Emerald honestly felt pretty good about today when she woke up this morning.

The sun had been… not shining, but visible, which was always a nice break from Vale's rainy season. Weiss wasn't in the office, as was tradition on Thursdays. Ruby was also out of town, which meant no need to keep her out of Weiss' office. All told, this morning had been wonderfully pleasant.

Just, currently she felt like she might or might not be staring at death itself. In the red, bloodshot eyes of death to be specific. Trying very hard to ignore the terribly contradictory runny/stuffy state of death's nose.

Also Yang was there.

If anything, Yang being around was actually the most normal part of the current situation. Seeing as she was currently doting on her sick partner, the inclusion of Yang was to be expected. The truly unexpected, honestly kind of terrifying, part of the ordeal was that Yang's partner was bedridden to begin with.

Or more realistically, that she was sick at all. Emerald couldn't actually remember the last time her feline-heritaged friend had been lain low by something so mundane as mere sickness. Even including the year Emerald had pretended to be friends with them.

To say the sight of the woman tucked into bed, surrounded by tissues, and blankly watching daytime interlink was strange was an understatement.

It was downright disturbing.

"D'orree do ak you do com' ober," well, that answers the question of runny or stuffy at least. "bud ya'g will worg herself do dhe bonde oderwise. Aldo we needed domeone do wa-a-a-chooo!... Ughh." with the last sneeze, the state of Blake's nose was once again in question. Her willingness to speak had apparently left her body alongside the mucus though.

"What my lovely quarter is trying to say, is 'thanks for watching Brennan today.' Also 'Yang is a wonderful wife and partner who absolutely can handle a sick Blake and watching our kid at the same time'" Yang said warmly from the side of the ludicrously large bed, had it belonged to any other family. "If you don't want to hang around me and Mrs. 'I never get sick'—" Yang lightly prodded Blake in the side as she teased. "here all day, don't feel like you have to."

Honestly the thought of going out hadn't even crossed Emerald's mind. Having any excuse to come over and see her friends and godchild was a welcome one, present sickness excluded. But now that it was brought up she had to admit the idea of a day on the town sounded like a great way to spend an otherwise empty day. "Later for sure, but I wanted to talk to you all anyway first. Health allowing, that is."

Blake somehow managed a melting glare with her face buried in a tissue. "You dow you cand alw—"

"Kitty, please. Nobody wants to hear you try to talk through enough snot to flood a small kingdom" The jokingly slighted 'glare' directed at Emerald became something far sharper as it snapped towards Yang, before promptly reminding its owner why snapping your head while sick was a very bad idea. Yang's brief moment of pride was quickly swallowed up by frankly overbearing concern for Blake's wellbeing.

The sight was adorable and heart-wrenching for Emerald all at once. She felt a pang of envy directed towards both women equally, but she just as quickly squashed the feeling back into the hole it crawled out from. That same pit, unfortunately, was the same one she stared into every time she saw anyone in a lasting romantic relationship.

Yang, finally finished wish her doting and fretting, but only at Blake's insistence that she wasn't about to explode without constant pillow adjustments and enough vitamin C to medically count as the first Faunus/Citrus blood transfusion. "—yes, okay, it's not like she doesn't already know how t— Ah! Was that really necessary? Fine, but you need bed rest"

Emerald found the oddly one-sided conversation sweet. Though if she hadn't known the women for as long as she had, she might consider it sickeningly so. Blake had somehow managed to speak entire sentences to Yang with silent motions; and a single playful slap that, had Emerald been anyone else... actually, knowing those two, it wouldn't have mattered if they'd been giving a speech at a funeral. Maybe Yang could just read Blake so well she didn't need more than that. But ass-slaps aside, Emerald did have a question, and cleared her throat to remind the two she was there at all.

It was a hard-learned lesson on Emerald's part.

Finally turning her attention back towards Emerald, Yang gave her best warm, accepting smile alongside a roll of her eyes slightly pointed at her found piece. "So, who finally caught your eye?"

Emerald's entire mental metro derailed all at once. Not a single train or even a two-locomotive collision either. Whole thing. Not a single thought ran through her head for a solid moment. Of course, once they started back again it was mass pandemonium. Every track and engine suddenly trying to find the way to the same destination from a thousand angles. To call the resulting loss of thought-life less than a tragedy would be disrespectful to all those who had fallen alongside Beacon. The entire event lead to a single endpoint, a word that somehow escaped the twisted pile of memory and thought. One of the most useful words in recorded history even.

What?

Yang's smile grew even wider as Emerald had a small breakdown in front of her. Fortunately, she wasn't one to laugh at another's misfortune without at least trying to help them with it first. "Hey, it's not some big secret that you've been… happier, recently" Emerald quickly found herself wrapped in a warm hug as she stared like a deer into headlights. "We just want to know who we need to snap like a twig if they ever break your heart."

