Any other morning, the sunrise would have softly bled into the room, painting a warm glow across the otherwise-bland features of the college dorm rooms. And normally, Blake would be standing by the window, green tea in hand, watching it all.

But after a night of drinking, it was the last thing Blake wanted to experience.

After having spent about 30 minutes wincing and squinting her way to lucidity, she'd crawled out of Velvet's bed and shuffled to the bathroom, where the cool touch of porcelain was her friend. It listened carefully to what she had to say, and with one press of the flush button, rushing water came and carried it all away.

She had never been one to drink regularly, let alone in excess, but she wasn't so naïve as to think the worst was over. She would have more to say to her porcelain friend throughout the rest of the morning, she was sure of that.

At that moment, she became vaguely aware that she was, for the most part, naked. She heard footsteps behind her, felt a towel wrap around her body.

"Are you alright?" Velvet asked quietly.

Blake didn't even feel the compulsion to look up at her companion. "I will be," she croaked. "Thank you."

Velvet smiled, and sat down on the cold tiles with her. "You're welcome."

There they remained, for a short while, Velvet rubbing small circles on Blake's back and holding her hair back when she desired further conversation with the bowl.

It was no secret that Beacon was an institute both highly-revered and envied; the flexibility of their course programs was unparalleled and the faculty were world-renowned. The results that they and the student population turned out were consistently top-rate, and the college had a reputation for making big names out of those who took the opportunities there.

But no matter who was discussing the topic, the elephant in the room was always the same thing – in a world where coffee-shop franchises were constantly denigrated for terrible coffee, Hunters of the Beacon University campus was a breath of fresh, dark-roasted, sugary air, loved and praised by those who chose to experience its wares.

Pyrrha shared these sentiments to the utmost.

Every morning, she would wake just before dawn, and set off for a run. After she finished up, and took a shower back at the dorm – careful not to wake her roommate Nora – she would walk down the campus to Hunters and order three large coffees and three equally large bagels, before returning to her room.

This morning was no exception. The grass and air was dewy from the overnight rain, and puddles of various shapes and sizes had pooled around the campus grounds. The midsummer warmth was already settling over everything, and it would see the puddles and condensation away before noon.

Pyrrha felt refreshed, as she always did after her post-run shower. Her walk through the campus to Hunters was deliberately slow as she took the time to soak up the setting. She had painted a similar sort of scene, puddles and trees and asphalt and grass, back in high school once. It was a watercolor, messy and beautiful and not quite real all at the same time.

At the entrance, she held the door open for two people who were coming out. They nodded at her in acknowledgement, and she smiled. Inside, the aroma was light, but inescapable. Not that you would want to escape it. The patronage for the early hour was impressive. A number of tables and booths were already taken, mainly by people scrawling in notepads or typing away on a laptop, occasionally pausing to raise a cup to their lips.

Pyrrha stepped up to the counter and placed her order. "Keep the change," she said to the cashier, to which he replied, "Thank you," before handing her a paper bag of bagels.

After some waiting, the barista handed her a cardboard tray with the coffee cups in the holders. She accepted the tray and took it over to the table of assorted flavourings and sugar packets. She gathered up the sachets and stirring sticks she needed before leaving.

Outside the door of her room, she heard Nora laughing within. Looks like Ren's here, she thought. She balanced everything in her right hand and knocked twice with her left. She heard footsteps bounding towards the other side of the door, and watched as it swung open.

"Hey!" Nora greeted, her eyes settling on the cups and the food. "Ooh, great! Thanks Pyrrha!"

Pyrrha stepped in. "Thank you," she said.

Ren nodded at her from the table at the back of the room. "Hey."

Pyrrha smiled at him. "Hello Ren. How are you?"

He shrugged, but not dismissively. He was looking very put-together for the hour it was; he was wearing a green sweatshirt and white trousers, and his hair was tidy and pulled back into his signature ponytail. His girlfriend, in comparison, still looked like she had just rolled out of bed, despite the exuberant expression she carried.

Said girlfriend hopped into one of the seats at the table, across from Ren. Pyrrha herself sat down in the chair facing the window, with Ren on her left and Nora on her right, as she finished unpacking the bagels and cups of coffee.

The three made small talk as they ate, ranging from the weather of the previous night to their classes to some of the people they knew. The entire morning, from Pyrrha's buying from Hunters to the three of them sitting around and talking over breakfast, was a more-or-less-daily ritual originating from the beginning of the year – interestingly, one suggested by Ren.

Nora and Ren had been together for as long as Pyrrha had known them, and even longer still – theirs was a relationship which had begun in their senior year of high school. Pyrrha had only come into the picture at the beginning of the freshmen year at Beacon University, when she found out that Nora was to be her roommate. The introduction to Ren came shortly after that meeting.

