Author's Note: Sorry for the delay, been a crazy couple of weeks for me. On top of that I went ahead and started my 'main' story on the side - yes, before finishing this one. I have no idea what I'm doing sometimes.
Disclaimer: I don't own RWBY in any way. I claim no expertise in nearly anything written below.
Except for the art part. I do know about that.
...
If you were to ask Ruby what was on her mind during the last period of the second Monday of her sophomore year of high school, she would not have a simple answer for you.
In truth, there were many, many things swimming through her brain at that time. None were any larger or smaller than the others. All of them loomed large, like a gang of trolls ready to devour the little redheaded halfling they'd just caught.
Firstly there was some sort of... issue with Blake this morning. If you placed a $100 bill in her hand, Ruby could not tell you what the reason for Blake's anger was. It was simply mystifying. She knew it had something to do with the mention of Yang's name in their conversation, which got Blake's attention, and then once Blake heard Yang's full name and that she was Ruby's step-sister, the taller girl stood up and stormed off in an angry huff. Coco followed close behind her worriedly, not bothering to offer any sort of explanation. Jaune was there too, but he was completely useless in this situation. It wasn't his fault, though... he seemed just as clueless as anybody. Blake wasn't his close friend, after all.
After that came the incident in third period, in which Ruby once again met a really pretty girl hiding in her class. Ruby felt like she was cursed or something. Why did all these good-looking girls keep finding her like this? It was almost torture. This girl seemed really interested in Ruby's sketch book after she opened it up following the end of class. Said her name was Velvet something-or-other. Ruby was a bit distracted by her abnormally thick glasses and her really long brown hair, so it was hard to pay attention at the time. That, and her accent was like nothing Ruby had ever heard before. Australian, perhaps?
Following that was the event at the beginning of art class, in which Ruby Rose met her real art teacher, called Cinder Fall, for the first time.
First impression: if the dictionary term for 'intimidating' had a picture next to it, that picture would be of Cinder Fall. Everything from her well-kept dress to her immaculate black hair gave off the feeling of control and order. The gleam in her blazing yellow eyes gave Ruby the sense that this was a woman who was good at keeping rowdy teenagers in line. The controlled pitch of her voice brought to mind images of the evil villains in various superhero cartoons. How this woman had managed to teach a freaking art class for any length of time was ...possibly one of life's great, unsolvable mysteries.
Ms. Fall had somehow analyzed all of the student's weekend projects in just a few minutes, giving each and every one of the kids a full rundown of their strengths and weaknesses based solely on that. Ruby's own project was two-fold - she had to draw two separate pictures, one in color and one in grayscale. The first had to show how she imagined herself in five years in a scenario based in reality, and the other was to show how she imagined herself in a more ...fantastical setting. Obviously she drew a scene of herself (albeit a bit older) working in some kind of artsy studio for the reality portrait, and in the other she portrayed herself as a sci-fi-ish warrior with a huge scythe weapon which was part sniper rifle. Her outfit in that image was themed after little red riding hood, one of her favorite old fairy-tale characters. The 'reality' picture was in color, the 'fantasy' one in grayscale.
Needless to say, her choices caused the teacher to raise an eyebrow. It would be some time before Ruby understood how significant that was.
And finally, based on the earlier findings, Ms. Fall had paired each student up in twos. It was what she called the 'buddy system.' This was a setup she had learned back when she was in-training herself, and it had worked quite well ever since. Each member of the pair would take some responsibility for the other, sending reminders of homework and helping each other out with tougher projects, among other things. And for the first pairing assignment, every student received a printout with some standard interview questions. Today was the 'getting-to-know-you' day.
...
Ruby and Weiss sat facing each other from opposite sides of the same desk, buddies for the remainder of their time in this class.
All Ruby wanted to do was run outside to the nearest pile of dirt and bury herself before she could stick her size-7 foot in her mouth.
The majority of the questions were so standard and cliche that it was hard to maintain focus for very long. Ruby almost started filling out the answers to a few questions before she even asked them, causing no small level of frantic erasing. Name, age, birth date (but... why?), and other details were all pretty standard.
Each student also had to admit which area of the artistic medium they considered their weakness - for Ruby, this simply had to be painting. She had worked with dry mediums for most of her life by this point, and the wet stuff always seemed like some kind of alien substance. She also hated getting very dirty, and always saw painters as practically covered in colorful smears.
