“Absolutely not.”
For someone who claimed to have been knocked around during the mission to bring in Drake Bishop, Blake kept up with Weiss surprisingly well. “It’d be a favor, Schnee,” she insisted. “Someone needs to help Yang fill out the report and mark it as complete.”
The half breed looked at the faunus, ice blue eyes narrow. “And you can’t do this, why? And don’t say it’s because of an injury,” she added, making the leopard faunus wince. “You’re moving just fine. You didn’t get hurt.”
Blake sighed, rubbing a hand over her face. This was part of why she hated interacting with Weiss, whenever Ruby wasn’t around. The heiress was chilly, to put it mildly, and if you weren’t on her list of people she cared about, she didn’t tend to hold back. They got along well enough—they kind of had to, considering Weiss was Ruby’s partner and Blake was one of Ruby’s good friends—but they’d never clicked.
Still, she had promised. And Yang could use the cheering up, if she was completely honest.
“Because,” she said, “Ozpin put me on the team that will be interrogating Bishop about other hunters in the community doing murders like this.”
Weiss was silent, at that. She couldn’t argue with the director’s logic; it was well known that Yang had worked the case right from the beginning, and had taken the mindless slaughter of her people very seriously. Frankly, leaving her alone in a small locked room with Bishop was like dangling a juicy steak in front of a starving dog. People had been shocked that the dragon had even brought him in alive. No point in tempting fate.
“The rookies?”
“If you mean the Stone brothers, they’ve already been released.” James had apologized profusely after slamming Eric’s head into the table so he couldn’t speak. Ozpin had seemed more amused than anything, and had let the young men go without issue. They weren’t the problem, after all. They hadn’t known about the kind of monster Bishop was.
Weiss was silent for a long, long moment.
Finally, she sighed. “Fine,” she said. “I’ll help her file the report.”
Blake smirked. “Thank you.”
“I hate you, Belladonna.”
“Ruby likes me.”
“I know, and that’s why I put up with you. I still really, really hate you. It just needed to be said.”
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It wasn’t that Weiss didn’t like Yang. She did, well enough. She considered the dragon to be on her relatively small (but growing as of late) list of friends, and while there was no end to how Ruby teased the blonde about her instincts, the younger woman genuinely loved her adopted sister and her whole family in general. Yang wasn’t a bad person… dragon. Not by any means.
Due to her half blood heritage, Weiss was used to a certain amount of ignorance and racism. People tended to fear what they didn’t understand, though ironically enough, the worst of her treatment came from pure-blooded yuki onna. She still remembered, quite vividly, how her grandmother’s reaction upon meeting her was that she had to be put down.
But it came from humans, too. Humans who knew what she was and feared her for the power she did have, humans who were fans of the magical and found her to be a disappointment compared to the pureblood yuki onna. And that wasn’t even getting into the kind of toll having a job like Beacon did to her love life. People knew what Beacon was, but not what it did. Having a job that often made her work crazy hours wasn’t very appealing to the ladies, especially when she came home injured or had been away from home for days.
So in general, Weiss was not used to women expressing an interest in her. She certainly wasn’t used to interested women pursuing her.
Yang was not only interested in her, she was actively pursuing her. Had been pursuing her now for quite some time. It was weird, and different, and Weiss…
Well, Weiss would be lying if she said she didn’t like it, in a way.
Asian dragons that were on the hunt were a bit like freight trains: they hit you hard and fast, and they didn’t stop unless you found some definite way of making it clear that you weren’t interested in being pursued. It was part of the reason why Blake and Yang, despite being partners for years, were close friends and nothing more. The golden-eyed woman had made her disinterest clear, and Yang had respected that.
Weiss knew all she had to do to get Yang to stop was to show disinterest, to firmly say “No” and mean it. It would be enough for the dragon to back off. All she had to do was stop responding to her teasing, to her flirting, to the nickname. It would be so easy to do, and when she did it, Yang would get the hint and back off.
Weiss could do that.
And yet, the truth was, she didn’t want to.
Weiss was smart enough to know that trying to date would be immensely stupid. Few would accept her heritage, and even fewer would accept her job. She had gotten comfortable in her loneliness, and was even beginning to make friends. She had her parents, who loved her and supported her. That should have been enough for her.
