Author's Note: Here it is, everyone! I'm looking forward to seeing what you guys think of this chapter! And I realized that I haven't been thanking my Beta Reader lately, so a huge special mega shout-out to Gorsouul! This story would be a lot different without your input. Thank you!
The next day at breakfast, Ruby and I's date is the talk of the table with our friends.
"So they get back to the dorm, and I ask them if they kissed, and both Ruby and Weiss just start blushing like crazy," Yang says cheerfully in between forkfuls of waffle.
"No way! You guys kissed last night?!" Nora shouts out loud. A good number of students look over from their seats towards our group. Ruby and I make eye contact with each other and blush before quickly looking away quickly. I start to blush heavily from embarrassment. I'm still not used to romance. Despite my years of living before going back, I've never been in a relationship. I've only loved Ruby...
"That's lovely. I'm so happy for you two." Pyrrha smiles and glances wistfully towards Jaune, who at this point is staring down at his food, moving it slightly with his fork unenthusiastically.
"Ahahahaha… Yeah, well… um… cool… Well, I gotta run. I'll see you guys in time for class or whatever," Ruby stutters. She gets up with her tray and puts it away before walking away in a hurry. Her face shows distress. Worried, I get up soon after and follow her.
"I'm gonna go too… After her…" As I leave, I can hear Nora talking to the other people at the table.
"I wonder what's with them."
I shrug the comment off and walk in the direction I saw Ruby walking in. I start to get more concerned about Ruby as I walk after her. The direction she took leads right to the dorm, and after a while of not seeing anything of her as I walked, I decide to check in the dorm room.
There's more of a chance for her to be in here than anywhere further down the hall. I open the door and walk in, looking around for Ruby. Sure enough, she's in here sitting on her bed, clutching her dog face pillow close to her chest. A wave of relief washes over me as I find her, although I'm slightly worried about the upcoming conversation.
"Ruby, what's wrong? Why'd you get up and walk away like that?" I ask, not in a harsh and questioning tone, but more of a light-hearted and curious one.
"I… I got nervous," she hesitates before continuing. "And kind of embarrassed."
My face falls. Is she embarrassed about me? About kissing me? Did I do something to make her upset and embarrassed?
She must have noticed my expression, because no less than a second later, she says in a panicked voice, "Oh, not because of you! You didn't do anything bad!"
I sigh in relief and walk up next to her bed and look up at her from ground level.
"Then what is it, if you don't mind me asking?"
She sighs in response and bites her bottom lip. A few deep breaths and I assume some mental psyching up later, she responds. "I was nervous because I thought my first kiss would be more… personal. That I'd be able to have the first relationship with someone I like be more private, but everyone is out there talking about us! It's just…" She stops her rambling, running through everything that she has just said. Her face goes red before she starts rambling again. "W-wait, did I say relationship? I-I'm sorry. I know that's not the case. It was just kind of wishful thinking I guess. I understand if that's not what you want, but I guess it just kind of slipped out."
I raise my hand, and she stops. She's so cute when she rambles. But it's easy to see where she's coming from. I want it to be more private as well, but privacy isn't easy to come by when you're an heiress… but I can try my best to make it as good for Ruby as I can.
"Well, you just said that it was wishful thinking, right? Does that mean that you WANT to be in a relationship with me?" I question, unable to hide the giddy smile on my face. Ruby nods shyly, squeezing the pillow closer to her, her face flaming red. She looks up at me, and our eyes meet. "Well, I want that as well." Her eyes light up as what I just said hits her and she understands. "So, Ruby Rose. Would you like to be my girlfriend?"
Ruby giggles and nods from behind her pillow. "Yes, Weiss. Yes I do." She jumps down from the bed towards me. Panic starts to fly through my head. Not knowing what else to do, I try to catch her. Try being the most important word.
She falls on me, and my knees buckle under the surprise addition of weight, even how little Ruby actually is. I collapse on the floor, and she tumbles down with me. We both make eye contact and break out laughing. While it did hurt quite a bit, the happiness I feel greatly outweighs that pain.
