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“Hey Rubes, can you help me with my hair?” Yang asked simply, hanging out the door to the bathroom and waggling a shampoo bottle for purposes of demonstration.
“Oh sure.” Ruby hopped down to the floor, her bunk swinging in the wake of her departure as she scampered across the room to join the blonde in the en-suite bathroom.
As the door closed behind them, the other two occupants of the dorm glanced across the shared space, something approaching a knowing look passing between the two.
Their dorm-mates couldn’t be more obvious if they tried.
The two had shown up together on the first day of school and already seemed to know each other. Throughout initiation they had been glued together at the hip, to the point that most other initiates had assumed automatically that they would be partners during the following year.
For Blake it had come as a surprise to see how well Yang took to finding a partner who wasn’t Ruby. She had expected some complaining, perhaps even jealousy from the fiery fighter, but instead had been met with cheerful welcomes. Yang had been excitable and in no-way put out during the rest of initiation, even after she found out that Ruby had been partnered with Weiss Schnee of all people.
It became clear the moment things started going south that it never mattered whether the two girls from Patch were partners or not. They had a level of trust that exceeded even what Blake had seen from her parents, fighting alongside one another like they could feel their distance in space without even looking. They performed partner maneuvers with no spoken command, each managing to be in the right place at the right time, and always covered each other’s backs.
She had honestly been relieved when they were all put together on a team, even if it meant being with the Schnee. It would have been some kind of tragedy to see two people who knew each other so well be split apart by some obtuse bureaucratic process. Somehow, seeing the way they hugged each other after the announcement healed Blake’s soul. Maybe it was just the damage that Adam had left on her, but it was good to see someone get to have a happily ever after, even if it was just her teammates at school.
Weiss had seen the two girls arrive before Blake. She’d had to take the same pedestrian shuttle that they did to get to the courtyard. In her humble opinion, they were overly physical, disgustingly emotional, and mushy in some way that made Weiss queasy just to look at. Even during regular conversations they couldn’t keep their hands off one another, always laying one on a shoulder or jabbing elbows into the other’s sides. They even stood too close together, like they couldn’t bear to have any air pass between them at all.
Now, Weiss would be the first to admit that her upbringing may have had some effect on her perception. After all, her parents were not exactly the finest role models in romance, and their example had lead to a family where one touch on the shoulder served as the equivalent of a warm hug of support most of the time, if one even got that much. The hug the two had shared at the commencement ceremony had brought a little smile to Weiss’s lips even still, but those were special circumstances.
What Weiss really couldn’t stand was the way that they seemed to have no boundaries whatsoever between the two of them. Snuggling on the couch in the common area was one thing, but sleeping in the same bed once every few nights was another entirely. They seemed to avoid getting too handsy with one another while their teammates were around, but that didn’t always stop them. They would exchange small kisses on the cheek or forehead even in the presence of others, and of course there were always the showers.
Weiss tried to focus on her school work as she heard the shower begin running from the other room. She tried to ignore the voices of the lively girls as they began their weekly ritual, which involved wrangling Yang’s insane mass of hair and apparently needed two people to be done effectively. The fact that they did this so brazenly in front of her and Blake only exacerbated the problem.
Blake’s ears twitched as she kept her gaze locked on the book she had been reading before the week’s entertainment began. As much as she could try not to let the nature of her preferred literature color her perception of the two girls sharing an energetic shower together, they were really too cute not too. The fact that her ears picked up everything—even through the bow—was certainly a factor too.
“Oh my god, so the other day Nora…”
“Mhm, yeah?”
“Ohhh actually hold that thought… just a little lower—yeah just like that.”
“You like that?”
“Don’t even think about stopping or I’ll knock your lights out pipsqueak.”
Ruby giggled at that, but whatever machinations she worked brought a low groan from the older girl that had Blake heating up under the collar, suggestive reading material or no.
Not even a minute later, that tone changed.
“Oi!, watch where those hands are going!”
“Oh? Is the big scary dragon gonna stop me?” Ruby’s laugh was infectious even from the next room over.
“You wanna try me short stuff? Because if you mess with Yang, you’re gonna hang!”
“Oh come on, that was weak.”
“Callin’ me weak huh? How’s this for weak?”
What followed was a series of alternating squeaks and giggles that that made Blake’s ears flinch under her bow.
Across the room Weiss shut her book with a snap, and made for the door in a hurry.
The whole of the two teams RWBY and JNPR sat at their lunch table in their usual fashion on a slow weekend mid semester.
