Class was droning on and on. It was too much for my brain to take as another minute ticked by. Professor Port's speech kept marching on even as he turned his back to write on one of his whiteboards. I took it as a merciful opportunity to lay my head down onto my crossed arms where I could let my mind rest and wander freely. It just so happened that my new position ended up with a decent view of my white-haired partner, who still had near perfect attention on the lesson at hand. Her hand managed to scribble notes despite how little she actually seemed to look down at her notebook. I admired the effort she put into her studies even if she always thought I tended to slack off too much. While I did have my own tiny bit of problems keeping up with my least liked subjects, some of my laid back attitude to studying was just so I could get her to pay a bit more attention to me. I'm sure most of her worry was that I would make her look bad but I guessed she still wanted me to do well just because. Plus, her small amount of frustration was cute to me.

Not that I could admit that fact though. I had started crushing on her two months into classes. My grades fell a little and so she took it upon herself to force me to study. I had to admit she was a very good tutor but after the third night of her being extremely close and watching over my shoulder to check my work I started to notice her a bit more. The tickle of her hair on my neck as she leaned in to check my math. The nice scent that came from said hair. How soft her hands were when she moved my hand that held my pen to show me a mistake. By the fifth night it could have been considered torture at that point. I was a red-faced mess the rest of the time whenever she deemed it time to study. It always had led to me being distracted and making more mistakes but it also lead to more imagining about the things that our study sessions could turn into. Even now, I had let my mind wander.

"Mmmm, Weiss…"

Her eyes snapped wide open and then her head whipped toward me. Everything was quiet now. I lifted my head slightly and looked around a bit. Other students were also looking at me. Yang looked like she was trying to hide a look of concern behind her hands. Blake was next to her with a book obviously behind her textbook, not even paying attention. Worst of all, Professor Port was quiet. Each time I looked around the room I could feel my face burn more. Weiss was still looking at me wide-eyed.

"Did you just.." She started but I didn't let her finish before I flashed out of the room, probably covering Weiss and everyone nearby in rose petals. I desperately needed to hide from any and all attention.

I slammed the dorm room door shut as I rushed in and immediately jumped up to my bed. Under my pillow was where my face would live from now on thanks to my apparently obvious slip up in class. Who knows what Weiss was thinking at this point. She was probably angry as all could be at me. How was I supposed to deal with it besides just hope we could sweep it all under the rug forever? It was just going to be an awkward few days all around. Even worse was that I doubted Weiss and I were going to have a study session for a long while if at all anymore. A groan escaped into my pillow at that sad thought. All because I had to indulge my imagination. I was such an idiot. An idiot with a huge crush on her teammate. Now all I could do was try to act like it never happened.

"Ruby? You in here?" The voice of Yang interrupted my thoughts. With the pillow over my head I didn't even hear the door open.

I lifted my pillow up. "What do you want, Yang? I'm hiding from the world right now."

Yang, like the big sister she was, couldn't leave the issue alone. "So, what was all of that about?" I could see her bright yellow hair through a space between my pillow and the bed.

"I don't want to talk about it," I told her quickly.

"I don't know about you but what happened back there in class sounds like a big sister talk," Yang said. "So how about you take the pillow off and lets talk?"

I groaned again. "No, Yang. How about we don't?"

Yang ripped away my pillow. "I just heard my little sister make a very questionable sound before saying Weiss' name out loud. If you think I'm not going to investigate then you're very wrong," Yang said. Her face was stern like when I messed up back home. "We're talking about it."

There was no way I was going to actually talk about something like this with Yang, at least not right after it happened. To show her that, I sat up and jumped out of the bunk and ran through the door. "Dammit, Ruby! You just can't just run off!" I heard her voice ring out through the hallway thanks to me not bothering to close the door. Dashing away quickly before she could decide to give chase after me, I took the stairway as I could use the stairs faster than the elevator could get to our floor. I just wanted to get away for at least a little while so I could prepare myself for all of the ignorance I would have to fake later on. The stairwell ended and I tried to make a break for the front door only to nearly run into Weiss.

