFW content is allowed. However, NSFW of characters that are minors is not allowed (e.g. Beacon arc RWBY + JNPR) and incest/pseudo-incest (e.g. Ruby/Yang & Ruby/Qrow) are not allowed. Relationships where one character is a minor and one character is a significantly older adult are also not allowed (e.g. Ruby/Ozpin). However, aging up characters is okay.

5. The following ships are not allowed due to being too common to be considered rarepairs: Whiterose (Ruby/Weiss), Bumbleby (Blake/Yang), Renora (Ren/Nora), Arkos (Jaune/Pyrrha), Fair Game (Qrow/Clover), Nuts and Dolts (Ruby/Penny), Rosegarden (Ruby/Oscar), and Blacksun (Blake/Sun).

Polyamorous relationships including these are permitted, however (e.g. Blake/Yang/Sun or Jaune/Weiss/Ruby).

6. Most importantly, have fun! This is meant to unite the rarepair shipping communties and feed each of our individual desires for more content of our rarepairs.

SCHEDULE:

September 15th: Sign-ups open

October 18th: Sign-ups close

October 20th: Matches sent out

October 31st: Drop-out deadline/Check-in

November 23rd: Posting begins!

[rwbyrarepairexchange]

Hello, I'm back! Sign-ups for the next edition of the rarepair exchange will open September 15th.

[howdoyoudothedew]

Rated: G

Pairing: Goopleck (Tyrian Callows/Dr. Bartholomew Oobleck)

Word Count: ~2k

A/N: @rwbyrarepairexchange for @preppy-lizity, using their coworker professor's prompt! I hope you like it, sorry I'm posting it here a bit late

"Huh, that's wrong." A voice says over Bartholomew's shoulder, making him turn around. Tyrian is staring down at his teaching notes, tail curled around his leg, frowning. "My nana didn't do that."

"Your... grandmother?" Bartholomew asks slowly.

"Yes." Tyrian blinks down at him. "Lieutenant Brunhilda?"

Bartholomew stands quickly, his chair rolling away. Tyrian sidesteps it easily. "Your grandmother was one of the best fighters in the war?"

"Who do you think taught me to fight?" Tyrian says like it should be obvious. Which it very much isn't, though it does explain a few things. Bartholomew grabs Tyrian by the shoulders, Tyrian's tail flicking out briefly in instinct before it curls around both their legs.

"Tell me everything," Bartholomew says with a seriousness and excitement only a history professor can have. Tyrian frowns suspiciously at him. It doesn't diminish Bartholomew's excitement.

"... alright," Tyrian says slowly and perches on Bartholomew's desk. Bartholomew sits back down, moving himself back to sit slightly to Tyrian's side so Tyrian's tail can wrap itself around his wrist.

Tyrian and Bartholomew's relationship was... complicated, to say the least. Tyrian was a well of forgotten history, thanks to his connection to a still little-known (though steadily growing more well-known) island. But Tyrian was also... rough. Not cruel, but not quite kind either. He's saner than he was when he first joined. Often Bartholomew doesn't know what to make of the other man, which to him, simply makes him more intriguing. Bartholomew has always liked learning.

Bartholomew watches Tyrian's combat class sometimes, watching the students run through the intense obstacle course he's still not entirely sure how Tyrian convinced Glynda to let him build. It contains fire dust, though not enough to seriously injure a student. Not after the first time it happened, seemingly to Tyrian's genuine surprise. (Tyrian had asked him to watch over the class while he took the student to Rose and Oobleck still remembers the concerned look on his face, under everything else.) Despite the dangers of the obstacle course, Bartholomew knows several students rather enjoy it. It's also a helpful, if unusual, tool.

Sometimes, Tyrian also comes to watch Bartholomew's class or perches on his desk, tail swaying calmly, while Bartholomew himself paces over every inch of his room as he plans a lesson or grades papers. Sometimes Tyrian will bring food. Or sometimes, Bartholomew brings extra for Tyrian. It always ends with them eating together, anyhow, Tyrian looking over whatever Bartholomew was half-rambling about without noticing.

"I'd still give them points for this," Tyrian says, cackling, looking at one of the answers Bartholomew marked wrong. Bartholomew looks back at it over his shoulder. What stopped the Great War? Signatures

"They're certainly not wrong," Bartholomew agrees, laughing. He adds back half a point to their grade.

Some of the other teachers have questioned Bartholomew before, when they learned he watches Tyrian's class occasionally, about the nature of the obstacle course. They haven't seen the class before, but they think it's too dangerous. It is dangerous, but so is being a huntsman. At least with the obstacle course, they're being watched carefully. Bartholomew always replies by asking how they feel about the accompanied missions, which are just as dangerous, if not more. It's kind of funny how quiet they always get, afterwards.

