Ruby blinked. "You… huh?"

"I… uh," Weiss fumbled for words, anything to overwrite what she had just said. Unfortunately, nothing came.

"You like girls?" Ruby probed, whole body shifting to face Weiss.

Weiss tried to say anything to fix her mistake, but the position she was in left her dumb. Talking about girls, fancying them, while in a bed with the girl she may or may not have such a fancy for? It was too much to talk past. Red bloomed across her face.

A beaming smile split Ruby's face. "You do!"

"I— I do not!" Weiss denied, scrambling out of the bed and thumping hard on the floor. She pushed herself as far back as she could. Her back pressed against a wall. She realized their room was tiny.

Ruby loomed over the edge of the bed, neck stretched as far towards Weiss as possible. "So I'm not alone! Yes!" The smith pumped a fist into the air and dropped down. She rolled onto her back, peering upside-down at the heiress.

Weiss gulped. She wished she could think about anything but how cute this girl was. "Alone?"

Ruby nodded. "Yeah, I thought my sister and I were the only ones."

"Your… sister?" Weiss intoned.

"Yeah, Yang. Blonde, usually wears armor because she's a Huntress," the smith described. "Have you seen her in the stands?"

Weiss thought back, then nodded. That was her sister?

"She kinda introduced me to the whole idea, but she kinda talks about it like it's a normal thing," she remarked. "I think all her time as a Huntress might've given her some strange ideas."

"Is it really that strange?" Weiss asked, suddenly insecure.

"Oh yeah. Really weird. I mean, girls can't even have kids together."

The heiress' blush had only just started to settle down, but the idea of having kids with Ruby surged to the forefront of her mind and made it redouble. "W-well, it might not be impossible, per se. Magic can do strange things."

"Well, it's still not right," Ruby stated.

Weiss blinked, then raised an eyebrow. Not right?So was she wrongfor this? Did this make her a bad person? She certainly didn't think so. Odd, maybe, but not bad. "Well who made you the arbiter of right and wrong?" Weiss countered, her challenging words rising with indignance.

Ruby flipped back over and propped herself on her elbows, clearly taken aback by the heiress' shift in tone. "Huh? Arbiter?"

"Since when do youmake the rules?" Weiss restated.

Ruby's brow creased into a heavy furrow. "I'm not saying I make the rules, it's just nature."

"Nature?" The heiress pushed herself back to her feet and puffed her chest. "Is nature perfectly right?"

"Uh, yes?"

Weiss pursed her lips. An idea sparked in her mind, like a long-forgotten candle suddenly awoken. "Do you know what a cuckoo is?"

The smith nodded slowly.

"Do you know how they breed?"

Ruby recoiled, struck by the odd question. "No?"

Weiss' gaze sharpened as it locked onto the girl before her, who gathered herself into a sitting position. "Cuckoos do not lay their eggs in their own nests. They lay them in other birds' nests, among the other eggs."

Ruby cocked her head. "Why?"

"Because they are parasites by nature," Weiss recalled, quoting an old book from when she had time to read. "Their eggs hatch faster than the other eggs, and their young grow more quickly. Since they came out first, the cuckoo babies have more time to grow, meaning they will be considerably larger than the others in their nest. They will constantly hound the mother for food, stealing it away from the other babies. They can even force the other hatchlings out of the nest, where they will surely die."

"That's not fair," Ruby stated.

"No, it's not, but it is their nature," she explained. "So who are you to say that nature is always right?"

"W-well," Ruby stammered as she tried to produce a counter-argument. She never was good at this kind of thing. "We aren't animals. We have our own rules outside of nature."

Weiss hummed. "Oh, so it isn't about nature?"

"N-no," Ruby flushed with embarrassment, hands wringing. "We, uh… there's just a way things are meant to be, okay?"

The heiress pursed her lips. "So you were meant to like girls? And that makes you, what, evil?"

"I'm not evil!" Ruby raised her voice in defense. "I'm just not—"

"Natural?" Weiss interrupted, her arms folding over her chest as she repressed a smirk. She loved an argument, especially one she was winning, but holding her victory over Ruby felt wrong.

Ruby stammered as she tried to grasp for something, but no answer came. She sagged. "I… I don't know. I just… it doesn't seem right."

"Why not?"

"I don't know!" The smith whined. "Do you think it's normal?"

Weiss' smug satisfaction suddenly sank. She'd made a compelling argument, but she'd made it without reflecting the ideas onto herself. "W-well, I, er…"

Ruby pointed at the heiress with a smug grin. "See? I told you!"

Weiss' arms fell back to her sides as her shoulder sagged. Was she really abnormal? She didn't want to be, but she couldn't just stow away her burgeoning feelings. She fancied girls. Ruby fancied girls. Ruby's sister fancied girls, but Weiss distinctly remembered scampering away from that woman's room when they'd heard her… fancying a fellow named Blake. "Wait, you said your sister also…"

"Yeah," Ruby said with a nod. "I guess she liked Blake more than I thought."

"Blake?" Ruby hadn't mentioned a Blake herself, but that was definitely the name her sister had been calling. And if she was calling his name, didn't that disprove that they weren't alone in liking girls?

"She's my friend," Ruby answered. "Yang must've gotten to her when they went out for drinks."

Weiss blinked. She had never met a woman named Blake.

The heiress sat back on the bed and folded her hands under her chin. So they weren't alone, and she wasn't so abnormal. She thought the idea would bring her some comfort, but it didn't. It just brought clarity. She was normal. Ruby was normal. Liking girls was normal. Liking Ruby was normal.

The room became silent, and the air grew uncomfortably thick with epiphany.

"Weird, isn't it?" Ruby said as she scooted beside the pondering heiress.

"No," Weiss said with grim clarity. "It's perfectly normal."

Ruby blinked, but didn't say anything. She joined Weiss in thoughtful silence as their gazes burned into a spot on the wall. Side-by-side, they could feel each other's warmth, and hadn't even realized that they'd been inching closer until Weiss fully leaned into Ruby. Rather than push her away, she wrapped an arm around the heiress' shoulders. The strained energy of the room slowly melted as the two grew comfortable.

"S-so, uh, Weiss," Ruby whispered. "Don't you—"

The heiress' warm body suddenly shook, then relaxed as she exhaled.

Weiss was snoring.

AN: sorry this took so long lol, this one was really hard to do. mainly because i finished the second TC chapter and im writing a third, but i also had a first draft that wasted a ton of my time. next chapter should be way easier to hit a stride with. again, sorry for makin yall wait so long for a short chapter. the end of this is finding its way to me a lot quicker than i expected.