Chapter 4: Would You Be My Little Quarantine?

"Peg you? I've got you pegged as an absolute fuckin' loser."

— 12 —

By Weiss' own estimation, it was so late at night that it had become Saturday by the time she snuck out of the room. Everyone but her was asleep, tucked into their beds and gone for the night. Everyone except for her, because she had the project. No matter how late into the night it took her, she would complete it, and it would be her masterpiece. All would look upon her works and despair.

Wearing a fresh silk camisole—a tactical loss of blood having stained and ruined the old one—she closed the door behind her as quietly as she could. It wouldn't do to let them know. This was her secret. Her project. Even if, when she thought about it, pretty much everybody could have figured it out based on what she had been doing the entire evening. And so she crept down the hallway towards the kitchen.

She'd always fantasized about doing this back home. Having the courage to leave her room at night and just do whatever. Like an old prince in one of those fairy tales, sneaking out behind her father's back to mingle with the paupers. To get her hands dirty doing something. But it was an abstract kind of desire; the poorest place in Atlas had been the city of Mantle below, and its poorest district had been the Gash. She would sooner be dead than found there. Or, well, technically, the two would probably coincide. A girl like her would probably be murdered in the Gash. So perhaps her idea of slumming it was just to go to a nice middle class neighborhood diner and eat a hamburger, violating her strict diet in secrecy without risking getting actually murdered by the dispossessed of the city.

In her earbuds, Lapiné sang Ich weiß es noch wie Heute, a song in one of the old dialects of Mansk about one's first lost love. At least that's what the accompanying song translation claimed it to be. It's not like she spoke anything but her own native language. She was too proper to debase herself with some low-class, backwater tongue. Still, it sounded suitably dramatic for her purposes. Her project.

Weiss arrived before the timer went off, giving her a moment in the silence of the music to contemplate the ultimate project of the night. She stared through the glass with wonder and awe. Almost too long. She opened the oven up, used her Semblance to summon a glyph beneath the baking tray, and pulled it out.

They were a perfect golden brown. Fresh baked dough formed into little rings around an upside down cupcake tray for the holes. She marveled at them. How they didn't puff away like soufflé caught with its dress down. The smell was divine. Her project was complete, and it was all she could hope for.

Bagels.

Not burnt, not undercooked, perfectly mixed. This would not be joining the nearly two pounds of burnt crisps currently hiding in the garbage bin.

Now all that was left was to let them cool and to—aw, to heck with it! She picked one up, only to hiss in pain as it singed her fingertips. Hissing in a breath, she tossed it between hands like a hot potato until it stopped burning. Still warm, though. And when she finally took a bite, she couldn't help herself.

"Yes!" Weiss yelled through her hand. She pumped a fist, and then was unable to stop herself from just punching the air victoriously. Left hook, right jab, pirouette, and jump!

She quickly realized what she was doing, and had a panicked moment when she thought someone might have seen her. But no, she was all alone. Just the darkness of the kitchen common room and a vague light from one of the side common areas.

Oh, this was absolutely perfect. Simply marvelous. Hours upon hours of slaving away in the food room, and she finally managed to make something that probably wouldn't kill anybody. She would probably ask anyone who ate them to sign a waiver, just in case. But that was a problem for tomorrow! Her teammates were going to be so surprised and they were going to love them and it was going to be the best thing ever and she would be the best girl ever and—

She shadow boxed again, taking bites between every single jab. Weiss had finally done it! She may have been flailing around so much that her headphones slid down to her neck, but she was invincible.

The world would learn the true terror of Weiss Schnee, Bagelmaker! Now all that was left was to learn how to use a vacuum cleaner and she would be properly, uh—the word that first came to mind was domesticated, but that had the wrong connotation. You couldn't domesticate yourself. Unless you were a cat, she supposed. They chose a human based on their own whims and just decided to stick around with the species. She wondered if it had any effect on Blake's psychology.

