Chapter Text
Yang wasn’t remotely surprised to be the last person down the stairs and eating, finding Weiss and Ruby already finished and chatting as Blake ate, ears flicking back and forth between the two as they spoke. She couldn’t catch all of it on her way down, but the word ‘cat’ was definitely said, and she groaned internally. Ruby still wanted an infernal furball and the other two seemed to be on board. Realistically, she knew that any animal raised by her sister couldn’t be as awful as her last few encounters, but there was a sense of dread at the thought of her feet being attacked at night and having to make sure nothing got clawed up so they wouldn’t have to pay for repairs.
“Morning,” she called, announcing herself and putting the thoughts aside; if Ruby would be happy, she would be happy.
She got a chorus of greetings in response, followed up with Weiss asking, “Have you checked your scroll?”
“Nope,” Yang replied, going straight for the cereal, “why?”
“Ren and Nora are gonna visit,” Ruby declared, cutting off Weiss, whose arms folded over her chest at the interruption. Of course, Ruby seemed to take no notice. “Isn’t that exciting?” she squeaked.
“That’s awesome,” Yang agreed, finishing pouring her cereal and eyeing the milk carton. There was barely an inch left in the bottom….
“So help me, Yang,” Weiss uttered warningly.
She made a face back at her. “I was gonna finish it,” Yang protested. “I wouldn’t put it back for someone else to drink!”
Weiss sighed, rubbing one temple. “Fine, but you better finish it.”
“Watch me.” Yang brought it up and took a long drink- and proceeded to start coughing as it flowed down the wrong pipe, milk spewing from her nose and her lungs burning as she hacked violently to clear the liquid from her trachea.
Blake came over to rub her back and Ruby gingerly took the carton from her hand, dumping the remaining drops down the sink, as Weiss shook her head, looking entirely vindicated.
Once the fit was through, she looked over at Weiss with watery, clouded eyes. “You better not say it,” she rasped, jabbing a slightly shaky finger in her direction.
“I don’t need to,” Weiss said primly.
“You didn’t even prove a point,” Yang added. “I just look like an idiot so you can’t even say it.”
Weiss sipped her coffee, not deigning to respond beyond a pointed reminder. “Your cereal is probably getting soggy.” She left the ‘and we are now out of milk’ unsaid along with her ‘I told you so’.
Yang took a seat beside Blake today, but not without propping her bare feet on Weiss’s lap under the table. It earned her a dirty look, but no retaliation as conversation resumed.
“Anyway,” Weiss continued deliberately, eyes darting around the table, “as Blake and Ruby know, we were discussing putting Ren and Nora up for a few nights. Would that be something that everyone is comfortable with?”
“I think that depends,” Blake murmured, brows furrowing. “Are we telling them?” She paused for a moment as the question sunk in and then added, “Because we’ve all made a great deal of progress in the last three weeks,” Yang didn’t miss the quick, pointed glance in her direction, “and I don’t want to pretend otherwise in our own home.”
Ruby was the first to respond, tone verging on casual. “I mean, I figured we would.”
Yang decided not to say that she figured they wouldn’t, merely tilting her head in Ruby’s direction as an acknowledgement, stuffing her mouth full of cereal. The bright grin she got in return warmed her deeply, though the feeling was certainly offset by the encroaching anxiety.
“Then we’re all on the same page,” Weiss decided, eyes locking with Yang’s in a silent challenge. “We’ll tell them.”
Yang swallowed her food and sighed loudly. “Why does everyone keep looking at me?”
“Yang,” Ruby said quietly. “We know how you feel about telling people- it feels like if you had it your way, no one would know still, not even us.”
She closed her eyes, temper flaring and then breathed out, opening her eyes once more.
“Look,” she said, aiming for patient and coming off sharp to her own ears, “I have my fears, you guys know that. You know I sometimes feel like I’m failing as a sister by going through with this.” She plowed on, even as Ruby’s breathing hitched. “But I wouldn’t change this,” she told them firmly. “This scares the hell out of me, but I’m not going anywhere.
