A/N: The stars aligned so that I could name this chapter.
Hugs,
Defenestrator
Weiss shifted on the mattress a bit, inspected the gauze bandaging on Ruby's leg. Well, her thigh. Upper thigh, to be more exact. The heiress had to roll Ruby's shorts up a couple of inches to find the top of the wrapping. So far it looked alright. Well, there were no fresh bloodstains, anyway.
"Am I going to die?" Ruby's solemn question made Weiss's heart jump. Then she saw the goofy grin plastered on the younger girl's face.
"Don't joke like that, you dunce," Weiss scowled. She lifted her hands to the edge of the gauze and let them fall again. The bandage seemed a lot higher up than before.
Oh, this was not awkward at all. Especially given the mortifying conversation she'd just had in the bathroom with Blake. Weiss stole a glance towards the place in question.
"Ruby, I... I hope you know that I really..." she searched for words, "respect you as team leader."
"…you do?" Ruby shifted a little more onto her side, hugging Yang's pillow. "I thought I was an insufferable little red-"
"Okay, no, well, mostly," Weiss massaged her temple. She tried again. "What I'm trying to say is I think we should continue to be team partners... or maybe... friends... but that's it."
Ruby's expression went quizzical, "Uh... Weiss, what are you talking about?"
"Nothing. Nevermind," she was a flustered idiot talking to a stupid idiot on heavy pain medication. Weiss focused back on removing the too-high bandage.
Ruby settled back into watching her work through a drugged haze. The heiress's hands were quick and precise, unwinding the old gauze. It stuck in places, but she was gentle getting it loose. Now she was saying something Ruby didn't quite catch. "Mm?"
"I said I'm going to get some water to clean this up," she repeated. "Don't go anywhere."
"Mm," Ruby still wondered a little about what Weiss had been trying to tell her before, but all that stuck in her mind was that she'd said 'partners' and 'friends', and, well, all of that sounded good to Ruby. She turned onto her side, snuggling into the blankets and drifting off to sleep.
Ruby's wound was an impressive slash- almost as long as Weiss's forearm. It had been stitched, where it could be stitched, but the edges hadn't been even and there were a handful of less serious scrapes alongside the main one, which almost made it look like Ruby had been chewed on rather than slammed by a rat's tail. The injury itself seemed to have improved a little since she'd first witnessed it being dressed in the infirmary, but it still wasn't healing as quickly as it should have been. Weiss would just have to watch it and keep it clean, which right now translated to taking care of the dried blood crusted around the edges of the wound.
She chose an empty mug off the bookcase.
Team RWBY's bathroom was obviously out of the question as a source of water, so she slipped out into the deserted hallway, shutting the door softly behind her.
Weiss straightened her jacket and brushed her hair into place. Then, steeling herself a little, she knocked on Team JNPR's door.
After a few moments, the door clicked and opened to reveal Pyrrha, already in her night clothes. The taller girl stared down at the heiress, trying and failing completely to veil her surprise. "...Weiss?"
Why was she visiting so late? Green eyes darted to team RWBY's door, fearing the worst. Had something gone wrong? Had Weiss been kicked out? Opening the door a little wider, Pyrrha stepped forward.
"Is everything all right?" she asked, concern evident in her tone.
Weiss stood very straight to make up for the difference in height between herself and the crimson-haired warrior.
"Ruby and I are not a couple, nor are we even remotely interested in becoming one," she lifted her chin, glaring at the taller girl as if daring her to offer a contradiction. "Also, I need to use your sink."
Pyrrha blinked at the sudden declaration. She frowned under the heiress's icy glare, saddened slightly at her apparent choice to hide. Of course, she'd always known Weiss to be exceedingly practical. It made sense that she wouldn't want to pursue things out in the open with her family name on the line.
This must be her way of asking for things to be kept quiet. Well, she could definitely keep a secret. A soft smile graced Pyrrha's features as she stepped aside to allow Weiss through the doorway. "Of course. Come in."
