The Chez Lafitte was by far the ritziest place Blake had ever dined at, but, considering the full length of places she'd dined at consisted of Mother's palace and Beacon Academy, that wasn't the most impressive list to top. Still… Blake had read so much about Valean dining culture, pouring over anything she could read and imagining over and over again in her head, both strategic and… well, there were certain scenes in her books that she always thought about with her and Jaune, the two of them-
No, focus. Blake was just struck by how different it was to be in a place compared to reading about a place. She knew every trick in restaurant decor and design and yet, experiencing it for the first time, she still found herself awed by the experience. A quiet, softly-lit and well-cushioned corner booth was acoustically and materially designed to make her feel like she was ensconced from the world, truly private even as uniformed staff, invisible but always at hand, swept in and out to ensure their needs were met. It felt truly private, safe, and... intimate.
Not to mention, she felt quite a bit different finally presenting herself as a high-society vixen instead of analytically approaching it. Her outfit was much more restrained than what Nora had began her in, but the memory of that slinky black dress left a tingle in Blake's core that hadn't gone away. And Coco's eye for fashion was undeniably effective—her outfit made Blake feel like she was a woman on the prowl, her looks as dangerous a weapon as her claws.
Especially when Yang arrived, her eyes boggling as, for once, the self-confident blonde was at a loss for words.
Yeah, Blake was killing it.
But they were at dinner now, and Blake still couldn't help but contrast how different this all felt from her imagination. Her romantic side, her ambitious side, her professional side, they had all pictured different dinners at classy restaurants, whether finally gazing into Jaune's eyes with undisguised adoration or unraveling a treasonous plot against their regime, but they weren't anything like this.
"-but that's when Fox said, 'could you imagine calling the Prince of the Grimm for bail?' And the whole group just lost it-"
"Yep," Yang laughed, "That's my favorite gang of morons."
"But the whole thing that started it," Jaune continued, struggling not to laugh, "Was that they were talking about how if they got in trouble, they'd call Ren before they called a lawyer!"
Blake laughed at the anecdote, like the rest of the table. She'd at least met Ren, though the rest of the group was only known to her in terms of intelligence—Team SSSN and Team CFVY were known factors for the Vytal. But she was happy that Jaune had found, well, friends. Maybe they didn't know him very much yet, but they were pretty open to being friendly with someone whose eyes glowed red with Grimm malice. Or… maybe Jaune won them over?
Blake was good at manipulation and analysis, but that meant she was only good at the appearance of social skills. When she had no agenda with Yang or Pyrrha or Jaune, she was, in truth, as socially awkward as Pyrrha, just better at hiding it. Much better, judging from how her sister's jaw seemed clamped shut, fidgeting a hesitant inch by hesitant inch closer to Jaune. But Jaune… Jaune was smooth. This was him in his element, where his kindness, his gentleness, and his willingness to reach out made him the perfect facilitator for the three of them. He was telling jokes and while Yang was obviously the life of the party, Jaune was the one making sure they were all involved and participating in the conversation. Case in point...
"Actually, Pyrrha, Blake, that reminds me… you got to meet the rest of Team CFVY that same night, are they anything like the other half of their team?"
"They, uh, mostly spoke to Emerald," Pyrrha blurted out, "b-but they seemed nice! Especially for being so welcoming to Emerald..."
"Yeah, Velvet's nice," Yang agreed with a sly smile, "But Coco is..."
"A lot like you?" Blake quipped.
But Yang smiled at the crack. "More than I'd like to admit. But I guess you'd have to meet Coco a little more to get the full experience."
Gesturing to her killer outfit, Blake smugly explained, "Who do you think got me ready for tonight?"
"You look really nice," Pyrrha said, quietly. And Blake realized that her aggression towards her sister earlier had been unwarranted. Yes, they were… "competing" over the same boy, but they'd literally just had a talk about how their sisterhood came first. And looking at her sister, seeing where her armor plates poked out from under her red dress, the bone-white bracers on her arms… was she comparing herself to Blake's elegant, pale beauty? And Blake was just... Gods, she was a horrible sister, wasn't she?
"You look nice, too!" she said, forcing cheerfulness into her voice, "Jaune? Don't you think Pyrrha looks nice?"
Jaune blushed and stammered, making Pyrrha blush and stammer as Yang gave her a nudge with her elbow, "You knew you'd set 'em both off, didn't you?" she whispered.
"I can't imagine what you mean," Blake replied, "She just looks lovely tonight, and I felt I should comment on it."