"Oh Weiss… um… I… " I stammered. Her face had a look of frustration on it. I didn't want to feel that wrath just yet. Not so soon. "I forgot my stuff…" I said as I started to side-stepped around her. She looked like she was about to start berating me but I interrupted her. "I can't talk! Got to go before something happens! You know, to my stuff..." And then I ran off before she could start on her rant. Of all people I didn't want to hear complaints from, it definitely wasn't Weiss. For just a bit longer I wanted to still think we were on friendly terms.

The last two hours was just a round of making laps around the academy in every which way I knew I could avoid my team and most of the student body. My legs ached and I was hungry thanks to skipping my normal snacking schedule for the day. At this point I knew I would have to get back to our room and potentially face the scrutiny of my own team. It was something I was not looking forward to. Between Yang's concern and Weiss' anger, it was guaranteed to be an evening of awkward tension. All I could do was face it down and hope it's only a topic for today. It was no use delaying it any longer. It was time to head back into the dorms.

Up the elevator, down the hall, and outside our shared dorm room, the feeling of dread started to hit me. I needed to calm down. Maybe I could ignore them long enough to get to my stash of sweets on my bunk so I could at least have that distraction. It was just a matter of if I could move fast enough. If they were all on their beds or, hopefully, not even there I could get to my own bed without interruption. All I had to do was just open the door.

Just an inch into opening the door and it was yanked open, along with my arm.

Yang grabbed me as I was pulled forward. "You're not running now!" She said while I flailed in her arms.

"Why would I run?" I asked. "I was coming back!" Yang let go as she thought about that fact.

I took the opportunity to rush my bed and attempt to hide in my covers. There was maybe thirty seconds of safety before Yang pulled my covers off.

She gave me the big sister look of concern. "Look, we need to talk and you're not going to ignore me," Yang said.

I pulled away from her. "There's nothing to talk about, Yang! Just let me mope to myself, please." I begged. I quickly felt the wall next to my bunk against my back. All I could do now was pull my legs up against myself while Yang still gave me that look. "No way, Ruby. I'm not going to ignore what's going here," She said. It looked like she was about to talk some more but Blake, who I didn't even realize was in the room, grabbed Yang's arm. "Blake, what are you doing?" Yang asked as Blake started to drag her away from bunk and towards the dorm room door.

"I think," Blake began. "That you need a talking to of your own. You're coming with me."

"But Ruby," Yang tried protest.

Blake pulled harder. "No, Yang. You're coming with me for now. Don't try to argue."

Yang looked back at me before turning around and allowing Blake to corral her out the door. I finally started to breath again as the door closed. I was safe for now. My snack stash was within reach and I was alone to just stew in my own head. It was only a matter of surviving the rest of the day by hiding in my bed like the immature child I knew I was. Maybe I could get away with it after all.

That sense of safety lasted only an hour before Weiss walked through the door. I was just reading one of Blake's books when I saw her white hair peek through the door. She looked around and spotted me on my bunk causing me to default back to pushing myself against the wall. Her face turned into a slightly frustrated frown as she finally walked through the door frame. She turned around for a second to close the door but it almost looked like she took a moment to breath. Before I knew what she was doing she quickly marched up to our bunks and pulled herself up a little to look at me. We shared a quick little moment of just staring at each other. I could feel my face getting hotter with each second.

Finally, Weiss broke the silence. "I tried to tell you earlier. I grabbed your books and notebook after you ran out of class," She said while tossing my class supplies onto my bed. "If you had stayed and listened, you dolt, I could have told you earlier when I found you at the dorm entrance. Instead, you ran off for two hours. You had your sister worried, by the way."

That was all she said before dropping down to the floor and started putting her own stuff on the shared desk. No one ever complained when she did because she was usually the only one to use it. Yang and I were terrible about studying anyway and Blake preferred to work while on her bed. Weiss just went about her normal business that she would do everyday after class. It kind of made me stir with uncomfortableness as she continued to act as if nothing happened.

