Defrosting


This was not his own terms.

"W-wait, no! Get off!" The urgent yet hushed sound of Yang's voice woke Adam up in the middle of the night. Without thinking, years of instinct had him springing up to a sitting position, flaring his aura and snatching up Wilt from his side.

CRACK!

Years of instinct built up without him having ever slept in a bunk bed.

As Adam yanked his head back and groaned from the fierce pain, he noticed that the entire room had become silent. Turning his eyes to the center of the room, instead of seeing however the Schnee reacted, emerald eyes met lilac and silver. Ruby and Yang leaned over Yang's bed, staring at him upside-down in a mix of curiosity and wariness. Blonde and red hair formed a curtain that obscured the room beyond. The girls had actually suggested, once, that he leave a blanket draped down from Yang's bed onto his own so that he wouldn't need to leave the room every time they needed a little privacy. Adam had refused: knowing his surroundings as he slept was worth the inconvenience.

Ruby and Yang were content to just stare. Adam, not so much.

He scowled and narrowed his eyes. "What was that noise?" he asked calmly, yet the cold edge in his tone was unmistakable.

The two girls looked between each other and awkwardly chuckled. "Well... ya see, Ruby and I got into a little argument, and it got a little heated, so it kinda became a..." Yang trailed off for a brief moment, and Adam arched an eyebrow. Strange. Over the course of the past two months, he'd believed the two of them to be all but inseparable, let alone how bizarrely cheerful the two were at all times. Could they really have started fighting?

"Tickle fight."

Oh. Of course. Of course it was.

"A tickle fight at..." The moon was halfway between the top of the window's frame and the horizon, which made it... "Three in the morning." How the Schnee girl was asleep right now, he hadn't the slightest clue.

"It was a really heated argument!" Ruby protested against Adam's agitation.

He closed his eyes and sighed: maybe he was getting a little too jumpy. These girls were going to drive him insane. "Fine, fine, just... keep it quiet or keep it away from me." With that, Adam laid his head back down to sleep.

Or, at least, he would have, if he did not instead find his head jerking painfully forward and the rest of his body not budging. Grunting, he reached up towards his hair, and froze as his fingers brushed across splintered wood.

Oh no.

He frantically searched across his hair with his fingers, bringing them across his horns to find...

Oh no, no, no.

His horns were stuck in the bed frame. How had this even happened? Was it when he leaned back in the first place?

Eyes wide, he tried to see if Yang and Ruby were still there. They weren't. Excellent. He could still hear them mumbling, but he could work with that. Sisters or not, he doubted they were going to stay—or fit—on that bed, so time was limited. If either noticed him still sitting up, they'd start asking questions.

He tried rocking his head and wriggling his horns to free them, but to no avail. They weren't moving! How was he going to get them out silently! Adam's mind went into overdrive, and his cheeks grew red with frustration and embarrassment both: this kind of thing hadn't happened since he was a child! This brought new meaning to the word demeaning! An incident that would inevitably become stuck in his mind, rising at the poorest of times! This infuriated him to no end! This... this...

This room was silent, again.

Adam froze. With dread, he turned his eyes towards the center of the room.

Emerald eyes met silver once more.

"Adam, are you..."

"I'm fine!" he barked in a much more shrill fashion than he wanted, but years of honing his aggression still got the point across perfectly. Too perfectly, he immediately decided as, while Ruby vanished back to the bed above, a particularly angry Yang dropped back down into view.

"I know we woke you up, but that's no reason to shout..." The building rage faded from her eyes just as her words faded from her mouth. "... Adam, what's with your... hair..." The silence, this time, lasted far too long.

"Are... you a faunus?" Ruby's voice, innocent and curious, quietly called to him from above. His eyes remained locked onto Yang's. More ice than the Schnee could ever summon fell into his stomach as he saw her mouth twitch. Then again. Then, it grew into a devious grin.

"Are you stuck?"

