Chapter Text
There’s a certain order to Yang’s life now, a not-exactly-but-almost specific flow to the days. (The alarm that sounds at seven minutes before five, the careful and quiet slip from the bedroom to the coffee machine, the far less careful and quiet hour spent in the gym, all followed by the frantic rush of shower, hair, breakfast, clothes, bike, work.) Ten years ago, Yang would have found the concept revolting, and maybe there’s still a bit of that eighteen-year-old version of herself kicking around, because where she finds herself now — sipping on a specially-made, unknown concoction of liquor and fruit on a Friday night, watching the dark-haired woman across the bar swirl her finger around the rim of her whiskey glass and glance almost longingly at the book tucked away in her purse — definitely falls outside of the natural order of things.
“Don’t even think about it.”
Yang is thinking about it and, frankly, also doesn’t think it’s much of Nora’s business if she is. The glare she levels on the bartender says exactly this, and Nora’s hands lift immediately, eyes going comically wide and overly innocent in the same moment. It’s a quick shift, but only because the initial jab is an old one; the routine of this song and dance was long ago choreographed.
“Nora,” Yang sighs. “How many times do I have to tell you? It’s not like that with — ”
“Fine, fine, fine.” She punctuates each word with a wave of the bar towel she pulls off her shoulder, arcing through the air with enough speed that bits of mystery liquid fly off and land on a nearby patron, who is (thankfully) a bit too drunk to notice. “Do what you want. I’ll just keep pouring you drinks.”
When she rolls her eyes, it’s for Nora’s benefit (but when she takes her ring off, it's done under the counter and out of sight, and that’s for Nora’s benefit as well). “Yeah you do that. You gonna tell me what’s in this thing, by the way?”
“No!” She slams the rag on the counter and this time, the spray definitely results in a few glares. Nora does not appear to notice. “If I’m not allowed to interfere with your business, that means you’re not allowed to interfere with mine. You’ll take your drink however I make it for you and you will like it.”
This doesn’t seem like a particularly fair trade to Yang, but (unlike the eighteen-year-old version of herself) she knows when to hold her tongue. And when there’s a storm brewing in Nora’s blue eyes, obvious enough that she swears she can see the lightning strike, it’s a very good time to hold one’s tongue. Granted, Nora doesn’t seem to think much of her chosen response either — picking up her mystery drink and favoring Nora with a jaunty air toast before sliding out of her seat — but then, that probably has more to do with what Yang does immediately after. She can feel the glare on her back as she heads over towards the dark-haired woman, but does her best to keep it from her mind, briefly fiddling with the collar of her patterned button-up by way of distraction (and primping). But despite what the objections might imply, Yang’s not terribly out of practice with this sort of thing, and the smile slides on easily enough, easier still when the woman half-turns in her stool to look at her and Yang’s reminded once more why she’s doing this.
And that reason is, the woman is gorgeous. Her eyes are gold and lined in a bold black. Her black shirt dips low and her pants are made of a tight leather that fits her form as well as the knee high boots accentuate it. The cat ears poking through her wavy, short bob are pierced in multiple places, and that — combined with the hint of a smile curling a single corner of her red lips — gives a vague sense of enticement to the overall package of mystery. Maybe Yang’s a sucker, maybe she’s falling into an obvious trap, but when the woman does a quick once-over Yang’s own attire (pausing, Yang thinks, on the generously unbuttoned gape of her shit), she gets the feeling that she’s passed some particularly tricky pre-test.
“Hi,” Yang says simply. “If you’re here to drink alone, I’m sorry for bothering you, but I’d like to sit there and get to know you a little.” She gestures towards the empty seat, ice of her drink rattling with the gesture. “Is that alright?”
The woman blinks. It’s a slow, lazy gesture that Yang finds sinfully attractive, enough so that she raises her glass to her lips in the heavy pause that follows, and is suddenly extremely glad that whatever Nora’s made for her is at least cold.
“Are you always this straightforward?”
Always, Yang wants to say, but then remembers the ring in her pocket, which hinders said straightforwardness on most introductory occasions.
“I prefer to be,” she says instead, shrugging a single shoulder. “Are you into it?”
There’s a purposefulness to the woman, a willingness to embrace silence that works well for her already impressive mystique; she carries another one through now, and Yang’s glad of the patience she’s picked up over the years, glad she can wait and watch and enjoy.
“It seems as though I am.” She waves a hand at the seat next to her; her fingernails are short and chipped and Yang is charmed by this too (charmed by the latter, encouraged by the former, more specifically).
“Seems?” Yang laughs, short but genuine, and slides onto the stool, immediately twisting a quarter turn to face her new companion, swirling the liquid in her glass as she does. “Are you not sure about this side of yourself or is it just me that causes the confusion?”
The woman hums in thought, bottom lip briefly disappearing as she tucks it between her teeth. “I’m not sure I have enough information to answer that question. Yet.”
Nora’s drink tastes better with each sip, and this time, Yang takes a long swig, satisfied when the woman’s gaze follows the extended line of her throat.
“Good thing,” she murmurs once she’s finished, setting the now-empty glass down on the counter. “That we have some time now to get you more information, then. I’ll give you the first part for free; I’m Yang.”
They don’t shake hands, but the exchanged smiles, the graze of the woman’s boot against Yang’s white sneakers, the perceptible lean in towards each other, these things are greeting enough.
“Blake,” is the name she gets in return, and it suits the woman (her dark hair, eyeliner, clothes, skin). “I do love a free and fair trade. But the next part better be pretty good, if it’s going to cost me.”
(There’s a few sayings about what comes next. Weiss has always favored an offshoot of the classic, and that’s what comes to Yang’s mind now: wishes sometimes come true, but they never come free.)
“Yang, your wife is here.”
Maybe if Nora didn’t announce it so gleefully, maybe if Yang didn’t turn so quickly, maybe if Weiss didn’t enter the bar looking like some kind of model with her hair up high and her designer clothing looking like it was made specifically for her. Or maybe Yang had been fucked from the very start, no matter how the series of events had transpired.
“Should’ve known the monkey’s paw would curl as soon as I said it,” Blake sighs. “It was almost nice meeting you, Yang.”
She’s out of her chair and walking away with speed born from a moral conviction Yang would admire if it weren’t so inconvenient currently.
“Blake! Wait!” It’s not nearly as graceful, the way Yang follows her, nearly falling off her stool in the process. “It’s not — hold on a second — it’s really not what you think. If you just give me a few minutes I can totally — ”
She stops as quickly as she’d started, and Yang’s swerve to avoid running into her probably attracts just as much attention as the rest of her efforts, though she hardly notices, given that approximately 95% of her processing ability is currently engaged in coming up with the words she’ll employ next.
95%, unfortunately, turns out to not be quite enough.
“Uh — okay, fuck, you’d think I’d be better at explaining this or at least prepared something a while back, but — ”
There’s little to no expression on Blake’s face when she turns, but her crossed arms and the staggering difference between her posturing from a minute ago says a fair amount. This isn’t the first time Yang’s had to explain this particular situation (it’s not even the tenth), but somehow, she feels more than a little caught out.
“You would think that,” a new voice chimes in and Yang’s caught between relieved and horrified when Weiss steps into view, and there’s nothing ambivalent about her expression. “Would you like me to clear this up for you, Yang?”
The smugness saturates each of Weiss’s words, curls her lips into something that’s a little too close to mocking to be of comfort, but the familiarity of her makes Yang smile anyways, has the tension slipping from her shoulders (even as she tries to calculate just how much shit she’s going to get for this later).
“Yes, dear,” Yang sighs, and Blake blinks in surprise, eyes darting back and forth between the two women, brow lowering until it pinches at the middle.
“I’m Weiss, Yang’s wife. Yang and I married for extremely convoluted and complicated financial and social reasons that involve: financial aid, my father, and a decent amount of spite. We’re not romantically involved and you won’t be a homewrecker if you give her your number, which she will, presumably, ask for at some point.” Weiss pauses, pursing her lips as she contemplates whether to continue. “Does that cover everything, darling?”
