The heiress sagged with relief as the door clicked shut behind Blake. They might be girlfriends now, but Weiss was still more comfortable nursing her wounds (or hangovers) alone.
She abandoned her alcohol-stained sweater and undershirt in a corner and cut on the shower. While she waited for the water to warm up, she caught sight of her reflection over the sink. Ugh, she looked awful. Like a raccoon. The streaky remains of yesterday's make-up didn't help matters. She traced her fingertips over the bags under her eyes and raccoon-Weiss in the mirror did the same.
How stupid did you have to be to take advantage of your girlfriend and subsequently get blind drunk on a Sunday night? Weiss shut her eyes hard, pretending for a second that her current situation didn't exist. Everything was fine. She'd shower, and go to class tomorrow like nothing happened. Everyone had sick days, right? It wasn't like she hadn't studied the material for her lecture classes ahead of time anyway. She could just borrow someone's notes to catch up on anything she might have missed. And Blake... well, she didn't seem like she hated her.
Weiss huffed. She shouldn't hate her. After all, she'd done much worse to her Faunus teammate early on in their time at Beacon. Railing against her entire species. Great way to start up a relationship. How they'd gone from that to... well... significant others... that was a complicated road. Especially considering her complete ignorance of the road until Blake had been drugged out of her mind. But, well, here they were. Weiss sighed and went to test the water.
Blake walked the halls with a smooth confident stride. The first half of her trip had been a stunning success. With each assignment turned in, each professor now updated as to Weiss's... cold, and team CFVY's blanket folded and left outside their door, all that was left was to return the library books and get some kind of food to bring back to the dorm. But what would be good for a hangover? Blake tried to recall a few of the remedies Yang had taught her, but honestly she hadn't really paid attention past the first rule - don't get a hangover in the first place - which wasn't much help at this point.
Maybe it would be easier to just ask Weiss what she wanted. With the rush of students bustling through the halls between classes, Blake probably shouldn't have taken her eyes off her path to pull out and open her scroll, but she did, and paid for it when she rounded a corner straight into a sprinting classmate.
Blake stumbled, just managing to keep from dropping her books, but she nearly dropped them again anyway upon looking up to see she had just collided with none other than Ruby Rose.
"Blake!" Ruby yelped. Her cloak got tangled on her arm as she caught her balance and she shook it off while she lunged to help catch Blake's books. "Where have you been? Yang messaged me that you slept in a study room? But when I got out of class the rooms were all empty, and you weren't answering your scroll, and Yang said you were good but Weiss missed class and I thought she was dead or something because she never misses class."
Once her books had been righted and rebalanced in one arm, Blake breathed a small sigh of relief, thankful that Yang had apparently kept her scandalous misinterpretations to herself.
"Thanks." She paused then, uncertain what exactly to say concerning what transpired the previous evening. Though not fond of the idea of lying to Ruby, Blake also didn't want to reveal anything that Weiss would rather keep under wraps. Like getting completely trashed.
"Sorry I didn't contact you. We're... fine. Well, I'm fine, but Weiss is..." The second half of Ruby's rush of words finally filtered through Blake's hunger-delayed logic centers. "Wait, were you trying to message me... today?" Realizing she hadn't gotten to open it before she'd been interrupted by a bodily collision, Blake actually opened and looked at her scroll.
It was dead.
"...Oh." Blake paled. "Oh no."
The shower cut through some of the fog in Weiss's head, but she still felt like she could sleep for a week. Also, she'd had to hunt for her toothpaste to get the stale throw-up taste out of her mouth. Someone had thrown it in the trash. Great. At least the cap was still on. She washed it with hot water and used it anyway.
Standing at the sink wrapped in one of her fluffy white towels, she took her time brushing her hair, the repetitious task and clean smell of lavender helping her focus on something other than her raging headache.
Not one to be outdone, the ear-splitting SLAM of the dorm's door heralded the arrival of an equally raging brawler, her growling voice filtering through the small space and well into the bathroom. "Stupid, arrogant, know-nothing-" The bathroom door flew open, a wave of heat preceding its originator, Yang, eyes red and hair flaming.
For all of two seconds anyway.
