Author's Note: Hey all, it's back to the Bumbles in a mildly fluffy situation.
This is more of a drabble, considering I don't think it follows procedure for a "proper" short story. But it was fun taking the silent bonding of my struggling photography class and spinning a story for my OTP from it.
I hope the jargon is explained clearly. These ain't the tanks most of us are used to. Also, this takes place before Blake and Yang get together. Just making it clear to avoid any confusion.
UPDATE 3/5: A few very minor sentence changes. I still think Ruby and Weiss steal the show.
"And after you take the film out, remember to cut the lead before putting it in the roller. This is all done in the dark, which is why I've made you practice rolling film without looking at it. But you've all mastered that, now haven't you?"
A quick look around the workroom showed no, they hadn't. Twenty-six photography students were scattered in various states of distress, leaning on walls or taking unconscious steps across the floor. All were looking directly at the objects in their hands. The sound of clacking plastic was heard as they tried to shuffle film inside reels.
"Why, Weiss, why?" Ruby asked when her film slipped, hitting the floor and hissing into a coil by her feet.
Blake stood by the buckets of solutions used to develop the photos. She had gotten a grasp on the art of rolling by doing their first photography assignment ahead of time. Her early success had ended when chemicals mixed poorly with film. The entire roll was pulled from its tank in ruins, acid smudges eating what images hadn't failed to appear. It was a mild wound to her pride but not one Blake couldn't get over. It was a learning experience, and it's not like she'd unearthed her destroyed film in front of the class.
Her eyes flicked to Yang standing close by. Yang was hunched at the shoulders with her feet planted staunchly on the floor, raising her roller as she tried to wrap the film around. Her tongue poked out a little as she shimmied the film through. Yang had gotten a plastic roller, letting the film feed through after pushing it between the twin prongs on either side of the tool. She had been lucky; most of the class had metal rollers, forcing them to clip the film on by hand before manually rolling it around the cylinder connecting the roller's two sides. Blake looked at Jaune sprawled over a table, and then at the tears running down Weiss's face as she angrily jammed the film in.
At least this was practice time and not the film out of their actual cameras.
Blake tapped a button on the bottom of her camera and wound the lever that folded from one on the top. When it stopped cranking she pulled the button up, popping her camera open. She inched back the hatch with one finger, peeking in to make sure her roll of film was rewound. If it wasn't it had no place in the light—her photos would be tainted before they were even developed. But it was, and Blake sealed the roll inside a plastic canister, tucking her camera among her team's belongings in the cramped lecture room.
"You ready to move to the darkroom?" asked the professor from the doorway.
"Just about," said Blake, walking over the tangle of vines Coco was hooking to a projector.
"You need a partner," said Coco, not looking up from the machine. "General protocol for time management and community bonding. Supposedly."
"Um, Professor?" someone said. Velvet was standing behind her, ears drooping more than usual under the attention. "I'm ready for the darkroom, but, um, no one else has got a grasp on the film yet."
"I'll go in with you," said Coco before Blake could reply, standing to meet her. She tested the projector's On button to make sure it worked. "All right, the impromptu lesson on aperture is almost ready to go," she said, clearly intending to come back and bring the image on the screen into focus. She clapped Velvet around the shoulders on their way to the hall. "Let's get down there so you can continue being ahead of everyone else." It was here that Velvet allowed a small smile to paint across her lips. Blake contemplated them for a moment before moving past the professor back into the workroom.
"This is the most pointless elective class I can even think of!" Weiss declared, showing evidence of how little she'd advanced.
"Oh, hush now, it isn't that hard." The professor shuffled over to patiently aid her least patient student. Blake stayed in the background, fiddling with a roller. A moment later Yang was at her side.
"Finally got a hang on this thing," she said, spinning the hollow cylinder of the roller around her finger. The roller lifted off and she grabbed, halting it in a strong grip. She slid to a cabinet and got a couple tanks. The bulky canisters clunked together in her hands. "So, you ready to move on to the darkest of dark rooms? I wanna see how my shots turned out."
"Uh…sure," said Blake, a little taken back by Yang's closeness. She took note of the stray curls in Yang's hair before settling back into eye contact.
They walked into the narrow hall. The cracked walls and sloppily painted white pipes along the ceiling were very apparent. Easily considered the least important field at Beacon, the art building had never received much attention. Blake and Yang went a couple doors beyond the photography lab and waited for Coco and Velvet to leave their destination.
Yang stumbled over a broom on her way in. The darkroom was an old janitor's closet with enough space to fit a small table. Blake shut the door and looked around at the space they'd been sealed in.
