Chapter Text
Vale Station was obviously a post-concordat station— anyone with eyes in their head and a skull full of something even vaguely brain-adjacent would be able to tell— with its broad, yawning gangways left open for myriad passerby. The long halls were dotted with an irregular amalgam of shops and stations, maintenance chambers, graviton relay wells, high-density housing units, airlock bulkheads and their hatches, janitor closets, and bathrooms. There were no shut doors between sections— no detection of incoming or outgoing bodies to open and seal the vulnerably continuous atmosphere— just the wide, gaping halls of an engineering team whose first worry was not ‘if we're unshielded and this gets hit by a sabot, will it vent the entire station?’
Weiss knew she could walk up to a wall, punch a hole in it, and immediately endanger the lives of at least a hundred people, not least of all the person with whom she walked astride. This gave her an undue and unfamiliar kind of anxiety, a paranoia that her striders would somehow pierce her boots, slice the metal decking beneath, and vent the entire station. For some reason, she worried a gravity slug would pierce the hull and kill every living being. She worried a stray asteroid would crack the vessel in two. She worried— beyond all logic— that the jet of a quasar had been crawling its way to this exact location for years incalculable, leading its shot while the notion of humanity was still just a spark away from abiogenesis.
Drop-Captain Weiss Schnee, who essentially fella*ted death on (at least) a monthly basis, had never felt so truly close to it. She could feel it, its vacuous hands held at bay by mere feet of vulnerable metal. She crossed one arm over her chest to hold the other.
!!!UNBEFUGTEÄNDERUNG!!!
weissgiselaschnee
25J.
BENUTZER
KEINEPRIORITÄT
STATUS:ÄNGSTLICH
…
…
…
STATUS-UPDATE
STATUS:ÄNGSTLICH(HOCH)
!EMPFOHLENEMED.:ENTSPANNER!
LIEFERN?
J:4xFAUSTBALLEN
N:5xFAUSTBALLEN
Weiss felt a dread grip in her chest as she watched the peripheral readout. Some relaxant… perhaps that wouldn't be so bad. Who would want to be a jumpy mess for their whole date?
Weiss clenched her fist twice, thrice, four—
A hand slipped into her own, just before her fingertips could press into her palms a fourth time.
NICHT ERKANNT
WIEDERHOLEN
STATUS:ÄNGSTLICH(HOCH)
!EMPFOHLENEMED.:ENTSPANNER!
LIEFERN?
J:4xFAUSTBALLEN
N:5xFAUSTBALLEN
Weiss turned, her gaze tilting up slightly to find the taller Ruby looking down with unexpected concern.
“What's wrong?” the tech asked. “Are your hands acting up?”
Ruby's fingers were in her grasp. It would take barely half a thought to turn those phalanges and carpals into dust, so it wasn't very smart to be sticking anything in there if there was real concern of malfunction. Although… she wouldn't deny there was something tantalizing about being able to shatter Ruby Rose with her own two hands, and with such ease.
Weiss clenched her unoccupied hand five times, making the red text on her periphery spurt a few more words of A-Sprache. “Ja,” she said, feeling her chest ease a little despite the lack of relaxant-slurry being pumped into her blood. “Entschuldigung. Ich bin… nervös.”
“Nervous?” Ruby confirmed, getting a nod. “For the date?” she confirmed, getting another nod. “You, Drop-Captain, are nervous for a normal, domestic date with frumpy ol’ Rubes?”
Weiss could not hold back her snort at ‘frumpy ol’ Rubes’, despite the fact that she hated how it sounds. “J-ja. I am. Und you vill never call yourself ‘frumpy’ again, oder?”
Those cold and striking greys rolled sarcastically in their sockets, and the technician's small lips quirked into an off-kilter, shaky grin. The girl faced forward again, leading the way at the captain's side. To Weiss’ dismay, she slipped her hand back out.
!!!UNBEFUGTEÄNDERUNG!!!
rubylirose
23J.
NICHTFEINDNLICH
PRIORITÄT-INGENIEURIN
STATUS:NERVÖS
Weiss didn't need the autoscan to figure that much. Besides the look on Ruby’s face (which had an uneasiness somewhere between ‘I forgot my homework’ and ‘my dog is starting to scratch itself more frequently than usual’), she was twiddling her gloveless hands, pinching the tips of her fingers and picking her nails against each other. The distal edges were jagged, telling of a habit to chew, which she would need to file out assuming the date went well.
Besides that, she had lovely hands. Weiss hadn't gotten a good look at them before— she hadn't cared to— but now she was glad to be staring at them. She could see how rough they'd felt, how calloused they were, how the well-worn ridges could slide devastatingly against her skin. They had the same stellar paleness as the rest of her skin, warm undertones singing of something more sun-kissed had the girl any such heavenly bodies to smooch. In fact, Weiss would wager her next three hazard bonuses that the girl hadn't seen a sunning chamber in at least a year, and a month of captain salary that she didn't take near enough vitamin D supplements to make up for that lack.
But they were knowledgeable hands. Even as she fidgeted with them, Weiss could see the ease with which the tech had operated on her. How smoothly, how flawlessly she'd taken out something that was jacked into her grey matter, talking and reassuring her all the while. How she'd boasted about deshunting someone, which Weiss hadn't even thought possible until that day.
The Drop-Captain part of her brain churned despite her best wishes, working out plans on keeping the HVT that is Ruby Rose out of death's clutches. She considered the girl's aptitudes. She fantasized about what she could come up with on the spot. She dreamed to see the moment— in the height of combat, in the rush of the adrenaline and the blood and the smoke, the sounds all drowning out, the chaos becoming one— the moment where it all just clicked.
Not everyone got it. Weiss herself hadn't even clicked yet, but she knew in her bones that Ruby would. She could see that slivered glint already.
This girl would do something impossible.
“Stop… staring at me…” Ruby whined, her face blooming with namesake splotches.
Weiss did the opposite, raking her optics up and down the taller technician. Her hair was freshly showered, a fluffy and decadent black with the ghosts of red highlights, wolfishly waving its way down to chin-length. She even wore a dress— a sundress, on a space station— and it was Weiss’ undoing that her captain's gladrags couldn't hope to match the technician's simple, splendorous beauty.