And yet every time Yang made a joke or a quip, Weiss would respond—even if she tried to claim that it just annoyed her. As much as she insisted that the ‘frost dragon’ nickname was one she disliked, she never actively told Yang to stop using it.
She didn’t want Yang to stop. She just liked the attention too much.
So really, the problem was that she liked Yang too much and thought nothing would come of it.
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Weiss paused for a moment, slowly lifting a brow as she took in the sight in front of her. “Am I really at Yang’s desk?” she asked. “You’re actually here, and no beautiful woman or handsome man in sight.”
Yang had been focused on her computer, another minor miracle, and when her lilac eyes drifted from the screen, for a moment she didn’t seem to recognize who was standing in front of her. It didn’t take long for the fire to blaze in her eyes, though, and she sprang to her feet. “Frost dragon!”
“It’s Schnee, or if you must insist Weiss—“
The half breed’s words trailed off into a squeak as Yang swept her up and spun her around, a brilliant grin on her face. “Come to help me out, eh?” she said as she set the smaller woman down, her hand sliding down from Weiss’s back to her hip. “I knew you couldn’t resist me for long.”
Weiss rolled her eyes. “Down, wildfire. I’m here to help you with the Bishop file?”
“Ah, yeah, hold on.” Yang’s hand lingered on her hip as she grabbed a spare chair and pulled it to her desk, and it took Weiss longer than she would have liked to admit for her to brush it away. “I already have his case up on the system, I just need you to read things out for me while I’m typing it in.”
It was simple enough, and if handled correctly it wouldn’t take long. Weiss picked up the folder on Yang’s desk, sitting down on the chair and crossing her legs. She could feel the heat of Yang’s gaze immediately. “Eyes on your computer,” she said without looking up. “We’re working.”
“That’s what they all say.”
Weiss gave the dragon a glare, but Yang had focused back on her screen, fingers poised over the keyboard. “You just need his name, the names of his victims, and why he was brought in, right?”
“Yeah, that works.”
“Easy enough. Drake Bishop, fifty-eight years old.” The irony over the fact that his name meant dragon was not lost on Weiss, and Yang began typing. “Member of the Bishop clan. Three families were his victims.”
Yang’s typing slowed ever so slightly, Weiss noticed. She could hear the slight hitch in it before she said, “Yeah, go on.”
The first family went in easily enough, even with Yang being uncharacteristically silent and focused on the task at hand. By the time they had finished working in the third family, though, a sort of quietness had settled over the dragon that Weiss found she didn’t like at all. It was a little sad, a dash of angry, but most of all just… sort of tired.
It felt too much like how she’d been numerous times, over the years.
“All right.” She closed the file. “What’s the matter?”
Yang blinked, confused, as she looked at her. “What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean. I’ve been sitting here now with my legs crossed and you haven’t made a single comment, or tried to hit on me at any point during this. Not,” she added when she saw the little smirk on the taller woman’s face, “that I want you to. But it’s weird.”
“Aw, you do care.”
“I’m going to freeze your face.”
Yang grinned. “I’m a dragon, babe. A little cold never bothered me.” The grin fell off of her face too quickly, though, and she turned back to her computer screen, studying the names she had typed in before she sighed. Weiss waited for a moment, not entirely sure what was on the woman’s mind and a little afraid to ask.
Finally, the dragon gestured to her screen. “This scares me,” she said. “This right here.”
Weiss frowned. “The families?”
“Bishop’s an ass.” For a moment, there was a hint of a growl in Yang’s tone. “He hates dragons. I don’t agree, I think dragons are awesome, but you know, whatever. But then he had to go and aim for the families, too. Partners, kids. Kids. Half these brats were so young they didn’t even know what they were.”
Weiss was silent, now. She hadn’t worked the case, but she had read the file. Of the children that had died as a result of Bishop’s rampage, the oldest had been twelve. Just old enough to know what they were, to begin to wonder.
Then they had been killed.
“And he used Icefire too, you know? As if it’s bad enough that he’s using the family to keep the dragon at bay, bad enough that he had to stab or shoot them. But then he uses the damned worst way to kill one, just so they die in pain and scared.”
