"Okay, maybe our first attempt was sort of a failure," Yang admits. "But now you have the opportunity to apologize, and bake her a cake or something, and bond over it."

"Bake her a cake?" Ruby puts down her textbook and stares at Yang. Ruby doesn't cook, after that one time she set their house on fire (just a small fire, though).

"I'll be there every step of the way," Yang promises, hand over her heart. "That way you're technically the one making it, but I'm giving the orders so nothing gets set on fire this time."

"Seems like a good plan."

After all, there are no rocks to get thrown or anything like that. Weiss probably likes cake, since everyone likes cake. There is no way this could possibly go wrong.

…

Okay, there are a lot of ways this went wrong, but the cake is mostly intact and in the oven, and she'll clean the batter off of the ceiling later.

"Set a timer for twenty-five minutes, then turn it around once the timer goes off and set it for another twenty," Yang says. Ruby nods. She can do that.

Blake walks in, nose in her book, and curls up in one of the armchairs, ignoring them. Yang looks at Ruby, then at Blake, then at Ruby again, and gives an apologetic grin.

"Mind if I just – go chat with Blake for a few minutes?"

And Yang has the nerve to think she's a qualified source of advice for Ruby's love life. She walks over, trying and failing to look casual, hands fidgeting constantly.

"Uh, hey, Blake!"

Blake looks up, expression not changing, and Yang apparently takes that as a chance to try to flirt.

"Good book?"

"Yes," Blake says, eyes starting to return to it.

"Care to read me instead?"

Ruby has to clap one hand over her mouth to avoid laughing. Blake's eyebrows furrow.

"I'm not sure what you mean," she says.

"I'm not sure either. Just, uh, do you want to, uh, recommend some books to me?"

Blake's eyes light up.

"Finally, someone is taking an interest in my books! This one is very good, it's all about star-crossed lovers and drama and tragedy! I'll go find you the first one in the series. Oh, and there's Howling at the Moon, and The Man with Two Souls – let's go."

Well, Yang's happy, but now Ruby is just bored. She doesn't feel like starting that essay, so she needs something to do to procrastinate. The cake must be almost ready by now, right?

Nope, it's been less than a minute.

Well, if Ruby turns the temperature up, just a little, it'll cook faster. Or she could turn it up to twice the temperature and have it cook in half the time. Or even faster, depending on how high the oven goes.

Only one way to find out.

…

The clouds of smoke make Ruby think she's set something on fire, but it turns out to just be the cake, which is just a little bit artistically blackened, with a touch of added smoky flavor.

Okay, the cake is burnt to a crisp. But it's Yang's fault for not being there, and not giving clear enough instructions. And the cake is probably salvageable, if she puts a little frosting on to disguise the color.

It burns her hands and then breaks into pieces when she tries to remove it, and half of it is still stuck to the bottom of the pan. She can still make this work, maybe by piling up the pieces and sticking them together with frosting, then putting frosting over all of it. A lot of frosting, so the cake part is less noticeable.

Weiss strides into the kitchen, clutching her textbooks, nose in the air, and Ruby gives a little squeak of horror and tries to hide the evidence behind her.

"Hello," Weiss says. "I was not planning to see you, but Blake and Yang are trying to flirt with each other, and it's too painful for me to stay in our dorm. What happened here?"

"Oh, nothing!" Ruby tries to usher Weiss away from her workspace. "Just, uh, a failed culinary experiment."

"Culinary experiment," Weiss repeats, turning her nose up. "I see."

"Um, yeah, just trying out a new recipe. Obviously, it, uh, it failed." Ruby begins picking up pieces of cake and dumping them into the trash, because this is officially a failure, and ignoring the fact that she might start crying soon. She's not going to cry in front of Weiss just because she can't bake.

…

"I'm so sorry," Yang says, wrapping her arms around Ruby. "I just – didn't think you'd need any more help with the cake."

"It's okay," Ruby mumbles. "But I think it was a failure too."

"Okay, so time for the next attempt. I've been reading Blake's books, and we need you to save Weiss from something."

"So Weiss runs into a Grimm and I show up just in the nick of time and save her, fairy-tale-style?"

"Exactly."

"Where do we find a Grimm?"

"The forest is literally crawling with them. I'll find a Grimm, don't worry about that."

…

Ruby sticks close to Weiss for the rest of the day, because she doesn't know exactly when the Grimm is going to show up, and she doesn't want Weiss to be in any actual danger. Weiss gets annoyed by it, of course, so Ruby ends up staying ten or fifteen feet behind her, peering around corners.

Weiss leaves the next class and Ruby follows her out, watching her shut down Jaune's attempts at conversation. That's nothing out of the ordinary.

The roar from a side hallway makes several people stop in their tracks, turning to see a Beowolf barreling towards Weiss and Jaune.

Ruby unfolds Crescent Rose and prepares to leap into combat, only to watch Weiss do a little twirl and tap her sword to the ground, freezing the Beowolf inches from Jaune's head in a block of ice.

"No need to worry," Weiss says, walking up to the block of ice and tapping it again. It crumbles to pieces and evaporates quickly, the Beowolf crumbling with it. "Who let a Grimm into the school?"

Oh, right, Weiss can also fight stuff.

Ruby rushes over to Weiss to check if she's okay, but Weiss ignores her and marches off down the hallway, muttering something about how not even Grimm will stop her from being late.

That's three good plans and three catastrophic failures, and it's starting to get a little demoralizing.

A/N: I don't make a habit of watching romcoms, so if you have ideas for more grand romantic gestures to go horribly wrong, suggest them in a review or PM.