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“I don’t think this is a good idea.” Yang paces the length of the kitchen and back, long legs eating up the space from fridge to table and back in three strides each way, hands shoved into her pockets and shoulders tight with nervous energy.
“Yang, come on.” Ruby shoves a foot out from her spot on the counter, barely missing Yang’s ribs when she dodges without breaking stride. “Please?”
“It’s been years ,” Yang mumbles to the tiles. She pivots by the table and sets back to the fridge. Ruby lands a hit this time, toes glancing between Yang’s ribs, and it throws her rhythm off by virtue of sending her stumbling into the opposite counter with a whuff . “Rude!”
“It’s my wedding , Yang.” Ruby folds her arms over her chest and sets her chin stubbornly. “One day. You can be around them for one measly day. You don’t even have to talk to them.”
“Since when do you even want a formal wedding!” Yang gestures wildly, nearly knocking over a hanging rack full of pots and pans that cost enough to feed a family of six for a year, and Ruby levels a warning glare at her.
“Break my kitchen and sister or no, I’ll chop you into pieces,” Ruby says firmly. “I have a $400 meat cleaver that’ll do the trick. And I don’t care either way, but Penny’s parents want a formal wedding and she wants to make them happy, so that’s what we’re doing, which means I need bridesmaids, which means you are my maid of honor and they are going to be my other bridesmaids. Okay?”
Yang groans, dropping her head back against the cabinets dramatically. “Fine,” she says with a whine. “But don’t invite Raven. Only condition.”
“Deal,” Ruby says quickly. She hops off the counter and dusts off her hands. “Glad to know you only had to throw a tantrum like a four year old for an hour before agreeing to be your only sister’s maid of honor. Now get out, I have to go open the restaurant.”
“I hate you so much,” Yang mutters, even as she lets herself be shepherded to the front door and shoves her feet into her shoes. “This is the worst idea you’ve ever had.”
“They were your best friends once,” Ruby says, momentarily gentle. “And they’re still some of my best friends. Just-- one day, okay? No bachelorette party, no rehearsal dinner, nothing like that. Just stand up with me, be cordial to them, and then you never have to see them again.”
Yang whines, slumping back against Ruby as she’s shoved out the door, half for show and half because she has six months to prepare herself for being in the same room as Blake Belladonna and Weiss Schnee for the first time in ten years.
Ruby yells for her when Yang’s halfway down the block, and Yang pauses, looking back.
“I was never going to invite Raven, you moron,” she shouts, and Yang pauses, groans, considers how much trouble she would get in for murdering her sister and if manipulation into facing her former best friends is a justifiable legal excuse for fratricide.
Weiss Schnee, in college, was a myriad of things: composed, punctual, formal, a force of nature that only the most reckless among them would challenge. Ten years on, on the morning of Ruby’s wedding, when Yang’s showed up ten minutes late to the venue setup to help position chairs and finalize the flowers, she finds that Weiss is still composed, and punctual, and formal, and a force of nature that’s upgraded from a tropical storm to a hurricane, based on the level of glare she sets on Yang.
“You’re late,” is the first thing she says to Yang in a decade. Her hair is swept back elegantly, neatly; her dress is simple, her heels towering enough to make anyone forget that she is, in fact, a whole five feet nothing in height. Yang smooths her hands over her own dress, torn between appreciating Ruby’s choice for her and hating how underdressed she feels next to Weiss, and doesn’t respond except to press her lips together and march right past Weiss. Weiss is exactly the same she was in college, but more , and Yang is more, too-- she has a business, a thriving career, success in her own right that no one would ever question and that she wears proudly-- but Weiss, diminutive stature aside, has always had the confidence to make everyone around her seem small.
Once upon a time, when she was younger and bolder and things were simpler, Yang had loved that about her, fiercely and proudly. Now it makes her want to sink through the floor. She turns her attention to the caterer who she’s been instructed to assist and smiles as wide as she can, ready to busy herself with literally anything to distract herself from the looming fact of having to be in the immediate proximity of Weiss and Blake in three hours.
Blake is the last of them to arrive, immediately drafted by the florists to help distribute bouquets to reception tables. Weiss is exactly the same she was in college, but Blake-- Blake who had traipsed around in flannels and Doc Martens like a temporally displaced Bikini Kill roadie, hair tumbling halfway down her back and nails bitten to the quick-- is something new, hair cut wavy and short, nails neat and painted dark blue to match her bowtie and the dresses Yang and Weiss are both wearing, her suit cut neat and tailored well.
She turns after setting a vase on a table and catches Yang staring and Yang nearly drops the crate of napkins in her hands when Blake simply raises an eyebrow at her, hands sliding casually into her pants pockets. Yang clears her throat and looks away, which proves a terrible idea, because her eyes then land on Weiss, who’d been looking at her looking at Blake, an unreadable expression on her face, and an old ache flashes in Yang’s throat.
Weiss turns away first with a patented Schnee sneer that even now, after so long, Yang knows has no real weight behind it. She disappears out of the room and Yang, without meaning to, without thinking about it, follows.
The estate the Polendinas rented for the wedding is massive and fashions itself a castle, which makes about as much sense as anything Penny’s family does-- Yang loves them, she does, but they’re precisely as weird as Penny is, and it works because only someone as endearingly odd as Penny could fall so very in love with a walking jack-in-the-box like Ruby-- and the room Yang walks into seems to serve no regular purpose and is, currently full of six sets of armor, a collection of what appear to be antique card tables, the towering wedding cake, and one Schnee vice president with ramrod posture but her head bowed and one hand pressed over her chest.
She turns with a whirl, lips pressed tight enough together that they go as pale as the rest of her, eyes bluer than ever with the navy of her dress drawing them brighter against her complexion, and she freezes mid-turn when she sees Yang.
“Did you need something?” she says formally, because Weiss is always composed, always punctual, always formal, and Yang stares at her and for one yawning, gaping minute, misses her with enough force to power an entire city. Instead she stares, hands hanging at her sides, unsure of what to say, of why she followed, of how to deal with the fact that there was a time once when there only two certainties in her life and one of them was the family she was born into and the other was the family she made out of Weiss and Blake and that she’s spent the last ten years with a hole in her ribs missing the latter.
“If you have something to say, say it,” Weiss snaps out. She turns more fully to face Yang, and Yang’s mouth goes dry, because Weiss’s anger is legendary and, even when it’s directed at her, exhilarating. She folds her arms over her chest, glaring at Yang, and one navy-painted fingernail taps against her arm expectantly. “You followed me in here, you know.”