Weiss strode past Pyrrha into Team JNPR's room. The light was still on but it appeared that the team was getting ready for bed. Nora bounced on the edge of hers, clearly incapable of holding still for more than a few seconds at a time. Lie Ren was under the covers of the next bed over. Only his dark hair and its pink stripe were visible. Jaune was stripping off his gear.
"Hey Pyrr-AAH, whoa, uh, Weiss!" the blonde swordsman fumbled his sweatshirt as he turned, holding it over his bare chest, as if he had anything to cover.
It was at this point that Weiss realized she had made a grievous miscalculation.
She had planned for this to be an in-and-out sort of operation. Go in, mostly ignore Pyrrha and Jaune, get some water, and get out. Lie Ren and his partner weren't supposed to be here; for Dust's sake, he'd gotten stabbed through the chest. By all accounts, he should have still been in intensive care.
She barely had time to register the scope of her error and vow to send Lie Ren back to the intensive care unit herself before Nora sprang from the bed.
"Heya Weiss! Have you kissed Ruby any recently? Jaune said you guys were all over each other, but I thought you were probably just wrestling, after all who knocks over chairs when they kiss? Unless you two were really into it, in which case, wow you must really be keeping that warm fuzzy side of you under wraps," Nora threw her arms around the heiress's shoulder in an ecstatic side-hug, "I mean, I didn't even know you liked girls! Isn't that crazy?"
"I-what?- no- get your hands off of me!" Weiss shoved at the other girl, ducking to get out from under the hammer wielder's unwelcome embrace.
"Whoa, guys, hey," Jaune, his shirt on inside-out and backwards, broke in between his teammate and the heiress to separate them before Weiss totally lost it, "Let's… uh… actually maybe let's not-"
"You-!" Weiss buried her fists in his collar, dragging him down to her eye-level, "What did you say about me and Ruby?!"
"Nothing!" Jaune squeaked in terror, hands raised in surrender. "Well, I mean, you were on top of her in the dark and it just came out when I opened my mouth and oh Dust please don't kill me."
A pair of strong arms suddenly wrapped around the heiress from behind, lifting her bodily off of the ground and away from Jaune.
"I'm sorry!" was Pyrrha's only explanation as she physically deposited Weiss back into the hallway and shut the door.
Moments later, the door opened again, and Pyrrha placed a bottle of water in Weiss's empty hand, looking nervous. "Don't worry, I'll explain things to them - I promise."
With one last apologetic smile, the red-head shut the door again to prevent her teammates from getting themselves killed.
When Weiss found herself suddenly ejected into the hallway, she was too blisteringly angry to even speak. The effect abated somewhat after the door shut in her face for the second time and she clenched her fists at her side with an infuriated shriek. The nerve- the absolute gall.
Crimson from her neck to the tips of her ears, she marched back to her own room and fumbled with the keys, muttering acid plans to send all of Team JNPR to the ER. At last, she stepped back in to the half-lit room. She'd apparently left the cap off the container of rubbing alcohol from when she cleaned up the marker on Ruby's face all those hours ago, so the room had a faintly antiseptic smell on top of that college-dorm-unwashed-sheets smell.
She scowled briefly at the hanging bunk where she'd be spending the night. Why hadn't she thought to put Ruby's sheets in the laundry earlier? Ugh. Well, that would be the first thing on the list tomorrow.
The bathroom door was still shut and Yang and Blake were nowhere to be seen. Weiss growled under her breath. Great. They'd probably both passed out on the floor, or in the shower. She'd have to check to make sure they hadn't drowned after she finished re-bandaging Ruby.
The little red dolt was exactly where she'd left her, conked out on the mattress on the floor. Weiss paused in the middle of the room, taking a couple of deep breathes to calm down.
Fix Ruby up now. Plan funerals later.
She fetched another handkerchief from a drawer at her desk and sat back on the mattress with her partner. "Wake up, Ruby."