She'd expected a shirt. She'd wished for a crop-top. Instead, that dress outdid them all. All white, the sleeveless top hugged Ruby's torso, revealing shoulders with faint lines of definition, upper arms sparsely dotted with red caramel freckles, and forearms with fine, dark hairs standing out softly against the girl's skin. And the skirt— god, the skirt— it fell to her ruddy knees with a swaying pattern of roses and thorned stems, red and green against the shifting white. Her calves were lightly defined, flexing and unflexing with each step, those and her shins dusted with another dark coating of unshorn hair.
And, cutest of all, there were her white canvas shoes. She'd apparently drawn the little rose patterns on them herself with permanent marker— not perfectly artistic, no, but unreasonably charming, especially with the sh*tty little skull she'd probably done one of and decided she wasn't particularly good at, judging by the fact that it was alone behind the right heel-tendon.
She was an absolute button, which only made her memories of the girl so much more scandalizing. Someone so… sweet, so cute, someone who looked so innocent, saying how she'd shatter Weiss, how she'd rewire her nerves and attune them all to Ruby's whims, how she'd made Drop-Captain Weiss Schnee into her thing… good god. She wanted it. She craved it. She would do literally anything to be under Ruby's fingernails.
All she had to do was not f*ck up the date.
Then she had to make sure the girl came with her.
Then she had to make sure she didn't die.
Then Weiss had to make sure she herself didn't die.
Then she had to find some way out of the strider program.
Then, when the inevitable backlash from that hit the fan, she had to keep both herself and Ruby safe.
Weiss celebrated her shunts. If there'd been room for a governor up there, it definitely would've caught the ‘or I could just desert and hide with Ruby’ that frolicked gayly (ha) through her grey-matter.
“Zo… vhere are ve going?” Weiss asked into the silence between them, making Ruby reclaim that adorable, nervous grin.
“Uh… I dunno,” she admitted sheepishly, her blush now reduced to a warm tinge across her cheeks. “I was just kinda… walkin’ around. I haven't really ‘gone out’ in a, uh, hot minute.”
“Ein hot minute?”
“Oh, ja,” Ruby teased, her adorable and nervous grin devolving into a co*cky smirk. “Zo hött.”
The captain rolled her eyes. “Go-ayund-fuhck-yohr-seyulf,” she mocked in return.
Ruby gave her a toothy smile at the fake accent, which Weiss was chagrined to delight in. “Anything you like to do?” Ruby asked as they passed a noodle bar.
Weiss opened her mouth, but slowly closed it into a scowl. “I… do not know,” she admitted. “I never really have, er… free time.”
“None?”
The once-Pilot shrugged. “Not really. Vhenever I am alone I just lay down.”
It would be a labor of the heavens to uncover a more depressing sequence of words. Weiss realized this the moment she said it, but she and Ruby were both cringing before she could be stopped.
“Uh… wow,” Ruby lamented. Strangely, she started to pump her arms and breathe heavily “Okay. Okay. Okayokayokay.”
“Vat are you—”
“I've got this!” Ruby chanted with more energy than volume. “No dates in a year is better than sleeping for fun, this'll be easy, so easy,” she said, huffing like she was on a jog, then slapped herself. “Okay. Yeah! I got this.”
Weiss blinked at her, but decided to see where this goes.
“Date, date, date… movies?” The tech tapped her chin pensively, so engrossed in her thoughts that Weiss had to loop their arms together to pull the girl out of the way of corner-rounding pedestrians. Well, she didn't have to, but it was a good excuse to start walking arm-in-arm with Ruby, cupping the technician's bicep as she sidled up to her.
Ruby didn't seem to notice, and continued ruminating out loud. “Mmmm-movies… mmmm-maybe. Weiss, do you have any kind of PTSD triggers? Like war or action stuff?”
Weiss snorted dismissively. “Of course not.”
Ruby hissed. “Ooooh, big yes. Okay. Uh…” Weiss blubbered defensively, but she continued. “Not movies, then… nothing good anyways. Is the, uh…”
The tech turned to her date, lips poised to ask a question, before she seemed to think better of it and just dragged Weiss along instead.
“I do not— hey!” The captain tripped with the sudden jerk of movement, supremely unused to her height being so degraded, but Ruby was upon her in a flash, arm shooting out to catch the shorter girl around the waist.
To her credit, Ruby didn't buckle under the augweight this time. She held Weiss with only a slight strain, giving the captain a front-row seat of her muscles in action. She looked up at Ruby.
Ruby grinned down at her. “On your feet, Captain.”
Weiss choked.
She clambered back up straight on her striders, reclaiming her hold on Ruby’s arm with nothing more than a muttered, blushing thanks. In return (as if to f*ck with her) Ruby sent her a smirk before flexing the arm in Weiss’ grip and turning back to where she'd taken them.
‘Where she'd taken them’ turned out to be a wall with a thing on it. A thing which, upon closer inspection, seemed to be a digital itinerary of events on the station and their respective locations. Weiss started from the top and tried to follow her date—
“Oooooh,” Ruby cooed, somehow already halfway down the list. “You wanna see me f*ck up some hot dogs? I am an absolute glizzy maniac,” she claimed, emphatically jamming her finger where the display screen said ‘hot dog eating contest.’ “I mean, I won't win, but it'll be absolutely insane. Plus, free food.”
Weiss gaped. She gawked. ‘Glizzy maniac’ was branding itself across her brain and she had no idea what it meant.
Ruby paid the captain no mind, and seemingly waved herself off. “Nah, that's weird. Second or third date, sure, but first date? No. Nope. How ‘bout, uh…” her finger drifted up the page, revealing she either read from bottom-up or she was just picking things at random. “Fish— no, nono, fishing is not the mood… oooh there’s a CyberCtrykers tournament this weekend…”
Weiss watched her with interest that she found to be surprisingly unwaning.
“Go-karts…” Ruby briefly looked over her shoulder, met Weiss’ eyes, and smiled her sundering smile before turning back to the board. “Nah. Your hair’s too nice for go-karts.”
Once again, Weiss choked. How else was she supposed to react to being so effortlessly complimented? This was supposed to be her opportunity to prove herself, dammit!
“Y-you look… er… ja…” Weiss fumbled idiotically, unable to assemble herself in the wake of Ruby’s earth-shattering sincerity. “Schön.”
