Taiyang slowly grows into a life where he is friends with immortals, comfortable with battling monsters, and casual about hopping to the other side of the globe for a quick romantic lunch. In and around and all throughout getting to know Summer's family is Summer herself and her growing relationship with Tai. These are moments big and small from their first few years together.

Yeah, I'm A Girl progress needed to avoid spoilers: None, though Volume 1, Chapter 2 (Scope) features Tai alluding to many of the events featured here.

A/N: I swear this whole series isn't going to be Tai/Summer fluff. Really. But it's been about a week since V2C2/Chapter 22 of the main fic dropped and since that was a reworking of Sworn to the Sword, I thought Tai's induction into the Gem family would be a nice counterpoint to Weiss's. And, honestly, while I know you should never explain a good Noodle Incident, I can never resist doing exactly that. So have some fluff. I hear it's a great antidote for angst, you might have been exposed to some of that recently.

Steep

There are many times in Taiyang's life when he has the chance to realise his situation is Not Normal and to get out of it, and chooses instead to carry on hurtling headfirst down the slope.

There is the time when he first works up the courage to kiss Summer Rose Quartz, after their ninth—ninth!—not-date, because Summer keeps tacking on 'as friends' to every invitation and yet strangely, no one else from their slowly-increasing circle of mutual friends is ever invited to this sort of thing, and they've gone for a sunset walk on the beach and she keeps looking at him like he's something wonderful and precious and no one's ever looked at him like that before.

It's different from kissing a human or a Faunus. Summer's lips are almost perfectly smooth and slightly cool against his, but they're still soft, have the same living give to them as he's noticed in her hand the few times he's dared to hold it. There's a part of him that wants to take this cataloguing project a little further—is the rest of her soft, too, and if her lips part, will her mouth be warm?—but he knows he shouldn't push her, and when he feels her go still he pulls back immediately, giddiness bleeding away as a stab of alarm hits home.

"I'm sorry," he says, already loudly berating himself inside his head, selfish, stupid, pushy. "I should have asked."

"I…Tai, Gems and organics…"

"Too different." His voice is hollow. Disappointment and mortification are crawling in to roost, too.

"Too different," she agrees in a whisper. "I'm not right for you."

"Then who is?" Tai asks, confused. "And who's right for you?"

(Qrow's face flashes in his mind's eye for a moment, staring down at him from the window, but he refuses to let the thought take proper hold. Summer would have said something. She would have, right?)

"I don't know," Summer admits.

"Then how do you know we aren't right?"

"Well—what if you resent me when I don't age?"

Straight to the long-term ramifications. And here Tai was still worried about entry-level problems like age differences. "Well, what if you resent me when I do?" he counters.

She reels back, clearly stung. "I would never be that shallow!"

"Neither would I! And if you don't believe that, that's the real problem," Tai adds, feeling a little insulted himself.

"I'm going to outlive you."

Taiyang shrugs, unable to contain a quiet, bewildered little scoff. "That's mortality. You're going to outlive me whether we're together or not. And—and say I meet the perfect organic partner tomorrow, we spend our whole lives together. Unless we go out in like, an accident or something one of us is going to outlive the other! That's just how it works when you're like me. There's always an ending, and it's always sad. …Is that why you don't want me?" he asks quietly. Because—yeah, actually. It kind of sounds like he might have stumbled on the answer, and he's not sure he can blame her. He doesn't think he'd be strong enough to be with someone he knew from the start he would lose, and sooner rather than later.

"I never said that," Summer says immediately. "I never—Tai…"

"I'm not asking you to marry me or anything like that," Taiyang points out, because if Summer isn't strong enough, either, that is her call to make; he'll accept it, but he's not giving up until she tells him to. "Uh, actually, I guess I haven't asked you anything yet. So…do you like me? Not just 'as friends'?"

Oh my gods. I'm back in middle school.

"Yeah," Summer whispers, finally. "I do."

"Then…can we just go with that? Liking each other? No strings, no rings," he jokes, laughing awkwardly because he sounds like such a tool, what the hell was that?

Summer's colour deepens, and goddamn, Tai loves that he can make this amazing woman blush even when he's being an idiot. "Yeah." She smiles. "We can go with that."

There is the time after their sixth or maybe seventh yes-date when Tai does the math, realises they should be on yes-date eleven or maybe twelve, and concludes that for some reason, Summer's availability goes way down when he asks her out instead of the other way around. She does still ask him out, so he doesn't think she's lost interest or anything, but something is clearly up.

