AN: Thanks to DarkSyaoran and a bunch of friends from DLP for helping me with this as I went along. Thanks to OneirosTheWriter for inspiring me.
Summary: Amongst other problems, Weiss has a bad habit. An exploration of ways a spoiled teenage girl with a fantastic singing voice can have a meltdown.
Mr. White
This was bad. This was really bad.
Blake worried the bow that hid her ears from the world as she read, a well-practiced habit. She was flipping through a dog-eared copy of the Tempest, a play written centuries ago. Everything but the language of the masterpiece was still relevant to the modern day - the Tempest was a cornerstone of the Faunus rights movement, after all. Despite its status, however, Blake always found a problem with the portrayal of Caliban, the archetypal member of her species who was closer to Grimm than human.
It was Saturday night and it seemed that the only civil thing left in the world was the Tempest. Saturday nights at Beacon were like a sickening repeat-reel.
Nora and Ren had the habit of disappearing in a way that didn't cause any trouble, which was a small mercy. Pyrrha trained Jaune, as she did nearly every night, but on Saturdays, Pyrrha took out her frustrations on him. It was a little unfair, as those frustrations stemmed from a personal restriction on going out to town that limited her bar-hopping to Fridays. Pyrrha was responsible in that way.
Ruby and Yang were doing sister things in Vale tonight, as they always did. And each time, it played out the exact same way. Yang would ditch Ruby after ducking out of the nice family movie that always sounded better than it was. Yang would make a beeline to one of her favorite bars to hook up with some hapless boy (or sometimes, a hapless girl). It was a sure thing that Yang would break a heart come morning.
Ruby was still a little young to attract attention like Yang did, so she ended up breaking bones instead. Usually not her own.
Blake shuddered.
Ruby had this idea in her head that Huntresses were superheroes who did the work the police were unwilling or unable to do. Blake could hear her team leader's voice now, low and gravelly in the morning cold, telling her that she was the hero that Vale needed, not the one that it deserved. Blake was unsure why Vale needed a fifteen year old girl with a scythe that weighed just shy of fifty pounds and turned into a bolt action sniper rifle to fight crime. It was a surprise that the younger girl hadn't ended up killing someone yet.
As far as she knew, Blake thought darkly.
If this was all Blake had to worry about, it would be nothing more than a normal Saturday night. The next morning would be a time of repentance. Yang would wander into the dorm room smelling like she'd gone ten rounds with a bare-handed boxer and then showered in Mistrali whiskey. Ruby would be crying softly, refusing to leave the bathroom until the blood washed out of her cloak.
Blake and Weiss were the only normal people around here.
But last Thursday, Weiss had failed an exam.
That in itself was a portent of the coming apocalypse, when Ruby would reveal her form as a Grimm, Yang would settle down with a nice boy like Jaune and she would be hired as a public representative of the Schnee Dust Company. But it was how she'd failed the exam that worried Blake so.
Of course Weiss Schnee couldn't fail the exam like a normal girl. She couldn't have overslept and missed it. She couldn't have forgotten to study for it. She couldn't have been caught cheating.
No, Weiss Schnee had been dragged out of Professor Port's classroom kicking and screaming by Headmaster Ozpin himself.
It had been a bad day for Weiss already. She'd been up until nearly four in the morning arguing with Yang about her Grimm Studies textbook, which had been missing for nearly three days, only to remember that she'd lent it to Nora and never asked for it back. In her haste to reacquire her textbook, she'd literally tripped over Jaune, who was passed on the floor of Team JNPR's room and knocked a glass of milk over Ren's notes.
So when the news came in the morning that an SDC train had been attacked by the White Fang, Weiss had let loose a string of very colorful and racist curses and stormed out, barely touching her breakfast.
The last straw had come when a Faunus upper year who'd been held back for failing the class had sauntered down the aisle, took the seat next to Weiss (where Blake usually sat, the nerve!) and whispered that the White Fang had eyes everywhere to the angry heiress.
Blake had almost been okay with the fact that the boy had probably set Faunus rights back a decade, considering the beauty of the display that followed.
Myrtenaster, Weiss's Multi-Action Dust Rapier, had sung along with the girl's aura, channeling red and yellow dust as she impaled the Faunus through the chest in a vortex of fire and lightning. "Eyes everywhere?" Weiss had screamed. "Tell me what hell looks like, mongrel!"
She proceeded to duel the weaponless Peter Port for the next four minutes before Headmaster Ozpin himself arrived in terrible anger, picked up a yardstick off of Professor Port's desk and disarmed her, then pulled the girl by the collar out of the room. Blake wasn't sure how no one had actually died.
