Work Text:
It’s been a shitty day.
The apartment is dark when she stumbles through the front door, breath whistling between gritted teeth and gun steady in front of her. No one comes hurtling out of the darkness to punch her and no bullets come her way, and she shoves the door shut with one foot and slumps back against it. Her ribs ache from the explosion in the desert, the one that sent her careening off target and let her mark get away, and she knows that Weiss and Yang will surely be home soon enough, if only to burn the evidence of their relationship to the ground.
There’s no telling which of them had set the charges that nearly blew her up. Yang's the engineer, but Weiss is the planner. Even odds.
She hurries through the apartment, bypassing Weiss’s study-- where Blake knows, now, she probably has an entire arsenal hidden away-- and Yang’s workshop on the second floor-- a menace even if Yang wasn’t also clearly a highly trained assassin-- until she makes it up to the fourth floor of their apartment, the highest point in the building, the one filled with a towering climbing wall that Weiss and Yang had surprised her with three years ago for her birthday, the one where she’s methodically stashed away enough weapons in hidden caches behind the climbing wall to arm a battalion without ever once worrying about her partners finding them. They’ve all always respected each others’ spaces, knocking before entering and waiting for invitations in, the relationship between them coasting placidly along on trust and understanding.
Well. Blake peels her tattered shirt away from her side with a grunt as it pulls at the abrasions on her side. Maybe not. She presses a hand over her side, cursing at the sting over her damaged skin, but her ribs are intact.
Her phone, barely intact, buzzes in her pocket with an alert from one of the perimeter sensors she’d set up the first month they all moved in together. She’d installed them because she wanted to protect Yang and Weiss from her work, in case it ever followed her home, but she’s apparently been sharing a home with her work for six years without knowing it and now one of them is in the apartment as well. She pulls her shirt back down over her damaged side and yanks her tie loose, strides over to the climbing wall and turns a series of handles until she can fill her hands with guns and belt with knives, breathes in deep until her pulse steadies and hands calm. Protocol is simple and unavoidable when it comes to being made by another agency, and the simple certainty of it carries her silently back downstairs, sticking to shadows and making her way closer to the alarm that was tripped.
Weiss’s office. It’s Weiss’s office, the one full of books where she holes up on weekends sometimes to take conference calls, where Blake’s brought her tea more times than she can count and where Weiss is always on the phone but always took a moment to pause and mute herself so she can say thank you can kiss Blake on the cheek.
Blake shakes her head and moves forward anyways. This isn’t Weiss, one of her partners, who always has to be hauled out of bed every morning because she’d rather sleep, who hates cooking but will do it when no one else is up for it, who bundled them all into therapy together when things started to somehow feel stale. It’s not Weiss, it’s an enemy combatant, and Blake has a job to do.
The door opens silently in front of her and Blake slides into the room and is immediately clocked in the jaw with a sledgehammer of a fist coming from much higher than she’d expected, because it’s not Weiss in her office but instead Yang who suddenly has Blake on her back foot, a flurry of hits coming at her too fast from too close for Blake to manage to get a gun up at all. There’s a dangerous set to Yang’s jaw, silent and enraged, and Blake’s stomach sinks because Yang’s got reach and muscle on her and of all of them she’s probably the most furious at being lied to and Blake’s got her work cut out for her just to survive this.
“Yang,” she says, barely getting an arm down to cushion the blow of a kick to her side and dropping a gun for her trouble when her arm flashes numb for a split second. “It’s just--”
“Don’t,” she spits out, charging forward with another flurry of strikes, keeping Blake on the defensive and pivoting out into the hallway, desperate for any advantage. The walls are closer and Yang’s reach is compressed and Blake flashes forward, ducking under her guard and driving forward with a collection of strikes of her own to Yang’s right side, unabashedly taking advantage of the right arm that Yang had shattered in a rock climbing accident before they all met.
“You lied to me.” Yang drops her guard and Blake takes the bait even when she knows she shouldn’t, aiming for Yang’s ribs and getting rewarded with a fist curling into her shirt and yanking her over Yang's shoulder, sending her flying down the hallway and landing in a pile of bruises ten feet away.