He doesn't know how to broach the topic with Summer, so when he finally breaks down and has to ask, he asks Yang. They're alone in the living room of the house on Patch, having an Edge of Night watch party. It's a historical drama, set towards the end of the last Golden Age of monarchist Vacuo, oozing with political intrigue and anachronistic glamour. Turns out it's Yang's current favourite show, and now it's Tai's as well. None of the other Gems will watch it with them.

Summer had tried to watch the first episode, her expression increasingly fixed in pleasant neutrality. "It's just not really my thing," she'd announced right around the 40-minute mark, the words polite except for how they'd all but exploded out of her. "I'll leave you guys to it."

"Too boring," had been Qrow's opinion. "Too predictable, I mean, we all know the Silk War breaks out, the monarchy goes bankrupt, and the mousy third cousin they keep shoehorning into the background of every goddamn scene becomes the new King of Vacuo once the dust clears. It already happened. And are there seriously five romance subplots? Plus the queen's way too sympathetic. I knew that woman. She was a howling bitch."

"She was a Faunus," Tai had pointed out, uncomfortable.

"Yeah, so was the first person to call her that. Now there's someone I'd watch a show about, ol' Queen Beyaz."

Yang and Tai had exchanged alarmed looks and chivvied Qrow out of the room before the show's waspish, aged-femme-fatale portrayal of the Dowager Queen could appear. Given Qrow's account, it was entirely possible the show had gotten her personality bang-on correct, but it didn't seem worth the risk.

Ozpin hadn't bothered to even feign interest. He'd walked in, taken one glance at the screen, shaken his head with a blunt "No." and walked right out again. Yang had just shrugged like she'd been expecting that and turned back to the TV.

So, yeah, they're not only alone but pretty much guaranteed to stay that way as long as the show's on. Taiyang spends most of an episode stewing, then finally pours out his woes when a sultry pop ballad starts playing over the latest Big Damn Kiss of Forbidden Love. (He likes the show, more than he feels like he should, honestly, but Qrow's not wrong that it's fairly predictable—and that its six overlapping romance subplots, while enjoyable in a guilty-pleasure sort of way, are prone to hijacking the story).

"Dude,"is all Yang says at first.

"…Okay?" he prompts when she doesn't continue. There's nothing on the screen that should be holding her attention, just a lot of artistic close-ups of silky fabric and bare skin that's as likely to be the inside of someone's forearm as anything genuinely risqué.

"She's a Huntress, Tai. When she asks you out, she knows she's free to actually go out. When you ask her out, you risk picking a time she's already blocked out for missions. Just give her different times and dates to pick from, it's not hard."

And yeah, that's obvious, except, "I thought she was retired."

"From leading the Hunt, yeah, ages ago, but she still hunts." Yang frowns at him. "You guys seriously haven't had this talk? What did you think she did all day, drink tea and read cosies?"

"No! Of course not. I…" Tai wracks his brain for a reason Summer would have omitted her actual job from all of their conversations, because they've definitely covered enough ground in the 'getting to know you' areas that it should have come up long since. "Do you think…maybe she didn't bring it up because she thought it was obvious, too?"

Yang's frown takes on a different character, more thoughtful, and she crosses her arms as she slouches deeper into the couch. "Honestly? Maybe. Or maybe she just didn't think it was important. Hunting used to be her whole life. Now it's something she does for a few hours a week. It probably doesn't seem like that big a deal to her."

But it is a big deal. This is a Hunting household, a Hunting family—Summer and Ozpin make for two former Commanders of the Hunt under one roof, no less—and Tai is becoming increasingly aware of just how far outside Summer's culture and social circles he really is. He'll never know what it's like to be a Gem, but it seems like every person he meets from Summer's life, no matter their species, has a story about hunting with her. Everyone but him.

So there comes a time not long after when Tai asks Yang to teach him how to fight, and her jaw drops before she gives him a slow smile that clearly says that he just made her whole damn century.

There is the time he arrives for his weekly dose of being Yang's punching bag and finds Qrow waiting for him, and the Pearl gives him this up-and-down look like he doesn't know what he's seeing.

"You're really learning to fight?" he asks, in the flat sort of way one asks questions like, 'So that's what you're wearing?' in hopes that the addressee will turn colours and run back upstairs to change clothes.

"I really am," Tai says, crossing his arms.

"Well, shit. This I gotta see."

And this becomes the first of many times that Tai squares off against Qrow, tall and lean and menacing with his cape catching the wind and his red eyes narrowed in a glare, leaning on his scythe and looking a whole lot like every depiction of Death incarnate Taiyang has ever seen. But with less exposed bone. Death's annoyingly-hot alien cousin who's very involved in the family business.

