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The drumming of Weiss’s fingers echoed in the mostly empty classroom. She was supposed to be in the middle of her Dust Studies class right now, and technically she was. The problem was that the notoriously flaky Professor Pulvis had failed to show up to teach the class. This was the third time this semester so far, and it was starting to get on Weiss’s nerves. The rest of the students had already given up and left, which meant that Weiss, along with Ruby, were the only people remaining in the room.
Ruby fidgeted in her seat next to Weiss, causing the scowl on Weiss’s face to deepen. She knew that Ruby would’ve already left too if she’d been here on her own. Weiss really wished that her partner would dedicate herself to her studies more without the threat of peer pressure looming over her, although Weiss did have to give Ruby some credit for improving. Her grades this semester were already much better than they had been during Team RWBY’s first semester at Beacon.
Ruby attempted to surreptitiously glance at a clock hanging up on the wall, although her subtlety left a lot to be desired. She turned to Weiss and hesitantly said, “I don’t think the teacher is going to show up.”
Weiss let out an angry sigh. Her fingers drummed even louder against the desk in front of her before they finally stopped. She said, “I suppose you’re right.”
“I am?” Ruby asked, sounding surprised. “I mean…. Yeah! I am.”
Weiss started to gather up her books and papers. This might have been her last class of the day, but she still didn’t want to waste what was left of it. She said, “Come on, Ruby. We’re going to go study in our dorm room.”
“Aw…” Ruby said as she also gathered her things. “I’ve done all my homework. What am I even going to study?”
“I can think of a few subjects you could stand to review,” Weiss said as she stood.
“I bet Yang and Blake aren’t studying right now,” Ruby said, standing up as well.
“They most certainly are. They have study hall this period,” Weiss said. This class was one of the few this semester that wasn’t shared by all of Team RWBY. However, Weiss was still well aware of where Blake and Yang were supposed to be right now. She had memorized all of her teammates’ schedules. How else could she make sure they were sticking to them?
“Maybe Blake’s studying then…” Ruby mumbled.
Weiss left the classroom with Ruby in tow. A moment later, they both stepped out onto Beacon’s campus. One happy side effect of leaving class before the current period had ended was that the usual crush of students milling about the school grounds was absent. Weiss was pleased with that at the very least. She wasn’t a fan of crowds.
Weiss and Ruby started making their way toward their dormitory when Ruby said, “About Yang and Blake. Have they seemed…different to you lately? Like since the new semester started?”
“Not particularly,” Weiss said.
“Not even around each other?” Ruby asked.
“Not that I’ve noticed,” Weiss said.
“Really?” Ruby asked. “Are you sure?”
Weiss sighed. She asked, “Ruby, what are you trying to imply?”
“It just kind of feels like, um, like their, uh…relationship’s different,” Ruby said. She sounded uncomfortable, although Weiss had no idea why.
“All of our relationships with Blake are different after what happened at the end of last semester,” Weiss said. She recalled how shocked she’d been to learn that Blake was a faunus. A tiny bit of shame pricked at her as she also remembered how utterly convinced she’d been that Blake had committed some kind of heinous crime. That entire incident had been a real lesson in humility for her, but she supposed that was why she was attending Beacon, to learn and better herself. She just hadn’t anticipated some of the lessons that the life of a huntress-in-training had in store for her.
“No, no,” Ruby said. “This isn’t about the whole…you know.”
“What is it about then?” Weiss asked.
“Do you think that maybe Yang and Blake have, like, gotten together?” Ruby asked.
It took Weiss a moment to parse what Ruby was suggesting. When she did, she abruptly stopped walking.
Ruby strolled a few steps past Weiss before stopping too. She turned around and said, “Uh…? Is that a yes?”
“I’m sorry. Can you repeat that?” Weiss asked. She was certain that she’d misunderstood Ruby.
“Is that a—?” Ruby started to ask again.
“No! Your question! Please repeat your question,” Weiss said, making an effort not to let herself get too frustrated.
“Oh!” Ruby said. “Do you think that Yang and Blake have hooked up?”
Weiss realized that she hadn’t misunderstood Ruby after all. However, there was so much wrong with what Ruby was asking that she didn’t even know where to begin. She blurted out, “No! Why would you even think that?!”
“Well,” Ruby said. “For one, Yang’s been staring at Blake a lot, like a whole lot, while we’ve been in class.”
“She should be focusing on the lecturer during class. And so should you for that matter,” Weiss said. “But it’s not unlike Yang to not pay attention. Or at least appear like she’s not paying attention.”
“It also sure seems like Yang’s been a lot more handsy with Blake,” Ruby said.
“Yang’s hands do have a tendency to not keep to themselves,” Weiss said with some derision.
“And Blake’s been smiling a lot at Yang when she thinks no one’s looking,” Ruby said.
“That…is a bit odd,” Weiss admitted. She’d never describe Blake as grumpy, but smiling wasn’t usually part of her repertoire.
“So you do think something’s up,” Ruby said.
“Possibly,” Weiss said. “But I doubt it’s what you’re assuming.”
“What else could it be?” Ruby asked.
“Let’s cut to the heart of the matter. Is your sister a…?” Weiss lowered her voice as she fumbled with a word she found uncomfortable. “…lesbian?”
“I don’t really know,” Ruby said.
“How can you not know?” Weiss asked. She was a bit shocked. She was under the impression that there were few secrets between Ruby and her sister.
“Yang’s never talked about that kind of thing with me,” Ruby said.
“Yes, but…what kind of people did she date before she was accepted into Beacon?” Weiss asked.
“She didn’t,” Ruby said.
