Hiii stinkies, if you saw me post this already no you didn't.
Little interest check/character study that I started ages ago for my bumbleby firewatch au. I'm feeling nostalgic, I miss these guys a lot 😔 anyway, lmk if I should finish this?
“Ow- Yang! Do you have to do them so tight-” Ruby hisses through her teeth, trying to jerk away from the as-gentle-as-they-can-be hands braiding the sensitive hairs of her overgrown fringe neatly along the side of her head.
“Oh, stop being so dramatic, I'm hardly even pulling. You know, maybe if you sat still it would go by a lot faster,” She says, words slurred through the bobby pins held fast between her teeth. “What’re you so nervous for? You've been practicing since, what, February? You're gonna do fine, Stink” The nickname earns her a dirty look in the mirror. With one braid finished, she takes one of the bobby pins from her mouth and uses it to fasten the hair to the back of her sister's head. She moves to Ruby's other side to get started on the next.
“I don't know, you know how I get with public speaking…my hands get all clammy, and my voice gets all shaky, and I start rambling, and- Ow, Yang!” a less-than-gentle tug from Yang breaks her out of that particular spiral, “I don't know, it’s the entire school, Yang, plus parents…all of them looking at me…judging me…” she trails off, the split second of eye contact in the mirror before she looks away again saying loud and clear the unspoken ‘judging our shitshow of a family’. In a town as small as theirs, it's not uncommon to be uncomfortable about something like this, getting up in front of her peers. If she messed up or said the wrong thing, chances are it'll be brought up one way or another at the next five graduations to come.
“Well, if it makes you feel any better, with our small ass town, ‘the whole school plus parents’ only comes out to like 200 people…” she trails off as she fumbles for one of the small elastic rubber bands she has in a small pile on the edge of the vanity, twists it onto on the end of the hair, and pins it back to mirror the other, fastening one more elastic band to both for good measure. “I bet by the end of your valedictorian speech, everyone's gonna be like ‘wow that Ruby girl is really, really cool, I wish we didn't treat her like shit our whole lives.’” she says, with no small amount of bitterness in her voice. So many years of childish cruelty toward the girl over things she had no control over.
A scoff, “Don't patronize me, Yang, please…” still not meeting her eye in the mirror. Yang lets out a sigh. With her task finished, she spins the small stool that Ruby's sat on in order to fully face her sister. She resists the urge to crouch to get onto the girl’s, the last thing Ruby needs is to be made to feel small- smaller than she must be feeling already. Brushing a stray piece of red-tipped hair behind her ear, she finally gets those striking silver eyes to meet her own.
“There’s something else bothering you, Ruby, and I’m pretty sure I know what it is, but I want you to tell me. Spill.” she prods in her Big Sister voice, thinking back a handful of days ago when Ruby had gotten a thick envelope in the mail addressed to her, embossed with fancy lettering in the top left corner. She didn’t even get the chance to read before Ruby snatched it from her hand. She had dodged the question every time Yang had asked about it, but now she was stuck, no way to weasel her way out this time, seeing as Yang had her literally by her hair. Yang glances down, taking notice of the crimson under her sister’s fingernails, the awkward tuck of her thumbs into her palms, hiding the cuticles she had been picking at until they bled. Stubborn habit that’d followed her since she was little. Yang sighs internally, her heart thumping painfully for a beat. Ruby had been doing so well curbing that particular behavior, but it looks like the stress of the last couple of weeks had brought it back. Back to square one.
The girl doesn’t look at her, instead fiddling with a loose thread on her dress “You know that um…that fancy university I applied to, the one with that really cool robotics pathway?” The one on the entire other side of the country. Shit. Fuck-
“The one that you applied to ‘as a haha funny joke’? Yes I believe I know the one,” Yang’s hands are starting to grow clammy, her heart thumping heavily against her rib cage. She knows where this is going. She had known for a while if she was being completely honest with herself, but to be faced with the reality is a whole other beast. Ruby was destined for so much more than this tiny nowhere town could give her. Than Yang could give her.
Her right hand twitches for her left, then, remembering Yang was looking at her, sheepishly curls both hands into fists and tucks them under her legs. Finally she looks up to meet Yang’s eyes “Yeah, well, it’s not so haha funny now. I got accepted, Yang. They want me to start in the Fall.” She says it like an apology, she says it like a doctor delivers a cancer diagnosis, like a judge giving a life sentence. Yang should be overjoyed, she's always taken so much fucking pride in how smart Ruby turned out, so why the hell is she finding it so hard now? If Yang’s being honest with herself, it feels like her entire world is crumbling around her, because it is. Her sister, entire fucking world is about to leave her too. How selfish is that? Her sister just got some of the best news of her life, and all she can think about is herself. Selfish. She needs to pull it together.
She puts on her winning smile, hoping it reaches her eyes, and claps Ruby on the shoulder “That’s amazing, Rubes, I’m so freaking proud of you, dude. I’d pick you up and hug the breath outta you, but I’m not going to be doing your hair again. All that nerd shit finally paid off, huh,” said Nerd Shit referring to the countless nights the two of they spent over the last four years staying up well into the morning trying to figure out what the fuck was going on with AP calc, AP physics, all the APs. Too many goddamn APs. “You should be excited. Why don’t you sound excited?”