Throughout the explanation, Blake’s eyebrows steadily climb higher until now, at the end of it all, they’re nearly covered by her bangs, and her arms — while still crossed — have slackened, only held in place by the formerly tight positioning.
“Well, yeah, I guess.” Yang frowns though, and Weiss’s smug expression slips. “I mean, technically you covered everything in a really neat and concise way, but where’s the finesse? Where’s the humor? Where’s the flirtation?”
Weiss scoffs. It’s her turn to cross her arms — putting wrinkles into the crisp, white blouse that probably cost her more than Yang’s entire outfit (or closet) — and Yang wonders, briefly, if this effect she has on women is something she should be concerned about.
“That’s quite a list of demands from someone who was stumbling all over themselves when I arrived.”
“I wasn’t — ”
“Besides,” Weiss continues, absolutely merciless. “Isn’t the ‘flirtation’ your job? Though — ” For the first time, Weiss turns away from Yang completely, focusing her attention on the other woman present; Blake returns the stare, a crooked smile in place, bewildered but amused. It’s a good look for both of them, and for a moment, Yang forgets why she’d felt the need to interrupt in the first place, and only stares. “You are extremely attractive.”
(Yang comes to a decision quickly, over the span of these few sentences; it’s definitely something she should be concerned about.)
“Actually, nevermind.” The change that comes over Weiss then is dramatic and obvious; her focus narrows, her smile widens, and her posture — already impeccable — straightens further. “Don’t give Yang your number. Give it to me instead.”
“What?”
She’s not proud of the squawk that comes out of her mouth. It’s decidedly unsexy and makes Weiss’s self-congratulatory smirk grow in a way that Yang now finds very stupid and not at all appealing. But then, Blake laughs, just a little, and maybe that makes everything okay again.
“You’ve been saying I need to get out more,” Weiss says, and alright, the fake little bored look at her nails is a little over the top, but Yang’s woman enough to admit that it’s effective.
“I feel like maybe you could have deduced that I didn’t mean like this.” The trifecta complete, it’s now Yang’s turn to cross her arms. (She takes a moment to congratulate herself over how her muscles are displayed best by this gesture, out of the three, but it’s a small victory.) “What are you even doing here? You said you were staying in with a crossword puzzle or whatever.”
“It was a sudoku and don’t change the subject.” Her chin lifts, the challenge clear in the gesture and the clear blue of her eyes. “Or are you afraid of a little competition?”
“Please.” When Yang straightens, it’s not with thought of her posture, but rather, how much taller than Weiss she can make herself appear (even with Weiss wearing her ridiculous five inch heels). “Look at me, Weiss. Come on.”
“I do every day, unfortunately.”
“You love it.”
A cough pulls them out of it, which — many of their friends would attest — is not an insignificant feat, especially once they really get going.
“This is, without a doubt, the worst way I have ever been hit on.” The words are damning, but Blake’s grin (still small, still confused, but also definitely still charmed) says something a little different. Weiss still flushes a bright red, of course, but this time, Yang’s far more prepared to deliver a comeback.
“But probably the most memorable way, right?” She winks and is pleasantly surprised when Blake’s cheeks darken as well.
“Not necessarily. My friend, Sun, used skywriting to ask me out. He had one of our friends learn how to fly so that he wouldn't have to pay anyone and that ended about as badly as you might guess.”
“Based on the usage of the word ‘friend’ I’ll hazard a guess and say it did not go particularly well,” Yang drawls.
“You would be correct. Neptune survived the experience, but his skywriting ended up looking a bit like a man performing CPR on a giraffe wearing heels.”
Weiss, recovered enough to laugh, bites her bottom lip to keep the sound from escaping. “That’s… quite specific.”
“We spent a lot of time trying to decipher it,” Blake admits with a shrug. “It was basically a city-wide game of pictionary with our group of friends, unfortunately for Sun.”
Without any sort of prompt that Yang notices, Weiss reaches around Yang to grab a glass of wine no one could have possibly noticed her order; it’s delivered by a Nora who avoids Yang’s eye with an equal (and somehow not contradictory) measure of determination and aloofness.
“Okay, but c’mon, that’s not nearly as good as this.” As the conversation has settled, so has Yang, and her smile comes easy now. “Having two hot wives ask you out at the same time is like, the biggest reputation bonus points. When you tell everyone about this, the punchline won’t be that your friend is an idiot; it’ll be that you’re just that captivating.”
“Dammit, Yang,” Weiss sighs, and Yang winks.
“Oh, okay. She’s the effortlessly charming sort, right?” Blake directs the question to Weiss, but offers Yang a knowing glance at the end that fills Yang’s chest with a fair amount of warmth.
“Unfortunately.” Another sigh, though this one is tempered by the twitch of Weiss’s lips. “It’s the bane of my existence.”
“I can imagine,” Blake returns and Yang’s arms uncross so that her interjection might involve both hands, raising up between them.
“Okay, wait, you both are making this sound like a bad thi —”
“Luckily for you, I like your approach just fine,” Blake interjects smoothly, the full weight of her gaze landing on Weiss. “Turns out, I’m a big fan of people being straightforward,” she adds pointedly, and Yang drops her arms without another word of protest, a wince sliding across her face. If Weiss weren’t attempting to hide her pleasure at the compliment, she might have enjoyed the rebuke of her wife a bit more, but as it is, she just flushes a deep red and gulps down her drink.
“Alright, alright. I know when I’ve been beat. And when to gracefully bow out.” Weiss opens her mouth, back to her normal self once more, and Yang cuts her off quickly. “I’m gracefully bowing out, Schnee. So I don’t want to hear it, alright?”
For a moment, it looks like Weiss might actually bite her tongue. But then, of course:
“So much for not being afraid of a little competition, Xiao Long.”
Looking between the two of them (Weiss, still a little pink, and Yang, forehead pinched something akin to confusion), Blake tilts her head in thought and then smiles. There’s enough of a curl to it, enough of an edge, that Weiss’s flush renews, and Yang has to fight one of her own.
“Don’t be so hasty, Yang,” she murmurs, and Yang loses the fight. “I’ve only just met you two. How am I supposed to decide now? I think the only way to settle this is for me to go on a date with you both.”
“What?”
“Excuse me?”
“Seems like neither of you minds a little competition.” Blake’s hit her stride now, and Yang finds herself struggling to keep up. And given the wide-eyed glance she exchanges with Weiss, she’s not alone in that. “So why not?”
Approximately seventy-four reasons come to mind, and clearly, both Weiss and Yang know this well. But then Blake bites at her bottom lip and Yang grins and Weiss’s face hardens and a single number is entered into two scrolls, each belonging to a woman who should maybe look a little less bemused at getting a string of digits.
—
—
“So what’s the real reason?”
She does her best not to sigh, roll her eyes, or show any other signs of annoyance, given Sun’s predilection for taking any such thing as encouragement. Instead, she focuses on her reflection, one last check for smudges in the makeup, lipstick on the teeth, stains on her shirt.
“I literally just told you.” She pauses, considering the text conversation from a few days ago. “In every sense of the word.”
The intricate rituals that take place in a woman’s bathroom haven’t ever deterred Sun, and Blake doesn’t expect them too now; it’s a last resort attempt (a distraction rather than a shield).
“Yeah, yeah, you said you want to get to know both of them. But hello? Blake Belladonna? You don’t actually like getting to know anyone!”
He’s not wrong, of course. Going to the bar last night had been another one of Sun’s grand ideas in his ongoing scheme to find more couple friends (requiring Blake, naturally, to be a part of a couple) and she’d only gone along with it to placate him.
“You wanted me to find a date,” Blake points out. “And I came back with two. You should be happy.”
Sun does not look happy. Blocking the doorway of Blake’s bathroom — shirt unbuttoned, hair mused, unable to stand still, as always — Sun looks suspicious, which is never a good sign.
“I don’t get it,” he declares, and then — in a gesture meant to convey his utter seriousness — crosses his arms.
