It took a whole week for Yang to even walk any closer to the apiary than the preordained path towards the town, and even then, it was just a couple of steps. Blake hadn't been there for those, Yang had gotten a burst of confidence and managed to walk two steps closer before backing out. Another couple days, and Yang got two more steps. Before the month was over, she and Blake were standing right behind the apiary. Yang had dressed in heavy denim jeans and a winter coat, despite the temperature still rising above ninety.
"You're gonna get heat stroke," Blake said.
"I have tons of water, I'll be fine." Yang said. It did look to Blake like Yang had a good tolerance for heat. Maybe she got it from having such long, bushy hair? Blake unconsciously brushed her hand through Yang's ponytail.
"So, how do we even get honey out of this thing?" Yang asked. "It doesn't look like any apiary I've seen online."
"I asked Pyrrha and she said the honey collects in a tray down below, you just need to open up the box and pull the tray out, then tip it into the container you want to store the honey in." Blake raised up a mason jar. "Which we have several of."
"So we need to open it up? Reach right into where all of the bees live?" Yang asked.
"Well you can grab the tray with your left hand then back away. I assume we can just close it up afterwards, no?"
"Yeah. Here goes nothing..." Yang slowly lifted the back wall of the apiary away from the main body. Several columns of plastic and wood were inside. To Yang, it reminded her of ancient architecture, just covered in bees. She carefully closed her left hand around the tray beneath the columns and pulled it away, careful to keep it steady. After the tray was completely out, she handed it to Blake and closed the apiary shut.
"You did it!" Blake cheered, "I'm proud of you!"
"Yeah, I did, didn't I?" Yang asked. Sweat was dripping down her face, and she could feel the rest of her body swimming in sweat as well. "Maybe I should take this jacket off, you're right." Yang stripped her jacket off and tossed it aside. She turned towards Blake, who had already started pouring the honey into one of the mason jars. "How does it look?"
"Well, it looks like honey. We can apparently eat it right away, but I want to double check before we start scooping some for ourselves," Blake said. She turned towards Yang and froze. Yang's tank top had stuck to her body with sweat, and left almost nothing to Blake's imagination. She could see the outside of Yang's abs underneath, and also – Wait, Blake thought, Is Yang not-
"Blake, the honey!" Yang shot forward and jerked the tray of honey upwards. Blake turned her attention back to the mason jar to see it had very nearly overflowed. She shook her head and began to fill the next one.
"That was close!" Yang sat back down and stretched her arms over her head. She could have sworn she felt something hit her right hand, but she disregarded it. "Anyways, what are we even gonna do with this honey?"
"Well I know it's good in some teas, and I've heard fresh honey is much better for your health than store-bought. As for other uses, I was thinking-"
"Ow!" Yang slapped her right arm and rubbed it. She winced as she put pressure on her arm. Her face fell.
"You okay?" Blake didn't look up from the mason jar.
"Blake."
"Yeah?"
"Blake."
Blake turned to see Yang staring at her right upper arm, eyes open wide. Blake shifted herself closer and saw a tiny ball on top of a stick protruding from Yang's skin. Blake's eyes went wide as well.
"Shit!" Yang jumped up and began to rush inside, leaving Blake in a cloud of dust and grass.
"Yang, wait!" Blake tossed the tray aside. Honey spilled out of the tray, but Blake didn't care – she caught up to Yang just as she reached the house – Yang had picked her phone up from the table.
"Need to call 911, need to call 911..." Yang muttered to herself.
"Yang, wait! Let me take a look at it first," Blake said.
"But I just got stung! Blake, I just got stung!" Tears were welling in Yang's eyes.
Blake put her hands over Yang's. She could feel Yang's hands trembling as they gripped her phone. "Do you trust me?" Yang continued to grip the phone. "Yang, do you trust me?" Yang slowly nodded her head. "Let go of the phone, let me take a look at it." Yang slowly released her grip on her phone, and Blake set it down on the table. "Sit on the couch. I know what to do for this, my mom taught me everything I need to know." Yang sat down on the couch, and Blake kneeled in front of her.