There’s a pause, the distance between them granting them a moment to breathe-- Blake’s ribs are bruised now and Yang spits blood out of her teeth-- and Blake pushes up to her feet and pretends she doesn’t wish she could undo the entire day, the last six years, to start things on the right foot.
Instead, she draws a knife from her belt and lifts her fists, sliding into a ready stance. “It wasn’t personal,” she says, flat and bored, a complete and utter lie that she can’t find a way out of. “Just business, babe, you know how it is.”
“Fuck you,” Yang grinds out, and Blake charges forward, only to pull up abruptly when a strike to the back of the head sends Yang to her knees.
Weiss appears, carefully impassive behind Yang with a nightstick held loosely and comfortably in one hand, her small frame seeming larger than ever as she looms over Yang in the unlit hallway. She pauses just long enough for Blake to blink at her and reset into her guard, and then disappears down the dark hallway, leaving Blake with a half-unconscious Yang and no idea where to set her attention anymore.
She sets off after Weiss, dodging Yang where she’s still dazed and pulling a bloody hand away from the back of her skull, ready to come back to deal with her later. Yang is a known entity, a tempest of dangerous martial arts and raw power, overwhelming but understandable, but Weiss is a wildcard.
Blake stalks silently through the hallways, clearing rooms methodically, listening for the quiet steps of Weiss haunting the hallways the way she does when she can’t sleep or doesn’t want to wake Blake or Yang up, forever moving with a balance and grace that Blake had attributed to years of childhood ballet instead of the fact that apparently she’s a brutally efficient assassin.
She peers into the kitchen and then immediately yanks herself back, barely dodging the knife flung her way and cursing.
“Oh, you want to play with knives ?” she mutters, shoving her gun into the back of her waistband and filling her hands with throwing knives instead. She breathes in softly and closes her eyes, listens, waiting for anything that will tell her where in the kitchen Weiss is hiding, and then blindly flings a knife through the door. She’s rewarded with a grunt and then the same knife embedding itself in the wall three feet away from her, one side of the blade tinged with blood.
“You missed me, baby,” she says, taunting, pretending her heart’s in it, pretending that riling Weiss up is a strategic move instead of a habit burned into her bones. “There’s a reason you’re not allowed in the kitchen anymore.”
“You say that like I’ve ever cooked a single one of those fucking meals,” Weiss snaps back from the kitchen, mouthy and angry as always, but there’s an splintering edge to her voice, uncertain and shaking. “Don’t tell me you’re just going to hide out there like a coward .”
“Play nice, princess,” Blake calls back. She ducks down and launches another knife into the kitchen, low and dangerous; there’s a clatter when it glances off of the countertop instead of hitting Weiss. “It’s just business.”
Just business . It’s just business, and business says she has to kill Weiss, who she’s loved for the better part of a decade, who’s so small but manages to take up so much space with her presence, who’s skipped board meetings and conference calls to take care of Blake when she has a cold or Yang when her arm’s been acting up; just business that she has to kill Yang, who’s held Blake through every nightmare she won’t speak about, who burned bright like a bonfire in every room she stepped, who punched Weiss’s father the first time they met him and made dinner for them all every Friday night before their lives went quiet and brittle, who dragged them all into therapy to fix them. Just business.
Another knife embeds itself in the wall, closer to the edge of the door jamb Blake’s taking cover behind, and then it’s immediately followed by Weiss flinging herself around the corner and driving her knee into Blake’s stomach. Air bursts out of her lungs and she goes flying back, stumbling and falling as she gasps desperately, trying to find a way to get oxygen back into her lungs while keeping her arms up enough to protect herself from the flurry of strikes Weiss is sending her way.
She collapses back onto the floor and the distance grants her the split second she needs to get her arms up and catch Weiss’s foot before it slams into her chest. She shoves it back, throwing Weiss’s balance off and flipping up to her feet and produces another knife, curling it into her fist and wiping at the blood on her cheekbone with the back of her other hand.
“It’s not personal, right?” There’s an edge to Weiss’s voice, cutting and aggressive, not new but a violent echo to every time she’d come home from a family event or answered a call from her father, and Blake almost falters, almost pulls back, almost lets her guard down. She doesn’t, but it’s enough, still for one of Weiss’s fists to slam past her guard, and Blake barely swerves to one side to protect her jaw. Weiss follows it up with an impossibly fast strike towards her ribcage, diverting up under her off-camber guard to instead wrap around the tie still hanging loose from Blake’s neck and yank hard, hard enough that Blake double over and her forehead slams into Weiss’s knee.