"Hmn?" she stirred at the bounce in the springs, but didn't lift her head, "What's the matter?"
"Nothing's the matter. Let me do this and you can sleep again," Weiss dampened the handkerchief and touched it to the edge of Ruby's wound. That treacherous flush was creeping back up on her. She darted her eyes to Ruby's for a second. "Tell me if it hurts and I'll stop."
"Mmkay," Ruby mumbled and proceeded to drool on Yang's pillow.
For a while, Weiss tried to hold onto some of her anger, but she really couldn't be upset and gentle at the same time, and dealing with injuries required gentleness, so she set aside the whole incident across the hall and focused on getting rid of the dried blood and gunk that edged her partner's wound.
It was… really unnerving to look at. It had been, what? A day and a half? Injuries like this, well… usually one's aura could have it patched up in an hour. At least Ruby's should have been able to handle this. Poison, though, Weiss reminded herself. There was poison, and doubtless that threw a wrench into the works somehow.
She finished cleaning up the dried blood and pretty soon had a square bandage over the wound and was wrapping it in fresh gauze from the bottom up. "Next time, injure your wrist, or your knee," Weiss grumbled as she rolled the hem of Ruby's shorts up an extra turn to give herself more room, "Someplace at least mostly decent."
After what felt like ages, Blake finally pulled the last bit of gauze from Yang's back, leaving only the trail of reddened square bandages covering her stitches. The brawler twisted around, curious. "How does it look?"
"Like you've been moving around too much," came Blake's deadpan reply. She prodded her partner back into standing straight before peeling the squares off one by one. The stitches underneath didn't look too bad, but they definitely needed cleaning. "Hold still."
Yang nonchalantly crossed her arms in a failed attempt to somewhat cover herself as Blake moved to grab a clean white washcloth and some kind of plastic bottle from underneath the sink. Fortunately her wild mane of hair covered what her arms could not.
She eyed the label on the bottle in her partner's hands as Blake moved closer - peroxide. Her face fell. "This is gonna sting, isn't it?" She didn't expect the lazy smile that suddenly flitted across her partner's features.
"Probably."
Yang took the peroxide like a champ, wincing more from the sheer cold of the liquid than the sting. Satisfied with her work, Blake capped the bottle of peroxide and put it back underneath the sink, grabbing the stack of sterile pads beside it. She turned to stare and Yang's back and paused.
She really had no idea what she was doing.
Weiss was the one who'd been given all the medical care instructions. Blake furrowed her brows at the fluffy white squares in her hand, amber eyes glassy from the medication. It shouldn't be that difficult, she just had to place these pads on her partner's back without them falling off. So, standing wouldn't work. Laying down maybe? But then how would she wrap the bandages afterwards...
"Uh... Blake?" Yang's voice broke through her musing.
Blake blinked up at her partner. "Huh?"
"Are you OK over there?" The brawler had turned around, arms still crossed, one golden eyebrow arched over a smile.
One amber eye tracked a particularly wild curl of hair swaying back and forth as Yang shifted her weight. "I'm fine... maybe a little tired." She motioned to the floor. "Could you get on all fours for me?" Blake barely suppressed a smirk as all color drained from her partner's face. "I need to put these on your back," she continued, holding up the sterile pads.
"Oh - right! Yeah, sure... ok..." Yang shook her head, smile returning as she turned around and got down on the floor. "Like this?"
"Yes." Blake half-smiled as she knelt to put the squares into place across Yang's stitches, layering them like scales on a dragon. Blinking slowly, she picked up the gauze and started the long process of wrapping up Yang's torso.
She was about halfway up the brawler's back when that wild mane of hair became a problem. Not because it was getting in the way of anything, but because it hung tantalizingly in the air, swaying back and forth... and back... and forth... Blake froze.
"...Hey, why'd you stop?" Yang looked down, realizing the bandages had just about reached her chest. "Aw, don't tell me you're nervous, it's just me." Yang turned to look back at her partner just in time to get a face-full of her own hair. Before she could recover, Blake struck again, swatting at her hair like... like a...