Adam grimaced and tried to hide beneath the quiet that permeated through the room.

Yang flipped herself off of the bed and was quick to lean over towards him. "What was that?" she asked.

"Yes," he hissed.

"Sorry, couldn't hear you~"

"YES!" Adam roared, his cheeks as red as Ruby's coat, his frustration and embarrassment overriding his desire to stay collected, and his loyal Wilt burning inside of its sheath. He withheld his groan as he saw the Schnee finally rise from her bed and yank something—earplugs, so that was how she stayed asleep—out from her ears. As Yang collapsed to the floor in uproarious laughter, their gaze met. Shock, anger, disdain and understanding all flashed across her eyes before she settled simply on narrowing them at him. Adam prepared to fire back with everything he had, and then she... put her earplugs back in and laid down with a sigh.

In his shock, he almost forgot that Yang and now Ruby were both laughing.

"Would you two just STOP!"

Yang's laughter, at least, faded, and her face fell flat. Just before Adam could feel a shred of his dignity return, her face split into that dreaded grin again.

She took her sweet time strolling closer and sat down on the side of his bed. "Ooooh, I see, you don't need any help, right? You're the big bad Adam, surely you aren't stuck at all, and I can just hop ri~ight back into bed. You'll be fine!" Ignoring Adam's protests, she slipped off his bed and sprung back up into her own. The sharp jerk and vibration of the board his horns were stuck in only hurt and infuriated him more.

"Are you sure we shouldn't help? He looks a little mad," Ruby mumbled, the thought of sleep now having thoroughly left the minds of the three.

"Pfft, what makes you think that?" Yang closed her eyes, crossed her legs and flicked them up onto the foot board. Ruby looked down at the positively seething Adam wriggling and bucking his head back in a desperate attempt to free himself without causing damage. But Adam wasn't just seething.

"Well, he's kinda... glowing?" Sure enough, his rage had built to the point where his Semblance was bleeding through: cold, crimson light emanated from the bed beneath them, pouring from his hair and turning his eyes the color of blood. Yang peeked an eye open.

"Get. Off. The bed," Adam commanded.

"And why should we do that? You've got it handled, right, Red Bull?"

"I'm cutting it down."

In a flurry of rose petals, Ruby was already atop her bed.

Yang crossed her arms, not budging one bit. "Nuh-uh. I don't believe you." She heard the subtle click of his blade being drawn. "... Buuut, that doesn't mean I won't see if I can get you some help, anyway! C'mon Ruby, someone has to know about how to get something unstuck!" Yang said with an awkward chuckle, and the two of them were off before Adam could make good on his threat. Adam, however, was fully prepared to just slice the bed in twain and deal with the consequences later.

"You're not going to get anywhere just jerking it around like that," the Schnee girl spoke up. Trying to bring his eyes to hers, Adam only found that she had her back turned towards him. She must've seen his silence as reason to continue.

"Move it slower, but you might need a little bit of red dust to burn it out, if they aren't sensitive." Stuck between losing his pride as a faunus and losing his dignity as everything else, Adam grimaced, and chose his dignity. Slowly, but surely, he rocked his horns out, unfortunately needing to spend one of his premium dust cartridges for Blush to burn away some of the wood, after all. Free at last, Adam let out a deep sigh of relief and dropped his head down onto his pillow.

Silence.

"That's an odd thing to know," Adam commented. For a moment, he wondered if the Schnee had fallen back asleep while he freed himself from that dreaded bed.

"I... had a couple problems with Myrtenaster, when I first used it." He could faintly hear the smile in her voice. Perhaps it was due to Adam venting his frustration at the bed, but he felt a surprising lack of contempt for Schnee. Adam could still feel it there, lurking, unable to die just as he was unable to forget, and yet...

"Thanks." He could see her jolt and tilt her head back just enough to look in his direction.

She let out a mirthless chuckle. "Don't."

