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Qrow’s pretty sure his nieces are planning his murder.
Now, normally, thoughts like these would be a surefire indicator that he’s feeling stressed and paranoid, and then a very Clover-like voice in his head would ask him if he’s slept or eaten in the past forty-eight hours. The answer’s usually no, so the method is highly effective, but it’s different this time. Qrow had a nice dinner with Clover last evening, and they spent all night sleeping (among other things) before his boyfriend had to leave for what sounded like an especially boring joint Atlas-Mantle Council meeting held at the godless asscrack of dawn. Qrow has always been a light sleeper - a childhood spent with a bandit tribe that made camp in Grimm-infested forests plus a dozen-odd years working as Ozpin’s spy didn’t help - but he never knows when Clover leaves in the mornings, always sleeps straight through it.
It’s nice.
So, physically, Qrow feels pretty alright. Great, even. And if there’s nothing wrong with him, then that could only mean one thing.
He glances at where Ruby’s sitting upside-down on the couch, her legs flung over the back of it. She’s gripping her scroll tightly in her hands, tongue poked out in concentration as she mashes the buttons for some fighter game. Her cape is haphazardly thrown across the coffee table.
He likes it when Yang and Ruby visit him, he truly does, but he’s also been a huntsman long enough to tell when some things aren’t normal.
Like, for example, being ambushed in your pajamas by your niece and tied to the living room armchair with a spare pair of your boyfriend’s bolas while your other niece cheers animatedly in the background.
“Is there something you and Yang want to tell me, Ruby?” he finally asks, after a few minutes of watching her avatar get pummeled by a flurry of fists.
The moment he speaks, the little pixelated dog Ruby was controlling gets decimated by an especially brutal punch, and she shrieks in what he can only assume is sympathetic agony.
“You made me lose!” she says accusingly, flopping backward so that her head’s hanging off the edge of the couch cushions.
He forces down the urge to say something annoyingly Tai-ish, like Sit up straight, you’ll break your neck, and instead focuses on how he’s being held prisoner in his own home.
“Sorry,” he says blandly.
Her cheeks are puffed up in mock anger, the same expression she makes whenever he wipes the floor with her at video games. “You don’t sound sorry.”
“Yang tossed me over her shoulder this morning when I tried to open the fridge,” Qrow says. “While you watched.”
Ruby bats her eyelids over wide eyes, like she thinks if she does enough innocent-looking things, he’ll start believing it. “That doesn’t sound like Yang.”
“I have plans, Ruby.”
She waves her hand dismissively in his direction. “Old man plans.”
“Plans with your dad.”
After months of prodding, Tai finally agreed to come visit them in Atlas. They’ve come down to Patch plenty of times since Salem’s defeat, but trying to get Tai away from that house has been like pulling teeth from an Ursa. Now that he’s finally here, if Qrow isn’t there to meet him…
“Right, like I said, old man plans.” Ruby swings her feet down and wiggles into something like proper posture. “Don’t worry so much. Yang’ll take care of Dad.”
“The same way she took care of me?” For emphasis, he wiggles his hand where it’s still stuck in the cords of the bolas.
Ruby giggles. “You can’t guilt me into letting you go, Uncle Qrow. We both know if you really wanted to leave, you’d be out of here by now.”
He glances at where her scythe is blatantly ignoring their No Weapons at the Dining Room Table rule. “Sure, and you wouldn’t try to stop me at all.”
“It’s for a good cause!” Her eyes are bright, and she bounces as she speaks. “I swear.”
When she and Yang were younger, they’d come up with all sorts of harebrained schemes that left him and Tai a little more worse for the wear every time. On one memorable occasion, he came back from a mission to find the house smoldering because a certain nine-year-old had thought it smart to operate an open flame with her younger sister to make smores for their uncle’s birthday. Tai had still been soundly asleep at the time, and it was pure luck that he burst in through the window before any of the furniture - or gods forbid, Yang’s hair - caught fire.