“What?” Weiss said. Now she was floored. She’d assumed that someone as obviously gorgeous as Yang would have a whole string of brokenhearted ex-boyfriends left behind in her wake.
“That’s why I’m asking you about this,” Ruby said. “I’m not sure what Yang’s like when she’s dating someone.”
“Don’t you think she’d tell you if she was in a relationship?” Weiss asked. “Especially if that someone was on our team?”
“Maybe?” Ruby said. “But maybe not. She knows that I’m not into that kind of stuff.”
Weiss was confused, not for the first time in this bizarre conversation. She asked, “You’re not into…women?”
“Anyone,” Ruby said.
“Anyone?” Weiss echoed.
“Yeah. Anyone,” Ruby repeated. “All that kissing and…other stuff just seems kind of gross. Hugs are fine though.”
Weiss stood there stunned for a moment. For starters, she hadn’t even considered that not being attracted to anyone at all was even an option. In a way she was envious of Ruby. She also felt mildly disappointed by this revelation about Ruby’s orientation for reasons that she neither understood nor cared to examine.
Eventually, not knowing what else to do, Weiss started walking toward Team RWBY’s dorm again.
Ruby hurried after Weiss. She asked, “So what do you think? Maybe Yang and Blake hooked up?”
“No. No,” Weiss said. “It’s…statistically unlikely.”
“Huh?” Ruby asked.
“Most people are straight,” Weiss said. “Therefore we can assume that any given person, like Blake or Yang, is straight until proven otherwise.”
“Can we?” Ruby asked. She didn’t sound like she was convinced.
Weiss and Ruby finally reached their dormitory building. Weiss opened the door and held it for her partner. It was a quiet act of defiance on her part. She knew Father would’ve been appalled that she wasn’t the one having the door held open for her.
“Thanks,” Ruby said as she walked inside.
Weiss followed Ruby through the door. She said, “The odds of Blake or Yang being…queer are low. The odds of them both being queer are even lower. And the odds of them both being queer and being assigned as partners are astronomically low.”
“I guess…” Ruby said as she and Weiss walked down the hallway. “But we weren’t assigned partners. We picked them!”
“Hardly,” Weiss said. “We were blasted off into that forest at random. Unless you’d have me believe that Blake took the time and effort to purposefully seek out Yang, who was a stranger to her at the time, all while dodging the other students. Or vice versa.”
“I guess neither of them ever told us they did anything like that,” Ruby said.
“Exactly,” Weiss said.
Weiss and Ruby finally reached the door to Team RWBY’s room. Weiss shifted the books and binders she was carrying in her arms so that she could pull out her scroll. She tapped it against the door’s lock which clicked. Then she put her scroll away and opened the door. As she walked into the room, she said, “And that’s why I’m confident that Blake and Yang aren’t—”
Weiss had only gone about three steps forward before she stopped dead in her tracks. She stood there, still as a statue, as her gaze locked onto the sight in front of her. Her face gradually turned more and more red. She desperately wanted to look away from what she was seeing, but she just couldn’t seem to manage it.
Blake and Yang were not in their study hall like they were supposed to be. They were both here in the dorm room. They were in the room and right in front of Weiss. They were in front of Weiss and in a position that she would charitably describe as “compromising”.
Blake’s eyes were open wide in alarm and her cat-like ears were pressed flat against her head as she silently stared back at Weiss. She at least had the decency, as ironic as that word was at the moment, to look mortified with embarrassment. She was blushing so deeply that it went all the way down to her breasts which Weiss regrettably had an unobstructed view of. Blake was “dressed” in a corset that did absolutely nothing to preserve her dignity. She was also wearing gloves that went past her elbows, thigh-high boots with ridiculous heels on them, and nothing else. And if that wasn’t scandalizing enough, she was holding a flogger in one hand and the end of a leash in another.
The leash managed to draw Weiss’s eyes down right to where she wanted them even less. Yang was down on her hands and knees in front of Blake. She’d apparently been right in the middle of literally licking one of Blake’s boots, and her tongue continued to hang out of her mouth mid-lick as she sat there, frozen with the same wide-eyed embarrassment as everyone else in the room.
The leash that Blake was holding was attached to a collar around Yang’s neck which was the only thing that Yang was wearing, at least in the traditional sense. She did have a headband on which had a pair of fake dog ears on top. There was also what appeared to be a dog’s tail sticking out of her backside, and since there wasn’t anything that it could be clipped to, Weiss could only draw one conclusion about how it was attached. Even in her dumbfounded state, Weiss was impressed that Yang’s dog-themed “accessories” almost perfectly matched her hair color.
The heel of one of Blake’s boots, the one that Yang wasn’t licking, was currently jammed into Yang’s shoulder. It looked painful to Weiss, but when she saw the angry red marks on Yang’s back that had clearly come from Blake’s flogger, she wondered if maybe the pain was the point.
Weiss was finally shaken out of her shock-induced stupor when she heard Ruby asking, “Is something wrong in there?”
Before Weiss could warn her partner, Ruby walked into the room. She took in the scene in front of her for less than a second before she spun back around and said, “Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope.”
Weiss heard the door to the room open again as Ruby continued to repeat her one-word mantra. Then Ruby’s voice vanished into the hallway, followed by the sound of the door closing.
Weiss, Blake, and Yang all continued to not move a muscle for what felt like many minutes. Then Yang finally pulled her tongue back into her mouth. She turned to face Weiss as best she could given her precarious position down on the floor with a boot on her shoulder. She said, “This, uh…. This is…. It’s…. It’s exactly what it looks like.”