Adam arched an eyebrow. With a snort, he was set to leave it at that, but the Schnee flicked her hand back towards him, and something gleamed in the moonlight as it flew through the air. Instinct had Adam swipe it before he even recognized that something was thrown at all. He—slowly—sat up and opened his hand. It was another pair of earplugs.

"Now you can thank me," Schnee chimed, and none too soon, for the door was promptly thrown open, and in came Ruby and Yang carrying handfuls of what looked like everything from butter to soap to popcorn.

"Awww, he already got out..." Yang huffed.

"Well, more for us!" Ruby cheered and, grinning, jumped up onto her bed with an armful of food. Were they just planning to watch him? Adam snorted in agitation and laid his head down, closing his eyes just as Yang sprung back up to her own bed. He'd need to work on it again, tomorrow, to make it higher...

"So, yeah, what was I saying? Ooh yeah! I never saw a guy squeal so loud, before! Cardin's got a set of lungs like you wouldn't believe!" Certain that the two wouldn't be going to going to sleep any time soon, Adam looked down at his earplugs, slipped them in, and drifted off to a pleasant slumber.

"Thanks, Weiss." He murmured under his breath. Across the room, Weiss smiled and put her own plugs back in. A girl needed her beauty sleep, after all.


"Sooooo," Yang woke him up the next day as Ruby left for her shower. Adam grumbled, shook his earplugs out and blearily opened an eye.

"Does being a bull faunus come with any other perks?~" She actually winked at him. He heard a scandalized scoff behind Yang from the Schnee, and only stared blankly at her before turning himself right back over.

One month down, forty-seven to go.

Wonderful.


It was Team CFVY's idea that they should actually try to spend more time together as a team, rather than just Ruby and Yang. For a month, he had remained fine with keeping to himself and his classes. The only times he'd break from his rigid schedule to make sure that the Schnee wasn't bothering Ruby again—something that no longer seemed to be an issue. His detachment had grown to the point where he was surprised to see that JNPR had joined them for lunch, one day, and was even more surprised when he was told they'd done so for the past week.

Unfortunately, the two sisters decided without his input that it was because he was too busy talking with Velvet, who had also decided to sit with them.

Eventually, after some needling from the faunus girl, he'd folded and decided to give them a try. At least for a week. That was two weeks ago. It was as he sat on the floor with Ruby and Yang, playing some strategy game simply called 'Remnant' with them that Adam realized, with dawning horror, that he was actually beginning to enjoy spending time with the two sisters.

Were they overly happy and optimistic? Yes. Did he really miss having personal space around the two? Also yes. But, they were a breath of fresh air. Frankly, not counting his time with Blake, most of his time as a teenager was spent commanding or forcing himself to fit in with people well above his age. Ilia was a brief exception, but her agreements with Ghira's cowardice had left their friendship... strained.

It left little time for relaxation, let alone genuine friendships.

The Schnee, however, did not fold as he did. She preferred her studies even now, lingering at her desk with her books while they played. As Ruby jumped up in victory at wiping half of Yang's forces out in a failed invasion on Vale—even if it was at Adam's suggestion—the Schnee grunted and slammed her textbook shut, snapping the three out of their reverie.

"Can't you three do that somewhere else? Maybe where people aren't studying?" She hissed with a surprising amount of venom for such a minor incident.

"No one ever said you had to study here, Princess," Adam growled on instinct, not even needing to think. The Schnee's fist clenched tight, and without another word, she snatched up her books, got up with enough force to send the chair clattering to the ground and stormed off. Perhaps it was just his keen sight, however, but Adam noticed something odd when her eyes narrowed into a familiar glare and her nose crinkled in anger. Beneath the usual indignant rage was just the smallest hint of pain.

Oh well.

It was only after a few more turns that Yang finally suggested, albeit halfheartedly, "So... should we see what's wrong with her, or something?" Both her and Adam looked over at Ruby: as far as they knew, she was the only one who was getting close to her.