Tai loses. Badly. Qrow isn't impressed. Tai gets back up—and loses again. Rinse and repeat.

"That's what I thought," Qrow says when Taiyang has at last had enough, and the Pearl walks away, evidently satisfied.

Taiyang comes back the next week. And the next. And Qrow is still there. Yang is, too, of course, but she doesn't seem keen on intervening in Tai and Qrow's whatever-the-hell-it-is. Rivalry? No, it's too one-sided to call it that. Both in that Tai isn't an aggressor here and in that Qrow is definitely winning, and weirdly pissed about it.

Then just plain old frustrated.

Then confused.

"I'll be damned," Qrow says somewhere around the fifth time he's beaten Tai into the ground, and the human groans as he feels a shadow fall over him. He opens his eyes to find Qrow bent at the waist, a hand stretched out towards him.

This is clearly a trap. He doesn't know why Qrow seems irritated by Taiyang's very existence (he has theories, and most of them involve Summer), but he's not subtle about it. No way winning him over is as easy—okay, not easy, but simple as letting Qrow wale on him once a week. Especially if any of Tai's theories actually have a leg to stand on. And yet…

"Gonna lie there all day?" the Pearl asks, smirking. For the first time, though, it doesn't seem cruel or condescending or any other stripe of nasty. It's at least halfway to qualifying as an actual smile.

Gingerly, he takes Qrow's hand. It isn't a trap, after all.

There is the first time he nearly gets himself killed trying to take down a monster that's too much for him to handle, but he doesn't actually die, and he does distract the thing long enough for Yang and Qrow to finish it off. Qrow gives him a punch to the arm that is definitely meant to be friendly because he's grinning like a loon when he does it, but it leaves a bruise that takes a solid week to fade. Qrow is clearly not well-accustomed to adjusting his strength for non-Gems, which really helps cut down Tai's resentment over how rough the guy is in training. Maybe he's not a closet sadist after all; he's just underestimating how breakable Taiyang is.

And so, swept up by the celebratory mood, this is also the first time Tai goes for drinks with Qrow after Yang volunteers to turn in the monster's Gemstone.

He doesn't remember much about it by the time he's woken up on Qrow's bedroom floor the next day, but as luck would have it Qrow's room is directly above Summer's, so he spends the morning (well, early afternoon) trying to explain himself anyway. It's rather cold comfort that Qrow is right there in the hot seat with him, presenting the absolute picture of contrition, but weirdly, it is still comforting.

Tai can't really tell which she's more upset about—that he shares Qrow's opinion that a night of bar-hopping was an appropriate form of celebration, or that he'd had something to celebrate, because whoops, Drunk Tai didn't care that Sober Tai has been waiting for the right time to tell Summer about his misadventures in Huntsman training. Now it's Hungover Tai's problem, and Hungover Tai is pretty sure even Drunk Tai would do a better job of appeasing his furious and frightened Gem girlfriend.

There's a whole lot of "What were you thinking!?" directed at him and Qrow both, and between his nausea, headache, and general feeling of grossness and Qrow's bewildering impulse to go full submissive yes-man in the face of Summer's anger, neither of them make their case very well. Sober Tai is gonna have to do some serious damage control.

"Same time next week?" Qrow asks him once they've made it outside, all his meek repentance dropping away the second the door latches behind him. The sunlight lances into Taiyang's eyes and intensifies the ache in his head tenfold.

"Ask me later," he groans, stumbling to his car. He'd give anything to go back inside and flop face-first onto Summer's bed instead of driving himself home, but shame is a powerful force.

"Sure you're good to drive?" There's a hint of honest-to-gods concern in the Pearl's voice.

"Mmhm. S'all good."

Qrow grunts, noncommittal, and lets him go. But once Taiyang makes it back to the apartment he's rented since his parents moved away last year, he sees a little black bird wheel around in midair above him and soar off to the west. Even through the blistering pain and the sinking feeling that comes of Summer being mad at him, he catches himself smiling.

Summer forgives him soon enough for the secret-keeping and admits he doesn't need her forgiveness for hunting; that it's his choice, and she just wishes he had involved her from the start. But this was not, as it would turn out, the last time he made the mistake of going out drinking with Qrow.

Some mistakes wind up being for the best in the end. Most don't—but some do.