She pauses, mouth turning down, and something in Yang’s stomach drops because she doesn’t know what to say but she can see the words on Weiss’s lips before they come, barely has time to brace herself before they land.
“I guess Blake wasn’t available to follow this time.”
Yang’s hands snap into fists at her sides and her shoulders jerk forwards, the swish of the skirt on her dress the only thing stopping her because it’s her bridesmaid dress, because this is Ruby’s wedding, because she can’t get into a fight with Weiss Schnee at Ruby’s wedding.
Something cold and victorious settles in Weiss’s smile, and Yang’s skin burns, anger finally coalescing into something she can verbalize and it’s all on the tip of her tongue when the door opens and, of course, it’s Blake who walks through and then, well. Then things go from bad to worse.
Weiss’s shoe won’t stop tapping on the ground, rhythmic and slow, precise, exacting. Yang stares up at the sky, shoulders aching and neck protesting, and considers how much worse the day would get if she kicked Weiss hard enough to send her $4,000 stiletto flying into the lake.
On her other side, Blake’s lounging about, seemingly unconcerned, legs sprawled out lazily. She tilts her shoes left and then right in a silent match to Weiss’s tapping, and the sun arching high overhead flashes in the polished leather as she does.
It would absolutely make the day worse, but Yang could probably throw both of them in the lake and it would be unequivocally worth it. Her hands flex into fists. If she keeps her temper then maybe-- maybe -- the day can be salvaged. Maybe Ruby won’t kill her. Maybe.
A particularly aggressive shift of Blake’s oxford sends a volley of light ricocheting up just as Yang pulls her chin back down in an attempt to salvage her cervical spine, and the remnants of her patience evaporate.
“Do you mind?” she snaps out, aggressive enough that Weiss pauses, mid tap, and glances over impassively.
“Do you?” Weiss says, calm and cold, and Yang looks away from glaring at Blake long enough to glare at Weiss.
“I wasn’t talking to you ,” she snarls.
“Of course not,” Weiss says coolly. “When have you ever?”
It draws a low whistle from Blake and lances deep into Yang’s chest, a decade’s worth of empty history dredging up in four words, and her fists clench tighter, knuckles aching.
“You’re the one who left,” Yang says, low and surprisingly steady for how the entire world is tilting around the bench they’re lined up on.
“You didn’t stop me,” Weiss hisses. She leans forward enough to glare past Yang to Blake, who’s still lounging like she’s waiting for the bus, eyebrows raised by eyes locked onto her shoes. “Because you told me to leave.”
Blake’s head tilts to one side, lips pursing, focus not wavering from her shoes. She finally moves, shifting to sit up straighter, mouth opening, only to be cut off when a shadow falls over Yang.
“You three,” the police officer says gruffly. “Let’s go.”
“What?” Yang says stupidly, because of course she sounds like an idiot, sandwiched between Weiss and Blake. Some things never change.
“Get in the car,” he says, jerking his thumb over his shoulder to the police cruiser behind him. “You should all fit.”
“Is this really necessary?” Weiss starts, in that voice that Yang knows, that she’s never forgotten, the one that talked them out of more trouble than it ever had any right to in college, the one that got them into too many bars and out of too many drinking tickets, the one that’s brimming with a confidence that has nothing to do with the number of zeroes in her bank account and everything to do with the fact that there has yet to be a situation Weiss Schnee would find herself in that she hadn’t prepared herself for.
Excepting, apparently, a drunk threesome with her two best friends on graduation day. And, now, getting arrested the morning of Ruby’s wedding.
“Yes,” the cop says bluntly. “Up.”
His enormous hand, meaty and sweaty, circles Weiss’s upper arm like it’s nothing, and something boiling and uncomfortable twists in Yang’s stomach at the sight.
“Get your hand off her,” she snaps out without meaning to, shoving up to her feet. Her broad shoulders barely miss slamming into his chin and he stumbles back, face red and hand landing on the baton hanging from his belt.
“You want to add assaulting an officer to your charges?” he snaps out.
“She didn’t touch you,” Blake says mildly from the bench. She lifts herself gracefully up from the bench, as if her hands aren’t also handcuffed behind her back, and slides up to stand at Yang’s side, a placid expression on her face. “You don’t have grounds for an assault charge, officer.”
“What do you even--”
Blake twists around, a business card somehow between her fingers, wiggling it at him and raising her eyebrows until he glares and takes it. His eyes go wide and his jaw sets, and he shoves the card back into her palm.
“In the car,” he grumbles out, and then, as if it pains him, “ Please .”
It’s a short, uncomfortable ride to the police station, the three of them absolutely crammed into the backseat of the cruiser, Yang in the middle with her knees practically crushed up to her chest, Weiss glowering on one side and Blake obnoxiously calm on the other. They’re shushed dramatically when another officer meets the first to lead them into the station, even though not even Weiss had said anything-- though her glare had managed to reach at least ninety decibels, at least--the whole ride, and are deposited in the one holding cell in the tiny station.
Yang rubs at her wrists with a sigh as the cuffs are removed, stretches her arms over her head, scrubs her hands over her face. It’ll ruin her makeup, but she’s in jail , two hours before her sister’s wedding, so it’s not like her makeup is the largest of her concerns right now.
“What did you show him?” Weiss says eventually. She’s settled delicately on the edge of the bench running along one side of the cell, one knee folded over the other and arms crossed over her chest, chin held high. If it weren’t for the redness to her wrists and the dusty cell, it’d be hard to tell she’d just been arrested.
Blake doesn’t move for long seconds from where she’s leaning against the opposite wall, ankles crossed and fingers working to loosen the knot in her tie, until she raises one eyebrow.
“Business card,” she says simply. She tugs the tie loose and unbuttons the collar on her shirt and lets out a low breath, and Yang looks between the two of them, Weiss and her careful sophistication, Blake and her casual elegance, and feels more out of place for her too-broad shoulders and too-simple dress-- forget that Ruby had picked the simple style herself, that Yang’s always taken pride in the work she’s put into strengthening her body over the course of her lifetime-- than for the fact that she’s in jail and going to miss her sister’s wedding.
“Clearly,” Weiss says, slow and annoyed. “But what do you do that put the fear of God in him?”
“I’m a lawyer,” Blake says simply, shrugging, hands in her pockets.
“Of course you’re a goddamn lawyer, Blake, I helped you study for the LSAT,” Weiss snaps out.
Blake rolls her eyes and digs the crumpled card out of her pocket, folds it into fourths, frisbees it across the cell. It spirals through the air haphazardly and Weiss barely manages to sandwich it between her hands before it hits her in the face, drawing a low laugh from Blake, and there’s something familiar pulling at Yang’s chest because this-- Blake’s calm, Weiss’s confidence, the way they play off each other-- that she’s convinced herself she hasn’t missed for ten years.
