CW for emotional abuse—feel free to head to the first linebreak to skip it.
A new day dawned. Warm sunlight filtered through the gap in the curtains, which were drawn against prying eyes. Weiss sat on the edge of her bed with her wings out, sipping on a cup of soothing tea that Blake had brought her. Soft classical music played from Ruby's scroll for probably the first time since its purchase. Yang kept fussing with a pile of pillows on Weiss' bed, arranging them just so.
They were clearly bending over backwards to calm her down, and it was almost working. Almost. Until her scroll started to vibrate. Weiss snatched it off the nightstand, knowing even as she opened it what she would see.
"Is that...?" Ruby trailed off.
"My Father." There wasn't time to cover her wings before she picked up. "Can you give me a moment?"
Her teammates exchanged reluctant glances.
Weiss rolled her eyes in fond exasperation. "It's just a scroll call, I'll be fine. Honestly."
They left her alone in the room, with the steady buzzing of the scroll grating at her ears. Weiss took a steadying breath and answered on the last ring.
"Took you long enough."
"I had to leave the room," she lied, swallowing past a guilty lump in her throat.
"Do you know what I'm looking at right now?"
She could guess. "My transcripts."
"Care to explain what happened on your practical evaluation?"
"We had to leave before it was finished. There was a medical emergency, one of my teammates dislocated—"
"Don't lie to me," he snapped. "I spoke to Doctor Marigold. I know you were the problem."
Shame curdled in the pit of her stomach. She'd always hated scrambling to cover her failures. "I did well on the written exams. Combined, it's more than enough to—"
"More than enough?" An incredulous scoff. "By whose standard? I have difficulty imagining that Beacon really is as lax as you seem to believe. Do you think your sister would be a specialist now if she called a botched mission good enough?"
"No," she gritted out.
"Your brother is intelligent, reliable, and rational. Why should I entrust the future of my company to you when you insist on giving me nothing but excuses?"
Weiss had long since learned by trial and error that there was no right answer to this question. She said nothing.
He let the silence hang for a moment before he said, "This is all beside the point. I didn't call about your abysmal performance."
Her heart leaped into her throat. Did he know she'd told her team? No, that was ridiculous, she had to stop that before she let something slip and he really did find out.
"You showed those... things to Doctor Marigold."
Relief flooded her. "Yes." A stony silence followed. And, like an idiot, she blundered into it. "I had to. I have a cut he couldn't look at with the bindings on, and I thought since we had to tell him eventually—"
"You thought. I see. In all that thinking, did it ever occur to you to call and ask me?"
"I had to do it," she insisted. "I had an infection and I needed a doctor. If you wanted me to tell you afterwards, fine, but I didn't have a choice."
"I suppose you didn't have a choice when you attacked the man, either?"
Her stomach twisted into a knot. "I—I didn't—!"
"I have spent years trying to make something of you," he hissed. "Do you hear me? Years of feeding, clothing, and housing you. Teaching you self-control, and keeping your mother's filthy little secret. All of that effort, and apparently you still can't help yourself."
Her hands shook. "He's a condescending sycophant. I didn't even think that was possible, but he is."
"Heinrich Marigold is a pathetic, sniveling coward. None of which changes the fact that in four weeks you are going to his office in Atlas and fixing this problem once and for all."
"Maybe I don't want him doing surgery on me!" she burst out.
"Of course," Father said, after a long and terrible pause. "It should be up to you, shouldn't it? I should let you find some nice doctor so that you can be comfortable during the procedure."
Weiss nearly dropped her scroll. "What?"
"Then, he can tell the newspapers all about it. Is that what you want? For the whole world to know you're a bastard? Maybe you don't want your inheritance after all, and you'd feel more at home squatting in the Crater like a gutter pigeon."
"No," she whispered.
"I can't hear you."
Her eyes burned. "No, Father. I'm sorry."
He hung up.
Weiss stood there for a moment, watching her trembling hands. Then she moved backwards, groping for a chair, and bumped a mug. Lukewarm tea splashed onto her desk, and suddenly she hated that mug more than she'd ever hated anything in her life. She hurled it at the wall, still half full, and watched it shatter with grim satisfaction.
It was short-lived. She heard the sound of running feet, and then her teammates burst in through the door. Ruby stumbled over the threshold and yelped as broken glass crunched under her boots. "Weiss! Are you okay?"
"Fine." She lay on her stomach in her bed, shoving one of the pillows under her front. "Let's get this over with."
"Are you sure?" asked Blake tentatively, as Yang knelt down and scooped the glass shards into the trash. "We don't have to do this today."
"I know."
"And we are gonna have to touch you kind of a lot," Ruby added.
"I know."
Yang finished cleaning up the mess and stood. "If you're ever uncomfortable, we can always stop, or take a break, or—"
"I know!" Weiss took a deep breath. "Just... stop talking."
