Taiyang and Summer meet cute. Taiyang and Summer's—housemates, friends, family?—meet...less cute. The expression "say it with flowers" takes on a number of new meanings and other expressions lose meaning entirely, like "a normal day". What is that? What even is that?
Yeah, I'm A Girl progress needed to avoid spoilers: None whatsoever. Read on!
A/N: I've been working on this in fits and starts around other things for a couple months now, and then suddenly it was done and...like...cool, alright, unexpected but good on ya, writing-brain!
It's present-tense because ? Sometimes that just. Happens. It often makes for slightly messier prose, but there's a different feel to it that just works better for some things. Anyone who's read my non-Gem RWBY fics knows what I'm talking about. Anyone who hasn't, well, at least no one's having an emotional breakdown in this one, so it's a kinder introduction. You can probably expect future instalments to be like this, too; it seems to be my default when it comes to shorter, less plot-heavy stuff.
Anyway. I hope you enjoy!
A Tangle of Briars
Taiyang attempts, without great success, to hold in a yawn as he unloads the new envelopes of bulbs into their display. The tension in his jaw travels down his neck into his shoulders, making his movements as sluggish and clumsy as his brain feels. It takes an embarrassingly-long time just to get all the fancy tulips hung, and there are still the gladioli to be reckoned with, and the crocuses, and the daffodils…
"Hey, Long!"
"Xiao Long," he mutters under his breath, more out of habit than anything. There's no point trying to correct Yarrow. His boss is in her high seventies and has been running this little garden centre since gods-know-when, and to her mind there are only two ways of doing any given thing, from planting seedlings to training clematis to, apparently, saying Taiyang's name: Yarrow's way, and the wrong way.
"What's that, now?"
"Nothing, ma'am," Taiyang says briskly, dusting his hands more-or-less clean of the particularly vegetal-smelling earth that still clings to the outside of the bulbs. He stands and turns to face her. "Something up?"
"Sky," Yarrow deadpans, giving him an unimpressed look over her horn-rimmed glasses. "Birds. Treetops."
The top of her head barely comes up to his chest, but Taiyang still shrinks back from her. "Ah, heh. Sorry. Is there something you need, ma'am?"
Yarrow nods approvingly. "Much better. Now if only we could get you to scrape off that peach fuzz you're tryin' to pass off as facial hair…" She raises an arm, pointing outside of the office building towards one of the greenhouses with a gnarled but steady hand. "Got a lady in there wants to plan out a front bed, don't know her begonias from bergenias. I'm not running hither and yon to show her what's what, not with the weather turning like it's been."
"I'm still trying to get these bulbs—"
Yarrow snatches a bagged iris rhizome right out of his hand. "The day I can't manage to hook cardboard on pegs, you'll know I've gone senile. Move it, Long, don't keep the lady waiting!"
"Yes, ma'am," Taiyang says, feeling a strange urge to bow or salute or something as he turns and leaves the building at a quick but not criticisable speed. He'd put a lot of effort into finding that exact pace, and Yarrow is always happy to let him know when he misgauges.
'Lady', huh? Tai quickly builds a picture of the customer in his head. Any woman who looks to be under the age of forty-five is a 'girl' to Yarrow; after that, they're biddy if she doesn't care for them and lady if she does, and while his boss has a good heart under it all she's quick to judge by appearances. Pearls, pashmina, and platinum hair await him, or he'll peel off his work vest and eat it whole.
He steps into the greenhouse and stops short, staring.
Well. Looks like poly-blend for lunch.
He'd forgotten that there is, after all, another very different category of woman that Yarrow would call lady. The kind that stands half-turned away from him now, bending forward to sniff at a potted verbena. Her deep yet oddly translucent rosy red complexion seems to glow from within. Her hair is a more vivid shade in the same colour family, slightly curly, stopping just above her shoulders. Over those shoulders drapes a ruby-red cloak, the hood down. Her arms are crossed behind her back beneath it, which holds it away from her body enough to show the simple black dress she wears, matching ballet flats on her feet.
As she straightens, the Gem catches his eye, blinking and looking briefly surprised before her expression settles into a warm smile. "Hello," she says, and for the first time Tai appreciates what every romance author means when they describe the leading lady's voice as musical. "Are you the 'nice young man' who's supposed to help me?"
"She called me nice?" Taiyang asks before he can stop himself. "Uh, I mean…yes?"
The Gem laughs softly—and briefly, quickly pressing her lips together to hold in the sound, which seems a shame. Though the deepening of the colour in her face and the faint all-over shimmering of her skin as she blushes are appealing. Like something out of a painting, Tai thinks dazedly. A fairy queen, or a goddess of Spring.
"Summer," she says, and for a wild, terrifying moment Taiyang thinks she's correcting his inner monologue. "Um, that's my name, I mean," she adds abruptly, her blush intensifying. "Summer. Yeah."
Tai isn't used to customers introducing themselves, but his hindbrain is kind enough to kick in and force out the polite response. "Taiyang." He offers his hand. "Nice to meet you."
"Taiyang," she repeats as she shook it, only she pronounces his name the way his born-and-bred-Animan grandfather used to, her mouth shaping the syllables perfectly. "'Great Sun'."
"Never let it be said my parents didn't have high hopes for me." He's still working the same job he's had since freshman year of high school with no immediate plans for the future, so those hopes have dimmed a bit, but at least they're still on speaking terms.
"It's a good name," Summer says. "I'm fond of Yangs. You're the second one I've met."
"Small world."
"Long memory." She looks down for a moment, a soft snort escaping her. "So to speak."
Tai takes advantage of her brief distraction to eye her Gemstone. He's never seen one up close before, but Summer's…well, given where it is on her body he'd really rather not be caught looking when they've only just met, and that's assuming he isn't already violating some rule by staring at a Gem's core. It is the same deep red as the rest of her, though it looks a little darker, at least through the facets that aren't currently reflecting the sunlight. It merges seamlessly with the flawlessly-smooth skin (Is it? Skin? On a Gem?) of her chest. He wonders what she is, specifically, and if it's rude to ask like it is with Faunus. Probably, he decides. It's not really any of his business, just because she's being friendlier than the usual—customer.
Somehow, he'd forgotten he is still at work.
"Anyway, um, how can I help you, ma'am?"
"Oh!" She looks a little taken aback, glancing around as if she, too, had lost track of where she is. "Sorry. Yes. I'm trying to find some plants to fill out my front garden."
"Okay. Do you have any ideas of what you'd like to put in?"
"…Flowers?" Summer winces, and Taiyang smirks—not unkindly, he hopes; he doesn't mean to mock.
"Gotcha. How much can you tell me about the space?" At her inquisitive, uncertain look, he adds, "Things like dimensions, how much sun it gets—if you know anything about the soil quality, that's helpful, too."
"Well, it's not too big, sort of a…" she spreads her hands "…strip, about that wide, between my front walk and the house. Um, I'd say it's a mix of sun and shade? The afternoon sun hits it better, the treeline's thinner on the west-facing side. I live in the woods," she clarifies. "Not, you know, out in the wilderness like a hermit or anything! Over on—"
"—Patch," Taiyang says with her, realisation dawning. "You're Rose Quartz." He's been practically ogling Remnant's saviour, mankind's champion, the singular reason he and everyone else he knew even existed. Yarrow might not have even been calling her lady on account of her age and respectability; capital-L Lady is Summer's proper title!
Goddamn. She could kick my ass in those tiny shoes.
She—well, Tai wants to describe what she does as biting her lip, but that isn't quite it. She sort of hooks her lower lip beneath one of her canines, looking away briefly before giving him an odd smile, her lips still tucked in at the corner. "That's me."