"You're on pain medication again aren't you."
Her only response was a contented purr.
Weiss sat back on her heels with a small sigh of relief. Ruby was medicated, bandaged, and sleeping like a log. As a final touch, she'd pulled the covers off of Ruby's bunk and laid them out neatly over the younger girl so she wouldn't wake up whining about being cold.
What next? Well... Yang and Blake had yet to make an appearance. Also it was getting late. Weiss crossed to the bathroom door, stifling a yawn. She desperately needed some rest herself. As in, the day really needed to end before anyone else accosted her with assumptions about her relationship with her team leader.
She would sleep after she checked on the other half of the team. Yang's voice came muted through the door, and she didn't seem to be screaming in pain or anything. That was always a good sign. Weiss knocked a couple of times and tried the knob. It was locked.
"Are you two alright in there?" she called, more than a little suspicious about whatever was going on. "Do you need anything? I'm going to bed if you don't."
Muffled bits of speech punctuated with scuffling noises drifted through the door, getting clearer as the source came closer.
"Blake, wait, hey c'mon that tickles, I'm just trying to - woah heyyyyy, all right." The door to the bathroom clicked, then swung open. Yang stood tall - disheveled, half-bandaged, topless, and with Blake practically hanging off of her neck, face buried up to her uncovered cat ears in the brawler's hair.
Amethyst eyes quickly traveled over to Ruby, then slowly returned to focus on Weiss. "So, we still need to talk."
The heiress had already turned, however, and was marching back to her bed.
Done.
She was done.
She shed her boots and tucked them under the edge of the now unoccupied lower bunk, tossed her hair ornament on the bookcase, and got under the covers fully dressed.
The day was officially over.
Only after she had pulled the blankets up over her head did she realize that Yang still needed her next dose of antitoxin.
"Oh, someone please just shoot me," she growled under her breath, shutting her eyes and pulling the covers close to block out the world for another couple of seconds.
It took a moment, but once she got over the shock of being completely ignored, Yang tried to follow Weiss, stumbling under the added dead weight of her partner.
"Wait, come back - I wanted to say I'm sorrUGH" she tripped over one of Blake's legs mid-sentence, faceplanting unceremoniously to the floor right by Ruby's feet.
Blake nimbly avoided falling, letting go of the toppling brawler at the last second. She sat by her prone partner and stared down at her, cat ears alert and twitching. Suppressing a groan, Yang turned her head slightly to squint up at the intense amber eye currently locked on her. Slowly, deliberately, Blake stretched out one hand... and placed it on Yang's face.
Weiss hadn't heard a word Yang had said. Now, cursing herself for being too responsible to let her partner's sister succumb to Grimm poison, she threw back the covers, bracing herself to deal with her half-naked teammate... who was sprawled flat on the rug in the middle of the floor.
"Don't move. Don't. Move." If there was one thing she most certainly did not need to see (again), it was topless Yang. Weiss swung her legs over the side of the bed, undoing the clasps on the case of antitoxin while her mind worked a mile a minute.
What had been going on in the bathroom? Did she really want to know?
Deciding that she didn't, Weiss banished any further consideration of the matter and finished prepping the syringe with amber liquid. Six more rounds of this meant three, maybe four more days of heavy pain medication. Possibly five, but the two sisters could surely work through the pain by then. So five days, tops. She could handle five days. After that, they could all be heavy-pain-killer free for the rest of their recovery time. No problem. Everything would be fine.
She approached her two teammates with a healthy amount of caution, holding the needle behind and away from herself, just in case. "Yang, I'm giving you your dose of antitoxin. Don't get up. I swear, if you get up, I will be extremely unhappy."
Yang held still and said nothing, simply staring up at Weiss through Blake's fingers. She glanced briefly at Blake's cat ears as they twisted towards the approaching heiress. That couldn't be good... Blake's fingers left the brawler's face as she stood and stepped towards Weiss in one fluid motion. Blake paused for a brief moment, staring intently, before leaning forward and rubbing her face against the heiress's cheek.