"... What?"

"I thought you were her new friend!"

"Well... uh..." Ruby's eyes darted around the room. "Heeeey, Adam, you're her partner, why don't you—"

"No." The fact that he hadn't succumbed to his White Fang instincts and strangled her to death should've been worthy of an award.

"Aw, come on! This should be easy!" Yang clapped a hand on his shoulder.

At first, Adam didn't even spare it a thought, instead glancing down at his cards and contemplating his next move in the game. Right up until he remembered his little 'bet' with Velvet. Give peace a chance...

He sighed: this was absolutely foolish, but something told him unless he dragged Ruby along with him, she wasn't going to try and talk to an angry Schnee, and Yang might just make matters worse after her petulance ticks her off. With a shake of his head, he got up, grabbed Wilt from his bed and threw his hat on.

"Fine, I'll go." It'd certainly be enough to shake off Velvet's needling. More importantly, when this ended exactly as he thought this would, he could prove the strategy's failing to Velvet.

"Don't worry, Adam, I'll take your turns! I'll defend the gates of Mistral with my life!" Ruby brought her hand across her chest, saluting with a sunny grin. Adam snorted as he reached the door.

"If I lose, you're getting court-martialed."


None of this was fair!

Weiss sprung off of a glyph and dug her rapier through the training dummy ahead, then kicked off of it to flip behind and slash another across the chest at her rear. Her books laid scattered and forgotten beside the entrance.

She wasn't the one that started physical fights with her own team! She was the first to sit with those two sisters! First to really accept Ruby as a leader! First to offer the olive branch!

Weiss twirled in time with the natural rhythm of combat and sent a ray of Dust to freeze the arms of another target.

What did she get for her trouble and sacrifices? She got shoved aside for that faunus, Adam!

She was half an inch off of her strikes. Awful. Weiss returned to her starting stance and took a deep breath.

And of course he was a faunus. Frankly, Weiss felt a fool for never noticing that staring her right in the face. Adam was cruel, but even more so with just her. The first time they'd even spoke was him insulting her with her family name. The hat. Getting along with Velvet. Being so... rough around the edges. Of course he'd hate her if he was a faunus. Of course she'd have no chance to get closer: she lost that before it even began.

Her glyph was a fraction too large: it'd be an easy target to strike in a fight. Weiss returned to her starting stance once more. Again. She'd do this routine until she was perfect. Irreplaceable.

It was the only choice she had left. With Adam having somehow managed to slip his way in with the sisters before she could, there was no doubt that he would turn them against her. Frankly, it'd already begun. Weiss knew how this kind of thing worked, and cursed herself for not getting in first while she could. The problem was just that... she didn't know what to do. What to say.

She'd observed enough to know how friendships worked—such was how she knew how Adam's growing influence would be a problem—just not how they started. Her childhood was being fawned over by private tutors, business partners and politicians, then being expected to fit in just fine with them. Contact with others of her age were with other heirs and to-be influential people. Networking, nothing more, nothing less. More people to put on airs around. More to impress.

It left little time for relaxation, let alone genuine friendships.

Weiss snarled, caring little for how unladylike she looked. She'd missed one of the dummies altogether. She was slipping! Weiss reset the dummies' positions and, as she had many times already, returned to her starting position. She raised her rapier, formed a glyph to speed her up, took her first step, right foot first—

"Your stance is too rigid." Weiss nearly stumbled and fell on the spot. She turned a dirty look at the interloper. Adam.

She refused to give him the victory of seeing her scowl.

"If the only reason you came here was to insult me, you can turn and leave, now. I get it." She did not give him the chance to respond, instead thrusting at a dummy to begin her routine all over again. She'd managed to have a few seconds to herself, able to cut her way through her imagined foes to the invisible rhythm of battle she kept in her mind. Weiss had even believed that Adam had actually listened to her for once and left, right up until a crimson blade lashed out from beside her without warning, knocking Myrtenaster out of her hands.