She'd be lying if she said she didn't slightly regret deciding to do this yesterday, especially when Ruby produced two pairs of tweezers. But if she backed down now, she knew she'd break more than a stupid mug. So she gritted her teeth until they ached and said nothing. It was decided—among the other three, because Weiss was too angry to have an opinion—that Blake and Yang would do the actual work of getting rid of the badly grown feathers, while Ruby acted as a distraction.
So they settled in, Blake on one side of her and Yang on the other, while Ruby sat cross-legged in front of her with her back to the headboard. There was objectively not enough room on her bed for this arrangement. Blake had to perch precariously by Weiss' hip and lean over her to avoid touching her injury. Yang's body temperature was, as usual, making it completely impossible to ignore how much of her leg was pressed against her side. Ruby was more or less fine—because Weiss could let her feet dangle off the edge to give her partner more space, and not because she was short, thank you very much.
"Is this okay?" Ruby asked.
Ugh. They were going to be like this the entire time, weren't they?
"Fine." And if a bit of Blake's hair kept brushing her shoulder, and she could feel Yang's breath on her back, and some combination of those things made it feel like her spine was trying to crawl out of her body, well. She was handling it.
Blake held her hand out. "Ready?"
Weiss nodded, bracing herself for the sickening feeling of someone else touching her wings... but it never came. It didn't feel like much at all, at first. She might not have realized Blake had started, if her head wasn't turned that way so she could see it. Her touch was cool, barely perceptible with her damaged nerves. But then she found a feather and tugged, and Weiss flinched. She'd sort of assumed she wouldn't be able to feel that, but there was a sharp twinge of pain under her skin. Noticing, Blake gave the base of her wing a reassuring squeeze, with just enough pressure for her to sense it. Her breath caught.
There was no time to recover. Yang, following Blake's lead, gently ran a hand down her other wing. And that, Weiss could feel. Her fingers left a trail of heat in their wake as she started on the ingrown feathers.
Seeing her wince, Ruby took her hand and started talking about nothing in particular. First it was chatter about the upcoming Vytal Festival, then it was gushing about her dog—"Maybe dad will let me and Yang bring him to Beacon for a few days after the break, because you have to meet him!" Then she started on a tangent about some upgrade to Crescent Rose.
It still hurt, but somehow the rush of words and the warmth and pressure of their hands took away some of the sting. She wasn't reminded of Doctor Marigold at all—it was more like when she was a child, still too young to wrap her own wings, and Klein had done it for her. Back when they still had feeling. It was easier with him than anyone else, but she still hadn't liked him paying attention to them. She could never get past the fear that she'd turn around at just the wrong moment and catch a flash of disgust on his face.
There was no need to turn around now. She was on her stomach with her head tilted to one side, looking almost directly up at Blake's face. She could watch the slight furrow in her brow as she concentrated, the way her ears flicked every time a lock of hair drifted in front of her face and she had to brush it away. And every so often she would pause, glancing down so that their eyes met, and smile.
Where was Weiss supposed to look? Blake was right there, and she knew she was staring, but there was nothing else except a blank wall and a bit of window for her to focus on. She tried closing her eyes, and all of a sudden she was remembering the first time she'd seen Blake's ears. Bathed in soft lamplight, hands on her back, all tangled up in—
Her eyes shot open. At that exact moment, Blake glanced down to check on her, giving her wing another squeeze. With the arm that she'd dislocated and risked breaking to protect it. And all the annoying speeches, all the times they'd snapped at one another, all the frustration of knowing her, it all came down to that. She just cared that much. About her ideals, about the faunus, and maybe even about...
Oh no.
Weiss wrenched her gaze away from Blake and turned her head. "Everything okay?" Yang asked. And as she spoke she put a hand on Weiss' back, right between her wings, soft and gentle and almost unbearably warm. Checking in to make sure she wasn't pushing too hard. She always did that, always asked, she was the only one who'd ever just asked what Weiss wanted and actually let her answer...
Oh, no.
She buried her face in the pillow, hoping that would help. It did not. She just kept remembering the scene under the lamppost on repeat, wondering what it would feel like to be one of—except no, she was not doing that, because they were both in a relationship with each other and there was something seriously wrong with her.
"Weiss?" Ruby patted her hand, drawing her attention away from her teammates. Her teammates that were very pretty and much too close.
"Fine," she mumbled.
"Um, okay. I think we can take a break now, though. Maybe switch to the massage part?"
Weiss nodded. Then she made the mistake of glancing over at where Blake and Yang were sweeping the old feathers into a trash bag. Bile rose in the back of her throat as she looked at the nasty, shriveled little things. "How are we getting rid of them?" She should have thought of this before, how could she have just—
"Yang and I were just gonna take them home to Patch and toss them in the woods," said Ruby. "Even if someone finds them, they won't know it has anything to do with you. It's not that weird to find random feathers out there."
"Oh. Right. Good."
"Are you sure you're okay?"
