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It feels so nice to finally be staying somewhere for more than one night. Nora thought as she set her toothbrush down on the counter instead of packing it away it her luggage for the night like she normally would.
I hope Jaune isn’t too lonely on his own. Since all the rooms available at the place they were staying had either two beds or one bed and Ruby wanted to share a room with Qrow in case his condition suddenly worsened, Jaune volunteered to spend the night by himself.
Nora opened the bathroom door to the bedroom she was sharing with Ren, but he had disappeared in the 5 minutes she had spent in the bathroom. The only sign of him was his tailcoat and gloves, which he had left lying on his bed. Slightly confused, she opened up her scroll and sent Ren a message:
> Where are you?
Only a few moments later she got a reply:
> On the roof.
> Want to come up? The sunset is really pretty and I want to talk with you about a couple of things.
On the roof? Nora wondered. Before she could even question how he got up there, she noticed a cold breeze coming in from the previously closed window by Ren’s bed. She approached the window and noticed the fire escape, which conveniently went all the way up to the top floor. She opened up her scroll and sent Ren a response:
> Coming up.
Nora tucked her scroll away and stepped through the window frame onto the metal walkway. I wonder what Ren wants to talk about? Nora asked herself as she started to climb the stairs. So much had happened recently that they hadn’t really had a chance to talk about. The crazy guy who attacked them, Ruby’s uncle Qrow, going back to Kuroyuri, seeing that thing again, finally getting to Mistral after months of traveling, that moment they had together on the airship…
Nora looked around and realized she had reached the top of the fire escape. She turned around and saw the roof was still about 8 foot above her. Nora leapt up and grabbed the ledge, pulling herself up with ease. Nora dusted herself off and turned to see Ren sitting on the opposite side in his black undershirt, staring at the sun setting behind the Mistralian skyline.
Ren turned and smiled faintly “Hey Nora.” He said before turning back to the sunset.
Nora walked up to Ren and sat down next to him “Hey Ren.” She replied softly as she leaned back and watched the sun vanish over the horizon.
After a moment of enjoying the view Ren turned to face Nora “I’m sorry.” He muttered.
Nora looked at Ren, slightly taken aback “For what?”
Ren sighed “For what I did back there in… Kuroyuri.” He said, swallowing at that last word. “I was being stupid and if you hadn’t stopped me I would’ve thrown my life away. I should’ve made sure you were okay and gotten you to safety, but when it threw you I just snapped. That thing took so much from me, coming back to the same place and nearly losing you was too much.”
Nora shrugged “Don’t worry about it.” She responded “I know what the thing did to you, I’m not going to be mad at you for losing your cool.”
“Thank you.” Ren said, relieved that Nora wasn’t upset. “There’s also something else I want to talk about. I wanted to talk about us.”
Nora’s heart skipped a beat “Oh.”
Neither of them spoke for a moment.
“So, by us you mean…” Nora asked.
Ren nodded “Yeah I mean us being… ‘together’ together. The conversation we’ve been avoiding for the past year and a half.”
“You’ve known how I felt about you for that long?” Nora asked.
“Yes I…” Ren started to reply but interrupted himself once he had fully processed Nora's question “Wait, did you think I didn’t know how you felt?”
Nora shrugged “Well… I don’t know, I thought maybe you did but I was never sure.”
“Nora, everyone at Beacon knew you liked me. How could I have not known you liked me, I’m your closest friend?!” Ren asked, mildly offended by the idea that he didn’t know how Nora felt about him.
“I don’t know!” Nora exclaimed “You never said anything about it. I thought you might just dense like Jaune, or maybe you didn’t like me. You can’t expect me to tell how you feel as easily as you can tell how I feel.”
Ren exhaled loudly “I guess I can be pretty hard to read. I should’ve gone out of my way to make it more clear.” He said as he turned back towards the city skyline, annoyed at himself “But for future reference Nora, I’m not an idiot.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure if I was you.” Nora responded playfully as she lightly jabbed him with her elbow, before turning serious. “What changed?” she asked “Why, after years of us acting like there was nothing between us, do you want to start dating now?”
“Well…” Ren said as he laid down and stared up at the darkening sky “I’ve always been scared of things not working out if we started dating. That if we had a bad break up for some reason things would never be the same.” Ren sighed “But then… Pyrrha died. Before her relationship with Jaune ever became romantic. And I just kept thinking about the same thing happening to us. And then after what happened at Kuroyuri…” Ren swallowed and turned to look at Nora “If your aura had broken one hit sooner, you’d be dead. And I probably would’ve gotten myself killed if you hadn’t stopped me. That’s how close we came. I’m not going to keep waiting for a better moment when I don’t know how much time we have left.”
A shiver ran up Nora’s spine as she suddenly noticed how cold it had gotten with the setting of the sun “It’s freezing out here. We should head back inside.” she said as she stood up and extended her hand out to Ren.
Ren grabbed her arm and pulled himself off, brushing the dirt off his pants before following Nora towards the opposite end of the building, to the fire escape they had come up.
“So are we doing this then?” Nora asked as she sat hopped off the roof onto the fire escape with a loud clang.
Ren shrugged “Sure.” He answered, stepping over the edge and landing with a softer clang than Nora had, which was still fairly loud. “I mean, we won’t really have much time to go on dates or anything like that.”
“Ugh. Why does saving the world have to be so much work?” Nora asked as she scampered down the stairs.
“We aren’t even getting paid for this. We should form a union.” Ren jokingly suggested.
“We should see if we can get the bad guys to agree to take Sundays off.” Nora replied, stopping at the open window leading into their room. Nora climbed through their open window and somersaulted into her bed.
Ren shuddered as he stepped through the window “It’s not much warmer in here.” He noted as he walked around Nora’s bed to his own.
“Yeah I forgot to close the window. My bad.” Nora apologized as she wrapped herself in her sheets. Suddenly a thought struck her. She stuck her head out from under the covers and turned to Ren “Do you wanna… sleep together?” she asked.
At this Ren’s left eyebrow shot up questioningly.
“Not in, you know, that kind of way.” Nora hastily added, launching headlong into a panicked, high-speed ramble “I mean you are handsome and all but I think maybe we shouldn’t do that yet. I was just thinking that since we’re together together now and it is really cold we could just sleep in the same bed for warmth. We’ll probably do more serious stuff eventually, but I don’t want to take things to quickly I mean we haven’t even kissed-”
“Nora.” Ren said calmingly, barely suppressing the urge to smile at Nora’s nervous chatter “I understand what you meant. And yes, we can share a bed.”
“Awesome!” Nora exclaimed before regaining her composure “Uh, I’ll come over to your bed since it’s further from the window.” She said as she hopped out of her bed and made her way towards Ren’s, dragging her bed sheets with her.
Ren tossed his own sheet to the side as Nora threw her sheet over him and clambered into bed.
"We forgot to close the window again." Ren pointed out as Nora rolled herself up until their faces where inches away from each other.
"Eh, it's not that cold next to you. Besides," Nora murmured as she brushed Ren’s hair out of his eyes "I'm too comfortable here."
For a moment no one said anything, yet they both knew what the other was thinking.
“Do you want to say it first or should I?” Nora asked softly.
Ren smiled “I think you get to say it first.”
“I love you.”
“I love you too.”