“This is my tie,” Weiss says with a snarl, fist still knotted in silk, and Blake digs her heels into the outlandishly expensive hardwood under her boots and lurches forward, grabbing Weiss around the waist and gripping hard enough through suit jacket and shirt that her fingernails almost certainly break skin, lifting and hurtling forward until Weiss’ back slams into the wall. There’s a split second where her whole body goes limp in Blake’s arms and Blake wonders, desperately, if she just actually killed Weiss, and then a heel jabs into the small of her back and an elbow, sharp and pointed, crashes into her shoulder.
“Looks better on me anyways,” Blake grinds out.
A harsh exhale whistles past the crown of Blake’s head, Weiss’s whole body heaving and scrabbling for breath, and then her weight jerks abruptly to the side, crumpling under the weight of the punch Yang just landed on her cheek. The momentum from the hit pitches her sideways, taking Blake with her, and they both topple towards the hardwood. Blake lands with a grunt and rolls just as Yang’s leg jerks back for a kick, letting Weiss take the worst of the hit and then scrambling away.
“Five fucking years,” Yang says, grating and cracking, fury snapping in her eyes as she pulls back for another kick, and Blake’s own anger snaps and she launches forward, tackling Yang into a wall. Her shoulder drives into Yang’s stomach with the hit only for a hand to hook into the back of her collar and yank, sending her tumbling backwards so Weiss can drive a kick into her side and a rapid-fire series of punches into Yang’s abdomen.
“It’s! Been! Six! Years!” Weiss grinds out, punctuating each word with a punch. Yang gets her guard up enough to block the next punch and grabs Weiss by the front of the shirt and fling her to one side. Even battered and clearly still unstable from Weiss’s hit to her head earlier, Yang’s still bursting with power, and Weiss flies six feet away and lands in a crumpled heap.
“That doesn’t make it better ,” Yang says, fists clenched and breaths coming heavy, and Blake straightens up slowly, forgotten, watching as Yang towers over Weiss with a tightness in her shoulders that has nothing to do with fighting or injury, a tension that she’s only ever had when she’s lonely, and guns shoved hastily into the waistband of her jeans.
“Don’t act like you didn’t lie just as much,” Weiss says thinly, swiping at her bleeding nose angrily.
“I’m not the one who kept missing dinner for work ,” Yang throws back. “I at least tried .”
Blake pulls one of her last knives free, the blade sliding silently from the sheath, and waits until Yang lets out a heaving breath, glaring down at Weiss and the stubborn set to her mouth, and throws. Yang jerks to one side, barely sliding out of the way of the knife and turning with fury written into her jaw, reaching for her guns, but Weiss’s boot slams into one of her knees and she drops. One of the guns skids out of Yang’s hands and clatters across the floor, and Blake dives for it at the same time Weiss does.
There’s the crash of shattering glass as Yang stumbles into the towering glass shelves against the wall, filled with framed pictures from the last five-- six -- years. Weiss’s attention diverts from the gun at the last second and Blake gets a hold on it instead, rolling out of Weiss’s reach and up to her feet just in time for Yang to claw herself out of the mass of shattered glass and point the gun straight at her.
Blake cocks the gun and fires abruptly, shooting just past Yang’s shoulder-- there’s no telling if she missed on purpose, not at this point, but nausea twists in her stomach when Yang’s jaw clenches and a graze on her shoulder starts to bleed as she ducks to the side-- and she slams an elbow into a panel in the wall and yanks another gun out to point at Weiss just as Yang kicks over an ornamental table and produces another gun from there and--
Everyone freezes, suddenly, Yang and Blake both stumbling back following some clever twisting something that Weiss did that even Blake couldn’t track because she moved too fast to follow and now her hands are full of guns she took from the both of them and she’s launched herself back out of arm’s reach.
“Stop,” she says, her voice shaking. “Just-- stop .”
