Work Text:
Get in, the water's cold now darlin'
I can feel the water fold my skin
And every siren went silent in my head.
Take a breath, let us turn to way home
Keep her hands pressed out against your chest
And every siren went silent in my head.
[Sirens by Woodlock]
—
Winning — to Weiss Schnee — is second to nothing.
It’s an attitude she’s been critiqued for in the past, but it’s gotten her this far, and — as she rounds the corner and steps into the B-Block lounge — it’s this mindset alone that saves the eyesight she desperately needs for her upcoming competition.
Because otherwise — confronted with the sight she is forced to behold — she would have most certainly gouged out both her eyes, then and there and without a moment’s hesitation, if only to save herself from having to witness another second of such a deep, cruel betrayal.
But for Weiss Schnee, the promise of Olympic Gold is far more important than her own dismay or discomfort at the dastardly deed committed by her best friend in the broad daylight of the common area. And so instead, Weiss screams.
Or. Yells.
She’s not entirely sure of the proper terminology, but the note hits somewhere around a C6, so perhaps it’s more of a shriek. And clearly, the two women across the room don’t appreciate the display of vocal talent anymore than they appreciate the sacred bonds of friendship and rivaldom (depending on the woman in question); the one violating the former merely rolls her eyes, the woman flagrantly disregarding the latter goes so far as to cover her ears.
“Weiss,” Blake sighs. “Use your indoor voice.” She pauses, tilting her head as she re-evaluates her statement. “Your non-opera-house indoor voice, more specifically.”
“Jesus fuck,” Yang says, digging a finger into her ear and waggling her lower jaw back and forth in a manner Weiss finds absolutely repugnant.
Granted, Weiss finds everything Yang Xiao Long does to be absolutely repugnant, but none more so than what she’d just seen: Yang’s wide, gaping maw thrown back and emitting a truly horrific cackle, while Weiss’s (potentially former) best friend stood far too close with a smile that was far too fond.
“Blake,” Weiss begins, much softer and (she hopes) far more deadly. “Can you define the term ‘betrayal’ for me? How about ‘treachery’? Or perhaps —”
“Psychosis?” Yang suggests, and Blake shushes her, loud and obvious. It’d be gratifying if not for the grin Yang flashes, and (worse) the resulting quirk of Blake’s lips. “Maybe you can define that one for us, Weiss.”
Weiss sees red. She so often does with Yang (red, or some relatively milder variation of a bright orange-yellow that gave her a terrible headache and did something unpleasant to her gut.) She’s across the room and directly in front of Yang before anyone can take a breath, up on her toes to counter Yang’s unnatural height and weird muscles and stupid smirk.
“You can shut your stupid whor — ”
This time, it’s Weiss that Blake shushes.
Weiss crosses her arms and tries not to let any of the hurt show on her face, without any success; Blake softens — her brows lift, the gold in her eyes melts, her shoulders drop — in the particular way she only ever does when Weiss attempts to seem less affected than she is.
“Weiss,” Blake says again, gentler this time, and with a new distance between her and Yang (a full two feet that Weiss hadn’t even noticed her traverse). “I was just coming to see if you wanted to grab food before you had to head to the stadium.”
“And you ran into… her.”
“Nah,” Yang contradicts, which is bad enough on its own, but when she throws in a wink, Weiss knows with certainty that she’s being fucked with. As usual. “I was looking for her.”
Weiss glowers. Blake, once again, sighs. And Yang grins.
And sure, at first glance, there’s nothing particularly wrong with Yang Xiao Long. With her stupid black and green track pants slung low on her hips; her slobby, worn, over-sized tank haphazardly half-caught in her waistband; the expanse of tan skin and large muscles tackily revealed by the loose and sleeveless nature of said shirt; her unruly, blonde hair that never seemed to be properly restrained by a hair tie; and that dumb, shit-eating grin that made her weird, pretty, purple eyes sparkle; some people might even call her attractive.
But Weiss knows better, and so when she takes a step closer, pressing directly up against the woman in question, it’s with murder on the mind.
“Nope!” Blake says quickly, and intercepts Weiss with a friendly embrace that’s less of a hug and more of a chokehold. It’s not unwarranted; Weiss can admit that. And Blake still manages to make it feel kind of nice, rubbing her back in gentle circles in a way that Weiss will never admit always manages to calm her down. (And that Blake knows anyways.) “Yang was looking for me and I was looking for you and you were on your way out and we ended up here. In the B lounge. All being utterly friendly and cordial with each other. Isn’t that right?”
“Yeah, definitely.” Yang smiles and stretches her arms up back behind her head, like she hadn’t been Weiss’s sworn rival for years at this point. (Nevermind that Yang had never recognized it; this was one of her most devastating moves.)
“Absolutely not,” Weiss disagrees, because she’s not above being petty. To her great (and perpetual) annoyance, this only adds to Yang’s apparent amusement; the stretch continues, emphasizing the muscles in her arms in a way Weiss is sure is intentional.
Blake ignores all of it, tugging on Weiss’s arm and heading towards the door. “Glad we’re all in agreement. Weiss, let’s get lunch. Yang, I’ll see you later.”
“You bet!” Weiss reads malevolence in the tone — and in the wink Yang throws her way when she glances back. “Bye, Weiss. Great seeing you, as always.”
“Bite me,” Weiss returns. It’s not her best, but she hadn’t prepared a set of vicious takedowns on this particular occasion, given the impromptu nature of it, and she’s short on time. She figures it gets the point across well enough… until Yang’s grin turns salacious.
“I’d love to, Ice Queen. Your place or mine?”
Blake’s tugging turns more into a full-body drag, after that.
—
It’s pure benevolence that has Weiss holding her tongue for the next twenty minutes — until they’ve made it to the cafeteria, loaded their trays with food, and found a spot on the lawn, tucked away under a spreading oak — and Weiss thinks she deserves far more credit for this tremendous feat than Blake gives her, once she finally speaks.
“So, clearly the sacred bonds of friendship mean absolutely nothing to you now.”
Blake looks up, arches a brow, and goes back to carefully dunking her tea bag in a multicolor mug that’s meant to promote togetherness and unity between the Kingdoms of Remnant.
“Try again,” she suggests, absentminded in tone and action if not for the way her ears twitch — briefly and just once — to the side.
“Based on your actions today, I can assume you’ve switched your discipline to knife-throwing, given the way you’ve stabbed me in the — ”
“Not an Olympic sport. Also still not remotely accurate. Try again.”
“Webster's dictionary defines betrayal as — ”
“Weiss.”
The stare leveled in her direction is full of reproach, and Weiss feels a pout forming in response; sure enough, her lower lip curls out before she can reign it in for a more dignified response.
“But she’s my rival,” she whines. “Isn’t it an unwritten best friend rule that one isn’t meant to fraternize with one’s best friend’s rival?”
“Of course.” Blake sips her tea; the pause is ominous, meant to build trepidation of what’s sure to be a devastating verbal takedown. Weiss can see the writing on the wall, knows she has no ground to stand on, but still wishes Blake would let her get away with it, just this once. She doesn’t. “But remind me… how did our last conversation about Yang go? What was it you said to me when I specifically asked — ”
“Yes, okay, alright! I know I said it didn’t bother me that you were — ” She swallows heavily, past the bile rising in her throat. “ — acquaintances. But this was… different.”
“How?”
