Weiss is not sure when it is.
Perhaps it is the first time Ruby takes her hands, remarking with faint awe how cold they are to the touch, before she pulls them to her lips and breathes heat into them.
Maybe it's when they're snowed-in within the cave on a field expedition together, huddled by the dwindling fire they've created, as Ruby tells her they'll find a way out tomorrow, as Weiss realizes that maybe she'd rather stay, as Ruby's fingers draw comforting patterns between her shoulders, touch the back of her neck. She remarks again how cold she is, and Weiss scowls and jerks away.
She knows.
It's probably when they lay side-by-side, staring at the cave's ceiling without a word, when there's fingertips stroking the inside of her wrist, coaxing her clenched fist open until Ruby's hand can slip inside it, fingers winding with hers.
"They want me to marry." She blurts suddenly, surprising even herself. Without looking, she can see Ruby's wide-eyed expression as she breaks her gaze from the stony cave above to look at her.
She knows that somehow she's come to feel safe with Ruby, but that doesn't mean she knows why.
She thinks to stop talking.
"They-" She swallows as Ruby squeezes her hand. "-find no other merit in me. I am only as beautiful as the most powerful man who would have me can see. I can only sing as prettily as is enough to hold his charms. I am only worth my obedience." Warmth pricks the corners of her eyes. "...I don't know why I'm telling you this."
"Because they won't listen." Ruby supplies simply, and for a profound moment Weiss is embarrassed and humbled by her insight. Perhaps even impressed. "And it's not like there's anything else to do right now." She smiles and Weiss meets her with a wry one of her own.
Why.
Why does she have to be so ineffably kind?
Weiss looks back at the ceiling.
"If I'd been their son instead, I'd be free. I could go fight. But I'm not. I'm the wrong daughter to them and a bargaining chip at best. "
"...So you don't have any choice but to become a warrior."
Nod.
"It's easy when you're angry." Sigh. "Not that you'd understand."
How did Ruby fight so well with a smile on her face, in her heart?
It wasn't fair.
"I don't even know what I want to do." Weiss goes on, just as Ruby opens her mouth to say something. "What kind of person I want to be, even. But anything's better than waiting around for someone else to decide what your life is worth." Her voice cracks and she has to will herself to breathe. "Father and mother return from their business venture in another year. And then I will be sold into marriage as a petted palace doll. I don't know whether it's worse that I'll be a slave..." Her face scrunches, a contortion of pain and despair, "...or a decoration." Dread fills her voice as though it were a fractured carafe, and her fears spill through the sides, splitting it wider. "I'm running out of time, I...I'm-"
"-scared-" Ruby breathes, clutching her hand tighter, and the sincere, heartfelt break in her voice is enough to draw Weiss' curious eyes.
Ruby's eyes are moist as she clasps her hands around Weiss', brings the back of her fingers to her lips tenderly. "...You're beautiful."
Ruby gives more weight to the word than all others who'd spoken it to her before-she meant it, the true meaning of the word, stripped of the artificial connotations it tended to carry. Ruby tore the word apart, made it visceral, raw, real, and her eyes are big and round and wet as she cries for her sake-
She couldn't fake this sort of reaction.
And Weiss is jealous.
Jealous for all the genuinity Ruby has the freedom to show, the truth of her life, the heart of hers that she wears so readily on her sleeve, that she is foolhardy enough to trust everyone with.
She covets that freedom, the passion in her eyes, the way her optimism rounds her cheeks, scarlet with cold.
Ruby is the one who's beautiful.
She covets the color that she wears, breathes, embodies-the way it tinges the curve of her lips in contrast to lily-white skin-
-there's something more to this, she's finding out the hard way, she's finding out with it staring her right in the eyes and god if only-
"Weiss..." Ruby mouths softly as the heiress shifts over her, pinning their joined hands between their chests, resting her full body weight, her forehead upon Ruby's. There is a paradoxical stillness between them now, one that is full of movement-of breath, of searching eyes, softening expression, deafening heartbeats. Her lips open and the movement is enough for them to reach Weiss and make her head go pleasantly blank as she closes completely-permanently-the space between them.
-if only she'd been born a man-
Her lips are soft and wet and sweet, a poison and a salve together. Weiss brings her hands to Ruby's cheeks, sliding them back through her hair, caging her with them, with her knees on either side of her hips as she angles into the kiss more deeply. Ruby's hands find the small of her back, her thumbs crossing the cinch of her waist and circling beneath her ribs and-god-Weiss whimpers and lets Ruby draw her in, melt her over the flame that is her body. Their tongues meet, and the wet sounds between their lips seem impossibly loud within the echoes of the small cave.
She just can't stop moving, one leg tangled with Ruby's, the other hiking up as a warm hand reaches for her thigh and strokes comfortingly along it, the entire palm.
"Please stay-" Ruby slurs, and there's a desperation in her plea, a helplessness in her fluttering eyelids, long dark lashes kissing her cheek-she's an angel, she's got to be-that makes Weiss' heart thud painfully loud in her chest-god, she might love her- "-I'm cold."
Weiss can understand that much.