It was difficult to reconcile that girl with the Weiss in her room now. Weiss had borrowed Ruby's enormous headphones (which had induced something between an orgasm and an aneurysm in Ren, the other audiophile in their social circle) and was now drinking champagne straight from the bottle.
Weiss had a beautiful voice. Even drunk, she wasn't an annoyance to Blake, providing a soundtrack for Blake's Saturday evening.
"Some nights I rule the world, with barlights and pretty girls!" Weiss belted on the top of her lungs.
To Blake's surprise, the picturesque (oh god why was she always so perfect?) contralto of Pyrrha Nikos responded from the hallway. "But most nights I stay straight and think about my mom!" Pyrrha called back.
"Oh god, I miss her so much," they sang in unison.
Blake rolled her eyes and smiled, then continued reading, interrupted only by her partner's soft giggles as she cycled through the record, trying to find a song she liked.
Weiss always started out a fun drunk. She seemed to know the words to every single song that anyone could think of, or anyone bothered to play for a quarter at the bar. She was grabby, even with Faunus. Blake recalled a night in September Weiss had turned Yang's favorite watering hole into a disco, complete with an inebriated Jaune doing the Vacuo fistpump offbeat.
"What are you doing, Weiss?" Blake said, suddenly alarmed.
Weiss had upended her bottle of champagne directly into her gullet and was now stalking around the room like a lioness, glaring at inanimate objects. Ruby's headphones had been deposited gently onto the girl's bed, which was no small mercy. The girl would be inconsolable if Weiss broke another pair. A Ruby without her pop-punk for even a day was an intolerable Ruby. No matter how much Weiss paid, delivery from Atlas still took time.
"Dust," Weiss moaned. "I want some Dust."
Weiss was rapidly transitioning into her second phase of drunkenness, which involved a lot of crying and shouting. Usually this was when Yang dealt with her - the girl had inordinate amounts of experience with all matters regarding proper Partying, a fact that the blonde lorded over them.
Blake wished Yang was here now - she'd know what to do. Weiss had taken to tearing through her belongings, sending all manners of perfume bottles and lingerie flying.
"What are you looking for, Weiss?" Blake asked, closing her copy of the Tempest in trepidation.
"Dust," the girl said irritably. "It's never a perfect night without some, right?"
"Right," Blake said, unconvinced. "Why don't you check your sword?" she asked uncertainly.
"Why how dare you!" Weiss practically shouted. "I'd never take it into battle. That's so irresponsible," she huffed, stumbling over an inexplicably large box of crayons boasting fifty shades of grey. Ruby's childish handwriting was scrawled on top of it, in a peculiarly unnatural shade of blue, reading "if I were green, I would die."
"Don't knock the crayons over," Blake begged, springing to her feet.
"Oh Blake, you're a genius!" Weiss gushed. "That's where I left it." She opened the box of crayons and started pulling out the little cardboard cartons which the heiress had ordered so meticulously it drove the normally neat Blake up the wall.
"Where is it?" Weiss practically growled. "Where's my Dust?" The cartons of crayons careened through the air as she dug through the industrial-sized box with ruthless efficiency. Blake supposed that ruthless efficiency was a Schnee's modus operandi, after all. A crayon with the label "powder-white" hit her in the face like a bad omen.
"Found it!" Weiss shrieked in triumph. Between her fingers was a faded little plastic bag full of white dust, coated with a panoply of shades of blue wax.
Blake stared. White dust was a fairly common commodity. It generated a glacial storm in the right hands and the little shards of ice that Weiss had been known for were particularly deadly against the species of Grimm they encountered on the regular. Weiss had gone through a lot of trouble to acquire a relatively small quantity of something she had a true abundance of.
"Oh dust, I'm still not sure what I stand for," Weiss whispered at the bag, definitely quoting a song. Blake sighed. The girl was already so melodramatic on a normal day. When she was even slightly drunk, Weiss was convinced she lived in a music video.
She was about to have another episode. Weiss gripped Blake by the shoulders, piercing her with those baby-blue eyes shining with tears.
"I just thought, we could find new ways to fall apart," she sang, transfixing the other girl. "You're my best friend, Blake, y'know," Weiss muttered. "You're always so understanding. You're always so tolerant of everyone and everything. Even those dirty faunus," she whispered.
Blake winced.
Weiss didn't notice. "So I want you to do me a favor," she said. "But really I'm doing you a favor too," she said, with a all the deviousness a drunk teenage girl could muster. "You're always so uptight, Blake. You need to loosen up a little. Have some fun."