“Please don’t think that I would stop feeling this way if I could,” she finished, throat closing up. Up until recently, she certainly would have- to cut her love for Ruby down to size, to turn her eyes away from Blake, to keep her friendship with Weiss normal- but now things were different. The memories of her first kiss with Weiss, holding Blake and Ruby in her arms as they slept, their little encounter with the old woman the day before, seeing Weiss and Blake holding hands as they came in from the snow, looking flushed and lovestruck, all of it pushed her fears down, even if it couldn’t eliminate her reservations entirely.
“I’m sorry, Yang,” Ruby mumbled, eyes looking a bit wet. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
Yang shrugged one shoulder, offering a tired smile. “I’m sorry I made everyone feel that way.”
Blake gently nudged her side and Yang felt a gentle pat on her ankle from Weiss before she was dislodged and forced to rest her toes on the chilly tile.
“If you’re sure, I’ll let them know,” Weiss said at last. “But only if you’re sure. Things have changed a lot and there will probably be more growing pains, so if you don’t want that stress, I understand.”
Yang glanced down at the table, sighed quietly and decided, “I’m okay with telling them, yeah. But I’m not sure I want them here 24/7 while we’re still figuring things out.”
“That makes sense,” Ruby admitted, with Blake merely nodding along. “It was kinda weird having Winter, Qrow and Dad in our space and they already knew.”
Weiss held up her scroll. “I’ll let them know, then. They’ll be here next Sunday, so they have time to make arrangements. On the slim chance they can’t find a hotel, Jaune and Pyrrha already volunteered to take them in for the week.”
Blake couldn’t withhold a wince. “I can’t imagine being packed into five hundred square feet with Nora,” she murmured.
“They did it for four years and they can do it again,” Weiss dismissed. “Besides, Pyrrha volunteered them, not Jaune. She knows what they’re getting into and will be shopping accordingly should it come to that.” She paused now that the message was delivered. “Speaking of which, we have some grocery shopping to do, unless we’ve picked up yet another job in the last twelve hours?” This time, her look was in Ruby’s direction and more playful than pointed.
“No, of course not!” Ruby answered. “We can stick with some close to home jobs until Ren and Nora are out of town again.”
“Good,” Weiss replied. “Then we can make a list. Is there anything in particular besides what I’ve got?” She rattled off the basics she already had written down and waited.
Silence met her ears. All around her, the other three shrugged and her eye twitched in irritation. “All of you mention never having enough snacks in the house, why don’t you tell me what you want?”
“I’ll let you know if I think of anything,” Yang said, rising from her seat and putting her dish in the sink. “I’ve got laundry to start,” she added as she headed toward the stairs, pausing to ruffle Ruby’s still damp hair and earning a lighthearted swat in response.
Weiss sighed, mostly to herself. “Blake?” she asked hopefully.
She considered that for a moment, tapping her chin and then offering, “Maybe a rotisserie chicken and some greens for salad tonight? We could use some dressing too.”
Weiss wrote that down. “Thank you, Blake,” she said.
“I’m going to get in the shower,” Blake said, “but maybe you should take Ruby with you?”
Ruby froze and sent her girlfriend a wide eyed look. ‘Why?’ it asked.
“That’s a good idea,” Weiss acknowledged, glancing up to catch the tail end of Ruby’s expression. “Oh, don’t look at Blake like that! We’re going shopping, not to fight Ursas.”
Ruby gave them both a mock pout in return, dramatically crossing her arms in front of her, but didn’t refuse the light kiss Blake left on her cheek, watching as she strolled around the other side of the table, over to Weiss. “Yes, that would be a lot more fun.”
“Don’t be so-” Weiss stopped short as Blake kissed her cheek as well, leaving her pink in the face and mouth parted mid scolding.
“Be nice,” Blake told them lightly, “both of you.” And made her way upstairs, humming one of Weiss’s songs slightly off key.
Weiss folded her arms over her chest, looking a little defeated and a lot amused. “You are something else, Blake,” she muttered.
