Honeycomb Hearts

Written and Spoken

The past few weeks had been a blur for Blake Belladonna. Between Yang, the potluck, and everything in between, she felt that she had been outside her room more that summer than she had for the entire year before. Now, she sat in her plush chair in her room, watching the sun slowly set behind her laptop screen. On her laptop screen was a much less beautiful sight: a blank page, an empty space that should be holding countless adventures, romances, and conflicts but was as white as a polar bear in a snowstorm. When was the last time Blake had written anything? She called herself a writer, but she'd only been consuming words rather than producing them for these past months. She scrolled up and saw bits and bullet points of plotlines she had planned, but they were long since forgotten or tossed aside; she was just too attached to delete them.

She sighed and took a sip of her tea. When she was in high school, these plotlines came second-nature to her. She was a natural, posting short stories online weekly to an adoring and growing fanbase. Her original stories shone like diamonds in the rough, her readers would say, but now those same readers were left as panhandlers looking for a single coin. She hadn't posted anything in years. Sure, she had written, but the novel she was working on took priority.

Now, that novel was in purgatory. Plotlines became stagnant and characters became as flat as the papers they appeared on. However, Blake wasn't about to give up. She'd heard from teachers and authors alike that the best inspiration for a book was experience; experience that she had been gathering.

She stretched and closed her blinds, preparing for when the sun would be a thin arc across the sky, blinding whoever saw its waning moments. She stretched her fingers across her keyboard and began to work. It was like magic, something she hadn't experienced in years. The story basically wrote itself, her mind rushing through her memories to adapt them to the page. Time was nonexistent to her; the clock on her desk changing from seven to midnight to the next seven didn't faze her. She never even stopped to finish her tea.

When she finally crossed the last T and dotted the last I on her seventh chapter of the night, she blinked, possibly for the first time in hours. She blinked several more times and looked at the clock. 7:09 AM, a bit under an hour before she was supposed to meet Yang at the library. She'd forgotten about this future event while she was engrossed in putting her past on the page. She began to panic and looked in the mirror on her dresser, and then immediately looked away. How she looked after an all-nighter was a familiar sight, and, oddly enough, it was somewhat comforting to know that she was still able to pull one off. She just wished it happened on a different night.

A shower, a change of clothes, and a silent prayer passed by, and then Blake pushed open the door to the library. Penny was off today, according to the sign out front, so it would probably just be her and Yang in the library. The November chill followed her in, and she knew exactly where to find warmth: the blonde perusing the shelves in front of her. She took a step forward, gauging her target, and then pounced.

"Your sneak attack needs some work, Blake." Yang chuckled.

Blake's response was muffled by Yang's hair. She squeezed her arms around Yang in a hug, perhaps a bit too tight. Guess she's not in a joking mood, Yang thought to herself. She let Blake let go of her by her own volition after a good minute then turned around and planted a kiss on her forehead.

"How are you?" Yang asked. Blake just blinked in response. Blake was sure that she looked like death incarnate, but to Yang, Blake just needed a little nap or a cup of coffee. She had never seen Blake sleepy like this, and she mentally noted that it was quite a cute side of her. "Wake up too early?"

"More like I didn't sleep at all," Blake said, "I spent all night writing." She rubbed her eyes and immediately wished she didn't; her eyes were much more comfortable closed.

"Well, at least it was productive! Better writing than writhing in bed, wishing you could be asleep." Yang put a book back on the shelf and took Blake's hand. "Hey, I found some comfy bean bag chairs in the back corner by the windows, want to sit down? There's something cool I want to show you."

Blake nodded, and the two set off for the chairs that Yang had "discovered." The chairs ended up being the very same ones she'd been using for years, and Yang had just sat in Blake's usual spot. Yang gestured to the other seat, but Blake crawled next to Yang and snuggled up close to her, wrapping her arm around the blonde's shoulders. "My seat," she said.

"Oh, do you want me to move?"

Blake hugged her girlfriend tighter. "Nooo. Stay."

Yang began to blush. She liked this spot because the cool air was able to barely get in through the windows, providing a nice gradient of temperatures, but she liked it even more now since Blake was apparently part space heater. She pulled out her phone and tabbed over to her texts, pulling up a picture message from Ruby. Ruby's face smiled from the screen, showing a quite busy Little Rose Cafe with pastries flying off the shelves. A caption below her face read, "The new cookies are a success!" Yang moved to show Blake and give a joking comment, but Blake had fallen asleep against Yang's chest in seconds. Her own chest was rising and falling gently, and she had a slight smile on her face.

Welp, Yang thought, guess I'll bring up the date idea later. Her phone buzzed, and an unflattering photo of Weiss passed out after one too many sips of wine (being five total) accompanied a message: "I'm working on getting what you asked for. If you end up coming to the cafe today, I'll give you a "free sample" to let you know if I can get it. Ruby's strawberry meringue means yes, the eclair means no." Yang sent a thumbs-up in response and stowed away her phone. Part of her hoped it was a yes because she could finally try the strawberry meringue Ruby had been going on about for a week now.

She moved her arm slowly around Blake's shoulders, careful not to wake the sleeping beauty. She closed her own eyes and soon fell asleep herself, not being one to argue with a few more Z's. The two of them laid peacefully in their own little world, unknowing that the library keeper was, indeed, there today, and was sneaking a photo to tease them about later.