There is the one and only time he is foolish enough to assume that, having not only survived but successfully befriended Qrow, he can handle anything Ozpin throws at him. Qrow's moody, broody, and carries the edgiest feasible weapon Tai can imagine. Ozpin's a fussy academic who fights with the same cane he uses to walk. Tai still wouldn't want to cross him no matter how cheerful he seems to be (dammit, he's seen Ozpin angry no matter what Summer says to the contrary), but he's pretty sure the guy's at least mostly harmless.

He's wrong, completely wrong, on all counts. He learns that very quickly, because what Ozpin throws at him is an entire fucking pit of fucking snake monsters.

Well, okay, obviously he doesn't literally throw them. You can't throw a pit. And he doesn't actually shove Tai in, either. But he absolutely 100% lets Taiyang walk right over the edge without so much as a flicker of either surprise or guilt on his face.

"Are you going to help me or not?" Tai yells, desperately trying to back up against a wall as the snakes writhe around him, hissing and snapping in ways he's pretty sure no snake ever has outside a cheesy action/adventure flick. Or a horror movie, like the one he's presently trapped in.

"Only if you need it," Ozpin replies evenly, leaning on his cane and observing with vague interest.

Of course Tai needs it, but help doesn't come. Ozpin offers the occasional article of unsolicited advice in a far-too-languid tone, but he provides no actual assistance; he seems perfectly content to stand around and watch from safety. Tai survives anyway. Gathers up the Gemstones and climbs out by using his tonfa as improvised pitons. Once he clears the top of the pit, Ozpin has the absolute gall to smile at him, warm and pleased. For a long moment, Taiyang just stares at him. And then he explodes.

"What the fuck is wrong with you? Were you dropped on your fucking head as a child!?"

"I was never a child," Ozpin replies, sweet as anything.

Tai marches right up and punches him in the face. Or he tries to. As soon as he throws the punch, Ozpin is no longer in front of him and Taiyang is stumbling through the space where the Garnet had once been standing.

"Oh dear," he hears from behind him. "Easy, Mr. Xiao Long. Deep breaths."

"Deep breaths?" Taiyang wheels around. "You—the—are you trying to kill me? What, is this some lazy-ass murder plot?"

Ozpin raises a single eyebrow as he peers over his glasses at the human. "Tai,"he says at last, calm, kind, and rational, "the monsters were trying to kill you. The monsters which you chose to fight, thus placing yourself in a position where they'd be able to kill you."

"You're saying this is my fault?"

"Fault? Goodness, no. You discorporated an entire nest of monsters all on your own. That's quite an accomplishment, particularly given your inexperience. I really must congratulate you on not being dead yet."

After a beat of stunned silence, Taiyang breaks down into hysterical laughter.

"Come on, he'd never really let anything happen to you," Summer says later that night. She's sitting on the couch in his apartment, eating her way through a pint of dark chocolate ice cream she'd found in the back of his freezer while a classic film marathon plays on low volume in the background.

"Do you see this?" Tai shoves his arm in front of her face, pointing out the livid puncture wounds. "Sum', he did let something happen to me. I knewhe didn't like me, but this? He's insane."

"Oh, he likes you just fine." Summer pushes his arm out of the way with the back of her hand, using her spoon to gesture him off to one side, her eyes glued to the TV. "If he didn't, you'd never suspect it."

"That is not comforting!" Especially since he can't help but notice Summer isn't arguing the 'insane' point.

"You know, most people find Oz very charming. The only reason you don't is because he doesn't put on an act around you."

"Yeah, because that ship sailed the day I met him."

Summer snorts. "Please. He's smoothed over worse first impressions. Anyway, he said he'd help you if you needed it, right?"

"But he didn't help!"

"Did you ask him to? 'Cause if you didn't and you weren't actually about to die, of course he didn't do anything." She says it like it's obvious. She's certainly come a long way from reaming him out for taking up monster hunting, if she's now utterly unconcerned about him almost dying.

All of Taiyang's feelings on the matter condense down into a single exhausted, incredulous "What?"

Summer finally looks at him properly. Her expression softens. "Oh, honey. I'm sorry your hunt didn't go the way you wanted, but I've known Oz for a very long time. He would never leave a fellow Huntsman to die and I promise he isn't trying to kill you. I really can't imagine he ever would, but I'd poof him if he did."

Taiyang blinks rapidly, parsing that. He…he thinks that's touching? "You would?"

"Of course. He'd get over it eventually, but I plan for you to stick around a good, long time, Taiyang Xiao Long." She winks at him and licks up another spoonful of ice cream, thumping the cushion next to her with one bare foot. "Now come on, sit down. You're missing the end of the movie."