Blake blinked. Was Weiss Schnee hitting on her? She felt the beginnings of a headache. She really didn't need this right now. She just wanted to curl up on her bed and read the Tempest in peace.
"So I'd like you to have some with me," Weiss said, holding up the bag.
"That's not Dust, is it?" Blake asked, dreading the answer.
Weiss let a giggle rock through her. Blake felt it through her shoulders as Weiss trembled with mirth. "Oh Blake, you're so innocent," she said.
Blake was not innocent. She had done unspeakable things. And she knew exactly what was in the bag.
"This is my friend, Mr. White."
This was bad. This was really bad. This was really, really, really bad.
"Weiss?" Blake put every single doubt and fear she could into the other girl's name.
"Are you scared?" Weiss wondered, swaying. Her face was a delicate shade of pink now. The alcohol had finally found its way to her features. "It's just us two girls against the world now," she promised, doing nothing to reassure Blake.
Blake fumbled with the scroll in her back pocket, trying her best not to alert Weiss while working out the locations of the buttons she needed to press from memory. She didn't know why, but she got the sense that Weiss would react badly to seeing her mail someone at the moment.
Bottom right for messages, she thought as her fingernail danced over the holographic screen, hoping that she had put the scroll on silent.
"Come on, Blake," Weiss said. She had an honest smile on her face. "You'll go on this little journey with me, won't you?" She stumbled learning forward and her breath ghosted against Blake's ear, sending shivers up her spine. "Won't we pursue that flighty temptress…" Weiss struggled, trying to remember the words. "Adventure?"
To her credit, if Blake hadn't seen the trouble that this particular sort of White Dust had caused amongst her brothers and sisters in the White Fang, Weiss would have made far too alluring a figure. The way Weiss held her now was so decadent, so perfect.
Bottom left for favorite contacts.
Blake smiled at her uncertainly, letting her teeth show just slightly, trying not to twitch in a way Weiss could only find suspicious.
Did she have her favorites ordered Ruby, Yang, Weiss or Ruby, Weiss, Yang?
Blake froze. "W-weiss," she stuttered. "I've never-"
Ruby, it had to be Ruby. She couldn't afford to make that mistake.
Weiss drew back an inch. "Don't you worry, Blake. I'll never let any harm come to you," she said, quite serious. Blake saw a tenderness that had never been directed at her before. This was the way Weiss looked at Ruby when she thought no one was watching. It made her heart skip a beat.
Weiss really wanted to share this part of her life with her. Not with Ruby, not with Yang, but with Blake. It was touching, in a way she knew was dangerous.
"Don't fight me on this, Blake," Weiss whispered, totally wasted and totally more beautiful for it.
Send help, Blake typed, hoping that she'd hit the right keys and wouldn't be overly screwed over by the scroll's autocorrect function. She hit the send button and slipped the scroll back into her pocket.
Blake reviewed her actions and nearly screamed. She didn't want Ruby to get the wrong idea and call for Ozpin, or worse, Professor Goodwitch. Weiss was being very naughty after all.
There was a little tinkling sound from Weiss's desk that sounded like doom.
"Oh," Blake muttered, unable to hold in the rush of true fear back. She desperately hoped Weiss would ignore her failed message.
Weiss did not. She was too much a product of communication to let something like scrollmail slide, even when she was engaged so intimately with her...
What were they? Blake wondered, a tad morosely. What would they be when Weiss saw the message?
Weiss smiled placidly as she picked up her scroll and thumbed through it with a practiced idleness.
Blake knew she had to head off the coming revelation of her duplicity, so Blake called out for Weiss sharply.
"Gimme a moment," the Schnee heiress insisted, waving her bagful of cocaine in protest. There was just the right hint of absurdity to the situation that stretched the corners of Blake's lips into a worried grimace.
"Weiss," Blake pleaded, schooling her features into something more appropriate as the other girl turned her attention back to her scroll.
The eager boredom that Weiss displayed was slowly becoming a burgeoning confusion and Blake knew in an that instant that there was no way the ringing scroll could have been a coincidence.
Weiss looked up from her scroll and Blake felt herself memorizing that deceptive calm. "Blake?"
Blake bit her lower lip and closed her eyes, tilting her head away from her roommate, doing everything in her power to keep herself away from what must have been rising anger on Weiss's face.
"Weiss," she responded, forcing the bubble of self-defensiveness down the best she could. "I can explain," she said in a hurry, sounding for all the world like she'd been caught stealing.