"Sorry." He isn't entirely sure why he's apologising, but he has the overwhelming feeling that he'd taken a very large step in the wrong direction by recognising her.
"No, it's…I gave you two and then I gave you another two and you made four, that's not…there's nothing to apologise for." Her smile widens, glamourous and welcoming, a perfect celebrity's look.
Oh gods. I don't know how to backpedal out of this. So instead, rather desperately, Taiyang recites her information back to her. "So about yea wide, maybe fourteen, sixteen feet long, partial sun…?" He trails off weakly. "It's mostly clay-tending out there, right? And it's got a…pH level probably since it…exists…"
"Well, it's…" Summer blinks rapidly. "It's definitely dirt."
Silence reigns, suffocating in its awkwardness, until Taiyang can't take it anymore, an undignified laugh sputtering out of him. He presses his knuckles to his mouth to try and stifle it, but the shocked look on Summer's face only makes it worse; he doubles over, wheezing.
Oh, man, who knew I was getting fired for a customer service complaint today!
He realises suddenly that some of the snickers echoing in his ears aren't coming from him. Then a loud, pealing laugh joins his own breathless, half-hysterical sounds. He looks up to see Summer leaning against one of the plant tables, a palm pressed to her forehead, peering at him sidelong through squinting eyes.
"I should know, right!?" she exclaims in a high, thin, strangled sort of voice. "I'm made of dirt! I photosynthesise, why am I so bad with plants!?"
"It has a pH," Tai quotes mockingly, brushing tears out of his eyes. "Good job, man, put that high school chemistry to work!"
They level out at around the same time, and this time, when Taiyang looks at her, Summer's smile is soft again, warming him through.
"Say that again?" Taiyang requests in a rather faint voice, a small pot of astilbe hanging from his fingertips.
"Well, it makes sense," Summer says defensively—it doesn't, at all, but clearly she's determined. "Everyone reacts differently to loneliness, but lashing out is pretty textbook, right? So maybe some company will help them settle out again."
"Them being…your roses."
"Exactly." Summer nods. She seems entirely earnest, and Taiyang can't decide whether he should ask questions or not. He will, because apparently on some level he's a masochist, but that doesn't mean he should. "They've just been so clingy lately. I'm worried about them. And the others have started complaining about them, even Oz and he almost never complains—well, not out loud, anyway—but they're being really unreasonable about this. He and Yang are insisting that if I can't calm the roses down, we're going to have to rip them out, can you believe that? Of all the things for those two to agree on…"
"What…what are the roses like when they're not calm?" Taiyang asks, unable to quite picture a rosebush acting out from stress.
"Well, like I said, they're clingy. So they've been trying to keep us close, you know? So they overgrew the front door. And some of the windows. And they're trying to get around back, too, and it's always dark inside now and we're going to have to replace the TV antenna and we've started finding thorny twigs in the fireplace…but my roses are absolute angels normally, and they're so beautiful!" Summer adds hastily, seeing the look of rising horror on Taiyang's face. "They're just going through a phase."
"A housebreaking phase. Like, they're breaking your house."
"Oh, no, that old place survived a hurricane once. A few flowers aren't going to take it down. But it was a little difficult getting outside to come here," she admits in a half-mutter.
"Okay," Taiyang says, nodding slowly and setting the astilbe down. "How do you feel about columbine…?"
"Hmm," Yarrow drones as Taiyang checks out Summer's selections. "Perennials and re-seeders, variable lighting, tolerant of crowding, low-maintenance. You know, if you live somewhere with a lot of plant life, you can flesh out your garden with some wildflowers. Just don't be a fool and plant vetch or morning glory or anything like that. You'll think it's pretty at first, but give it an inch and it'll take your whole yard!"
"Or your house," Taiyang says, causing Summer's shoulders to hunch guiltily.
"Thank you for the advice," she says to Yarrow. "But I think these should be enough to keep my roses company."
"Oh, these'll hang in there for a while, as long as the climate plays nice," Yarrow assures her.
"And the roses," Tai sings under his breath.
"Long, don't be muttering at your customers."
"Yes'm."
"How're you gettin' these home with you, hon?" Yarrow asks suddenly, squinting out at the parking lot. There are only three vehicles there—her own little coupe, Taiyang's second-hand sedan, and the garden centre's pickup. "That matter, how'd you get here from home?"
"I flew," Summer says matter-of-factly, then pauses, looking at the cartload of plants she's just purchased. "…I'm going to need bigger feet."
"What?" Tai breathes, squinting at her. He only realises he's said it out loud when she blushes, and Yarrow smacks his elbow. "Ow!"
"Don't you be carrying these like a bird, you'll strip the foliage right off even if you manage to keep hold of 'em all. Long'll drive you, there's time before he clocks out."
"Oh. Uh, I'm the only one here today, ma'am," Taiyang points out.
"Oh, you're the only one who ever shows up on time anyhow!" Yarrow snaps, throwing up her hands. "I ran this place on my own before you got here and I can run it just the same now. You go on, get those loaded in, don't make the lady do the lifting."
Summer holds up a single finger, looking perplexed. "I'm stronger than he is."
Yarrow shakes her head. "Not to his face, hon," she scolds. "You'll crush the poor boy's spirit."
"I'll just go get the truck backed up," Tai sighs, walking past them with his eyes rigidly fixed on the middle distance.
"I didn't really hurt your feelings when I said I was stronger, did I?" Summer asks, frowning as Taiyang pulls onto one of the main roads.
"Pff. No. Yarrow's got this idea in her head that I'm really sensitive." Tai glances over at the Gem in the passenger seat. "My last name is 'Xiao Long', but it's written as two words. So she decided it was really just 'Long'. I used to try and correct her, and she had a little tizzy about how I was getting so worked up over such a little thing and…I mean, in hindsight it really wasn't worth pushing, knowing how Yarrow is, but I didn't make as big a deal about it as she remembers. In a weird kind of way, I think she's trying to respect my feelings."
"Great sun, little dragon." Summer laughs. "Kind of a mixed message."
"I'm a walking contradiction. A man of mystery. Intrigue and danger ooze from my every pore."
Summer sniffs the air. "Perspiration and fertiliser. Which one's danger and which one's intrigue?"
"Oh, in that order. Nothing more dangerous than a man who's worked up a sweat, and I mean, who really wants to know what's in their favourite fertiliser?"
"Not I, said the little red Gem."
Taiyang barks out a laugh, taken off-guard. "I was…"
"Already filling it out in your head." Summer winks at him. "You're welcome."
Tai shakes his head again—she's gonna have him dizzy by the time they're done—but this time he's smiling. "Hey, you mind if I put the radio on? It's kind of a haul to the ferry port."
"Anything but M-pop," Summer says immediately. "One of my housemates is going through a phase. If I hear one more idol singer's cutesy high-pitched voice, I will rupture my own eardrums from within in a rage-fuelled effort of sheer willpower."
Taiyang blinks, staring fixedly at the road. "Said like a completely normal thing to say."
"Immortality gives you a weird relationship with melodrama and hyperbole. You're uniquely aware of how ridiculous it all is, but eventually come to embrace the way it lets you pour a full century or three of feeling into a single sentence."
Eyeing her sidelong, he ventures to ask, "How long has the M-pop phase lasted?"
Summer sighs. "When did the genre emerge again?"
"Oh boy." He reaches for the radio. "How do you feel about classic rock?"
"Probably the same way I felt about it when it was just rock. It's a positive feeling," she clarifies when he raises an eyebrow. "Rock on."
He isn't quite sure that's a real vote of confidence, but she'd given him the go-ahead, so he shrugs internally and presses the button. It's already tuned to his preferred station; he makes most of the garden centre's few deliveries.