Oddly enough, this answer seemed to give Weiss a small bit of surprise. Did she really not expect that?
Ruby herself was surprised when Weiss revealed that her own weakness matched Ruby's strength: pencil drawing. Her comparison of scribbling with a pointed stick came close to making Ruby break out with a case of the giggles, but she bravely held it in.
It was only after this that the redhead began to understand Ms. Fall's reasoning behind pairing her with Weiss - their strengths and weaknesses seemed to balance each other out. Each could teach the other new things about their chosen medium that they would otherwise never learn on their own or even in class.
That was also when she began to realize the true reason for the pairings: let the students do half the teaching work.
What a shrewd woman...
...
...
...
It was now the last few minutes of class. Almost everybody was done and was now chatting the time away before the bell rang. All but Ruby and Weiss, that is.
In addition to the pre-written questions, everyone had to ask three custom questions to each other. Three questions that pertained to each person on an individual basis. Three questions that were not already printed on the paper. Weiss already had hers done, but she had to sit and wait for Ruby to come up with her third one. The redhead was close to panicking, her mind locking up whenever she tried to think of something meaningful, or something funny maybe... anything but something personal or embarrassing...
As was usual with Ruby, once her mind began to rebel against itself, the mouth was soon to follow.
She muttered, "...Do you have a girlfriend?..." before she could stop herself. Her hand instantly flew to her mouth, but it was too late to catch it.
Weiss could only blink, "...What?" in a low voice.
After a split second of brain fart, Ruby spat out, "No, I- I mean boyfriend... n-no, I ...oh Goddammit ..." Ruby buried her face in her hands in a vain effort to hide her deepening blush. Why the hell did she say that? Only a half second away from starting to cry, Ruby was saved by the miraculous timing of the bells. She quickly and noisily grabbed her bag and very nearly headbutted the door into oblivion on her way out, her face a deep shade of red. Tears had just started to form in the corners of her eyes as she nearly ran to the bathroom to ...try to clean herself up.
In her haste to make a quick exit, Ruby failed to notice Coco watching the whole scene... as well as the wicked smile slowly spreading over her face in the style of the Grinch contemplating his holiday heist.
...
...
...
That night, Ruby sat up in bed exploring her normal internet haunts on her laptop. She needed to get her mind off of that mortally embarrassing event from earlier. The lights were off in the room as Yang lightly snored from her bed on the other side. The alarm clock glowed 9:56. Other than that, her screen was the only light in the darkness.
A ping sang out as a pop-up vied for Ruby's attention from the corner of the monitor. A chat invite? From someone with the username... fa11ingsn0w?
...
[fa11ingsn0w]: Ruby, are you still awake at this hour? It's me, Weiss.
Oh, joy. Just what I need right now.
Although come to think of it, she actually did need to talk to someone...
[5car1ett-17]: Yea I'm here. What's up?
[fa11ingsn0w]: My answer is 'no.'
[5car1ett-17]: ...um, no what?
[fa11ingsn0w]: To your question from earlier, my answer is 'no.'
Oh, gods... has she been thinking about that all day? No, she's probably talking about the 'boyfriend' part I tried. Yeah, that's it...
[fa11ingsn0w]: No boyfriend, either.
Ruby had the sudden urge to crawl into a trash can.
[5car1ett-17]: I'm sorry I asked such a weird question. I felt like such an ass.
[fa11ingsn0w]: Oh, it's alright. Stuff like that actually doesn't bother me.
Ruby's shoulders lifted by about half an inch...
[fa11ingsn0w]: What about you? Boyfriend? Girlfriend?
...And then dropped another two inches. How the flaming crap was she supposed to answer that?
[5car1ett-17]: Uh, nope. And that's for both, btw.
There was no other message for several minutes, giving Ruby the impression that Weiss was done for the night, but then she noticed a little icon in the corner just underneath the chat box. It seemed to indicate that the other person was busy typing a message. It blinked on and off for quite a while... apparently she was trying to word her next message with great care, giving Ruby cause to be concerned...
[fa11ingsn0w]: Are you interested?
Ruby was sure her head was soon to explode from all the blood rushing into it. She almost swore there was steam coming off of her face. The next several messages all popped up in quick succession.
[fa11ingsn0w]: What I mean is, interested in me?