“I haven’t decided if I’m going yet…” she mumbles.
“What? Why not? Of course you’re going.” She says it with such finality and surety it almost sounds like a command, which surprises herself.
“Yang, I don’t- ” she cuts herself off, thinking of her next words carefully “I’m worried. About leaving you, I- stop, just let me finish,” she says, uncharacteristically firm when Yang opens her mouth to interject, taking the older woman aback. “Things between you and dad have gotten worse and worse. Just the two of you here by yourselves…I- I just-” she cuts herself off, looking up at the ceiling, trying to keep the tears at bay.
Fuck. Fuck! Yang feels like she took a suckerpunch to the gut. Shit, how long has Ruby been worrying about this, worrying about her? They’d been casually talking about colleges since the end of Ruby’s Sophomore year. The closest coll Yang feels her throat constricting, her eyes itching. Fuck, she needs to pull it together. She allows herself a shaky sigh before crouching, patting her sister’s knee a couple times before letting her hand rest there.
“Dude. I’ve put a lot of work into making sure you didn’t have to worry about a damn thing growing up, and I’m not about to let you start now, okay? You were born to do amazing things, born to help so many people, but you can’t do that from Patch.” Yang brings a rough thumb up to brush away a lingering tear on her sister’s cheek, “I would never forgive myself if I let you sacrifice your future for me, and you would never stop regretting it. Plus when you’re all rich and famous, you can just buy me a big house and a few acres, then we can call it even, hm?” Yang shoots her a corny wink, and finally gets a chuckle out of Ruby.
“And what about you? Promise me, Yang, if I leave you’ll leave too. I can’t stand to think of you spending the rest of your life here babysitting dad. I need you to put yourself first for once. Go back to school, get a good job. Find a nice girl maybe?” She says that last part with a waggle of her eyebrow, Yang snorts at the concept. Patch’s queer dating pool leaves much to be desired to say the least. She looks in those silver eyes for a long time before sighing and nodding, resigning.
“I promise, Stink. We can iron out the important details later,” She fondly bumps a knuckle under the younger girl's chin before placing her hand on her shoulder, spinning her on the stool to face herself in the mirror. She smiles, turning her head this way and that. Yang’s heart gives a painful thump against her ribcage, she would never say it, but she's struck with how much she looks like their mother. Not even just in the face, there were jokes when they were growing up that their father's genes didn't even try, but in this moment with Ruby's radiant (maybe a little cocky) smile, the girl was like a carbon copy of Summer. Although her own memories of Summer were fuzzy at the best of times, she will never forget that smile. Yang finds her throat growing itchy, covers it up with a cough into her hand, and by the single eyebrow raise Ruby gives her in the mirror, it doesn't do much to hide it. “Why don't you take five to yourself, I'll go check on the old men.” She says, squeezing her sister's shoulders, trying and failing to resist digging her right thumb into the pressure point that makes Ruby squeak, curling into herself, whipping her head around to fix Yang's back with a glare as she walks to the door, cackling.
“Yang?” she calls in that sheepish tone of hers. Quick to forgive Yang's antics. Yang’s hand stills on the door handle, she turns back to her sister, giving her a stern look when she notices her picking her cuticles again. The girl gives her a sheepish little look before smoothing her hands over her dress. Yang furrows her brow, studying her sister a little more closely. There's something different about this new anxiety of hers. It's deeper, deep in the way that it makes the usually bright, goofy kid look as if she'd been hollowed out. She has none of her usual nervous energy that would have her knee bouncing, fingers cloying for something to fiddle with. She's totally still. “You're sure dad's coming? Like…like did he say that?” Yang sighs, scratching the back of her neck. Her own little tell.
Yang pulls on a smile, “Yup, he'll be there. Last I checked on him, before I came in here for your hair, he was getting dressed. He seems pretty stoked.” She hates lying to Ruby, but growing up as Yang had, she learned sometimes it's for the best to keep that ernest little spark going in Ruby, give her a little shred of hope that maybe today would be better than yesterday. As she's gotten older, her sister can see right through them. Or maybe she had always been able to.
Ruby's upper lip twitches, brow furrows, a blink and you'll miss it expression of anger, sadness. Yang sighs, turns back toward the door, pressing her forehead to the rough surface. She takes a breath to collect herself, releasing it slowly “Today's one of his better days. He seems a bit more present. He wants to go, Rubes, I can tell, it's just- You know how he is, he just gets…stuck,” She turns her head, resting her cheek and temple on the door, glancing at Ruby out of the corner of her eye, “But he will be there, I'll make sure of it, m’kay? That’s not something I want you to be worrying about tonight.” A nod from her sister is all she gets in response. With a press of her knuckles to the door, she pushes off of it, rolling her shoulder in an attempt to ease some of the tension that had settled there. With one last glance at her sister, her person, her whole world, she slips out of the bedroom. She scrubs a hand over her face, bringing the other up to press the heels of her palms into her eyes, brute-forcing the tears pricking her eyes back where they came.
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