She can’t stop the sigh that escapes her now, but rolls it into her next calculated risk rather than fight it.
“Okay, just — go get my bag. Grab my scroll.”
He wanders off, eyes still narrowed, and returns moments later with bag in tail, already going through her scroll with both hands (her passcode hardly an obstacle for him).
“Go to my photos. The most recent ones are of them. Yang insisted on contact photos.”
Yang had insisted — with a wide grin and wide eyes that Blake had found equally charming and compelling — and neither Blake nor Weiss had said no (or, perhaps, been able to). This had resulted in the two photos Sun is (presumably) looking at now, his eyebrows steadily raising as time passes. In Yang’s, the woman is winking, throwing up a peace sign, and looking unequivocally gorgeous. In Weiss’s, the smile is small, her eyebrow is raised, and her blue eyes are sharp and clear and also absolutely breathtaking.
(Later, Yang had sent another option for Weiss’s contact picture; a candid that the woman very clearly did not approve of, if her subsequent string of threats — all centered around what she might do to Yang if said image was not immediately deleted — was any indication. Blake, of course, had saved the picture immediately, and sent a screenshot of the result.)
“Do you get it now?” Blake asks, a little smug as she — now satisfied with her appearance — brushes past him, snagging her bag and scroll on the way out.
“Okay fine; they’re hot.”
Her scroll buzzes with a message; it’s Yang, both promising to be there in less than five minutes and sharing a photo of the license plate in front of her (EATPEAS). When she looks up again, Sun is staring, and she fixes her unwitting smile into something far more neutral.
“But,” Sun continues, folding his arms, “that’s not it. You didn’t brag about it at all even when we asked you about it and you weren’t even really happy! It was more like… that face you had the whole time you were trying to get me and — ”
Sun cuts himself off with a gasp, and Blake — slipping on a pair of black Toms (at Yang’s request, who’d said they would be ‘active’ on their date) — nearly falls over.
“You’re scheming!” he declares with a dramatic point that Blake, now free from her secret, rolls her eyes at with great and obvious exaggeration. “I don’t know how or why but that’s the scheming face you had when you locked me and Neptune in that closet or when you would say you were going to come to dinner with us and then ditch us at the last second with some fake emergency that you and Ilia made up. Or when you — ” His triumph fades to mild consternation. “Hang on, I’m just realizing just how much you did this.”
She leaves Sun in her bedroom, heading for the kitchen to collect her keys, sunglasses, lipstick, and assorted necessities scattered on the table; Sun follows and makes a face when he sees the disarray, which Blake ignores (as she always had when they were roommates).
“You and Neptune took forever to figure out how you actually felt about each other. Hopefully it doesn’t take nearly as long for Weiss and Yang. But then, they seem to have a few more collective brain cells. Not that the bar isn’t low.”
“Wait.” He starts to laugh, but stops just as quickly as he’d begun. “Wait. Are you — it’s seriously the same thing? You’re just like — ?”
“They’re in love with each other,” Blake explains, sounding bored as she checks her scroll once more.
“So you’re gonna date both of them. You’re going to date both parts of the married-but-not-really-married couple. At the same time.” Sun blinks twice, then throws his hands up (once again, dramatically; always dramatically). “Sure. Right. Because that makes sense.”
Satisfied with the contents of her bag, Blake slips it over her shoulders, adjusting her shirt to make sure it’s purposefully and tastefully askew.
“They clearly need a push and they’re — ” Cute, Blake thinks. Cute and into each other and two people she might want to be friends with, after all this. (Beautiful, also, but that’s hardly relevant.) “— Stubborn. In weirdly different ways.”
“You’ve known them for a week!”
Her phone buzzes again; it’s Yang, this time with just a winky-face heart emoji and a single word.
“Well, I’m about to get to know one of them a lot more, because she’s here.” She skirts around the table and plants a quick kiss on Sun’s cheek. “I know you only came over here because it’s date night and Neptune is hogging the bathroom at your place. Lock up when you’re done and then stop bugging me about this as a way of returning the favor.”
It takes Sun a while to respond, long enough that Blake’s already out the door when he does, and by that time, she barely comprehends his words. Because Yang’s there, leaning on her motorcycle, a worn, brown moto jacket thrown over a Carly Rae Jepsen t-shirt, and her hair is loose and long, her smile wide, her eyes bright.
If there’s a problem with Blake’s plan it’s this: Yang looks too pleased to see her.
(If there’s another problem with Blake’s plan it’s this: Blake has to take a deep breath before she’s ready to start walking again, and once she does, her heart follows the rhythm of a rapid hum rather than a beat.)
“Blake!” Yang straightens as she comes closer, folds her into an easy hug that Blake returns instinctively, and gladly. (There’s a warmth to Yang in everything she does, and her body temperature follows suit.) “You look great! I brought an extra jacket and helmet for you for the ride, but tried to pick something that’d suit your whole vibe.”
It’s a light jab — that much is clear when Yang brandishes a black leather jacket and black helmet, each without any embellishment or adornment — but it’s an accurate one. The jacket is too large in the shoulders, but fits Blake’s all-black ensemble: flats, distressed jeans, and baggy, off-the-shoulder shirt. It also smells like summer — florals and the ocean and a hint of citrus — when Blake slips it on; she has to work to keep from breathing in too deeply.
“Thanks,” she murmurs, taking the helmet as well and tucking it under her arm. “Does this mean we have a long ride ahead of us, or is that a secret too?”
“Nah, it’s a short trip to the start of the hike.” She winks, nudging the toe of one of Blake’s shoes with her boot. “The jacket looks good on you though, so it’s kind of a shame you’ll have to ditch it so quick. Maybe we’ll take the long way home on the way back.”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself, hotshot.” With a wink of her own, she fits the helmet in place (taking care with her ears), and snaps the visor shut. “Let’s see how good this date of yours is, first.”
Yang laughs, unrestrained and easy, and follows suit. Her own helmet is a bright yellow and painted with black stripes (much like the bike itself), and with her hair spilling out from underneath it, Yang looks like something out of the fantasy of a young, queer girl. (And at 28, Blake finds she’s not as immune as she might have otherwise wished.)
“I’m aiming to please, Belladonna,” Yang promises, rolling her bike off the kickstand and sliding on, gesturing for Blake to do the same. “But I’m pretty sure Weiss has a whole rating system ready, so you’ll have a chance to leave a thorough review at the end.”
“If you were talking about anyone else, I’d think you were joking, but Weiss seems —”
“Exactly the type to have a complicated system for tracking some sort of nebulous point total throughout this whole thing? You’re absolutely right!”
Even with her visor shut, Blake can picture Yang’s face; she’s easy to read in all the ways she wants to be, and maybe that’s why — when Blake climbs on the bike and wraps her arms around her center — she doesn’t try to hide her small hum of pleasure at the touch. (Blake hides her own, if only from herself).
“I’m going to guess that you like to go fast on this thing,” Blake murmurs, wrapping her arms around Yang’s waist, tight enough to be safe, in case her assumption is correct.
“I’ll say ‘yes’ if it means you’re going to stay like this.” She leans a bit into the embrace to make her point, before shifting forward again, starting the bike up. “But you really don’t need the excuse.”
And that’s probably true for Yang who — once they take off without further warning — chatters at every stoplight and points out various landmarks in her life (the gas station she’d had to walk to when she once ran out of gas, the drive-through that her sister had worked at for three hours before getting sacked, the tree that her friend Ren had chained himself to when the city tried to tear it down) without a trace of self consciousness or motive. Maybe, Blake realizes — as they leave the city behind and move into the surrounding rolling hills — this is the sort of woman who genuinely doesn’t see the need for excuses. It’s an easy thing to believe during their ride, mainly because everything with Yang feels easy; the conversation (as sporadic as it is, shouted over the wind or delivered during brief stops), the warmth of her back against Blake’s front, and even the ride itself. It’s all easy; leaning into turns, leaning into comfort, leaning into Yang herself in ways both literal and metaphorical, and Blake doesn’t know what to do with any of it.