Weiss shook her head. She had been awake for nearly twenty hours, and now the weird thoughts were getting to her. It didn't stop her from giggling to herself as she individually wrapped every single bagel in fibre plastique wrap to preserve freshness. She covered the plate of wrapped bagels in tin foil, because it just felt like the thing to do.

Now all that was left was to avoid skipping down the hallway and sneak back into the room. Her teammates would have no idea what was coming to them in the morning—homemade breakfast! She didn't even bother putting her headphones back in as she crept her way back down the hallway.

Which was the only reason why she heard the singing. A soft, male voice from the side common room, the one filled with a couple of computers, chairs, and a TV for watching movies or whatever.

"And you could bring down my level of concern," he was singing softly. Decidedly on key for a song she didn't know. And as she poked her head past the doorway to see who was awake at this ungodly hour, she was both surprised and vaguely proud to find Jaune.

The room's window was cracked open, letting in a sliver of the winter cold outside. Naturally, the boy was shirtless, because of course he was. The only thing he was wearing were jeans and his weapons. Facing away from her, he was hunched over one of the computer desks, the monitor pushed aside so he could look over something. He seemed to be studying them intently, twirling a pen around in his left hand, and softly singing to himself.

"Just need you to tell me we're alright, tell me we're okay," he continued, nearly under his breath. If not for how quiet it was, she might not have noticed him at all, just presumed someone had left a light on.

It was kind of remarkable how well he'd taken to their occasional attempts to sing together. Even just doing it under his breath like this, she could tell he had taken her advice to heart. And the words of the song she didn't know were bubbling up from the heart to the tongue.

Jaune sat up slightly and flashed his Aura. The singing stopped. He turned around suddenly, his eyes meeting hers, and said, "Ain't you up late?"

Despite herself, she squeaked, flinching back out of the doorway. What was he doing here? The boy was supposed to be asleep! He should have been back from his detention shift hours ago! She could have sworn he was back in the room. Unless—had she actually dozed off for that long while waiting for the bagels to finish?

Weiss swallowed, nosing back into the doorway. "I could tell you the same thing," she said, refusing to be intimidated by his… whatever.

"Got some work to do," the boy said simply. "Didn't reckon I could get me to sleep with it left. You?"

She searched her memory for any particularly burdensome homework they had this week, and came up empty. "I also had some work to do."

He gestured his pen at her. "It got sommat to do with that thing you're hiding?"

Weiss bristled. How dare he make the perfectly regular observation that she was hiding something outside of the door frame. She thought about how she could lie and hide it, but realized that there was no way past the doorway without him seeing it. Jerk.

So instead, she parried. "Does yours have something to do with whatever is bothering you?"

Jaune regarded her evenly. "I said it was fine."

"You deflected," she said. "There's a big difference."

With this somewhat defensive look, he said, "What do it matter, girl?"

Her first reaction was to huff and tell him fine, what do I care? But then she thought back to Blake and Shamrock. While Jaune was gone, they had gotten into a scuffle of sorts. There had been things bothering all of them. It took just a bit of blood and violence to realize maybe you should ask. Maybe you should extend the olive branch and try to care. You would be amazed by the results simply being willing to listen could bring.

With a sigh, she stepped fully into the room, holding her plate of bagels. "You have been kind of killing yourself recently," she said. "It reminds me of when we first met, how you just kept doing whatever and didn't stop."

Once again, she thought back to the night they first met before Initiation. She'd run into him again when she was trying to talk to Pyrrha. Oh, who is me? he'd drunkenly replied to Pyrrha. Call me Fiendish Doctor Wang.

Before he looked Weiss over, eyeing her like it the first time they'd met. The old Jaune had nodded approvingly and said, Damn, baby, you so fine I'd suck your dad's dick to get a taste of what you're made of.

What is wrong with you?! Weiss had demanded, shoving the drunken, incomprehensible bastard away. Just touching him made her skin burn like some sexual disease.