"Thank you for trying to catch me, Weiss" Ruby says in between fits of laughter. She slides her arms around me and pulls me close to her in an embrace.
This here is the start of our journey together, Ruby. I hope you're as happy as I am.
"Hey Weiss?" Ruby asks from on top of me. The closeness of Ruby to me right now makes it hard to concentrate, but I try my best to listen to what she has to say.
"Yes, Ruby?" I lean back and look Ruby in the eyes, curious as to what she's going to say.
"So… we're like… girlfriends now, right? What do we do? Like, I know that dates and stuff, but like are there any rules for when it comes to like, k-kissing? Or other stuff?" I have to think for a bit.
That's a great question… What are the boundaries? What are the rules? How can we know? I don't know… My head starts to swirl from the barrage of questions that I start asking myself. Unsure of what to say or how to say it, I just start talking, hoping something good comes out of it.
"I don't think that can be answered so quickly. This is new for me, and I think it's new for you, right?" I ask. Ruby nods her head, looking away embarrassed and blushing. "Well, I think we just need to learn from what happens…" Ruby nods in agreement. "But I think the first thing that should be done is you getting off of me," I jest.
"Oh! Sorry!" Ruby gets up off of me and helps me stand up as well. I laugh to myself, dust myself off and look at Ruby. "Well, we had better get going again. Don't want to miss our classes now, do we?"
Ruby groans overdramatically. "You and your classes." I can see a small smile at the edge of her lips as she says this, and I extend my hand towards her.
"Shall we go?" Ruby grabs my hand quickly and smiles. She checks her scroll and grimaces. She shows me the time: 9:20. Ten minutes before our class starts. I return the expression and pull her along forward.
"Yeah, let's go." We end up running through the halls across the school and pushing ourselves into the classroom right before the bell rings. Normally, we'd be sitting up front with both Blake and Yang, but seeing as we were almost late for the class, all of those seats are full. We instead elect to take two of the seats in the empty back row. I wave to Yang and Blake as a sort of apology for not sitting with them.
Professor Port starts out his lecture, like always, with a story about how absolutely 'amazing' he was growing up. Boring. I've already heard this story before. He gets the Ursa and brings it back to his town. There's got to be something that I can do to alleviate this boredom.
I look over to Ruby to see what she's doing. What I see as I turn to look doesn't surprise me in the slightest. On the desk in front of Ruby is a sheet of notebook paper. One would think that the paper would have notes on it, but that's not the case. A few small doodles adorn the paper, and adding to the number of doodles seems to be taking up most of her attention. After about 30 seconds of watching her, an idea pops into my head.
It's about time that I start being a lot more fun for Ruby. More than just going out to have fun. There needs to be a steady influx of fun. I hope she enjoys what I have in mind. I'm excited.
I get out a sheet of paper myself and nudge Ruby's shoulder. She visibly jumps, snapped into reality from the heavy focus she had on doodling.
"What?" She whispers to me. I raise a finger in front of my mouth signaling her to be quiet. I then scribble "Do you want to have a doodling contest?" onto the paper in front of me. I slowly slide the paper over towards her. She takes the paper and reads it. She then looks at me with a smile on her face and nods vigorously. I smile in response and get more paper out. She does the same.
"Okay, so you choose what we're doing first." I write onto the paper. She thinks for a second before writing down something. On the paper reads a single word: Puppy. I smile and nod.
"Okay, so we have three minutes. One… Two… Three… Go…" I whisper to her. I immediately get to work, doodling. The form of a dog ends up taking shape after a minute. The doodle is coming along nicely; the form is solidly there, and now it's just detail work. At around 3 minutes of drawing, I finish my doodle and nudge Ruby. I proudly put my puppy in view of Ruby. Proudly, that is, until Ruby puts her drawing in front of me. The doodle, while only taking three minutes, is an incredibly detailed picture of Zwei. Of course, I'm not supposed to know who Zwei is. If I were to compare her drawing of Zwei to my puppy drawing, my drawing would be the one that a parent hangs on a fridge when their child brings it home from third grade art class, whereas hers would be an upper level collegiate art student's project. Her drawing absolutely blows me away. When comparing her drawing to mine, it looks like my dog was born with a few… defects. It becomes hard for me to not just grab the picture and star fangirling over the corgi.