Disbelief came over her face, and her aura roared to life in preparation to defend herself.

But when Myrtenaster clattered to the ground, no second attack came. Adam snorted in derision, and by the time Weiss snapped around to face him, his blade was already back in its sheath.

"You said you were studying; why are you here, instead?"

She growled in annoyance at Adam's continued criticism and reached for her blade, but Adam took a calm step and rested his foot on top of it. So then, he was forcing the issue.

"What does it matter? I'm getting better. That's all you care about, isn't it?" Weiss crossed her arms, clearly just wanting this over and done with. Adam only glared at her until she was forced to speak again or continue to live in tense silence.

"If I can barely have a team, then I need to make sure I'm the best on my own." More silence. She growled. "What do you want from me!"


To Adam, it was a good question: he wouldn't have come here if he hadn't made that bet, so he supposed a better one to ask would have been what Ruby and Yang wanted out of this. They probably shouldn't have sent him to deal with these emotions: he was a bit... blunt. As he watched the Schnee, taking in the suspicious lack of malice for a faunus like himself in her eyes, the turn of her body away and flick of her eyes down to her weapon showing her simple desire to escape, and her fists balled tightly enough to look pale even against her light skin, Adam grew curious. He believed he knew what Ruby and Yang wanted to know.

"Why are you always angry?" Adam didn't even bother slipping in one of the numerous insults he could have added.

The Schnee gaped at him. "Excuse me? Why am I so angry? Coming from the one who spends all his time brooding, scowling or finding another way to insult me?" she threw back at him with indignation.

"You didn't answer me."

"Why should I! What do you care, anyway? It's been over a month, Adam. Over a month, and all I hear from you is 'Schnee' this, 'Princess' that. Even Yang slipped and called me 'Schnee', once! We're supposed to be partners, but you just stand there and treat me like I'm your worst enemy. Shouldn't I be just a little angry that you've managed to turn the team against me when I'm supposed to be entrusting my life to you? In fact, here's a better question that you never answered: what have I done to you?" The Schnee stomped closer, face red with growing frustration. It was as if she had not heard him the first time, like she'd completely forgotten the sins of her kind.

Adam shifted his jaw and forced down the numerous shots he could've taken at her family. "What do you want?"

The heiress wrinkled her nose in agitation at not being answered, then took a deep breath, stepped back and crossed her arms. "I want a chance," she replied simply.

Adam raised an eyebrow. "... A chance."

"Yes, Adam, a chance. A chance to actually get close to my team, and a chance to actually have the people I fight alongside be my friends, too. Including you."

Adam's first response came out faster than he could think: he laughed. She must've been delusional to think he would ever befriend a Schnee! She had outright lost her mind! She... looked so dejected.

It was brief, for not even a second before it fell to an ice-cold glare, but Adam could still see it. His laughter died out. This would only cause the problem of her anger to grow greater, and even though he'd love to see another body added to the Schnee mausoleum, if her wrath caused her to become distracted and fall in battle, it would only drag him down too. That was why Adam decided to take a different route.

That's what he told himself, anyway. That look of pain had nothing to do with it...

Adam silently kicked her rapier back up to her.

"Your grip is too loose. Did you have a trainer? Sparring partners?"

She frowned and her glare intensified, but she remained silent as she walked back to her starting position and readied herself.

"One." Were he a lesser man, Adam might have actually been put off by just how frigid her tone was, even in something so simple. Instead, he only hummed and began walking away. He stopped on the other side of the hall and turned, unsheathing Wilt.

"As I thought. Let's change that." Adam readied his blade. The Schnee tilted her head in confusion and, slowly but surely, he could see the ice in her eyes already beginning to thaw.

She raised her rapier.

"Is fighting the only way you can connect to people?" she asked, her lips quirking upwards into a smile she so desperately tried to hide.