Ruby hummed. “You said that earlier, about something else— shoo-nuh, or maybe just shoon. What's that mean? ”
Surprising herself, Weiss found no urge to correct the technician’s pronunciations. If anything, it felt like a blessing to hear A-Sprache coming out of Ruby's lips in a way that wasn't mocking. “B-beautiful,” Weiss answered, her ears going hot. “Lovely. You look lovely.”
The tech half-turned, just enough for Weiss to see that adorable, bashful smirk again. “Nah,” Ruby insisted, pulling out her skirt again. “Ich bin frumpy.”
Weiss scowled, her eye catching something on the itinerary. “Stop saying zat, Ruby. You look delicious.”
“Deli—”
“Yes, idiot, delicious. Like I vant to devour you, ja?” She waved off her own words, instead pointing at one of the last things on the itinerary. “Vhy does a space station have einen ice skating rink?”
Weiss was very lucky that she liked Ruby. She was even luckier that she delighted in hearing her, because the technician beamed at having an opportunity to blow her special interest all over Weiss’ beautiful face.
“Well actually it's not technically an ice skating rink,” Ruby explained, her eyes sparkling. “It's part of the engineering masterwork that is Vale station— see, see,” she attempted visualizing something with her hands, something circular, until she realized she did not have a holo-projector in her palms. This seemed to genuinely frustrate her, as the girl took Weiss’ hand and started tugging her somewhere else. The captain let herself be pulled, equal parts curious and so down bad that she'd let Ruby do pretty much anything with/to her.
The tech pulled them down the passageway, fast-walking with overt enthusiasm and a giant, stupid smile, until the hall opened up into a colossal atrium.
The Central Heating Exchange Chamber was an open space of immense verticality, the singular vertex around which the whole of Vale station was built. The middle was a giant, empty cylinder circled by levels upon levels of system floors, maintenance floors, commercial floors, labor floors, and residential floors of variable density, stretching from the clear view of space through the ceiling all the way down to the open recreation space on the lowest floor. And at the bottom, right at the base of that cylinder, was a massive circle of bright blue ice.
Ruby threw herself half-over the railing to marvel, making Weiss leap to keep her from tipping over and plummeting to her death. “Ruby!” she called, grabbing her around a wrist and shoulder.
The technician made Weiss reel fully back by letting out an obscene moan.
“f*ck,” Ruby mewled. “God, I love the CHEC.”
Drop-Captain Weiss Schnee was stricken by an odd twist, one she found herself reviled to recognize.
She was jealous. Of a f*cking heat exchanger.
Well she had a right! It was a glorified radiator, meanwhile she was glorious and her machinery was radiant! Ruby could do so much better! She had wires and hoses, screws and magnetic clamps, panels and pistons and a f*cking extra voice box!
And… and she could do heat exchange! If she wanted to— needed to! She could do it right there, right then! Just pop all her maintenance panels and force a directive to pump her semisynth through them at double speed! Boom! Heat exchange!
She almost did it, too, before Ruby turned to her with a smile that reduced all her thoughts to nothing. Her teeth were big and bright— a little jumbled as if the girl hadn't worn a retainer since losing her braces— and the light of joy (or the bright overhead fixtures) had turned her gunmetal eyes into glimmering mercury. Her lips were pulled high, so high it must hurt, creasing her cheeks until the happiness threatened to occlude her unmatchable irises.
!!!UNBEFUGTEÄNDERUNG!!!
rubylirose
23J.
NICHTFEINDNLICH
PRIORITÄT-INGENIEURIN
STATUS:FRÖLICH
Okay. Sure. Yeah, she'd let the CHEC have Ruby, if she wanted. She'd do anything. As long as she could see this more often, she'd do anything.
Ruby talked, taking no notice of Weiss’ internal musing. “Okay, so like, everyone gets cold right? Everyone gets hot? Normal stuff. Hot, cold, humans need that kinda thing, even if it's uncomfy.”
God, anything.
“Well planetsiders— you prolly know about this thing I guess but you're listening so— you're listening right?”
“Ja.” Good god, yes, she was listening. She'd listen for hours, for days, she'd let her head drown in Ruby until she withered into nothing.
“Anyways, planetsiders have seasons, right? Most habworlds do, at least, for good reason it turns out! Even if we've been putting around in space this long, we're still parsecs away from actually evolving past the basics of our meat-bods. Like seasons, it turns out! Or at least, like, temperature and weather variance— there were studies a while ago about it, like, a super long while ago— turns out it's super enriching for us. Yeah, enriching, like we’re friggin’ pets or something, weird right?”
Weiss laughed a tight, strained laugh, because yes, being Ruby's pet would be weird. Yes. Extremely weird. It was strange the way her neck itched wantingly. Downright odd how she could picture herself on her knees for the girl, dog tags jingling on her collar as she heeded her commands.
“Jaaaaa,” the captain said under her breath, pointedly looking everywhere but Ruby. “So seltsam.”
Thankfully, Ruby ignored her and kept talking. “So like, if we don't experience variance like that it f*cks with something in our heads, some dopamine serotonin whatever stuff,” she claimed. “But the engineers for Vale station— I actually kinda know the project lead haha— were like ‘oh ok how about we just do seasons on the station?’ and, like, okay that doesn't sound too weird but what's, like, the weirdest way you could possibly do that?”
Weiss watched the tech dramatically thrust her hands over the edge and do jazz-hands towards the ice rink in the middle.
“A big f*ckin’ ice cube!” she declared, giggling to herself a little. “Just a huge pool of water down there! It's got, like, half the friggin station running through it for cooling, and there's an insane battery of heat exchangers to keep the whole thing from just boiling up into the station.”
Weiss’ optics tracked the elated quirks of her lips, the way they creased and separated when she spoke, the way her pink tongue moved with consonants and vowels, noting the hexadecimal red of her month's interior. Her pupils widened at how white her fingers would look in there.
“But like— okay, it's September, right? Standard-wise?”
She wanted to just… pinch the girl's cheeks in one hand, like… hold her mouth open and just… feel around in there. Caress the palette. Depress the tongue. Stroke the frenulum. Explore the interior of Ruby Li Rose, memorize how her smile would taste, how it felt when she formed those lovely words, which part vibrates the most when the captain made her squeal.