Different, because Yang had been leaning in until there was barely an inch between them, had curled her fingers with surprising and evident gentleness around Blake’s elbow, had worn a soft expression that had looked out of place and beautiful on Yang’s face until Blake had said something that made her erupt into laughter and Blake had seemed so…
Weiss sighs, pushes past the new tendrils of something like discomfort curling in her stomach — the ones that had taken root alongside the fully-formed trees full of wasps and bees and all sorts of unpleasant insects that had first sprung up after her first meeting with Yang Xiao Long — and focuses on exactly how Blake had seemed.
(Relaxed. Happy. At-ease. Very un-Blake-like, except for those rare moments that she let her carefully constructed defenses drop in favor of something else: like focus, mid-swing in the middle of a game, or love, when she was with the person she’d called her best friend for half her life, even when said best friend wasn’t much acting like one.)
“I’m sorry,” she says, instead of responding. “You’re right.”
Blake’s smile is knowing, but she doesn’t tease Weiss for her difficulty with the admission. (She never does.)
“You know I’m on your side.” Weiss waits for the caveat, but Blake holds her tongue.
“Just say it,” she sighs.
“But I don’t get it!” Blake sighs. “She’s a badminton player! You ride horses! There’s no overlap. How are you rivals? And don’t say — ”
“I can have a side-hobby, Blake! I can have a side-hobby-rival! It was a very intense fencing match and she completely violated article t.25.2 of the International Fencing Federation Technical Rules. The bout should have been halted immediately and the hit scored ought to have been annulled. The fact that she continued and, worse, declared herself the victor was simply — ”
“Weiss,” Blake groans. “It was a party. Both of you were drunk. You were fencing with twigs. It was four years ago.”
“ — Unforgivable and gauche. I don’t see what’s so odd about declaring her my rival so that I might one day best her in a rematch and prove once and for all that she’s an inferior fencer.” Weiss pauses. “And person.” She pauses again, smoothing out the paper napkin that had found its way into her clenched fist. “But obviously you can associate with her. Obviously you’re welcome to have a jolly time with the woman who announced to a group of my peers that I was a ‘noodle-armed loser’ while she stood atop a table and swung her recently-removed t-shirt over her head.”
This time, it’s the twitch of Blake’s lips that gives her away.
“Okay, but that — ” Blake bites the traitorous bottom lip, like keeping herself from smiling will help, the situation, regardless of how she follows it up. “That was funny.”
“I hate you.”
“You don’t.”
(She doesn’t.)
“And,” Blake continues. “You owe me one now, for saying such a horrible thing. So you have to try to get over the whole fake fencing incident, okay? Because Yang is great and — as I’ve been telling you for ages — you’d like her if you stopped glaring for half a second and actually spoke to her.”
Weiss groans. To make sure the implications of the sound can’t be ignored, she collapses against the trunk of the oak, throwing a forearm across her eyes. “We’ve spoken on numerous occasions. She’s awful.”
“You’re doing that thing where you decide someone has wronged you in a horrific way and are thus worthy of your eternal ire.”
She lifts her arm upwards, but only to glare at Blake with a single eye. “I’ve never done that in my life.”
“You really don’t want me to start listing off examples right now.” Weiss knows she’s right, but stays silent, nose upturned both metaphorically and literally. “Okay. Sun Wukong: made the mistake of missing the trash can when he was throwing away a banana peel, which you then stepped on and slid maybe two inches without any sort of — ”
“I nearly died, Blake. Died.”
“You refused to talk to him in anything other than yes or no answers for five years. Next, Penny Polendina: startled you when she came around a corner too fast and bumped into your shoulder; you rooted against your own Kingdom in Gymnastic for two Olympics because she was on the team. Jaune Arc — ”
“Okay! Yes, fine. You’ve made your point.” With only a limited amount of grumbling, Weiss sits up; Blake pats her hand gently once she does. “I will make an attempt with Yang. For you. Because for some reason you’ve taken a liking to this random badminton player.”
The pat turns into a hand squeeze that results in a similar sensation on Weiss’s heart.
“She makes me laugh,” Blake says simply, softly.
And Weiss, who remembers how rare that’d been at one time, can find no fault in the presented logic.
“An attempt,” she promises again.
“Good.” Blake stands, tucking her tray under her arm, and offers her hand, which Weiss takes without thinking. “Because I invited her to your competition tomorrow afternoon. I figure you’ll be on your best behavior after winning.”
—
(The first time Weiss Schee met Yang Xiao Long, she was four drinks in and high off the success of winning her first Olympic gold in dressage. In that initial meeting, Yang had told no less than four horse girl jokes and Weiss had challenged her to a duel.
It had ended in her defeat and also, not an hour later, Yang’s hand down her pants.
The latter had never seemed worth mentioning, given it’s irrelevance to the present day rivalry.
Weiss had always been quite sure the two were completely unrelated.)
—
Blake knows her well, which means that she’s spot-on about Weiss’s attitude post-win. Weiss’s second event is performed flawlessly — with her nudging out Cinder Fall for a top score in the test — and her pleased expression doesn’t fade, even when she sees Yang standing alongside Blake. She has one hand tucked into the pocket of her surprisingly well-fitting trousers, a classy dark maroon in color, paired with a simple, but crisp white button-up, and it all works. Really works. It’s the first time she’s seen Yang in anything other than gym clothes, and there’s no denying she cleans up well. More than that, the effort speaks to something, though Weiss couldn’t say exactly what, only that it pleases her in a way she feels strange about. Next to her, Blake looks her opposite — tight, leather pants and an off-shoulder sweater, all in black — but complimentary. There’s a certain amount of pride, fluttering against the sides of her ribs, seeing both these women waiting for her backstage, and it mixes with the flush of her win in a dangerous sort of concoction.
“Well done, Weiss,” Blake says, stepping forward and pressing their cheeks flush against each other in a quick but warm hug. “There was no doubt you would win, of course, but it was a beautiful performance.”
When she pulls back, Weiss feels the warmth on her cheeks, only worsened when Yang moves closer, as though she’s going to — incomprehensibly — wrap them both in an embrace. She doesn’t, stopping short just before, and shoves her hands back into her pockets with no small amount of force and a smile that Weiss would call sheepish on anyone else.
“I didn’t even know a horse could do stuff like that,” Yang says, eyes widening with excitement. “The little skipping thing with the hop? It was like you were dancing!”
This enthusiasm isn’t the typical reaction to dressage, and Weiss’s instinct is to meet it with suspicion. There’s no doubt that Blake instructed Yang in preparation: how to dress and act and what to say, all to overcome the rivalry she’d always found so nonsensical, but this knowledge doesn’t stop Weiss from being charmed, her defenses weakened by both victory and Yang’s efforts, which somehow manage to come across as effortless, despite the contradiction therein.
“Thank you,” Weiss returns, and Blake rewards her with a rare grin, a brilliant flash of white teeth. Yang does the same, and while the expression is far more common on her, the lack of irritation that results on Weiss’s end most certainly isn’t.
Of course, Weiss has no idea how to proceed after. It’s been four years since she looked at Yang with anything other than purposeful and focused malice, and now, forced into a new point of view by a genuine ask from one of the few people who she was inclined to go out of her way for, she was left adrift.
Yang, unsurprisingly, doesn’t seem to have this problem.
“And the uniform?” Yang whistles, looking Weiss up and down. “I’m not saying every sport should have cloaks and top hats, but… every sport should have cloaks and top hats. Not that everyone would be able to pull it off.”
That’s not… exactly right, but the compliment is sincere enough, and without the typical leer Yang has always seemed to delight in throwing her way.