All of Weiss's self-assurance went out the window. She recoiled from the Faunus girl, stumbling over the throw-up trash can and crashing into the bookcase.
One of the tiny shelf supports broke, sending novels and textbooks tumbling to the floor. Weiss sat up with a groan, her free hand clapped to the back of her now-aching head. By some miracle, the syringe was still intact.
Startled by the sudden movement and noise, Blake sprang backwards as well, darting underneath Ruby's desk.
"Woah!" Yang pushed herself up off the ground, skirting around Ruby and scattered books to kneel at Weiss's side. She leaned over the heiress to inspect the back of her head - no blood, that much was good - then sat back on her heels. "Jeeze, you ok?"
A crinkling noise drew Yang's attention back to her partner, who was batting around one of the many crumpled up candy wrappers littering the floor under her little sister's desk. It was... dangerously cute. "Um... how much pain medication did you give her anyway?"
Two pills. Dust, should it have been one? Had they even been from the right bottle? Weiss was bent double, the syringe abandoned at the base of the bookcase, her face hidden in her hands, "Stop speaking to me and cover yourself, you imbecile."
Yang was half-naked and practically on top of her. Weiss hadn't let her hair down from its off-center ponytail when she'd gotten into bed earlier, which had been a mistake as it could have offered her at least a small amount of shielding. Even the back of her neck was red.
"Oh. Right." Yang backed off, but not before taking the roll of gauze from the now slightly less organized pile of medical supplies on top of the bookcase. "Uh, give me a minute..." Some of the sterile pads had fallen off of her upper back, but whatever, it was probably fine. Fumbling a bit with her hair, she set to finishing up her bandages.
Moving around so much ached a bit, but it was all right. Though, annoyingly persistent curls of her hair kept getting tangled in the bandages, which was a pain. Yang glanced at Weiss, momentarily considering asking her to help hold her hair back, but instead she just grinned at the heiress, who was still burning red.
Really, how had Weiss been expecting to change these bandages if she was going to get this embarrassed over a little bit of skin? It might be best to leave the task of redressing this thing to Blake again when the time came for it later. As if on cue, a clattering of pencils drew Yang's eyes to the Faunus in question, now perched atop Ruby's desk where the cup of writing utensils used to be, silently surveying her surroundings. Or, maybe she would ask Ruby for help.
The pajama-clad scythe-wielder curled up a little tighter on her side under her blankets, mumbling something incoherent into Yang's pillow. Probably a complaint against the noise.
Weiss, meanwhile, was moderately certain that she'd given Blake the right medication. Even having just suffered a blow to the head, she couldn't fathom making a mistake to that degree. There was just no way.
But there was also no denying the distinctly feline manner Blake had adopted. Her ears were perked. Her eyes were bright. She was knocking things off Ruby's desk. If they hadn't already known that Blake possessed certain catlike characteristics as part of her Faunus heritage, they would certainly have found out today!
Weiss held her hands up to her temples like blinders to block out Yang and halfway forgot about how horrible the current situation was as she watched Blake. Why on earth was she acting that way? Lowered inhibitions? Some kind of instinct that remained functional when the rest of her mind was impaired by pain killers?
Whatever the case, this would be a most opportune time to procure a little blackmail material on her unfortunate teammate.
If Weiss were the blackmailing type, anyway. Which of course she wasn't.
At least she would never use it.
...
Oh, who was she kidding? Weiss plucked her scroll out of her jacket pocket, activating its video recording feature, then held it up in her free hand so Blake was in the shot.
Lights, camera, action.
Though she had been concentrating on one of Ruby's endless pieces of candy - one with an especially crinkly wrapper - the tiny beep signaling Weiss's scroll beginning to record caught Blake's attention. In less than a second her ears swiveled forward, her amber eye honed in on the red recording light, and she tensed into a crouch.