Later in life, if pressed to look back and identify the exact instant he'd started falling in love with Summer Rose Quartz, he'd have to point to the moment when an old rock ballad came on and she immediately grinned like she'd won the lottery, throwing her head back and belting out the chorus, completely unperturbed by the virtual stranger not two feet away and hanging on her every note. She's off-key. He doesn't mind.
"Turn here," Summer directs. "That's the driveway."
Nodding, Tai punches off the radio at the end of the next song—nothing worse than having to cut off midway through. Then he frowns, leaning forward over the steering wheel as he peers out through the windshield. "What the…?"
"Oh, no," Summer sighs, slumping in her seat. "You're still on the clock, right? I'm going to have to call you as an expert witness in the pro-rose case."
As Taiyang rolls to a stop a good few yards from the door of the garage, he openly gapes at the sight before him. Based on shape, size, and the presence of a garage at the end of the driveway, he assumes there's a house somewhere underneath the thorny tangle of briars writhing off to the right.
"Yeah, this is bad." Sounding more resigned than alarmed, Summer pops her seatbelt and swings out the door at speed. With rather more reluctance, Taiyang turns off the truck and follows her lead, stepping out onto the asphalt and craning his neck up at the alleged house. It's like something out of a particularly surreal horror movie. Gods, the briars are moving, on their own; what the hell!?
"Hey!" he hears from off to the left; he and Summer look over to see another Gem, yellow in colouration, peering over the peaked roof of the garage and waving at them. "Good to have you back! Welcome to Rosepocalypse! Thornmageddon! The End Vines! I couldn't pick."
Summer cups her hands around her mouth. "Yang! Are you alright?"
"They really wanna make it over here, but I grabbed some Burn Dust on my way out the window and they do not like that at all," Yang yells with a grin so wide Tai can see it from the ground. "Gotta admit, I'm losing ground thanks to the whole thing where I don't wanna burn the house down, though! So if you could do your thing and talk them down, that'd be greeaaat."
"Where are the others?"
"Qrow tried to fly out and the briars got him; I can still hear swearing from up here, so I think he's fine, but I can't track where he is in," Yang gestures, "everything. Ozpin couldn't get out in time 'cause, y'know, Garnet big, windows small, so he should still be inside fighting the giant beetles."
"The what?" Taiyang yelps, looking at Summer. She shakes her head wildly, flinging up her hands in a shrug.
"What giant beetles?" she calls back up to Yang.
Yang points behind them. "Heads up!"
The buzzing tells Tai what he's going to see before he even turns around, but he still stumbles back as a Mistralian beetle the size of a large dog slams down on the roof of the truck, flashing blue and brown and green under the sunlight.
"Holy shit!"
"Ohh," Summer breathes. "I wondered where the blooms went. If they've been eating them…"
"Why do you even have these freaking roses!?"
"Because I wanted them and I love them and they're mine!" Summer holds out a hand, and with a shimmer of light a strangely delicate-looking, fantastical device in red and silver materialises in it. It's only when she raises it to her shoulder that Tai recognises it as a gun. And it's only when she fires it, and the beetle explodes in a mess of iridescence and ichor, that Tai realises it's a shotgun.
Ch-chhk!
Pump-action, apparently.
"Yang! Can you please come down and make sure Taiyang doesn't get eaten?"
"I'm sorry, is that a serious concern?" Tai stares at her wide-eyed. "Are they carnivorous now? Did your roses turn a bunch of Mistralian beetles giant and carnivorous?"
"Oh, is that what those are?" Summer looks enlightened. "I don't actually do a lot of gardening."
"Gardening," Yang repeats, and when Tai looks up she's hooking her fingers into air quotes.
Summer snaps her fingers and points at the ground. "Yang."
Yang holds up her hands defensively, looking more chagrined than chastened; she hikes her legs over the peak of the garage roof and slides down the shingles in front, kicking off the gutter to land knees-bent in the driveway. "Guard the human, got it. Most of the beetles are inside, FYI, not sure why. Maybe they're trying to nest? Do beetles nest?" She directs that last question at Tai.
"Scarabs burrow," he says weakly. "If they're trying to burrow under the roses…"
"…Then at this size, they'd have to go through the house," Summer realises, eyes widening.
"Oh hell no. Do you know how longI've spent building and re-building this house? Freaking years by now!" To Taiyang's bewilderment, there's literal, tangible heat radiating off of Yang. Actual tongues of flame have sprung up among the golden-yellow curls of her hair.
Hothead, his brain supplies; he fails to take the opening.
"Okay, I'll go talk the vines down. You get ready in case the bugs don't like that. Taiyang…"
"Should I maybe just…" He points with his thumb, but when he actually looks at the truck he realises how little he wants to get near it. There's a surprising amount of fluid inside a beetle's exoskeleton. "Yeah, I'll just wait here."
"Yang'll keep you safe," Summer assures him, lifting her shotgun to hold properly across her body. She turns and approaches the house, leaving him alone with his second Gem of the day.
"So. Taiyang."
"So. Yang."
They eye each other without quite facing. Tai has the distinct impression she's sizing him up. For his part, he's just trying not to stare. He'd assumed Gems' whole never-ageing deal was because, well, they're all already adults and there's nothing to be gained by becoming old adults. Yang, though, has the appearance of a teenager, maybe 16 or 17.
"One of us is going to have to change," Yang decides.
Tai looks down at himself in confusion until he understands her meaning. "Change our name."
"I had it first. Think of it like a chance to reinvent yourself. Organics eat that kinda talk up, right?"
"Yeah, unless you're going into witness protection, reinvention is supposed to be a personal choice, not something a talking light show badgers you into because she's jealous of her name."
"…So you agree it's my name."
"You could just call me Tai," he suggests. "Pretend the Yang isn't even there. It's a strategy I'm down for."
He carefully doesn't look at her, staring straight ahead at Summer instead as she kneels down in front of where the path disappears. He still manages not to react when Yang punches his arm, because he'd kind of been expecting it, and because she doesn't even hit him as hard as the guys he used to roughhouse with in high school.
"Try pretending that isn't there," she grumbles. "Tai."
He smirks. When he risks a glance at Yang, she's wearing the same expression.
Ahead of them, Summer has laid her shotgun across her lap. She leans forward, bracing her hands against the ground and closing her eyes. He thinks he sees her lips moving.
"So she can really talk to flowers?"
Yang shrugs, rather helplessly. "Plants like her. I don't mean she has a green thumb, I mean literally, they are affectionate to her."
"How, though? I've worked with plants for years—if they were secretly sentient, shouldn't I have noticed by now?"
"I didn't say they thought about liking her or decided to like her. They just do."
"But they're moving on their own! That's intent…and muscles." Taiyang pulls a face, vaguely nauseated at the mental image he's unwittingly conjured. "That's impossible, s'what it is."
"Uh, hello? Giant beetles? Immortal rock people? Any of this ringing a bell?" Yang actually reaches up and gently raps on his skull. Or he assumes she was trying to be gentle. It doesn't feel like it's going to bruise, at least.
"Hey!—the beetles are part of the same problem. And no offense, but I'm pretty sure the immortal rock people are the cause of the problem."
She tilts her head to one side, then shrugs again, nodding. "Yeah, that tracks."
"Ha!" Summer gets to her feet with a triumphant shout and a surprising lack of grace; the briars are slowly retreating down the roof and away from the door, twisting and rolling away with movements that remind Tai uneasily of the curling of a spider's legs. He shudders reflexively. "Alright, I'm going in!"
The briars are still pulling back, but the door is clear, and Summer holds her shotgun ready as she approaches. And then she leaps back as the door flies open, and another beetle shoots out the doorway wings-first. It hits the ground that way, too, twitching feebly.
"Oh, hey, Oz," Summer says with cheer that sounds more than a little forced.