“ACLU?” Weiss says once she’s unfolded the card. She glances over at Yang, and then to Blake. “That-- makes sense.”
“Glad you approve.” Blake shrugs again, still leaning back against the wall lazily, as if there isn’t a tinge to her cheeks, barely visible in the poor lighting on her dark skin. “I assume you’re raking in millions for Papa Schnee?”
Weiss stiffens, the card crumpling in her fists, and Yang winces because this is also familiar, the way no one could ever needle at Weiss the way Blake could, the way no one was ever willing to hit back as hard against Blake as Weiss was.
“Can you two just not fight for once?” Yang snaps out. “The wedding is in two hours and--”
“Oh, now you care about the wedding?” Weiss says thinly. “An hour ago all you cared about was--”
“Of course I care about the wedding!” Yang says, too loud for the small cell they’re in, and it’s satisfying, the way her voice booms off of the concrete walls. “It’s Ruby , Weiss! My sister!”
“And my best friend!” Weiss throws back. “You think I don’t want to be there for her?”
“You’ve got a funny way of showing it.” Yang plants her hands on her hips and glares down at Weiss, Blake momentarily forgotten. “You threw a dove at me, Weiss!”
“Who the hell actually has doves at their wedding anyways!” Weiss bellows. She’s made it to her feet at some point, and her heels are towering and she’s honestly some sort of miracle worker that she can stand on them, much less gesticulate with quite as much gusto as she is, but then again, Weiss Schnee has always been a miracle worker in a variety of ways. “And it’s not like it was an actual dove, you absolute crybaby, it was a cage. It weighed like three pounds.”
“It broke a stained glass window!”
“And knocked over the cake,” Blake offers languidly. She still hasn’t moved, is still leaning against the wall with her bowtie loose around her neck, being lazy and hot and annoying, a counterpoint to Weiss being hyperactive and hot and annoying, and Yang presses the heel of her hands into her eyes.
“Excuse you,” Weiss says indignantly. “ Yang knocked over the cake, thank you very much. And you were the one who managed to knock over a suit of armor and break a three hundred year old table!”
Blake’s mouth snaps shut and, for the first time since the cops showed up at the venue, she looks properly chastised. Weiss looks mildly satisfied, just for a moment, and something flares in Yang.
“I knew this would happen,” she mutters. “I-- I told Ruby this was a terrible idea. I told her and she threatened me with a meat cleaver and still--”
“You knew that princess Schnee over here would throw a birdcage at you and that you’d respond by challenging her to a duel with a lance you found on a wall?” Blake recites in the maddeningly calm way she has.
“Again: armor. Table.” Weiss stares, unimpressed, at Blake. “Of all of the property damage claims in question, yours are the most expensive, I’m fairly certain.”
“Stained glass!” Blake points indignantly at Weiss, who points right back at her, with all the height and maturity of a seven year old.
“Antique table!”
“God, I cannot believe you assholes two ruined my sister’s wedding,” Yang groans out, slumping down onto the bench and dropping her head into her hands. “I hate you both so much.”
“Excuse you,” Weiss snaps out. “ You were the one who felt the need to dredge up ancient history.”
“I didn’t say anything about it!”
“No, you just decided to bring medieval weaponry into the equation because, what, you don’t like my dress?”
Yang’s mouth snaps shut, because she doesn’t have a comeback for that, and she slumps back. “I--fine. Whatever. Sorry I grabbed a-- you know.”
“A lance?” Weiss says drily, eyebrows lifting, and it’s so familiar, so calming, that Yang almost laughs and Blake does, quiet and easy.
Yang shrugs, sighs, scrubs at her face. “I was mad.” She pauses, drags her gaze from Weiss to Blake, back again. “I am mad. I guess I never stopped.”
Silence stretches between them, the cell small but cavernous suddenly, and Yang drops her head back into her hands, focuses instead on the ways she’s going to have to prostrate herself in front of her entire family to make up for this over the rest of her life. Maybe she’ll be lucky and the weird Polendina family will find it funny. Maybe if she pays for their lost security deposit on the venue.
“Can’t believe we’re going in the goddamn clink,” she mutters into her hands. “Instead of Ruby’s wedding.”
“It’s not exactly central lockup,” Blake drawls. She shrugs out of her jacket and hangs it over the bars on the door. “We’re in rural Connecticut, Yang. Ruby’s getting married at a venue that costs, like, a couple hundred grand to rent. This pretentious white people territory. I promise you’re safe from the drug cartels and violent offenders.”
Yang’s response-- the one she’s sure would’ve been scathing and would have knocked Blake down a peg from being hot and charming and suave with her vest and loose bowtie and sleeves rolled up to the elbow now-- is cut off by an officer appearing and clearing his throat at them.
“You’re free to go,” he says gruffly.
“We are?” Weiss says, ever suspicious. “Based on what?”
“Based on I don’t care.” He unlocks the door and tosses an envelope with Yang’s phone and wallet to her, the same to Blake, Weiss’s purse to her. “Not my problem. Now for God’s sake, please take your bickering somewhere that isn’t my office.”
“I’m not sure--” Weiss starts to say.
“Absolutely!” Yang says over her, slapping a hand over her mouth. “Thanks so much. We’ll be on our way now.” She drags Weiss bodily out of the cell, flashing a broad grin at the officer. Weiss lets out a muffled yell behind her hand, but Yang doesn’t let go until they’re almost outside.
“There’s still half an hour,” she hisses out, fumbling with her phone. “If we call a car we can still be there in--”
Weiss’s elbow slams into her ribs and Yang nearly drops her phone. “What the--oh,” she mutters. She shoves her phone into her dress pocket and clears her throat. On either side of her, Blake and Weiss both look at the ground, and Yang scuffs a shoe against the asphalt.
“Hi, Mom,” she mumbles, glancing up and wincing when her mother’s absolutely unimpressed expression glares her into submission from where she’s leaning against her car at the curb. “So about the whole-- uh--”
“Later,” Summer says. She’s wearing sunglasses, thank God; Yang’s absolutely sure there’s no way she’d be able to handle the infamous silver glare that sent every single one of her friends running for the hills when they caused trouble as kids. “Come on, you three. Tai’s stalling as much as he can and Penny is about as chill as they come, but Ruby’s already nervous about today.”
“Yes ma’am,” Blake mumbles.
“Of course, Ms. Rose,” Weiss says, clear and calm.
