Our revels now are ended (fly_beyond) wrote in pathways_log, @ 2021-02-09 02:29:00 |
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Entry tags: | @location: diamond burlesque club, life is strange: rachel amber, rwby: yang xiao long |
Who: Weiss and Rachel Amber
What: A ride home and Weiss On Pot
When: Recent
Where: Diamond and then Rachel’s Shitty Car(™)
Ratings/Warnings: PG-13, some talk of abusive situations. Also recreational drug use.
Status:
Rachel leaned against the wall, arms folded, waiting for Weiss to finish whatever-the-fuck she was doing back there. Up on stage there was this hottie, but she wasn’t really looking at her, so much as through her.
Then, there was Weiss, who always reminded her a bit of her sister. Shorter, less severe, honestly more put together. Rachel tended to prefer hot-messes (she was still trying to figure out how to climb Tony Stark like a tree) and Weiss wasn’t as much of a hot-mess as her sister was.
But she was hot. Super hot. But going after her for real would be a bit like being hung up on Winter which Rachel? Was not going to be hung up on.
Besides she was flighty as fuck and not so much of a bitch to put Weiss through all that. But she was enough of a bitch as to drape herself over Weiss when she emerged, in full sight of Tits McGee. Which seemed to ruffle Yang’s feathers, so Rachel whispered hotly in Weiss’s ear, “Been waiting for you, babe.”
Operation ‘Get Weiss Laid’ was off to a resounding start. Fuck, maybe she should just deflower her herself.
The fact that Rachel was her ride home on late work nights was a perpetual annoyance to Weiss, but it was far safer than taking public transportation at that hour. IF it was even running. Weiss had really only memorized the transit schedules relevant to herself.
They weren’t even that close, though their rivalry was currently mostly a friendly one. Still, it was something of a shock when Rachel leaned in and whispered in her ear like that. She wrinkled her brow at Rachel and nearly elbowed her in the side, “WHAT are you talking about?!”
If Yang’s eyes were on them, Weiss was trying very hard not to notice. Just like she’d tried hard not to notice them on her all during the last week.
"All eyes on us," Rachel commented. "You want the big bucks, get people to think we're a lot closer. Have you thought about that doubles act I mentioned?"
She shifted, still keeping her arm around Weiss's shoulder as she guided her towards the exit. She caught Yang staring again and stuck her tongue out as they stepped outside.
Her shitty little car was waiting for them in the parking lot, just barely within the lines, "You should chill. I'm having a joint. Want a joint?" Someday, she’d get Weiss to loosen up. Maybe that day she’ll find out what happened to Winter.
Weiss thought back to that singer on the forums who’d been utterly shocked that girls took their clothes off and openly admitted it. She was feeling that level of shock right at this moment, and not just because Rachel ha just offered her a-
“Wait, a JOINT joint?” Weiss blinked her eyes at Rachel. They were beyond the safety of Yang’s stare now, and there was no one to save her. Especially since that car was still her ride home. “I don’t know about that. I don’t need to ‘Chill’.”
One of Weiss’s hands came up to make airquotes around the word Chill, and she looked absolutely scandalized. “Why do you suddenly like me so much? It can’t just be about doubling our take.”
Though doubling their take COULD lead to a better car for Rachel, and that girl desperately needed one.
"Yes, a JOINT joint. You know they're legal here, right?" Rachel rolled her eyes. Saying 'JOINT joint' clearly meant Weiss needed to chill. To be fair, so did Rachel. She was feeling a little manic but calming down now that they were off shift. Glancing back at the club, she wondered what it was about it that brought out the worst in her.
Okay her worst was almost always under the surface but she was trying and Mor believed in her. Rachel would do almost anything for Mor's respect.
Yeah. She needed to chill too. "I never didn't like you. I can't say you're the only one that's not stuck up, I mean you're totally stuck up. But ... we kind of came from the same place."