The Gem who emerges from the doorway is not what Tai expected, given his experience so far. He is tall, green in colour save for his light grey hair, and wearing a suit—the only things eccentric about his state of dress are the tinted glasses on his face and the scarf he wears in lieu of a tie. In much the same way as Tai's truck, his jacket has seen better days. So has he, judging from the utterly stony look on his face as he walks forward towards Summer. He stops beside the struggling beetle, holding out—something in his hand over it, and Tai hears a shhk sound as a length of some solid material snaps down and skewers the insect where it lies. It gives one last violent tremor and goes still.
"Lady Rose," Ozpin says, very pleasantly, if one ignores how mismatched it is to his facial expression. There's an edge of something upper-class on Summer's voice, but it permeates Ozpin's, and it immediately puts Tai on edge. People who sound like Ozpin don't make life easy for people like Tai. "I trust you had an enjoyable outing this afternoon?"
Yang lets out a soft, low whistle as Tai winces in sympathy for Summer; a shared look is all it takes for them to decide to stay back and stay quiet.
Summer lifts her chin. "I did, actually. I believe I've found a solution to our rose problem."
"Ah. And will you be cutting back the bramble, burning out the roots, or salting the earth in their wake?" Ozpin gives her a brilliant, horribly rigid smile as he pulls his weapon free of the beetle's corpse and plants the end beneath his feet instead, leaning on it like a cane. Taiyang half-expects him to start vibrating like a furious Chihuahua. "Best we work out division of labour ahead of time, don't you think?"
"We will not be resorting to such drastic measures," Summer proclaims, banishing her shotgun and beckoning one of their spectators closer; neither of them is sure which she means, so Yang starts trudging over and Tai trails behind her, trying to strike a balance between going too close to the furling roses and too close to the large, armed, angry Gem. Neither feels especially safe, but he suspects the briars will be easier to run from, so he sticks close to the walkway.
"Drastic is firebombing the lot," Ozpin says, "and I haven't ruled out the possibility."
"How many bugs were in there?" Yang asks, the picture of morbid fascination as she eyes his unfortunate jacket.
Ozpin sighs and holds out his cane to her; she takes it carefully, letting out a soft ewww over the state of the shaft. "I didn't count," he replies flatly, stripping off his jacket with efficient motions and holding it away from him, the ends of his scarf falling loose over his waistcoat. The offending garment vanishes in a burst of green light, the matter which had previously coated it dripping to the ground all at once with an unsavoury plop. "I am fairly certain they're all dead—though that's not to say there won't be more where they came from."
"Well, we're not burning the house down just because you don't like my garden," Summer says, crossing her arms.
"Ab absurdo." Ozpin rolls up his sleeves to the elbows as he goes on, still with the same quick, sharp, dare Tai say it huffy way of moving. "My stated goal is to destroy the roses, not the house along with them; I used the latter example to demonstrate the moderation shown by the former. Thank you, Yang," he adds more quietly, nodding to her as he takes his cane back.
"Look, Summer, I know you love those roses, but we just almost lost our house without getting any fire involved," Yang points out, crossing her arms. "They gotta go. They should've been gone; it's insane that this even happened!"
"No! I think I know why they're so wound up, and I know how to fix it. Qrow will back me up," Summer says confidently.
"After today? We shall see about that." Suddenly Ozpin frowns, looking around; he sees Tai but visibly dismisses him in the same instant. "Where is Qrow?"
Tai will reflect, later, that Ozpin had been too quick to write him off. If his gaze had lingered a little longer, he would have seen the moment a small dark blur tumbled off the roof directly towards the lone human at the scene. Tai holds out his hands automatically, fingers curling around a bony mass of crumpled, disarrayed feathers as a little black bird drops into his palms, cawing weakly on impact. Most of the creature's back is taken up by a charcoal-coloured plaque of some smooth, glossy material, like…stone…
"Uh, I think I found…him?"
The crow lets out a peculiar wheezing noise, almost like coughing. "You didn't find shit," the bird accuses in a raspy voice before passing out in his hands.
Summer is the first to his side, coaxing his hands open to look over the bird-shaped Gem resting in his palms. "Qrow? Are you…?"
"Clearly not," says Ozpin from Taiyang's left. His immediate left, and Tai startles, head whipping around to stare at the Gem's profile mere inches from his own face, peering down at Qrow. "Poor thing; he was already overdue for an intensive recharge. He must be exhausted."
Summer's fingers probe carefully at Qrow's feathery form as she inspects him for gods-know-what; Gem medical care is entirely beyond his expertise. All Taiyang can do is stand there, stiff and uncomfortable as Yang, too, crowds into his personal space to have a look at the fallen Gem in his hands.
"He'll be okay, right?" she asks, the uncertainty in her voice making her sound as young as she looks.
"He's not even chipped, he's fine," Summer assures her. She holds her hands out beneath Tai's in clear request, and he lowers his hands until she's nearly holding them, parting his hands carefully to let the alarmingly fragile-feeling Gem settle into her gentle grasp. "He just needs some sun. I'll go sit with him by the cliff for a…bit…"
She looks up with wide, hurt eyes as Ozpin steps past Tai to stand before her, retracting his cane into its handle and hooking it on his belt. He holds out his hands just as she had, and Summer seems to shrink into herself, drawing Qrow closer to her chest. Taiyang suspects he'd need a few more years of experience—or a few hundred, possibly—to interpret the expression on the green Gem's face. It's remote and subdued and apparently makes it difficult for Summer to meet his eyes. A moment later, Qrow is being gently transferred into Ozpin's hold, cradled with just as much care as Summer had shown.
Ozpin gazes at her a beat longer, then nods, just once, and walks away, passing the door and heading for the thin treeline that runs along the right-hand side of the house.
"He seems like a fun guy," Tai says into the silence which follows the Gem's departure. The words come out a little strained.
"Hell hath no fury like a control freak whose space has been violated," Yang observes, giving Summer a sidelong sort of look. "Hey, come on, no one died and Oz won't stay mad for more than like, a week, tops. He or I would be dead by now if he was better at holding a grudge."
Summer sighed, shoulders slumping. "Yeah. I guess."
"…Welp, good luck with that. I'm gonna go check the damage," Yang says. Taiyang jumps a little in surprise as she delivers a sharp slap behind his shoulder on the way by, going through the motions of cracking her knuckles and her neck as she approaches the door. "If I get stuck in there, forget Oz, I'm burning the place down myself."
"I thought you were trying to avoid that?"
"Hey, if it's me or the house…"
"It's really not that dangerous!" Summer called as the door closed behind Yang. "Okay, come on, help me get those plants unloaded so I can get them in."
"You—right now?"
Summer frowns at him, raising her eyebrows in confusion. "Well, I didn't figure you wanted to stay overnight."
"No, I mean, you're putting them in right now? After all of…" he flails his hands rather desperately, because he honestly doesn't know what he's talking about anymore. He doesn't know what anyone's talking about anymore. He just caught a talking bird who's been held captive by magic roses. Nothing matters. Reality is meaningless.
"Why not?" Summer asks, which. Okay. Again, nothing matters, so, valid question. "If I get the plants in and it fixes the rose problem, everyone wins. If I wait, Yang and Ozpin will make me put it to a vote, we'll stalemate, and I'll have to play the 'my house, my rules' card anyway, and then Oz will give me an ultimatum, I'll call his bluff, he'll follow through out of pride and move back into Beacon for however long it takes him to remember he's a quiet extrovert and not a sociable introvert and then he'll come home because he's lonely and I'll have gotten my way in the meanwhile but also have had long enough to miss him and feel guilty so everyone will just pretend nothing happened for a decade or three until Yang brings it up to win an argument and we all silently agree to let her version of how things went down serve as the official history no matter who ends up being the bad guy."