Yang looked up as well, glancing from Weiss to Blake, and back again. Weiss was recording Blake's antics, awesome! Blake was carefully tracking the red dot of light on Weiss's scroll. That... might be less awesome. "Uh... Weiss-"
The heiress had maybe a fraction of a second between realizing exactly why Blake was crouching down so low and the actual pounce. Her eyes flickered up from the screen, wide with panic.
It was too late. In two swift bounds, Blake leaped from the desk and pounced on the red light, and by proxy, Weiss.
The impact slammed then back into the bookcase again, sending more books slewing across the floor as Weiss struggled under the full weight of the cat Faunus. "Blake," she tried to wrestle the scroll away and get out from under her at the same time, "Get. Off!"
Yang moved towards them to intercept, but just as quickly as she had attacked, Blake wrenched the shiny red light from Weiss's hands and retreated, jumping up into Ruby's bunk in a single swift movement. Eye patch knocked askew from the scuffle, she gripped Weiss's scroll firmly between her teeth and crouched once more, eyes and ears focused on the heiress.
Yang stared up at her partner, face slowly breaking into a grin. "I really wish I had a laser pointer right now."
Weiss hauled herself up on the bookcase and stood in the middle of the spill of books and medical supplies, her uniform a disheveled mess. She scowled up at her teammate in the bunk bed- did she have her scroll in her mouth?! "Okay. Not funny. Give it back."
Yang nudged a textbook out of the way with her foot to stand next to Weiss. She gave her bandages a quick cursory check - messy, irregular, but they covered everything... More or less. Eh, it was good enough. She glanced at Weiss. "Do you think Blake can understand us right now?"
Just as the words left the brawler's mouth, Weiss's scroll clattered to the floor. Blake's gaze had shifted again, now locked on the long swishing ponytail trailing down the heiress's side.
"Does that answer your question?" Weiss rolled her eyes when Blake dropped her scroll. It was entirely possible that this whole act-like-a-cat thing was, in fact, an act. Granted Blake didn't seem like the type to pull this sort of stunt. Oh well.
She knelt to retrieve the sturdy device, not even paying attention to the way her hair followed her arm, draping along her sleeve, "Anyway, thanks for just dropping it on the floor, Blake. If it's broken, I'm blaming you, pain killers or no."
The attack was swift. It was silent. Not even Yang could react in time as Blake sprang from Ruby's bed, descending upon Weiss like a Nevermore swooping down on its prey, flattening her target to the floor. She stretched languidly atop the heiress's back before lying on top of her and burying her face in those alluring white tresses.
To Weiss, it felt more like having a full-grown Ursa Major land on her back, with the small exception that she was still alive several seconds afterwards. Alive, with the breath knocked clean out of her and a very heavy, very medicated Blake lying on top of her and doing something to her hair.
Weiss gasped in an attempt to get more air into her lungs and tried to push herself up on her elbows, but she was quite pinned under the far-too-affectionate- ferocious?- Faunus. She tried to give getting her wind back priority over whatever her teammate was doing to her but the latter was truly a large concern. Was that Blake's face against the back of her neck? Was that Blake's tongue?! Weiss managed a small, choked sound.
At the same time as all of this, Ruby was whining somewhere behind her, "Why are you guys so loud...? Did somebody fall out of bed?"
Yang glanced at her sister and smiled. "You could say that." Seeing that Weiss was in no position to escape on her own, the brawler bent down, cautiously reached around Blake's middle, and hefted the squirming Faunus up off of Weiss and into a standing position.
"Hey now Blake, you can't just go around pouncing on teammates like that." Blake fought her partner's grip for a short while, but ultimately gave up and slumped forward to hang limp in Yang's arms, ears lowered and looking dejected.
"Y-you-" Weiss coughed, still unable to draw a full breath. She gripped the edge of the bed and used it to get to her hands and knees, snarling, "I'm... going to lock you... into a person-sized cat carrier," a deeper breath this time, "for the rest of your life."