“Ja,” Weiss agreed mindlessly. “Zeptember. Ja.”
“So it's like fall— an early freeze this season, I guess, the guys upstairs like to vary it— which is a cold season, so they crank the evaporators up and cool everything down. Like, everything— even personal habitation units have a lowered upper limit for heating— except for senior care and the hospitals. It's great! Everyone gets all chilly and we all have to wear jackets and—” Ruby shivered, as if only the verbal mention of chill had reminded her that she was susceptible to it. “And I'm realizing I forgot mine. Beans. Okay. Here, let's go back it'll just take a—”
Weiss stepped in front of her, already shrugging off her freshly-washed captain's jacket.
Ruby stuttered, spluttered, and floundered her way through the Standard tongue before finally managing an ‘oh wait you don't have to’, but Weiss’ jacket was already off, already in her hand, already being held out for her date.
The tech stared at her, at Weiss, her panicked words slowly trailing off as her eyes locked solely onto the captain's snug grey fatigue top. “O-oh,” Ruby’s voice ghosted, her eyes roaming between Weiss’ torso and the slightly oversized joggers she'd borrowed, then down to where the pants were tucked into her bulky drop-boots. “Oh and with the… oh the pants…”
Weiss rolled her eyes, though she couldn't stop her own sheepish smirk from sprouting. “Ze jacket, Ruby.”
“Good god…” the tech mumbled, ignoring the extended garment completely. “f*ck, Weiss, you're… like… hot.”
The captain's pallor turned crimson in an instant. “Rubyputonzejacket!” she hurriedly demanded, thrusting the garment towards Ruby, who had absolutely no reaction. Weiss’ other arm crossed over herself insecurely. “You have already seen me like zis,” the captain muttered. “You have seen me naked.”
Ruby reeled as if Weiss had claimed that her hair was blonde. “Yeah? Okay?” she responded, baffled. “Is something only beautiful the first time you see it?”
“Sh-shut up and take ze damn jacket,” the captain commanded, screwing her eyes shut until she felt the thing leave her hand. When she opened them again, she was graced by the sight of Ruby Rose slipping into a jacket that was, to Weiss’ eternal chagrin, a little short in the sleeves.
Ruby tightened it by the lapels nonetheless, and took an unsubtle whiff of its high collar before she caught herself. “Uh, thanks Weiss,” she said, turning back towards the giant frozen pool of the CHEC, hiking the collar high to hide her face.
Weiss came to the railing beside her and leaned over, feeling a familiar pull in her gut as she stared down to the bottom.
Ruby rubbed the back of her neck. “Anyway, yeah. Yeah, the, uh… CHEC. It's super cool. I won't drive you crazy about it though,” she chuckled sheepishly. “I could talk about it all day, it's just one of those, uh… things, that I kinda hyper-obsess over. I know it's annoying.”
“I don't mind listening,” Weiss hummed, letting it slip under her breath. She didn't think Ruby had heard it until the girl slowly slid her arms along the railing, bringing herself to lean against the captain.
“That's… nice.” Ruby looked down at the CHEC, down at the ant-sized people skating along its surface, little more than dots sliding over the giant pool of frozen blue. Her voice came quietly, “Did you wanna skate?”
Weiss shrugged, but subtly drifted one arm around Ruby's back, aug hovering over the jacket, moving slowly, slowly, her hand shaking by the time it came to rest just above the technician’s hip.
Weiss Schnee, Drop-Captain of the Eighteenth Martyrs Company, had killed more people than she could count. She'd blown enough plaz to make a star, burned enough capacitors out to build shuttle out of their blackened husks, and burned her way through a planet-cracking amount of gunpowder. She'd seen men and women turned inside out. She'd been danger-close with an orbital bombardment. She'd charged through two frontlines irradiated by tactical atomics.
But holding her hand there, agonizing between whether to let it rest upon Ruby or draw it back, she was shell-shocked. She was rigid. She was a teenager again, on a first date again, her brain gridlocked on what she was supposed to do with this Pilot boy. Her hand quaked .
She didn't want to f*ck it up. It was just the first date, but… she’d taken her jacket! She'd even smelled it! Was touching too much? Was she an idiot for worrying about touching the girl who'd choked on her tongue?
Of course she was an idiot! Of course she could touch her!
Her hand trembled. It did not land upon Ruby.
What if she backed up? What if she slapped her hand away? What if she looked her in the eyes and said ‘actually, I hate you, you psychotic murderer, you dog of the Hierarchy, you cross-wired, jury-rigged, brain-jacked f*ck’, and pushed her over the railing?
What if she was worrying way too much? What if her hesitation was ruining this? What if this was all jumbled up, all in the wrong order, all so beyond f*cked that—
Ruby huffed, grabbed her wrist, and laid the captain's hand on her hip. Weiss sucked in a sharp breath.
“So, Cap,” Ruby started casually, her gaze still firmly on the skating rink below. “Did you hear me?”
Weiss made a noise in her throat.
“Wanna go ice skating?” the tech repeated.
“I… I don't know,” Weiss admitted. “Ist das normal? I don't…” know how to do any of this.
“We probably shouldn't,” Ruby decided, deflating a little at her own words. “Not with your striders decompressed. It could get bad.”
Weiss nodded, her eyes locked to the hand on the other girl's hip. “Okay.”
The technician sighed. “I really want a smoke right now.”
“You smoke?”
Ruby nodded. “Yeah. I stopped.”
“Zere are a couple rolls in ze interior pocket, ze little tin.”
Ruby looked at her— god, it felt good to meet her eyes again— and raised one brow. “Rolls? Like… hand-rolled?”
“Ja.”
“You would,” the tech snorted. “But no thanks. My sister would kill me.”
“Du hast eine Schwester?”
“Weiss, I—”
“Sister?”
To the captain's dismay, Ruby looked down again. To her delight, she shuffled closer.
“Yeah,” Ruby confirmed. “She's a Pilot.”
A surprised, energetic ‘hmm?’ rose from Weiss’ throat.
“Yang. Belladonna. Heard of her?”
Weiss blinked, squinted at Ruby, then snorted. “Yang Belladonna,” she repeated with a bark of laughter. “Zat's funny.”