"Yang, what symptoms did your dad have for his allergies?" Blake asked.
"H-He would get hives, and-and-and rashes... and he'd have really trouble breathing, and-"
"Yang, take a deep breath." Blake placed her hands over Yang's. "Follow me. Breathe in..." Yang took a deep, shaky breath, "And out." Yang exhaled slowly. "Breathe in..." Yang took another deep breath, "And out." She let it out. "In," Inhale, "Out." Exhale. "Can you breathe a bit easier?"
"Y-Yeah..." Yang's breaths slowly became less shaky, and her shoulders relaxed.
"Let me see the sting," Blake said. She lifted Yang's left arm and saw a small stinger sticking just below her shoulder. She closed her fingernails around the stinger and pulled it out, to which Yang surprisingly didn't flinch from. The area around the sting was slightly raised and paler than her normal skin tone, but there was no sign of a rash or any hives forming.
"I don't see any sort of reaction. If your allergies were as bad as your dad's, then you should already have trouble breathing, right?" Blake asked, "It seems to me like you're fine."
"My throat's sore though..." Yang said.
"That's probably just due to the stress. Let me get you some water." Blake stood up and grabbed the glass off of the table next to the couch. She walked into Yang's bathroom and ran the sink for a bit to let the water cool down, then gently scooped the glass underneath the stream. When she turned back to see how Yang was doing, she noticed what else was on the couch-side table: a pot of amavissets.
"Blake... the water?" Yang asked. Blake jolted and realized the glass was overflowing. She shut the water off and poured a bit out, then went and handed the glass to Yang. "Thanks..."
Yang sipped the water slowly, letting the water cool down her sore throat. The burning sensation faded, and she felt her body relax even more. "So, if there's no trouble breathing..."
"And no rashes." Blake added, holding Yang's arm up.
"Then... there's no allergy?" Yang asked. Her eyes widened – was she really afraid of bees her entire life for nothing? All it took was a single sting to tell her that all of her years of fear were for naught.
"There's no allergy." Blake sat next to Yang and wrapped her arm around her, pulling her closer. Yang laid her head on Blake's shoulder and sighed, wrapping her arms around Blake. Yang nestled her head under Blake's and the two stayed still for several minutes, enjoying the moment. Yang's relief and the feeling of just being with Blake made sure the smile never wavered from her face, at least not for long.
"Yang, can I ask you something?"
Yang pulled her head away. "Sure, what's up?"
"Where did you get those flowers?" Blake pointed to the amavissets on the table.
"Ruby gave them to me for my birthday. She apparently found them in the woods, and she thought I would like them. I really do, they're beautiful and they really brighten up the room."
"You... do realize what they are, right?"
Yang took the pot of flowers off of the table and rested it on her lap. "Yeah, amavissets. Apparently Ruby and I were the only ones who didn't know what they were when she gave them to me. Your mom and dad both told me that whoever gets them will have good luck in love for the next year to come." She looked at Blake. "Maybe they weren't so wrong."
"It's more than that, Yang. Those flowers are actually how my parents got together."
"Really?" Yang asked.
"Yeah. It was actually your grandfather who gave them to my dad. Apparently he was running around the woods, freaking out because he didn't have a gift for his godson's birthday, and found them randomly behind where Penny's house is. He gave them to my father, who was only twenty-two at the time, and everyone called him crazy for it. Not three days later, he was in Malleus for some shopping, and some guy ran straight into him on the sidewalk."
"I'm guessing this guy isn't who he fell in love with?"
"No," Blake laughed," But the woman behind him was. The guy had just stolen my mom's purse and was making a break for it. He didn't look where he was going and ran straight into my dad. My dad, being just as muscular back then as he is now, kinda looked at the guy. He didn't know what was going on, he just had some random guy run into him – but the crook's eyes went wide and he shoved the purse into his hands and ran off. My dad handed my mom her purse back, she thanked him, and invited him for coffee as thanks."