She spends most of the twenty-five minute ride caught in this loop (relaxing into the sensation, remembering her objective, talking herself out of it and then relaxing once again), but still feels disappointed, despite herself, when Yang pulls off a side road and into a rustic parking lot, full of cars with hipster bumper stickers, bike racks, and kayaks strapped to roofs. They haven’t traveled far, but their surroundings have drastically changed, and perhaps if Blake hadn’t spent so much of the trip distracted, she would have taken better note of their elevation change, of the thickening of the trees around them.
“Where are we?”
She lifts up her visor to ask the question as Yang rolls them into a section of the lot that isn’t a parking spot so much as a patch of packed dirt, but Yang waits until they’re fully parked and she can whip off her helmet entirely before answering.
“Just a little trail I think you’ll like.” She slides off the bike with ease and offers her hand to Blake with a smile, too sweet to not fall into, and Blake takes it without thought. (The leather of her glove is warm, just like the rest of her.) “It’s not like, intense or anything, but there’s something cool at the top.”
“How mysterious,” Blake teases, sliding off her helmet with care and shaking out her hair, running her fingers through to make sure it hasn’t lost all it’s volume, ears twitching as they’re finally freed. “Are you going to give me any hints or do I just have to wait?”
Yang’s response takes a second too long, and when Blake looks up, she finds the woman watching her intently, eyes a little wide, mouth a little slack. And when she notices Blake watching, a pretty pink spreads across her cheeks, and she reaches for Blake’s helmet with an uncharacteristic lurch.
“Um. Yeah. It’s not a long walk. So you’ll find out soon enough.” Attaching both helmets to a lock on either side of the bike and grabbing the brown, leather pack strapped to the tank, Yang seems to regain her composure, an apologetic lift to her lips when she meets Blake’s eyes again. “Sorry. You just — you look good. The whole helmet and bike thing really suits you.”
It’s Blake’s turn to flush; the heat bites at the back of her neck and she feels sixteen again, struggling with compliments from the boys and girls who’ve unexpectedly started to notice the quiet girl who missed class nearly as much as she attended. (And the thought strikes her then, that If Yang had been one of those girls, she might have showed up more often.)
“Black leather isn’t outside my wheelhouse.” The drawl doesn’t quite hide her pleasure, if Yang’s expression is any indication, but it at least mutes it, especially when she takes another beat to remove the jacket Yang had leant her. Until, of course, she hands it back and her fingers brush against the cool metal of Yang’s prosthetic, and then she’s back where she started, the tips of her ears burning.
“I’ve noticed,” Yang murmurs, then blinks, removing her own jacket and shoving both into the bag, slinging it over her shoulders when she’s done.
The action reveals that Yang’s oversized band tee has been cut in such a way that shows of her arms and sides (both devastatingly defined) and Blake, for perhaps the hundredth time, thinks about goals, good intentions, and just how much Sun will make fun of her if she ends up fucking this whole thing up.
“Right,” she rasps, her dry throat not a particularly encouraging sign for the hike (and date) to come. “Lead the way?”
Yang only smiles before nodding towards the trailhead and taking off, her strides long, but not purposefully fast. As promised, the trail itself doesn’t look particularly strenuous, though it disappears into the trees and boulders almost immediately, the slope of it is gentle, and the path is well-worn and clear. Yang signs them in at the trail register nevertheless, her handwriting a blend of cursive and print and nearly illegible. It makes Blake smile, which then makes her frown, which then makes her press her lips together to avoid any show of emotion entirely. She’s glad that Yang misses the whole of it; when she turns around, starting on the trail with a careless backwards walk, it’s with a grin that nearly starts Blake on the same loop again.
“You know what I’m realizing? I know your last name and your drink of choice and that your ex-roommate/current best friend was in love with you enough to try to write your name in the sky, but I don’t know how you fill your days.”
It’s a novel (and cute) way to ask the familiar question, and right about then, Blake gives up on trying to control the effect Yang Xiao Long has on her mouth (though she does, most vehemently, attempt to tamper down any other wayward meaning of this particular thought).
“I practice labor law,” she says simply, picking up her pace and tugging on Yang’s arm until she’s frontward facing again, and they’re walking side-by-side. “Mostly helping with the process of unionizing, but also general negotiations with employers.”
The answer clearly isn’t what Yang expects, and she takes a moment to process it, adjusting the strap of her backpack as she stares, smile growing and eyebrows lifting as the two seconds pass.
“Damn, okay. So you’re like, the full package, huh? Smart enough to be a lawyer, kind enough to not be the scummy type of lawyer, and also like — ” She waves at hand in Blake’s general direction. “- “ — you know. You look like that.”
Coming from anyone else, it might sound like cheesy flattery, but Yang’s eyes are clear with sincerity, and Blake, for once, doesn’t hate the response to telling someone her profession.
“But wait,” Yang continues with a short laugh, “that definitely means you know Weiss. Or like, know the Schnee Dust Company. After all the shit with her father and the whole messy takeover thing, there’s no way you don’t.”
Blake winces and Yang’s laugh picks up again.
“Well, well, well. How the turntables — ”
“Okay, yes, she looked familiar and I recognized her last name after we exchanged numbers, but how was I supposed to bring that up? By the way, Weiss, I was a staunch critic of the SDC until you took over and I deeply admire the challenging work you’ve done since?”
“Actually, she would have loved that,” Yang says with a shrug. “But wait, are you saying that it’s not always easy or convenient to explain a complicated and deep history within the first second of meeting someone? Are you saying that — ”
“You’re not a very subtle person, are you?”
But she’s grinning. Yang’s grinning and she’s grinning and they look like idiots, probably, slowly meandering down the trail and grinning at each other. Blake is surprised how much she doesn’t care.
“Not even a little.”
“Alright so then give me a completely non-subtle answer to this; what’s wrong with her? Weiss, I mean.”
It’s a question she planned on asking from the start, pretty much the full extent of her planning for this particular outing, but she finds herself curious now, beyond the general matchmaking scheme.
“What? There’s nothing wrong with her.”
Yang’s bemused, and that says something all on it’s own, but Blake pushes forward, looking for more.
“I just mean… all the things you said about me, don’t they apply to Weiss? She’s smart enough to run a company, kind enough to run it ethically, and gorgeous, on top of all that. Not to mention, you clearly get along well, have been friends forever, and are — let’s not forget — married.” Blake finishes her list with a nod, pins it in place with a tilt of her head. “So what’s wrong with her? There must be something, otherwise the marriage wouldn’t be platonic.”
To her relief, Yang doesn’t take offense at the question, only nudges Blake’s shoulder with her own. “Oh, alright, you admit you’re a lawyer and suddenly all the hard-hitting questions come out. But hey, fair enough,” she adds, before Blake can cut in. “I guess the easiest way to explain it is this; Weiss and I nearly called off our fake wedding because she wanted doilies and I wanted a smoke machine.”
Blake waits, but Yang appears to be done for now, smiling up at the dense canopy above them.
“A smoke machine? Really?”
“Oh okay, go right for that and not the grandma decorations. I see how it is.” She kicks a rock into the underbrush, but Blake notices that the smile hasn’t dimmed. “I was young! I wanted a kickass party! And I thought a smoke machine would really piss off fucking Jacques Schnee, so it was really a two-for-one. But anyways, that’s sort of me and Weiss in a nutshell. If we had really been getting married, it would have been over. Or we would have divorced in like… four months, max.”
There’s not an easy response to that, so Blake merely hums, and Yang fades into something a little more pensive as she gives her a sideways glance.
“And, you know, it’s not like I haven’t thought about it. We both have, I think. Probably more than once. But at the end of the day, we don’t have a middle ground in a lot of ways and adding romance into the mix… I don’t think our friendship would survive it. And that’s more important than any what-ifs.”