Blake heard the sound of Weiss stumbling like she'd been physically struck. And then Weiss was in front of her, quick enough to have given chase to even Ruby in her drunken state. Weiss now held her by the collar of her shirt.
"You're just like those dirty subhumans," Weiss whispered, impressively offensive. "Liars, murderers…" she trailed off.
"Weiss," Blake whispered, feeling even worse, but strangely at peace. She didn't know what stopped her from throwing Weiss's fingers off and escaping, but there was an almost perverse need in her to hear the other girl out and maintain that calm before the inevitable storm.
She regretted not escaping the instant she turned to look back at Weiss. Tears were pooling in the other girl's expressive ice-blue eyes and Weiss didn't look angry - just genuinely hurt.
"And traitors," Weiss finished.
Blake knew the emotion. It was one she was all too accustomed to. She'd betrayed her heritage by cozying up to one of the great causes of Faunus suffering and now she'd betrayed a girl who had called Blake her best friend.
Weiss had not drawn her rapier, which was a good sign, but out of the corner of her eye, Blake could see that the girl was gripping her collar so tightly her fingers had turned red, then bloodless. Blake could hear the tirade coming now.
"We go through so much trouble to house-train them and they bite back at us like wild animals," Weiss shouted, crazed.
Blake bit the inside of her lip until she nearly drew blood.
"I say they should be put down," Weiss told her conspiratorially. "Or made to serve us."
Blake swallowed.
Mercifully, Weiss's attention wandered now as she stared into Blake's eyes. "I thought you were different," she begged, taking on an arctic disappointment.
"I wasn't trying to get you in trouble," Blake muttered in complete honesty, desperate to change the subject.
Weiss glared. "You have a funny way of showing it, Blake Belladonna," she slurred, wiping away her tears with her free sleeve.
Blake pursed her lips and found herself bowing her head in sorrow as she stared at those fingers holding her in place intently.
"Who were you trying to send that to?" Weiss wondered, suddenly furious at her. Beacon students weren't allowed to be drunk as a rule but unless it was directly reported, the Professors turned a blind eye to nearly all of the students. They were adults, after all. Blake didn't want to think about the implications of being in the same room as that little bag of white that Weiss now tossed up and down.
"Ruby," she said automatically.
Weiss sneered, allowing a haughty mask to take over her features. In retrospect, that was the wrong person to name. She should have said Yang, which would have been a little more believable.
"Give me your scroll," Weiss said, shocking Blake out of her sorrow.
"No," Blake retorted instinctively, fearing what Weiss might find on it. Blake didn't message anyone - her missives to Headmaster Ozpin from the beginning of the semester had incriminating material in it and would undoubtedly attract Weiss's attention.
That was also, in retrospect, not the best thing to say to Weiss. Few people dared to disagree with Weiss politely and nearly no one challenged her - especially not when she was drunk.
Something ugly found its way into Weiss's expression and Blake felt the sudden surge of Weiss's aura, but it was far too late to defend herself. With an almighty push, Blake was shoved back onto Weiss's bed.
There was a loud tear as the front of the shirt she wore under her vest ripped open, as Weiss dropped the ruined fabric onto the ground.
"Oops," Weiss said with a nasty grin, as sheer humiliation overtook Blake's senses.
Blake glared up at her, too mortified to speak, exposed.
Weiss considered Blake with a lascivious eye now and Blake felt that fear return. She brought her knees up to her chest and clasped her arms around calves, hiding herself as Weiss advanced on her. This was not Weiss, it was some sort of stranger who-
"Lie back," Weiss demanded imperiously, fully expecting Blake to comply.
Blake blinked, letting loose a series of monosyllabic stammers, curling up even tighter and hoping Weiss would leave her alone. She tried to keep the plaintive note out of her voice to preserve her dignity, but it was a lost cause.
The heiress's anger had now made her motions violent and jerky. "I told you that I'll protect you," Weiss practically spat. Blake believed her, but wondered who'd protect her from Weiss.
Despite all this, Blake still couldn't bring herself to run. It would be so easy - Team JNPR was used to irresponsible chases and near nudity from every member of RWBY, but there was something different about this - something deeply shameful.
She found herself considering Weiss now. The girl was so firmly between alluring and intoxicated that Blake found her irrationally difficult to resist. She let herself become a victim to an unwilling obedience, as her treacherous knees slid askew over the side of the bed and she lay back, hyperaware of every sensation.
There was a crinkle of lien and for a moment, Blake thought she was about to be rendered payment for whatever Weiss was going to do to her. That alone caused her to sit up, her eyes alight with fury.
