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Weiss Schnee was absolutely exhausted.
After a long day of the same dull classes, loud and obnoxious peers, and teachers that were either incomprehensible or masters of putting students to sleep, she was ready to just relax. She could have a nice cup of tea and focus on her studies and not be bothered by-
“No, over there! Come on, it’s gotta be evenly spaced,” a voice yelled from inside her dorm room. Weiss looked worriedly at the door. She knew that her teammates had already returned due to her needing clarification from Oobleck’s lecture, but whatever they were doing, it didn’t sound good. “No, Blake, we have enough staples.”
‘Oh gods what is Yang doing now,’ she thought to herself. It was obviously Yang. The voice was too low to be Ruby’s and she was yelling at Blake, so it couldn’t be her either. Weiss approached the door with caution. After living with them for over a year, she knew better than to expect the door to not be blown across the hall.
Weiss opened the door, sucking in a deep breath in preparation. As she threw it open and opened her eyes, she was just…shocked.
All three of her teammates were kneeling on the floor, Weiss’ bedsheet ripped from her bed and sitting between the three. Blake had a stapler in her hand while Yang and Ruby both held corners of something over her comforter. It looked like a flag of some kind, changing from a deep pink to a dark orange, with white in the middle dividing the two colors.
“What in the world are you all doing?” she asked, clearly exasperated. Thankfully nothing was on fire and the window was in one piece, but this was just…incredibly strange. Not to mention the heiress was a little annoyed that her comforter was currently on the floor with staples in it.
“Hey Weiss!” Ruby said enthusiastically. “We’re, uhh…just decorating?” A beat of sweat dripped from her forehead.
“...With my bedsheet?” Weiss asked.
“Well…umm…well y’see it’s June, so we figured it would be fun to…you know…”
“You’re gay as hell and we wanted to prank you,” Yang said, cutting off her sister’s rambling. Ruby let out a sigh of relief before immediately looking up at her sister horrified.
“Well, Yang mostly wanted to. She roped me and Ruby into it,” Blake said. She placed the stapler back down, just thankful she didn’t need to keep getting yelled at for her ‘rush job’ she didn’t even want to do.
“Hey, that is unfair. You could have easily said no,” Yang defended.
“Yes because that always works when I tell you no,” Blake quipped back.
“It was one time !”
“Umm, Weiss, are you alright?” Ruby asked, breaking up the argument between the two. Weiss meanwhile was just looking at them all confused. As if they were all speaking a different language.
“...What do you mean ‘gay?’ What does that mean?” Weiss asked honestly. Now it was the others’ turn to look at their teammate as if she were an alien. Weiss felt a bit uncomfortable as the three pairs of eyes were boring into her. She quietly closed the door and stepped into the room. “Why are you all looking at me like that?”
“Weiss…do you not know what the word gay means?” Ruby asked. Weiss set her book bag down on her desk before walking over and sitting on her naked bed.
“Well, no. I may have heard it before but I’m not sure if I’m aware of the meaning.” Ruby looked sad for her teammate, Yang was moments away from exploding with laughter, and Blake was currently beating Yang with a pillow to get her to shut up. Ruby stood up and sat next to Weiss, a hand going to her shoulder.
“Weiss, I don’t know how to break it to you, but…you are gay. That means that you…well you like…so you know how when a mommy and a daddy love each other and-”
“Ruby, please just tell me,” Weiss said.
“Being gay means you want to be in a relationship with someone of the same sex,” Blake explained casually. Yang finally exploded into laughter, Blake giving up and just throwing a pillow on her partner’s face to stop her. “That’s what this is we’re attaching to your bed sheet. It’s the flag for lesbian pride.”
“That’s a girl who is only attracted to other girls,” Ruby further explained. “There’s a lot of them too. Like there’s bi, or pan, or ace, or-”
“I-I am not gay! Or a lesbian or whatever you said!” Weiss yelled. The others went silent, even Yang stopping her laughing as she stood right up. “I…I-I can’t be, can I? Everybody feels like girls are…a-attractive, right?” Weiss’ face was as red as her partner’s hood, so clearly flustered the shattered moon could probably tell what she was feeling.