“Weiss Schnee, I swear to God, I told you almost fifteen years ago to never call me that,” Summer says, but her glare finally breaks and her crossed arms fall, and she smiles. “Come here, you two. It’s been too long.”
There’s a moment of hesitation, and then Blake breaks first, stepping into her arms and letting herself fall into a hug. Weiss waits and then follows, sinking into Summer’s arms as well, and Yang, hanging back, twists her hands behind her back because Weiss had spent every Christmas in college at their house and it had been almost harder to tell her mother than her sister that Blake and Weiss had disappeared from her life.
“Yang, sweetie, come on,” Summer says, tilting her head towards the car. Weiss and Blake are already in the back seat, and Yang shakes her head, swipes at her burning eyes, lets herself bury her face against her mother’s shoulder for just a moment, even though she’s got six inches of height on her and it makes her spine ache.
“Okay,” Summer says briskly once they’re all inside. “First: we get Ruby married, and you’re all on your best behavior, because today is for her. And Penny, too, I guess, but mostly Ruby, let’s be honest. And later, you three idiots are going to sit down and talk , because this has gone on long enough. And after that , you’re going to explain to me why I had to lie through my teeth to the venue owner about how a taxidermy deer got speared with a lance and also why we’re one dove short, why the three of you are going to have to pay astronomical cleaning fees to get buttercream and fondant out of a ten thousand dollar Persian rug, and how you wound up arrested by the most Barney Fife police department I’ve ever seen in real life, okay?”
“Yes ma’am,” they all chorus, and Yang, for the first time since she walked into the venue that morning, somehow relaxes.
They rush into the building only five minutes late, skidding in at Ruby’s side with flushed cheeks and bouquets in hand, Yang holding onto Blake’s while she fumbles with her bowtie.
“For God’s sake,” Weiss hisses out, shoving her flowers into Yang’s hands as well. “Stop that.” She slaps Blake’s hands away and, in the span of three and a half seconds, has Blake’s tie knotted neatly, collar straightened, lapels laying flat, and hair neatened. Blake clears her throat awkwardly and Yang does the same, both of them staring dumbly as Weiss holds her hand out expectantly.
“Flowers, Yang,” Weiss snaps.
“Oh,” Yang says, brilliantly, and shoves them out in front of her with exactly as much eloquence as she can speak with at this exact moment.
“I’m going to murder all three of you later,” Ruby says through a smile, but she’s radiant anyways and Yang’s stupidity vanishes because yes, Weiss’s dexterity is something of a distraction, past issues notwithstanding, but her little sister is getting married and her chest aches with happiness.
“I love you,” she says, and it’s not enough, it’ll never be enough, but she kisses Ruby on the cheek, and then her father, and then into place with Blake and Weiss.
The reception, somehow, goes off without a hitch. The food from Ruby’s restaurant is, unsurprisingly, perfect, and it only takes Yang and Penny hunting Ruby down a combined four times to keep her away from the staff and stop her from micromanaging them. Whatever lie Summer told the venue staff about the cake worked wonders and, following some furtive texting at the front of the reception from Weiss, an emergency delivery of gourmet miniature cupcakes arrives just before dessert. Judging by the squeal of delight from Penny and the way it makes Ruby beam, Yang’s fairly certain they could’ve just saved whatever assload of cash they spent on the cake in the first place and gone straight to cupcakes.
No one makes fun of her too egregiously when she tears up during her speech, except for Ruby, because Ruby’s a brat, but Ruby’s a brat who’s getting married and also Yang very nearly ruined her wedding because she and her college best friends all spent a decade stewing in emotional repression and dysfunction, so she wouldn’t really have a leg to stand on even if she wanted to.
Yang nurses the same glass of champagne the whole night, spinning around the dance floor with her sister, her mother, her father; she lets Penny twirl her around like she weighs nothing, because Penny is ungodly strong and also delightful and, now, family, and she does adore her. She keeps tabs on Weiss and Blake from the corner of her her eye the whole night as she keeps a smile on her face. It’s easier than she’d thought it would be, after spending six months dreading sharing space with them again, her smiles honest and laughter clear.
“So who stabbed the deer?” Ruby says after Yang’s spun her around again.
Yang raises an eyebrow at her. “Are you sure you want to have that conversation right now?”
“Mom and Dad think they hid it from me, but like.” Ruby shrugs, twirls under Yang’s arm, blows a strand of hair out of her eyes. “They’re both terrible at lying to us, and also Penny told me.”
“Traitor,” Yang mumbles.
“She’s my wife, ” Ruby informs her, and then pauses, splitting into a wide grin, and Yang nearly steers them right into another dancing couple accidentally.
“She sure is, kid,” Yang says fondly. “You did good, you know?”
“Yeah.” Ruby’s quiet for a moment, solemn. “I always thought it’d be you first, you know. When we were in college-- with Blake and Weiss--”
She cuts herself off carefully, glancing over to where Blake’s chatting with Penny, Weiss at the other end of the table with Summer, and then back to Yang and the way she’s tensed up.
“I know what happened with you three,” Ruby says after an agonizing moment, and Yang’s universe tilts. “I’ve known for years. When we started planning the wedding I knew-- I knew that there was a chance you three, in the same room-- that it could go to absolute shit.”
“You knew ?”
“Blake’s always been a lightweight.” Ruby shrugs. “They’re my best friends, too, Yang. It’s different than with you, but they-- I love them, too. And the first time Blake dated a girl, at least that she told me about, she-- it all sort of came out.”
“Of course,” Yang mutters, cheeks hot. Of course her little sister’s known about the drunk threesome she had with her best friends ten years ago and how it blew up their entire friendship and, today, wound up with an impaled stuffed deer and a murdered wedding cake. “I might have stabbed the deer, but Weiss definitely started it.”
“Uh huh,” Ruby says drily, but her eyes are bright, her smile wide, and Yang fights the urge to sweep her up into the kind of bear hug that always makes her shriek. “I don’t really care all that much. Penny doesn’t either. As long as we don’t have to deal with paying for the clean-up, it’s a no harm no foul issue as far as we’re concerned.”
“You’re a good kid, Ruby Rose,” Yang says, slapping a kiss on her forehead. “Someone raised you right. I wonder who that could be. Tall strapping blonde, maybe? Legs for days, biceps the size of cantaloupes?”
Ruby makes a disgusted sound, shoving her away, and Yang laughs, loud and happy, because the day started terribly but her sister is happy and married, and-- judging by the way Penny is positively bouncing with excitement over by the exit-- about to leave for her honeymoon.
“Time to go, munchkin,” Yang says, and Ruby’s eyes go wide.