“I'm serious,” the other girl claimed. “We have different moms, but the same dad.”
“You are not related to Yang Belladonna. Zat is… you're not, are you?” Weiss shook her head. “Das kann nicht sein.”
Ruby locked eyes with her, dead serious. “Yeah. I am.”
“And you're not—”
Ruby threw her gaze back down to the ice, her voice low and bitter. “No. I'm not.” She waved her hand ruefully. “I went to college instead.”
“You… vait, you actually have einen Masterabschluss? Not just ein Bachelor’s?”
The tech shook her head. “Yup. Went to school and everything. I always wanted to be a Pilot, but uh…” her gaze hung low, her face drooping. “Well. I wanted this more.”
There was something to the way she said ‘I’ that made Weiss think it was a lie. She drew it out too long, her voice was a little too uneasy, she said it too quietly. She was leaving something out and the captain could tell.
“Vell…” Weiss started, deciding something so obviously heavy wasn't first-date fare. “Zat must have been hard.”
Ruby laughed. For the first time to Weiss’ ears, it was not a pleasant sound. It was bitter and sharp, all jagged edges, sounding like memories so bad that they could only be laughed at. “No,” Ruby lamented. “It was the easiest thing I've ever done in my entire life.”
Weiss blinked.
“Absolute f*cking cakewalk,” the engineer claimed with dread. “Like I was born for it.”
Weiss blinked again. “Oh.”
Ruby sighed. Her hand idly drifted towards Weiss’ jacket pocket.
“Ent—” Weiss cleared her throat. “Er, sorry. I'm sorry.”
Ruby shook her head. She pressed herself closer to Weiss, mumbling, “You're warm.”
Drop-Captain Weiss Schnee set her jaw and stared forward, but let the hand on Ruby’s hip give it a reassuring squeeze.
“I guess we should probably eat,” Ruby said after a while, pulling her warm, soft body from Weiss’ one-armed almost-embrace. “Brunch?”
“Was ist Brunch?”
“You… don't know what brunch is? Weren't you, like, rich?”
“I am rich,” Weiss corrected. “And I vould not have asked if I knew vat brunch is.”
Ruby giggled at her, the sonorous sound a blessing after hearing her voice go so dark. She took Weiss’ hand and pulled. “C’mon,” she beckoned. “I'll take you to brunch. It'll be wild.”
She dragged Weiss to brunch.
The only thing wild about it was how hard Weiss’ heart flopped around when Ruby ordered for her, insisting she'd love the ‘Vale Smash’, which ended up being a complement of fruit and battered toast served with syrup. Compared to rations and cigarettes, Weiss did love it.
What she did not love was Ruby's insistence to foot the bill, which she did by whipping out a credit chit faster than Weiss could comprehend. She had left no time for argument and stormed out of the establishment with Weiss in hand, brimming with a fresh reserve of energy as she dragged the heavy captain bodily.
She tugged the strider back towards the central, columnar emptiness around the CHEC, smiling wide as she tightened the white authority jacket around her shoulders. “Okayokayokay,” Ruby started, “uh… aquarium? There's an aquarium.”
Weiss, as she often found herself doing in Ruby's presence, shook her head to the point of dizziness. “Ein Aquarium?” she asked stupidly, her voice in the tones of ‘who the hell thought this would be anything but a terrible idea?’ as her hands gestured through hysteria. “Gibt es hier ein Aquarium? Warum? Warum zum Teufel gibt es hier ein Aquarium? Ein Aquarium auf einer Raumstation? Wa- rum! Sind diese Leute verrückt?”
Ruby tapped her chin pensively, and guessed before Weiss could self-translate: “Something about aquariums being a terrible idea? Probably something like ‘an aquarium on a space station?’ Then a jab at the designers?”
Weiss opened her mouth and felt vaguely offended to be so easily read, but voiced nothing of it. Instead, she just offered a soggy shrug.
“Oh yeah, it is a terrible idea,” Ruby agreed, already pulling her in a new direction, taking them down a new gangway. “Awful. Like, god- awful. But, like, I'm super grateful for it. I wouldn't really get to see a fish otherwise.”
“You have not seen a fish?”
“Of course I have, because of the big, stupid aquarium in this big, stupid station.”
Weiss processed a question for a couple seconds, and Ruby slowed down enough to not be dragging the captain's augweight alone. “And… other animals?”
The tech nodded. “Yep! There are pets, obviously— mice, roderilim, ferrets— that get imported and sold around. I actually had one up until aaaaa… bout a year ago. A mouse, that is, god knows I can't afford a roderilim. But in terms of, like, animal- animals… well there are, like… cattle on the agricultural floor. Sheep and goats, mostly pigs, some cows— oh! And grubbers!” She announced the last one cheerfully, as if the presence of giant, domesticated meat-bugs was the equivalent of a roving ice-cream vendor. “Lots of sweet lil grubbers. Oh and the aquarium has penguins.”
Weiss nodded comprehendingly, only for the last word to bang into her brain like a hang-fire. She ground her drop-boots down, her striders holding hard against the pull of Ruby Li Rose, their decompressed, unbuffered frames smarting against her hips (though much less than before) as she ground herself and her date to a halt in the gangway. She seized the other girl by the shoulders. She whipped Ruby around. She held the taller tech tight and thrust their faces close— close enough that crazed blue optics and wide grey cornea could be convinced to meet.
“Dieser Ort hat Pinguine?”
“Mein Gott!” Weiss squealed, bolting so hard out of Ruby's grip that she nearly dislocated the girl’s arm. “Dieser Ort hat Pinguine!”
She sprinted to the clear barrier of the enclosure and pressed her face against it, making her date giggle. “Yyyup,” Ruby confirmed, stretching the cuff of her yanked arm. “Pinguini.”
Weiss didn't even try to correct her. She was too busy being dumbstruck, completely and idiotically bedazzled by the wondrous machinations waddling before her. Their little bodies were all… round. They were so distinctly oblong, just a roving (waddling) gang of little tux-laden birds, flapping their wings, looking like god-forsaken idiots in a way that only hyper-specialized flightless birds can. They honked their stupid idiot honks, sounding like kazoos given the torturous curse of life as a penguin. One waddled close to where Weiss’ cheek was flat against the glass, tucked its beaky head flat to its body, and made a tonal chirrup with the same cadence that her vox-entangler probably did, at least when it was actually set to encode her voice.