Her finger hovered over the light. "Are you ready?"
"Ready as ever, feisty," said Yang.
Blake shut the light off and Yang jumped, another student unprepared for the eclipse. She groped for a few seconds before finding the table. Fumbling with the encased roll of film in her hand, she opened the lid to her tank and took out the funnel and pole. Then she groped some more for the old can opener on the table, using it to crank open the lid that protected the film. They both heard the spring as it unsheathed.
"So now I have to cut the beginning of the film, right?"
"Right," said Blake.
She watched as Yang felt for a pair of scissors that had been left on the table. There was a rattle and a snip as Yang performed the next step. She picked up the roller. "And now it's strapping the film around. You sure I can't spark up my Aura in here just a little?"
"No light is supposed to reach the film, Yang," said Blake.
"Right, right. Just wanted to see if it was worth asking."
There was a silence between them as Yang tried to slip the film through the roller. It was a whole new challenge for her, but not for Blake. Though no one knew, she could see perfectly well in the dark. Her bow twitched in the void.
She watched Yang quietly under clear if tinted vision, gray but focused in the blackness. Yang was hunched again, lips tight as she tried to slot film into clip. She had a metal roller, making the endeavor harder. Blake traced Yang's hair again. It was somehow always radiant and beautiful, even though often messy. Little ringlets of it tangled over her shoulder. Yang managed to fit a brawler's body inside the build of a lady, toned and curved at every inch. Blake pondered this as Yang pushed the film roughly into the cylinder, and then dropped it. "Ugh," she said, getting on her hands and knees. "How do people even work in here?"
"Hang on." Blake shifted quickly to the floor and, catching herself at the last moment, hesitated in picking up the roller. She sat on her knees as Yang waited, slipping the film into the clasp and winding it around the cylinder.
"Whoa, you really can go fast," said Yang, hearing the steady wraps.
"Well, I did do this before."
The film tugged tightly in her finger and she knew it was done. She held it to Yang, looking briefly at the blond's hand as it approached. Yang felt the roller and grabbed it, standing. "Great," she said, searching for the tank on the table. "Thanks."
She slipped the roller down the pole and put it in the tank. The funnel went over it, and after twisting the lock all the way into place she capped the canister's lid on. Blake paused before she went to secure her film.
"What did you photograph?"
"Pretty much anything I thought would fit the assignment," said Yang. "But I got this crazy shot of some Beowulves fighting not too far outside the city. Wasted them when they saw me, no biggie." She sounded confident. Blake picked up the can opener.
"It's cramped in here," said Yang while Blake was rolling.
"And you're a genius," said Blake. "I would have never noticed."
"No, I mean, I'm just saying. I don't normally hang around small, dark spaces. I imagine you might, being secretive and everything." Blake saw Yang's fingers wiggle. "But it stands out to me now, is all," Yang went on. "It never really hit how much I need the light until it got taken from me."
For some reason Blake almost felt a meaning behind Yang's words, and she paused in her work. Then she returned to it, shuffling plastic under the bloom of heat creeping up her face.
"Whoa, Blake, slow down," said Yang, hearing the rapid cranking of the roller. "It's film. It's not the end of the world if it takes a while."
After Blake finished she turned on the light again, watching Yang cringe under the flood. Her partner blinked several times before finally stepping forward from the wall. "Yup, definitely need it," Yang concluded.
They didn't say any more on their way up the hall, looking at the chalky wisps across the brick floor. It was only after passing the other members of their team and making it back to the workroom that Blake realized she'd forgotten something.
"The tank!" she said, and rushed back down the hall. Yang followed her, and before they'd gotten close they had reason to believe Blake's film might again not make it.
"I didn't say I was ready!" Weiss snapped from behind the darkroom door, a huge clunk coming right after as she hit something.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, do you want me to turn it back on?" Ruby asked above another crash.
"No, you dunce! What if it hits the film?"
"Did we even open the film?"
"Wait, does it even matter?"
"I forget! Weiss, photography is hard!"
"Don't break down on me now, you dolt, we need to work together!"
There was an assortment of sound penetrating the dialogue before and after, climaxing in the staccato thumps of a bucket as one of them caught their foot. It appeared to be Weiss, as reason deduced Ruby had grabbed onto her for support in a fit of tears.
"Why must our cameras hate us so?" Weiss asked after a thwack and a drag, suggesting they'd hit the floor with a mop after wildly smacking the table.
The fate of Blake's roll was up in the air. She and Yang walked back to the darkroom with their eyebrows raised, letting Ruby and Weiss sob out their frustration while they measured the first chemical to develop Yang's film.