“It’s hard to compete with Weiss in that respect as well,” Blake agrees, fingertips brushing along one of the shining buttons at Weiss’s front. “But then, she’s been wearing something like it since she was a child. Ever since I’ve known her at least. From the very first time we met.”
It’s not a difficult memory to pull forth, and Weiss smiles with open fondness until she realizes that Yang is staring directly at her, lips curled in a quiet smile.
“I was in the middle of practice,” Weiss feels the need to explain.
“I’ve actually always wondered how you two met. Because…” Yang trails off, gesturing between the two of them. “You know.”
“Faunus and Schnee, Atlas and Menagerie, black and white hair, golf and dressage,” Blake starts to count off on her fingers, the bored tone of one who’s heard this many times.
“Wait, are those considered opposite sports?” Yang’s grin shifts, tilting into a crooked line. “I would have thought golf and like, an actual sport.”
Weiss’s shoulders tense, with the angry set of someone who’s heard this said to her friend many times (and challenged two of the people who said it to a formal duel), but then Blake laughs, and returns rapidfire, and it’s clear she and Yang have had this back and forth more than once before.
“Bold words from someone who plays with something called a shuttlecock for a living.”
“Oh, going right for the jugular, Belladonna, huh? That’s how you’re gonna play this? Get ready for me to talk about golf carts, babe, because it’s on.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“You took us here, Blake! You raised the stakes! I have no choice but to follow.”
It's odd, seeing the interaction firsthand. She’d known Blake and Yang were friendly, but the level of comfort on display is of a higher caliber than she would have guessed; it’s clear in the banter, but even more so in the way they gravitate towards each other, drifting slightly closer with every fake barb traded. Weiss can’t pin down exactly how she feels about it, only that the emotions at play are contradictory and not ones she cares to process.
“Yeah, well, be careful with your insults. We’re here for Weiss and golf is how I met her.”
“She was invited to the Manor,” Weiss cuts in to explain, pleased to have something new to think about. “To teach my brother. My father thought it would help him make connections. At the ripe age of ten years old.”
“A Schnee hired Blake to teach his son?” Yang’s surprise isn’t unfair, and Weiss can hardly take offense.
“My father isn’t known for doing his background research very thoroughly,” Weiss huffs. “He heard there was a professional golfer working with kids in Atlas, so he arranged for Whitley to have a private lesson. Blake came over, made Whitley cry, called my father a bigot, and we’ve been friends ever since.”
“To be fair, it’s not like there are many Faunus in golf.” Blake’s lips curl in disgust. “Why would he have stopped to consider? It’s such a civilized sport.”
“Which is why she got into it, you know.” Weiss smiles at Blake, not hiding the pride in her voice. “Some asshole at a country club told her she couldn’t, so she decided she would become the best in the world.”
“And now she is.”
Something in Yang’s voice brings a red hue to Blake’s cheeks — something awestruck, or maybe simply tender. Weiss would have spent a bit more time considering the significance of it if she hadn’t been preoccupied by experiencing the exact same emotion herself.
—
Things shift afterwards.
Weiss had made an effort with Yang because of Blake; after a while, she finds that effort isn’t really required because of Yang.
It’s not really a surprise.
It’s not even the first time.
—
(The first night Weiss met Yang — after the fencing match and before the hand down her pants — they’d sipped glasses of whiskey in the middle of a track field and Yang had apologized for the horse girl jokes and her sore victory, and Weiss had apologized for throwing her fencing stick at Yang’s face. Yang had made up stories about the stars and talked about her mother; Weiss had laughed harder than she could remember laughing before and talked about her father.
The morning after the first night Weiss met Yang — after the hand down her pants and before the spiraling rivalry — Weiss had woken in her bed, naked and sore and sated, blinking up at the ceiling and wondering if her legs would support her own weight, should she try to get up.
Yang’s voice had traveled from the common area and put a smile on Weiss’s face before the words had started to register; words like ‘I have to tell her’ and ‘break it to her easy’ and ‘should have said something earlier’. Ruby had still been there when Weiss emerged from the bedroom, and had offered a little half-wave when Weiss crisply thanked Yang for the night and explained she was needed at the stadium.
It’d been easy to ignore Yang’s texts. Simple to declare them rivals. Straightforward to push everything else deep down and lock in a tight mental box.
But in all that, Weiss had forgotten something else; Yang could bring down her walls fast, and it was dangerous to allow it.)
—
“I’ve done some research and I think I’m prepared.”
Blake’s lips press into a thin line; Weiss, appreciative of the effort, ignores the barely veiled laughter as she pulls out the thin binder she’d put together beforehand, staying up only a few hours (or five) past her bedtime to thoroughly research the rules and regulations of badminton.
“A match consists of the best of three games of twenty-one points. A point is won if the shuttlecock — also known as the birdie — hits the ground in the opponent’s half of the court. This includes the lines, and in a doubles match the court is 13.41 by 6.1 meters. The net is 1.55 meters high, though it dips slightly, in the middle, where it’s 1.52 meters high, and 1.98 meters from the net, there’s a service line — “
“That a serve has to cross before it counts,” Blake finishes, the smile breaking through, though not unkindly. “I’ve seen a couple of Yang’s matches, so I’ve got the basics down.” She must see something in Weiss’s face though, because she continues, reaching out to gently take the binder from Weiss’s lap, opening it up on her own. “But the nuances are beyond me, so let’s look through this before the match starts.”
There’s kindness in Blake’s subtlety, and Weiss would ruin it by acknowledging it directly; instead, she smiles and summarizes the trickier rules as simply as possible, until Yang comes out in her uniform, and both of them lose their focus entirely.
Weiss immediately decides to blame the unexpectedness of it. Sure, Yang is objectively beautiful, but when considering badminton uniforms the first word to come to mind wasn’t exactly ‘hot’ or ‘sexy’ or ‘gorgeous’ or any of the other adjective she might use to describe Yang now, striding out in tight, black shorts and a tank top so fitted, Weiss can’t find a single wrinkle. She looks extremely good — muscles on full display, stretches of sun-kissed skin highlighted by the black fabric of her uniform, hair tied up in a pony-tail, but still tumbling down her neck and shoulders in perfect little waves — and there’s no hiding her reaction. She’s not sure whether to feel grateful or annoyed when Blake apparently fails to notice it, being so caught up in her own; she’s seen Blake go after people before, men and women alike, but she’s never seen her look at any of them like this: openly wanting and not interested in waiting a second longer before getting precisely what she desires.
(Weiss shivers, and she’s not sure why.)
Yang looks up and waves, cherry and oblivious, like she can’t feel the tension radiating from the two seats that are front and center of the reserved seating. There are other figures out there — Yang’s opponents and her sister, a fast-moving bundle of black and red — but Weiss barely notices (Blake most certainly doesn’t), especially not once they start playing. Because once Yang starts playing… it’s hard to remain conscious, let alone aware of her surroundings.
Yang moves with fluidity and grace, but most of all power. While Ruby zips around the court — twenty places at once — Yang sets herself up for a final strike, which never fails to land given the force with which she delivers it. Honestly, Weiss can’t see how anyone could possibly stand up against it, how there could be any other contenders for the gold, and it’s not surprising when Yang wins both her games, one after the other without issue, and does a celebratory dance with her sister that somehow doesn’t diminish any of the heavy feelings pressing down on Weiss’s chest, making both breathing and thinking more difficult than they should be.