"Oh, hey Weiss." In the span of one single blink, her eyes returned to amethyst, her fire and heat died away, and the brawler smiled as if she hadn't just been the picture of fury. "Didn't expect you back so soon."
Weiss had jumped so badly when Yang burst in that she was sitting in the sink. The faucet bit into the small of her back.
"Get out," she ordered, clutching her towel to her chest as she climbed back down. Her tube of toothpaste fell back into the trash.
"Ah, the sting of rejection," Yang clutched her heart, walking right into the bathroom and next to Weiss, scouring the counter top. "Ahah, there it is," she unearthed her own hairbrush from behind a blockade of facial products. She turned to face Weiss, looking like she wanted to say something, but thought better of it and grinned instead. "Guess I'll... get out of your hair then," she winked, slipping right back out of the bathroom without another word.
"Ugh," Weiss turned to the mirror, massaging her temple. Yang was a headache and a half. On top of her existing headache? Was it possible for someone to have two and a half headaches? She reached for her clothes, which she usually hung up on the back of the bathroom door, but they weren't there.
She stared at the blank hook for a moment. Apparently she'd forgotten to bring a change of clothes in. Well, she wasn't going to re-wear yesterday's. She would just have to step out and find something. Or she could sit on the bath mat and cry. Or sleep. Both options were entirely within her power right now.
But no. She squared her shoulders and pressed her ear to the door. Walking out in a towel with a hangover wouldn't be too bad if she didn't have to deal with Xiao Long.
The only noise coming from the dorm was the low creak of bookcovers and bedsprings, and the light airy sound of a brush running through hair, punctuated by the occasional snap of its bristles against a knot.
So much for things not being too bad.
Ignore her. Get some clothes. Curl up and die in bed. Weiss took a deep breath and opened the door.
Her things were still all over the floor from yesterday, though it seemed like the red Dust had been wiped up. Cringing at the bright, midday light outside the windows, she picked her way to her dresser.
Amethyst eyes carefully watched the heiress's every move, taking in each sway, each tiny stumble, and the strange haze she seemed to be suffering. Yang paused in brushing her hair, leaning over the side of her bunk to get a better look at her teammate's eyes.
"Hey, Weiss? Are you feelin' all right?"
Weiss fell over a stack of notebooks but caught herself against the dresser.
"Shut up," she growled at Yang, pulling out the first shirt and skirt in the drawer. Socks. Underwear. Done. Her gaze strayed to her bed. It was so close, but Yang was peering down at her from her bunk. Weiss mustered a glare, "Would you mind giving me a little privacy?"
"Sure, fine," Yang sat up again, her view blocked by Ruby's hanging bunk. Probably best not to watch your partner's girlfriend change clothes anyhow. "I wasn't planning on staying long. Just wanted to... relax a little before heading back to classes." Tossing her hairbrush aside, Yang flopped back onto her bed, hands cushioning her head as she smirked up at the ceiling. "But you look like you're getting ready to sleep. You and Blake stay up too late studying or something?"
Weiss got dressed, left her towel half folded on the floor, and got into bed. She lay on her side facing away from Yang and pulled the covers up to her ears, grumbling through the cursed fog in her head, "I'm taking a sick day."
Yang squinted down at the heiress, trying to reconcile of what she was being told versus what she already knew. Weiss never got sick... but she also never missed class, and there she was lying in her bunk... Either way, with how genuinely tired the other girl seemed, the brawler let her questions rest for the time being, going back to tracing patterns in the ceiling.
It wasn't long after she heard Weiss's breathing start to slow that the low beep and click of the dorm's latch opening drew Yang's eyes to the doorway. She sat up when Blake silently slipped through, raising a single brow at just how cagey the Faunus looked, her amber eyes wide in open worry that only relaxed when they locked on to Weiss's sleeping form. Yang stifled a giggle at her partner's muted jump of surprise when she finally noticed the brawler waving and smiling from her bunk.
Setting her brush aside, Yang dropped to the ground with a surprising amount of grace, managing to make only the slightest shuffling noises as she crossed the room and pushed Blake right back outside, the door drifting just shy of closed behind them.
