Yang

My kiss with Blake, probably the last I'll ever have, is nowhere near long enough. How could it be, when I was trying to force a thousand words, a thousand hopes and dreams into a few seconds of contact?

After she pulls away, and I say goodbye, I watch her leave. I can feel Dad's eyes on my hair, but I don't say anything. I don't look at him, even when Blake is gone and I'm shutting my bedroom door.

The house is utterly, completely, silent.

I crash on my bed and lie there, barely breathing. After a few moments, I hear the floors creaking as my dad moves downstairs, and his muffled voice as he talks to air.

He might be ordering pizza. He might be calling Mom, asking her what they should do about their deviant daughter.

I know it's not that, but it's not impossible now, and it's all that frigid bitches fault.

It's an hour before I hear Ruby's footsteps.

They come close to the door, and hesitate, waiting.

"Yang?"

I don't move.

"Yang… can I come in?" she asks, already opening the door.

"Go away."

"Yang, I—"

I stand, picking up a pillow and throwing it as hard as I can. It misses Ruby, but it crashes into a picture with a satisfying thwump.

"Go away!" I yell. "Haven't you fucked up enough yet?"

"N-no, I haven't—I mean, I didn't-"

"What? What didn't you do? Out me? Out Blake to Mom and Dad and Weiss?"

"That's not what I was doing!"

"It's what you did!" I scream, actually scream, the kind of noise you only hear in horror movies. "I don't know what the hell you were trying to do, but that's what you did. You outed me, and Blake, and—and—"

"And I told Weiss," she finishes, her face drawn into a frown. Not just her lips, or her eyes, but her whole head. Her whole body, focused on regret.

Despite all the shit tonight, it hurts.

"I'm sorry," she says, voice tight. "I screwed up. I know that. I'm not—I'm not trying to defend myself. This was my fault."

I pause.

"It's not just your fault," I mumble, falling. It hurts to push the words out, but it's the good kind of pain. "It's as much Weiss's fault as yours. Probably more. She chose to out us, you… you just did it by accident."

Ruby doesn't relax.

"I was trying to help," she says. Her hand grips the door, and her body leans against it, her strength vanishing. "I—I heard you and Blake, and I thought, you know, maybe I could—I could do something. Change her mind, or find out at least, and then I'd… make it better, somehow."

In another time, I would walk over to her, put my hand on her shoulder, and tell her everything was going to be all right.

Tonight, I fall onto the bed, letting my head spill over the pillows. "Hell thanks you for the new highway."

I close my eyes. Ruby lingers for a few more moments, until she shuts the door and walks away.

Eventually, somehow, I go to sleep.

By the morning, I regret ever laying down.

It's late when I get up.

Normally, I get up at five or six, have a quick breakfast, and then I'm off to meet up with Blake for some alone time.

Today, however, it's quarter after nine when I roll out of bed and into decently clean clothing. The birds are singing, the sun is shining, and the world just has no decency. None.

My bedroom window shows me the pavement where mom's car usually sits, and Ruby's room is empty, with the bed messily made and the lights off.

From downstairs, I can hear and smell frying bacon.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out what's going on, and I really don't want to deal with my dad right now, but as my stomach forcibly reminds me, I didn't eat anything last night.

So I go downstairs.

My dad's in the kitchen, of course, wearing some joke apron Uncle Qrow got him for a birthday several years past. The stove is covered in frying pans filled with bacon and pancakes. It's something I see every time he gets the day off, but it's stiff. Artificial.

I stop by the edge of the kitchen, lean against the wall, and adopt my best "I don't care" face.

"Decided I needed the day off?"

Dad isn't startled, calmly tending to the food before he turns. "I think you've earned a break."

"Where's mom?"

"At work. There was some kind of contractor thing, she couldn't cancel."

He turns off the burners and piles the food on two plates, carrying them to the table before he sets them down.

"Dig in."

I walk to the table, but remain standing, gripping the back of a chair until my fingers hurt. "Can we just get this over with?"

"Get what over with?"

I roll my eyes and sit down, lumping my hands around the plate. It's not the most dramatic of confrontations, and if I want to strangle him, I'll have to drag my hands through pancakes and bacon.

I suspect that was a strategic choice.

Dad sighs, and pushes the plate away.

"You're dating Blake."

I nod.

"Like, dating-dating? I'm going to marry this girl one day dating?"

I nod again.

"So you're… gay."

I hesitate. "Yeah, I guess I am."