He stares. She shrugs. Smiles. "Better to cut out the middleman, right?"
"I…I have no idea," Tai says weakly. "I just help people pick out plants."
"And you're very good at it," Summer says, patting his arm. "Let's move, we're on a clock."
It all goes great until Summer dusts off her hands, smiles as she looks over the array of pots and flats, and then immediately swears. Taiyang's not sure why it startles him so much, though he understands why he hadn't been actively expecting it. Just hours before, he'd thought she was this ethereal creature right out of myth. Now he's witnessed her singing off-key, literally flailing in confusion, firing a shotgun, and cursing. Summer's not myth, she's history, and rapidly dispelling the romance of it.
He doesn't mind that, actually. Honestly, he's a little relieved. But his "What?" still comes out sounding rather alarmed.
"We don't have a trowel."
So Tai climbs back up into the truck bed, opens the tool chest latched in behind the cab (mercifully, most of the, uh, bug stuff has dripped down the windshield and not the back) and pulls out a pair of soil knives.
"I, um, I can get those back to you later, I guess," Summer says, watching him.
"I'll never hear the end of it from Yarrow if I leave tools behind." He tosses one of the sheathed trowels over the side of the bed at her; privately, he marvels as she catches it by the hilt without ever looking away from him. "We're on a clock, remember? So let's move."
The startled, almost amazed look she gives him makes up for the fact there's no way Yarrow will pay him overtime for this.
"So, okay," Tai finally asks once they're both knuckles-deep in soil. He hadn't had any work gloves that fit Summer, but he figures he's the only one in danger from the thorns anyway. "Don't get me wrong, I'm the last person to talk about getting attached to plants, but if you've been having trouble with these roses for a while now, like, to the point you're fighting over them…"
Summer is silent, gently kneading the roots of a dianthus to loosen them as he'd shown her. Her fingers are slow, and her gaze is distant.
"Honestly, when you first explained everything to me, I thought it sounded really silly," Taiyang confesses. "'My roses are angry. I'm buying them friends.' But they're seriously trying to take over your house. They're super-sizing your garden pests and pissing off your housemates."
Or hurting them, he doesn't say, but evidently Summer hears it anyway.
"Qrow's fine. He really is," she says earnestly. "He just ran out of energy. Like Ozpin said, he was already running low, and being in the dark and trying to hold on to his bird form just drained him faster."
"Wait, bird form? So does he not normally look like that?"
"No! Gems are naturally shaped more or less like humans. It's just that if Qrow was wrapped tight enough, reverting to his normal shape and size would have popped his projection. He'd have been okay—Pearls' Gemstones aren't that much more fragile than the rest of ours—but it's still not fun. He'd basically be in a coma for a few days until he could re-form. Probably longer, with how drained he was," Summer reflects, patting soil into place around her newly-planted dianthus. "This way, he's just in sort of a mental pause. Like putting a computer into sleep mode. He's not conscious, but the subconscious processes in his core are in a holding pattern until he wakes up again."
"So that's why he's still all feathery?"
"Mmhm." Summer pauses, biting at her lip. "It's still not great, though, that this happened to him. I owe him an apology."
"If Ozpin lets you give him one. He kind of just swooped in between you back there." 'Back there' actually only being a few feet to Tai's right, but who's counting?
Summer snorts, shaking her head, the late afternoon sun catching and glinting strangely on the strands of her hair. "If I were anyone else, Ozpin would go behind Qrow's back and insist I give him one. He has just enough respect for the fact I was his boss once that he'll stick to pointed looks and the silent treatment."
"Yeesh. That's even worse." Tai stabs into the earth, carving out a new hole about six inches out from the foundation. "That's what my mom does when she's angry."
A quiet sigh from Summer. "He's not angry. He's disappointed." She looks rather wretched as she says this; it's immediately obvious that as far as she's concerned, anger would be preferable. "We've got different ways of handling things and I'm normally the more proactive one; he's reactive, to the point that sometimes you'd swear he didn't care. But even he would've reacted by now, and I didn't act at all, and now someone's gotten hurt because of it. Ozpin took Qrow to give me one last chance to act according to my best judgement before he steps in."
"And that's what this is." Taiyang points around the little garden with his trowel.
Summer nods. "Of course, he's not going to be thrilled that my best judgement didn't align with his, but that's his problem. Ozpin's rarely wrong, but he isn't always right, either. And there's a difference between right and not wrong, too."
Pondering that, Tai scrunches his nose. "…Is there?" he asks, dubious.
Summer tilts her head, looking at him strangely for a moment before smiling. There's something a little sad about it.
"What?" He's unable to look away from her.
"I forgot," she says simply. "Funny, right?"
"Forgot…"
"That we've only just met. And that you're very, very young."
That has him drawing back from her. "I'm nineteen," he replies, a little stung. He immediately wants to cringe; aloud, the words sound so petulant. Like a child insisting he's all grown up because he needs two digits to show his age. It's even dumberthan that, even, because everyone else on the property needs at least four.
And it backfires, too, because Summer's eyes go wide and now she pulls back from him. "Nineteen?"
Great. The single most beautiful woman he's ever seen now thinks of him as a kid, assuming she didn't already. Awesome. This is just…the best day.
The front door bangs open again. That can't be good for the hinges.
"Oh-ho, you're triple screwed!" Yang sounds absolutely gleeful as she stomps onto the porch. "They broke into the house, got one of us hurt, and put a dent in the chocolate pot. Hope you know a good…"
She takes in the mostly-full garden for a long moment, eyes sweeping across the newly-planted stretch.
"Silversmith. Why. Why are you that close to the roses? And the. There are more things in there. Now." Yang blinks, shaking her head sharply. "Holy crap, Summer, did you just give your psychotic rosebush reinforcements?"
"It's not psychotic! Or a bush!" Summer throws up her dirt-smudged hands, still clutching a soil knife. "They're just flowers. Oh my gods."
"Cool!" Yang says brightly, clapping her hands together. "Well! I'm going to go make some tea. Because I am the good Quartz today, and that's what the good Quartz does. She makes tea. And I'll take it around back, because our house is no longer fit to live in! Come around when you're done!"
As she re-enters the house, Tai realises Yang is laughing. Quietly, half-hysterically, with tears gathering at the edges of her eyes.
He realises, too, that "You never answered my question."
"What question?" Summer asks innocently.
"What makes one plant important enough to start a cold war with people you've apparently lived with for longer than I'll ever be alive?" he prompts, raising his eyebrows.
Her face falls at his insistence, and once again Tai starts backpedalling in response to the sick jolt caused by her discomfort.
"I'm sorry, is it something private? Oh, man. I'm prying. I gotta stop doing that. I'm sorry," he says again.
"No, it's—it's just not something I talk about. And it's not something I want Yang or Oz to hear, either."
Taiyang frowns slightly. "But not Qrow?"
"Qrow already knows." Summer shook herself. "It's not even a secret, really. Not one that matters. It's not a long story or a complicated one, it's just not…something they need to know."
Tai just nods. A third apology is probably a little much, so he just silently goes back to planting.
"There were two Rose Rebellions," Summer says abruptly. "It's just you never hear about the first one, because it didn't last. I didn't know what I was doing, and it all fell apart."
Slowly, Taiyang straightens again, looking at her. Summer's head is bowed, and her hands are clasped in her lap.