Rachel let go of Weiss, shrugging as she unlocked the car and slipped inside. There were some joints in the sunguard, and she pulled one out. "Sure you don't want one?"
Weiss had taken a moment to toss her dance bag into the back of Rachel’s car, but she stopped short at the admission that they’d come from the same place. Not that they were about to bond and go shopping for dance supplies and paint each other’s nails or anything…
She poked her head down to look at Rachel, “The same place? Really?” Because that same place had a way of eating young girls alive and that definitely explained, well, everything. She thought back to Winter, and how they could never even be proper sisters.
That was depressing. “I have no idea how to smoke anything.”
"I was friends with your sister." Sort of. Rachel frowned for a moment, before she forced a smile onto her face and waggled the joint at Weiss, "I can show you how to toke it up. Just gotta not actually inhale it."
Sighing, Weiss took her seat next to Rachel and shut the car door. The joint was tempting, not because she ‘needed to chill’, but because this was the first time she was ever hearing about this. “Winter? You mean Winter Schnee, right?”
As far as she’d been aware, her sister didn’t have any friends. How was she only finding out about this now? Was she honestly about to smoke some pot in a crappy car miles from home?
She wrinkled her nose up a bit and took the joint in her fingers, then stared at it. “I can’t believe they legalized this stuff.”
"Who else?" Rachel grinned at her, "It's not dangerous. I mean do you have any, like, lung issues or something? Grass allergies?"
Those were the big ones she could think off the top of her head. "It's not super common but probably should check or something right?"
Rachel glanced at herself in the mirror for a moment, remembering a time when her face had been much thinner. Pot was the only thing she could have anyway, because it wasn't addicting for her.
“Unless Whitley is hiding some very interesting things, I suppose it had to be Winter.” But she’d never seen Winter with anyone else, not at their house, hardly even mingling at parties. Always just standing right behind her father, the perfect little Jacques Schnee female carbon copy.
Allergies, right. “Not that I’m aware of. We probably couldn’t do the work we did if we had lung issues… I had to pass several physical tests to get into Juilliard, so I’m probably healthy. Though considerably less healthy since I got here.”
That was probably true of anyone who ended up in Vegas.
“Right, so I’m a prude, a snob, and apparently not that excellent a sister, either. Tell me how I start smoking the pot and feeling, as you said, more chill.”
"Your father was always throwing these stupid parties, and my dad was in politics, so I was paraded around. Straight-As, Theater-kid, daddy's perfect little girl." Rachel snorted. Her lighter was vintage zippo, painted with an American flag. The flag had been defaced to look as though the red stripes were bleeding, and ACAB scribbled in black ink across it.
"Okay, puff, then exhale." She lit the joint.
In another time, that might have been an extremely controversial lighter. Weiss noted it, but made no comment. She wasn’t as up on everything going on as some were, but ‘ACAB’ was a sentiment she could definitely get behind.
“Weren’t we all,” She said, sighing a bit as she still stared down at the joint, which was now lit. She didn’t want to waste the stuff, unsure how much it cost now that it was legal. Probably still a lot to people who didn’t have a rich man’s credit card to foot the bill.
Shrugging a shoulder, she puffed, and then - TRIED - to exhale.
Instead she ended up nearly choking on it.
Rachel tried to not laugh, and she even managed to almost succeed. Reaching over, she rubbed Weiss's back, "Blow it out!"
That's what she said.
Once it seemed like Weiss was no longer dying, she tried to get her to try again. "We're not leaving until you've got this down and I can smoke while driving!"
It tasted awful, smelled odd, and Weiss grimaced as she took another puff, this time being far more careful about exhaling the smoke. “I hope this stuff works quickly....”
“You’ll be giggling in no time,” Rachel assured her, lighting up her own joint and then starting the car. The engine cranked and sputtered, sounding like a million dying dolphins before it finally started. The entire vehicle jerked, threatened to fall apart, and then settled. Only then did she shift it into a grinding gear and pull out of the parking spot.