"I-it's not like that!" What? No. Nononono. No. Nope. Not telling Yang anything. She'd probably find a way to make Salemlook merciful if I ever… If They ever… "I just… I've known you girls for years and I realized I just never… I guess I'm just curious how you four ever, you know, figured it all out." Emerald was not asking for relationship advice.

Absolutely not asking. She was merely inquiring about how some of her closest friends had fallen in love… and fallen in love again twice more… and then didn't fall apart as either friends, family, or people in a more romantic relationship. For scientific reasons, of course. No personal gain to be had whatsoever.

Nothing wrong with a little professional curiosity after all.

Yang smiled and shook her head in a way that told Emerald just how poorly she had recovered. Luckily she didn't push the subject, even if she probably wanted to. Blake looked like she was trying not to laugh, though whether out of respect for Emerald or a respect for the pain from her headache was unclear. Emerald was thankful for small miracles like her friend not dying of laughter from something as ridiculous as her terrible social recovery.

"That's a long story. There's probably someone better than me that could tell you the whole thing like a history book" Yang fiddled with her bandana set as she seemed to mull something over "Realms, I think there's actually a kids book about it. Maybe not us specifically, but I think the newer prints of The Biggest Hug are colored a bit differently than the copy in dad's attic" Yang gave a shrug as if being so famous that existing literature was rewritten to reference you was normal.

For her it probably was.

Yang, of course, never let it phase her. She continued "First things first: Don't do it how we did. Hypothetically that is. Bad idea" she punctuated the command with her index finger to Emerald's forehead. "I didn't even start thinking about Blakey in a romantic way until… wait. No. Let me start over. Just to get this out of the way, how do you think we started out?"

Emerald wouldn't lie and say she'd never thought about the subject. Most people with an ounce of media awareness knew something of the relationship the four shared. Everyone had their own little theories about the period between the Fall of Beacon, and the restoration of the Vale CCT, the 'true story' of the Witchhunters especially. Emerald definitely knew more than most, given her direct involvement with nearly every major event during that time, but she'd been on the wrong side of the fight to have payed attention to her then-enemy's love lives. Still, Emerald remembered more than most too.

"I know… none of you really showed signs until after—" Emerald stumbled a bit. Even after all these years it sounded weird to talk about the time she'd helped assault one of the four latest cities across the kingdoms. "after Beacon. I don't think Haven either, but that night's a bit fuzzy" semblance migraines were honestly the worst thing. Intense pain and an inability to clearly remember any events for at least an hour in either direction.

"Then the next time I saw you, in Atlas. maybe? We were fighting mostly. There were a few times when I was— errr, I guess spying isn't the worst thing I've done, is it?— you and Blake were close. You and Ruby sometimes, but you're family. Sometimes her and Blake, or Weiss. But you're teammates, partne—."

Yang thankfully stopped her before she could go much further into her checkered past of semblance-assisted photographic memory. "Hey. Woah. Slow down there, Matinee. You could write a your own history book with that level of detail."

"I-I don't—"

"Yeah. I know you don't write like that. But do you have any idea how many crazy ideas I've heard? Somebody's gonna get it right eventually; infinite typewriters, and all that" Yang turned to face the black-haired booger beast behind her back. "Speaking of, how's Sun doing these days?"

Yang promptly got a high velocity kiss from a pillow.

As Yang recovered from the downy doming, Emerald was recovering from the burst of laughter it had caused her. Even when barely able to stand, Blake could apparently still knock Yang off her feet.

"Right, right. Talk shit; get hit. Anyway: How We Did It, The Movie!" Blake snickered a bit at the cheesy, slightly hamfisted segue. "First things first, it wasn't all at once. It took years for any of us to figure anything out. I had to lose my gods-damned arm before I even started thinking about Blake as more than just an Academy partner. Then Ruby and Weiss got close, but they didn't really figure that out until Weiss lost her—" Yang had a look like she'd just discovered the back of the textbook held all the answers to her homework for the year. "Maidens, I think all four of us have a thing."

"I like my women with a liddle less meat on der bones. Plus all de exdra feadures" Blake interjected during a brief post-blow moment of nasal clarity..

Yang playfully flexed her mechanical arm, then wiggled her fingers a bit to punctuate before returning her attention to Emerald. "Long story short, we were young, dumb, confused, and unstoppably horny for the beginning of the whole thing. Those aren't great foundations for any long term relationship. We all lived with our little crushes for years before any of us actually tried talking about it. Then it was a whole heap of awkward because we'd already set up with each other."

"So how did you work it out? I've messed up when there was one other person to worry about. Like, a lot." Emerald rubbed her arm self consciously as she spoke. Slowly drawing into herself at the admission.