“Blake! Weiss!” It’s Yang, of course, running towards them, half climbing up onto the dividing wall, and showing off a wide grin (and her arms, covered in a fine sheen of sweat and barely straining under her full weight). “We’re celebrating tonight! Come over at eight!” She’s pulled down by Ruby, jumping on her back, but still manages another wave and smile. “Y’all can tell me all about how incredible we were later!”
She’s gone again in a flash.
Weiss is left blinking at the space she’d once held, unable to find the words. Thankfully, Blake finds them for her.
“Oh, fuck.”
—
They don’t talk about it, not really. Other than this:
“So. Yang was — the new uniform — for both of us she was. — ” Blake doesn’t have a follow up to this,dropping her hands to her side, and Weiss can’t blame her.
“Yes. She… was.” She pushes back on the heavy silence by clearing her throat. It doesn’t work. “Unfortunately, she’s still a horrid gremlin, so it was fleeting for me.”
(Weiss is lying to Blake, for maybe the first time, but she’s lying to herself as well, so maybe that makes it okay.)
“Weiss — “
She can’t look at Blake, can’t spend any time processing the combination of emotions on her face.
“Don’t worry.” She waves Blake off, then pats her gently on the shoulder, as though it’ll move the conversation topic along more quickly. “I can be civil at the party.”
—
And she is.
She’s absolutely cordial when Yang greets them at the door with a hug that feels so good it should be criminal, and offers a genuine smile when she pulls away, putting them face-to-face. When Yang leads them further into the room and hands over a whiskey sour, she even replies with a simple and contained thank you.
And then she finds a place to hide (outside the building, between an azalea bush and a maple tree) where she immediately falls into a complete panic over the fact that Yang had looked like some kind of Greek goddess in her white and gold dress and strappy sandals and had also remembered her favorite drink from four years ago.
(Four years ago, when Yang had found her outside — after a small outburst over the official International Fencing Federation Technical Rules and had thrown her impromptu foil into Yang Xiao Long’s pretty face — and offered her the same drink with an easy smile and a simple question: ‘truce?’.)
One hour and thirty-seven minutes later, Weiss is still crouching in foliage and on the verge of a panic attack, but she also has the beginnings of a very promising list entitled Reasons Why Yang Xiao Long Isn’t That Hot and Also a Bad Idea; it’s written on the back of a leaf and consists of two items: 1) those weird purple eyes that probably denote some kind of concerning genetic mutation and 2) Blake, so she's clearly on the verge of an upwards swing.
This is, of course, a lie, but it becomes a far more obvious one when two familiar voices drift out over the courtyard and Blake and Yang come into view, both clearly not 100% sober given the less-than-straight trajectory of their ambling walk. Weiss considers a few different options (popping up with a cheery hello and no further explanation, sneaking away through the carefully manicured line of bushes that lead back to the building, closing her eyes and hoping that the laws of object permanence no longer apply), but then they’re there right in front of her impromptu safe space, and they’re talking about her and the decision slips away.
“ — haven’t seen her since we got here,” Blake is saying, tucking a short strand of black behind her ear. “I suppose avoiding you entirely is one way to not start anything, but it wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.”
Yang blows out a loud breath; it catches on her bangs and they float above her forehead for half a second before rearranging themselves haphazardly. “Yeah,” she mumbles. “Thanks for talking to her, by the way. I know she didn’t want anything to do with me after that night, all those years back, but I always thought — I mean, I know I didn’t always do myself any favors, what with all the jokes — but I thought we’d still be able to be friends.”
“Honestly, I still don’t get it. Every time I think I do, she makes me question everything.Today at your match I swear I — ” There’s an odd sort of frustration in Blake’s voice, and the guilt — always simmering in Weiss’s stomach — bubbles up like heartburn. “I don’t know. It doesn’t make much sense to me. But Weiss and I have always expressed similar emotions in different ways.”
“I mean.” Yang rubs the back of her head, tugging her fingers through the mass of curls. “She told you what happened, right? I guess it’s not super unusual for something like that to ruin a potential friendship.”
“It’s not?” Blake’s eyebrows shoot up, an incredulous laugh slipping out of her lips. “Are you challenged to drunken twig duels all that often?”
“Not that part.” Yang returns, eyes rolling skyward, but a smile curls her lips, seemingly unwitting, impossible to suppress in the face of Blake’s laughter. “But seriously, thank you. If we couldn’t be — er, you know — since that didn’t work out, I’d still like to be friends with her. Especially now that you and me are… hanging out.” The lack of certainty in the phrasing stands out mostly because it’s so atypical; over the years, Weiss has heard Yang express a wide variety of emotions, but never tentativeness.
Blake, much more typically, pounces on it immediately, complete with a clever spin that puts her directly in Yang’s space, not a half foot apart, face-to-face. “So we’re hanging out, then?”
“So we’re talking directly about this, then?” Yang fires back, and Blake falters, but only momentarily.
“It’s about time we did, isn’t it?”
Weiss only realizes then that she’d been holding her breath for the past minute, and it takes her a second longer to realize that her dizziness is a result of this rather than the scene playing out in front of her. Crawling through the bushes is definitely her best bet now, but she finds herself transfixed, unable to look away. There’s still space between Blake and Yang, if only just, and every cubic meter of it is packed with a tangible tension. Yang’s hands are clenched behind her, like holding back right now is the hardest thing she’s ever done, and Blake’s pushed herself up, almost imperceptibly, onto the balls of her feet.
“I’ve just been waiting for you.” There’s no accusation, only earnestness. “I didn’t want to mess this up; I figured you’d let me know when you were ready.”
“To… talk?”
There’s no subtlety in Blake’s words, and Yang’s crooked grin knows it.
“Or anything else.”
Or anything else seems to be Blake’s preference, given the way she kisses Yang immediately after; not uncertain, not soft, not with any trace of hesitation, Blake kisses Yang like she’s been planning to for a while, like she’s thought about it so much she’s nearly done it before (but still — given her soft moan when Yang kisses back, hands sliding around Blake’s waist and pulling her closer — hadn’t been prepared).
Yang stumbles forward, taking Blake with her, and spins them around until she can press Blake up against the trunk of a maple only one tree down from Weiss’s hideout, and it’s impossible not to see the flash of her teeth when she pulls Blake’s bottom lip between her own, nips hard enough that Blake’s hips jerk and a curse slips out, part-groan, part-warning. Weiss blinks and her brain (and breathing and heart) restarts, pulling her back into her body and reminding her exactly where she is, exactly what she’s doing. The internal chastisement comes quickly, as quickly as she then drops down into the grass — heedless of what it will do to her white blouse — and shuffles away, crab-like and silent. If she’d had any thought in her head other than various profanities on repeat, she would have mourned her loss of dignity.
As it is, she’s left without the capacity to do anything other than find her building, her room, her shower, and then jump into the coldest water the tap could muster.
—
(Her head isn’t empty of thoughts; that’s a lie she’ll tell herself later.
In the moment, she’s consumed by something that should be jealousy but isn’t, directed at not one of the women, but both.
In the moment, she remembers kissing Yang, thinks about kissing Blake, and wonders why even the cold water doesn’t douse the warmth pooling in her stomach when she thinks about them kissing each other.)
—
Weiss wakes to noise, not from her alarm (it’s still too early) or within her head (she hadn’t consumed enough alcohol for a hangover), but rather the door. Her bed is a mess — understandable given the amount of tossing and turning she’d done throughout the night — and she hurries to tidy it, despite the ever-increasing volume of the knocking.