The sounds Rachel’s car made regularly disturbed Weiss. She was certain she was going to die in it, honestly, but at that moment she couldn’t say she was as worried. Maybe there WAS something to be said for pot.
She looked down at the joint again as it smoldered in her hand, almost as if she expected it to give her some sort of secret information only it knew.
Then she shrugged and took another pull. Was her brain supposed to feel so fuzzy? “Wow.”
“There we go.” Rachel giggled, toking again before smacking the vent to make the heater kick back on. “Was that so hard?”
She glanced at her, before sinking back into the seat. The radio, alas, had died before she’d even gotten the car.
“I still think this entire thing is ridiculous,” Weiss replied, though she wasn’t feeling as contrary as she normally did. That had to be the pot doing whatever it was that it did. She sank back against her own seat and closed her eyes, “But… I’m not sure I care.”
“You know, I can’t say I’ve ever actually relaxed in my life.”
"Yeah, that's the best part," Rachel said. "It just makes everything feel nice and smooth."
She reached over and poked Weiss in the side, "You know, that's pretty obvious. You're like a ball of nerves and anxiety on a good day. There's a stick shoved so far up your ass we need an excavation team to get it out."
“YOU should understand, shouldn’t you? Winter wasn’t the only one who always had to be perfect all the time. He pit us against each other in everything. I think only Whitley got a pass because he was so much like father already.” Weiss snorted. Sometimes she wondered if her little brother was actually safe now that they were both gone.
Honestly, he probably fit right in, but it was possible she should worry about that more.
"Only child, blessing and a curse." Rachel kept one eye on the road as they got stuck behind a bus. The way those things stopped sometimes was legitimately dangerous. Easy enough to plow into the ass of one which was not exactly any ass Rachel wanted to deal with.
"But Winter did have a stick up her ass until I removed it. Such a fine ass..."
Weiss had been about to take another puff off of her joint, but instead of remembering to exhale or only pull a small one, she nearly sucked the rest of it down and started sputtering and coughing loudly.
She smacked her hand against her chest a couple of times as tears started to stream out of her eyes and she swore she saw something resembling her life flash before her eyes except with a whole lot of question marks superimposed over the details.
Rachel laughed, slapping Weiss on the back to try to help her. Probably. That was the normal human reaction even if she wasn't actually sure it was going to work or anything.
And if she was honest, she wasn't actually sure Winter's stick had been removed, but they had had... kind of a moment before it all went to shit. Winter was human. Who knew?
Her throat felt like it was going to be on fire forever, but when Weiss could finally breathe she half-shrieked “WINTER?”
Rachel had mentioned they were friends, but this was an entirely different situation
“You - with MY winter - like… sex? Gay sex?! MY sister?” And suddenly that night so long ago that she could never fully forget the memory of came flooding right back. Weiss was glad for the pot in that moment, despite the fact that it had just nearly killed her. If she wasn’t in the process of getting high she’d probably have had a panic attack.
"What, you didn't know?" Rachel asked, looking at her in genuine shock. It had been so obvious that night, hadn't it? Though her father had waited until they were no longer in public to berate and yell at her and then disown her.
That part had been fun, really. She looked at her own joint, staring at it like it could somehow make everything better again, "Okay so a whole helluva lot happened around that time." She wasn't looking for a pity party so she kept the getting kicked out to herself.
Was probably pretty obvious she wasn't where she should have been, anyway.
No one really chose this life because they wanted it, Weiss figured. Not when they had all the opportunities that rich kids usually did.
And it had probably happened to Winter, too. Weiss worked her throat a bit, trying to figure out what to say next, but also still working to get rid of the inferno that had happened in there.
“She disappeared that night. We never… talked, anyway. And I left… soon after that. I never knew why he was so angry.”
Was she honestly going to start crying about her teenager trauma, right here in Rachel Amber’s crappy car?