Weiss cooed at it in turn, but it didn't notice her because it was an idiot bird that was stuck (like an idiot) on a big, stupid space station.
She was happy. Drop-Captain Weiss Schnee of the Eighteenth Martyrs Company, who had killed more people than Ruby had probably ever met, and seen twice that amount die, was elated. Her heart was full. Her chest was aflutter. If she could cement herself to this spot, glue her eyes open and affix her gaze to these dumb f*cking birds, she would do it with a smile. She didn't want to leave. She wanted to stay here forever.
Ruby bumped her shoulder. “So… big penguin fan?”
“Ruby,” she addressed, her voice ringing with grave honesty, “Zis is ze greatest moment of my life. For zis, I owe you.”
“Leave the army.”
Weiss looked at her. Ruby winced.
“N-nevermind.”
“I'll do it,” Weiss offered, her face falling solemn. “But you know vat vould come next, und… I vould be leaving my people behind.
“N-no, just…”
Weiss turned her body and twitched one hand out for Ruby's, which the technician took with only two sheepish fingers. “Just vat?”
“Maybe, if you really do like the penguins,” Ruby supposed, looking away with a light blush. “You could owe me… two favors?”
She held up two fingers sheepishly, giving the captain a shaky, hopeful smile. Weiss narrowed her gaze suspiciously at the girl, but the chuffed nasal-honks of two communing penguins made her heart swell, crushing all her objections beneath it. “Fine,” she conceded. “But zey had better not be too crazy.”
Ruby tapped her fingertips together, her expression quirking into sheepish, giddy guilt— the expression someone makes when they're about to ask for something too crazy. “Well, like… this is super nice but, uh…”
The captain watched the other girl's face heat, her silver eyes darting between Weiss’ neck— not really reaching her face— and her boots.
“We haven't really gotten to know each other better, which was kinda the whole point, so for my first favor…” the grin of someone who had outsmarted their opponent crawled up Ruby's lips, lifting them to her reddened cheeks. “Tell me about yourself.”
Weiss blinked. She'd honestly expected sex, judging by the blush. “Oh. I am, er… tventy-five. Und… uh…”
“Where from?”
The captain scoffed, motioning to her own throat sarcastically. “Is zat not obvious?”
Ruby rolled her eyes. “Of course it is, but I want you to tell me. That's the point.”
“V-vell, I vas born on Atlas Station,” Weiss stated, ignoring the irrational insecurity that bubbled in her chest. “But I did not live zere— it vas just convenience, meine Mutter vent into labor in it, had me in it, but ve lived on ze Schnee Dynastius.”
“What's that?”
“Oh, er… big… rich-people ship. Like ein, uh… house-boat. I lived zere until I joined ze Pilots.” Her gaze slid away, but Ruby gave their joined hands a reassuring squeeze. “You, uh… you know ze rest.”
The tech shook her head. “Not really. Like, what'd you do for fun? Favorite color? What kind of food did your mom make?”
“Fun? Uh…” Weiss had to yank hard on the threads of memory for this; everything pre-Oz was… fuzzy, as if that fort was still exploding, its force shaking things it had no right to shake. “I read a lot of books,” she managed to remember, before a spike of hot recollection lanced through her thoughts. “And I sang! Opera! I sang opera.”
Now it was Ruby’s turn to gawk. “You're an opera singer?”
“I vas,” Weiss corrected, tapping her throat again and purposefully rumbling her vox-entangler. “I can't hit ze high notes anymore, nor hold a good one for long. Und mein Vibrato ist f*cked.”
Ruby, to her date's surprise, deflated like a sad balloon, her lips pursed and troubled.
“Meine Lieblingsfarbe ist… Rot— red,” Weiss stated, hoping to cheer the girl back up. Instead, Ruby gave her a rueful, knowing smirk and started slipping her fingers out of the captain's grip.
“N-no, I'm serious!” the captain insisted, grabbing Ruby's hand fully before the girl could slip away. “Rot. I am not lying.”
Ruby glared, suspicious. “No way, you're f*cking with me.”
“Nein! I am serious!” Weiss huffed, drawing a few bystanders’ attention. A penguin did its noises. “I had meinen Mech painted mit red accents! My closets at home vere as red as zey vould allow! I even tried to get a red-eye transmog for mein optics!”
“Tried?” the tech probed. “They’re so easy to get, how come—”
“Mein Vater,” Weiss spat, “vould not let me. Zat is vhy i did not vant mein Name on any documents— he vould find out, und I vould be f*cked.”
Ruby made an ‘o’ with her mouth, letting out a sound to match. “I see.”
“You believe me now?”
“Yes,” the tech conceded, nodding. “Just… I dunno, you seemed more white and blue.”
“Blau— blue— ist eine family color,” Weiss elaborated. “Und das Weiß—”
“Ha! That’s your name!”
Weiss indulgently (read: condescendingly) patted her head. “Yes, Schatzi, good job. Jedenfalls, das Weiß is because I preferred it over die schwarze Uniform. Zose vere ze only Optionen.”
“Shv—”
“Black.”
Ruby scoffed, aghast. “You— you turned black down? But you'd look so cool!”
“Nein. I do not look cool, I look… edged.”
“Edgy?”
“Ja.”
Ruby shrugged. “Nothin’ wrong with edgy. It can be a good look.”
“It's really not for me,” the captain assured. “It makes me look pale.”
"Dude, your name means white, and honestly? It looks like it,” she pointed up and down at Weiss, who looked fatally stricken. “But that's a good thing! I-I mean, I think you look great! Super good! Zo hött!”
Weiss scowled. Unfortunately, that did nothing against the snort that ripped out of her nose. “Sh-shut up,” she admonished through her teeth, stuttering with mirth. “Never say zat again.”
Ruby laughed at her reddening face, her laughter forcing her to buckle onto the other girl. The technician held herself against the captain. Weiss didn't laugh anymore. She was busy staring.
Ruby had a wonderful laugh. It was dumb and low— kinda scratchy— but nonetheless a pure and wholesome sound, and the captain watched like she could see the soundwaves, as if each chuckle was a firework. And the fact she was holding Weiss, gripping the captain as if she'd fall through the station otherwise… she'd never been laughed on before. She'd never been funny, really, besides the graveyard humor that'd only ever get a solemn chuckle from her platoon, which was probably just to appease a higher up in hindsight.