“Don’t you dare--” she starts, and then lets out a yell when Yang throws her over one shoulder.
“Everyone say goodbye to the brides!” she yells out, thumping Ruby on the back. “They’re off to go climb Mount Everest because no one ever told them what a honeymoon is actually for!”
She carts Ruby around the dancefloor with great aplomb, waving majestically as she does. She nearly trips over her feet when she passes by Weiss, who’s watching with a glass of whiskey dangling from one hand and her chin propped in the other, eyebrows lifted and mouth tilting up into a smile that makes her eyes burn bright. It almost happens again when she traipses by Blake, tie and collar loose again this late into the evening and golden eyes scalding as she watches.
Yang swallows and continues on, depositing Ruby at Penny’s side and accepting the punch Ruby slams into her arm with a grin. She hugs the both of them and then slides to the side to let her parents have their turn and curls into her dad’s side once he’s said his goodbyes.
“A lance , Yang?” he mumbles into her hair, even as his eyes shine, bright and happy and locked on Ruby, and she groans and slaps at his stomach.
“God, am I ever going to live this down?”
“Absolutely not,” her mother says, settling at her other side and patting at her hair. “What sort of parents would we be if we didn’t make fun of you until the end of time? It wasn’t even a clean kill, Yang, honestly.”
The venue empties slowly after Ruby and Penny leave, and Yang drags her feet. She follows her parents around, letting herself be shown off, since they apparently love to do that when they aren’t mocking her endlessly for her shameful jousting or social choices-- yes, both their daughters are prodigies; yes, this one works in robotics; no, actually, the Terminator movies aren’t going to happen and of course no one has ever made that joke before-- because it’s easier than facing down the conversation with Weiss and Blake she’d promised she’d have.
“Stop procrastinating,” her mother mutters at her when Yang agrees to a lab tour for the fifth couple who assures her that their son is, in fact, the next Stephen Hawking and is probably, in reality, a brat with jam all over his hands who’s going to ruin at least one of her prototypes.
“I’m networking,” Yang says through a smile.
“You’re being a chickenshit,” Summer says sweetly, and then, more loudly, “So sorry, everyone, but look at the time! We have to close the building up by midnight!”
“A chickenshit ,” Yang mutters, scandalized. The last of the guests in the ballroom slowly make their way out, shuffling and tired. “Your own daughter!”
“Make me proud, grasshopper,” her mother says, unfazed. She pulls a set of keys out of her purse and tosses them to Yang. “If you leave, lock up. Apparently there are antiquities here.”
“Unbelievable,” Yang grumbles, affronted, even as her father ambles up, jacket slung over his shoulder, and shrugs.
“You know, maybe if you hadn’t wound up arrested, you’d have more of a leg to stand on, kiddo.”
“My own parents.” She shakes her head, grasping at her heart, because melodramatic antics land somewhere between networking and cleaning toilets on the list of things she’d rather do than have this conversation.
“Bye, sweetie,” Summer says over her shoulder, already halfway out of the building. Tai glances back and salutes her solemnly, pausing only to point to the bar, unmanned but still stocked, and she sighs. Might as well.
She finds them in the makeshift kitchen the catering team had used. The caterers had left ages ago, taking their setup with them, but the smells linger, familiar spice mixes that Ruby favors hanging in the air, and it makes Yang smiles. There’s only one table left with chairs and a final platter scattered with miniature cupcakes, and Weiss sits at one side, Blake at the other, the both of them studiously focusing on their phones instead of each other.
Yang breathes in deep and, bottle in one hand and shoes in the other, crosses the room and fills the third chair at the table.
“We don’t have to do this tonight, you know.” It’s Weiss who speaks first, not looking up from her phone, and Yang raises and eyebrow and pops the cork out of the bottle and offers it to her.
Weiss accepts it silently, inspecting the label with a sniff, and Yang rolls her eyes.
“Don’t act like you it doesn’t pass your standards,” she says. “And we do have to do this tonight, because we all promised my mother, and not a one of us is willing to cross her more than once today.”
“Right,” Weiss murmurs, and then takes a sip of the whiskey. Her eyes slide shut as she does, and Yang smirks, glancing victoriously over at Blake, but she’s focused entirely on Weiss, and Yang deflates. Weiss swallows, licks her lips, opens her eyes. “This is good. I’m surprised you remembered.”
“Please,” Yang scoffs. “Your whiskey taste is like clockwork, Weiss. Nikka coffey grain--”
“One large ice cube,” Blake finishes for her, quiet, voice nearly disappearing into the dark room.
Weiss glances down at the bottle in her hands, one thumb sweeping over the label. She clears her throat, hands it back to Yang, who hands it to Blake.
“Should we just rip the bandaid off the whole thing?” Blake says instead of drinking. She glances up to Yang, to Weiss, and Yang wishes for the bottle back, just to have something to do with her hands.
“I don’t know how to talk to either of you anymore,” Yang says instead, because it’s the only thing she does know how to say. Once she could say anything to them, could let anything spill out past her lips and know that even if they didn’t understand her words they would understand her. Once they were half of the fulcrum that her entire life rested on, until the day they weren’t and she had to learn to live without them, still functional but less steady, less sure. “I-- it’s like a bomb went off. One second things were fine, and then everything was destroyed.”
“It was,” Weiss says thinly. She resettles in her chair so she can face Blake more fully, and Blake slumps back in her chair, one hand rubbing at the side of her face. “We could have-- there was still an opportunity to--”
“You called me a coward!” There’s no fight behind it, Blake’s voice tapering off near the end, and Yang’s eyes volley from Blake to Weiss, because she remembers this like it was yesterday--
“Should we--um--” Weiss says, uncharacteristically inelegant, clinging to a corner of the blanket up over her chest. “Talk about--”
“I don’t think so,” Blake says shortly, and Yang, between them, knees curled up to her chest and barely covered by the blankets, blinks through her hangover.
“What?”
“Blake,” Weiss says carefully. “I think--”
“There’s nothing to talk about,” Blake says, too sharp for five in the morning, too sharp for a hangover, too sharp for the three of them crammed into her bed in the apartment they’ve shared for two years.
“We slept together,” Yang says, and winces because it sounds stupid, to say it so baldly, but also she’s barely awake and there’s half a bottle of tequila gnawing at her stomach and beating at her skull, and she had sex with her two best friends last night, slept with her head on Blake’s shoulder and Weiss’s forehead pressed to her back, and in spite of the hangover she’d woken up happy, but now everything has taken a sour turn.
“We were drunk,” Blake counters.