I got to the point where it was me who broke the silence. "You're not going to say something like Yang tried earlier?" I asked Weiss from the safety of my bunk. Weiss continued to say nothing and sat at the desk, presumably studying for classes. The silence got to me yet again. "Weiss, are you mad at me now?" I asked.

She slammed her school book closed. "What do you want me to say?" She asked without turning around. "That we're fine despite the fact you just made me the center of attention to a whole entire classroom because you essentially moaned my name out loud? Do you know how long it took for our classmates to stop just even looking at me? And that's not including all of the whispering I heard." Her voice had risen but died back down at that last comment. What I found odd was how she continued to sit at the desk and refused to look at me. It was kind of freaking me out because she usually wasn't afraid to speak her mind directly to my face. Now it seemed like she didn't want to even look at me anymore.

"Weiss?" I called.

"What?" She asked back at me.

I crawled to the edge of my bed. "Are you okay?"

"No, I am not!" She snapped. I could hear the faint sound of her taking deep breaths. "I thought I was done being made the center of attention when I left Atlas," I heard her say.

I jumped down from my bunk to walk over to her. She was still sitting at the desk but now I could see one of her hands turned white with a death grip on her textbook. "What's going on, Weiss?"

There was a small jump from her, like she didn't notice me walk up. "Just… just let me settle for a bit. I can't take that many people looking at me, let alone talking about me."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Let's just say it bugs me, okay?" Weiss said. Her hand finally let go of her book but I could see her face was a bit red. "I can't stop imagining that whole thing, over and over again," she said, finally looking at me. It looked like she wanted to be angry at me but it was being beat out by her eyes looking upset. I've seen this same look before. Way back in Patch when Yang stormed into her room when she came home. That was two years ago but I remembered it vividly. I definitely didn't like to see people close to me look like this.

My sister instincts told me to wrap my arms around her. She tried to reel back but I managed to catch her. "Weiss. Breath. It's just you and me. It's okay. Just breath," I told her in as calming voice as I could. She started out stiff, but I felt her chest rise and fall slowly leading to her finally resting against me. We stayed like that for a few minutes before she wiggled a bit.

"You can let go now, Ruby," She said. I immediately let her go and stood back. She seemed to have calmed down significantly. Even then she still didn't look too happy with me.

"So…" I started. "Are you okay now?" I tried but Weiss just glared at me.

"Why?" Weiss asked sharply. So sharp it made me jump.

I gave her a confused look. "Why what?" I asked.

Weiss' face gained an annoyed trait to it. "You know why. Why did you say my name? And more importantly, why did you say it like that ? It was, suggestive…" She said, letting that last word linger.

At this point I figured running away would just cause more problems between us. Besides, her face said she was tired of waiting for me to say something. I took a moment to take a deep breath before spitting it out. "I might be… well actually, I am... ah ha…" It was harder to say than I thought. Weiss' face was showing her impatience though. "I'm… well, gay." Weiss' eyes widened just a hair and it looked like she was about to say something but I interrupted her. "And I have big on crush on you…" The words tumbled out of my mouth without a chance to stop themselves. Weiss had stopped her attempt to speak after that. She instead took a few moments to look at me and a few glances around me.

"Okay, we're going to the cafeteria," she said suddenly. I blinked and next thing I knew she was standing and pulling me out of the room.

"Wha… Why?" I asked as I got dragged into the dorm hallway.

"Because you need to eat something other than sweets for dinner," Weiss told me with a harsh tone.

"But, but, what about what we were just talking abo…" I was interrupted by a sharp tug.

"Plus," she began. "I need a bit of time to process everything, okay?"

That was more like the Weiss I knew. I was glad her mind was back to being level enough to be herself. I just wished I could enjoy her hand pulling me along but it was a bit painful since it was around my wrist. Maybe things could actually just stay normal like I hoped.

This is actually an attempted fix up of my very first ever fanfiction. After I went back to look at it the other day I about died of embarrassment at the terrible writing I found within it. Because of that, I decided to make what I hope to be a better version that doesn't seem to be a complete mess. I plan on finishing this since I essentially have the main idea of the story already written out but my motivation seems to be random most of the time. At worst, I hope this better story is received better than my old story.