"You're a lucky man, Jaune," Yang said, causing the other side of the table to blush even harder, "Though I'm sure Neptune probably told you that enough already."
Jaune tried to play it cool, but Blake could see the blush wasn't going away. She could also see that he was caught in a struggle between glancing at Pyrrha while not getting caught glancing at Pyrrha. Adorable, but... perhaps she prematurely judged him as smooth.
"Okay, fun discussion topic," Yang said with a saucy grin, the kind that told Blake be worried, "Thing you're gonna remember most from your visit to Beacon, and no," she smirked, "You can't say, 'Meeting such a radiant blonde beauty as Yang' as your favorite memory!"
"I'd answer, but I'm afraid my favorite memory's classified," Jaune quipped with a casual ease that impressed the hell out of Blake. Good recovery, too! If he only had this energy while on Lavender's show...
"I'm sure we'll have a lot more memories to come, especially with the Festival," Pyrrha said, her cheer effervescent even with the remnant of her blush still on her face. "But I really liked going out into the forest with your team, Yang. It was good to… stretch my legs and show off a little." She gave Jaune a knowing glance. Blake understood it—they lived to demonstrate their talents for the brother's benefit, and much like Blake got her moment with the Lavender interview, Pyrrha had gotten hers in the Emerald Forest.
Yang and Pyrrha both looked to Blake, but she demurred politely, not inclined to giving up her secrets that easily. But then Jaune gave her an encouraging look that… made Blake want to open up. "Okay… I have to say, the thing I think I'm going to remember most from Beacon so far is Nora trying to dress me for this date-"
"Oh gods," Yang interrupted, in open horror.
Fluttering her eyelashes suggestively, Blake laughed, "Oh, I don't think you'd have minded the dress she had me in… or the corset."
That bit was aimed at Jaune as much as Yang, and Blake was pleased to see that her words got their desired reaction out of both of them. But what she hadn't expected was Pyrrha's response.
"Perhaps I should ask for Nora's help for our next date..."
There was a clear deliberateness in her words, the kind that shocked Blake to see Pyrrha use. Or at least, to see her use it here. Yang commented on how Jaune blushed, clearly imagining Pyrrha in a tarted-up outfit, but Blake was paying much more attention to how Pyrrha seemed to beam even as she blushed. Way to go, big sister!
But there wasn't time for admiration, not now. Yang had teased Jaune, and it was Blake's sworn duty to deliver her own bon mots, whether at Jaune's expense or in his defense… she'd play it by ear. She was… she was having fun. With her brother and her sister and her… friend. Yes, Blake figured, Yang was a friend.
She'd actually made a friend here at Beacon.
Ah, the life of the perpetual chaperone.
Glynda gave the cheerful foursome an idle glance, pleased to see that any intervention would be unnecessary. Not that she could do much to chide royalty. Though, frankly... she wasn't here as a chaperone, she was here as emergency response. The video she'd seen had rattled even her, who'd been observing the best tournament fighters in all of Remnant for years, but Glynda trusted Ozpin and she trusted Summer. And… she trusted Yang. If they thought that the appropriate response was to ease off the stern discipline, Glynda could see reason.
So long as they didn't start trying to tell her how to run things at Beacon. No, Glynda knew how to teach and how to manage the Academy, and she would not budge on either. But this wasn't her class and wasn't under her purview as Deputy Headmistress, so she could afford a bit of a night off.
But if that counted at that… she looked back to her dinner companion, having just given her drink order to the uniformed waiter.
"A martini?" she raised an eyebrow at Ms. Fall archly, "That's Valean gin you're drinking—we mix our martinis a little stronger than you might be used to."
Ms. Fall, ever the professional, didn't rise to the bait. "And you?" she asked, "Campari? Hardly seems like I should expect the Deputy Headmistress of Beacon Academy to be drinking on a work matter."
"A work matter?" Glynda replied with a smile. They both knew that they were long past anything approaching business professionalism here. "I like an aperitif before dinner, something to clear my head and lighten the day a little. And besides, I like a stiff drink after a long day."
If any of her students knew that Glynda Goodwitch liked her liquor strong, she'd never hear the end of it, but she was confident nobody would be surprised if they heard it. Glynda did nothing in half-measures, drinking was no different from training was no different from preparing lesson plans. And she was a daughter of Vale—as she'd told Jimmy so many times, a stiff drink was just a beloved part of her heritage.