The first time Bartholomew sees Tyrian like he was when he first joined is also the first time Bartholomew ever sees Tyrian's semblance in action.

Semblances are a mystery of science and philosophy, with some needing to be activated and some always being active. Bartholomew's own semblance sits in a grey area, with how much he uses it. Anymore even he's not sure if it's a permantely active one or not, despite speed semblances typically needing to be activated. Tyrian's semblance is in a similar grey area, simply because of how it affects him.

It's rare for teachers to go on missions, but even combat school's take breaks and teachers are still huntsmen. Tyrian and Bartholomew go on a mission together on one such break during winter, and it goes well, until Bartholomew's own curiosity outweighs their luck. One day, Bartholomew might learn from his own mistakes and be more careful with strange things he doesn't recognize. Of course, he's in his forties and still hasn't learned it, but he's not dead yet so there's always time.

Tyrian is the reason he's not dead and still has time.

It doesn't happen immediately after he touches it, because it's only ever immediate in dramatic scenes in movies or books or plays. Instead, they're walking, keeping an eye out for grimm, when Bartholomew's knees start to buckle and his vision blurrs. He does go down slowly, though. Or at least it feels that way. But for a man who's always going at a rabbit's pace, it's not much of a surprise a fall which likely takes a few seconds feels like several minutes. Tyrian catches him before he wobbles fully into the dirt, lowering him carefully so he doesn't hurt his knees on the ground.

"What happened?" Tyrian asks, looking him over with a careful eye and an expression Bartholomew recognizes from survivors of tragedy. Bartholomew doesn't like the latter, so he chooses now to focus on the former. The hand Tyrian puts on his forehead is cooler than it should be.

"It seems I've touched the wrong strange plant," Bartholomew says with a smile forming slower than it should. For a second, Bartholomew thinks he sees Tyrian panic. His tail wraps around Bartholomew's ankle. Before Bartholomew can assure him it'll be fine, he's interrupted by a coughing fit he knows means it likely won't be. Both of them know they are too far away from anyone else and their medkit is too bare to do anything. All they can do is hope whatever Bartholomew touched isn't as bad as it is making itself seem. Except Tyrian's eyes go purple for several moments, the tail around Bartholomew's ankle twitching. When Tyrian's eyes go gold again it's with a terrible, hacking cough. And suddenly, Bartholomew's vision isn't blurry behind his glasses.

Bartholomew helps Tyrian to a hospital, Tyrian's tail wrapped around Bartholomew's waist and Tyrian himself twitching and cackling in spurts around coughing fits the entire way, while Bartholomew's brain reels. It's not until a nurse is treating Tyrian for the plant Bartholomew touched that it really hits. Whatever Tyrian's semblance is, it let him take the poison from him and helped Tyrian's body deal with it better than Bartholomew's own could. Only once the poison is out of Tyrian's system does his tail unwrap itself from Bartholomew and Tyrian stops cackling. Later, he realizes neither the cackling nor the twitching were common effects of the poison.

Later, Tyrian tells in quiet words about losing his moms to a plague no matter how much of the sickness he took from them, and Bartholomew suddenly knows exactly why Tyrian was like he was when he ended up on Beacon's doorstep, looking for a job: Cackling, twitching, with a hollow expression in his eyes.

"I'm technically a prince," Tyrian says one day, out of nowhere, making Bartholomew's eyes snap to him, followed soon after by his entire body. The only thing keeping him from running full-bodied into Tyrian is Tyrian's tail. He might be worried, if he didn't know Tyrian and if Tyrian wasn't laughing brightly at him. Not quite the unhinged cackle, but close. Bartholomew barely notices either, half bracketing Tyrian to his desk with his hands.

"What do you mean?"

Tyrian shrugs, a familiar glint in his eye, backing further onto Bartholomew's desk. "Well when a beautiful, clever woman marries a very wealthy man-" He begins and maybe if he were anyone else, this is where Bartholomew would scoff and roll his eyes, but he's not and Tyrian knows that. Just as much as Bartholomew knows Tyrian isn't anyone else. Bartholomew slowly goes between pacing and simply leaning against his desk listening as Tyrian tells him about a beautiful, clever woman who uses her smarts to gain, only to lose everything in a tragic back-and-forth. It's sad, the way Tyrian tells it, in the way greek tragedies are sad. Inevitable. Unstoppable. For every rise, there is a fall, until there is no longer a rise.

Bartholomew stares at the floor, still, and Tyrian slides to the floor, wrapping his tail around Bartholomew's wrist.

Later, much later, Bartholomew makes a dessert with the help of two archeologists he knows who specialize in Vacuo's history. He's not sure if it's a thank you for the story, or a kind of apology.

Either way, it's one of the few times Bartholomew ever sees Tyrian cry.

It's also the first time Tyrian kisses him.