As though sensing the mood (and wanting to be done with it), Yang throws in an over-the-top wink, her cheery disposition picking back up. “Nice try at getting me to trash talk the opposition though. It was a good feint, but I don’t go for the cheap tricks; there’s nothing wrong with Weiss. She’s the greatest woman I know and you’re right to want to date her... even if I’m gonna end up completely winning you over in the end, of course.”
“Of course,” Blake returns, instinctively, thankful for her reflexive drawl.
Because there’s nothing simple about the rest of it. Blake had expected an answer that would confirm that Yang had feelings for Weiss, but having gotten it, she’s unsatisfied, disquieted, and off-balance, as though she’d wanted something different than what she’d originally thought, but can’t quite pinpoint exactly what that had been. The answer should have been perfect, but there’s something missing from it, and Blake doesn’t know what.
Maybe some of that shows up on her face, maybe Yang has some kind of understanding that Blake herself lacks, or maybe she just lets the silence carry on for too long, but when Yang brushes her fingers against the back of her hand, it is the perfect response, pulling Blake out of the tangle of her own thoughts that she isn’t able to deal with right now.
“People don’t really get it, so you’re not alone there,” she murmurs, smile apologetic. “I mean, you saw Nora at the bar. She’s pretty protective of this idea she has of us, but it’s just not…” Yang trails off, then shrugs. “Sometimes things don’t fit together in the way you want, and trying to force it just breaks two perfectly good… things. Does that make sense?”
It does, but only because Blake finds the meaning underlying the words; if there’s one thing she understands, it’s the sense of dread that comes with the idea of hurting the people around you, of holding parts of herself (or all of herself) back so the ones she loves don’t suffer. Blake understands that sort of fear, she just hadn’t thought Yang would feel it too. (First impressions were funny that way.)
“Yeah,” she says softly, and knows her smile is a little too sad, works to correct it with a shake of her head. “Yeah, people never really see the full picture, right? Forced perspective is deadly.”
Yang’s mouth twists into a half-grimace. “Did I fuck this up? I know we’re doing things pretty… nontraditional, but I don’t want you to think I’m here for any other reason than getting to know you.” She hooks her thumbs around the straps of her bag, gaze shifting to the ground and then up to the green above them. “I like you. I don’t know where this’ll go and I know we’ve got a lot to learn about each other, but I like you and I don’t want anything to stand in front of that. I figure we’ll sort out the rest along the way, right?”
It’s a dangerous mindset to have in this situation, and Blake knows that, but she already knows that she likes Yang too, likes her smile and her honesty and her charm, and maybe, for once, Blake can let things happen and it’ll work out okay, one way or another. The universe might surprise her yet.
“I think we could give that a shot. How about an easier question, to get us back on track?”
“Why do I feel like I’ve just successfully run through a dungeon full of deadly raps and am about to get tripped on the obvious tripwire over the exit?”
“Are you always this paranoid?”
“Is that your ‘easier’ question?”
Blake laughs, surprised when it cracks through some of the lingering unease, and Yang grins back, clearly pleased to have things back on more comfortable ground.
“We can get into your delusions later, if you’d like. I was going to ask you what you did for a living. You asked me and then we got…”
“Derailed?”
“Something like that.”
Despite the cover from the trees, streaks of sunlight peek through, highlighting the blonde of Yang’s hair, brightening her eyes to a vibrant lilac when she looks up to follow the sound of a songbird. It’s like something out of a picture book, and Blake wishes for a way to capture the moment without losing it entirely.
“I teach,” Yang says, a simple answer for the simple question. “When I was a kid, I used to watch over my little sister a lot — Ruby, I think I’ve mentioned her a few times now — and she was kind of… wired, I guess. She always had a lot of energy and we lived in the middle of nowhere so there wasn’t much to do, and I started coming up with stuff for her. Little experiments like, you know, baking soda and vinegar, digging for ‘fossils’ I’d buried the night before, film canister rockets… stuff like that. Turns out, I was pretty good at it. And I liked it too, though I didn’t realize how easily that could translate into teaching kids science until way later.”
Yang scratches the back of her head, looking a little bashful. “I spend a lot of time traveling around and looking for adventures before settling down a bit more. It was actually — uh — it was Weiss who helped me figure it out. I’ve been at it for five years now. And actually, I’ve been trying to take my kids here for ages. There’s a bunch of variety in plant life on this trail, and I thought we could do a combo field trip with the English department, but… eh, red tape and stuff.”
It’s not the answer Blake would have guessed, but it floods her with warmth, like that first sip of tea on a cold day. The effect slips into her voice too (and into Yang’s smile, as a result), even if her words are teasing.
“You’re taking me on a date to the place you wanted to take your class? Don’t ask me to explain why, but I feel like I should be insulted.”
“Hey! Learning is cool for all ages,” Yang says with a wink, and Blake doesn’t think it’s a stretch to guess that she’s the favorite teacher of nearly every student at her school. “Besides, we’re just about there, so there’s no point in giving up on it now.”
Not that there’d been any real danger of it, but once they round the last bend, cresting the mountain, Blake’s so taken aback by the sight in front of her that she can’t manage to finish crafting the innuendo about leaving a job unfinished that’d been on the tip of her tongue.
“See?” Yang throws out her arms, excited and unrestrained. “Mountaintop book swap!”
Even with all the pieces in front of her — the small, wheeled carts scattered throughout the clearing, the few groups of people sitting in Adirondack chairs facing out towards the view of the city below, the rabbit Faunus fluttering about with an apron full of bookmarks and pencils and notepads — it’s not until Yang’s announcement that she fits them all together, and fully comprehends.
“I… didn’t bring a book,” she says faintly, and Yang laughs, placing a warm hand on the back of her shoulder and leading her forward again.
“Honestly, it probably would have been a bad sign if you had. Though, you bringing a book to the bar the other week was what made me think of this in the first place. Plus, my friend Velvet runs this whole place, and she’s the nicest person I’ve ever met; I might not be able to trust my other friends, but at least she won’t say horrible things about me. Isn’t that right, Velvet?”
The Faunus turns at her name, and fixes the both of them with a stern look that fails miserably almost immediately, a giggle cracks through the lips pressed together with no small amount of effort.
“Yang is an absolute cad and you’re crazy for coming here with her,” she says, each word pushed forward with a resolution that crumbles as quickly as her frown. “Oh gosh, I told Coco I would try, but that was awful. I’m so sorry. Yang is lovely. And I’m so glad she’s brought you here. I’m Velvet!”
The accent is stronger than her handshake, but Blake is warmed by both (but not so much as by Yang’s long laugh, ringing out again).
“Blake. But you can be honest with me. Don’t let Yang bully you into compliments.”
“I would never.” Swinging her bag over her shoulder, Yang unzips it with a flash of panache. “Bribery is way more effective. I’ve got some good ones today, Vel. Just you wait.”
Velvet’s apparently not one to stick to a line of teasing, because she immediately peers into the bag, impatient as Yang digs around and finally withdraws two books with a cheesy tada! that shouldn’t be as charming as it is.
“I have two incredible selections for you today; a fun and incredible book about a badass space pirate who gets unwittingly drawn into a conspiracy against a sexy but flawed Empress of the Galactic Empire and… a really sad and tragic story that takes place in the 1400s or whatever. The second one is Weiss’s, obviously, so you know it doesn’t have a single mark on it. I figured that would make up for my more… well-loved contribution.”
By ‘well-loved’, Yang means dog-eared to hell and also perhaps that it’d been the loser in a fight with a full cup of coffee, but Velvet accepts both books gracefully, far more so than Blake would have, who’s unable to hide her own grimace at the sight.
“And does Weiss know you’re donating a copy of one of her favorite books, Yang?”
“She has like seven copies! I checked to make sure this wasn’t one of the fancy editions. I think one of her pretentious potential girlfriends got her this one. She hasn’t touched it and won’t know it’s gone, I swear.”
Velvet hides a smile, but tucks both books into one of the pockets of her apron, alongside a thick biography and a thin book of poetry.
“You two can pick out two books, then. Would you like me to explain how it works, Blake?”