Tai sinks down slowly beside her, squinting at the screen in confusion. "…Did they just break out into another movie set? Like, in-universe?"

Summer just giggles in response. Clearly, she's seen this one before. She spends the rest of the scene watching his reaction instead of the TV.

Too soon, there comes a time when mortality does what it does and creeps up on the closest thing Tai's ever known to a grandmother. Grouchy, stubborn old Yarrow looks frail and wrong in her hospice bed. Summer is with him. He hadn't even had to ask.

"Eighty years." Yarrow smiles grimly. "My big sister only made it to seventy-nine. Know what that means, Long?"

"You won?" he guesses. Although it's a 'you get three and the first two don't count' kind of guess. He knows who he's talking to.

Yarrow's hand clenches into a loose fist, weakly pounding the mattress beside her. "I fuckin' won." A dry little cackle escapes her.

"You know, ma'am," Summer reflects. "I don't think I've ever met anyone quite like you."

"That's prob'ly a good thing."

"Well, they do say the end brings clarity," Taiyang says.

"Tai!" Summer hisses, elbowing him, but Yarrow guffaws, almost wheezing with her need for air.

"Go—go screw yourself."

He grins.

"You." Yarrow jabs a finger towards Summer. "You take care of him. He's a damn fool and he needs it."

"Hey!" Tai protests.

"Well. Might be he's less of a fool now'n he was," Yarrow allows. Her face does a particularly odd twisting thing, especially around the mouth, and her eyes are squinting a little. "Guess he did grow up in the end."

Her voice wavers, and it feels like being struck by lightning when Tai realises that Yarrow is trying not to cry.

"So I guess y'all better take care of each other, then," she manages, blinking rapidly, jerking her head in a tremulous little nod.

"We will," Summer says softly, taking Tai's hand.

"We will," Tai echoes in a whisper because nothing louder will make it out past the lump in his throat. His other hand closes around Yarrow's gnarled fingers, and she squeezes it as tight as she can.

Her nephews inherit the garden centre, and though they're civil about it they make it clear they have no intention of keeping the place open, even after Tai volunteers to run it. Most of the inventory gets bought up by an assortment of Yarrow's former competitors. Tai is allowed to take the rest, and he and Summer and, surprisingly, Qrow spend a few afternoons putting gardens into the back yard.

Ozpin doesn't make more than a token appearance, but someone must be responsible for the lemonade, iced tea, and assorted foodstuffs that keep materialising on the patio table, and it isn't Yang. She's busy sourcing parts and paint for the battered old garden centre truck that Tai had bought for a song in a fit of sentimentality. Once the gardens are in, Tai's afternoons are taken up working with her on a lengthy, much-needed repair job on what Yang refers to, not unkindly, as his rust bucket. It feels less demeaning than junker, at least, though he's…not really sure why.

These times are some of the big moments, but there are other times, little moments that form the vital mortar between the bricks of Weird, Crazy, and Strange that Tai keeps actively choosing to lay in place on the foundation of his normal life. Not that there's much normalcy left; with the garden centre gone, Tai finally takes the plunge and registers himself in Haven's systems as a Huntsman. He barely sees his apartment anymore. Staying over on Patch where he has easy access to a warp means he can take more jobs farther away and spend less on travel in the bargain. His water-treading bank account approves of this development. So does Summer.

That's probably how the little moments start piling up so fast—sheer volume of exposure. Because he's there when Yang sees the sunflowers by the back door bloom, and he gets to watch her absolute fascination and delight with how the huge yellow blossoms track the sun in its path across the sky. Yang goes from innocent indifference toward plants to having a favourite flower, and that matters to Tai, and he's glad he got to see it happen.

It's because he's there that he finds out Qrow has a soft spot for the same kind of old-timey radio dramas Tai remembers listening to with his grandfather, and Qrow invites him into his room for a round of cards 'cause if they're both gonna listen they might as well do something together. Qrow's good, not surprisingly, but what is surprising is that he isn't any better than Tai. Which is how he ends up with an invitation to a quasi-regular allegedly-monthly poker game hosted by one Peter Port, where Tai realises how much he'd missed making new friends.

Because he is so often there, he's not sure if the first time Ozpin absently calls him 'my dear' is actually the first time or if it's just the first time someone else has been present to hear it. The someone else in this case is Summer, and she lights up in every way short of literally becoming a living glowstick. Later that night, she explains that 'my dear', as opposed to just 'dear', is something Ozpin only calls family. It's…weird; Tai's not entirely sure how to feel about it, but Qrow has the same reaction as Summer and Yang is utterly gleeful, loudly calling Ozpin out for being "soft on our human", and somehow that's where the keystone slots in and the bricks are fixed in place and Taiyang realises This is our life. This is our family.