“There’s nothing wrong with it, Ice Queen,” Yang said, finally recovering from her explosion of laughter. Weiss’ face was no less red as Yang threw an arm over her shoulder. “I mean hey, all of us here like girls. Right ladies?” Ruby and Blake nodded along with her. “Like Ruby over there is bi, Blake is too, and I’m pan. We can explain them if you want.”
“But I…I-I-Isn’t that bad? You’re not supposed to like someone of the same sex. It’s not…” Weiss stopped, looking back at every time she’d heard that kind of dialogue from her father and the other elites he associated with. “I-I don’t understand.”
“Hey, Weiss, it’s alright,” Ruby said. She stood and pulled Weiss into a side hug. “We all accept you, regardless of who you are. You should be proud of your identity!” Her wide smile helped soothe Weiss’ worries a little.
“But…how did you all know? A-And wait, I like guys too. There’s…well there’s…a-and my father told me I…” her mind was going blank, desperately trying to comb through her memories for anything.
“Weiss, I hate to tell you this, but maybe your father isn’t the best source for this kind of thing,” Blake said. She had already ditched the project that they’d been working on and was not sitting on her bed.
“Yeah, your dad seems like a real asshole,” Yang commented.
“YANG!” Ruby yelled.
“What, it’s true!”
“Well, yeah , but you can’t just…I don’t know.” Her attention went back to her partner. “You alright Weiss?”
“Yeah, just…I never really thought about it. I always thought everyone had these thoughts. But they never…talked about it. How are you all so…open about this? And how did you just know about it all?”
“Well our dad told us. We always wanted us to be open about how we felt,” Ruby explained. From what Weiss knew about Taiyang Xiao Long, that tracked.
“And my parents never made it a mystery. If I had a question, I just asked them,” Blake explained.
“Plus that one time our uncle Qrow kissed a guy at the kitchen table and Ruby had to ask dad what that meant-”
“Yang shut up!”
“Sis if I don’t mock you for asking Dad ‘why two boys were kissing like a mommy and daddy’ now I’ll never get another chance to.” Ruby just went over to where Blake was sitting, fuming at her sister. “Here Weiss, let me show you something.” With that, Yang pulled out her scroll, walking over to Weiss’ bed and inviting the heiress to join her. Yang had opened the chat to the group chat the four of them shared with team JNPR.
YXL: yo
YXL: weiss didnt know she was gay lmao
“I really don’t think you need to be so crude,” Weiss said, face going red again. Yang just chuckled as she waited for responses to come in.
NV: no. Way. LOL
LR: Nora…
NV: chill ren, I’m just teasing.
NV: but for real weiss?
PN: Oh, do you need us to explain Weiss? We would be happy to help you.
JA: How did she not know? Even I knew.
NV: yeah, after we had to tell you she wouldn’t date a dude.
JA: Hey!
PN: They do have a point, Jaune.
JA: ...Thanks Pyrrha. Really encouraging.
NV: oh you’re fine! Quit being a baby.
“See Weiss? It’s not exactly a mystery as to how you feel. And there’s nothing wrong with it.” Weiss smiled at her friend, thinking more about the flag currently stapled partially to her comforter. Her father had always told her she would one day marry a powerful man and continue the lineage, but…what did he know? She was allowed to have their own feelings. Her friends made that extremely clear.
“Thank you Yang,” Weiss said, earning a big smile. “I think…I have more questions, is that alright?”
“Of course it is Weiss,” Ruby said. The four looked at one another from the opposite sides of the room.
“Also…can we please take the flag off of my sheets?”
Weiss had many other questions, ones that her teammates were happy to answer for her. She wasn’t able to get her homework done, instead choosing to talk with her teammates and just enjoy their presence. By the time night fell, she had gotten a kit to properly hang the pride flag on the side of the room. She looked at it as she got under the covers and smiled. She did feel proud of who she was.
She would deal with the rogue staples in the bed sheet another day.