“Sure,” Blake smiles. “I’d love to hear about this place. I’ve never heard of it, and I’ve lived here for a few years now.”
“Okay, You both do that and I’m going to start looking.” Pack back on her shoulders, Yang shifts her weight to one side, hip popping out. “Here’s what I’m thinking, Blake. You pick out a book that you think you’d like and then I’ll also pick out a book I think you’d like. We’ll meet back here in a bit and you can rate my selection with points for both accuracy and humor. How’s that sound?”
“I think… you like a challenge a little too much, Yang Xiao Long.”
This is all the encouragement Yang needs, and she takes off without another word, heading for the cart furthest away from them, getting into a conversation with a redheaded teenager perusing the same cart approximately five seconds later.
“You should see her when she plays Mario Kart,” Velvet comments, and Blake can honestly imagine it pretty easily.
“A bloodbath, I’m sure.”
“Especially if Weiss is involved.” She seems to regret saying it almost immediately, if her wince is any indication, and Blake tries to make her smile encouraging, or non-threatening, at the very least.
“How do you know them? Yang and Weiss?”
At the book cart, the teen has started gesturing wildly at the three books Yang already has in her arms, and both Velvet and Blake watch for a moment, caught in the spectacle.
“My wife, Coco, is a wedding planner,” Velvet says after the pause, a hint of her previous wince still in place. “She planned the — oh, god, I think you already know about this, but I don’t know all the specifics of what’s happening with you three and — ”
“She planned Weiss and Yang’s wedding,” Blake finishes for her and Velvet sighs in relief. “Yeah, Yang was just telling me about the doily debacle.”
“That part was pretty bad.” A faint blush colors Velvets cheeks, as though admitting as such pains her. “But, honestly, it’s the most fun Coco’s ever had planning a wedding. Even if it was a fake one. She… doesn’t care for Weiss’s father, so she enjoyed all Yang and Weiss’s plans to cause him grief. Maybe a little too much. Even if he is a horrid man.”
“I don’t think anyone cares for him much,” Blake drawls. “What’d they do?”
Velvet’s laugh is a puff, blowing her bangs off her forehead. “Oh, anything that would upset the sort of things a man like Jacques Schnee would consider traditional; the whole wedding party wore suits, no one wore white, they walked themselves up the aisle, they changed the standard vows. They also based their menu off of things Jacques specifically didn’t like.”
The last one makes another giggle bubble up, and Blake feels her esteem for both Weiss and Yang grow a little bit more. Studying law had taught her that a bit of spite now and then could do a world of good, when applied correctly.
“Can’t say that doesn’t sound like a good time.”
“It was,” Velvet murmurs, lost enough in the memory that her smile turns wistful. “They’re a great pair… platonically.”
It sounds a bit like a question, which Blake would have enjoyed more two hours ago, when her intentions had been an awful lot more clear. But now, with Yang now in deep conversation with the teen she’d met not five minutes ago, Blake trying not to stare at the ease of kindness on display, and Velvet looking apologetic, it’s hard to figure out exactly where she stands any more.
“Yeah, so I’m learning.” She speaks again, before Velvet has to. “It’s alright. I’m not going to quiz you about the whole thing, so no need to look so worried. Yang seems to have made her choice quickly, so you’re in the clear.”
For a moment, it looks like Velvet will object, or that she has more to say. But in the end she merely smiles.
“I’ll leave you to find a book then. Unless you need help?”
“Actually.” Blake gestures to one of the books in Velvet’s apron, one that had caught her eye from the start. “I’d love to get that one, if it’s up for grabs.”
Velvet doesn’t hesitate; she’s handing the book over before Blake finishes her sentence. “It’s all yours.”
“Thanks, Velvet.” The book’s cover is worn, warped at the corner. Blake runs a hand over it and feels the small weight of history. “This is a great place. And it was nice meeting you.”
She means it, despite the awkwardness of it all. Strange, that she means it, really, and stranger still that she wants it to happen again, sometime in the future where she might sit at a dinner table and hear more about doilies and spitting on tradition and the fun of properly applied spite. But these aren’t thoughts for a first date (they’re definitely not thoughts for a first date with a married woman who is more likely simply too afraid to date her wife), and so Blake nods, smiles, and turns to go.
“Blake?” The call comes tentatively, as does Velvet’s half-step forwards, but she continues nevertheless, her voice soft and sure. “No matter how complicated it is, Yang and Weiss are worth it. You can’t go wrong with either of them. Or — ” Her smile twists, containing more than Blake can decipher. “ — Both.”
Blake’s brain completely empties of any and all thoughts, her face flushes red, and her throat restricts with a sudden and overwhelming dryness. (Should she have considered this before now? The, frankly, overwhelming concept of both? She’s unable to say so now — in the midst of a short circuit of something crucial — but knows that it’s certainly something she’ll think about later.) And, of course, the timing couldn’t be more unfortunate; Yang’s voice is cheery and unconcerned as she strides up, a book under her arm and a characteristic grin on her face.
“I had help on this one; I feel like I should admit that from the start. I was talking to Hector — the red-headed kid — and he was a big fan of the whole erotic ninjas genre, which — again, gotta be honest — I did not actually know was a genre. But anyways, he says that The Sais of Passion is the latest and maybe one of the best.” She holds out the book, displaying the cover (a muscular man with more clothing covering his face than the rest of his body) with a jazz-hand sort of wave. “This book definitely once belonged to Hector, but now it’s yours!”
Pros of the entire mortifying situation: Blake now has a reason for the blush that’d tinted her cheeks before Yang had showed up.
Cons of the entire motifying situation: absolutely everything else.
“How did you — ”
“I told you I saw that book in your bag at the bar. Ninjas in Love, right? I swear I wasn’t trying to be a creep, but that was really an eye-catching title. And cover. The ninja girl with the impressive katana? Trust me, I’d be reading it myself if I wasn’t too gay to focus on any man in any romantic sort of context for more than five seconds.”
“I… could have been holding on to that book for a friend,” Blake mumbles, entirely unconvincingly, and Yang nods, humming in agreement.
“Totally. So maybe you should take this for your friend and you can stick to — ” Her eyes narrow as she tries to read the small title text of the book already in Blake’s arms. “ — The Spiritual in Art: The Abstract Paintings of Wassily Kandinsky. Wow, okay, I was way off the mark with The Sais of Passion, huh?”
It’s an easy out, but not one Blake will take.
“Not… as much as I’d like,” she admits, and is rewarded with another one of Yang’s blinding smiles, wide and bright and absolutely worth the heat lingering in the tips of her ears.
“Nothing better than a woman with layers, Blake. Because I brought tea that my friend Ren made from his own special blend, cookies that Weiss learned to make just so she could say she could make something, and a really small blanket that you can totally use as another excuse to cuddle up with me some more. And all of it will be totally worthless without a woman with layers who can tell me all about both sexy ninjas and abstract painters. So what do you say?”
And there it is again. One more time.
If there’s a third problem with Blake’s plan it’s this: she’s coming to find that when it comes to Yang, she never wants to say no.
—
—
Weiss has dealt with far more complicated situations than this.
That’s what she keeps telling herself she watches Blake slide into the car she’s rented; smile a crooked, questioning little smile when they pull up to the museum; hold back a gasp when they’re let in. She’s been in worse situations and come out fine, but when her heart rate picks up as Blake — wide eyed and lovely and wearing a simple, black dress that that offers no distractions to the curves it covers — looks around the empty lobby in wonder, Weiss doesn’t yet know how she’ll manage this one.
“How did you —”
“My father had quite the art collection before he was sent to prison. The curator here was more than happy to take them off my hands. And more than happy to help with a special request to view the new exhibit before it officially opens tomorrow.”
It’s not the first time she’s been granted such a privilege, but it is the first time she’s brought anyone else. There’s a sanctity to it, a stillness she’d never felt comfortable disturbing with the people closest to her. (The vibrance Yang brought to every space she inhabited would fill the place too completely, Ruby’s chatter would bounce off the walls, Ren’s brand of careful silence would stifle the imperceptible aura of each piece). But watching Blake now — hardly moving, barely breathing — Weiss knows she’d guessed right. (Knows too, that it would have been better had she been far off the mark.)