And fine, maybe Weiss was... feeling things that weren't exactly ideal, and maybe the thought of lying down with both of them pressed close like that again was a little bit terrifying, but—
But actually, that was a very good point. She didn't need to do this now. She didn't need to do this at all. Who did she think she was kidding, anyway? Plucking herself like a chicken and getting a massage wasn't going to change anything. All those feathers were disgusting, and here she was asking Blake and Yang to pick them out and stare at her misshapen wings and touch them, as if she wanted to make sure they could never look at her the way they looked at each other.
"I'm fine," she lied. Because this was torturous and humiliating and probably a terrible mistake, and she wanted it to keep making it just a little bit longer.
Hands slid underneath each of her wings, holding them steady and stretching them gently outward. Weiss sucked in a breath, and her grip on Ruby's hands turned crushing. "Slow down a bit," her partner said.
"No," she gritted out. "Keep going."
"Are you—"
"Yes."
Structurally, her wings weren't much different from a second set of arms—and both were being lifted, gently rolling the shoulders back and forth. Sharp pain flared in the joints. Yang adjusted her grip to cradle the right wing in one arm. With her other hand she kneaded the muscles in Weiss' back and the shoulder of her wing. On the other side, Blake mirrored her. Her thumb dug into points of tension until they gave way, leaving behind a warm, leaden ache.
"Do you need a break?" Ruby asked.
Weiss shook her head. She couldn't tear her eyes away from Blake—she was leaning forward now, to get a better angle, muscles standing out in her arms as she pressed down. Then Yang rested her knee on her lower back, so that she could brace Weiss' wing against it for leverage. She felt the touch on her wing only as a vague prickling, but the heat of it came through so vividly that she felt warm all over.
Her only warning was a sudden spike of pain. Blake kept up the pressure on her 'shoulder', slowly but steadily forcing it to bend. Until, with a sickening pop, it gave way. Weiss buried her face in her elbow to muffle a groan.
"Are you okay?" Blake asked anxiously. "I didn't push too far, did I?"
She shook her head. And Blake was still right in front of her, staring at her wing with that laser-focus—and something else, a softness that seemed inappropriate. How could anyone look at that so tenderly?
"Should I try to do the same over here?" Yang wondered.
Weiss nodded, but that side did not cooperate. It wound tighter and tighter, and she kept mumbling, "A little further," until Yang shook her head and let go.
"Sorry," she said. "I don't want to pull something." And then, thoughtlessly, she reached down to tuck a lock of hair behind Weiss' ear.
Warmth bloomed in the pit of her stomach. A fluttering that only got worse when Yang moved down to the 'elbow' of her wing, tracing gentle patterns over the skin as she went. Ones Weiss might not have felt at all if her hands weren't so absurdly hot.
All of a sudden, there were too many sensations happening at once. The curve of Blake's neck as she tilted her head tangled up in the heat of Yang's touch, the sharp ache in her wings as they stretched, Ruby's hands gently holding hers. The smell of them all surrounding her. It caught her like a tide, and she felt like she was falling—except nothing like that, because this scared her the way a sheer cliff never could.
She caught herself staring at Blake's mouth, pursed slightly in concentration. So she turned her head, and there was Yang, gently bending the 'wrist' back and forth, looking at that hideous twisted thing as if it were a delicate flower she had cupped in her hands.
Too much.
Weiss squeezed her eyes shut and buried her face in the pillow in front of her. Sensing her distress, Blake pressed in close and touched her shoulder. "We've got you," she promised, and reached up to stroke her hair.
"That's it." Yang's free hand rested on the center of her back, rubbing soothing circles between her wings. She kept going, heat radiating from her hands wherever they touched her. It sank under her skin to settle in the hollows of her bones. Weiss started to shake.
Ruby still had her hands. She held them tight and murmured, "You're doing great." And because it was Ruby, once she started talking she didn't stop. She kept up a steady stream of reassurance, until Weiss' whole body trembled like a pane of glass about to shatter.
"We love you," struck like a hammer blow. It came from three sides, impossible to deflect. Her breath hitched and heaved into a sob.
"Weiss!" Ruby clutched her hands. "Are you okay? Are we hurting you?"
She shook her head.
"We'll give you a minute—or maybe we should just try again tomorrow?"
Ruby made to draw away, and Weiss surprised no one more than herself when she grabbed her wrist with a desperate clinging strength. Because somehow too much had become not enough, not enough. A cold pit opened up inside her, threatening to swallow her whole if they stopped touching her. She couldn't speak, had no idea what she'd say if she could, but it seemed like somehow she'd made herself understood.
"Easy." Both of Yang's hands landed on her back, burning fingerprints into her skin. Blake gave up trying to stretch her wings and held her close instead, leaning in so she could press her forehead against Weiss' shoulder. She buried her face in her arms in a hopeless attempt to hide her tears.
"We're so proud of you," Ruby told her.
As with the joint in her wing—she felt something stretch to the breaking point and then beyond. In its wake there was exhaustion, and a wonderful aching relief. Weiss slumped, too spent to think about anything at all. Able only to lie there, hearing and feeling it all, breathing in their scents and surrendering to hunger.