~
Ultimately, their shopping trip culminated in nearly triple the number of items on Weiss’s list, packing the trunk and a single seat in the back of the car. There was no text from either Blake or Yang and Weiss was hardly surprised by this turn of events; they never texted her unless there was an essential they managed to forget, or Yang wasn’t paying attention while Weiss made the list and didn’t realize she already intended on getting something.
“We should stop and get brunch,” Ruby suggested as she returned from depositing their empty shopping cart.
“Ruby, we literally ate an hour ago,” Weiss reminded her. “And we just got food that we can eat when we get home.”
Ruby frowned but didn’t disagree as Weiss began backing out of the parking space. “Okay, then we should stop at that cool coffee place with all the weird flavors,” she decided.
“Why? You don’t even like coffee unless it’s half sugar.”
“C’mon, Weiss, please?”
Weiss knew better than to look at Ruby when she was begging, but she did it anyway, catching a soft, pleading face and wide silver eyes boring into her. She groaned. “Alright, we’ll go get coffee, Ruby. Or, I’ll get coffee and you’ll get hot chocolate that we could make at home.”
“Thanks,” Ruby said, rather than rise to the jab. She settled into her seat, hands in her lap now instead of clutched up by her face. “Have you heard from Olive lately? She sent me a picture of Ajax next to her mom’s Pomeranian a couple weeks ago, but nothing else.”
“Yes, we talk every few days, sometimes a week in between,” Weiss replied, eyes on the road. “Even if we’re not talking, I get daily Ajax updates. I didn’t even realize how big he’s gotten until she sent me a side by side of him when she got him and him last week. He’s nearing fifty pounds.”
Ruby’s eyes widened. “Wow, that’s huge! You said you grew up around these kinds of dogs? How big do they get?”
From there, the conversation turned mundane. They talked about the guard dogs around the premises of her home and the detection dogs at the company, some of which sniffed for Dust in mines. They debated the kinds of dogs they would adopt if Blake liked dogs, there was the discussion of what types of dogs would be good with cats, if Ruby decided to adopt some, Weiss mentioned a rescue thirty minutes from their house that looked promising and so on, the trip to the coffee shop going by in a flash of casual chatter.
“Let’s get out and order,” Ruby insisted when they pulled into the lot. “The drive through is always crowded.”
A glance at the drive through confirmed exactly that and Weiss shrugged- they had insulated bags for a reason. “Alright, we’ll go in,” she agreed, unable to withhold a smile as she caught a small fist pump from Ruby out of the corner of her eye.
Ruby whirled to Weiss’s side in blur of petals and grabbed her by the hand the moment Weiss had locked the car; she looked ready to drag her in, but stopped short, glancing down for a second. “Is, uh, this okay?” she asked softly. “I know this is still kinda weird to you….”
“Very,” Weiss admitted. This evening, she would be walking Ruby through any questions she had about sex so that she could feel more comfortable when having that conversation with her girlfriend, a person who definitely wasn’t Weiss, and yet, here Ruby was clutching her hand and looking at her with blatant affection. Polyamory was a decidedly unique experience, and yet, she couldn’t find it in herself to be stressed in this instance. “But this is okay,” she said at last, squeezing Ruby’s hand and taking the lead, gently tugging her along.
In stark contrast to the drive through line, the inside of the shop was near empty, not a single person in line and less then ten people actually inside the shop, none of which even looked up as they entered. A tired looking college age girl stood at the register and gave them a customer service smile as they looked over the board above her head.
Weiss had no idea what half of these things were, but Ruby was looking up at the names wide eyed. “Everything sounds so good,” Ruby hissed as they tucked themselves into a corner, out of the way of others who might come in ready to order. “What do I get?”
“I’m asking myself the same question,” she replied drily.
“Oh! Idea,” Ruby chirped. “You pick for me and I’ll pick for you!”
Weiss’s brow furrowed. “And what if we both hate what we get?”
“We won’t,” Ruby assured her, swinging their hands between them excitedly. “I bet you I can get something you love.”