And it's weird. And it's wonderful.

There is one time that Taiyang at first mistakes for one of the little moments, but he is wrong. He has been wrong before, but never this wrong.

It's a thing they do, he and Summer, going on spontaneous post-hunt dates if they like the look of a place, or if one of them remembers a likely-sounding destination exists nearby. They're on a hunt near Mistral, the two of them and Yang and Qrow. It hadn't sounded like the sort of thing they'd need so many people for, but Summer seems to be having a bit of an off day, shotgun blasts only clipping her targets. She spends most of the fight struggling through the exact sort of close-quarters combat she prefers to avoid, blocking with her sceptre, retaliating with her gauntlets, and once lashing out at a retreating monster with what appeared to be a riding crop.

Still, between the four of them, the mission is squared away handily with plenty of time before Tai will need a hot meal and a bed, and if Summer hadn't given their oh-so-subtle signal to Yang and Qrow ("You go ahead; we'll catch up"), he would have. In hindsight, Yang's huge grin and the warning glare with which Summer responded should have clued him in, but the look Qrow is giving him is incredibly distracting.

Tai cannot begin to fathom what that look is meant to convey. If it's meant to convey anything at all. He thinks the indecipherable yet unspeakably intense emotion on Qrow's face might just be what's inside spilling out, pouring through the cracks. He should ask—shouldn't he? Or would that just make things worse, drawing attention to something Qrow might not even realise he's betraying? Before he can make up his mind, the Pearl gives him a tight nod and turns away, following after Yang.

"Tai?" A hand on his arm.

"Hm? Oh. Uh." He shakes himself, doing his best to toss the weird moment out of his head. "We're not too far from that one tea plantation."

"Um…" Summer bites her lip. "I actually already had an idea of where to go. If you don't mind?"

Of course he doesn't. Even when her idea turns out to be one of the floating islands above Lake Matsu. Fortunately, he doesn't have any problem with heights, and he knows Summer knows that, but there's something unsettling about being on land that doesn't have more land under it.

Still, he's gotta admit: "You can't beat that view."

"No, you sure can't," and Tai doesn't even have to look at Summer to know she's looking at him, because they're the exact same type of sappy romantic and he pulls that line every chance he gets, too. He does look, though, so he sees that while he's been taking in the view of the lake and the sun just beginning to set over it, she's been busy unpacking a picnic basket she must have had stored in her Gemstone. Looks like they're having tea after all; Summer had found a flat rock and set up a little burner on it, heating water while she measures out the leaves.

"I wasn't sure if we'd be feeling sweet or savoury, so I brought a little of both," she explains with a bit of a blush when Tai's eyebrows shoot up at the amount of food in the basket.

"Summer, I love you, but that's not a little of anything," he informs her.

"Well, I wasn't sure how hungry we'd be, either."

"You don't even get hungry," Tai points out.

"I also don't get full, so." She sticks out her tongue at him. This is, evidently, the entire second clause of her sentence.

"My girlfriend, the living garbage disposal."

"Oh, Taiyang. Thou font of romance. Take me now."

"Keep up the Ye Olde Valean and I won't be able to help myself," he teases.

"If thou employest not some measure of control, 'twill be thine undoing," Summer informs him primly. "I shall claim thy victuals for mine own, and leave thy belly and bed alike to stand empty."

Taiyang pouts as Summer pops a madeleine into her mouth. "You're no fun."

"Well, that's better than what the last guy I gave a Middle Valean ultimatum to said."

"What was that?"

"Um, something along the lines of 'I'll have thy head, outland whore'." Summer grimaced. Or maybe she was suppressing a smile. "He was big, like—" she gestured vaguely in the air above her head. "Big. The big ones always try to deal with me instead of Ozpin, and to hell with my 'I'm retired' spiel. I think they think I'm going to be scared of them. Or maybe they're just insecure about talking to people their own size."

Taiyang chuckles as he settles himself down onto the blanket across from her, the tea water coming to a simmer between them. "Clearly, he did not get your head."

"Qrow didn't get his, either. Though he did not want for ambition." Abruptly, Summer shakes her head. "Ack. I mean, it's not that he didn't want to. Do it. The beheading thing. Ugh, this is why I stick to one dialect. I suck at code-switching."

"I understood. I don't mind when you get all fancy on me."