“I’ve been looking forward to this exhibit since it was announced.” Blake’s voice is soft, but the emotion bleeds through, sinks low and coats the ground with an invisible fog that Weiss wants to wade in, dream-like. “Did — Yang must have told you. Isn’t this meant to be a competition?”
Even with the carefully applied layer of sarcasm, Weiss recognizes the confusion underlying the question; she’s felt it herself a million times, especially in the beginning, when Yang and her predilection for befuddling and needless acts of kindness had Weiss searching for an ulterior motive that (it turned out) didn’t exist.
“Yang has this habit of doing everything in her power to bring happiness to the people she cares about.” Weiss moves towards the exhibit, a collection of Kandinsky’s works that Yang had — overly casually — mentioned Blake would definitely enjoy, but glances back to show off the roll of her eyes. “There’s absolutely no defense against it. It’s infuriating.”
She shouldn’t feel as pleased as she does when this gets a laugh. Blake’s is low and a little raspy and Weiss suddenly understands why Yang is seemingly always cracking jokes if this is the result.
“Devious,” Blake agrees, falling into step with Weiss. “But I’m appreciative of the dirty tactics if it means I end up here. I can’t say I’ve ever had this exact experience.”
“Visiting an empty museum at night?”
“Visiting an empty museum at night with a beautiful woman,” Blake corrects, and Weiss flushes. She’s used to Yang saying such things, but always with a teasing grin; Blake's expression doesn’t shift into anything even slightly approaching humor, and her tone remains low enough to pitch Weiss’s stomach. But then she continues and the teasing slips in, and Weiss is left wondering if perhaps it’d been there from the start after all (or if it matters if it had). “When I was a young, impressionable girl, I did, in fact, visit an empty museum at night. But it didn’t involve being willingly let in by security, either.”
The statement — when combined with this particular tilt of Blake’s lips — feels like some kind of test. Or maybe that’s just Weiss, assuming the worst in people as she was — according to Yang — so quick to do.
“If you’re about to tell me that being a lawyer is merely a cover for your moonlighting as a thief, I’m afraid I will have to officially pull out of the competition for your favor.”
The smirk tilts further, becoming the sort of dangerous slant anyone might find themselves stumbling on.
“Is that so?”
Weiss considers this logically and honestly for a few seconds (Blake in some kind of skin-tight, all-black get-up, Blake as a crusader against the display of looted artifacts, Blake — with the exact expression she’s wearing now— offering to teach Weiss more about ropes and knots and harnesses) and them promptly and violently banishes any and all thoughts of it from her mind.
“Yes,” Weiss says, the word as firm as it is unconvincing.
“I’d never not take a lady at her word,” Blake murmurs (dangerously, still so dangerously). “So I guess it’s good that I’m not moonlighting as anything. Please, feel free to continue your wooing.”
But as they leave the lobby and turn the corner, Weiss finds herself back on familiar ground — plaques on walls, strategically positioned lights, multimillion dollar pieces on display — and this time, her response leaves less room for doubt, embarrassment, or floundering.
“Actually, I brought you here so the art would do that for me.”
Blake might have had a response if not for the dozens of paintings on the wall, all created by the artist she’d purchased a biography of, not a week ago. Watching her step into the gallery, Weiss’s emotions flit rapidly from pride to pleasure to admiration to interest, but in the end she’s left with something a little like awe as Blake moves further in, her lips parted in wonder, her eyes lit with an intensity that Weiss has only ever seen in Yang, and never quite so quietly.
“That,” Blake breathes, “might end up being a very effective strategy.”
There’s little else that needs to be said in the moment, and Weiss finds a novel comfort in the space the silence carves out. There’s a gap here that shouldn’t exist, a section of the universe that’s been carved off until it’s only Blake (her hand almost-but-not-quite lifting from her side, middle and index fingers separating from the rest, her spine straight from the tension of holding back from the impulse to reach further in) and Weiss herself (much of the same, but the fervor stretching out through the tips of her fingers focuses on the woman rather than the art). The bubble breaks as soon as it forms — Blake blinks and shifts to another piece, the bob in her throat visible — and Weiss takes a deep breath, searching for familiarity.
“They have a collection of over a hundred Kandinskys here,” she says, too loud, too sudden, too obvious. “Some of them were acquired over a century ago, and as you can see from this particular sampling, they possess a bit from each of his various aesthetics: his early years in Munich, his return to Moscow, his time at the Bauhaus, and finally, of course, his final years in Paris. They change out the pieces on display, but this is the largest gallery they’ve put together thus far, as far as I know.”
Blake’s pace is slow (hardly a pace at all) and by the time Weiss has finished, she’s only just started moving from the first painting to the second, both early representation paintings with oils thick enough to lift off the canvas.
“You’ve come here often, then?” Blake guesses, not so absentminded as to not glance away from the art, turning the weight of her stare onto Weiss for one brief flash of a moment. It’s blinding, but only in the surprising sort of way the moon can be, a brightness amplified by the dark, and perhaps that’s why Weiss dips back into the strange mood from before, honesty slipping from her lungs in the lull.
“This is the one thing that I had as a child that my father never managed to ruin, at least in part,” she admits. “Music, family, business; I had to claw those things back. But not this. I come here and… it’s nice to remember that, I suppose. That I could always find something in paintings like this.”
She doesn’t realize Blake is staring until a few seconds have passed, until she pulls herself from recollection and feels her gaze again. And it takes another two seconds before she comprehends what she’s seeing.
“That’s…. something I understand well,” Blake says slowly. (And yes. That’s what it’d been; Weiss had seen recognition there. And an empathy that only came from experience.)
“I suppose that makes you the perfect person to bring here, then.” Weiss smiles, mood lifting by these words and the ones that follow. “Yang doesn’t mind his earlier work, I don’t think, but once we move into the beginnings of abstractionism, she loses all interest. For her, it’s throwing blobs of paint on a canvas. She compared it to geometry class once.”
“So that’s what’s wrong with her.” Blake winces, but quickly shifts the expression into something new, a dash of curiosity followed by something far more sly. “I’ve been trying to figure it out.”
Protectiveness rises in Weiss’s throat like bile, too quick to be contained. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Blake’s surprise only shows for a second, but again, she’s quick to turn it, an odd blend of amusement and melancholy that Weiss is distracted from almost immediately.
“No offense intended. I just — honestly, I’ve been trying to figure out what’s wrong with both of you. There’s got to be something, otherwise your marriage wouldn’t be fake.”
Weiss crosses her arms. “What, two lesbians can’t just be friends?”
“Well, sure. But two lesbians who look like you two? Who flirt as much as you do? There has to be a reason why you’ve never even given it a shot.” Blake shrugs, the picture of nonchalance if not for the fact that she’s fully turned away from the art that’d ensnared her not moments ago. “I asked Yang the same thing, if it makes you feel better.”
“And?”
The answer comes without pause, and it hits like a strike.
“She’s scared.”
(It’s not bile flooding Weiss’s throat now, but rather her own heart. It settles just as quickly as the former, reality kicking in.)
“She most certainly did not say that.”
Giving a new meaning to the term puckish, Blake waits a beat.
“No,” she admits. “She didn’t. But maybe I’m reading between the lines.”
With a sigh, Weiss halts the fairly rapid back and forth, moving a bit further down the wall, until they’re at the start of the abstractionism that had gotten them on this topic in the first place. Blake follows, her attention once again shifting, eyes following the lines and curves of one of the Compositions (number IV, Weiss recalls vaguely, the first in the series that’s survived as anything other than a black-and-white reproduction).
“It’s not… fear,” she says finally. “It’s… Yang doesn’t like abstractionism.”
Though the words are in dire need of further clarification for her true point to be made, Blake merely raises an eyebrow, drawing none of the conclusions that Weiss would expect.