“You’re one to talk,” Yang says, harsh and snarling, but there’s a waver under her voice, the one that’s only ever shown up the few times she’s spoken about her birth mother leaving her, or her mother dying, and it twists Blake’s stomach in a way that has nothing to do with the cracks she definitely has in her ribs now. The gun she has left rattles in her trembling hand and nausea swoops in Blake’s stomach and she nearly throws her own gun away just to try and help Yang, years of habit warring against the instinctive need to protect the both of them.
Instead, she resettles her shoulders and cocks the gun in her hand, as if the definitive sound of an armed weapon will help her make a decision she thought she’d already made. Even if it’s not pointed at either of them, it’s a choice.
“It’s just business,” she says again, splitting her focus between Yang’s burning anger and Weiss’s icy calm.
Weiss’s jaw clenches and the scar over her eye pulls tight with it, blood leaking out of her split lip. “Just business,” she echoes.
“Don’t pretend like you don’t have orders too,” Blake grinds out. “We all do.”
“Orders,” Weiss says, still echoing Blake, still impassive, still standing too still and too out of reach, and Blake glances over at Yang and the familiar cut of her jawline and for the first time in her life regrets her chosen profession.
Weiss shakes her head abruptly and her posture breaks, guns falling down to her side and shoulders slumping. Yang glances over at Blake and then snaps to attention, free hand coming up to support the gun she has aimed at Weiss, and Blake does the same, mirroring out of instinct more than anything else.
“Can’t do it,” Weiss says ruefully, shaking her head again, one shoulder lifting in a shrug. “I can’t shoot either of you.”
“You’re trying to trick--”
Weiss ejects the clips out of one gun and then the next, dropping them all on the floor with a laugh that cracks brittle and unsteady into the suddenly still air, and Blake’s hands start to shake because she’ll never have a better opportunity to get the upper hand over Weiss and her painstakingly cerebral fighting style. She glances over to Yang and the uncertainty written plain into her shoulders, hoping to follow her lead and instead finding herself just as lost as ever.
Weiss holds her hands up in surrender, a familiar sad smile on her face. “Just do it, one of you. It’s fine.” She shrugs again. “You two can have a chance to get away from all of this. It’ll pacify everyone to have a body to point to.”
“What are you--” Yang’s voice cuts off abruptly, and Weiss’s head tilts to one side, palms splaying out gently.
“It was always going to be you two anyways,” she says, and it slices through Blake more than every punch she took, more than anything about this whole rotten day.
“What the hell does that mean?” Yang snaps out. Her gun arm drops down and she gapes at Weiss, and suddenly Blake’s the only one with a gun up and cocked while Yang stares dumbstruck at Weiss. “Why would you-- what the hell, Weiss!”
“I lied to you,” Weiss says, flat and tired and so unlike herself that Blake’s hands shake around the gun she’s holding. “Like you s--”
“We all lied!” Yang says, yelling loud enough that her voice bounces off of all the shattered glass in the room, the damaged walls, the broken pieces of hardwood. “ Fuck , Weiss, come on--”
Weiss’s gaze shifts from Yang to Blake, the gun she’s still holding, the way her knuckles are going white, and lifts one shoulder in a shrug again. Blake’s stomach twists and Weiss shakes her head, as if she can see the argument building in Blake’s chest, the uncertainty, the wavering intensity.
“It’s just business, right?” she says, not breaking eye contact with Blake. “It was always going to be you two.”
Yang lets out a strangled noise and yanks the clip out of her gun as well, flinging herself between Weiss and Blake. The back of her head is matted with blood and the graze on her shoulder is bleeding freely now, running dark tracks down her arm, but she grabs Weiss by the shirt with her uninjured arm anyways and shoves her way in front.
“Put it down,” she says sharply, staring at Blake with wide eyes, eyes that Blake knows , even now, even when their whole world’s been turned upside down in the last eight hours. She’s spent the last six years loving Yang, loving Weiss, finding a way for them all to fit together even when their life together turned inexplicably dry, and now she’s holding a gun on the both of them and Yang is looking at her like she trusts her still.