Their relationship perplexed Pyrrha. Here were two people who appeared to be polar opposites, sharing nothing surface in common with each other besides a mutual liking of the color pink, and yet they perfectly compatible, and happy together. Or rather, Nora was happy. Ren was "quietly satisfied". Pyrrha was happy for them, but she had no problem making it jocularly clear that she was jealous of what they had.

She fell silent at the table, but neither of her companions seemed to notice. She thought the previous evening, and seeing Weiss again after so long. If Pyrrha didn't know any better, then Weiss clearly wasn't as keen to talk about things as she was. Not surprising, but it made her wonder. In particular, it made her revisit the same question she'd asked months ago, during an anxious, tear-stained breakup: Why?

She pulled out her phone and sent Weiss a text message.

After Velvet was able to coax her away from the toilet – which ended up being a much more difficult task than anticipated – Blake had sat down on Velvet's bed, still wrapped in a towel, while Velvet prepared coffee and several glasses of water. They sat next to each other on the bed and silently drank. It was a confusing silence. It seemed comfortable, and there were aspects of it that were indeed comfortable: the relaxed setting, the mutual partaking of beverages and the proximity of their sober bodies, in particular, seemed to suggest this air. However, at the same time, it felt slightly tense, and it required contextualizing the situation to glean such details: the relaxed dress – underneath the towel, Blake was wearing only underwear, and no bra, while Velvet was wearing boxer shorts and a nightie – was one of these. Another was, again, the proximity of their sober bodies, but with the knowledge that less than 10 hours ago, their drunken bodies couldn't have been closer together.

So they had sat, drinking, for the better part of an hour, until Blake had started shivering – from cold, not ailment – and she started to wordlessly gather up her clothing, which had been tossed into a pile with Velvet's during their... whatever it was they ended up doing. She remembered that there had been large amounts of kissing and groping involved, but her memories ended right after the point when her hands were travelling down Velvet's stomach. She groaned inwardly as she started putting her clothes back on. She studied Velvet. She found it interesting that such a diminutive, generally soft-spoken person could be so forward with her advances. Maybe she'd started drinking before Blake showed up. But Velvet also didn't strike her as that sort of person.

Velvet caught her gaze, and gave her a small smile over her mug. Blake smiled back, but glanced away. As much as she liked Velvet as a person, she didn't know what she thought about her as a potential partner. And she definitely didn't want to think about the possibility that they may have had sex.

She tried her best to keep a calm exterior as she went back to the bathroom, but as soon as she closed the door behind her, her eyes widened to the size of plates. She turned on the tap, letting the water run over her hands.

The thought of her and Velvet sharing a drunken tryst made her uneasy. Not that it was with another girl – her sexuality was something that had shaped her for years, back in Menagerie, and she was completely comfortable with who she was – but just that they might have gone all the way. Surely it was too fast? Or was that how relationships began now? She didn't have a lot of room to judge – her last relationship of two years had gone up in smoke six months before she left Menagerie and enrolled at Beacon.

But even if things had changed that drastically in just a few years, it didn't comfort her at all.

"Hey Blake?"

Blake turned off the tap and left the bathroom. Velvet was cleaning up, picking her own clothes up off the ground. Blake rubbed her hands on her pants. "Yes?"

"I was going to make some breakfast," Velvet said, straightening and looking at her. "But I've got a lecture coming up soon, so..."

"No problem," Blake waved her off. "I was going to head back anyway."

"Now?"

"Yeah."

"Oh. Yeah, okay then."

"Mm."

"So, I guess I'll see you at work tonight, then?"

Blake's heart sunk. Right, I'm not off from the bar yet, am I? She kept a warm expression. "Yeah. I'll see you there."

"Great."

"Okay. Um, bye," she said, stepping closer to Velvet. She was unsure of what to leave with, but she darted in for a quick hug anyway, before turning on her heel and leaving.

Velvet felt her shoulders relax as soon as the door closed. That was the most tense hug ever.

She proceeded to clean up her room in preparation for when her roommate came back, whenever that might happen.

She wondered about Blake's odd behaviour. Had she also been thinking about what happened last night? It had been the only thing on Velvet's mind since she'd woken up and realised that what happened wasn't a dream. How far had they gone? She wasn't put off by the idea of having sex with Blake, but she was worried about how Blake would interpret it. Would she think that Velvet wanted to get involved? That would be an almost-nightmarish scenario, because Velvet was certain that she couldn't handle a relationship. In any case, it wasn't what she wanted, nor was it something that she was prepared for. For the time being, she was complacent with haphazard jackrabbit flings.

But she didn't know Blake that well. Blake had only been in town for a matter of days, and if she was the type to look for a relationship, then Velvet feared that she would become quickly disenchanted with the idea of romance and relationship.

