A/N: Technically a prequel to the first chapter, this fills in the unmentioned details from the story Yang told Glynda. All Freezerburn fluff and a little character building for my take on their personalities that will be important later, so be warned there is a little talk of self-harm, but it's nothing too crazy. I plan to add an omake like this between each major chapter. Just something short to break up the sex and build the fluff or build the characters.
It was a good thing it was well after lights out. Rumours would have ripped through the fabric of the academy in a heartbeat at the sight of a naked Yang Xaio Long carrying a furiously blushing, still soaking-wet Weiss Schnee bridal style through the locker room. The heiress had tried to stand in the shower when Yang had offered her the chance but the white-haired girl's knees refused to budge. Worse, when she had managed to get to her feet – with more help from the blonde than she would have liked – her legs nearly gave out under her own weight.
So Yang, ever the chivalrous one, picked Weiss up as easily as if she wasn't even there and carried her out into the main locker area, gingerly setting the heiress on a bench before the brawler started rifling through her things for a towel. Immediately she realized the issue: not expecting company, Yang had only brought enough supplies for herself. She silently stood over her gym bag, sunset orange towel in hand, just staring at the cotton sheet and briefly wondered if ripping it in half would work before relenting to the emotions warring in her mind. She needs it more than I do...
Turning, she took stock of the heiress beside her. Small hands were balled into white-knuckled fists in her lap. Shoulders hunched ever so slightly forward, giving in to the occasional shiver that Weiss would quickly suppress to maintain her facade. Her jaw was set so stiffly Yang could make out the tension in her temples. But it was the blank stare, locked on the tiled floor, that struck Yang the most: Weiss was inside her mind and furiously bottling her emotions so she could react to this with whatever logic she felt matched the situation. Yang figured for once, the alabaster girl could do with a distraction before those emotions were completely locked away. So, the blonde took the only action she could think of: she unceremoniously dumped the towel over Weiss' head and moved in front of her to start working on drying the girl's pristine white hair. Weiss was wearing a full set of soaked clothing, after all, so it made sense she should be the one to be tended to first.
Yang could see the argument building in the white-haired girls posture when the shorter girl started to sit up, squaring her shoulders as she did. The blonde stopped the girl before she could start with a hooked finger under Weiss' chin and the pad of her thumb over pale lips. Shifting the towel to Weiss' shoulders and working to clear some of the water out of her clothes, Yang gave a low chuckle to start the conversation when life briefly sparked into blue eyes on meeting the wave of concern spilling from lavender. "Can I be honest?"
No response was offered other than a confused tightening of white eyebrows.
"Blake has been trying to help me build up the courage to ask you out for weeks." She let out of a huff of air to reprimand herself while she rolled her eyes, "Weeks."
Before Weiss could interject, Yang reached down to push the half-dried shoulders of her jacket down to strip it and the vest underneath off of Weiss' petite frame. The blonde made a mental note to go back to the shower stall to collect the buttons she'd yanked off the jacket. "I'll, uh, help you sew the buttons back on once we get back to the room, okay?" Had her voice always been so meek?
A short sigh preempted the gently spoken words. "With how often Ruby tears her clothes I'm actually pretty good with a needle and thread, now."
As she worked on bundling up snow white hair into the towel to finish drying it as carefully as she could, taking the same care as she would with her own hair, she let out a heavier sigh. "Look, I... I feel like I'm supposed to say I'm sorry. I..." She broke her own train of thought with another weighted sigh while she opened the towel to make sure she wasn't being to rough with the delicate tresses in her hands. "I've just spent so long trying to convince myself you weren't out of my league that when you... When we... I just didn't think."
The heiress blinked up at the blonde, words were forming on the tip of her tongue but she voiced nothing. Her lips twitched ever so slightly to show she'd meant to speak but Yang continued before Weiss could manage to loose her words, though. "I can pretend this didn't happen if you want." She offered the opt-out weakly, not meaning the words but offering them if the heiress needed an easy excuse. The blonde caught herself drying the same lock of hair for the third time and purposely moved to sit beside the other girl, tanned legs straddling the bench. Before she continued she wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand in a subconscious gesture to make sure she hadn't let any tears slip out. "I get it if this wasn't supposed to happen... Not like that, you know? But..."
Yang paused to grumble about the words she was trying to find in her turbulent mind. "That trust thing I mentioned before? It goes both ways, right? It still counts?"
Weiss turned her head but couldn't bring her eyes to fully meet Yang's dejected stare, so she just nodded hesitantly. The last time the blonde had talked about trust it had been a precursor to effortlessly lifting the snowy-haired girl so the brawler could... Weiss' thoughts trailed off and she shifted her gaze back to the floor lest Yang catch the spreading blush.
"I just... Looking back? It had to have started when we formed the team, you know?" She paused to push a splayed hand over her face and through her hair, leaving the blonde locks half tucked behind her ear. "Ruby told me what you did; why you started helping her study. And then everything with you and Blake. I think when I realized you were just Weiss - and not Weiss Schnee, heiress - I started looking at you differently."