“Blake,” Weiss says again, firmer, and even still waking up Yang can see something dangerous and familiar rising in Weiss’s eyes, something she knows and she’s never had to actually defend against. “You’re being--”
“Weiss,” Yang says carefully, glancing over at Blake. No one has a temper as dangerous as Weiss’s, except for Blake, and three minutes ago caught between them was exactly where she thought she wanted to spend her day but now--
“We can’t ignore this, Yang!” Weiss says, heated and angry and glaring past her to Blake, who’s glaring right back now.
“There’s nothing to talk about,” Blake says, cheeks burning dark.
“You can’t run away from the fact that this happened ,” Weiss says cruelly. Yang scrambles for something to say, anything to derail her, because Weiss is at her most dangerous like this, wounded and off-balance, and hungover and naked and rejected in Blake’s bed is a trifecta of insult and injury that’ll leave her lashing out, but she’s not fast enough. “Don’t be a coward--”
“Get out,” Blake says over her, voice shaking with fury, and of all the things she could have said, all the things Yang expected to hear, that was the worst and the last, and it lands like a sniper shot. Weiss-- always pale, immaculately so, white from head to toe-- goes grey in the face. It washes out even the blue of her eyes.
“Blake, wait,” Yang says stupidly, but Blake’s already sitting up, feet over the side of the bed, pulling a shirt over her head.
“Leave, Weiss,” Blake says over her shoulder, and she doesn’t have to say it again. Weiss moves briskly, efficiently, gathering her clothes faster than Yang can gather her brain cells, and Yang gapes at her as she pulls her dress on, disappears out of the room with her chin high and shoulders square.
“What the hell, Blake!” Yang finally manages to get out.
“I’m going out.” Blake’s fully dressed, somehow, already, and Yang scrambles for her own clothes, cursing herself from yesterday for choosing jeans and a shirt with godforsaken buttons instead of a dress like Weiss, because by the time her feet manage to find their way through the tangles of her jeans the front door of the apartment’s already closing.
She chases after Blake, because she can’t leave , because she needs to talk this out with Weiss, because they’ve been best friends for years and she won’t let this-- this , sex and alcohol and a hungover fight-- be the end of it, but by the time she makes it out of the apartment, bare feet aching on the hot concrete outside, Blake’s already disappeared.
“Fuck,” she grinds out. This was supposed to be a good day, the last day they were all in the apartment together before Yang left to start her grad program early, Blake and Weiss staying through the summer until Weiss left for her job and Blake started law school, but now it’s all gone up in flames.
She trudges back inside, wincing as much at the ache in her feet from running on concrete as the hangover beating at the back of her skull, and slams to a halt in the doorway because Weiss is standing on the other side of the living room, eyes red and hands curled into fists at her sides.
“Of course you’d choose her,” she says, and it comes out as a snarl but there’s something unsteady under it that cracks the earth under Yang’s feet.
Yang stares at her, nausea and exhaustion and the incessant, ungodly hangover still fighting for dominance over her shitty morning, and wonders what to say. Where to lay the blame, who to side with, how much of it to take onto her own shoulders.
There’s a bruise on Weiss’s collarbone that Yang remembers from last night, so late it was early this morning, sometime long past being drunk and well into them settling into an easy intimacy crowded onto Blake bed, Yang stretched out on her side, head propped on her hand and watching lazy and easy, as Blake laid Weiss out and pinned her wrists to the mattress and sucked a bruise into her skin and Weiss’s eyes stayed locked onto Yang’s until she finally moved, sliding across the sheets so she could kiss Weiss, slow and burning with a hand tangled in Blake’s hair and every intent for it to be the start of something that would last .
“Of course,” Weiss mutters again, and Yang ends up saying nothing, because she’s mad at Blake for leaving, mad at Weiss for antagonizing her, mad at herself for not being fast enough to hold the three of them together through a three minute fight until they had at least had some goddamned coffee. She shuts the front door behind her and disappears into her room, where her life’s already packed up. She can deal with them when Blake comes home, before she gets on a plane tomorrow. They’ll sort it out later.
Instead, she wakes up late in the afternoon, mouth full of cotton, and stumbles out into the living room. There’s a text from Weiss indicating that she’s at the library and an envelope on the table with cash rent for the rest of the summer and a prepaid invoice for professional movers scheduled to come pack up Blake’s room.
-- and she’s tried to forget it every day since then, channeling the hurt into anger, the abandonment and loneliness into blame and rage, building a new social life with new friends at grad school and carefully choreographing her way around the friendships Ruby maintained with both Blake and Weiss.
“You threw me out of bed , Blake, what the hell was I supposed to think?” Weiss hisses out, and there’s a fury to her voice but her eyes are wide and wounded, her hands clenching in her lap. “I-- you--”
“You were right,” Blake says, and it shuts Weiss up with an audible click. Blake breathes in deep, takes a long swallow from the bottle, takes her time handing it reverently back to Yang, who accepts it dumbly. “And you were right.”
“I’m sorry, what ?” There’s a shrill edge to Weiss’s voice that Yang’s never heard before, one that, more than anything, unsettles her, and Yang takes her own swig of whiskey to cover her uncertainty.
“I was panicking,” Blake says softly. She rubs at her forehead, breathing in deeply, and shakes her head, and Yang looks between them, at a loss, because it’s been so long and she’s imagined this conversation so many times and not once did she see it going this way. “I’d-- spent a long time trying to figure out who I was, and I was sure, and then you-- both of you--”
She glances over to Yang as well, and Yang blinks rapidly.
“Threw all of that for a loop. And I didn’t handle it well and I panicked and-- I’m sorry.” She drags a hand through her hair and smiles, sad and empty, lets out a heavy breath that pulls her shoulders lower. “I thought about reaching out to both of you a bunch of times, but I just-- everything blew up that morning, and we were all in different cities after that, and I thought maybe it was just better for everyone to let things lay.”
Yang shakes her head, rubbing at her eyes. “Wait, let me get this straight,” she says, ignoring the snort it draws from Blake and the dry laugh from Weiss. “We all hooked up after graduation, and you-- you, who had dragged us to literally every single pride event in college because, and I quote, Weiss and I had to represent our community-- had a sexual identity crisis over it--”
“In my defense, sexuality is complex,” Blake says, nose wrinkling.
“Blake, please,” Weiss says with a scoff, gesturing to herself and Yang. “Read the room.”
Blake flushes darker and slumps down, arms over her chest and for all the world pouting like a child.
“--so you had an identity crisis about it,” Yang carries on over the both of them loudly. “And then fought with Weiss about it. And kicked Weiss out. But not me?”
“Yes,” Weiss says sharply. “Please do elaborate on that part, Blake.”