“Stop it,” Blake says, her voice shaking and shoulders aching with the tension of holding the gun steady. “Don’t-- it’s just orders--” She sucks in a heavy breath, eyes burning and chest aching in a way that has nothing to do with the bruises on her sternum or cracks in her ribs and everything to do with the way that Weiss has shoved her way out from behind Yang’s back and her fingernails are digging into Yang’s arm and the both of them are staring at her, easy targets with their guns out of reach and eyes wide with trust.
“It doesn’t have to be,” Yang says, careful, quiet, gentle, the way she is when Blake wakes up from a nightmare or Weiss comes home from the godforsaken monthly lunches with her father that she won’t discontinue, strong and confident and forever solid. “We can figure this out. Together.”
It’s Yang who keeps talking, easy and level, her words blurring together into a constant undercurrent of calm, but it’s Weiss who moves first. She pushes Yang’s grip away when she tries to hold her back and halves the distance between them and Blake, hands out in front of her carefully and jaw set tight, until the nose of Blake’s gun is a hairsbreadth away from her forehead.
“Fuck.” It cracks in Blake’s throat, strangled and tense, and she drops the gun unceremoniously because she can’t kill Weiss, she can’t kill Yang, she could never lose them and stay standing even if it’s what she’s ordered to do. The realization shatters in her chest and stitches her back together instantaneously, certainty coalescing in her veins as an understanding that three years of therapy could never find solidifies for the first time. “ Fuck. ”
The gun clatters onto the damaged hardwood and Weiss moves immediately, one hand wrapping in the bloodstained tie around Blake’s neck and yanking until she can kiss her like the first time they met, aggressive and impatient and bursting with energy, with intent, with certainty. Blake’s hands shake, even as she pushes back just as hard against Weiss, even as her fingers thread through Weiss’s hair, because every single one of their agencies will be sending someone to kill them all tomorrow but nothing else matters as much as the way Weiss’s mouth moves against hers and Yang’s pressed against her back and biting at the back of her neck, hand familiar at her waist and pulling at her shirt.
Yang’s teeth scrape over her the back of her neck and Blake’s back arches, one hand flying back to hold Yang’s head in place and a harsh breath breaking in her chest. Weiss’s hands scrabble at the loose knot on the tie until she can discard it and grip at Blake’s shirt instead, pulling herself closer and pushing up onto her toes until she can reach past Blake with her free hand and knot her fist into Yang’s shirt.
“Are you--” Blake cuts off with a groan when Yang pushes closer and holds tighter, lips and teeth finding their way down one side of Blake’s neck. “Are you sure--”
“Blake,” Weiss says sharply, firmly, close enough that Blake can feel it washing over her lips more than hear it. “ Yes .” She bites at the underside of Blake’s jaw, mirroring Yang’s assault, and Blake’s head drops back onto Yang’s shoulder, hips moving without meaning to and fingers scrabbling for anything she can find, holding on tight to Weiss, to Yang, to the three of them together.
Yang stretches her arms up over her head, groaning, back arching and muscles straining. Blake rolls onto her side, propping her head on her hand and watching appraisingly at the shift of muscle under Yang’s skin, raising an eyebrow when she glances past Yang to where Weiss is staring just as blatantly. Weiss, who’s always been the most restrained of them all, who would normally clear her throat and blush and pretend she hadn’t been staring, raises an eyebrow back at her and smiles, small and easy.
“I think I have a splinter in my asscheek,” Yang mumbles, staring up at the ceiling.
“Could be glass,” Weiss says. She picks up a crumb of glass from one of the shelves and flicks it delicately away with a frown.
“So helpful, thanks, babe,” Yang says with a huff, even as her hand flops over onto Weiss’ stomach and flaps insistently until Weiss sighs and slides closer, curling into Yang’s shoulder and pressing a lazy kiss over her collarbone. Blake’s fingers slide over the familiar surgical scars on Yang’s other arm, mapping the familiar tissue blindly.
“Was this really a rock climbing accident?” she says softly.
“Yeah,” Yang says eventually, carefully, head lolling over to one side to stare at Blake. Her fingers on one hand tangle into Weiss’s hair, with Blake’s on the other. “Extraction gone bad. My harness snapped and I fell.”
“Who was it?”
Yang sighs. “Are we going to do that? List off our resumes after we just had seriously intense sex on the floor of our dining room?”