Adam matched her expression. "Possibly."

They lunged.


"If no one personally trained you, how did you learn? I would have expected the Schnees to be able to afford the best of the best." Adam's curiosity had gotten the best of him as they parted from yet another clashing of blades.

She huffed and jumped off of a glyph past him. "I don't appreciate"—she hurled a number of ice shards to force Adam to roll out of the way—"talking while I work!"

Wilt suddenly launched itself from Adam's sheath. While she could dodge the blade itself, she couldn't be so quick when Adam all but appeared at her side to snatch the blade from the air and slash at her. Forced into close combat, they traded blows.

"If you cannot fight while distracted, you'll never survive." When she didn't respond, Adam lashed out with his foot at her wrist, knocking her rapier from her hand. The next kick struck her cheek, throwing her down right next to it. Adam enjoyed that a little more than what he would consider to be healthy.

"Your grip is still loose," he chastised her as he sheathed his blade. Schnee only rolled her eyes, mumbling something about him being 'such a brute' while she retrieved her weapon.

"If you must know, I spent most of my time battling against androids and practicing routines. My father did not exactly want me to become a Huntress in the first place." She got to her feet and brushed herself off. "I'm not stupid: I could see when he was trying to interfere when every trainer coincidentally had a full class."

"And what of simply finding others to fight with?"

She scoffed at that one. "Would you want to be the one trying to beat up the heiress to the entire Schnee Dust Company?"

The two stared at one another.

"Don't answer that."

Adam merely held a hand up in his defense.


Weiss kept a better grip on Myrtenaster, this time: his kick towards her wrist was instead responded to by a point-blank burst of ice that sent him flying across the grounds. Adam rolled back up to his feet just in time to block a stab aimed at his chest.

"And what about you, hm?" she asked him. "Who taught you how to fight?"

Adam was lucky: had this been even two weeks prior, he might have even spoken Branwen's name. Now, however, he knew just how much trouble it could cause with the never-mentioned daughter on his own team.

He smirked and forced her back with a series of swift swings. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you. Let's just say my trainer was a rather odd woman and leave it at that."

"You can't keep all these secrets forever, Adam!" Her rapier thrust not at him but the ground, sending ice suddenly rushing across it and his feet alike, freezing him in place. Schnee turned her weapon's cylinder.

"I have more secrets than you can imagine, Schnee."

She let out a laugh and lunged forward.

"How dramatic."


"You never answered my question, you know," the heiress mentioned at random when they—she—ran out of energy to keep taking out their frustrations through combat. When had he started talking so languidly with a Schnee? It only truly clicked in Adam's head now, as the two lounged on a bench and sipped from water bottles, just how much this went against everything he'd once fought for.

Seeing Adam's silence as a motion to continue, she went on: "What did I—no, what did my family—do to you to have you attack me so much?"

He wordlessly turned his eyes towards hers. After a couple moments, he just drained his bottle and stood up. "It might pay to glance at one of those 'faunus-sympathizing' articles, some time. Perhaps in time I'll tell you, but for now, just know that they did enough." Adam walked off towards the door, just now remembering that the game of Remnant he was playing was likely long over.

"Another one of your little secrets?" she tried to joke, but the crimson glare Adam threw over his shoulder choked out any humor she might have been going for. In that brief glance there was far more anger than she had seen in even Yang's at her most livid. In a way, she saw a connection between the two. Their eyes both turned red with anger, yet while Yang's were fiery and bright, Adam's was darker. Dull. The difference between freshly-spilled blood and a stain, deep-seated and old.

It didn't bode well for what that 'secret' of his might've been. Yet, it left her curious, still: what had happened?

"... Are you coming, or do you plan on just sitting there?" In the time she was mulling that over, Adam was already leaning against the doorframe, having already grabbed her books.

Weiss huffed and crossed her arms. "I was thinking! Perhaps you should try it, some time."

Adam rolled his eyes.