Blake’s mouth opens and then closes, cheeks darkening even more, and Yang watches as Weiss’s bravado siphons out of her and she starts to fold in on herself, hands dropping onto her lap and chin dropping towards her chest. Yang shakes her head, because none of this makes any sense, because she spent four years spending nearly every day with Blake and Weiss, two of them living with the both of them; because she spent too much time watching the way Weiss spoke to anyone who would listen about the way Blake’s passion was going to save the world, listening to the way Blake eviscerated anyone who dared speak ill of Weiss, watching the both of them together do more for both the Schnee name and the racial justice causes Blake’s family had fought against SDC for since before they were born than an entire army of lawyers could.
“You were in love with her,” Yang blurts out. Weiss’s head snaps up, fast enough Yang’s absolutely certain she probably just ruptured a disc, and Blake freezes in response. “You--it wasn’t just your gay freak out, it was because you were in love with her and you-- what, let me guess, had to go have a brood over whether you only wanted to fuck her to get to the SDC?”
A laugh drags out of her, scraping along her throat, aching and rough, and she pushes up to her feet and paces away because her muscles are burning now, fists clenching and unclenching.
“That’s it, isn’t?” she says. She pulls her hands through her hair, points towards Blake. “That’s why this-- you ran away from her-- from us -- because you were--Jesus, Blake! What the hell!” There’s a crackle to the room, an ache pounding at her ribs, and she’s had half a glass of champagne and one drink of whiskey but it feels like a tequila hangover hammering at her skull, a shared apartment, Blake running out the door all over again and Weiss’s cracking the world open in response.
“Yang, stop,” Weiss says sharply. She’s staring at Blake, jaw tight, hands held neatly in her lap.
“Weiss,” Yang exclaims, flinging her arms out wide. “All of this is because--”
“All of this ,” Weiss says over her. “Is because of all of us. All of us. It’s not just Blake’s fault.” She breathes in deep, eyes shutting carefully, and Yang shoves the heels of her hands into her eyes because this was never what she wanted. She’d buried this all, put it away into a history she never had to touch again, a scar that only hurt if she touched it, one that she’d learned to stop prodding years ago, but now it’s ripped wide open again.
“Yang’s not entirely wrong,” Blake finally says, very carefully not looking at either of them, and Yang lets out a triumphant yelp and points at Weiss, only to be cut off by Blake continuing, “But not entirely right, either.”
“Blake, for God’s sake,” Weiss says with a sigh. “Just have a fucking drink and talk like a human instead of a lawyer, will you?”
Yang snorts without meaning to, and Blake smiles, unbearably soft and fond, across the table at Weiss, and Yang’s leg shake at the sight of it. She strides back over to the table, snatching the bottle up and taking another sip and then shoving it into Blake’s hands.
“I’m right,” she mutters, dropping down into her seat. Blake takes a small sip, raising an eyebrow over the bottle at Yang, which she ignores and keeps her focus on Weiss, who’s huffing in annoyance at her. “She wasn’t just in love with you then, she still is.”
“I wasn’t just in love with you then, no,” Blake says carefully. She offers the bottle back to Yang, waiting until she takes it. “I was in love with both of you.”
Yang sprays an entire mouthful of whiskey across the table, eyes watering as half of it comes out her nose and her eyes water; Weiss doesn’t even seem to have the mental wherewithal to be bothered by the fact that some of it landed on her dress and is gaping inelegantly at Blake.
“What the fuck,” Yang gasps out, rather eloquently, given the situation, and swipes at her mouth with the back of her hand.
“What the fuck ,” Weiss echoes, somehow making it sound significantly more elegant, and Blake slumps further in her chair.
“You know, this is why I was panicking then.” She waves one hand generally at the both of them. “Now you understand.”
“I extremely do not ,” Yang bellows, a decade of pent-up hurt exploding out of her chest, her entire body crackling like a live wire. She’s back on her feet again, pacing back away because she needs distance, space, something to put open air between herself and Blake and Weiss because at this rate she’s fairly certain her hair’s about to catch on fire. “You were what , Blake? And that was how you handled it? No explanation! You kicked Weiss out of bed like she was some hooker you picked up in an alley and then you walked out of our home and then you moved out when neither of us was there.”
Blake slinks lower in her seat, miserable and sulking, but doesn’t argue, chin dropping closer to her chest.
“Yang,” Weiss says carefully.
“And you!” she pivots, arms flinging out and then jerking down at her sides, because she can’t yell at Weiss. Not in anger. Even in the midst of the bomb that blew their friendship to pieces, when Blake was lighting the fuse, she never raised her voice, and Yang knows better, even now. “You fucking-- you-- do you have any idea what it was like?”
Her voice cracks, because there was never rage at Weiss, not the way there was with Blake, because Weiss didn’t walk away like Blake did. Weiss just assumed that Yang would, and let it happen.
“I was just trying to keep us all together,” Yang says uselessly, arms flapping uselessly. “I went after Blake because I wanted her to come home so we could talk , Weiss. I wasn’t--taking sides. I just wanted everyone home .”
A long silence settles over them, heavy and jagged, Yang so far from either of them with eyes that burn and a throat that feels full and heavy, Weiss sitting ramrod straight, Blake slumped in her own chair. Yang digs her fingers into her palms, counts the heartbeats thundering in her chest, wishes to be literally anywhere else in the world but in this room.
It’s Weiss who finally speaks, because of course it is. Of all of them, Weiss was always the most skittish around silence.
“I thought you two were,” she starts delicately, and then pauses. “I thought that Blake didn’t want me there, and that Yang went after here, because you two had already.” She pauses again, swirls her hands around ineffectually. “Been together.”
Yang gapes at her, glancing over at Blake and her similarly dumbfounded expression, and, unexpectedly, a laugh bubbles out of her throat.
“You thought we were together?” She points at Blake. “Me and Blake.”
“It’s not an absurd thought,” Weiss says defensively. “Tons of people thought you were together!”
“Weiss, half of my major thought I was dating you ,” Yang blurts out.
“Also,” Blake says, propping an elbow on the table and her chin in her hand. “When would we have had the time? We were literally always with you.”
“Look,” Weiss says, heated, annoyed. “You can be as logical as you want, but I was 21 and anxious and--” Her mouth snaps shut, red smearing across her cheeks, and Yang folds her arms over her chest because this just took yet another turn she wasn’t expecting.
“And what?” She raises her eyebrows, making her way back across to her abandoned chair and taking her seat once more.
“Do tell,” Blake drawls out, apparently no longer feeling the need to be brooding or ashamed now that Weiss is in the hot seat, and Weiss flushes darker.
