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Beacon University. She hopes that she'll manage to truly escape from her father here, but there were some conditions to her coming here.
One: she has to major in business. She is taking over the Schnee Energy Corporation someday, and as the heiress she has to know her stuff about it. Didn’t say anything about double majors, so she’s double majoring with a combination of Business courses and electrical engineering courses. For the company, though.
Two: no making waves. Not that...she would.
Three: no making friends with any of them. Her father is still a racist, of course, and she doesn’t like that but she didn’t want to go to Atlas University either - so she’d play by his rules, play by his rules until she could be free of him when he died.
A little dark, but she will give anything to be rid of his influence.
A girl comes up to the door. She had moved ASAP. The less people she had to interact with, the better. She couldn’t avoid having a roommate, and her father refused to set money on the table so that she would be alone. One roommate was the best deal that she would get.
A girl dressed in black and red came into the room. “I think there was a mistake. I’m supposed to be rooming with my sister.”
“...who exactly are you?” she asks, looking up from her book.
“Um. Ruby Rose. We should be able to go down and fix this, my sister wll be here and they agreed to room me with her because I graduated early and going here is a big deal-”
“Do shut up, please. I can’t handle your dribble.”
The other girl - Ruby - looks hurt by that.
Why should she care if Ruby is hurt? She just met Ruby.
“Fine. I’ll talk to the administration alone, if you don’t want to also fix this.”
“Hey, sis!” a blonde yells from down the hall. “Come help me move stuff!”
...the two looked nothing alike.
“That’s your sister?” she asks.
“Yep! I’m so glad she’s here, we can get this sorted out--”
And then she notices that there’s one of Them across the hall. “Ask if your sister is rooming across the hall from us, please.”
“...okay?”
Yang holds up a keychain.
“There was sort of a mixup, I think you’re across from me.”
“Oh. You want to see Professor Goodwitch about it?”
“I don’t know, I’ll have to ask my roommate.”
“She’s across the hall from us. A numeric mixup.”
“You can’t change this. I’m not supposed to be around one of them.”
“Who’s...them?”
“Your sister’s roommate. Their kind.”
“Wow, okay, I-”
“I don’t want to be racist, okay? My father is sponsoring me, and he is, so I have to play by his rules until I can transfer enough money into my own accounts to make it out on my own merit.”
“What’s your last name?”
“Schnee.”
“I...see.”
“There are conditions that I have to fulfill to keep going here. One of those is my major. One of those is to not make any waves. And part of that not making waves is not to be friends with people like your sister’s roommate.”
“You know that isn’t good.”
“I’m trying to get out. I swear. But for now, I can’t. No switching. I’d rather be roommates with someone as hyperactive as you than be roommates with her. Because that breaks the conditions, and breaking conditions...that would mean I’d have to go to Atlas. My sister went to Atlas, and she’s in the military now to rebel against Father - trading one prison for another. I want to take over the company and make things right. Restore the honor to the Schnee name, instead of whatever twisted entity my father made it.”
“If we’re going to be making this mixup permanent, I need to tell you that I’m autistic. Sometimes I get overwhelmed, sometimes I infodump about things, sometimes I need help with emotional stuff - I’m not like most people. And I have a few sensory triggers, though we can handle those as they come up.”
She remains silent for a bit. “Okay.”
9½ months later
She stands in front of the door and takes a deep breath, knocking.
“Can I come in?”
The door opens up. Blake. “What do you want?” she asks, hostile.
With good reason. Weiss has shut her out all school year, and with the four of them sometimes meeting up for study sessions (gen ed stuff, but her and Ruby are both Engineering, so that works for both of them, even if it is different fields) it just felt like she had been avoiding Blake.
Which she is. But not anymore.
“I wanted to...apologize.”
“Must be hard for a Schnee to admit they’re wrong.”
“I’m sorry that I’ve avoided you all year. I was scared that we would become friends, and that would break the conditions that allow me to come to Beacon.”
“...Conditions?”
“I was going to Atlas at first. I applied to Beacon without Father’s knowledge, and when I got in I wanted to go - to be farther away from him, but he doesn’t know that. Anyways, there were a couple conditions. I had to major in something that would apply to my heiress status, hence the double Business and Electrical Engineering. And the other one was that I wasn’t allowed to make waves. A subset of that was that I wasn’t allowed to befriend people like you. Because Father’s racist, and I know that he’s wrong, but I still want him to...approve of me. He’s not doing anything right, but I still want him to approve of me.”