"Blake. I gotta know," Yang placed her hands on the confused Faunus's shoulders, looking her straight in the eye, "What did you do to that girl? She is completely and utterly exhausted... Like, to the point of skipping class. You have achieved the impossible. Tell me your secrets." Her voice lowered to a desperate whisper as she leaned close to her partner, nearly nose to nose.
"What?" Blake stared in utter bewilderment at the wide sparkling amethyst eyes boring into her own. "...What?"
"Aw Blakey, c'mon, I swear it'll just be between you and me. I won't tell a soul." Yang's eyes darted left and right, her voice lowering even further as she sidled up next to her partner, speaking directly into her ear now, "...Did you try that one move? You know... from Ninjas of Love? Chapter four?"
Blake was fairly certain every ounce of blood in her body collected in her face at that very moment. She rounded on Yang, clutching at the brawler's forearms with a vice-like deathgrip as she let out a small strangled cry of mortified fury. "No. We... we did not... We did not."
"You did not..."
"Do. Anything." Blake hissed through her teeth.
Yang looked incredulous. "... Nothing? Like at all?"
"NO," the Faunus whisper-shouted.
The partnership held a brief staredown, ultimately ending in a relieved sigh and smile from Yang.
"Dang. Guess I owe Nora that money back."
"...What."
"Oh, nothing, I've got a hammer wielder to track down - have fun with your sleeping beauty!" Yang called over her shoulder with a wink as she made her escape.
Blake stood in the hallway, waiting for her cheeks to relinquish their crimson. Muttering curses at her overzealous partner, the Faunus slipped into the dorm once more, shutting the door behind her. With a long-suffering sigh, she leaned against the cool polished wood.
She was going to have to relocate her stash of novels.
Weiss was still asleep. Her damp hair lay spilled across her pillow. Her covers were all uneven, half untucked from her attempt to block out Yang.
The sight brought a much gentler blush to Blake's face - one that she quickly shook off as she went about the business she'd intended on doing before being so rudely interrupted by her partner. Setting her scroll to charge, she turned the small device on and sent a quick message to Ruby, who'd already been late for another class when she'd bumped into her.
Sorry I had to run. Weiss is fine - she is asleep. Please take notes for her?
Courtesy message complete, the bedraggled Faunus ghosted about the room, gathering a change of clothes before heading to the bathroom to treat herself to a nice hot shower, brief, but unbelievably refreshing. When the steam finally cleared, she slowly realized that her head had not, finding it still filled with the cottony haze that had settled in as she brushed her teeth. Fatigue was starting to hit hard, further compromising her ability to think critically, so Blake shrugged, chalking the strange feeling up to her hectic evening the night before, rather than the vaguely familiar diluted scent of not-quite-mint coming from Weiss's toothbrush.
Squeaky clean and perfectly ready to collapse, Blake emerged from the bathroom wearing a dressed-down version of the school's uniform. She wanted to look at least somewhat like she might make an attempt to go to classes at some point, but she only got as far as the skirt and blouse, deeming the jacket and vest unnecessary thanks to the residual heat from the shower making her mostly immune to whatever biting coolness lingered in the air.
She couldn't sleep just yet though... she had to get food. And yet... Blake felt her feet move her over to stand beside Weiss's bunk. As she smiled down at the peaceful image of her sleeping girlfriend, her basic instincts fought a fierce battle for control of her next move. Hunger told her to go find something in the cafeteria to bring back, but fatigue and something else told her to have a seat, stay a while.
Before Blake knew it she was sitting on the edge of Weiss's bed, resting against the headboard and idly running her fingers through Weiss's hair, lips curling in a lazy smile at the scent of lavender lingering in the air. Maybe if she was lucky Weiss would forget about ordering new shampoo and just keep using hers. Feeling at ease, Blake finally allowed herself to relax. Her surroundings were peaceful, and Weiss's bed was dangerously comfortable, but she would only rest for a minute or two. ... Is what she told herself as she fell asleep.
A/N: And with that, the stage is set.
Shout out to our guest reviewer from last chapter: shampoo, toothpaste... close enough. You rock, buddy.
The rest of you rock too. Are we seriously at almost 400 followers? Ha! Good times. Crazy times.
Stay tuned, folks,
- Fiercesomest