"I don't like being fancy. Fancy was always something I had to be." She shrugs. "Now I don't. So I'm not."

Tai gazes around at her choice of picnic spots, looking sceptical.

"Hey, I didn't say anything about dramatic. I'm just not fancy."

"Fair enough." Taiyang debates the wisdom of baiting her by lifting his pinkie finger as he nibbles on one of the tiny and definitely-not-at-all-fancy tea sandwiches she'd brought. He decides he will do what his long-gone ultimatum-receiving predecessor did not and choose the better part of valour.

Eventually the water comes to something just shy of a boil. Summer lets it cool slightly before she pours it into the teapot and sets a four-minute timer on her scroll, the countdown visible on the screen. And then…she starts fidgeting.

"Is everything okay?" Tai asks after two minutes and twenty-seven seconds of this.

"Yep!" she says immediately and far too brightly.

Taiyang has learned more than fighting from the Gems, and he gives her a mighty Look that lasts until the timer runs out and Summer has an excuse to direct her attention elsewhere. Her hands shake as she pours the tea.

"Here you go!" She beams as she hands him his cup.

Tai isn't much of a tea snob, but immortals become connoisseurs of virtually everything they use or consume almost by default, and some of that has rubbed off on him, too. So he knows that based on Summer's choices of food—many of which, he somehow only now registers, are particular favourites of his—she should have served a strong black tea. This tea, however, is green. It is earthy yet fresh, with just a hint of mint, and Summer is looking at him with a sort of anxious expectation he hasn't seen on her since…

"This is the tea Yang made the day we met."

A lot of the tension in Summer drains out when he says that. Tai, on the other hand, is feeling much more tense than he was a moment ago, counting the days, trying to remember if today is A Day, an anniversary of some first of theirs.

"Yeah. I thought it'd be nice to have it again tonight."

Screw it. Life isn't a sitcom or a soap opera and Summer's a reasonable person; she won't give him a hard time for asking. "Is there something special about tonight?"

"…Maybe."

But she will, apparently, play coy.

"I mean. There isn't yet," Summer clarifies, which actually just confuses Taiyang more. "But there…might be soon?"

"I don't follow," he admits.

"Look, I haven't done this before, okay, gimme some leeway," she snaps. Then her eyes go wide, and she takes in a deep breath. "I'm so sorry. You did not deserve that."

"Hey." Transferring his teacup to a one-handed grip, he leans forward and puts a hand on her knee. "It's okay. Why don't you just tell me what's on your mind? Take your time. I'm not going anywhere."

Summer looks at him like she's seeing him for the first time, or—no, like he's the first other person she's ever seen, and she doesn't understand what he is or believe that he's real. Then, slowly, she smiles again, and it is strange and faltering but genuine and happy.

"You aren't, are you?" she asks quietly. And it's in that same near-breathless voice that she asks another question.

"Will you marry me?"

Something in Taiyang's brain apparently shorts out and causes him to forget that this is a binary yes/no question, because what blasts out of his mouth after a long and heavy pause is neither of the appropriate answers but rather, "You weren't kidding about the dramatic thing, were you?"

Summer bursts out laughing. There are tears welling up in her eyes. "I really wasn't!"

"I mean you—" damn it, now Tai's laughing too "—you isolate me in a high place in the middle of the si-hingle largest lake in the world and—like, is it a proposal, is it a mob hit?"

"I'm—" she's making those squeaky little hiccupping noises now that she's trying to talk, has to take a few rapid breaths to get enough air. "I'm makin' you an offer you—you can't—"

"Oh my g…" He rocks forward on his knees and presses his forehead against hers. He'd kiss her if he had the breath to spare.

But what he actually does once he catches his breath is say "Yes."

"I should mention," Summer says sometime later. Not much later. They're still on Mob Hit Island, but the sun is down and the other stars are taking their chance to shine. "We are going to have to move."

Not that Tai has any objection to having a space that's just theirs, but "Why? I thought that place was your dream house."

Summer lets out a little thoughtful humming noise that Tai can feel against his arms, wrapped around her as she leans back against him. "It is," she agrees, "but. Bluntly: it's get our own place or give up sex forever."

This is the moment Tai's brain picks to remind him of something he's apparently forgotten:

Gems don't need sleep.

"Your bedroom's right below Qrow's," he whispers, sick with horror. "It's…right below…"

"Fortunately that room at the end of the hall upstairs is technically Ozpin's bedroom, which he never uses, so Qrow stays in there when you stay the night," Summer says, poker-faced. "Yang has apparently been living on the garage roof because she was too mortified to say anything."