But Weiss didn't care. "Did I ask you to move?" Weiss whispered in her ear daintily, uncomfortably close.
Blake lost her nerve immediately, lowering herself back onto the covers and she felt tears begin to form in the corner of her eyes.
As quick as sin, Weiss slipped the large, overstuffed pillow she had the habit of cradling in her sleep under Blake's neck, inclining her face so she was forced to look into Weiss's eyes.
"I'm going to need you to be very still," Weiss murmured and Blake felt a damned heat in the pit of her stomach. "You've forfeited any chance of me doing this civilly," Weiss said, with a wicked whisper. "It's so much fun to pretend you're one of those fucking animals, after all."
The resentment returned to her, but was quickly chased off by a tickle in the valley between her breast. Weiss had poured half the contents of the bag onto her collar bones and a thin trail of white powder slipped down towards the center of her bra.
"Black lace?" Weiss queried, enjoying herself a little too much. "You naughty kitty."
A stronger spike of fear dominated Blake for a moment. How could Weiss know? She made to move, but Weiss's left hand - her sword hand, Blake realized - found its way her neck. Weiss gave an experimental squeeze to prove she meant business. Blake couldn't contain her whimper.
"Ah-ah," Weiss tutted. "You're going to be in a lot of trouble if you struggle," she said, the nasty grin widening incandescently before Blake's eyes.
A rolled up thousand-lien bill trailed is way from her shoulder across the cocaine as Weiss released her. Weiss pinched her left nostril shut and inhaled, gently at first but more desperately as she traced Blake's smooth skin beneath those defined collarbones.
Blake shivered along with Weiss, the heat in her stomach growing.
Weiss might have been the perfect, composed princess in their day-to-day life, but she was showing a wild and free side that Blake couldn't help but find attractive. Every single motion that Weiss made was unmistakably erotic.
She leaned away from Blake now, sighing deeply in contentment. "Oh, Mister White," she moaned affectedly, "you still love me!"
Blake licked her lips as something frenetic took ahold of Weiss. She leaned forward and caressed Blake's face.
"It could have been you," Weiss promised, almost sorrowfully. "I would have let you go first," she said in a throaty growl. Her voice dropped to silky whisper, sending shivers up Blake's spine. "You could have pinned me against your bed and held me down while you indulged," Weiss explained with a playful lilt.
Blake nodded numbly, knowing full well that Weiss was misinterpreting the color that had risen to her cheeks and for certain that she was lying to herself. Blake felt a stab of real desire to do as Weiss said, to make her feel that arousal and that fear that she'd shared her every secret with one of those hated Faunus.
Blake wanted to push Weiss down, tie her with the ribbon of Gambol Shroud and reveal her ears to the other girl, to force the girl to accept that she was the one who'd be sharing that nasty little habit with her. And she'd indulge in Weiss just as Weiss had indulged in her - in vengeance and sweating bodies and anything that struck her fancy.
But the moment was gone as soon as Blake had lost herself in it, cut down before its time by the sound of their dormitory window crashing open.
"Weiss," said a confident, younger voice.
They both turned toward the source of the sound and Blake felt the heady insanity slip away in face of her salvation.
"Ruby Rose," Weiss said, a touch coldly, her eyes darkening in anger as she took deep breaths. Blake didn't need the mirror on Yang's dresser across the room to tell her that Weiss was beginning to feel the effects of the cocaine take her as her dilating pupils swallowed up those blue irises.
Ruby was dressed in her Beacon uniform and favored her left side, as there was a deep gash on her right forearm. She was wearing a tan fedora that was a size too big for her and pointing Crescent Rose in rifle form at Weiss.
"Unhand m'lady," Ruby said in righteous anger.
"You should leave," Weiss said, with the same anger that Blake had caved to, but Ruby stared her down easily, unmoving.
"We're doing grown-up things," Weiss said, aiming to anger the younger girl. The condescension was a particularly ugly thing to Blake but even she could admit that Weiss wasn't necessarily wrong. More insidious though, was the stab of fond possessiveness that invaded her mind. What exactly had Weiss done to her?
In response, Ruby fired.
The wound must have telegraphed Ruby's intent, because Myrtenaster flew into Weiss's waiting hand even as she saw the tightening in Ruby's triceps and the younger girl's trigger finger squeeze. Weiss brought her weapon into the path of the bullet's trajectory.
There was a loud ping as it ricocheted towards Ruby's bed and nailed the pair of headphones directly.
"Those cost me five-point-five-fucking-k," Ruby said, matter-of-factly. "You're fucking donezo, Weiss."