But Ruby wasn't in the Eighteenth Martyrs. She wasn't doing this for her appeal. She really just… liked her. At least enough to laugh.
She wasn't in the Eighteenth Martyrs yet.
Oh f*ck, she was going to put this sweet, lovely girl in the Eighteenth.
“I vill figure something out,” Weiss promised, tucking a strand of black behind the technician's ear. “I can keep you safe, I svear— zo long as you do ze same.”
Ruby choked on her mirth and reeled, her hands barely remaining on the shorter girl's shoulders. Her eyes drifted away, that starburst smile crumbling into a pursed, anxious line. “I want to believe you,” she claimed. “I… I really do.”
“You vant me out?” Weiss asked, taking one hand off her shoulder to hold between both of her own. “Be my reason. Bitte. I just need a reason, I can get out— I vill.”
The technician stared down at those not-porcelain hands. A penguin honked.
“How?” she asked, meeting the captain's gaze. “How can you possibly keep me safe?”
“Good eqvipment,” Weiss stated immediately. “Keep you close to me.”
Ruby deadpanned. “Close to you? The literal ‘first in?’”
“Ja. Zere is a reason I have lived zis long.”
“The cybers.”
Weiss shook her head. “Ze cybers only do so viel.”
“You said they saved you a thousand—”
“Zey have, ja, but I have lived long enough to not need zem anymore.”
Ruby snorted, her hands lifting from Weiss as she straightened. “That sounds delusional.”
The captain frowned, absorbing what was, unfortunately, a good point. She sighed. “I vill have to start using ein Schild again, but I haven't had to use ze cybers in ein hot minute, as you say.”
“You haven't been using a shield?” the engineer shouted, aghast, making her date wince from the volume. “You— you've been wearing armor, right?”
Weiss winced. “Er…”
“Weiss—”
“I— Ich bin ein strider, okay!” the captain feebly defended. “I prefer unencumbered Mobilität!”
Ruby scowled, staring hard at Weiss like she was even dumber than the stupid idiot birds squawking beside them. She pursed her lips so hard they paled, screwed her eyes shut, and let out a monumental sigh.
“You are an absolute dumbass,” the tech declared. “Like, seriously, that is so f*cking stupid. You're a god-damn fool.”
The captain shrank under each criticism. “B-but I—”
Ruby crossed her arms and turned away with a huff. “f*cking idiot,” she scathed, her voice a red-hot, semi-sarcastic dagger. “You do need me.”
Weiss bowed her head. It took about five seconds to process what she'd said. When she turned up to her date, knowing how pathetic her optics probably looked, all of her words got gummed up somewhere between her larynx and her vox-entangler, releasing only a strangled double-whine. Her gaze climbed up to the technician's.
Ruby Rose impaled her optics with haughty grey steel. Her lips dared to rise, parting just enough to show devious canines. “Is this how you get me?” she asked, her voice low. “Play weak? Be such a goddamn fool that I can't leave you alone?”
Weiss choked on her words. Laughing so sweetly one moment, spearing her the next— accusing her— she was dumbstruck. Fouled. It was as if she'd taken an electric goad right to her shunts. Ruby didn't make sense. She was adorable. She was terrifying. Wasn't this a date? It felt like an interrogation!
“N-no,” Weiss managed to eke out, seething through her teeth. “I am not trying to play you, verdammt. Just—” she sucked air between her teeth, her voice rising. “I am sorry, okay? Okay!Entschuldigung! Sorry! Vat do you vant me to say! I am not trying to f*cking manipulate you! I'm trying— I'm trying to— gah! Ruby!” She stomped, her alloy fists clenching. “Ich versuche normal zu sein! Für dich! Hör auf— s-stop being ein Arsch-hole! Just leave if you hate me! No, I vill go! Bye!”
She turned, catching all the myriad gazes watching her embarrass herself. Weiss huddled tight, clutching herself as she stormed out of the aquarium and left the honking penguins behind.
“W-wait!” she heard from behind. “Weiss!”
She kept going, stomping so hard that it made her hips hurt.
“I'm sorry! I didn't mean it! I—”
FORCERICHTLINIE
/DEAKT.COCHLEA
…
…
!COCHLEAAUS!
An empty whooshing filled Weiss’ dead ears, a deafening waterfall. She kept going.
A hand grabbed her shoulder— not strong enough to force her augweight on its own, but she turned nonetheless. She let Ruby Li Rose see her face. She let Ruby Li Rose see that she made her cry— that she had hurt her enough to force bluish semisynth through nigh-vestigial tear ducts. Her cheeks must've been alighted with cyan tracks, her veinless, artificial sclera tinged a translucent periwinkle.
Ruby’s lips moved, empty of sound.
FORCERICHTLINIE
/AKTV.COCHLEA
“Scared, okay? I— I'm sorry, Weiss, I got scared!”
“That's what you do when you get scared?” The captain scowled. “I vould hate to see you angry.”
“Well I was angry, too!” When Weiss turned around again, Ruby restated: “Wait! Just wait, okay?”
Drop-Captain Weiss Schnee, despite wanting nothing more than to leave in a hurry, waited.
“Look— look, I just—” Ruby balled up her fists and pressed them into her own temples, her eyes squeezing shut. Pedestrians passed by with long stares. “I… I just… I get attached bad, okay? Like, bad,” she rolled one hand towards Weiss. “Bad-bad. And this—” that hand now darted between its owner and the captain. “Is bad-bad- bad. Like, you're… you're a soldier! A strider — a captain! Like, that's not.my kind of person, okay! But you are! Like you just keep telling me these things and, like, I've heard about striders! It's not good! I mean, you guys are crazy! So… like…”
Weiss watched the other girl aggressively massage her knuckles against her skull. She waited.
“Like… like…” the words ground out of Ruby, as if every syllable had hooks that caught in her throat. “Like, how do you get people to do that? How am I supposed to know that I'm not getting manipulated?”