“Maybe,” Blake drawls out, one side of her mouth lifting into a smile when Weiss rolls her eyes.
“Mercury Black,” Yang says with a sigh.
“Seriously?” Weiss sits up abruptly. “That was you ?”
“Uh, yes?” Yang props up on her elbows, eyebrows lifting.
“You shit .” Weiss slaps at her shoulder ineffectually. “I spent months prepping for-- the day before -- I can’t believe that was you!”
Yang stares at her blankly for a moment, glancing over at Blake uncertainly; Blake looks between the two of them, the beginnings of a laugh curling low in her belly because of course. Of course they’ve all been orbiting each other for years, for decades, for maybe their whole lives. Of course they’ve always been tied to each other.
“What about this,” Yang says, quiet and serious, one hand ghosting over the scar over Weiss’s eye. Weiss stiffens, sharp enough that it slices through the momentary levity, and Yang hesitates and then presses her hand against Weiss’s cheek anyways. “Sorry, I--”
“It’s okay,” Weiss says, leaning into her hand gently. “That-- wasn’t from a job. That was just home.”
“Well,” Yang says slowly. “Since we all know that murder is certainly an option now, can we kill your asshole dad?”
A laugh bursts out of Weiss, quiet but unrestrained, and it settles over Blake’s shoulders, warm and familiar, and she pushes up to her feet and holds her hands out to Yang and Weiss.
“Come on,” she says, pulling them both up to their feet and waiting patiently so Yang can curl around Weiss’s back, hands wandering low and lazy until Weiss clears her throat and grabs Yang’s wrists, pulling her hands back up to waist height. “We should figure out a game plan for--”
“There’s going to be a hit out on all of us if one of us doesn’t report in that the others are dead,” Weiss says.
“How long did you two have?” Blake picks up her discarded pants and sighs at the ripped button rendering them useless, holding them up with a disappointed glare at Yang, who shrugs and props her chin on Weiss’s shoulder.
“Twelve hours,” Yang says. She buries her nose in Weiss’s neck and breathes in deep, eyes fluttering shut.
“Same for me,” Weiss says quietly. She tilts her head down against Yang’s for a moment. “So we’ve got about two hours left, I think.”
She untangles herself from Yang’s hold, keeping a grip on her hand instead, and tugs her towards the stairs and their bedroom, collecting Blake with her other hand as she goes. “Blake’s right that we need a plan.”
“I’d be down for just retiring,” Yang says. She flops down on the bed with a groan, stretching again. “We could just all put in our notice, go hang out on a beach somewhere. We could buy a beach.”
“They’re going to want to make an example out of us,” Blake says from inside the closet. She throws a pair of sweatpants out for Yang, and then another set for Weiss, and grabs a handful of tshirts. “It won’t look good for any of them that we-- for so long--”
“Five years,” Yang says cheerfully, slotting a glance over at Weiss and waiting for her predictable response.
“Six years.” She doesn’t disappoint, not even looking up from where she’s dabbing at a bloody gash on one arm with a towel. “Blake’s right, they won’t let us go. It’s bad for business.”
Yang sighs and pulls on her clothes, shaking her hair out of her face and wincing, one hand automatically going to the lump at the back of her skull. Weiss freezes, towel still pressed against her arm, and Blake watches carefully with nausea building in her stomach because Weiss’s guilt is written into her jawline. The damage to Yang’s skull came from Weiss, the bullet graze on her shoulder from Blake. One of Weiss’s eyes will be swollen shut by tomorrow morning-- Yang-- and there’s a cruel bruise spreading across one whole side of her ribcage from Blake.
“No,” Yang says sharply, pointing at both of them. “Nuh uh. We’re not doing that. All of this will heal and it’s nobody’s fault, okay? We’re okay, and we’re not doing that.”
She leans forward from her spot at the foot of the bed until she can grab at the pocket of Blake’s sweats and the hem of Weiss’s tshirt, pulling them both forward until they both drop down to sit next to her. Blake leans into her side automatically, hands curling around her arm easily and holding fast, and she tilts her forehead down onto Yang’s shoulder and breathes in slowly.
“We could run,” she says, not looking up from where she’s pressing her forehead into Yang’s shirt. “Disappear, start over, start new. Just the three of us.”