Velvet didn't want to be the cause of that, because despite the limited time she'd shared with Blake, she knew at the very least that Blake deserved someone who could fulfil those needs.

She just wasn't that someone.

"... That's just one of the reasons why businesses decide to expand internationally. Now, what's another reason?"

A few people raised their hands. The professor nodded at a young man in second row to go ahead. "To look at existing firms, and whether they can take over, or uh, buy out those firms."

"Okay. Any others?"

Weiss scribbled the notes, and added her own next to the passage: Also look at existing market and demographic interests first. Lack of research = potentially risky investment when it comes to buying out a firm internationally. Could lead to bad investment in long run, and costly financial mistake. Best to fund research as a first step before looking at financial options.

She didn't love business studies classes, but it was one of the concessions she granted to keep her parents off of her back. At the very least, it would be useful for when she took over her father's company. If, she reminded herself. She didn't know if the offer would still be open once her parents found out one of the few things they didn't know about their daughter.

The class eventually ended, and Weiss was one of the first out of the door. She'd been at lectures since breakfast, and was getting to the point where she was worried about the slightest thing setting her off. But now she had the rest of the day off, and was looking forward to tackling the new issues that had presented themselves in her personal life, namely one that took the form of a black-haired girl with eyes the color of melted, liquid amber, who spoke with a tone which was quiet, but because of that, just made you want to listen even closer to what she had to say.

She unlocked the door of her room and walked in. Do I seriously like Blake? I barely know her. Does she even like girls? She never said. She said the other day that she was with someone back in Menagerie, but she didn't specify. Geez, speaking of screenplays – imagine me, a gay girl pining after a straight girl. Ugh, been there; not fun.

She walked over her bench at the back of the room and picked up her phone. Stupidly, she'd forgotten to charge it overnight, and a blank screen was the only thing that greeted her when she went to check it after she'd woken up. So she'd left it on charge for the morning before she left for the first of her lectures. Now it was fully-charged, and not only that: she had a new message. Her heart leapt at the possibilities. Could it be Blake? We exchanged numbers, after all, she rationalised.

It wasn't quite disappointment, but something else entirely that she felt when she saw that it was not from Blake; rather, it was from Pyrrha. She frowned, and opened the message. The first line was, Hello Weiss.

A formal greeting, but not unusual for Pyrrha, in Weiss's experience. She read further. Pyrrha had written, Hello Weiss. This might seem odd, but given your skittish reaction to my presence yesterday, I get the feeling that you're not exactly eager to talk yet. But I think it would be a good idea for us to talk anyway. It's been months since we had our last real conversation, and even then, it ended with a breakup. Anyway, I want to have this talk, because if anything, it will leave me with some closure to properly move on, because it's still nagging me every now and again.

P. S. I would have called, but right now it's rather early, and you might be in class anyway.

Weiss sat down, and reread the message several times. After the fifth time, she laid back in her bed, holding the phone to her chest and staring at the ceiling.

Pyrrha hadn't specified what she wanted to talk about, but she didn't need to. Weiss knew exactly what was bugging Pyrrha. She wanted to know the full truth of why Weiss broke up with her.

A pang of regret stabbed its way into Weiss's chest. She did feel genuinely bad about the way she'd ended it, but it was a matter of the situation more than anything else, and she hadn't been sure that Pyrrha would understand. She knew now that such a notion was foolish; if anyone would understand why Weiss had done what she'd done, then it would be Pyrrha.

And here she was, obsessing over a girl who may or may not be a blip on her gaydar, when she'd left behind a casualty of a relationship who hadn't done a thing to deserve it. The regret tightened.

Now that their breakup was about three months old, the feelings of tenderness had of course dulled. But she still thought of Pyrrha rather fondly; after all, she hadn't done anything wrong. It was Weiss's problem to deal with, but now that she gave it some more thought, she had inadvertently dragged Pyrrha into it by refusing to tell her the truth.

She made up her mind. If she truly felt any affection for Pyrrha during their relationship, then she would tell her what it was that caused things to turn sour so suddenly. And she had indeed felt a lot of affection for Pyrrha.

So she dialled Pyrrha's number.

Okay, so I'm hoping for a quicker turnaround between chapters next time. I can't make any promises, but I'm hoping for maybe a new one of these early in the coming month.

I don't know how long this story will go for, honestly. With this chapter, we're approaching the end of the set up, and getting to a point where these characters are about to get involved in some major experiences. Now, rest assured, I haven't forgotten the summary of this story. This is still a story about Blake and Weiss and their eventual pairbond. But realise that relationships have baggage, and these two have as much baggage as anyone. Also demoting Ruby and Yang from Main Character status. For the meantime, I'm promoting Velvet and Pyrrha to their positions.

... Truly Yours, Kalico.