The captain stood up straight, raising her chin despite the semisynth teardrops that fell from it. “Because I am here,” she stated, her voice cracking. She sniffled. “Ich bin— Ich, Ruby, ein Drop-Captain— Ich bin hier on ein date! I am using mein PTO for zis! PTO zat I have never used before, for anything! For you! I am not f*cking manipulating you, Ruby! I like you, and you said you vanted to leave, to do something beside langvish in Deinem Shop all day!” She stomped up to the taller girl, coming chest-to-chest and drawing an even longer stare as she poked Ruby's sternum. “I svear I vill not let you be hurt! I svear I vill do my best to keep us alive! I svear I vill do everything in my meiner Kraft to get out of ze strider program! I, Drop-Captain Weiß Gisela Schnee, vow it.”
That ceramium finger poked into Ruby's chest with hard finality, making her stagger. Weiss crossed her arms.
“Just say yes,” she proposed. “Und wir können continue our date, spend all of mein PTO together, zen ve vill do ze hardest thing any person has ever done, together.”
Ruby stared warily.
“Or say no, und ich werde a shuttle finden und leave.”
Ruby stared— unreadable, now.
Weiss growled. “Verdammt nochmal, Ruby! Stop getting in your own vay and say yes!”
Ruby did not say yes. She continued to say nothing. Her pupils started to widen.
“Say anything!”
Ruby said nothing. Instead, she grabbed Weiss' hand and fast-walked down the gangway. The captain followed dumbly, blubbering the whole way: ‘verdammt, Ruby!’ or ‘talk to me!’ or long, compound strings of A-Sprache that achieved absolutely nothing. Ruby tugged her silently. Like the idiot Weiss was, she let her.
Maybe, if she hadn't been focused on flinging hysterical demands at the technician, her optics would've recognized the gangways. If she hadn't been stomping and growling the whole time, she probably would've noticed elevator’s direct. Maybe, if she weren't such a god-damned dumbass, she would've had a second thought at being pulled into the Crescent Rose.
She only shut her mouth when Ruby slammed the backroom door and locked it, then presented her back to Weiss.
“Unzip me,” Ruby said, her voice as cold and metallic as her eyes.
Weiss watched her shoulders roll indicatively, making the simple white zipper at her back jingle. Her mouth went dry. Her hands did not move. “I… I don't think zis is—”
“Yeah, yes, sure— whatever,” the tech growled, annoyed. “Weiss, just take my f*cking dress off.”
“You—”
Ruby grabbed her wrist and placed it against her back, right at the zipper. Weiss’ hands pulled it down. Her eyes followed its track.
The zipper's white teeth parted at an agonizing pace, but Weiss could not convince her arm to go any faster. She couldn't convince any part of her to do much of anything, really. She could only stare, her optics absorbing every uncovered inch of pale, supple skin, interrupted only by the sparse dots of coffee-colored freckles and an occasional, slightly darker mole.
She absorbed the valley of her spine, with its cervical vertebrae subtly making themselves known at the base of her neck before disappearing somewhere between her shoulder blades. She watched the zipper unveil more, baring Ruby Li Rose down past the small of her back, nearly to the hips before there was nothing more to unzip. Weiss lamented that fact— that she could not see whatever tantalizing shape the girl’s tailbone made with her back— but overrode her grief by raking her optics up the girl's flesh once more.
This gave her the perfect view of those angular shoulder blades rolling back, pinching close, the tracts of her skin unbroken.
“BH?” Weiss found herself asking, the acronym enunciated as little more than a pair of bewildered huffs.
Ruby looked over her shoulder, her face almost completely unreadable save for the boiling mercury of her eye. “What?”
“B-bra,” Weiss clarified, the word falling out in a single, idiotic tumble like a particularly clumsy penguin.
Ruby hummed, nodding slowly as she shouldered the dress down her arms. “Built in,” she answered succinctly, as if her disrobing was not actively making the captain's brain into horny slop.
The captain, whose brain was now horny slop, watched the sleeveless top of the dress slide off Ruby’s arms. It fell limp in front of her waist, unveiling the technician’s upper figure in broader context: her back was pale and gentle, unmarked, begging for Weiss to make stripes upon its blank canvas; her sides were formed just for the captain— the bow, dip, and bow from chest to hip, a figure that made Weiss senseless, drove her past sanity, and drowned out all thoughts save for the craving of her tongue.
If Weiss’ brain had been emptied, then the sight of Ruby pulling the skirt off made her mind negative. Her thoughts became a void, a singularity, a black hole that vacuumed away their surroundings until it was just them. Just the captain and the technician. Weiss Gisela Schnee and Ruby Li Rose. The cyborg and the girl who had made her cry.
Ruby turned.
Weiss looked.
It was everything she'd hoped for.
Ruby Rose was not a soldier. Her body was soft, surprising Weiss in a lack of lean edges that she herself was abundant with. Her breasts— because of course that was the first thing her optics landed on— were round and soft, prodigious compared to Weiss’, their peaks crowned by circles of gentle, brownish pink. The color difference between those and the the tech's solar-starved paleness was both stark and surprising, leaving Weiss to stare in a daze. The rest of her would be the dictionary picture for ‘soft’; she looked not at all like someone who wanted to pry Weiss open, but more like a lustrous not-tan pillow of a person, with faint lines of shade hinting at where the sides rolled as she moved.
Weiss was stuck staring, marveling, her optics sliding all over the girl like they could unpeel her. She didn't even notice Ruby was moving until her calloused hand was around the captain's jaw, clutching tight. “Well?” she said, her gaze expectantly flicking down the other girl's damnably clothed body. “You gonna be a good girl or what?”
Weiss whined. It felt so right to be in her hands again.
Then Ruby’s gaze softened, her grey eyes deep, and she pressed her whole naked body against the captain. Her grip on Weiss’ jaw moved to her cheek, thumb drifting over her synthetic lip. Those silver-limned pupils dragged Weiss past their event horizons, trapping her into a time-dilated downward spiral, their gravity pulling her apart piece by piece just as they crushed her into their singularity.
“I'm sorry,” came Ruby's voice, drawing Weiss’ attention to the movement of her lips. “I shouldn't have doubted you.”
Weiss had no words. Ruby had sucked them all out. All she could do was open her eyes wide, pleading, and press her face into that strong, knowing hand. The technician grinned. Her thumb moved away.
Ruby kissed her, and the galaxy was reborn anew.