"I figured the Gems most likely to listen to me were the other Rose Quartzes. So I started feeling them out. Talking them around. After a while a bunch of us ran off together, us and a few other Gems. Carnelian, Calcite, Fluorite. We set up a makeshift base in this little valley, it was out in Anima somewhere, I honestly don't know if I could find it again now, but it was a beautiful place. And, I mean, obviously we had a goal and a cause, but…mostly, back then, we were just enjoying all the freedom we suddenly had. Rose Quartz 4EL—we didn't all have names, yet, we weren't that brave—she had a knack for gardening, turns out. And she started cultivating some of the wild roses that grew in the area. Finding different kinds and bringing them home. She didn't exactly know what she was doing, but she had plenty of time for trial and error and in the end, she created one of the first domestic roses. Big blooms with lots of petals, bright colours…and her crowning achievement was a rose that bloomed a bunch of different shades of pink and red and yellow and orange all at once. 'Just like us', she said."
Summer takes a deep, steadying breath.
"I'm the only one left from the first Rebellion. I was…lucky. Away on a, a scouting mission. They were all gone when I got back. I barely managed to slip in and out without Homeworld's forces noticing. They were gonna destroy the whole place, erase the evidence that rebellion was even possible. All I had time to do was take a cutting from one of Fouriel's roses. Then I ran."
So. That's a lot to take in. As Summer goes quiet, Taiyang seizes on the safest topic he can think of. "You grew this from a cutting? Thousands of years ago, and it's still alive? That's pretty impressive for not knowing much about gardening. I mean…" And then he trails off, realising too late that it seems like he's brushed past the point of the story. But Summer gives him a weak smile in response.
"Well, Gems are good at making things grow, ironically. We need a lot of the same stuff that plants do in our early development, so I got my hands on some seed material and, uh, it's kind of like rooting compound." She shrugs self-consciously. "That's probably part of why it's so hardy. And stubborn."
"Why don't you just tell the others? You all fought together in the end, right? They'd understand why this means so much to you."
"No, they wouldn't. They'd just thinkthey understood. To me, the roses are a reminder of my old friends, the first people who believed in the Rebellion. In me. I miss them, I feel awful about what happened to them, but remembering them makes me happy. Yang, Ozpin, they'll see the tragedy, but not the rest." Summer shook her head. "Ozpin is haunted by the Gem War. Not…traumatised, exactly, but Gems like him have perfect memories, and I mean perfect. Nothing fades for him. Qrow and I can remember everything, but Ozpin relives it all down to the smallest details. He doesn't need another set of ghosts on his literal doorstep. And I'm worried he'll think I'm punishing myself by keeping them around—honestly, if our positions were reversed, I'd think the same thing. I don't want him to worry about me.
"And Yang, she's young, she never even saw the war. But because she's a Gem, and because she stayed with us, she lives in its shadow every day. So much of our lives are shaped by what happened back then, and it's not fair that she has to deal with that. I don't want this to be one more thing—'oh, yeah, the front garden's a war memorial'. We came to Patch to get some distance from all of that. To actually enjoy being free Gems, not just constantly tripping over our own history. So yeah, I could tell them about the first Rebellion and insta-win the whole rose debate, but would it really be worth it?"
Taiyang doesn't know what to say to that. "I'd want to know," he offers finally. "If someone I loved was carrying something like that? I'd want to share it."
"But I don't want to share," Summer says gently. "Don't I get a say?"
"You shared it with Qrow. And…I guess you just shared it with me." He swallows, suddenly feeling not only the weight of what she's told him but of the factthat she told him at all. "Thank you," he says.
"For oversharing about my tragic backstory?" Summer asks with a lopsided smile. "I guess you're welcome."
"I mean, if it makes you feel better, I'm a great oversharer," Tai says. "I can tell you so much about myself in wildly unnecessary detail. We can even start with the embarrassing stuff if you want. You feeling more elementary school play or junior high basketball tryouts?"
Summer tilts her head, considering. "…What was the play?"
"So believe it or not, there's a kid-friendly version of Silence Reigns."
Her jaw drops. "No."
"Oh yeah. And I was supposed to play Forte, but I understudied Tacet and there was this bad flu going around that year—right? You know where this is going. So anyway…"
In the same way that Summer's house looks kind of cobbled-together—once Taiyang can see enough of it to tell past its pseudo-sentient climber—he suspects the property as a whole had been an exercise in 'I feel like there should be X' and then X got added in wherever the speaker had been standing at the time. He can't really think of another explanation for why there's a back patio. There's certainly nothing to look at out here. A wide, empty stretch of grass that's only a lawn and not a field by dint of having been recently mowed, and a weird round stone platform whose purpose Tai can only guess at smack in the middle of all the nothing. And yet there's a stone-topped round table and four wrought-iron chairs set overlooking it all. Because…there's a yard, so why wouldn't there be a patio? Right?
It's just so marvellously boring. Magic flowers in the front, jack all in the back. Absolutely mind-boggling.
"More tea?" Summer asks, emerging from the back door with a small, freshly-filled Mistralian teapot hanging from her hands. Apparently Yang had cheated and made a large batch on the stove, so when she and Summer had headed back inside they'd taken the pot with them to refill.
"Yes, please." It's a green tea, earthy yet somehow refreshing, with faint notes of mint. Tai likes it. "How'd your walk-through of the house go?"
Summer winces as she takes a seat across from him. "Cleaning supplies have come a long way since the last time something like this happened. I'm sure it'll be fine."
"'Last time'?"
Her response is mumbled and muffled even further by the way she ducks her head to pour the tea; Taiyang makes out the words "turf war", "squirrels", and "had it coming", and decides he doesn't need to know the details that bad.
"'I'm sure it'll be fine' is code for 'we're gonna have to scrub bug juice off basically everything and repaint most of the walls to cover all the scratches, aaaand the floor's gonna need refinishing in a couple spots'," Yang reports, pulling out her chair and plopping herself down. "Also, most of my material wardrobe is gonna need replacing, and my bedding's basically just a bunch of shreds now. So that's great!"
"A silversmith and a department store gift card, got it," Summer says in a rather small voice.
"Qrow's room's seen better days, too. Looks like his old record player got knocked over. You know, the one he swears makes everything sound better?" Yang props her chin in her palm, clicking her tongue. "Man, he really loves that thing."
Wordlessly, Summer buries her face in her hands.
"Hey, at least it sounds like there's not a whole lotta structural damage," Taiyang offers, hoping to cheer her up.
"Silver lining," Yang concedes, abandoning her faux-thoughtful posture to pour herself a fresh cup of tea.
"I'm never living this down, am I?" Summer's voice is muffled.
"Hey now. We almost never bring up that time you got stuck as a sea lion anymore."
"Uh…" Tai squints at Yang, trying to work out if she was serious or not.
"Do not!" Summer lifts one hand away from her face to hold up a single stern finger at Yang, squinting her visible eye in a glare.
"I'll tell you later," Yang says breezily, winking at Tai. She lifts her teacup for a sip that somehow comes across as smug.
"Havin' a tea party without us. Nice. Classy move."
With where Yang is seated, she must have seen the other Gems approaching, and Summer is still occupied with hiding half her face, so Taiyang is the only one who jumps in his seat at the unexpected new voice, tea slopping out of his cup and running down the sides in little rivulets. Thankfully, it's no longer quite hot enough to burn his hand.
"You don't even like tea," Summer protests, letting her other hand fall as she lifts her head.
"Yeah, well, I never said I wanted any, did I?" Qrow retorts. Summer had said he was a Pearl, and Tai supposes the Gemstone he'd seen had fit the bill, but there's something so delicate about the idea of pearls. That doesn't suit Qrow at all. He's wiry but muscled and stands at about the halfway point between Summer's height and Ozpin's, or maybe a little taller; it's hard to say given he's leaning slightly against the latter Gem. The colours of his form are almost entirely shades of black and grey, though he wears a red cape that echoes Summer's cloak. His eyes are that same vivid colour, so shocking against the rest of him that they almost seem to glow. "That's not the point."