Dating Tyrian Callows is a bit strange, but there are many things in Bartholomew's life which are strange, from his seemingly always active speed semblance, to his weapon, to his choice of drink actually being decaf coffee instead of caffienated.

It's funny to Bartholomew, as a history professor, but Tyrian is more open about his past than Bartholomew himself is. Bartholomew tells his own story in bits and pieces, like a jigsaw puzzle, where Tyrian is sudden revelations followed by stories, like translating a short novel after finally cracking the forgotten language.

"I worked a dig site in Vacuo one summer. Even after all the warnings, I wasn't quite prepared for the heat."

"My parents died when I was a teen. It's part of why I'm a huntsman."

"I don't actually care for cauliflower."

He can feel Tyrian picking up each piece, fitting them all together to create a single picture. It's odd, because Bartholomew doesn't think anyone's done this before, even Peter. Maybe Ozpin, but Ozpin is more enigma than even Bartholomew can handle half the time and the rest of the time he's in his office, hidden away.

There is something nice about it, though. He doesn't know why, because it's not as if he's ever felt like the amount of thought others put into his personal life or past relates at all to how much they care about him, but something about Tyrian taking the time to figure out where each part fits is nice. Bartholomew wonders if this is how fossils feel when archeologists put their skeletons back together. If, of course, the long dead creatures could feel anything at all. If they did, he thinks they would thank them simply for taking the time to learn their story.

Because that is what archeologists and historians do—they learn the stories. That is what Bartholomew has done, both consciously and subconsciously, a very large part of him always wanting to learn. And that is what Tyrian's done as well, Bartholomew realizes slowly. He has learned as much about Bartholomew as Bartholomew has learned about Tyrian, only he has learned it in chunks and pieces with careful tools in dangerous hands. And Bartholomew has been on several dig sites in several places. He's been a historian for nearly three decades. Bartholomew knows from experience; you only use the most careful brush strokes to sweep away grime to reveal the things you really love. And sometimes, with luck and patience, they reveal themselves to you, and it feels like being loved back.

The next time Tyrian shares a story, they are in the training room, and Bartholomew tells Tyrian a story of his own.

[dykesapphics]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Here's my entry to the @rwbyrarepairexchange ! It's a gift to @stormage-writes , hope you enjoy!

[kaen-ace-of-diamonds]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Word Count: 3,968 (twoshot, completed)

Genre: Angst/Hurt/Comfort

Pairing: Pyrrha Nikos/Emerald Sustrai

Characters: Pyrrha Nikos, Emerald Sustrai, Nora Valkyrie, Lie Ren, Ilia Amitola, Cinder Fall (lurking around offscreen)

Summary: Pyrrha is a warrior angel, charged by her superiors with slaying soul-eating demons. But her life is changed forever when getting to know the demon Emerald has her seriously questioning the role she's been given.

Written for @elverniia for the 2024 @rwbyrarepairexchange!

[stellarfoam]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Relationships: Whitley Schnee/Ruby Rose, Whitley Schnee & Neon Katt & Flynt Coal

Tags: Modern AU, Pre-Relationship, Pining, Childhood Friends, Meet-cute, College Graduation Party

Whitley is hosting his college graduation party in his apartment. He invited Weiss, of course, and shared high school friends, but he didn't expect any of them to show up. He didn't expect Ruby to make herself at home in his kitchen. He definitely didn't expect her to remember him. And he certainly didn't expect those old, inconvenient feelings to come roaring back to life. Written for RWBY Rarepair Exchange 2024! ---- Whitley makes a point to be the life of any party he hosts, and a scintillating conversation partner for any event he graces. He is charming, refined, and occasionally magnanimous. He does not take breaks, especially not for something held in his honor. Ruby does not listen to his explanation, and her grip is far stronger than expected for a person of her stature as she steers him into the kitchen.

@rwbyrarepairexchange

[elverniia]

Home

The drawing I’ve made for @whysapphics for the @rwbyrarepairexchange !! I loved drawing these two, such an underrated ship between redeemed antagonists <33

Hope you like it!!!

[theriveroflight]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

This year's @rwbyrarepairexchange fic for @pilot-boi, with the prompt "Armored Angel (Jaune/Weiss/Pyrrha) Beacon dance"!

[art-from-the-stars]

promise

for @empress-s :-) hope you like :-D

@rwbyrarepairexchange

[multifansblog]

@rwbyrarepairexchange @kaen-ace-of-diamonds

Here's my Cinder/Pyrrha modern athletes piece for the exchange!

[spivecream]

a gift for @alto-tenure for the rare pair exchange!

the prompt was assassin/target AU, so i tried to do a love at first sight thing, if that makes sense

i hope you like it!

[stormage-writes]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

My submission for the 2024 RWBY Rarepair Exchange for @harmonylight!!

@rwbyrarepairexchange