(There are some things that Weiss, even in her current state, is unwilling to compromise on.)
When she opens the door and Blake is standing there — black Wayfarers covering her eyes, a duffle bag slung over her shoulder, running shorts barely covering any of the dark skin of her long legs — she immediately wishes she’d spent more time on the menial task, if only to give her more time to prepare what she knows needs to be done.
“Weiss, thank god.” Blake slides past her, into the room, like she always does, like the fabric of space and time hasn’t wrinkled in the span of a night. “Where did you go last night? I haven’t seen you without your scroll on your person in years.”
“I am perfectly fine! I simply came back early.” Weiss tries for light and breezy and fails miserably. “I was tired. From the day’s festivities.”
An observant best friend was a great thing to have when it came to receiving gifts, planning activities, and most every other facet of Weiss’s life, but it was shit when it came to times when she had absolutely no desire to be observed. It doesn’t take Blake long to sense it (it never does), and her eyes narrow into gold slits, a hyper-focus on the woman in front of her.
“What’s going on?”
Weiss swallows; Blake steps closer.
“Weiss.”
She looks around, searches for distractions, finds nothing, and so holds up her scroll weakly, a last barrier between them. “The switch… it’s on silent. I think.”
Another step, until Weiss’s scroll — and the hand clutching it, knuckles turning a ghastly white — are pressed against Blake’s chest.
“We both know the switch is never set to silent.”
Blake allows the silence to stretch, narrows her eyes as it does.
“I slept with Yang!” Weiss blurts out, and only once the words are there — floating in the open — and Blake’s expression clouds with hurt, does she realize how this sounds, and stumbles over herself to clarify. “A long time ago! At the Vacuo Olympics. After the fencing and — after all that — I slept with her. And obviously it didn’t work out. She — I overheard her talking in the morning with her sister and she wasn’t actually interested in me and I — I also wasn’t — clearly we were better suited as rivals and that’s why we carried on in that manner instead of anything… else. So there’s no need for concern, should you choose to continue your dalliance with her, but this information did seem pertinent, suddenly, so I thought I ought to… ” She gestures vaguely, without success. “Mention it.”
Blake stares.
Then she stares some more.
“You — ” She shakes her head. Tries again. “Weiss! I’m — ” And once more, this time in something of an outburst. “I knew there was something weird between you two other than that stupid duel and that’s why she — ” With a loud groan, Blake steps away, mashing her palm into her forehead. “Why didn’t you tell me? I asked you a million times about your dumb rivalry! A million times!”
“Yes.” Weiss’s hands find her own hips. “You asked me about the rivalry. This is wholly unrelated.”
“Wholly — ” Sputtering isn’t something Blake Belladonna does, but she does it now. “Oh my god, Weiss. Are you kidding me? You don’t think that any of what you just told me has anything to do with the way you’ve acted around Yang? You don’t think that maybe you were using the fake fencing duel as a reason to cover how you actually felt about how things went down that night?”
Weiss considers.
She considers this from all possible angles.
She then — very calmly — sits down, folding one hand over the other.
“It’s possible, in light of recent events, that your reasoning is sound.”
In the resulting silence, Blake sits down as well, right alongside Weiss, and leans into her heavily.
“If I’d have known, I never would have —”
“Made out with Yang in the middle of the C-Building Courtyard?”
“How did you — ?”
“I saw you,” Weiss admits, ripping off the metaphorical bandages at an alarming speed. “I hadn’t much felt like participating in the revelry and went outside for some air.”
Blake slumps a little further, folding in on herself until she appears smaller than even Weiss.
“Oh god. Weiss, I am so sorry.”
It wasn’t exactly communication that had always caused them problems; Weiss could (somewhat surprisingly, given her upbringing) coax Blake into an open discussion about her feelings when required. Rather, their fatal flaw was the shared ability to bury something so effectively that it never came up, especially when the burying was done out of desire to spare the other.
And now, in this moment, Weiss is more aware of that than ever.
Which is why she resolves to simply bury her feelings better, so as to prevent Blake from doing the same.
“There’s no need to be sorry. I only — I felt guilty last night, because I’d never told you. And now that you may be pursuing some form of relationship with this woman —”
“No! I’m not.” Blake shakes her head, spreading her short bob out like an umbrella with the speed of the movement, and covers Weiss’s hand with her own. “I would never do that to you. Yang and I are friends. This doesn’t need to change anything.” She leans in, eyes wide and honest. “Truth be told, I wasn’t sure I wanted it to, so this makes things easier for me, in the end.”
And there it is; an impressive feint, if Weiss hadn’t been fully prepared for it, witnessing the same tactic employed time after time over the years.
Blake could so easily make it seem like you were doing her a favor by breaking her heart.
“Bullshit.” Weiss pokes her, hard enough to make Blake jerk back. “I am calling bullshit, Blake Belladonna. You are into her — she makes you light up like some lovesick fool — and I won’t stand for this self-sacrificial nonsense when it’s in no way necessary! And granted, she’s supremely irritating and would probably be a miserable girlfriend, but I refuse to let you drop everything without being able to find these things out firsthand, on the off-chance she can actually manage to continue to make you smile the way you always do when you’re around her now.” She drums her fingers against the fabric of the couch. “Also you were extremely into that kiss.”
Blake flushes. It’s a very cute look, but Weiss isn’t to be distracted. Not now. Not when she has her goal and victory is in sight.
“Weiss!”
“I’ve seen you kiss people, Blake. But not like that. And honestly, your qualms are entirely unwarranted. Do you truly think I’ve spent the last four years pinning over one woman I had a brief, one-night affair with?”
If Weiss had been standing, she would have fit her hand to her hips, but as it is, she merely cocks her head, like she’s so often seen Blake do.
“No.” Blake takes a breath in the pause, as though steadying herself. “I think you’ve spent the last four years channeling whatever feelings you did have into an insane and one-sided rivalry that nearly got you arrested on not one, but two occasions.”
A brutal combination of a deadpan tone and the absolute truth; it would decimate a weaker woman. But Weiss only tsks.
“The officer was very understanding about the mice incident; I would hardly say arrest was on the table. Don’t pretend otherwise. And it would have been fine if I had made it to her room without the rodents chewing through the box.”
“Mmhmm.” A smile is returning to Blake’s face, her shoulders losing their tension. “And the golf cart in the pool?”
“You know I’m still sore about that incident,” Weiss sniffs. “It would have worked if Jaune hadn’t mismanaged the weight distribution of the paint buckets.”
They stare at each other for a while, and Blake’s features are warm enough, so full of fondness, that Weiss knows she’s won.
“You’re twenty minutes late to warm-up,” she says, as a final nail in the coffin. “Don’t think I don’t have your schedule memorized. Glynda is going to have your head.”
It’s nearly a misstep. Nearly a fatal and classic show of overconfidence that has so often destroyed Weiss’s careful planning in the past. Because Blake looks at her a little too carefully then, and she nearly falls apart under the intensity of the gaze.
(She doesn’t know what she’s doing here. Absolutely no clue what to do about the rush of new ideas that are sending her blood pressure spiraling skyward. No earthly idea how she’ll react if Blake and Yang actually do get together and their everyday intimacies become a feature in her life. But she does know she’s not about to let her failed venture — and subsequent weird one — get in the way of Blake’s happiness. That’s something she simply won’t allow.)