Summer rolls her eyes. "And here I was feeling bad for you. Drama queen."
"Now, now," Ozpin says, reaching across his body to lightly touch the back of Qrow's hand, which grips his other arm. "We have a guest."
Qrow glances at Taiyang and raises an eyebrow, snorting.
Nice to meet you, too.
They've reached the patio, Qrow releasing Ozpin as soon as there's even footing to be had, and Ozpin immediately darts forward. "There we are. Have a seat, Qrow."
"There's only one left," Qrow is saying, but Ozpin has already moved, and the chair is out and waiting for him before he can finish speaking. They don't exactly stare each other down, because Ozpin is blinking steadily and smiling placidly and Tai wouldn't really classify that as a stare. He thinks he might have to re-evaluate that position as Qrow's stubborn expression yields to resignation with little more than a roll of his eyes to mark the transition.
"Hey, look who's finally up," Yang says, lifting her teacup towards him in toast. "Congrats on not being the first Gem to ever choke to death. That would've been embarrassing!"
Qrow sneers at her, making her grin. He leans forward and grabs a teacup, ignoring the pot altogether and calling a flask to his hand just as Summer had summoned her shotgun. Qrow unscrews the cap and pours what a stream of what even Tai can't fail to identify as whiskey into the little earthenware bowl. Taiyang can't decide if he's horrified or impressed when the Gem proceeds to knock it back like a shot.
"Oh my gods," he hears himself say, and he sounds genuinely shocked.
"What?" Qrow snaps. "It's after four."
"Qrow." The same scolding tone in two very different voices, Summer and Ozpin both turning critical eyes on him.
"Oh, what, am I gonna kill my non-existent liver?" Qrow rolls his eyes and refills the cup, but this time the flask vanishes when he's done; he contents himself with slowly nursing his second round. "Today sucked. Lemme have this."
"Yeah, let the bird drink," Yang agrees. "What's the worst that can happen, come on."
"Thanks, but also never ask that, what the hell, Yang?"
"It conveys a certain impression to organics," Ozpin says mildly, glancing at the only organic present.
Qrow points at Taiyang, squinting. "You disguised royalty or something? Huntsman? Insurance agent?"
"Do I look like an insurance agent?" It only belatedly occurs to Tai he should have been more incredulous over 'professional monster hunter' or 'secret prince'. Privately, he rather fancies that last one.
"That a no?"
"Yeah?"
"Then I don't really give a crap what impression I convey to you," he declares, his tone and accent morphing into an uncanny mimicry of Ozpin's for the second half of the sentence (earning a raised eyebrow from the Gem himself), rolling his eyes and raising his cup in a mocking toast.
Well, Qrow's clearly in a foul mood, or at least Tai hopes he's not like this all the time because that's not something he'd wish on Summer, or even Yang, for all she seems to enjoy winding him up. Taiyang takes a calming breath and tries really hard not to take Qrow's attitude personally, since he figures he would also be pretty put-out if he'd had his home invaded by pernicious plant life and spent who-knows-how-long tangled in thorns only to then fall off a rooftop onto a stranger and lose consciousness in their hands. Er, arms. Since he wouldn't be bird-sized in that scenario.
He's overthinking this.
Summer sighs. "Taiyang, meet Qrow. Qrow, Ozpin, meet Taiyang Xiao Long."
"A pleasure," Ozpin says with every appearance of sincerity, offering his hand so promptly Taiyang is shaking it before he can even consider doing otherwise. Not that he would have. He finds Ozpin a little unnerving, all the more so given how amiable he is now compared to the bottled outrage of earlier, but that's no reason to be impolite. And, well, while Tai's trying to keep an open mind, everything about Ozpin signals the kind of entitlement that views 'disrespect' as a capital offense, and he doesn't want to deal with that. Gods, he hopes he's reading him wrong or that, like Qrow, he's just reacting poorly to what's clearly been a terrible day for all three of Summer's old friends.
Qrow's own view on politeness is made clear when he just grunts in acknowledgement, and in response to Summer's sharp look lets out a defensive "What? I just told him I didn't care about him. Pretty bullshit to follow that up with 'Hey, how's it goin'?'."
Summer's expression shifts into something that isn't quite a pout, and Qrow's eyes go wide. So do Taiyang's the instant the Pearl turns to him, not making eye-contact, and mutters, "Hey, how's it goin'?" without a trace of irony.
"Good to see you're okay," Taiyang says, nodding in lieu of trying for a handshake or risking coming off too flippant with a wave.
Qrow grunts again, non-committal, but the way he twitches makes Tai wonder if he's not a little surprised, too. "Take more'n a rosebush to kill me off."
"Of course," Summer agrees immediately, smiling at Qrow and gently squeezing his forearm where it lies on the table. "We're all tougher than that. But we're still glad you're alright."
"Unrelated, who gets all your stuff if you die?" Yang asks.
"I couldn't help but notice the population of the front garden has mysteriously increased over the past hour," Ozpin says airily, clasping his hands behind him. "Dare I wonder why that is?"
Summer blinks up at him innocently, looking and sounding sweet as anything as she says, "I implemented a non-violent solution, Professor."
Qrow makes a noise into his whiskey cup that is very much like the one he'd made before passing out.
"Booze is not for breathing," Yang stage-whispers to him, earning a raised middle finger.
Summer and Ozpin give no sign of noticing this interaction, Summer continuing to look positively angelic while Ozpin seems to be channelling a more judgemental aspect of the divine. He also kind of looks like he might need to borrow Qrow's flask. 'Professor', huh? That actually explains a lot. Tai's pretty sure he'd seen something close to Ozpin's current expression on the faces of a few of his old high school teachers. And they mostly hadn't been assholes, just a bit curt sometimes, so that's a spot of hope.
"Violence, in this instance, refers to physically-harmful action taken by one being against another," Ozpin says dryly. "I was unaware plants were now considered beings."
"Well, there are the beetles to consider."
"Aren't there just."
"All life has value." Summer shrugs. "Guiding principle of the Rebellion, I don't know what to tell you."
"So we're just gonna ignore the one you shot?" Yang asks. Summer shoots a quick glare in her direction. "Love you."
"Alright, alright," Qrow sighs. "Look, Sum, don't bullshit Ozpin, it pisses him off. Oz, don't nitpick Summer, it pisses me off. Yang." He sets down his cup with a clack and points at her sharply with his other hand. "You're a little chaos gremlin. Knock it off."
"Okay." Summer lays her hands flat on the table. "Honestly? We know the roses get attached to people and don't want them to leave. Which means on some level they understand presence, absence, and solitude. So I bought them companion plants. Tai and I put them in, and we'll see over time if that tempers their behaviour. If it doesn't, we'll take more decisive action. If it does, I don't want to hear any more about cutting or burning from either of you. End of story." She gives stern looks to both Ozpin and Yang.
"Any of us, surely?" Ozpin glances at Qrow. "But no, of course, I forget."
"Ha ha." Qrow rolls his eyes again. "Anyone's got a right to bitch about this, it's me, and I'm waiving it. You need a ladder to get back on the moral high ground, or can you pull yourself up?"
"Speaking of burn—" Tai begins immediately, but Yang's saying it too, and they cut themselves off at the same time to look at each other in surprise.
Then Yang pumps both fists in the air, laughing triumphantly. "Yes! YES!"
"Oh, no," Ozpin murmurs, sounding genuinely dismayed.
"The age of puns is nigh!"
"I'm sorry," Qrow says with a sigh. "I wouldn't have said it if I knew this would happen."
Ozpin gently pats his shoulder, leaving his hand there. "You couldn't have known. You aren't to blame."