“I’m only talking if you promise not to bolt out of that goddamned chair again,” Weiss mutters, and Yang grins broadly, holds her hands out.
Weiss snatches the bottle back and takes a sip, then another, and another. Yang glances over to Blake, whose eyebrows are climbing higher and higher with each sip. Weiss always had a higher tolerance than either of them, and it seemingly hasn’t changed as they’d gotten older.
The bottle settles gently back onto the table and Weiss straightens it absently, so the label’s square in front of her. She stares at it for long seconds, pulling at her own fingers, before finally speaking.
“I handled my part in things poorly that morning,” she says carefully. “In part because, well, a lot of reasons that had nothing to do with either of you or that situation in particular. But also in part because I may or may not have possibly also been...somewhat enamored with the both of you and unsure of what to do about it.”
Yang blinks owlishly, and then blinks again.
“You,” she says, and then runs out of steam, and then turns to Blake. “And-- you.” And then runs out again. “Both of you. Were both.”
“Apparently,” Weiss grumbles. “Now would be a great time for literally anyone to say absolutely anything else.”
“I’ve said my piece,” Blake says, shrugging and reclaiming the bottle.
“Oh, you’ve said your piece,” Weiss says. She rolls her eyes and leans over the table to snatch the bottle back; Blake leans back enough to keep it out of her reach, grinning sharp and teasing when Weiss glares and drops back into her seat. “Said your piece about how you kicked me out of fucking bed.”
Blake freezes, bottle halfway to her mouth.
“To be fair, you called me a coward.”
Weiss pauses in straightening her dress, looks from Blake to Yang and back again. “You’re right,” she says softly. “I--that was cruel, and I’m sorry.”
Something melts in Blake, her eyes turning immeasurably soft, and she leans forward, offers the bottle back to Weiss, who accepts it cautiously.
“I’m sorry I kicked you out,” Blake says, low but clear. Her gaze shifts over to Yang. “And I’m sorry for leaving. I-- think I’m better about not running from my problems, now.”
Yang looks from Blake to Weiss, back and forth, back and forth, pulse thundering in her chest, skin humming at their proximity at a way it hasn’t since she had just graduated from college, when they were young and tangled together, bright and excited and optimistic. They both look back to her, something familiar and warm and expectant unfolding in the middle, and she leans forward, grins, claims the bottle for herself.
“I’m sorry y’all are both dumbasses,” she says, and takes a huge sip before Weiss’s indignant swipe manages to yank the bottle back from her. She nearly chokes on the whiskey but it’s worth it because Blake laughs, and it’s bright enough to power a building, and Weiss’s smile, indulgent and restrained, lights up just as much. Yang wipes at her mouth and drops her elbows on the table, her chin into her hands, glancing practically giddily between the two of them. “It’s true, though. If you two had managed to keep your stupid tempers in your pants for a whole five minutes then the one person here who didn’t have her head up her emotional ass could’ve been very up front about being totally head over heels for the both of you.”
Weiss drops the bottle and it shatters on the stone floor.
“Dammit, Weiss,” Yang groans out. “That’s like an $800 bottle.”
“I’ll pay for it,” Weiss says automatically.
“I’m not talking about the money, I’m talking about how I wanted to drink it, you moron,” Yang says, then pauses. “Also how it’s now all over my shoes.”
“Who cares about your shoes,” Blake breathes out. “Can I just-- can we lay the facts out here for a minute.”
“Blake, I swear to God, one more lawyer slip up and I’m going to murder you,” Weiss snaps out, but there’s no bite to it.
Yang points at Blake. “ You were totally in love with me and Weiss in college, and handled it terribly by kicking Weiss out of bed and then running away to California to go to law school.” She pivots to Weiss. ” You were totally in love with me and Blake in college, and handled it terribly by being a dick to Blake after we hooked up and then being a dick to me when I tried to fix things.”
She points to herself. “I am sheer perfection and also in love with both of you and you’re both extremely lucky.”
“You literally stopped talking to me immediately after Blake left,” Weiss says drily, and then blinks. “Wait, are in love? As in--”
“Current tense?” Blake finishes for her, and Yang nearly swallows her foot for how far into her mouth it is.
“It does seem that way,” Weiss says, light and easy. She leans her chin onto her fist, surveying Yang like she’s a house for purchase, or whatever it is billionaires purchase in their spare time. “That is what she said.”
“She did,” Blake says.
“Excuse you,” Yang says. “She can hear you.” Indignation is easier than facing up to the fact that, buried deep under that scar tissue she’s refused to prod at for so long, she’s been holding together something that shattered in Blake’s bed that morning so long ago.
“So just to confirm,” Weiss says, and Yang scoffs, rolls her eyes, but Blake reaches out and shoves at her arm gently and it warms her whole body and Yang’s protests die immediately. “We’ve spent ten years apart, more or less hating each other, all because of some severe miscommunication, because we were all in love with each other and didn’t know how to talk about it.”
“Are,” Blake says softly, and Yang’s elbow nearly slips off the table, chin going with it.
“What?” Weiss says, and for once someone sounds as stupid as Yang feels.
“Are in love,” Blake says, careful, precise, older now with shorter hair and an elegance to her that Yang never would have seen coming ten years ago, a comfort in her own skin that had come with settling into an identity that neither of them had seen her find. “I am, at least.”
She shrugs one shoulder, pulls at her cuffs. “Some things don’t fade.”
Weiss clears her throat before Yang can say anything, and Yang turns her head so fast her neck cracks.
“God, does your neck still do that?” Weiss mutters, momentarily derailed, and then shakes her head, rubs at her forehead, breathes in deep. “I...also never got over either of you.”
Yang gapes, looking from Weiss to Blake, something bright and giddy and warm bubbling up in her chest, and it comes out as a laugh.
“We are,” she gasps out. “So stupid. Oh my God.”
She nearly drops her head onto the table, her whole body shaking with laughter, because she’s spent a decade telling herself she didn’t love them, but they’re here now at her sister’s wedding venue, laughing with her, together again and laughing with her.
She doesn’t stop laughing until she manages to sit back up straighter, one hand curled around Weiss’s wrist and the other at Blake’s knee, and she drags Weiss closer, hauls her up onto the table, kisses her like she’s missed her for ten years. The noise Blake makes at her side drags straight down Yang’s spine and this isn’t where she expected her day to go, her hand dragging the hem of Weiss’s dress up or Blake’s lips on her spine, a tray of miniature cupcakes flung off the table and scattered on the floor, but she’s got ten years to make up for and she’s not stopping now.