Huh. Dunno. I'm just fuckin' nuts like gay fathers.

It still gave Weiss horrified little goosebumps all over when she thought of it.

But right here? Right now?

Jaune didn't make any kind of disturbingly creepy remark. He hadn't done that in months, no matter how much a part of her still expected it. Instead, he just looked grim. "Yeah. I think a part of me thought that if I just kept repeating them jokes, you would eventually find me funny and charming."

"I'm glad to see you found new material in the end."

"Does that mean I'm funny and charming yet?"

Weiss gave him the barest smile. "No." She allowed herself into the room properly, and sat down beside him. Ignoring the paperwork on the desk for the moment, she took the tin foil off her plate. "But here. I made bagels."

The look he gave her was so disbelieving that she almost wanted to laugh, and almost cry.

"I didn't know you baked."

"That's what the last several batches of bagels said."

"Bagels can talk?"

Weiss shook her head. "Technically, they can scream. But that's mostly just when they're burning, all the hissing of the water vapor. It gave me enough time to learn their hidden language and finally get it right. I'm practically the bagel whisperer now."

He grabbed one of the bagels and examined it. "Did… did you individually wrap these in plastic?"

"It's to preserve freshness."

Jaune laughed, shaking his head. "Fucking sociopath."

"We're in the same psychology class, remember?" she said, recounting something he once told her. "If you paid attention, you'd know that's not a real diagnosis."

Jaune either didn't get the joke or didn't remember he had said that once. For some reason, that hurt. But not as badly as when he put the bagel back on the plate.

"I'm good," he said, shifting in his seat. "I haven't eaten anything all day, and I kind of want to see how long I can keep that up."

Weiss folded her arms, frowning. "Does this have anything to do with you skipping breakfast to go running, or lunch to go to the gym?"

Jaune shrugged.

"Have you even been eating at all lately?"

"I been forgetting."

Weiss scowled. "Jaune Arc, if you don't eat this bagel right now and then tell me how it was the best thing you ever ate, I swear I will force feed you. You can't just forget to eat, Jaune!"

He arched an eyebrow. "You'd have to touch me to do that."

She met his eyes, unwilling to relent or give up no matter how he tried pushing her buttons. "Some things are worth debasing yourself for. Like the health of your teammates."

The boy regarded her for a very long moment, before taking the bagel back and unwrapping it. "I remember a time when you wanted me dead."

"I too remember right now." Weiss gave him a look. "But, seriously, what you're doing isn't healthy. I understand working yourself to the bone to look good and be fit, but there are limits to sanity. I doubt you have any body fat left to lose at this point. Have you seen yourself? I mean, it's pretty impossible not to; it's like you are allergic to shirts."

"That's for health concerns, the shirt," he said.

She scoffed. "How so?"

He gestured at his chest.

"What?" she asked with a sour face. "Please don't say something like I have to show off that my chest is bigger than yours. I swear to god I will actually stab you if you do."

Jaune snerked. "Ha! But nah. I, y'know, I kinda chafed my nipples raw doing that marathon and shirts make them hurt."

Her eyes widened and she had to very consciously avoid looking at his nipples. Weiss' eyes settled on the new scar on his cheek, a more visible and ugly thing than the neatly healing one Blake had given her. He'd never explained where it had come from.

"I, uh—huh." She actually laughed. "Well, that's even more awkward! I thought it was bad enough that you were just half-naked again."

"Two-thirds naked," he said casually, twirling his pen through his fingers. "Were I half-naked, I'd just be in me the drawers. That'd be brazy, shawty."

Weiss blinked. "Those… were words. I think. What's a drahz?"

"Drawers," he said, annunciating it into two syllables, which made it sound like he was gargling, his heavy, somewhat throaty way of pronouncing his Rs. "Jimmies, schlong thong, boxer briefs. Whatever you fidna call 'em. I'm in jeans, so that only makes me two-thirds naked."