“Jeez.”
“I want to...be different from my father and the other faux aristocracy. I do not want to be like them. So, as long as we keep it on the DL…?”
“I accept your apology,” Blake says. “And we can work on being friends. Over the summer.”
“I’m going back to Atlas.”
“You have a phone. You can text. And I’m sure there’s one person in particular you want to keep being friends with out of us, at least.”
She sighs. It’s good to be forgiven. “When we’re back, then?”
“When we’re back.”
She doesn’t even think about Blake’s comment on “one person in particular” until she’s going to bed that night.
She’ll miss Yang and Ruby when she’s back in Atlas. Especially Ruby, with her enthusiasm for engineering and tendency to infodump on it (she took notes, so that she could discuss it with Ruby later and ask questions).
Ruby.
Oh no.
They’re two years apart, 17 and 19, is it weird for Weiss to have a crush on her?
Ruby’s a girl, too, that’s not right, is it?
And then Weiss remembers that Yang is openly a lesbian.
Does she think Yang is somehow bad for being a lesbian? No. Is Weiss a hypocrite? Absolutely.
She sighs, resigning herself to suffering from an unrequited crush.
And now they’re here. Almost two years after that realization, their third year of university, and she still hasn’t confessed.
Yang found out at the beginning of the next year, during one of their study sessions. They tended to pair off, because Blake was criminology and some of her courses were medical and Yang was a nursing student - and Ruby and her were both engineering.
Ruby sometimes spent those study sessions just...talking and stimming with the ruffles on her clothes and Weiss just still finds it ridiculously endearing - how can one person be so adorable?
Even now, at the end of their third year, with an apartment that they actually live in together, Weiss finds it hard to say anything.
Father was displeased when he found out about the apartment. She left out Blake when persuading him to let her move. It hurts, but better to not make waves. Better to keep herself safe.
As long as she goes back over the summer, it’s okay that she lives here during the school year.
She promised Yang that she would confess this year. It’s going to be hard to confess.
“Ruby, are we still on for our walk tomorrow evening?”
“You mean, when Blake asked us to all be out of the apartment so she can have sex with her boyfriend? Yeah.”
“Good.” She turns over. “Good night, Ruby.”
“Night, Weiss.”
Yang’s out with the Polycule (Jaune, Pyrrha, Nora, Ren), and is not coming with them on the walk. Good.
She places an order at a florist place for a bouquet. Red roses partially because she’s cliche and also because Ruby’s last name is quite literally Rose.
It’s perfect. The weather is good, and the evening will be warm.
She picks up the bouquet and goes to meet Ruby at the park.
“Hey Weiss!” Ruby says. Her enthusiasm…
“I have something for you.” She presents the bouquet. “Can we call this a romantic date?”
“I-I-I-I”
She goes to comfort Ruby. “I’m sorry that I overwhelmed you. Take a deep breath, follow my snaps.” She snaps a constant rhythm, and Ruby is soon breathing steadier. “Can you...tell me why? If you’re comfortable. No pressure.”
“I can’t do romance.”
“So, you’re...aromantic?” The word feels weird to say, but it’s something.
“And asexual. Could you look up ‘queerplatonic’ for me when we get home?”
“Sure. For now, just a walk?”
“Could you...throw out the roses?”
Weiss dumps them in the trash can. “No problem.”
They embark on the trail through the park. It’s nice, the crisp night. She can almost forget that her crush doesn’t and never will reciprocate her love.
A queerplatonic relationship (or “QPR”) is one which is more intense and intimate than what most people regard as a friendship, not fitting the traditional romantic couple model or the traditional bounds of friendship. [ Source ]
A QPR. Could she have that with Ruby? Would her romantic feelings get in the way?
She thinks that maybe it would actually help her get over Ruby, having a relationship like this. It would almost be nice. No pressures, and it’s still a partnership. Just not quite the partnership that she would want, but she’s willing to compromise for Ruby.
She thinks that she could maybe get over her feelings. Maybe.
“I did research into queerplatonic relationships,” she tells Ruby the night before her flight to Atlas. “If you want, we can be in one.”
Ruby flaps her hands a little bit. “That would be amazing!!” Weiss can practically hear the exclamation points, and she smiles.
“That’s great.”
And it really is.