There’s no response from either of them, Yang’s breathing carefully unchanged but her muscles tensing; Weiss’s breath hitches audibly, and Blake pulls her head up slowly. Yang’s staring straight ahead, jaw tight, Weiss watching her carefully from her other side and tilting her head until she can see Blake as well.
“I’m not sure that’s an option,” Weiss says quietly. One hand curls up around Yang’s jaw, pulling gently until she turns. Weiss’s eyes shift past Yang for a moment to catch Blake’s jaw set and she shakes her head, and guil swirls in Blake’s stomach because of course it isn’t an option. It was never an option, taking Yang away from her family.
“I’m sorry,” Blake says into Yang’s shoulder, hands curling into her tshirt. “I know we can’t do that.”
Yang breathes in slowly, shoulders moving with the inhale and taking Blake with her, and she nods, one hand curling around Weiss’s wrist and the other gripping at Blake’s leg. She lets the breath out and falls backwards slowly, dropping back to lay on the bed and pulling them both with her until they’re all staring up at the ceiling together.
“We could push back,” Yang says eventually. She doesn’t look away from the ceiling, and Blake rolls over onto her side to look at her instead. Weiss rolls over onto her side as well, one hand pressing over Yang’s stomach gently. Blake reaches out without thinking about it, fingers tangling with Weiss’s. There’s something easy to it, easier than the last year of their relationship had been, easy and gentle in a way that belies the brutality of the fight they just had, the damage pushing back against every breath Blake takes. They’d always been good together, before, but they’d never been soft , but Yang’s hand drifts up to cover both of theirs, calloused and familiar and gentle, and Blake blinks at Weiss and nods.
“We could push back,” she echoes, and she curls closer to Yang’s side, dropping her chin onto Yang’s shoulder and watching Weiss out of one eye and Yang’s profile out of the other.
“We could,” Weiss says quietly, eyes distant the way they are when she’s dissecting a complex problem. “We’d need leverage, and logistical support, even if we didn’t want to make a direct run at any of--”
“Weiss,” Yang says, hand tightening over theirs. “We can do it.”
“Are we sure?” Weiss sits up, even though neither Blake nor Yang lets go of her hand. She pushes at her tangled hair, spine sharp under her shirt and shoulders tense, her free hand tapping rapidly against her knee. “These are some of the most powerful agencies in the world, and they hate each other, and we still managed to offend all of them enough that they worked together to kill all us. Are we sure that we can--”
“We can,” Blake says over her, sitting up smoothly and pulling Yang with her. She holds tighter to their hands and glares at Weiss’s profile until she looks over to meet her gaze. “We can figure it out.”
“Yeah,” Yang adds in. There’s a smile growing on her face, the one that means she’s about to say something to annoy the both of them, and Blake opens her mouth to cut her off because they’re all fragile right now and--
“Besides, we’re all in this together,” Yang rushes out, grinning triumphantly and shimmying her shoulders enough that it nearly knocks Weiss off balance and Blake groans and slaps at her shoulder.
“Didn’t we ban Disney references years ago?” Blake says with a whine.
“You’ll never stop me, Belladonna,” Yang says, full of gusto and drama, enough that it cuts through the crease in Weiss’s forehead and even she smiles.
“Are you sure?” she says again, even as she turns to face them both more fully, leaning forward to keep ahold of their hands.
“Absolutely,” Yang says, and Blake nods.
“Yes,” she says firmly. “We can do this. We can--”
“Go the distance?” Weiss supplies, one eyebrow quirking up, and Yang gasps so loudly Blake is sure everyone on the street outside heard it. The high five that follows is just as loud, as is Weiss’s shriek when Blake dives past Yang and flings her further back onto the bed. There’s a split second of triumph Blake’s staring at the ceiling and Weiss has her flipped into a jiu jitsu hold.
“You know,” Yang says conversationally from the foot of the bed. She rearranges herself so she’s sitting cross-legged, chin propped on her fists and eyes wide. “Honesty really is the best policy in a relationship, and honestly I’m extremely excited to watch you two wrassle it out now that I know how good you both are at it.”