"And it's silly things, you know?"A heavy sigh and another ruffle of her still-wet hair punctuated the sentence. She was trying to convince Weiss without making herself sound crazy and the blonde felt like she had failed before she'd really started. "It's this little crinkle between your eyebrows when you're trying really hard to keep up with the teacher so you can get all the notes down. Or the way, when you smile – really smile – or your mouth tries to hide a smile but it gets to your eyes before you can put on the Schnee mask... The way it pulls at your scar and you somehow look so bad ass while I'm trying to make you laugh harder just so I can keep staring at you... Cause you're so beautiful and I just feel like I can't measure up."
Since she was staring at her own palms in her lap, Yang couldn't see the heiress open her mouth to speak and proceeded to interrupt Weiss without realizing. "I guess it doesn't really matter, eh?Well... Come on, let's get you out of those wet clothes. Can't have you catching a cold 'cause I'm a hot-head." To emphasize her point Yang slipped a few fingers under the collar of Weiss' torn blouse to roll it back and off her shoulders while she moved to stand behind the white-haired girl. It was a terrible attempt to avoid continuing the conversation. Yang had stopped focusing on the heiress and just worked on pushing the thoughts of not meeting Weiss' standards out of the forefront of her mind.
As she slipped the shirt over Weiss' shoulders both girls stiffened suddenly. "Um... Weiss?"
Pale shoulders slumped forward slightly to match the exasperated sigh. "I suppose you'll want to know about that?"
"Kinda. Yeah?"
Weiss delicately ran lithe fingers over her shoulder and as far on to her back as she could reach comfortably. Her fingers danced across an intricate tattoo: a perfect rendition of the Schnee crest, stark white and split evenly in two, on a vibrant background of deep violets and cool blues with only the barest hint of any other colours to liven up the image. Small stars spread out like a constellation on the virgin twilight sky. "It was just for me, so generally I keep it covered up... I don't necessarily mean to hide it but I don't like talking about it. My bolero jacket. The shawl I wore at the dance. Even my sleepwear is meant to keep it from view."
"It's just... Sometimes people..." She hesitated only long enough to lift her hand from her shoulder and extend it all the way towards the ceiling. Yang, with her position behind the heiress, could see how the motions caused a score of parallel scars cresting Weiss' shoulder to shimmer in the fluorescent light. Each was only an inch or so long and couldn't have been too deep when they were made, but the fact they were there at all indicated Weiss hadn't let her aura heal them when they were made. "Pressure builds, Yang. And sometimes people need to find ways to remind themselves that they're still in control."
"Never back down when confronted. Never show fault when challenged," she deepened her voice and quoted the words in a way that clearly indicated she'd heard the words time-and-again, "But where do those emotions go when you stomp them all down but they still fill you up?"
Weiss knew she was crying now. Softly, and only a tear at a time, but she wept all the same. She'd let too much out in front of the brawler to hold back now. "After Winter renounced her title as heir, everything got worse... I've got enough marks because of his training, so I needed to add something to remind myself I was still the one in control." Weiss drew back the edge of her skirt to reveal another host of marks in places where her father wouldn't find them. Places where Yang had missed them when her eyes had been clouded red.
Weiss flinched when a too-gentle hand swept over the ink on her shoulder. Yang had seen the scar the painting was meant to cover and was tracing the edge of the mark so lightly it only made Weiss ball her hands harder. Yang's hands were impossibly warm and somehow the heat released a dull ache Weiss hadn't realized was building with the tension inside her chest. Strong fingers slipped over her shoulders and Weiss knew it was meant to be a soothing gesture to urge her to continue.
"It's funny how easy it is to exploit money to get what you want. Silence. An escape. Something to paint over the pain someone else left." She gave a pained chuckle before continuing, losing some of the mask she normally wore. "My fencing teacher nearly ran me through with his foil. Father's orders to teach me a lesson when I kept making the same mistake. Tore the hell out of my shoulder and my father just watched. I was given an aura blocking drug by the doctor when he closed the wound because my father wanted the scar to remind me how I had disappointed him."
Strong arms encircled Weiss' shoulders, pulling her flush against Yang's chest before a single gentle kiss was planted on the top of her head. "We're the same, in a way." Yang held out her hand in front them, only half releasing her hug to do it. As she fanned out her fingers and rolled her knuckles Weiss could see the layers of scars in the callouses across the fighter's hand. "We both hurt our selves for control. You did it to get control back from someone else. Me? I did it to get that control back from me."
"I used to get in fights a lot. With anyone; over the dumbest things. My anger would build up and the only thing I could do was throw a punch at whatever was closest." The brawler made a fist tight enough to crack a few of her knuckles. "I started really training to get some discipline so I wouldn't lose it like that anymore. So I'd beat my hands bloody, until I hurt all over, just so I could feel like I was the one calling the shots inside my own head."