"Oh my god," she said blankly, "it only gets more unintelligible when you explain it."

"Tell me about it."

Weiss frowned "No. But what I will tell you about is the way you've been acting lately can't feel good. Stop distracting me. What you're doing to your body, that can't feel good."

Jaune made a face she didn't like. It spoke a thousand words. He had heard her, acknowledged her, but didn't want to discuss it. It wasn't that he was saying she was wrong, just that it wasn't something he cared to deal with. He was more focused on fighting the fibre plastique wrap, attempting to actually unwrap it instead of ripping it apart.

She kept thinking back to her conversation with Blake. Bonding over how they were both screwed up people. Learning that Blake was once a terrorist, and returning the information by discussing—well, the way she was raised.

"I think I know what you're going through, even if you won't tell me, even if I don't know what it is exactly," she said softly. "If you don't want to talk about it, that's fine. But there's a line between pushing yourself and self-destruction. I think it would pretty much ruin our day if you killed yourself over something stupid. Trust me, I've been there. It's not pleasant."

This time, he looked away. He bit into the bagel and chewed it contemplatively. "Still warm. These hella fresh."

Weiss sighed. "Just came out of the oven."

"I thought I smelled something cooking," he said, taking another bite. "Y'know, these is actually pretty fire. It would go fantastic with some cream cheese or maybe eggs and bacon."

Her face fell. "Oh."

He looked around, vaguely alarmed. "I—I didn't mean that in a bad way. These are fantastic. Genuinely. I'm not just saying that because you threatened me otherwise."

"No, it's just—I only made bagels. I was hoping to surprise everyone with breakfast tomorrow. But I never once thought about toppings or turning them into sandwiches." With a slightly nervous edge, she wrung her hands and said, "Does that mean this isn't a good breakfast? This isn't a complete meal!"

He gave her a light hand chop over the top of her head. "Bad Weiss. Stop worrying about shit."

"Ow! I only said it was okay to touch if it involved force feeding you, not this!"

Jaune laughed, chewing the last bit of bagel. "Girl, it's delicious. The thought itself at least doubles the calories. Besides, I'm used to going for long stretches of time on nada. You won't ruin anybody's morning just because there's no eggs."

That calmed her down for a moment, before she realized the original topic he was trying to ignore had come back up. "So you're used to this. Why don't you eat?"

Jaune picked up on her peculiar emphasis. "Why don't you eat?"

"Reasons," she said.

"Same. Reasons."

She fidgeted with the hem of her camisole. "Is—and I'm just going out on a limb here; I don't really care—is it because you couldn't afford food growing up?"

That made him pause. "'Scuse me?"

Weiss put the tin foil back over the plate, just to keep her hands busy. "It's just—you talk about it a little bit, here and there sometimes. Shamrock too, if you're reading between the lines. I almost think that I was the only one of us on the team who never had to worry about food growing up. Which is exactly why food terrified me."

Jaune looked over at the desk, at all the paperwork on it. There were photographs, documentation, and other miscellaneous administrative detritus. "A bit. Growing up how I did, eating was a bit of a luxury. I didn't care me none for it. When I did, it was processed crap, the kind of stuff that makes you fat."

She couldn't help but hug herself. "Yeah."

"So, food was just another problem." He ran a hand through his hair, which hadn't been cut in a long time, and was starting to get long. It was almost all the hair he had left after shaving his attempt at a beard. "Money spent feeding me was money not spent on my siblings. Food, doctors, even gifts always used to give me this sense of anxiety. This thought that if they spent it on me, no one else would be able to have the things they needed. I had to look out for my family."

"That's." She hesitated. "I suppose that's considerate. Of your siblings, I mean."

"I guess," Jaune said noncommittally, rolling his shoulders. "Had to look out for others before myself. I was the firstborn. The one my parents got to fuck up before they got it right with my sister. The burden of having people you're born caring for is, you always gotta put 'em first. Like me and this team. All y'all gotta come first, even if I'm still figuring out how to do that."