Her smile was bright, and she looked so determined that Weiss could hardly refuse; and, if they didn’t like their drinks, Weiss had gotten a monetary ‘gift’ from her father during their stay in Mantle due to her ‘behaving’ in front of the board and she had no problem spending his money on frivolous things. “Alright, Ruby, I’ll leave it to you,” she acquiesced.
“Awesome, cause I know exactly what I’m getting you, too,” Ruby said, looking content with herself.
“You can go ahead and order then,” Weiss told her, “I’ll take a bit more of a look.”
“Nope! I can wait and we’ll order together,” Ruby asserted.
Weiss arched a brow. “It won’t be much of a surprise,” she reminded her lightly.
“It doesn’t have to be. I just want to spend time with you.”
She turned slightly, catching Ruby’s eyes properly. “Is that why you begged me to come here?”
Ruby looked down at the ground, a blush rising on her cheeks. “You and Yang already had a date, you and Blake were out for a while when we were in Mantle and Yang, Blake and I all hung out while we were in Atlas. I just… wanted you to myself for a bit, I guess,” she admitted.
“I know this isn’t a proper date, since I never asked and I know that I need to do that,” Ruby continued, slowly looking up to meet Weiss’s eyes and offering a shy smile, “but I wanted to buy you something and talk to you and just-” she trailed off and gave a jerky shrug.
Weiss sighed softly. “That’s fine, Ruby. More than fine,” she corrected, not wanting to give the wrong impression. “And you can always ask me to spend time with you, date or not.”
Ruby merely nodded and went quiet, looking thoughtfully at the menu.
Weiss followed her lead, watching where Ruby’s eyes went- to the hot chocolate portion, of course. She smiled slowly as her eyes lit upon the perfect option and she gave Ruby’s hand a little squeeze. “I’m ready when you are,” she declared.
“Good,” Ruby murmured, “I think we’re making the cashier nervous with all the whispering.”
~
Yang was surprised to learn that Blake was the only person in the house nearly two hours after Ruby and Weiss left for shopping, finding Blake alone on the couch puzzling out the layout of a bland, futuristic looking room as a deadpan person talked down to her character. She didn’t seem too bothered by the condescension, looking more focused on the environment; if one ear hadn’t shifted in her direction, Yang would have thought that Blake was too engrossed to know she was present.
She ducked into the kitchen and snooped through the cabinets until she found a not yet stale package of cheese flavored crackers and rejoined Blake on the couch, plunking the box down between them. “Whatcha playing, Blake?” she asked as she grabbed a handful to shove in her mouth- something she could get away with for as long as Weiss wasn’t there to see it.
Blake dove into an explanation of the puzzle game, good portions of which went right over Yang’s head until she stopped what she was doing to demonstrate various mechanics that allowed her to traverse different rooms, slowly working her way through different parts of the puzzle at hand as she spoke. Eventually, Yang stopped asking questions, just letting her go on.
It wasn’t too often that she managed to get Blake rambling about something. Talking was more her area of expertise, but damn if she didn’t mind getting Blake to do it; she gestured and extrapolated and grinned in spite of the narrator’s verbal abuse as she went through, looking incredibly cute the whole time.
Yang slumped back in her seat and let it wash over her.
“Are you still listening?” Blake asked after a while, pausing in her praise of the game’s clever design. She wore a playful smile, actually looking amused by the idea of being tuned out.
“I am,” Yang promised, stretching languidly. “You were just talking about how unique each room was and how the mechanics all sorta build on each other.”
Blake smiled, a small, soft thing that made Yang smile in return. She paused the game and plucked up the box between them, reaching across Yang’s lap to set it beside her on the couch. “What are you...” she trailed off as Blake shuffled closer, tucking herself under one of Yang’s arms and resuming the game and looking quite satisfied with her new position.
There was a moment of discomfort that quickly passed, leaving Yang content as she rested her head against Blake’s and bit down on a yawn. “This is nice,” she murmured.
Blake merely hummed in agreement as she cleared a second room.
“Thanks for being patient with you me- you’ve all been too good to me,” she added.
She could practically hear Blake rolling her eyes. “Too good is a poor descriptor,” her partner disagreed. “We’ve just been trying to give you what you need.”