"But. Qrow wasn't."

"No. No he was not." A full-body shudder wracks Summer before, with audible difficulty, she forces out, "Neither was Oz."

"Oh gods." And then, because that ol' masochistic streak has apparently survived intact, he has to know even though he doesn't really want to. "Euphemisms of choice?"

"None for Qrow, he just asked if I knew he could hear us…y'know."

"Yup," Tai agrees, rather strained; he does, indeed, know.

"Oz went with biology experiments." Summer sounds like she's being strangled, which is about how Tai would feel if either of his parents tried to delicately inform him that he was having sex too loudly. "There was a whole intervention. He had charts. It was…inexpressibly awful."

It is a really good thing Summer's moving out, because Tai is never going to be able to look any of these people in the eye ever again. He'll do whatever it takes to avoid it, even if that's wearing a blindfold for the rest of his days. He can rock that aesthetic. Martial artist honing his other senses by denying the one he leans on the most. It's very Wuxia.

Of course, he does have to look them in the eye eventually, and it's not the soul-killing experience he'd expected. Everyone is perfectly happy to pretend that none of them know any other reason why Summer is packing her things aside from wanting some time alone with her fiancé.

There is the time they get married, and it's not the big white wedding Taiyang isn't too proud to admit he's always imagined for himself, because he'd only kind of wanted to make a big showy fuss and Summer had very much wanted to avoid any fuss at all, and very much beats kind of in that scenario. Instead, Summer switches her simple black dress out for a slightly-less-simple red one and leaves her cloak at home, and they stand in front of a judge at City Hall and sign a slip of paper that makes them husband and wife.

Taiyang was a little surprised when Summer insisted their marriage be legally-binding, especially considering the alarming number of hoops she has to jump through as a Gem wedding an organic. He only had a little surprise left, considering most of it has been used up on the fact she wants to get married at all, rather than leaving their relationship to settle into an unspoken permanence on its own. He'd even swallowed his nerves and given the I don't need a ring to make me stay speech, just in case she'd thought otherwise.

"It'll make things easier later," was all she had said, faux-casual with a strange non-emphasis on later and a change of subject so abrupt it nearly gave him whiplash. It takes Tai a bit of time to puzzle through that, and when he does, he's not sure what to do with it. Because Summer is thinking of the end, his end, of the decisions someone will someday have to make for him and she is making sure she'll be that someone. The reminder that only one of them gets to call this 'happily ever after' nearly breaks his heart. And yet, as morbid as Summer's logic is, there is something beautiful in her absolute commitment to be with all of him, even the tragic mess of his mortality.

They really do have literal rings and everything, tightly-braided mixed metals inset on slim titanium bands. Tai recognises the two kinds of gold, yellow and rose, but can only guess at the third metal. Summer names it with an Adamant word, shoving any notion from his mind that these rings might have been store-bought or even professionally commissioned and instead making him consider the unusual amount of time Qrow and Ozpin have been spending up at Beacon lately.

In the moments before Summer slips the larger of the rings onto his finger, it occurs to him, again, that he is being selfish, just like it had at the very beginning. But just like then, it's not his choice to make alone. If Summer wants him as he is, it would be nothing short of arrogance to refuse her for her own good, to turn on her the words she'd used on him years ago by the sea, when their togetherness had been new enough for the gesture to be more kind than cruel.

Perhaps they will regret this. Perhaps they are fools. Tai, though, Tai thinks they've been awfully wise to take their happiness where they've found it. The happiness doesn't stop with them, either, because Summer may have specified the ceremony would be just the two of them but she hadn't said a word about the reception, and that is how Tai learns that Yang can throw one hell of a party.

Once upon a time, Taiyang lives in a neat little house on Patch, just a couple of blocks away from where Summer (his wife! His wife Summer!) had planned to spend forever until he agreed to spend his forever with her.

He plants deep red hollyhocks and more sunflowers in the back yard of the new house. He braces himself for Summer to ask about taking a cutting from 4EL's rose, and tries not to be obvious about his relief when she doesn't. If ever a plant could be called jealous, it's that one. Tai supposes she sees plenty of it anyway; even with their new living situation, most of their time is still spent at Summer's house. Er, Summer's other house. Sometimes it's for work, sometimes for fun, sometimes just because Summer's used to having more than one person around adding to the ambient noise of the house and the relative quiet is creeping her out.

But there are some days they stay home. In their home, together, and on one of those days, Summer admits they've become her favourite. They're Tai's favourite, too.

And they live happily.