[fa11ingsn0w]: No, I mean
[fa11ingsn0w]: Shit, hold on a minute...
Needless to say, seeing such a thing was more than sufficient to hold the redhead's full attention for as long as it took. If Weiss had simply lost her connection and didn't send anything else all night, then the morning sun would find Ruby staring hard at that screen, willing something to happen. It was obvious that the other girl was trying to say something very important, and Ruby did not want to miss the chance to hear... or rather, see it.
As she waited, Ruby found herself thinking back on the first week of school and all the times she got to see Weiss. That first day was really something else for her, since she had never even seen platinum blonde hair before. It was gorgeous. Even the next few days were memorable - finding out that the name 'Weiss Schnee' was German for 'White Snow' was really neat. Every time she thought of the blue-eyed beauty, Ruby found her heart beating faster than ever. All through the weekend Ruby had found herself daydreaming of falling into those deep, wonderful eyes... Damn did she have it bad.
After the longest ten minutes of her life, Ruby's patience was rewarded.
[fa11ingsn0w]: What I meant to ask was, if you're interested, would you like me to be your girlfriend? I believe it would be both a good status for each of us and mutually beneficial with regards to our class pairing. Of course, you don't have to if you don't want to...
Ruby honestly didn't follow anything after the initial question. Her brain had just shut down.
Weiss Schnee had just asked to be her girlfriend...
Weiss Schnee had just asked to be her...
Weiss Schnee had just...
If this is a dream, please don't wake me up. If it's not, that means I'm dead.
The redhead barely managed to type a single word before passing out on her bed.
[5car1ett-17]: yes
Ruby was not looking forward to tomorrow.
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...
The first thing Weiss did when she got home was to look up the word 'girlfriend.'
She wasn't stupid, but some words simply ...eluded her. She knew good and well that the quote-unquote "modern culture" used many terms and references that she was totally unfamiliar with, and to her credit she did go out of her way to learn many of them. For all she knew, Ruby's use of the word might have meant something completely different than what she would expect. Such was the result of living a sheltered life, she supposed.
The first search result stared back at her from the monitor:
girl·friend
[ɡərlˌfrend]
noun
noun: girlfriend; plural noun: girlfriends
1) a regular female companion with whom a person has a romantic or sexual relationship
2) a woman's female friend
Upon reading the first option, Weiss choked. She found it hard to imagine the stuttering, mega-talented redhead was asking about that.
Okay, ...in that case, Weiss picked what she thought was the best choice - the second option. Ruby was just asking if she had any good female friends.
Well there was Velvet, but she had a slight feeling that wasn't quite what the question was about...
Several minutes later, Weiss was engaged in an online conversation with her new art buddy. After confirming her answer, Weiss was a bit surprised to find that Ruby herself didn't have either one - so they were in the same boat, so to speak. She tried to ask Can I be your girlfriend? but deleted it. Too personal. She then tried We can be girlfriends if you want... but deleted that one too. That was too indecisive. She had to be direct, but detached. First she had to know... Are you interested?
Damn, that was too vague. Trying to correct it only made it worse. When the phone rang, Weiss forgot manners and typed just what she was thinking.
It was her father checking in on her (again). Normal stuff, and it always lasted just five minutes.
During the entire call, however, all Weiss could think was Did I really just say 'shit'? I hope she didn't log off thinking I'm rude or anything...
As luck would have it, Ruby was still connected. Weiss took a minute to write out the full request, complete with her intent. She was rather proud of herself, to be honest. She had always considered Velvet to be her best friend, and now she had another girl to add to that list. And it was a talented girl to boot! It didn't matter to the young Schnee what terminology Ruby used - friend, girlfriend, bff - it was all the same to her.
The short but simple response appeared moments later. The girl grinned.
Well, I guess that makes two best friends. I am on a roll.
Weiss was really looking forward to tomorrow.
...
A/N: Man, this chapter turned out to be a lot harder than I expected. Hopefully my muse will wake up soon and help me out - I think she went on vacation or something. The idea here was to show that Weiss' sheltered life has left her significantly unprepared for the real world, to the point that she is even innocent of the meaning of the term 'girlfriend' in the context that Ruby actually meant. This, naturally, will lead to many misunderstandings in the near future.
I hope this story doesn't get too out-of-hand for me.