“Yang, we don’t have time to--” Weiss cuts off into a sharp inhale when Blake kisses the side of her neck. “We need to make a plan--”
“We have a few hours,” Blake says against her throat, hips twisting and one leg hitching around her waist and flipping them both back over. Yang’s there immediately, pinning one of Weiss’s arms down while Blake pins the other, and Blake pulls on her tshirt with her free hand so she can kiss her, familiar and burning in a way that only Yang’s ever been able to do.
There’s a sharp noise from Weiss underneath them, and Blake smiles against Yang’s mouth and redirects her attention to Weiss. They still have a few hours to figure out how to deal with the fact that there’s about to be an open bounty on all of their heads, and she intends to spend it the best she can.
“So,” Blake says, squinting into the bright sunlight and exhaling heavily. It had been darker inside than she would’ve liked when negotiating with a collection of overpower suits who had put out a bounty on them, but they made it work. “Free and clear.”
“Free and clear,” Weiss repeats. She huffs out a soft sigh and straightens Blake’s collar absently.
“What do we do now?” Blake leans into Wiess’s touch and glances past her to Yang.
“Well.” Yang pushes her hands into her pockets and whistles innocently.
“Yang,” Weiss says sharply. “What did you do?”
“I mean--”
“Yang,” Blake says, hands on her hips to mirror Weiss’s posture.
“I might have called Ruby,” Yang says, shrugging and scuffing her boot on the sidewalk. “And might have suggested we-- I don’t know. Open up our own shop.”
“Our own shop.” Weiss glances over to Blake, eyes narrowing and jaw clenching. “Our own-- do you mean our own assassin-- ”
“I mean, maybe?” Yang scratches at the back of her head, sheepish and unashamed, and she shrugs again. “Come on, it’s a good idea. We can be our own bosses!”
“What does Ruby have to do with it?” Blake says, a hand on Weiss’s waist to stop her from yelling at Yang in the street.
“I’m your tech girl!”
“Jesus Christ,” Blake mutters, nearly shooting out of her own skin when Ruby appears behind her and Weiss. She squeezes between them and slings an arm around each of their shoulders.
“Did you really rope your baby sister into--”
“I’m taller than you, you know,” Ruby says over Weiss.
“That is not the point--”
“So it’s settled then,” Yang says brightly. She latches onto their hands, pausing to kick gently against Ruby’s shin, and grins at them. “We’re opening our own business together!”
“This is a terrible idea,” Weiss says.
“I don’t know,” Blake hums. “I think it could be fun.”
“Blake’s in, you’re outvoted, we’re doing this,” Yang rushes out. She flashes a wider grin at Weiss, head tilting playfully. “C’mon, Weiss, you know it’s a good idea.”
Blake cranes her neck forward so she can look past Ruby to where Weiss is standing stiff and still, running odds and options in her head.
“We could all work together,” she offers, quietly, carefully. “Like really together. No more secrets.”
“No more secrets,” Weiss says after a moment. She rolls her head back on her neck and stares up at the sky for long seconds before dragging her chin back down and nodding. “Okay. We start our own shop.”
“Yes!” Ruby crows out, launching away from Blake and Weiss so she can tackle Yang into a hug. Blake reaches across the empty space and curls her hand around Weiss’s, fingers sliding together easily, and pulls her closer so she can press a kiss to her temple.
“It’s going to be good,” she says softly into Weiss’s hairline, breathing in the way Weiss relaxes into her touch.
“It’s going to be so fun!” Ruby half-yells, already starting to pull Yang down the sidewalk.
“You realize we’re talking about murdering people,” Weiss says. She rolls her eyes at Blake and they follow Ruby and Yang, leaning close to each other.
“Yeah, but they’re all bad people,” Ruby says with a scoff. Yang laughs, loud and bright, and ruffles Ruby’s hair affectionately. She slows her stride until Blake and Weiss catch up, curling a hand around Blake’s waist until her thumb can hook into Blake beltloop and her fingertips can catch at the edges of Weiss’s blazer.
On her other side, Ruby is talking excitedly about a mesh network of some kind she’s been working on, but it levels into background noise for Blake because she’s walking down the sidewalk, free and clear from any bounties on her head, with Weiss on one side and Yang on the other and all three of them together.
It’s a good day.