"And they lived happily ever after." Yang said.
"Not even ever after, they got married six months later. Everyone apologized to your grandfather at the wedding – apparently it was quite the event." Blake's eyes fell to the ground. "That's the true meaning of the amavissets, Yang. They don't just give you good luck in love for the year."
"That means..."
"It's basically a guarantee that whoever gets them will be married in a year's time." The two fell silent, the air between them as palpable as a brick wall. "I actually spent a lot of time as a kid looking for them in the forest. I didn't really get the 'getting them as a gift' part, but I really wanted to find them so I could find someone for me, y'know?" Blake sighed. "I never really stopped looking. Even on the drive back from our date in Malleus, when we first kissed, I was watching the side of the road – looking for a pot of blue flowers."
Before the two could fall back into silence, Yang reached out towards Blake, the pot of flowers in her hands. "Here."
Blake looked at the flowers, then at Yang, then at the flowers again. She took the flowers and held them in her lap. "Is this a proposal?"
"No! I mean – I didn't mean it to be! When I propose, I want it to be more special, y'know? Like, not just a pot of flowers, and I would need a ring, and all that... y'know?" Yang's face grew pink.
"When, huh? Not just 'if'?" Blake chuckled and placed the flowers aside.
"I just thought it was right. You've been looking for them your whole life, right? If I give them to you as a gift, then we'd both have gotten them. Then maybe the whole thing would be twice as effective."
"I'm not sure if that's how that works." Blake looked at the amavissets, sitting on the couch between them. "Well, if it is how it works, let me give them back to you. Three times the efficiency, plus they're your birthday gift, so I wouldn't want to take them."
Yang moved the flowers onto the floor and laid herself against Blake. Blake adjusted herself so that they were both laying down, their eyes even with each other. Blake planted a kiss on her girlfriend's forehead. Yang responded with a kiss on the lips. They shared a chuckle and allowed silence to overtake them, but only for a brief second.
"About a proposal..." Yang said, "Your dad said something to me, on the night Ruby gave me the amavissets."
"What did he say?"
"He said that he gave me 'his blessing.' I got really embarrassed and ran away, and it's been driving me crazy these past few weeks. Every time I saw you ,I just kept wondering if this was really it – if I found my special someone, y'know? And all of it by chance. A freak earthquake caused me to lose my apartment with only one box surviving the wreckage, and it just so happened to be a deed to this house. That can't have been a coincidence, right?"
"I'm sure you would have found your way here eventually, maybe Weiss would take you and Ruby here for a picnic."
"That's the thing. Before the earthquake, I had applied for a job that would have moved me across the country. I was on the last phase of interviews before I had to move here. They called me just a couple weeks after I had settled in, and I really wanted to say yes, but something kept me here. I didn't know what it was, I really couldn't explain it to myself, to Ruby, or to the employer."
"So, you think it's a red string of fate scenario?" Blake asked.
"A red string of fate?"
"It's an idea that true lovers are bound together by a string tied around their hands. The more they move around in the world, the more the string ravels itself around the two people, shortening the length of string between them, before they inevitably collide. If you had tried to go across the country, the string would either keep you in place, unable to move further away, or simply snap."
"Well in that case, neither of us could stand up now, right? We're both on the same couch."
Blake chuckled. "Maybe it has some special rules."
"A couple strings attached, you could say?"
Blake flicked Yang's forehead and frowned. "Bad."
"I definitely deserved that." Yang smiled back and looked into Blake's eyes. "If we can move apart physically still, does that mean we can still get closer romantically?"
"That might be the case."
"Good. I still want to get closer to you, get to know you better. Even though we have been together for quite a while, I feel there's just so much more to know, to do."
"I agree."
Yang nuzzled herself into Blake's chest and Blake rested her head on Yang's. Yang's hair had fallen to the floor – sure, her hair was going to get dirty, but Yang paid it no mind. She was with her true love, and to her, that was all that mattered.