They’d had an interesting childhood, if nothing else: every teacher in Signal has been successfully cowed by their antics, at least one restaurant in Vale put out a permanent ban on their entire family, and they’re probably responsible for at least half of the gray hairs Qrow owns. After Beacon fell, he was afraid that playful spark would be gone for good. But if tying him to a chair on a random Thursday morning for inexplicable reasons is enough to get it back…
He feels himself deflate.
“Fine,” he says, then glances down at his baggy T-shirt (probably Clover’s) and sleep pants (definitely Clover’s). Apparently, he has a bad habit of nabbing things that don’t belong to him, even now. “Can I at least change? I promise I won’t escape.”
At that moment, Ruby’s scroll beeps, and she glances down at it. Then she stands, stretching out her hands apologetically. “Sorry, Uncle Qrow, there’s just not enough time.”
“Time for what?”
She circles past the sofa and sweeps her scythe into her hand before making her way back to him. He glances down at the weapon. It’s folded into its compact form, and he knows that she would never hurt him deliberately, but the way that she’s standing over him makes him nervous.
“Ruby?”
Her smile is somewhat contrite. “I probably should have told you,” she says. “I wasn’t here just to keep you company. I’m also responsible for knocking you out until we get there.”
“What?”
The last thing he sees is Crescent Rose, swinging in a graceful arc, and he thinks thank the fucking gods Tai is coming over because he doesn’t care if these girls are now grown women and huntsmen in their own right - they’re about to be so incredibly grounded, even Mantle’ll feel it.
~
Qrow wakes up on a street.
At least, that’s what it feels like, the ground cold and smooth under his arms. He can’t see a goddamn thing, and his arms are still pinned to his sides. Normally, when people are knocked out, there’s a moment of disorientation when they come to, some confusion about where they are and how they got there.
Not him, though - not since he became sober. He remembers everything down to the letter.
“Ruby!” he shouts, wiggling around until he lands on his stomach. “Yang! You two are in so much trouble.”
He considers turning into his bird form to get out of these stupid ties, thoughts of playing along be damned. But before he can act on it, he hears an all-too-familiar chuckle, and the blindfold drops from around his face.
“You know,” Clover says, “when your nieces said they’d take care of getting you here, this isn’t quite what I had in mind.”
“The feeling’s mutual,” Qrow mutters, rubbing at his eye with his shoulder. From his peripheral vision, he can tell that they’re in Mantle, all right, the dark, close-knit buildings stretching tall on either side of them. He lifts his gaze towards Clover. “And how the hell did you know-”
Qrow’s voice sticks in his throat.
His tongue feels heavy.
His brain grinds to halt.
In fact, he thinks he must have forgotten how language works altogether because his thoughts as he sees Clover in front of him - propped on one knee, silver and green ring box in hand - are so far from coherent that he might as well be trying to squawk out human words in his bird form.
Clover’s smiling, of course, the handsome bastard. He looks completely at ease, kneeling in the middle of a desolate Mantle street still clad in uniform, but Qrow knows him well enough now to see the slight tension around his shoulders, the jump in his jaw before he opens his mouth to speak.
“Okay,” Clover says, taking a breath. “Here we go.” His eyes, teal like all the oceans he wants to visit, are shining. “Qrow, I didn’t believe in love at first sight before I met you. Now, after two years with you, I can safely say that I was right - it definitely doesn’t exist.”
Qrow chokes out a laugh that turns halfway into something like a sob. The orange glow that always bathes the city of Mantle seems especially luminous. His vision is swimming.
“Falling in love with you wasn’t easy,” Clover says, “and I’m not going to trivialize it by pretending it was. There couldn’t have been a worse time for us to meet. The world was in danger, Atlas was falling, and I remember looking at you after every morning briefing, feeling sick to my stomach, because I didn’t know if that would be the day one of us pushed too far during a mission or Salem attacked or, gods forbid, James ordered your arrest. But-”
Clover pauses, then laughs like the sound is tumbling out of him, like it’s filled his chest up to the brim, and he can’t help but set it free.
“But it doesn’t matter. It didn’t matter. Because when push came to shove, I chose you.” His fingers clutch around the ring box so tightly, his knuckles pale. “And you chose me. We chose each other, every single time, and that’s why we won.”