Most carried on with their usual banter, discussing grades and course work, or else exercises and practice sessions. Ruby was engaged in an animated conversation with Jaune about a card game. Yang talked with Pyrrha and Nora about their planned workout that evening.
Weiss on the other hand, watched both Ruby and Yang with a question on her mind. It wasn’t that they needed to spell anything out concretely, she had just been getting confused as of late. While the state of their relationship seemed pretty obvious to any who she had discussed it with, she had never actually heard the two refer to themselves or each other as girlfriends, and she was pretty sure she had seen Yang flirting with Blake in a way that seemed pretty off limits if they were in any sort of exclusive relationship.
Call it her conservative upbringing or whatever, but that kind of ambiguity got on her nerves. Not the least of which because it would determine in no uncertain terms whether a certain Rose was on the market, something she couldn’t help but wonder about despite all the evidence to the contrary.
By chance, a lull came in both conversations, and Weiss took the opportunity to clear her throat, effectively pulling at least the attention of the relevant parties to her intrusion.
“Um… Ruby, and Yang—” She started weakly, “I was wondering, um… about how long you too have been together.” That wasn’t even a question but she supposed it would have to do.
The two in question stared at her blankly for a moment, their silence spreading to the surrounding friends as ears waited to catch the answer. They had all been wondering after all.
Yang seemed to pick up her thoughts first.
“Well, I was two years old when Ruby was born so that makes it, what, like 15 years?”
A light round of chuckles passed through the group, many assuming she was making some joke about them being friends for as long as they could remember.
Blake fought a twitch in her ear at that. She needed to know the real answer even more than Weiss did.
“No, I think she meant: How long have you two been dating?”
She waited with baited breath for the answer, biting her lip as the silence grew around them.
Far beyond their own table, it seemed that many students at Beacon were interested in the subject as the quiet bubble of attention spread across the cafeteria at large.
This time both girls looked absolutely flabbergasted.
Yang stared loose jawed at Blake like some kind of fish pulled out of the ocean. Ruby stared hard at the floor, face paler than Weiss’s hair, but she managed a stuttering reply.
“W-We, um… We’re si-sisters actually.” She flushed with embarrassment, tapping the tips of her fingers together.
The silence somehow rang with new tension, that of confusion and bewilderment in all who heard.
“Wait, but you look totally different. And you have different family names.” Weiss cut in once again, failing to ask questions but determined to get answers none-the-less.
“Yeah, hehe…” Ruby chuckled awkwardly, one hand scratching at the base of her head in a gesture she shared with Yang, now revealed to apparently be a family thing. “We have different moms, but the same dad.”
“Huh” Blake noted, eyes shifting back and forth between them as pieces of the puzzle came together. “That explains a lot.” She finished, not elaborating on what was being explained or why she looked so deeply satisfied with the information.
“Wait, wait, wait wait wait. You thought we— You thought that me and Ruby…” Yang stumbled over her thoughts, mind struggling to put all of the conversation together into a coherent picture.
Nora was quick to help out however:
“Yeah, we all thought you two were totally doing it.” she said with her usual tact.
“NORA” various voices overlapped, some louder than others, as Ren gently but firmly shoved a pancake in her mouth.
“What?! What?! How could you possibly think that?!” Yang looked on the edge of panic, but Weiss had even more questions for her now than ever.
“Then what was all that in the shower?”
Everyone turned to her suddenly with mixed looks of shock and confusion all around.
“You mean cleaning my hair? You don’t think it gets like this by itself do you?”
“No, I mean the part after that, with the shrieking and ‘Don’t touch me there!’”
Weiss felt mean at that point, seeing Yang’s face go pale while the looks around her shifted more towards horror. She really wished there were another explanation.
Luckily, Ruby was able to provide:
“You mean tickle fights? We’ve been doing that since I was like four years old.”
Tension deflated around the table as an audible sigh of relief swept through the crowd like a gust of wind through the tree-tops. Weiss found herself blushing Ruby’s-cloak red with embarrassment, both for the scene she had caused and the impression it gave of her mental proclivities, given her interpretation of clearly innocent interactions between two totally normal half sisters who just happened to never disclose that fact.
Oh well, with that clearly resolved, and the cafeteria wildlife returned to the natural chaos of it’s native habitat, Weiss had work to do.
Blake watched across the table as Weiss began concocting an elaborate training/study schedule with Ruby for the rest of the week that would conveniently have the two spending quite a lot of quality time together away from their team.
Silently, she wished the girl luck, as she turned back to face the little dragon that she herself was eager to make way on catching.