Yang pulled Blake closer to herself and took a step back, looking horrified. "Oh my god Weiss, you can't just say things like that to a Faunus!"
Blake's ears flattened in fear and she began to squirm again, trying to get as far away as possible from the heiress that was currently radiating pure fury in her direction.
"No? Then how about this," Weiss hauled herself upright, squaring her shoulders and pointing at the cowering Blake, "Get into bed right now and stay there before I freeze you to your mattress for the duration of the school year," she shifted her icy glare to Yang, "And that goes for you too. I don't care if you're half naked anymore. That's fine! But I am going to give you this shot of antitoxin if it kills me. Or you. Whichever. I am seriously beyond caring at this point."
"Ok, OK." Yang held up a hand in a gesture of peace, keeping a hold on her partner with the other. By the end of Weiss's tirade, Blake had turned completely around to bury her face into Yang's shoulder, opting to hide as escape apparently wasn't an option. The brawler squinted, both in incredulity at Weiss, and in pain. Blake was gripping her shoulder very tightly, and it hurt a little.
Well, everything hurt, actually. She had just been ignoring it for the better part of an hour now. Yang knew she needed her next shot, but Weiss looked as though she was about ready to stab her in the eye with it if she wasn't careful, and the pain medication probably wouldn't help much with that. Anyway, the ice queen was certainly living up to her title.
Yang inched backwards towards Blake's bed and sat down, pulling her shaking partner up into her lap as best she could. She'd never seen Blake this afraid of anything. Granted, she'd never seen Weiss this angry. She marveled at how the heiress could be so cool in battle, but could be set off so easily almost anywhere else. Really, what did Ruby see in this girl? She glanced at her little sister, staring up at Weiss with those bright silver eyes.
A thought struck her then. What if Ruby liked it when Weiss got angry? What if... she thought it was cute?! Even she had to admit, the heiress was beautiful. Was her little sister a fan of the pretty, angry-but-easily-flustered types? Thinking about it that way, things started to make sense.
Weiss did get angry pretty often... and it was usually at Ruby... and Ruby would usually smile and... oh man. Her little sister had it bad. She would definitely have to talk to her tomorrow... Blake tensed in her arms as Weiss's icy gaze bored into them both. ...That is, if she survived the night.
The heiress had her hand on the back of her hair. Was that drool? Oh, Blake was going to pay for this. Weiss shut her eyes for a second trying to sort out the dozen threats- threats as in promises- all leaping to the front of her mind.
Fortunately for the cat Faunus, Ruby made a timid interruption, "Hey, um, Weiss?"
Abandoning the threats, Weiss snapped, "What?"
The younger girl cringed and averted her eyes, "Could I maybe have some water? I mean, if right now's not good that's okay, just I feel kind of hot and..." she trailed off, rubbing her forehead with the back of her wrist.
Weiss stood, completely derailed, as her partner rambled. She was still under the influence of the pain medication, as was the rest of her team. Right. Weiss scowled. She was dealing with semi-invalids.
"... fine." she answered Ruby. She picked her way through the mess of books to get the mug left on the top of the bookcase. Her gaze cut back to the pair on the bed, "Don't. Move." and she stalked to the bathroom.
Ruby waited till the tap was running to turn to Yang. She gave her a brief, sleepy thumbs-up and held a finger to her lips for silence.
When Weiss returned, she was notably calmer. "Here," she gave Ruby the mug of water. Then she located the syringe and the bottle of rubbing alcohol and turned to Yang, eyes hard with some vestiges of her previous anger, "Are you going to grab me or try to climb on my back or something? Because if so, I just want you to know that I will happily facilitate your being unconscious for this."
Yang took Ruby's advice and stayed silent, avoiding Weiss's gaze and simply shaking her head. Amazing. Her little sister was amazing. One small request and just like that, the heiress seemed at least 50% less likely to murder them on sight. Ruby's ability to defuse Weiss was unparalleled. She loosened her hold on Blake, absentmindedly straightening out her partner's skewed eye patch.