“Clover…”
“I’ll never stop fighting to be with you,” Clover says. “I love you.”
The band is pale silver, ringed with red. It’s raised in the center, a small shamrock carved in dark green. Qrow has to strain his neck to see it at this angle, but he’s already shaking so hard, he barely notices the discomfort.
“Qrow Branwen.” The smile on Clover’s face is brighter than sunlight reflected off the Mantle ice. “Will you make me the luckiest guy in Remnant and be my husband?”
Qrow’s lungs feel as if they’re about to declare independence from his body. He doesn't blame them. “Let me out.”
Clover’s expression scrunches, tinted ever so slightly with confusion. Handsome, handsome bastard. “Sorry?”
“Let me out,” Qrow says, “of these stupid restraints, so I can kiss your stupid face, of course, I’ll marry you.”
When Summer proposed to Tai, Qrow had been there. She had asked him to stand by her side as she knelt in the field just past their home in Patch, a thousand flowers brushing at their feet and flying through the sky in a whirlwind of color. Qrow won’t ever forget the way Tai smiled - like a fire rekindling, like the air could breathe again. He didn’t think he’d ever see someone that happy again, face alight and joy pouring from their body like water.
As Clover sweeps him into his arms, Qrow has never been more pleased to be wrong.
~
“We thought it would be romantic.” Ruby’s toeing the floor of their apartment with her boot, hands clasped behind her back and looking everywhere other than at Qrow.
Yang huffs and crosses her arms. “I’m not sorry,” she says. “Recreating the first day you two met was Clover’s idea.”
“Hey.” Clover raises his hands in surrender when Qrow turns his glare on him. “I said I wanted them to bring you to where we first met. I didn’t say anything about what state I wanted you to be in.”
“Should have been more specific.” Yang lets out a genuine cackle. “It was so much fun.”
“You didn’t have to carry his body, though!” Ruby protests. “People looked at me like I killed him! Plus, he was really heavy.”
If Qrow weren’t still riding on the adrenaline rush of getting engaged to Clover (Clover!), he’d be feeling a headache coming on. “Girls,” he says. “General rule, which I didn’t think needed saying, but I guess I was wrong: Do not kidnap your family members.”
“Not even if it’s for a good cause?” Ruby asks.
“Especially if it’s for a ‘good cause.’ Agreed?”
His nieces mumble an assent. It’s not very convincing, but it’ll have to do. Qrow runs his fingers over the latest, best ring in his collection and feels something inside him gentle. He smiles and pats the two of them on the head.
“Thanks,” he says. “Brats.”
Yang rolls her eyes but looks pleased nevertheless. “Should we leave then, so you two can do the horizontal tango and consummate the engagement?”
Qrow sputters. Ruby looks scandalized.
“Yang!” she chides. “That’s for marriage. Obviously, engagements are sealed with a kiss.” She looks at them expectantly.
“I’m not going to kiss Clover in front of you,” Qrow says.
Ruby pouts. “You’re no fun.”
Yang rolls her eyes again. She gets it from her dad. “I’m too gay for this,” she mutters and grabs her sister by the wrist. “Let’s go, Ruby.”
Ruby waves brightly at them as she gets dragged out the door. Clover turns to Qrow.
“Is that a no on the horizontal tango, then?” he asks.
Qrow tamps down on the affection creeping up his sternum by crossing his arms over his chest. “Don’t even think it.”
“So, would you say-” Clover’s eyebrows raise and lower suggestively as he leans in close. “-I won’t be getting lucky tonight?”
Qrow presses a palm to Clover’s cheek and shoves him away. “You’re never getting lucky again if you keep that up.”
Clover laughs, loud and bright, his eyes like stars as he looks at Qrow. “I wouldn’t say that,” he says softly, taking Qrow’s hand and brushes his thumb over the ring. “I feel pretty lucky already.”
And if they kiss a little after that, giggling and pushing at each other like much younger men - well, at least Qrow’s nieces aren’t around to see it.