But then Blake nods, lets off a soft snort of agreement. “She’s texted me around twenty times. If I don’t win today, you may have to avenge my murder.”
“She won’t know rest for the remainder of her life,” Weiss vows. “But that’s irrelevant, because you have absolutely no competition. Second place is a mile behind. Emerald Sustrai? Her? Please. Don’t make me laugh.”
With the tips of her fingers, Blake brushes against the plane of Weiss’s cheekbone as she stands. It knocks Weiss breathless for a crucial second, and in that time, Blake peels back some of her victory.
“We’re going to talk more about this later, okay?”
“Alright,” Weiss murmurs, because even when she pulls the air back into her lungs, she finds she’s a little more boneless than before. “I’ll see you at the game.”
“Using those boney elbows to jab your way to the front,” Blake says, with nothing but fondness. “You’re impossible to miss.”
—
Beautiful Olympic athletes make it into magazines all across Remnant, and Blake is no exception. Guessing her profession, however, tends to be a tricky task; people assume gymnast or swimmer or volleyball player at first sight, but golfer rarely makes the list. It’s understandable, but shortsighted; Blake mid-swing — eyes lightened by the sun, forearms tense in the middle of the motion, waist twisting with precision — is a sight to behold. It’s wholly distracting, as well, and maybe that’s why Yang is able to sneak up on Weiss so easily, slipping through the crowd until she’s right alongside her, the warmth of her front against Weiss’s arm apparent before she speaks.
“I still prefer the trickshot videos she does, but damn if she doesn’t make regular golf look like a sport worth watching.”
Yang isn’t wrong, of course, but Weiss is also keyed up to the point that, were she to murder some random person in the crowd at this exact moment, an insanity plea wouldn’t be a stretch. She barely trusts herself to speak, let alone actually turn and look at Yang, so she merely nods, keeping her focus on the game in front of her.
Unfortunately, the game in front of her is an incredibly slow moving one. About five seconds after Blake’s shot (beautiful and perfectly placed) the crowd has to amble down the fairway, giving Yang the perfect opportunity to slide into her point of view.
She’s wearing a yellow snapback (slightly off center), aviators, a simple black t-shirt, and ripped cutoffs. It’s nothing fancy, but Yang still looks like she’d be photographed by random people in the street, even outside of her fame as an athlete. It’s supremely irritating. It’s so irritating that Weiss forgets to hide any trace of emotion from her face, leaving her annoyance on full display for Yang to see when she next looks down, lifting her sunglasses up with a single finger to get a better view.
“Oh, come on, Weiss, let’s not go back to that.”
Annoyed at herself more than Yang now, Weiss slides her own glasses off the top of her head, hoping the large frame will help with the situation.
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”
“Uh huh.” She walks alongside Weiss for a moment, a surprising silence overtaking them. Yang isn’t often quiet, and when she is, it’s usually cause for worry; this turns out to be the case now more than ever. “I guess that’s as good a segue as any. You should know; Blake called me. She thinks you’re full of shit.”
“I —” Weiss stops so suddenly she causes a minor traffic jam. As usual, Yang appears entirely unconcerned. “Excuse me?”
“I mean.” Yang squints against the sun. “She didn’t use those words, exactly, but she thinks you’re full of shit. About the whole being totally unaffected by seeing us making out last night.”
“Ugh fuck!” For this, she gets a few more dirty looks, including a warning gesture from one of the marshals. She ignores them all. “That’s ridiculous. I was flawless this morning. She’s so paranoid.” Remembering who she’s talking to, she hurries to continue. “Also, she’s wrong and I have nothing to say to you on this matter.”
“Very convincing,” Yang drawls, leaning closer and lowering her voice, under all the now-watchful (and reproachful) eyes. “You wanna tell me what’s going on? Because right now, all I’ve got is that Blake thinks you have some kind of deep emotional trauma from one-night-standing me a billion years ago.”
Her reply is delayed by the marshals holding up their hands, calling for silence as another golfer chips their ball out of the sand; it’s a lucky break, since Weiss has absolutely no words on hand. She also doesn’t stop looking at Yang the whole while, and barely notices the soft clapping that follows the (apparently) successful shot.
“I don’t have — how dare you blame me for this! I told Blake it was an insignificant moment in history. Which it was.” All of this comes out in a whisper, until she loses a bit of her cool, poking her finger into Yang’s stomach. (It hurts, which is annoying on multiple levels.) “But since we’re discussing it, you’re the one who was going to kick me out that morning! I only left before you could. I heard you discussing it with your sister.”
“I didn’t — !” Yang appears genuinely shocked at this, enough so that her control slips, voice raises briefly. It’s only with considerable effort that she lowers her volume again, rubbing at her forehead. “I dunno what you heard, Weiss, but I wasn’t going to make you leave. I wanted to take you to breakfast. And dinner.”
This is, Weiss thinks, the worst thing Yang could have possibly said at this particular moment in time. Mainly, because it causes a sharp jolt through Weiss’s chest, surprise and happiness and memory (the latter of which supplies more of the two former, and then some).
“That — ” Her voice cracks in the middle of the word, and she clears her throat. “That is… an unfortunate misunderstanding, but it doesn’t change our current situation.” If she looks too closely at any of this, she knows she’s liable to start screaming, so instead she finds calm in smoothing the imperceptible wrinkles in her skirt. And in taking a step away from Yang, who’s radiating heat like some kind of nuclear reactor, unbearable on a hot summer day and also anytime ever for the rest of Weiss’s life. “I’ll speak with Blake again. We’ll get this sorted.”
Yang falls silent before the next call for it by the marshals, and this — combined with the pinch of her forehead — has Weiss on edge as they move towards the green, where Blake is knocking a ball against the flat of her putter, putting on an impromptu (and, knowing Blake, entirely absentminded) show. It’s the ease with which the action is performed that makes it effective, flicking the golf ball onto the top of her club, over her shoulder, under her legs, all while surveying the green. Weiss watches and it settles her, like the old and familiar attraction to Blake is able to put her renewed interest in Yang into perspective.
The thought comes and goes until Weiss realizes exactly what it contains and reels it back in a panic.
“Yeah.” Yang is close again, front pressed to Weiss’s back, mouth close enough that Weiss’s hair moves with her exhale. Heat rushes up, colors her face, and then dips back down to her toes, leaving a shiver in its wake. “It’s really weird how good she makes khakis and a polo look.”
“What? No. I’m not — ” Weiss laughs, forced and obvious. “I don’t — hmm — no, I didn’t notice.”
“You are so smooth, Weiss,” Yang breathes and — god help her — her lips brush just so against the shell of Weiss’s ear. “Good to know that you aren’t affected by Blake bending over to line up her shot right now. Or by the fact that I wanted to keep you in my room for several more rounds, that morning you left.”
Oh no, Weiss thinks. Or… thinks she thinks, until she hears herself say it outloud.
Yang’s laugh should irritate her, but it’s quiet and far from unkind, tickling the back of Weiss’s neck.
“Yeah, Blake was right. You’re full of shit. And all of us really need to talk.”
—
It’s the understatement of the year, but that doesn’t mean Weiss is, in any way, looking forward to the activity, despite Yang’s hurried reassurances that she ‘understood everything now’ and it was ‘all good’ before she left the golf course, apparently late for a match of her own. Her follow-up group text wasn’t particularly helpful either, only consisting of a time (9:00 at night) and place (outside of the Atlas building, at the far side of the Village) and a series of emojis that Weiss attempts to decipher for a solid two hours. (Blake is better at this thing, but texting her is out of the question, which hurts worse than anything.)