The crown of white hair tried to tilt back to give her a better view of the blonde's eyes as the hug was released. A heavy palm planting firmly on the top of her head kept her in place despite her groan. "Stay still for a second." Weiss could hear Yang rummaging through her bag again, but kept her gaze on her knees as instructed. Before she knew what was happening, a gentle hand swept up her hair and a brush followed it through. Then another stroke followed the first until a steady rhythm set in.
"Yang?" Weiss' voice was soft. It was relaxed and subdued in a way the brawler hadn't heard before today. She was always serious; always so tense it could be heard in the ups and downs of her voice. Yang hummed to acknowledge she was listening and committed the sound to memory.
"While this was all incredibly sweet in the beginning. Romantic even, coming from you. I can do this on my own, you know." Weiss laughed lightly and shifted under Yang's hands to lay the weight of her head on the blonde's stomach.
Yang's laughter was far more pronounced in response to Weiss' insistence, but she refused to cease her actions, sweeping the white locks over Weiss' shoulder. "Yeah, I know, but I started for a reason and you know I'm too stubborn to stop something once I get started." The blonde shrugged as she spoke, the motion enough to jostle Weiss.
Weiss rolled her eyes while she giggled. "Is this all it takes to get you to admit you're a stubborn bull?"
"No, you could have just asked."
Both girls shared a soft laugh and started to let the weight in the air die.
"Do you think I could ask you something else?" Weiss' voice kept the gentle air from before but Yang could hear a hesitation under the words.
Yang gave another hum in response and worked on running her fingers through the thin white hair in her hands. Just slow strokes down the length of it so she could map the feeling of it in case the fear bubbling in her chest came true and she never got to feel it again. Every other stroke she'd let her fingers linger, against the soft skin along the side of Weiss' neck or over the lines marring her shoulder. Anything she could do to keep the contact from slipping out from under her hands. She was content to be given this permission and never let this moment end.
"I know there have been others, for both of us I mean, but that's the problem... I've never had more than just that... And..." The heiress paused just long enough to place her hand on Yang's when it ran over the purple ink again. "Is it alright that I'm scared to want more of this?"
"I don't think so... I'm kinda scared of what it means, too. Up until now I was just goin' off the crush I had on you; I wasn't thinking about what comes after I'd admitted how bad I had it for you. But that's the thing..." Yang paused to run a thumb along a pale cheek, stopping just short of the edge of Weiss' lips. "I want to know what it's like to kiss you – to hold you, to have you – when my semblance isn't driving my brain into overdrive and I feel like I'm going to burn you up or break you, you know? I want to know what it's like to be with you; with just Weiss."
"You won't hurt me, Yang." Weiss tried to reinforce her point by taking Yang's hand and turning it so she could kiss Yang's palm.
"I know you're not some delicate little flower or anything – I've seen you fight. It's just... What if I get out of control? What if..."
Weiss stomped her foot in a huff then stood up, with a twirl she stepped back over the bench and brought her body nearly flush to Yang's. The taller girl swallowed hard when she angled her face down to look at the white-haired girl fully. "Then..." It all seemed so much more confident in her head before the heiress tried to say it out loud. She felt so much more confident when she wasn't staring up into amethyst wavering with emotion. "Then we take that slow. We start small and learn the limits. For everything else..."
She trailed off, closing her eyes as they worked to close the rest of the gap between them and come together in a firm, chaste kiss. Though it wasn't without it's passion, Weiss made sure to keep it from building. Tentatively she reached out and put her hands on Yang's hips. The nervous touch wasn't to last as Yang pulled them together in a loose hug, the blonde's tanned cheek pressing into white hair just over Weiss' ear. The shorter girl lifted her chin and continued, "But just know, even if we start out slowly, I expect you to put the effort in. No girlfriend of mine will get away without taking me on a date now and then."
Yang's heart nearly leaped out of her chest at the words – the sudden spike in her heart rate left her lightheaded. "Girlfriend!? You mean it!?" A nod, pressed into the side of her neck was the answer. "You'll give us a shot?"
"I won't say yes many more times." The blonde's response was to lift the smaller girl into a crushing hug and spin them both around, the whole time ignoring the chastising curses thrown her way. Through the curses and biting orders to put her down, Yang just kept smiling so hard she was on the verge of bursting.
When she finally released the white haired girl, she stood up fully and planted both of her hands on her hips in an effort to keep herself from snatching Weiss up again. "Sorry. I just... I just needed to hear it one more time to make sure I wasn't dreaming. I mean, seriously, THE Weiss Schnee just said I was her girlfriend."
"Firstly," she made every effort she could to put her trademark scowl on over top of the subtle grin she was wearing but the softness in her voice let Yang know she wasn't upset, "You said it yourself: I'm just Weiss when it's just us."
Yang offered a sheepish nod and an apologetic smile.
"Secondly," this time, when she continued, the scowl was real; evidenced by the gentle but pointed jab with her fingertip directly into Yang's breast. "I'd appreciate a little warning next time you plan to nearly smother me in these."