Dad pauses for a moment. I try to read his expression, but there's nothing there. It's like I'm staring at a brick wall while crashing a car into it.

Finally, he stabs his pancakes.

"I had wondered if you were, a few times," he says. "Maybe that's something every parent does. They see their kid looking at something, or doing something a little different, and they think, maybe that means something."

"So… what, you're not surprised?"

He chuckles. "Trust me, I'm more than surprised. I mean, yeah, maybe a little less than I could be, but…"

He pauses, picking up a knife and sawing through his pancakes. "I had some moments, sure, little times where I realised you never had a boyfriend, or I saw how you looked at Blake, but it was always just that. Moments."

"Looked at Blake?" I lean forward. "What does that mean?"

Dad pauses. "Sometimes, when she's in the room, talking or reading, I notice you'll just… stare at her. Not in a, you know, bedroom eyes kind of way—although you do that too—but more like your just in awe of her. Like she's an angel."

He picks up and eats a bite of pancake, chewing silently.

I wait.

"…Is that all you have to say?"

He sighs. "Do you want me to say something else? Ask why? Why Blake? Ask why I found out from Ruby's tutor?"

He saws hard on his pancake pile, shaking the table. "I know those answers. I get it, better than I know you think I will. I have questions, I have concerns, but I know this isn't the right time for them."

"What concerns?" I ask. My stomach gives a faint whine as I continue to ignore my breakfast, but I honestly don't care.

Dad's fork cracks into his plate. "Goddammit."

"What concerns, Dad?"

Dad puts the fork down. "It's nothing kiddo."

I stand, chair squealing backwards, slamming my hands into the table and making the cutlery jump. "You know what? No. I'm out now. Through the worst way possible, yeah, but it's done. I'm not hiding anything anymore, and neither are you."

Dad pauses for a moment, glaring at his food before he looks to me.

I forget that my parents were in the army sometimes. I always know it, of course, and I've used it as a threat a few times, but when I'm at home, listening to Dad discuss cases and Mom sketching decks, it doesn't register.

But then there's times like now, where I can see a flood of emotions rolling past his eyes, yet his face remains stone-still, that I'm reminded.

"I'm not ashamed of you, Yang," he says, quietly. "I'm not disappointed, or unhappy, or even all that scared."

"But I just found out that my daughter has a part of her life that's been hidden from me, for years, and I… I can't help but wonder why. What did I say or do that made you feel like you couldn't trust me with this?"

The air is clogged by the ensuing silence; neither of us having any real clue how to continue.

"…I was eleven when I realised I was… different," I say, sitting down. "Everyone else in my class was looking at these movie stars and talking about how handsome they were, and I… I mean, I could see what they were looking at, but I didn't care. I thought… I thought I was a late bloomer, or something. So I kept waiting for the magic moment, when I'd see a guy and realise I liked him."

I pause. Dad blinks, but stays silent.

"Except I never did," I spit, nailing grinding against the table. "I stared at posters, watched movies with naked men, and it never worked. I thought something was wrong with me—that I was broken."

"Why didn't you say something?" Dad asks, reaching for my hand. "Honey—"

I pull away. "What was I supposed to say? I don't get turned on when I stare at dicks? How do you think that conversation would have went?"

I close my eyes. "How was I supposed to tell you that, sometimes, when we were changing for gym class, I couldn't look away from the other girls? That I kept wondering what it would feel like to hold a girls hand? To… "

A lump forms in my throat.

"I was home, alone, surfing channels, when I stumbled onto this preacher guy, ranting about hell and damnation and all the sins that could lead you there. I thought it was ridiculous, but then he… he started talking about the "gay menace," and how they would destroy the very idea of marriage and all that bullshit."

"Yang…"

I fix him with a hard glare. "That was the first time I'd ever heard the word "gay." The first time I actually had a name to put to what I was. The first time I realised that I wasn't… w-wasn't some kind of new breed, just… different."

A hardness creeps into my voice. "And I found that out from an asshole in Texas. No one in town ever talked about it. Mom didn't talk about it. You didn't talk about it. I had no idea what you would have thought about—about people like me."

"We weren't going to throw you out—"

"I know," I growl. "I know you wouldn't, and that's what I kept telling myself, but I never had any proof. How… how was I supposed to tell you?"

He's quiet for a long, long time.

He sighs. "I don't know."

"Of course not." I stand and slam my chair into the table, shaking the plates. "I'm going to school."

"Yang—"

"Bye." I leave through the back door, not bothering with my backpack or fresh clothes.

I let the echoes of the door slam chase me down the street.