Weiss still didn’t say anything. Honestly, Yang didn’t seem to want her to interject. The dragon leaned back in her chair, running a hand through her hair and absently playing with warm golden strands.
“It scares me,” she said at last. “And I know that sounds weird because, you know, dragon and all. But it scares me to think that one day I’ll have a mate, maybe some kids of my own, and nutcases like Bishop will be after them because I’m a dragon. Or some enemy of Beacon will be after them because I work for Beacon.”
Yang’s other hand was still on her desk, her fingers absently drumming as she’d kept talking, some mindless pattern that she probably did without even realizing. Nerves, Weiss thought. This was genuinely something that bothered her. This was something she worried about.
She didn’t know how to react. She’d never seen this side of Yang, before. And it said something about how much the dragon trusted her, on some level, that she was letting her actually see this. Talking to her about it, even if Weiss didn’t really know what to say. Ice blue eyes lingered on that hand, for a moment.
This little ‘game’ they had going on—because that was what it was, on some level, a game, Weiss could admit that much—had very strict rules. Yang often touched Weiss, but Weiss usually didn’t touch Yang back. It was just one of those little things that had happened while they had known each other, and neither of them had ever tried to change it.
(Weiss refused to admit that this was because Yang was openly and actively pursuing her, and she was afraid to respond to it as much as she liked it.)
Weiss hesitated for a moment, uncertain of how to proceed, before she made up her mind. She reached out, a bit more tentatively than she would have ever admitted, and rested her hand over Yang’s. As a yuki onna half breed, her body temperature was a few degrees below normal; a sharp contrast to the warmth she could feel radiating from Yang’s skin. Honestly, a part of her still expected the dragon to jolt and pull away from her touch.
But Yang didn’t pull away. She felt the slight coolness, of course, and she perked up at Weiss’s touch, watching with interest and a hint of surprise. This was new. She’d never done this before.
Weiss tried not to think too hard on the implications of it.
“I think it’s wise that it scares you,” the half breed said, after a moment. “It means you’ll just be ready if that time ever comes and you need to be there to protect your family.”
Yang’s lips twitched, and she turned her hand over so her fingers grasped Weiss’s. It was an intimate, gentle gesture from a dragon that so far in the half breed’s mind had been defined by her endless sex drive.
“That’s a thought,” she said with a little laugh. “And I could always find a mate who handles themselves in a fight, too. I think that’d be a nice bonus, knowing I don’t have to worry so much because my baby can kick someone’s ass all on their own.”
They sat in silence for a moment, and it was actually… pretty nice. Just being there for her, having her know that she was there, and having that be enough. It was the kind of thing Weiss often saw with her own parents, something she had always sort of ached for herself, to have with someone else.
Someone would see them like this and probably misinterpret the entire situation, but for once Weiss didn’t even care.
“Might even be you, Weiss,” Yang added conversationally, and when Weiss glanced up at her she couldn’t see anything sexual or teasing in her face, hear it in her voice. The dragon was glancing at her with this little smile, and she squeezed her hand, and there was just such open honesty in the want in her eyes.
Weiss inhaled quietly.
She wasn’t used to being wanted. Hadn’t even suspected that Yang’s interest in her ran deeper than sexual.
“Yang—“
“Though if we get that far, I’m still going to call you frost dragon.”
“…. You were doing so well, too,” Weiss sighed as she pulled her hand away, getting to her feet and setting the folder back down on Yang’s desk.
“Hey, I’m just being honest! You’ll always be my lil’ frost dragon, Weiss.”
“Good night, Yang.”
“Actually it’s morning!” Yang called after her. “Early hours of morning though so, still dark. I understand your confusion. Wanna crash at my place? Preferably in my bed?”
Weiss whirled around and took a few steps backwards, a small, blunt blade of ice shooting from her hand and aimed right at Yang’s head. The dragon ducked with a hoot of laughter, and the ice ended up embedding itself in the wall. Yang grinned, leaning back in her chair to watch Weiss leave, and didn’t look away for awhile even once the half breed was gone.
Only once Weiss was out of sight did Yang tug the ice from the wall, melting it in her hand with a small, warm smile.
“My lil’ frost dragon’s got fire.”
Originally Posted by Kieran
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