“Sometimes I like to imagine the abstractionists as… filters. They saw the world in a certain way, a way that only a rare group of people did — like Kandinsky, with color and music — but instead of keeping it to themselves, they… translated. They put all those things into a form that the rest of us could comprehend.”
She gestures to the piece in front of them now, a near caress of the air in front of the paint. “Yang doesn’t like abstractionism. She doesn’t need a filter for her feelings. But I — I think I do. I think we don’t work in that way because we don’t have…”
“A Kandinsky?” Blake finishes, only a little glib (and only out of kindness).
“Something like that.”
The silence of the gallery reigns once again.
And again, Weiss doesn’t mind it.
(Again, she finds something dangerous in Blake’s sideways glance, but this time, it’s not temptation, but affection.)
“I wonder where that leaves me, then, as a fellow aficionado of Wassily and the rest of the abstractionists,” she muses. “Will Yang and I need a translator too? Should I quit while I’m ahead?”
Though she’s uncertain where the instinct comes from, Weiss laughs.
“For some reason, I get the feeling that you’re a bit more middle ground. Metaphorically bilingual, let’s say. I wouldn’t fret. Maybe you’ll even get her to appreciate it.” Her smile softens without permission, blunting the sharp sounds of her consonants. “She already tries for me. So I’m sure she’d try for you too.” She cracks a smile, small but genuine. “Especially if you frame it properly. As though you need help with the break in for your next art heist.”
“Maybe in another life I’m an international art thief pulling Yang — and you — in on big heists, but not in this one.” Blake’s smile does an odd thing then, cracking through on one side of her face and then wavering, falling off as suddenly as it started. “It wasn’t like that, you know. My last visit. I wasn’t there to steal or vandalize or… anything. I just wanted to look. Just like this.”
She waves a hand at the empty room around them, a vague gesture that, combined with the somber tone, has Weiss’s brows pinching low on her forehead.
“It was a museum that was sort of out of the way,” Blake continues, gaze resolutely pasted to the painting before her. “Not exactly a metropolis, but they had a nice collection. But as soon as I walked in there it was like… why would a young Faunus girl want to look at a gallery of abstract art.” A sneer pulls at the corner of her lips and Weiss quickly looks away, eyes finding the ground out of instinct. “I came back that night — there wasn’t any security — and I could look at everything in peace.”
“I’m — ” She should be better at this now, but the words catch in her throat, swollen by uselessness.
“I know,” Blake says, her shrug not as sharp as it might be, and Weiss shouldn’t feel relief, but does. “There’s this quote from Kandinsky; the true work of art is born from the artist: a mysterious, enigmatic, and mystical creation. It detaches itself from him, it acquires an autonomous life — ”
“ — becomes a personality, an independent subject, animated with a spiritual breath, the living subject of a real existence of being,” Weiss finishes softly, and Blake nods. The slant of her mouth is gentler this time, still a slope, but one of less obvious danger (a field of wildflowers, a babbling brook, a beautiful, inviting world that greets you before the slide off the cliff).
“That’s what I always took from abstractionism. And there was a comfort in that, the idea that art could remain pure, no matter what else was going on. When I was younger, I thought there was something rotten about people. Most of them, or even all. So it was… nice to imagine that even if that were true — even if the core of humanity was bankrupt — it still couldn’t taint this one thing.” Her eyes dart away, on and off Weiss’s form in a flash that feels like a fire or lightning strike or flood. “Funny, isn’t it? That we both got there somehow.”
“Is ‘funny’ the word?” Weiss rasps.
“No,” Blake admits. “It’s neater though. Just like Kandinsky’s theory. Because it’s not really true, in the end, is it? But neither is the idea that there’s some kind of innate evil in every person in the world. I guess I figured both of those things out as I got older and got away from the sort of people that made me feel that way in the first place. People are people and art isn’t removed from that because nothing is. But that’s okay. Because the right people make it okay.”
This is too much. Weiss had known that from the start, known it as soon as Blake had stepped into this room, as soon as she’d slid into Weiss’s car, as soon as started texting both she and Yang back with a regularity that failed to dull the jump of her heart rate every time the notification came through.
Weiss has dealt with far more complicated situations than this. (A childhood spent trying to please the father she loved and hated, an adolescence ripping out the hated things inside of her that had taken root, an adulthood trying to mend the parts of her that’d been torn in the process.) But that she only had herself to blame made it all the more difficult. At the time — in that moment she’d first made the joke that started it all — she’d thought it would be more of the same. She’d thought it would peeter out. She’d thought Blake would go on a single date with Yang and then the competition would be over and they’d be able to joke about it later, because Yang was Yang in the same way the universe was infinite and the Earth orbited the Sun.
She’d thought a lot of things, but instead she’s here and Blake’s eyes are a gold that’s gotten progressively brighter with each word and there’s something in her voice that has slipped in through cracks Weiss had thought she’d mended and Weiss has dealt with worse, but this is still too much. Far too much.
(And shouldn’t she have known? Shouldn’t her first joke turned complication have taught her better? Shouldn't she remember being a broke student trying to get an education without relying on a father who used money as a weapon and that moment — that stupid moment — where she’d joked that marrying someone would set her up as an independent and solve her financial aid problems? Shouldn’t she remember Yang’s grin, the way she’d leaned forward, the spark in her eyes? Shouldn’t she know by now that a joke could turn into a permanent hitch in her chest, a curl that only tightened whenever her gaze caught on the wrong — or right — thing.)
“It sounds,” Weiss finally begins, strain hidden by softness, “like we’ve both gotten lucky in finding the right people.”
Blake doesn’t whisper when she speaks next, but her tone holds something of the same, a quiet admission of a hesitant truth.
“Present company included, I’m thinking.”
And Weiss, of course, would agree, though perhaps it would be simpler if she didn’t.
“Yes,” she murmurs. “It seems as though that might end up being the case.”
In what capacity remains to be seen, of course, and Weiss thinks that might be on both their minds as they turn back to the Kandinskys, settle back into a calmer (less personal) viewing of the pieces before them. At least, until Weiss speaks again, surprising even herself.
“This is my favorite.”
They’ve moved into the 1920s — past the Blue Rider Period and Kandinsky’s time in Moscow — and the lines and geometric shapes have become all the more apparent. If Weiss were try to being coy or intellectual, she wouldn’t admit to her preference for the canvas in front of them now, one of Kandinsky’s less popular (and perhaps less notable) pieces.
But there’s something in the air, the promise of honesty Yang had drawn from all of them, and it compels her towards truth.
“Three Sounds,” Blake sighs, a little wistfully. “If I say the same, will you think I’m lying?”
“Somehow, I would be surprised if you didn’t.”
It’s one of his simpler paintings in some ways, precise and geometric, but without some of the chaotic clutter often featured in his other work from this era. But the stacks of triangles, the explosions of circles, have always, to Weiss, held a certain movement, a clear direction. But it’s the layering she’s always loved most, the thing that she’s always supposed gave the painting its name.
“His synesthesia here is so…” Blake takes a breath, but releases it as a laugh. “Each color really does have a sound, doesn’t it? I don’t always see it, not in every one of his works. But here — right here in the three triangles overlapping — it’s like a melody, isn’t it?”
“Three instruments,” Weiss agrees. “Trumpet, violin, and organ, Kandinsky said, didn’t he? But I don’t think it matters so much. Not to me.”
“It’s the concept. The change of hue and sound that results from the placement. The idea that it’s creating something that’s more than the sum of its parts.”
Weiss takes a moment before she responds, just to be sure the single word she can manage doesn’t crack.
“Exactly.”
In the oils, she finds the curve of Blake’s cheekbone, the line of her jaw, the gold of her eyes, the warm brown of her skin, and Weiss wants to kiss her. Wants to take her hand. Wants to fold her own body into Blake’s — black and blue — until they create something new (a color, a sound, a feeling) that they can add to the canvas.
Instead, Weiss curls her fingers against her palms, and thinks of people in her life (the ones she’d call ‘right’), and what she’d do to keep them there.
—