"Yeah," Weiss whispered, looking at her bare feet. She hadn't even bothered with shoes to sneak out of the room. "I—I really don't know what to say to that."

"You don't gotta. We can just sit around in awkward silence and pretend each other don't exist like in the old days."

"I don't want to do that," she said. "That's not what this team is. Not who we've become."

"Who have we become?"

"I don't know," she said, looking out at the moon through the window.

In the silence, Jaune reached under the tin foil to take a bagel. She didn't object as he tore the plastic off with his teeth and ate. Honestly, it put a warm fuzzy feeling in her chest. He had chosen to go back for seconds; her bagels were just that good. It was all she could do to stop from jumping up and waving her fist victoriously. Yes!

She wondered if seconds were something he was used to being able to get.

Weiss said, "The whole food thing you were talking about, it's like something you only see in fiction. Something that can only happen to other people. The idea that the things you take for granted are a luxury for other people." She shook her head. "I've never known what that would be like, and likely, I never will. But it seems to be something everyone but me understands."

He waved his hand dismissively, smiling. "Nah, don't worry about it none. The resulting anxiety became pretty productive. I turned it into a force for good. When something's bothering me, I just shut down and can't eat, which works wonders for the waistline."

Weiss looked down at our own stomach, slim and toned. Just the way her personal trainers had designed her. The way her father insisted she had to look. She could be nothing but the best. For this brief moment, she had an intrusive thought. I wonder if I'd have my mother's chest if I ate more growing up. The idea put this weird little half smile on her lips.

Jaune nodded. "I know, right? It fucking hilarious how well that shit worked out for me. Coupled with a pathological need to pick everything up and then put them back down, and here you go." He ran a finger down his arm, tracing one of his rather visible veins. Weiss knew a lot of girls found that attractive, but she always thought it looked somehow weird. Like people who had veins that pronounced were constantly starving and pissed off. Not gaunt, but somehow on the verge of death.

Once again, she found herself uncomfortable. And maybe it was just the chill coming in from the open window, but she found her arms wrapping around herself.

"That's not funny," she said quietly. "Nothing about that is. Stop trying to romanticize what's almost looking like a mental illness at this point."

He chuckled. "Please. I only romanticized my own mental illness in the hopes that, like everything else I've romanticized and loved, it too will leave me."

For some reason, Weiss found herself thinking of Blake. She wondered how the girl would feel if she heard that. Sure, both of them insisted there was nothing between them, but the pair were rather codependent in a way that kept raising eyebrows the more they denied it.

Weiss rubbed her eyes, unsure how else to take this conversation. It didn't feel like this was a dead end, but she just couldn't figure out how to follow that up. Where to take it from here. Part of her just wanted to nod and leave. Go back to sleep. Pretend like everything was normal, for whatever normal was. A world where she and Jaune simply tolerated each other without getting into anything too mushy feely. Without relating to him in ways she couldn't articulate and that made her want to curl up in a ball in her bed and never leave.

Weiss found herself looking at the paperwork on the desk again. He didn't stop her when she took one of the pages and scanned it. "What's this? Montluçon? Why are you reading about some resort city?"

Some of the tension seemed to leave his shoulders. He leaned back slightly in his chair, eyeing her. "It's a mission dossier."

"Mission?" Weiss asked with genuine surprise.

He nodded. "It's what I was up to esta noche. There was a meeting in the tower of all the team leaders, for us to pick missions for the upcoming semester. I didn't really have me much a choice here."

She gave him a significant look. "So, you're actually the official team leader again?"

"I guess. Do that bother you?"

Weiss took more of the paperwork, scanning them over. "I guess you could say I'm not surprised."

"Really?"

"During the interviews we had as a team, I had the feeling that Headmaster Ozpin was interested in you for a reason. Now it all makes sense."

"You didn't answer my original question."