Rachel stopped a little too suddenly at the light and this time she was the one inhaling too much smoke. Once her coughing fit subsided, she squeezed the wheel. "I ... guess that explains why she never showed. We'd made plans... not to run away or anything but honestly I'd thought about it. But like, to do that again. Hang out. That kind of thing."
She'd wondered, she'd guessed, mostly she figured Winter had just been scared or too stuck up or a combination of both. It hadn't mattered, because Rachel had taken off too. The light turned green again, and the car started moving, and Rachel added, "Guess I ruined it for everyone. Cool."
“No. No, no.” Weiss shook her head so emphatically she thought it was going to spin right off of her neck, which was honestly a somewhat great feeling. “Whatever Winter… liked to do, she should have been free to do it. You should have been free. None of us have been free our entire LIVES and that’s not your fault. That’s your father, and mine. And our mothers, too, for never standing up to them.”
She snorted out of her nose and finished off her joint, adding, “Besides, this is honestly better. It’s awful, but it’s better. I don’t hate all of it? And I hope wherever Winter is, she’s happier too. Better than she’d be if she’d stayed. Father would have made her pretend it never happened. He would have made us all pretend. Every year he pressed me right back into the mold he’d made of me, even when I felt too big to fit.”
“I hope she’s off somewhere being a great big dyke,” Rachel remarked. She took another draw, not for the first time reminding herself that it wasn’t addicting to her and ignoring Mor’s voice in the back of her head telling her that might not matter if it leads her to picking up the harder stuff again. She’d be fine.
“We all deserve to be great big dykes.” Puff, “Except I do like a nice scruffy man too.” Another puff, and she looked at Weiss again, speaking in a quiet voice, “Sounds like you broke out when you needed to.”
“Well I don’t-” Weiss squinted at the view out of the car windshield, though there wasn’t much sky to look at with all of the orange street lights shining in the window. It wasn’t an easy concept to wrap one’s head around when they weren’t smoking a joint. Winter had a place in her mind, but it wasn’t a big dyke place.
“I guess if that’s what she wants to be. And if you want to be. Or… I guess liking both is a thing, too.”
But she wondered about what would have happened if she’d stayed. There would have been even greater pressure to be perfect, she thought, without Winter there to take some of it off of her shoulders. Would her father have- Would she have been next?
“... yes. I think so. I looked for her for months, you know. She was here at one point, but I don’t know where she went.”
Rachel moved her hand, palm out, like she was spreading it out across the windshield, "Whole spectrum, Ice Queen." She supposed that ran in the family, but talking about Winter made her a little more uncomfortable with finding Weiss attractive, in a weird sort of way that she couldn't put words to.
"Might have been while I was... Actually there's a lot of gaps there." She shrugged, putting her joint out and leaving it in a tray on the dash, "Are you happy, Weiss?"
“No.” Weiss replied, without even thinking. Watching Rachel put her joint out reminded Weiss that she needed to do the same, and she let out a long soothing breath through her nose before trying to qualify that. “Yes? I don’t know. Freedom? But where has that gotten me? Dancing makes me happy while I’m on stage, but then I have to get off it. In the end I feel like I’m still just… putting on a show, fitting into a box, but- at least it’s not HIS box.”
"Maybe you need to break the box open," Rachel said. Weiss's extended stay was in view now, but they had to stop at another light first. Shrugging, she continued, "Maybe we both do."
Rachel looked down at the wheel, then at Weiss's face, "I'm sorry I'm a bitch sometimes."
Only sometimes, sometimes she wasn't actually sorry that she was a bitch.
“Maybe.” Weiss wasn’t sure what a world outside the box even looked like. Maybe that was the point. But she snorted and met Rachel’s eyes at that last, adding, “We’re both a bitch sometimes. I’ll try to be... nicer.”
It was a genuine promise, and a series of words that oddly felt familiar.
“Me too.” Maybe they wouldn’t succeed but… what was the harm in trying?