But with the waiter gone and the students behaving themselves, there was very little else to do now. Other than avoid appearing like the two of them were assessing each other, sizing the other up. Prying for weaknesses in the others façade. But… well, she could leave that to Qrow. If her dinner companion wanted to keep up her frosty glare, Glynda would have to be the one to let her know she wasn't going to play that game.
She chuckled. "Not two nights ago I 'enjoyed' dinner with Qrow Branwen and Winter Schnee. Believe me, Ms. Fall, you could not be a worse dinner conversationalist if you tried."
"Sounds like a wager," Ms. Fall shot back with a sly grin, "Are you a betting woman on top of your drinking, Ms. Goodwitch?"
"Oh no, don't start—I put up with Qrow and Amber placing bets on just about everything in sight just to take the boredom off. Speaking of," she leaned forward with a smirk, remembering a conversation she'd overheard the two of them have a while ago, "what exactly is the Prince's relationship with-"
Ms. Fall cut her off. "I thought of everyone on your side, you'd be the least interested in talking about the romantic life of teenagers."
"Oh, just wanted to settle a bet..."
While her poker face was impressive, Glynda saw that Ms. Fall rather clearly turned an angry shade of red at that. "I can assure you," she snapped, "the Prince and I have a purely professional-"
Glynda interrupted her with an airy laugh. "Come on now, someone of your experience should know I didn't mention anything about you."
"But you meant it," the dark-haired woman said with a glower.
Trying to wave off the ill will with an apologetic gesture, Glynda smiled. For how much hell this woman had put her through in the past weeks, she was glad to have a chance to put some heat on her. "It was Branwen, actually," she said, "Feel free to let him know your opinion on the matter."
"He might not survive my opinion on the matter..."
Glynda had an undignified laugh to that as their drinks arrived—she had to admit, the service here was fast. Not the sort of thing she enjoyed on an educator's salary, even for a school as prestigious as Beacon was.
"Still surprised to see you drinking."
"I'm off the clock," she smiled, sipping her drink. The bitterness was good, bracing. The sort of thing that cleared her palate before a meal. "So if you were expecting the dour, stuffy Deputy Headmistress, she punched out an hour and twenty minutes ago. Though, I have to say, I'm surprised you haven't clocked out yet."
Ms. Fall tensed. Personal conversations likely weren't her forte—or perhaps she hadn't had a chance to talk about her own well being in years. What life must be like under that monster's rule…
"I think you'll find it wiser to keep your mind focused. This isn't a place to let your guard down."
Glynda shook her head. "Someone I trust asked me to lend some trust towards those four, and looking at them," she glanced over, just in time to see Ms. Xiao Long bring everyone to laughter from some, likely inappropriate, joke, "I don't see a threat. Perhaps some mischief, but-"
"Isn't that exactly what someone would say to get my faction to lower our guard?"
Well, someone was touchy. But Glynda understood that.
"For Heaven's sake, not everything's a coded threat, Ms. Fall," Glynda took another sip of her drink, "I thought this might be a good time for the two of us to try to talk things out a little. We're not that different, you know—we're both the ones stuck scrambling to clean up the messes made by our leadership, to handle the nitty gritty and the paperwork that makes their grand visions possible. I would have thought for sure you'd have found some kind of release for yourself—you can't be the mastermind all the time, after all. It's not healthy."
"Consider who I work for," Ms. Fall responded dryly, "I'm surprised you think that's where my health is concerned."
A joke, even as terse a joke as that, was a relief to hear. Glynda chuckled a little at it. "I'll drink to that," she said, raising her glass appreciatively. "To the many, many dangers in our lives, may we ever stay at least one step ahead of them."
Ms. Fall paused a moment, but then, she raised her own glass. The two of them downed their drinks like Valeans, Glynda giving a proud smile to Ms. Fall for managing to take her gin as well as Glynda herself did. She might even have a bit more to drink tonight, open up a little, and try a little bit of a page from Yang's book.
When nobody in the world really knew what to do, well… maybe looking to the youth for inspiration wasn't the worst thing in the world.
Hard to believe things were going so well.
Yang had been given the heads up from mom that things had gotten… dicey after she had burst into her mom's office and begged them to help out. Exactly what had happened, she didn't know, but it couldn't have been that bad if Yang had been able to get approval this easily for two separate, simultaneous visits to Vale. And their escorts were way more lenient than she'd been expecting! Ms. Goodwitch didn't seem all that checked in on what they were doing, more interested in talking to Ms. Fall, and Ruby got to hang out with Weiss and Emerald with Uncle Qrow and Clover—who would definitely be paying a lot more attention to each other than what some teens were up to.