It seems that Ruby is able to change her drawing style when she wants to, as this beautiful work of art is completely different from some of the other doodles I've seen; even the ones that I saw earlier today. And definitely different of her quick blotchy sketch of Professor Port on the first day of classes. In all of my years before, back then, of knowing Ruby, I never saw this artistic side of Ruby.
I guess even when you've known someone for 14 years of your life, there's still a lot more that you can learn about them. It's strange. I'm thrown off by this new revelation, but I feel happy about it at the same time. It's amazing when you can learn something you didn't know about a person you love.
"Weiss?" Ruby whispers, looking at me. I shake my head, not realizing that I was staring at her picture for so long. "Are you okay?"
"Oh, yeah. It's just… That's really good. Like… wow. Just… wow." I whisper, still in awe of how great the drawing is. "The dog is also really cute."
"Thanks!" Ruby smiles. "It's my dog." I take this opportunity to do the fangirling that I tried to avoid earlier. I grab the picture and study it even more profusely.
"It's your dog?" I ask with as best of feigned enthusiasm as I could muster. I am enthusiastic, don't get me wrong. It's just that I already knew about Zwei. "What's his name?" You know his name, dummy. I know I do, but I'm not supposed to.
"His name is Zwei. Isn't he cute?" I simply nod in response and then look back at the drawing.
I guess there's still a lot that I don't know about her. And I can't wait to learn more about her.
"Yeah, he is cute. Will I ever get to meet him?" I ask, still whispering, and smiling. I look at Ruby to find her staring at me.
She thinks to herself for a little bit before she speaks. "I'm not really sure. I think if you ever visit while I'm back in Patch, you might get to see him." She smiles at me again and blushes. My heart melts at the sight of it.
It's still so strange that she and I are… together. It's unreal. It's like I'm in a dream. A dream that I never want to wake up from. She wants us to be together whenever I visit.
The rest of the class is filled with more doodling. Ruby decides that contests just aren't as fun as normal doodling, and with my competitive streak, I'm inclined to agree. The puppy doodle absolutely destroyed any hope of winning against her in doodling ever again. But that's fine. It was fun, and that was my goal.
The class ends, and Ruby and I walk out together. We start heading back to the dorm, talking on the way.
"So what you said about me visiting you on Patch. You mean that?" I ask, giving Ruby a sidelong glance as we walk. I try to not sound overly excited, but it's hard to contain my joy.
"Of course! Any of my friends are welcome to come to my house! Dad told me so before I came here. And now since you're… more than just a friend…" I can feel myself blush. I look at her, and she's blushing as well. She's not making eye contact with me, however. She's looking straight forward and smiling. "Since you're more than just a friend now… you're like, extra welcome."
I can't wait to visit Patch again. The last time that I did back in my reality, Taiyang was so nice to me. I just hope he's as nice this time… Because now I'm dating his daughter...
I laugh to myself. "You're such a dolt sometimes, you know that?" She looks at me for the first time since we left class and smiles back.
"Yep!" Her smile widens, and she looks back the way we have been traveling. We're almost back to the dorm. Right as we runs the corner to the hallway that takes us directly to our room, I can feel my Scroll start to vibrate.
"Hey, Ruby? You can go on ahead. Someone is calling me. I'll be right there, okay?" I ask, fishing my hand into the pocket in my jacket that I keep my Scroll. Ruby nods and makes her way to the room by herself. I get my Scroll and take it out, looking at who is calling me. My heart starts beating fast as I see who it is.
Scrawled across the screen in bold letters is one word: "Father".