Thunder struck at that precise moment, spooking the already stressed Faunus. Blake bolted - her lack of depth perception finally catching up with her as her shoulder caught one of the stacks of books holding up Yang's bed, knocking them free. The bed frame teetered for a split second, then slid sideways and collapsed, right on top of its stunned owner.
"Yang!" Ruby dropped her mug and tried to get up and help get the solid wooden bed frame off her sister while Wiess stood staring. While she may have threatened to knock Yang out, she hadn't meant for Yang to actually receive a blow to the head. Thunder rolled again and she snapped out of it, setting the syringe by the mattress on the floor and helping Ruby lift.
"Okay, get out from under it," she growled to the brawler as she shifted her grip to get her shoulder under the edge of the hefty frame. It wasn't all that heavy without the actual mattress, unless you were, say, getting clocked with it. It was big, though, and unevenly weighted.
A low stream of curses emanated from the brawler as she slid out from underneath the frame and flopped to the floor. She refused to move. Everything was pain. And yet, in her final moments of consciousness she managed one last strangled whisper, "wow Blake... you really got the bedder of me..."
Ruby sat down hard next to her sister after that effort, her head swimming. "Okay. Ow. For both my head and that pun."
Weiss let the bed frame fall back into place on top of Blake's bunk. "I told you this arrangement was incredibly dangerous," she watched the fallen bed a moment, as if she expected it might rear up and strike again.
If Yang had been able to make jokes, she couldn't be too bad off. Then again, she was unconscious now. And her shoulder was bleeding. Great- she'd ripped some of her stitches, most likely. "Ruby, are you alright?"
"Me? Yeah, of course," she tugged at her sister, trying to straighten her out on the mattress a little, but... "... there's blood. Is she okay?"
"Just hang on," Weiss climbed over to the bookcase for the last of the bandages. She'd thought it was ridiculous, the amount of materials the infirmary had given her. Ha! Well. That would teach her to not expect her teammates to re-injure themselves at least two or three times daily.
Kneeling back over Yang on the mattress, she scowled at the tangle of bandages and cotton pads. Well, she'd just have to do something temporary till the brawler could sit upright for her.
A little gauze and medical tape later, Yang was no longer bleeding freely on the ripped curtain (which was thankfully already red. Had Beacon's color scheme been chosen with this sort of scenario in mind?) Weiss also took the opportunity to administer her second dose of antitoxin, though Yang couldn't very well take painkillers. She was not going to be in good shape when she woke up, but for now Weiss had done what she could. Yang was stable, resting easy. Ruby had drifted back into a drug-induced slumber. Weiss breathed a sigh of relief, and then remembered Blake.
Blake. Who was currently out of her mind on pain meds and just might soon be suffering an early demise. She whipped her head to the side, searching for the Faunus girl.
The room was silent save for the ceaseless thunder and rain. Blake was notably absent. A small creaking noise came from the darkened bathroom.
Weiss got up, eyeing the darkness of in the bathroom with an air of suspicion. She crossed the room slowly, quiet in her stocking feet, and shut the door.
Maybe, what with the medication and all, Blake had forgotten how to use doorknobs.
The heiress could only hope.
She shed her jacket, cut her desk light off, and collapsed into her bunk, completely spent.
Hours later, in the dead of night, the storm finally subsided.
One lone amber eye peeked out from underneath Weiss's bed. Blake crept out into the open. Slowly, quietly, she surveyed her surroundings, ears high on full alert. Brightness caught her eye, and she turned back to face Weiss's bed. Moonlight peeking through from the freshly parted clouds poured down onto the heiress's snow white hair, which was draped over her shoulder again.
Enamored, Blake crept up onto Weiss's bed, careful not to wake her. She gently pushed herself under the heiress's arm, letting those alluring white locks of hair fall all around her face. Releasing a quiet, contented purr, she curled right up to Weiss and joined her teammates in some much-needed sleep.