Yang wasn't having a very good dinner.
Sure, the fancy five-star restaurants Weiss kept bringing them to for their weekly team dinners had the most amazing food, but whenever she tried to enjoy it...
"Yang, that's the salad fork, you imbecile."
"Yang, you uncouth brute, the entirety of your dessert is smaller than your soup spoon, so why would you use it for that?"
"Yang, what are you doing under the table? Go sit down, you crude philisti- OW!"
...Okay, so maybe jabbing Weiss in the knee with the hilt of the knife she dropped wasn't something she made a habit of, but damn it, the frosty vixen had it coming!
If there was anyone else she would criticize, Yang'd probably be okay with it, but Weiss refused to lecture anyone but her!
Blake knew exactly what she was doing, of course - probably got it out of her books; her posture was perfect, arms in exactly the right spots, carving evenly sized chunks out of her fish dish. Immaculately and disgustingly posh.
Ruby, on the other hand, was nearly the sloppiest eater in Beacon, bested only by Nora (whose messiness exponentially increases with the quantity of syrup involved). As soon as Ruby's food arrived, she would grab a random utensil from beside her plate and dig in with reckless abandon, be it soup with a knife or using a spoon on steak.
Bits of her meal would fly all over the restaurant - Yang once spied one of Ruby's carrots fly atop the head chef's hat when he came out yet again to suck up to the Schnee - yet Weiss, seated right next to her partner, her jacket clearly soaked by the energetic redhead beside her, would lean across the table, a smirk on her face, and smack Yang's wrist for gripping her knife a millimetre too high.
It was just so infuriating! Yang could tell Weiss knew exactly how much it bothered her, and Dust, was it a lot.
But Yang had an ace up her sleeve. Next week would be Blake's outing, and the week after would be Yang's, and in preparation, she had carefully crafted the perfect plan to counter the injustices done unto her.
In Yang's opinion, revenge was a dish best served flaming hot - literally, on occasion.
But for the Ice Queen, she could make an exception.
"Yang, how and why are you doing this?"
"Don't worry about it, Weiss. It's not like I've fallen into debt or anything, the head chef here just owed me a favour." Yang set down Ruby and Blake's meals in front of their respective owners and jauntily tipped her unnecessarily large chef's hat. "And as for why, well; you'll see when I bring you your dinner," said Yang, heading back through the double doors into the kitchen.
When she was sure her teammates could no longer see her, Yang took off the hat and pulled from her pocket a note, with "DO NOT TOUCH" scribbled on it, and set them both down beside Weiss's designated meal.
Having ensured that the request to avoid contact was thoroughly visible, Yang then strolled by the dishwasher, grabbed one of the dishes left out to dry ("Need to borrow this real quick thanks bye"), used her semblance to get rid of any remaining moisture, and sauntered over to the freezer, humming as she scanned the contents within.
Upon locating her frozen treasure, she let out a small "Aha!", dumped a few onto the plate in her hands, kicked the freezer shut, and headed out, stopping herself just short of the exit to the kitchen.
This is it, Yang. This is what you've been waiting for all night. Just go out there and do it! You got this, girl!
The doors crashed open as Yang came through, prompting Ruby and Blake, among others, to look up from their meals. With her enhanced eyesight, the latter could see exactly what was in the plate Yang carried. She looked confused for a moment before her eyes widened in realization and she dropped her head into her hands, too distraught to acknowledge the bemused glances her table-mates directed her way.
C'mon, Blakey; a little support would be nice! thought Yang. She dropped the dish in front of Weiss with a large crash, drawing the attention of any patrons not yet watching the spectacle.
The plate held two cubes of ice.
Ruby looked from the plate to Yang, then to Blake, then back to Yang. "Uh, Yang, what-"
"Here's your dinner, Weiss!" interrupted Yang.
"Just ice has been served!"
Ruby fell backwards off her chair and Blake led the restaurant in a chorus of groans, but Yang only had eyes for Weiss. She watched, a smirk on her lips, as Weiss got redder and redder, glaring at the blonde, using her glyphs to pick up the ice cubes, and- wait, that wasn't part of the plan- where's she aiming that-
After Yang came to from her ice cube induced 'brainfreeze' (which she refused to believe Weiss said after knocking her unconscious, despite Ruby's insistence that 'it was super terrible, you should have seen how the entire restaurant reacted, it was so much worse than yours') the quartet finished up their dinner, Yang having gone and fetched Weiss's actual meal.
"She doesn't have any more jokes up her sleeve, does she?" asked Weiss to Blake, as Yang excused herself to retrieve the team's desserts. Blake could only shrug in response.
Their attention was drawn once more to the doors flying open, revealing a grinning Yang and the platter in her hands.
"The tiramisu for you, Blake, and the three-scoop strawberry, rocky road, and, of course, cookies 'n' cream ice cream bowl for Rubes here," Yang announced, placing the desserts in front of their respective owners.
"And for you, Weiss..."
Yang dropped a small bowl filled with sand in front of her teammate.
"You get your just deserts."
Antithetical to her previous reaction, Weiss just looked at Yang, almost... pityingly? And Blake, too...
"Do you guys not get it? Y'know, cuz, it's your dessert, and you all know the saying 'just desserts' but it's an actual desert as your dessert, so-"
"You realize 'just deserts' is how the idiom is spelled, right?"
"Uh, what?"
"'Desert is an archaic term, meaning 'that which one deserves''," recited Blake. "'The phrase 'just desserts'' - with two 's''s," she clarified, "'originated as a pun, used, for example, in restaurant names.'"
"Oh no! Blake, you've turned against me too? Yang cried out, clutching the hand not holding the empty platter to her heart as she melodramatically fell to her knees. "Etymology, my greatest weakness!" Weiss scoffed and looked away.
"Look at it this way, Yang." The corners of Blake's lips turned up. "You made a pun out of a pun so unknowingly overused that you looped all the way back around." It wasn't true, of course, but it was bound to make the blonde feel better.
"I did? ...I did! Blake, that's awesome!" Yang shot to her feet, dropping the platter and enveloping her partner in a triumphant hug.
"Blegh! Ptoo!" The two turned to the table to find Ruby spitting out sand, having moved onto Weiss's dessert after finishing both her own and Blake's, with Weiss staring at her in disbelief.
"Yaaaang, why does this restaurant serve sand as a dessert?"
Yang started to laugh. "Gee, sis, maybe if you hadn't stolen other people's food you wouldn't be getting your just desserts!"
"YANG XIAO LONG, I SWEAR I WILL FREEZE YOU SOLID AND THROW YOU INTO THE OCEAN!"
"Well, princess, that's a start to solving global warming, but I think you can do bet- ARGH, MY EYES! WEISS, YOU THREW SAND IN MY EYES! OHHH GOD, IT BURNS!"
Blake simply stared at her plate, forlorn at the tragic loss of her sweet, delicious pastry.
A single tear slid out of her eye.