Summer has burst out laughing, bent over the table in apparent delight, and it makes Tai want to laugh too, but he's like, less than a foot away from Ozpin, and his self-preservation instincts, honed by his years in retail, win out. He now suspects the teacher thing is mostly to blame, but still, the Gem doesn't so much give off 'I want to speak to the manager' vibes as he radiates an aura of 'I used to have your manager's job and am silently judging your every move'. An observation which sparks off a couple more as Tai looks sidelong at the pair of unamused Gems: Qrow's a Pearl. Ozpin's hair is, arguably, platinum. And one end of his scarf is inches from Tai's face, and suddenly he has to know.
As subtly as possible, he reaches over and rubs the fabric between his fingers. Silky-soft wool, palpably expensive, and Taiyang cracks a gleeful, almost disbelieving smile. It's not in classic shawl form, but Ozpin's wearing pashmina. Or at least cashmere—what is he, some kind of textile expert?
The smile melts slowly off his face as he realises Ozpin is looking down at him with an unblinking stare. Tai feels pinned, head thrown back to meet his eyes, a tiny bit of the Gem's scarf still pinched between fingers and thumb.
"What are you doing?" Ozpin asks at length.
"Um," Tai explains, most eloquently.
For whatever reason this fucking breaks Qrow, who cackles like the bird for which he's named, smacking one hand against the table and catching his forehead in the other. His reaction only renews Yang and Summer's mirth. Belatedly, Taiyang feels himself flush beet-red, pulling his hand away from Ozpin's scarf like it's on fire and clasping it together with its mate in his lap. He stares fixedly down at the table, hunching his shoulders in abject mortification.
What the hell, Tai. What the actual fuck is wrong with you.
He stays like that until he hears a quiet chuckle amid the peals of laughter, jerking his head up to look at Ozpin, who's watching the others with a small, almost rueful smile. He seems to sense Taiyang's gaze, though, and returns it.
"Never mistake maturity for gravitas, Mr. Xiao Long," Ozpin says softly. "Or vice-versa. Thank you for helping her."
"I…I thought…?"
"You don't have to approve of something to appreciate its impact. Sometimes the end…mitigates the means." He turns back to the table. "If it's good enough. And this is good, as endings go, wouldn't you say?"
Endings?
Tai wonders.
"Thank you, thank you, thank you," Tai groans as he beholds the garden centre truck, freshly hosed-off and good as new.
"Good thing it's an old model," Yang says from beside him, putting her hands on her hips. "I just had to reach in and pop the dent on the roof out from inside."
"By hand?"
Yang grins, punching her palm. "Never mess with a Quartz."
"I guess you could say you're…" He smirks. "Rough-and-tumbled?"
"Pfft." She raises her right arm. "This look like a cab to you? Come on, I'm cut."
Tai hangs his head, rubbing the back of his neck. "Damn, that one was right in front of me."
"Eh, you'll just have to brush up on your geology humour. It's a new niche." The Gem reaches out and pats him on the arm—more of a slap, really—and nods, pursing her lips like she's decided something. "You're alright, Tai. See you around."
"I hope so," he says, a little surprised to find he means it.
"Mm…no, I will," Yang says confidently, and walks off without another word, tossing her mane of hair.
O…kay?
"Tai!"
He turns fully just in time to see Yang reach the porch—and to see Summer leave it with a sort of stumbling half-run very much at odds with the grace she's displayed thus far. She steadies herself most of the way down the walk, brushing her hands over her skirt, and closes the rest of the distance at a more sedate pace.
"I was worried I'd missed you," she said with a smile, pinkish-red darkening to a ruby shade.
"Uh, no. No, I was just getting ready to, uh…" He flaps his hand at the truck, jamming his other hand into his pocket for want of anything better to do with it. "It's getting pretty late, so. Yeah."
"Right. Yeah."
Summer fidgets. Tai clears his throat.
She takes a sharp breath. Lets it out again a moment later. He scuffs his shoe against the driveway.
"So would you—"
"I was just—"
Silence, even more awkward than before. Then Summer balls her hands into fists and straightens her spine, looking up at him with a fierce expression.
"I would like to see you again," she says clearly, almost over-enunciating the words. "As friends," she adds a beat later; Tai fancies there's a little less oomph to the addendum, but doesn't really trust himself to be objective on that count. "I enjoyed spending time with you today. And I know that you went very far out of your way for me, and I'm hoping that means you enjoyed it, too."
Tai can't help but laugh a little about how formal she's being, but to his horror, she visibly wilts at the sound. "I did!" he's quick to assure her, holding out his hand like he can somehow just pause her reaction. "I really did. And I would also like to see you again." He waits the same beat she had before adding, "As friends."
She blinks. "Right." And then she smiles, bright and beautiful, and Tai's pounding heart actually literally skips a beat, which he'd always thought was some dumb figure of speech until now. "Right."
Summer's dress has pockets, apparently, as her hand vanishes into one of the folds of her skirt and reappears with her scroll. Tai pulls out his, too. As they exchange numbers, something—he's not sure what—prompts him to look up at the house. The briars have returned to what Tai assumes is their usual position, and now instead of covering the second-storey windows, they quite artfully frame them. It's very picturesque, or it would be if only there weren't a pair of red eyes boring down into his from the left-most one. Taiyang feels a chill shoot down his spine, but can't decide if he's actually afraid or just startled by what he sees.
Qrow leans one-shouldered against the wall beside the window, his arms crossed over his chest. There's a slight frown on his face as he glances between Taiyang and Summer. Then he pushes off from the wall and reaches up, and a curtain cuts him off from sight.
"Is something wrong?" asks Summer, following his gaze. She gasps, but the noise is immediately followed by an "Oh!" of delight. "It worked!" she squeaks, wrapping her arms around one of his and bouncing on her toes in sheer excitement.
"It…" Tai scans the façade swiftly for whatever she's seen—whatever he supposedly saw first. "It did," he breathes, as he finally spots it. The briars are covered in new green buds, which is impossible, but very much in line with the rest of the day. And as he watches, in seconds, one of the largest unfolds into a full, billowy bloom, the petals a variegated swirl of sunset colours.
"We did it," Summer sighs happily, resting her head briefly on his shoulder. Then she seems to realise what she's doing and releases him, stepping away and clearing her throat. "Uh. Sorry. Got a little carried away."
"I don't mind," he assures her. "And I'm glad it all turned out okay."
Friends, huh? It's hard to be disappointed by that, even after Tai spends most of the drive back into Vale convincing himself not to convince himself that Summer might want more. There's a lot of reasons why a romance between them would be a stunningly bad idea—the age difference would be staggering even if he had more than a year and a half of adulthood behind him, for one thing. For another, she'll outlive him and everyone he's ever known and possibly even the sun in the end. And he remembers taking a World History unit test about her and he's pretty sure he got a C on it, so that feels like an omen.
A human gardener and the Lady of the Rose Rebellion. Yeah, that'll be the day. What had he been thinking? But…friends. They can be friends. Taiyang's even optimistic that they'll be good ones.
"Today was good," he decides, and turns up the radio.
A/N: Ahh, safely got this out of my head and I hope it helps tide y'all over 'til the next part of Yeah, I'm a Girl is out! Got the beginning and most of the end of part 2 solidly plotted out and now I'm working to bridge them while drafting the first chapter. I can't give you an ETA because if I do I'll treat it like a deadline and that means I'll start procrastinating and that would be very counterproductive. I apologise; please understand that my brain is actual self-sabotaging garbage that must be tricked into cooperating and periodically distracted with unrelated stimuli. But if all goes well, then by the time I've got a functional outline I should also have enough material already written to not only start posting, but post with regular updates.
I know, right!? It'll be super weird.
That's probably the next time I'll see you, so, 'til then! Thanks for reading!