Weiss arrives forty-five minutes early, her third coffee of the afternoon clutched between her hands, a book about the International Olympic Committee (which she will maybe open, but not read) tucked into her bag. She’s dressed up for the occasion — though she’d done her best not to think about why — and her skirt slides up to mid-thigh when she sits, enough so that she spends the next five minutes straightening the folds just so, then makes sure the lace fabric of her top hasn’t similarly wrinkled over the following five. By the time she finishes and looks up, Blake is there, watching her, dark purple eyeshadow and thick liner only adding to the intensity of the hooded gaze. Blake has dressed up as well; her black wrap top lands just below her chest, leaving a wide stretch of dark skin that only ends where her high waisted shorts begin, which are tight enough to make the wide leather belt an accessory rather than a necessity. This applies double to the thin tights Blake’s wearing; Weiss can’t imagine how practical they are in the summer heat, but there’s no arguing the result: Weiss regretting her decision to bring hot coffee rather than cool water.
“Hey,” Blake says, softer than her appearance would lead anyone to think possible, which somehow makes it hit all the harder. “I didn’t know if you’d come.”
“We all need to talk in order to move forward,” says Weiss, who practiced this exact line four times in the mirror before she left her room. She’s not thrilled about how stiff it ends up sounding, but it makes Blake smile, so it’s not a total loss.
“I’m sure we can all come to an arrangement where we can all stay friends,” Blake agrees.
“So that all of us can remain friends while some of us move forward with the desires they clearly have for each other,” Weiss corrects.
“Absolutely. Because some of us have had feelings that have been denied for far too long and — given recent revelations — acting on these feelings would be beneficial to all parties involved.”
“Of course. Some of us haven’t allowed themselves to love in quite some time and — ”
“Alright, alright. Enough of that.” Yang strides into view without any greeting, making both Weiss and Blake jump at the unexpected intrusion to their face-off. “See, okay, both of you have the exact same problem; you’re both so ready to sacrifice your happiness for each other that you’re missing the obvious.”
It’s hard to tell whether Yang has dressed up or not; her hair is as it always is, wild and gorgeous, her slate-colored pants are rolled up mid-calf, her sneakers are scuffed and worn, and her shirt — short-sleeved and patterned with small, blue bees — is unbuttoned to a point low enough to be a distraction. She has a black bag slung over each shoulder and her grip on them gives her forearms classic definition. Yang looks like Yang, and she has the effect she always does: everyone in the vicinity stares, at least for a little while.
Weiss recovers first, but only barely. “Um — the — sorry, the obvious?”
“Hold on. I’ve made a chart to explain; I know you like those”
(Yang knows this because Weiss had employed many in her presentation on the History of Their Rivalry, which she’d prepared when Yang had questioned, several years back, why Weiss insisted they had one. The fact that Yang remembers this shouldn’t make Weiss feel as warm as she does, watching Yang pull a large notebook out of one of her bags.)
“Okay, here’s where we’re at.”
The ‘chart’ — such as it is — is a triangle with each of their names written on each corner and incomprehensible scribbling covering the rest of it. Weiss stares at it for a long moment before turning to Blake, who looks equally puzzled (and, somehow, enamored, which is a sure sign she’s about as gone for Yang as a person can be).
“Here’s me at the top, because like… obviously.” Yang’s grin makes Weiss blush and Blake roll her eyes, which is pretty telling in a way Weiss tries not to dwell on. “Weiss is here on the bottom left and Blake on the bottom right. We all clear?” She glances around, waiting for a response. “Great. So. This line between me and Weiss represents Weiss and I sleeping together, way back. Weiss ran away because she thought I wanted it to be a one-night thing and that made her sad. She invented this whole rivalry thing because it was easier than dealing with any of those feelings.”
“That’s — ” Weiss begins, outrage pitching her tone.
“Accurate,” Blake finishes. “Please continue.”
“Clearly she still has feelings for me because Blake told me so and also I have eyes.”
“Blake!”
“She has eyes, Weiss.”
Yang clears her throat and points to the chart once more. “Of course, I thought Weiss invented this rivalry thing so she wouldn’t have to talk to me, because she wasn’t interested in me, even though I was totally and, I thought, obviously interested in her. So now we’re at a point in time when we have a chance to try all that again without any stupid assumptions. Hence the chart line. Right?”
“Which is what I’ve been saying — ”
“Blake, please, I’m not done with the chart.” Yang waves her hand. “Surely you can see I’m only a third of a way through it.”
“That’s assuming quite a lot about what we can determine from this ‘chart’,” Weiss says, like her heart isn’t pounding in her chest at a million beats a minute.
“I’m getting there. Which leads me to part two.” She gestures to the opposite line, stroking up and down it like she’s some kind of creepy salesman. “Since Weiss didn’t say anything about anything to anyone, me and Blake became friends in the aftermath of all that. She made sure that none of Weiss’s ‘pranks’ lead to be being maimed or arrested and — ”
“She what?”
“Weiss, you wanted to set a beowolf on her.”
“ — and the two of us start hanging out all the time. We both take things slow; me, because I’m like, recovering from a broken heart, or whatever — thanks for that, by the way, Weiss — and Blake because she thinks her best friend hates me for some incomprehensible reason. But obviously the attraction is there and it all comes to a head in a beautiful, romantic moment that Weiss happens to witness.”
“So your ‘chart’ — ”
“I really wish you two would stop putting chart in air quotes like that.”
“ — Your ‘chart’,” Blake continues drolly, ignoring her. “Is just showing us that we’re in the midst of a love triangle. Thank you, Yang. That’s entirely new information to either of us.”
“Yes! Exactly.” Yang snaps her fingers, and smiles wide enough that Weiss feels her own lips lift in response. “Except not one of those dumb love triangles from one of Blake’s dirty novels — ”
Weiss snorts. Blake flushes.
“ — We’re talking a full-on, legitimate love triangle that actually has three sides. Because see? There’s this line between the both of you two as well.”
Yang delivers this with great panache, like it should mean something to both Weiss and Blake immediately.
It doesn’t.
“Oh my god, seriously?” Yang throws her head back and groans. “Weiss, today at Blake’s game, why do you think you stared at her ass for a good five minutes without blinking?”
“I — ”
“And Blake, when we were at Weiss’s competition, do you think there’s maybe a reason you said you’d like to ‘ride that rider’ when they announced her for the first time?”
“That — ”
“And both of you; why do you think you’re so ready to give up everything — happiness, love, or anything else — so someone else can have those things?” Yang stops, the light and purposeful comedy of her presentation sliding away as her expression shifts into earnestness. “Listen, I know neither of you realize this, but you’ve both talked about each other to me for years. Honestly, it’s sort of why I ended up thinking you both weren’t into me; you were too in love with each other.”
“Oh, because that’s the only reasonable explanation for why someone might not be into you?” Weiss says, in an attempt to keep herself from considering this revelation in any way.
(It’s too late. It’s too late because she already knows. Has known for a while. Too late because it’s an easy conclusion to accept.)
“You’re both here, aren’t you?”
She dare not look at Blake, not with anything more than her peripheral, and so she jumps a little when the woman finally speaks, voice lower than typical, words slower than they usually are.
“Even if all that is true, Yang. That hardly solves our problem.” She laughs a little, without any humor. “Not unless you’re saying we should — ”
Blake trails off. Yang grins.
“Yeah. Exactly.”