Weiss let out a breath. Before he could say anything about that, she held up a finger sharply. "One. You get one chance, Jaune. One chance not to screw this all up. Everyone deserves at least that much. Even you, despite my better judgment. One last chance."

He smiled this oddly boyish smile. "All I need is one, Weiss."

"Good!"

"Good," he repeated.

"Excellent."

"Superb."

"Incredible," she said, eyes narrowing.

"Do you really want to do this?" he asked. "I'm pretty sure my thesaurus is bigger than yours. I know a lot of slang. Plus I've got a couple extra languages to draw from. It's why I was banned from playing Scrabble."

"And let you beat me?" she replied, chuckling. "As if."

"That's what I like about you, Weiss."

The sudden shift threw her off. "Wha'—huh?"

He nodded seriously. "You don't have a quit button. You don't know when to give up. You spent hours trying to make bagels, burning each and every one of them, and now here you are way late into the night just to finally get one good batch. That's you. That's who you are. And I kind of can't help but respect that."

Weiss looked away, feeling a slight blush. "Oh, well—I mean, of course. I'm the best there is. You can't think of it as failure. You have to think of it as learning how not to do something. Which is why I have never failed once in my life." She winked.

He laughed. "Which is why we're not going to fail this extra special dangerous high-level mission."

"Extra what now?"

"Blame my friend Coco. She didn't give me the choice. Her and Team CFVY are gonna be our plus one for this detail out Montluçon way."

"Team CFVY!" Her mouth hung open.

"What's the matter?" he asked in a way that was somehow teasing. "I thought you always wanted to work with the legendary Coco Adel. Your boy here got connections."

"Stop doing that," she said sharply.

"I will never stop throwing myself out there and making friends with random people."

"No, I mean—" She waved her hands at nothing. "The knowing. You always do that with the weirdest stuff. Stop somehow knowing I've always wanted to work with Coco, yet having zero idea I'm trying to get into baking. It's so eclectic I can't figure you out. Just get out of my head for once."

Jaune made this face, like this was news to him for the first time in his life. He sniffed. He brought his fingers to his nose like he was expecting it to be bleeding, but they came away dry. Weiss didn't know what to make of that. She thought it may have been some obscure Valean gesture she just didn't understand.

Whatever the case, he shook his head. "Uh, sorry. I sometimes forget how schizophrenic my knowledge be. I kind of just pick stuff up and don't know where it's from or how it fits together."

"Yeah, well, it's weird."

Jaune shrugged. "Says the girl who claims to be the bagel whisperer."

Weiss bristled. "It was all in the service of getting it perfect! An amateur practices until they can get it right; a professional practices until they can't get it wrong."

He grabbed the entire dossier and held it out to her. "Care to be my perfectionist assistant and spend all night with me figuring the mission out and making a plan of attack until we can't get it wrong, you and I?"

She scowled at him for the longest time, arms folded defensively. Until she finally relented and snatched the dossier from his hands. "Fine. But only to make sure you don't screw this up for me in front of Team CFVY. I really don't want them to have to engrave died of embarrassment on my tombstone."

"Oh, naturally."

"And I'm not your assistant!" she said, pointing dangerously at him. "We're teammates. We're equals. We're all in this together. The only difference between you and me is that you are an idiot and I'm not. Understood?"

Jaune shook his head. "I wouldn't have it any other way. And hey, if we make it through this, then tomorrow we can whip up eggs and bacon to go with the bagels."

"I don't really know how to cook those," she said, suddenly losing her momentum with this awkward grimace.

He just gave her that boyish smile again. "Hey, you teach me to sing, and I'll teach you to cook. You and me together till the morning, girl. Deal?"

Slowly, very slowly, Weiss nodded. "I think I'd like that, Jaune."

So, yeah. That was the story of how Jaune wound up keeping Weiss up all night long.

a/n: Hmm, in an AU where Jaune and Weiss were partners and became the codependent pair…