And she was damn glad for the privacy right now.
"I just think," Blake said, "that they have a point—Jaune's the Prince of the Grimm, there's no laws that conceivably bar him from drinking, so-"
"But the restaurant won't serve us," Jaune replied, blushing, "So it's a moot point."
Pyrrha cracked her knuckles and grinned. "Are you so sure? I get the feeling that they'd rather not have to explain to me why my brother can't order a..." her voice trailed off, clearly not knowing the names of any drinks.
"We're gonna order Strawberry Sunrises," Yang cut in, bailing Pyrrha out, "Not only are they the tastiest drinks you can get at a bar, I'd also die for the chance to threaten the place into making four Strawberry Sunrises under threat of global war!"
The three of them laughed at the mental picture, and, really, the fact that they could make jokes about the fact that the Grimm kids lived on the other side of everything Yang was raised to fight… well, it was really promising. Really promising.
Yang was a believer that you had to take risks on people. And that people were generally better than you thought they were. Deep down, most people were good. Even folks like the dinguses in Team CRDL, when the chips came down, even Cardin did the right thing. Sometimes, it took a lot more chips before he got the picture, but even a jackass like Winchester had something inside him that told him to work together and help others out. The people protesting Jaune and the Grimm kids, they were just scared. And once they could get past that fear, once they let the Grimm kids break out of their shells a little… Yang was confident they could figure something out. That everyone could be happy.
Though… maybe some kinds of happiness were both more imminent and more personal than she had expected so soon.
From the way Pyrrha and Jaune's arm seemed to fidget, it wasn't hard for Yang to realize that, out of their sight, beneath the table, the two of them were... holding hands.
How utterly adorable.
From what Yang had learned from Blake, the Grimm kids were… stunted, to say the least. And while they were, biologically, as old as she was, they were all, in their own, various ways, not quite as mature as Yang and her peers were. Maybe a bit more like Ruby than Ruby would want Yang to claim, but that told her that the two of them holding hands was a huge deal. But it also made this a bit of a tricky situation to handle.
A glance to Blake, though, confirmed that Yang wasn't the only one to notice it. Hell, with how unsubtle the two of them were in their shy affection, Yang could probably count on the whole restaurant to have noticed it. But any worries she had about jealousy or anger were easily quashed: Blake looked as touched to see it as Yang was.
She really cared about her siblings. Enough to put her own happiness second to make sure they were doing well. Yang knew what that was like. They shared a moment of silent camaraderie, quietly acknowledging that they were on the same page here. She was a good sister, which was a major plus in Yang's book and, also, a major hottie, which was an even bigger plus.
It was a shame she and Blake didn't have a chance together, the girl was clearly smitten with Jaune, but Yang could, at least, enjoy the view a little while the four of them enjoyed each others' company over dinner.
Though that dinner option might be a little shorter than she had expected...
"Hey, um," Jaune blushed, "I have to, um, run to the restroom real quick?"
"Me too!" Pyrrha added, entirely too quickly.
How utterly adorable. Yang almost laughed at the bluntness of their escape. They were cute together, two dorks with unbearable expectations that neither fit very well. Yang felt that they could be real happy together. But she also felt that it wasn't fair to Blake to cut her out of the loop like that. Trying to help her "date" out a bit, she spoke up to-
"Let them go," Blake whispered in her ear. Yang froze her objection, and the two runaways (barely stifling their giggles) went off to the "restroom."
Yang turned, surprised at Blake's objection. "Wait are you-"
"I'm still much more into him than you," she said with a playful smirk. "But… I'd rather Pyrrha got her chance. Now, at least. "
"Okay, but… that implies you're at least a little into me, so can I just say how hot you look in that dress? Like, the absolute cat's me-ow, here, kitten's got-"
Blake punched her in the shoulder.
"You had a chance," Blake groaned, "but the cat stuff ruined it."
"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take!" she laughed back. "Also, if you think they're not coming back, you mind if I help myself to some of Pyrrha's entree?"
"Don't even think about it," Blake growled with vigor enough to remind Yang about the Grimm kids' whole food thing.
I like writing things going cute and well in this story, give a bit of a breather from all the darkness. And it was fun to write a bit of Glynda's POV! Debated a lot of what kind of drink Glynda would prefer. I was thinking things like Grappa, something with a strongly acquired taste, or cognac, because she's a classy drinker. I settled on Campari because I see her as someone who'd like the bitterness as an aperitif, though I admit, my knowledge of mixed drinks is pretty limited.
Thanks to Renarde for feedback on this chapter!