It takes Weiss another second to catch up, but once she does, her mind reels again.
“We can’t — “ She glances between the two of them with some desperation.”I mean — we can’t do that. We can’t all date.”
“Why not?” Yang smiles down at them, easy and charming, and suddenly, Weiss can’t think of a single reason.
“We’ll — ” Blake shakes her head, eyes a little wide. “Yang, someone will get jealous.”
“Maybe, but I prepared this whole presentation about how you two are in love and it only made me a little giddy. And also Weiss saw us kissing and definitely got off to it, so — ”
“I most certainly did not get off, you pervert.”
“You were the one who was watching.”
“I — I was trapped! It was — ” Weiss huffs for a bit before she runs out of steam; this happens with alarming speed in the face of the laughter that follows: Blake’s, soft and slightly disbelieving, and Yang’s, anything but. “Fine. We can agree that I found the sight aesthetically appealing.”
“Two for three, then. Only one left to figure out.” Yang leans down to tuck away her chart in one of the black bags she’d arrived with, then lifts both sacks back onto her shoulders. Every component of this movement makes zero sense to Weiss, but then, if pressed in that moment, Weiss may not have been able to supply her own name.
“And you have a plan? For figuring that out?” The skepticism is clear in Blake’s voice, but so is the excitement, like her hope is edging out her practicality.
“I sure do. We’re gonna go on a date.”
—
They don’t go far.
The mystery of the bags on Yang’s shoulders comes into play when she leads them into the woods behind the Atlas dormitory, where some of the archers have set up a makeshift range with paint slapped onto a few trees in the approximation of targets. The location is isolated, quiet, and perfect, and the gear that Yang pulls out of the bags is professional quality, apparently leant by one Pyrrha Nikos, Yang’s close friend and undisputed world champion of the sport.
(It’s not the time, but Weiss resolves to ask for an introduction later. She may have a poster. Or two.)
The idea is a good one on Yang’s part, because having something to do with her hands, having something to focus on, helps with the potential awkwardness, and silences some of the clamoring in Weiss’s head, the sound that hadn’t abated since she first saw Blake place her lips on Yang’s.
Better yet, it’s something Weiss (and Blake) can turn into a competition.
This helps them both immensely, mainly in that they have a chance to absolutely decimate Yang (a real confidence booster, given how she’d had to take charge of the whole debacle), and then try to one-up each other, the latter of which takes up enough of their focus to make the evening enjoyable, rather than stilted.
“Holy shit! Can you guys do every sport?” Yang hardly sounds put out. There’s a spark of something easily defined in her eyes as she watches Weiss land another bullseye, and Weiss doesn’t hate the look at all. Neither does Blake, who’s watching with a similar expression, stare unwavering as she follows Weiss’s walk towards Yang, clearly appreciative of the swagger.
“I was trying to pick something none of us were much good at so we could learn together.” She takes the bow from Weiss, fingers lingering against the pulse thudding against her pale wrist. “That was the whole point.”
“I thought the point was to get to know each other in a new way” Blake says, lips curled in a teasing smile. “This fits. In fact — ” Her brow pinches, watching the two of them, carefully considering her next words. “Weiss can teach you. She taught me, actually.”
“Alright.” Yang draws out the word, searching for meaning in the look Weiss and Blake share in the moment. “Show me what you’ve got, Ice Queen.”
“Very well.” The formality covers her own nervousness when she steps around and behind Yang, nearly pressing up against her back. “First, your stance. Face away from the target and — your feet should be a bit further apart.” She slides a foot between Yang’s, knocks the inside of one with the outside of her own, until they’re the proper, shoulder-width distance. Yang makes a sound at the motion, low in her throat, and Weiss steadies herself with a breath.
“Good,” she continues, clearly breathless. “Keep your grip relaxed, and place an arrow on the shelf, just so. And — yes — push the nock of the arrow in between the nocking points. Now lift the bow.”
The muscles in Yang’s shoulder flex; as Weiss presses closer, she can feel them moving against her front. “Alright. How are my fingers? Should I use two or three?”
Yang knows exactly what she’s doing with the wording (evidenced by the teasing grin), but Weiss steels herself, sliding a hand along Yang’s arm until she can help her position her fingers in precisely the right spot: index above the arrow, and two fingers below it.
“Three,” Weiss breathes. “In this case. And now we can draw. Use the muscles in your back, not your bicep. And bring the string just to… here.” Her hand travels again, brushing up against Yang’s nose and lips. “Close your left-eye. Take a deep breath and… release on the exhale. When you’re ready.”
Clearly, Yang’s ready. She releases the shot without further instruction, without a single trace of beginner’s hesitation. Weiss doesn’t look away from the profile of Yang’s face, but knows the arrow strikes true from the intake of breath that doesn’t come from either of them.
“Pyrrha taught me,” Yang admits then, dropping her arm and turning to face Weiss, fitting her free hand to the curve of Weiss’s hip, mid-motion.
“You’re letting us win.” Weiss isn’t sure if she likes the idea or not. She’s not really sure of anything other than how much she desperately wants something she hasn’t let herself want in a while.
“Not really. You’re both still better than me.” She shrugs, clearly not bothered by this in the least. “But I really didn’t want to be labeled a rival again.”
Blake laughs, and Weiss’s eyes jerk away from Yang’s to find gold, visible over Yang’s shoulder when Weiss presses up onto the balls of her feet. Blake doesn’t blink, but she does nod.
It’s all the permission Weiss needs.
Yang’s lips are slightly chapped from the sun and as hot as the rest of her, heat rolling off her into Weiss’s mouth, filling her mind with dizzying warmth as she re-learns that Yang’s bottom lip is fuller than her top. They’re also sweet to the taste, like a lip balm had been applied in apparent vain. She’s gentler than Weiss remembers, until Weiss’s hands slip under her shirt, nails digging into the skin of Yang’s back, and then her hand slides upwards — along Weiss’s side with a pressure that pushes a sound out of Weiss that’s far from decent — where she lays it flat against her collarbone, thumb pressing at the hollow of Weiss’s throat.
There’s absolutely nothing that could break through the haze of her thoughts in that moment… except, apparently, Blake’s soft fuck that’s less of a word and more of a moan. Yang pulls back at the sound and Weiss whimpers, just a little, when she turns her head enough to take the other woman in.
“Thought I’d get this for you.” Blake murmurs. “These things are expensive. Pyrrha will be mad if you drop it.”
“She won’t.” Her hand shifts upward and flexes around Weiss throat, and Weiss sucks in a sharp breath. (They're talking about the bow, she thinks, but can’t reason out why. Can’t find any part of herself that care.) “But I’m glad you’re here anyways. What do you think?”
Blake’s gaze shifts, catching on Weiss’s and dragging it away, even as her lips press to Yang’s jaw. “I think maybe you were onto something. Let’s call this a tentative three for three.”
“Tentative,” Weiss repeats faintly. “Sounds like you need a bit more convincing.”
“I bet we can think of a few ways,” Yang says, idle if not for everything other than her tone saying the opposite.
“I can think of nineteen.” Weiss isn’t lying. Not even a little. “At least.”
Blake laughs, hand wrapping around Yang’s side, fitting between the hips of the two women in front of her. “Careful, Yang. Weiss can be a little competitive.”
“I’ve noticed.” She twists to find Blake’s lips, tongue darting out with a sure stroke. “Let’s make that work in our favor from now on, yeah?”
Weiss, who has always loved to win, takes easily to the challenge.