"Oh, that's the easy part, in theory anyway. We talked to each other, about everything" Yang threw her hands wide in punctuation. "It's the little things, all the dumb issues you normally would let slide, that do lasting damage to your relationship. Is one of us using a deodorant that reminds Weiss of her less-than-stellar childhood? Sad Weiss, Sad Life. Did Blake buy that weird brand of butter for a recipe she wants to try? No, she just saw it was healthier than our usual stuff. Maybe Ruby did a cool thing with a dust mixture. That's way over my head, but I can still be excited that she's excited" Yang took a second to think. "Just make sure you're honest about that stuff too. Tell them 'I don't really get it, but I'm excited for you.' or something."

She held up two fingers as she moved to her next topic. "Ask 'stupid' questions. All of them. From 'How do you like your coffee' when you can't remember, to 'How was work?'" She leaned in almost conspiratorially. "Even when you maybe don't actually want to know. All those dumb little questions let you understand who they are better than just assumption and experience. Took me years to learn that Weiss never used the deodorant I would pack for hunts, would bring her own and just add unnecessary weight to her pack. 'Till one day I asked the stupid question of 'Why not?'. You're never going to get answers to questions you don't ask"

Yang put a supportive hand on Emerald's shoulder as she locked eyes and continued "Set boundaries. For you, and them. Things like 'my pillow' or 'I'm not comfortable wearing that'. It sounds kinda harsh, but you've gotta draw that line somewhere. Do it early, and let them know if it changes in either direction. You should feel comfortable, not confined." Yang let her hand fall away as she finished.

"We communicate. It gets easier, but at first? Let's just say I'm lucky Ruby even looks at me after those first few months" Yang gave no impression she was joking. Not even a playful smirk flashed across her features. "If you're asking for advice though, I'll warn you now. It's not for everyone. Even if you can find the right people, and they're also interested in the idea, it's not 'normal' for a reason, Emerald. Not just because it's kinda hard, all this stuff applies with any number of people involved. Pairs don't have it worse or better, and more people doesn't mean it's better. We know one— " Yang paused as she searched for a word "octet, maybe? There's eight of them. It works for them, but I can't imagine being happy like that. Just like maybe you can't imagine being happy with more than one person. Don't hurt yourself trying to fit into something you don't want because you want it to work."

"I-... I don't think I was considering it. But if I ever do I'll try to remember that. I was mostly asking how you first really knew, but I guess you kinda answered that didn't you?" Emerald had learned much more about trying to juggle multiple relationships than she had expected this morning. Not that it was a bad thing, just… maybe not exactly relevant to her situation. At least, she didn't think it was.

"Oh that's a great story!" Yang gave an excited clap, followed quickly by a wince at just how loud it was in the otherwise quiet room. "We were all out on a hunt, I had packed some extra stuff for a celebration meal. So when I whipped it out to start cooking, Weiss stalks right up and full on kisses me" her face broke into a huge, almost drunken smile. "Then she does that 'I was raised eating diamonds for snacks' looks she has, and just goes "Yang Xiao Long. I love you." Ruby seemed fine with it, and Blake—"

"Ya'g. Eberald doedn't deed do know" Blake mercifully stopped the, knowing Yang, lecherous story in its tracks. "Guick! -Hnnk- escape before she starts trying to show you baby pictures and videos from our honeymoon!"

Emerald hadn't heard a better idea all day. Once Yang got started on something, it was always hard to stop her. So she took the advice with a tactical "I'll take care of Brennan once he gets out of school. You— " Emerald pointed an accusatory finger at Blake. "just focus on getting better" as she slipped away from the den of tissues and stories— both of which were more than likely dirty.

So. We're to take a nine year old on a Thursday afternoon? Whitley should be in Vale this week, which means Kalt is in town, and Henna's always up for a playdate. but school still needs to let out first… Everyone else is probably busy with work or out of town. So how can I kill a few hours? Emerald ran through several possibilities, from solo laser tag (not a great look) to maybe a Cafe lunch (maybe in a bit) when her Scroll buzzed with a message.

C: know any good places to find fresh cheeses? Need brie for recipe.

Well. Emerald could think of worse ways to spend time than chatting with Cinder, and apparently go shopping at the same time.

Emerald had a pretty good feeling about the rest of today, actually. The sun wasn't shining, but it was visible through the otherwise oppressive cloud cover. Maybe, Emerald would take a chance to just ask. But for the moment, she was communicating.

At least a little bit.

A/N:

This chapter has been brought to you by the Color: Burn.

Heyooo new house, same me.

This one required a lot of input from Yell Head (who, by-the-by, is known as WhatOtherWorld on Ao3, and is writing his own pollination Fic, It Might Even Be Great. Highly recommend.)

Comment, share, and scream pointlessly into the void, please.