If It Be Thusly (Weiss Schnee x Reader)

Fatal Familiarity

"You're eating here? And you're eating banana bread?"

"I did say we'd be making full use of our time when we started." You do suddenly remember two days ago, where she said you'd be working through lunch. "Did you really forget?"

"No," you snap.

"Be honest."

"... Perhaps."

She chuckles, "You dolt." You smile, though not by your own will. Something about that jab felt more teasing than harmful. "And why would you fixate on the bread?"

"Well... I just thought it's a bit..."

"What?"

"Beneath you, I guess," you finally say, afraid of offending her with incorrect assumptions.

"I don't see why."

"Well, banana bread was popularised by citizens of Mantle who didn't want to throw away bananas during the Great War... primarily by faunus citizens," you explain. This is something that Yushan has explained once or twice in her various sermonettes on faunus history.

"So? I don't care. Food is food, and it doesn't matter to me if it's a faunus thing," she shrugs. You narrow your eyes as she tears the wrapper open. Obviously, she's not comically anti-faunus, most people aren't. They still have subtle preconceptions and opinions about faunuskind that contributes to their suffering, and that subtlety can make those opinions hard to worm out, like woodlice that blends into the wood, but if they're not excised then the pillars of the faunus' collective, metaphorical house may someday collapse, as it has done so many times in the past.

"You're not all bad then," you joke, shooting her a smirk

"I'm actually a very moral individual," she shoots back, half chewing on the loaf. "Don't know why you think I'm 'bad,' honestly," she chides. You roll your eyes.

"You know why."

She groans and slumps her shoulders, "I do not want to argue. Not today."

"Fine. Later, then?"

She tries to hide the smile that blooms across her face, "Indeed, later."

You smirk again, "It's a date then."

"Ugh. Don't make me vomit while I'm trying to eat," she growls, no trace or scrap of a blush or fluster across her porcelain cheeks. That's a hit to your self-esteem, for sure.

"Is it good, at least?"

"The bread? Mhm," she hums, her cheeks stuffed with the stuff. "And your... uh, rice?"

"I like it. Reminds me of home."

"That cottage, or?" She thinks the home you have is quaint. Poor and filthy, but quaint.

"Mhm, the cottage."

"So, you were born in Atlas then?" She guesses.

"I have a feeling you were," you dodge the question masterfully. Nothing of your past is something you want to tell her.

"Of course. My family has long been a staple of the Kingdom. When our kind first came to the continent we were led by huntsmen-knights, the Schnees were some of the first among them; the finest of them all," her words ooze so much pride it falls onto the floorboards in thick, vacuous drops, more like oil or blood than water.

"Wow, did your family commit war-crimes during the Great War too?" You joke, breaking the aura of grandeur around her. In truth many of the leaders of the Grand Army of Mantle (As Atlas did not exist during the Great War.) either ignored or actively encouraged the overzealous use of many new inhumane weapons during the war. You don't know true pain till you've had gravity dust mixed with fire dust try to thrust itself deeper into your skin, attracted towards the nerves, where the soul is conducted.