Yang couldn’t help but snort. “What I need is a hell of a lot of work.”
Blake turned her head, nuzzling into Yang’s hair and letting out a little sigh. “And it’s worth it as long as you feel safe and loved,” she insisted.
“I definitely feel those things,” Yang told her quietly. She shifted as well, pressing a little kiss onto Blake’s head, even as the arm not over Blake’s shoulder went tense- she so badly wanted to take Blake’s face in her hands and kiss her properly, but today wasn’t that day. But when she thought about it, that day felt a lot closer than it had only a few hours ago.
They stayed like that for a long moment, nestled together on the couch, Yang running her hand gently along Blake’s arm as she purred quietly. Slowly, they extricated themselves from the embrace, Blake picking up the controller and offering it to Yang. “Want to give it a try?” she asked.
“Sure, why not?” Yang decided, accepting it and unpausing the game. She had to unwind her arm from around Blake, which Blake remedied by wrapping her arm around Yang’s waist and leaning on her shoulder.
The controls were responsive and from what Blake had said, she seemed to get most of the mechanics: put this there, that here, jump, run, don’t get shot and so on. But… Blake started twitching a good ten minutes into her perusal of the room.
A quick glance revealed that Blake’s face was slightly scrunched in concentration, and her eyes were darting around the screen. Ah, she wasn’t solving it fast enough….
Yang turned the character around, completely ignoring the progress she was making.
“What are you doing?” Blake asked, sounding just a tad distressed.
“I had an idea,” Yang evaded, proceeding to do something she knew would get her killed.
Blake made an indignant noise as the character went careening into water, killing her on impact and inciting more snark from the narrator. Her ears went flat against her head. “Do you need a hint?” she asked, sounding tense.
“Nah, I think I’ve got it,” Yang drawled and settled in for silent rage.
~
Ruby squinted out the window at their front porch, tapping at the hand Weiss had reached over to rest on her knee, her gently circling fingers raising goosebumps on Ruby’s skin under her leggings.
“Yes, Ruby?” Weiss asked, more focused on whether she’d be able to back her car into the drive without encroaching on either Blake’s car off to one side or the McKnights’ on the other. Ruby elected not to disturb her until they were properly in.
“I thought I saw Yang out front,” Ruby told her, pushing the door open and peeking out.
Sure enough, there she was, rubbing her hands together in the chill of the winter air. She paused to wave at Ruby, a wicked grin on her lips.
Ruby was before her in an instant, head cocked curiously.
“Blake needed a moment,” was Yang’s enigmatic response as she pushed herself to her feet.
Judging by the look on her face, it couldn’t be too serious, but Ruby had to ask. “What did you do?”
Yang didn’t look back, heading for the car and intercepting Weiss at the trunk, catching her for a quick kiss. Weiss didn’t resist, leaning up on her toes to return it properly and disengaging shortly after, casting a less than surreptitious glance in Ruby’s direction.
Ruby merely gave her a thumbs up and an exaggerated wink, earning faint blush.
They were soon busied with unloading the car and bringing the groceries in- whatever Yang did didn’t get her locked out, at least, Ruby noted to herself. Blake was nowhere in sight until after everything was put away, appearing out of thin air in the doorway to the kitchen.
“You two were out longer than I expected,” Blake noted as she slipped into the kitchen, already poking her head into the refrigerator.
“We had fun,” Ruby told her, walking up and wrapping her arms around her waist for a brief hug. She took an abrupt step back, eyeing her girlfriend. “Why was Yang banished to the porch?”
Blake sighed deeply as she snagged a handful of berries from the fridge. “She was not banished- she retreated on her own terms.” She stalked past Ruby to give Yang a little nudge and a sly look. “Let’s get out the other controller- I owe you a thrashing,” she said lightly.
Yang just smirked as Blake headed for the couch. “Sure do,” she agreed, trotting after her partner.
Ruby looked to Weiss helplessly. “I still don’t know what’s going on.”
“They make no more sense to me than you,” Weiss assured her, “but I doubt we’ll need a sit down for this one, thank the gods.”