#no association with bumbleby week i am simply out here

[kienava]

several folks requested beacon era bees for a fic giveaway and i miss them so enjoy <3 

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Dancing - Blake can’t remember the last time she enjoyed it.

She remembers going to functions with her parents when she was little and frolicking to her heart’s content before self-consciousness hardened into an opaque shell around her.

With the White Fang, there were plenty of other teenagers who were just as awkward and nervous as she was, but nights spent with them around bonfires always felt stolen and forbidden. Having fun meant wasting time that could be spent on the mission.

Seeing so many hunters-in-training taking the time to relax and forget their own insecurities reassures Blake now. She’s somewhere safe, relatively speaking, and she’s allowed to take a night off from trying to fix the world. She’s allowed to enjoy wearing a dress, and she’s allowed to enjoy yelling the wrong lyrics to songs along with her friends.

Yang was right to encourage this, she thinks. And the fog machine is actually pretty cool.

Considering how difficult it is to look anywhere else when Yang is in the room, Blake’s seen surprisingly little of her. Yang greeted her when she came in and then ran off, and Blake hasn’t spotted her since. It feels a little silly to want to thank someone for inviting her to a school-wide event, but she certainly isn’t going to thank Sun for stepping on her foot three separate times. Blake feels compelled to find her partner and say it anyway, and she’s confident the buzzing in her stomach won’t stop until she does.

Sun is trying to figure out how to re-knot his tie properly after tying it around his head and subsequently loosening it beyond salvation. Neptune is about as helpful as Blake would have guessed, and when Jaune gets involved, the whole thing is a lost cause.

Blake searches the room. It’s challenging enough to look anywhere else when Yang is in a room - but despite that, she’s surprisingly difficult to find.

It’s only when a giggling, stumbling couple clears out of the balcony that Blake sees her. She’s watching from one story up, her elbows propped on the railing and her chin resting on tight fists. There’s a wistful look on her face, and Blake might not have recognized it if she hadn’t seen it before.

She remembers watching Yang drag a piece of chalk across a blackboard, that same expression following as she looks at the floor. Sometimes Yang is loudest when she says nothing at all. When a teacher asks if her semblance causes her pain and she doesn’t say no. When someone mentions their mother at lunch and Yang doesn’t have a quip ready in reply. When someone asks if she’s interested in anyone and she says nothing at all.

Blake thinks she’s started to understand what those silences mean. Right now, Yang is unmistakably lonely.

It’s written in that cloudy, content smile. A quiet yearning with no particular velocity, like a single firefly hovering still over a field in the middle of the night. Look directly at it and it disappears.

Most people are born alone, but nobody is born lonely. That kind of thing has to be learned, practiced, perpetuated. Eventually, when solitude is a choice, it’s a comfort. Blake understands, though it’s not something she ever thought she’d have in common with the most extraverted girl in the whole school.

Maybe it’s foolish to hope that Yang will feel Blake’s eyes on her and turn her head, but Blake hopes anyway. She doesn’t remember when she started wishing so recklessly. The thrill it brings is something she’s only ever mined from the pages of her favorite novels, usually in the moments before an almost-kiss or a bracing confession. So she wishes, and she hopes, and she watches.

Yang keeps her eyes on the crowd, scanning with a soft focus that says she isn’t searching for anything. She glances toward the corner where the fog machine is. Weiss has made plenty of vague threats about the machine breaking under mysterious and unprovable circumstances, so it’s probably smart to keep an eye on it. But that can’t be the sole reason Yang has sequestered herself on the balcony.

Blake drifts off, leaving Sun, Neptune, and Jaune to their contained chaos. Pyrrha will probably intervene before anything gets broken.

At the bottom of the stairs, Blake bumps into the couple from the balcony, but they’re too wrapped up in each other to notice. As they whirl towards the dance floor, already laughing and twirling in each other’s arms, Blake looks over her shoulder, and she suspects her expression matches the one she just saw Yang wearing.

A few other people are up on the balcony, including Ruby, who’s so sick of her shoes that she’s put her bare feet up on a table. Blake passes by and raises an eyebrow at Weiss, who’s in the middle of an impermeable tirade about how revolting and utterly inappropriate it is to take off one’s shoes in public. Ruby simply leans back in a chair precariously, hands behind her head, eyes closed. Sooner or later she’ll lose her balance and fall over, but Weiss is right there to catch her, bare feet and all. That’s what good partners do, isn’t it? Catch each other, no matter what. 

Yang finally looks away from the dance floor when Blake is just passing Ruby’s table.

“Blake!” she calls. Her distant, foggy smile has brightened into a wide grin, and Blake feels like she’s just reached the bottom of a page.

“It's pretty exciting up here,” Blake replies. “I think I just heard Weiss mention foot sweat.”

“Gross,” Yang laughs.

Blake slides up next to her and grips the railing. “I think it hurt her to say it more than it hurt me to hear it.”

“Definitely.”

Yang looks back down at the party, and Blake hears the beat of silence that follows.

Blake pokes Yang’s shoulder. “So, are you having fun up here all by yourself?”

“I’m not by myself. Ruby and Weiss are--”

“Arguing about foot sweat.”

“And I’m having a great time watching.”

“Uh-huh.”

Yang turns to face her fully, and Blake is struck once again by how beautiful she is. The dress is cute, but it’s the attitude, the smirk, the pop of her hip.

“You got something to say, Miss Belladonna?” Yang teases.

“I came up here to say thank you, actually.” Blake rocks away from the railing, hiding her hands behind her back. “But I’m a little confused. You went on and on how much fun this dance was going to be, but you’ve barely done any dancing yourself.”

Yang mirrors her but leans one elbow on the railing. “Sounds like you’ve been keeping tabs on me.”

It’s like their own little unconventional waltz. One leads, the other follows, alternate, repeat. Is it too soon for Blake to know that she would follow her partner anywhere? Is it wishful thinking for her to believe Yang would do the same?

Blake could say something, or she could let her sly silence do the talking.

Yang holds her gaze for a moment, then another, before looking over the railing.

When Yang looks back again, her lip curls shyly, and Blake’s pretty sure she’s not thinking about the fog machine anymore.

“I’m glad you came,” Yang says.

Blake wants to kiss her again, pick up where the left off in their dorm room. First kisses are supposed to be messy, and Blake wouldn’t trade it for anything, but she feels the need to thank Yang for this night in as many ways as possible, with and without words. After all, Yang hears her no matter what. 

But they’re in public, and Blake isn’t sure if Yang would be comfortable with that. For all the attention she commands, Yang doesn’t make a point of sharing personal details with... anyone, really, now that Blake thinks about it. Not on purpose.

Blake remembers when she accidentally saw Yang’s bullet-bruised skin after a heavy fight, and she knows that the rest of their team doesn’t know about it.

When one of their friends needs to talk, Yang is happy to listen. Yet she never brings up anything more serious than a bad homework grade herself. She overwrites her own silences with easy jokes and disguised deflections. If Weiss and Ruby are around, she’s wary. Maybe she doesn’t want her sister to worry.

Blake knows what it’s like to keep the truth from people and think that you’re protecting them.

“Yang?” she asks.

“Hm?”

“You are having fun, right?”

Yang shifts. “Of course. Aren’t you?”

“Mostly.”

That catches Yang’s attention, and suddenly this is a very serious matter to her. “What’s wrong? Did someone spike the punch?”

“You wish.”

“Did someone not spike the punch enough?”

“No...”

“Because I can fix that.”

“Nothing needs fixing,” Blake says. She reaches for Yang’s hand and squeezes, hoping it’s convincing. “Tonight is pretty much perfect.”

Yang frowns. “Pretty much?”

“Well, I’ve barely seen the person who asked me to come to this thing in the first place.” Blake steps closer, and she sees Yang’s breath catch in her chest.

Yang covers it with a light and fleeting laugh. “Yeah, I could have guessed Sun wouldn’t be the most attentive date on the planet.”

Blake almost rolls her eyes because that one is way too easy to see through, but she’d rather watch the blush flare under Yang’s freckles. “I wasn’t talking about Sun.”

“Oh.”

Yang doesn’t move, and she doesn’t say anything more, and Blake isn’t sure what to do. Whatever Yang’s silence is trying to say is drowned out by Blake’s deafening need to kiss her, and it certainly isn’t helping that Yang is still holding her hand.

“Blake...” Yang says the name like she’s starting something, and it’s infinitely more exciting than turning a page.

In invitation, Blake nods her head towards the stairs and tugs just slightly on Yang’s hand. “You promised me a dance.”

“I guess I did,” Yang laughs.

She looks down at their hands like she’s double-checking a lock, and Blake hopes she never gets better at hiding it when she’s nervous.

Maybe she’ll get to kiss Yang later, when they’re walking back to their dorm at midnight after staying late to help clean up. Blake’s legs will be pleasantly exhausted from jumping around all night, and Yang will pull her jacket out of nowhere and drape it around Blake’s shoulders. Blake will pause to shiver and pull the coat tighter, and momentum will carry Yang half a step in front. She’ll turn around to see why Blake stopped following, look up at the shattered moon, and then find Blake’s eyes watching her, waiting. It will take a moment, perhaps two, for Yang to gather her courage, and then Blake won’t feel the cold at all.

It’s a scene right out of one of Blake’s books - but it doesn’t even compare to the way Yang looks at her when they reach the bottom of the stairs, all light and admiration. Blake can’t help but think of the couple she ran into earlier, and she allows herself to make one wish.

She hopes they stay like this always, side by side, braced to spin and fall and catch each other.

Blake certainly isn’t going anywhere.

***

[cross-posted on AO3]