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“I can’t sleep,” Nora whispers to Ren, who cracks an eye open. She’s always loved his eyes, beautiful and focused, even when he’s tired.
“For once, I can’t either.” They don’t move, just look at each other for any sort of hint of anything, really. Ren breaks their eye contact first, rolling over to roll out of bed as to not bother Jaune. He slides his scroll in his pocket and beckons for her to follow him, and she rolls out of bed to take his hand, her fingers fitting with his perfectly and making her heart flutter obnoxiously. She knows she loves him; her organs don’t need to remind her of it every time she touches him.
“Where are we going?” She asks him as they walk to a hallway on the other side of the house, where a string dangles from the ceiling.
He places a finger to her lips, and she resists the urge to lick it. “You’ll see.”
He tugs on the string and a ladder falls from the ceiling, inviting them to climb deeper into the bowels of their borrowed home. He leads the way, like he knows where he’s going. She trusts him.
It’s that moment where it really hits home. He could lead her blindfolded into a den of rabid beowolves and she’d trust that he’d save her, protect her from harm. She trusts the others, yes, but she’d be much more hesitant of Ruby leading her up some dark stairs into an attic.
Ren pulls the trap door back up into the attic, leaving the only light source the shine of the moon through the window.
He leads her towards the window, hand having never left hers for a second, and jimmies the window open. “Do you want to go up first?”
It’s too late (early?) for her to be causing chaos. “You know what you’re doing,” she answers, to which he nods, and she squeezes his hand before their fingers split their separate ways. She watches him climb out the window and over it, onto the peak of the roof. She hears him move, and then his face is upside down against the windowpane, hair dangling to frame his face against the moonlight. “Come on.”
And she crawls out of the window, onto the lower part of the roof before joining Ren onto a relatively flat part of it. “So, we’re on the roof.”
He pulls his scroll from his pocket and taps around a little, before slow music starts up, and he offers his hand to her. “Do you want to dance?”
And her stomach loops itself in knots. “Of course I want to dance with you.”
And they do. Ren leads, careful to mind any loose shingles, but they dance on the roof, under the stars in clothes that smell too much like sweat and tears, but they finally won another round, and nothing else should ever matter again.
“We lived again,” she tells him, taking in the feel of him against her.
“It’ll take a lot more than that to kill us,” he answers, dipping her backwards. “We’re like cockroaches.”
“Mm, but sexy ones.”
“You have a point there.”
A natural silence falls over them as they move in time, and Nora thinks back to everything she’d felt over the past few days. She recalls injuries and fear and panic, all stuff she’s dealt with before, but it all goes back to the hurt that still lingers in her chest. “Do you ever think about fragile our lives are?” She asks, reaching forward to tuck a strand of his hair behind his ear. “We almost watched another fr—“ she changes paths with that word, “—family member die.”
Ren misses a step and almost throws the both of them off the roof. “I try not to, but it lingers.” He changes how he holds her: no longer is she arms-length away but rather mere inches from him. “I don’t know if we could handle losing another part of our misfit family.”
His hand is warm against her back, his chest radiates enough warmth to ward off the evening chill. “Not even just a we; I don’t think I could handle it. Especially if it’s you.” She’s got the confidence to do it now: just them under the broken moon, there’s no better way to tell someone you love them.
He misses a step again, which is incredibly unlike him, and this time they do go tumbling down the roof like the idiots they are. Ren brings her to his chest as they fall, and luckily they’ve both fallen from enough high places that they’ve got the procedure down. Normally she does a tuck and roll, but Ren’s always been more of a barrel-roll lander, and she rolls with him until their momentum falls through. Nothing new, but definitely a good way to wake up. She may have bashed her nose against his sternum, but that’s an issue for later. She has some teasing to do.
“Nice save,” she tells him, shifting up his chest to meet his eyes. “Did something spook you?”
He shakes his head. “It’s more anxiety than anything. You’re unpredictable when you want to be.”
He’s got such pretty eyes, always tender when he looks at her. “You’re not always the easiest to read either, mister.”
There’s a tension in the moment, and every inch of her wants to kiss him, to find out if his lips are as soft as his hands, but she won’t. That isn’t her choice to make. She figures she’s loud enough about how she feels that it’s up to him to make the call. She adjusts so she’s hovering over him.
He smiles, mischief in it. “I wouldn’t be me if I was easy.” And he flares red, realizing too late how it sounds. “To read. Easy to read.”
She laughs. “Uh huh. Whatever you say, Ren.”
But she does have to give it to him, he is a bit more spontaneous tonight that he usually is, unless he’s been planning this without her knowledge. So when he flips their positions, him hovering over her, she grins. She’s seen this part of him before, mostly in showing affection towards their friends, or even just her, and her heart beats even faster. There’s an intensity to his expression as he speaks. “If it’s any consolation, Nora, I don’t think I could do it without you, either.”
Normally, she’d start wrestling with him over who’s on top, because she won’t let him win a wrestling match ever, but this is different from their play-fighting. This is so much different, something her brain never thought would come true. But her brain also doesn’t know how to be quiet. “Are you going to kiss me?”
He blinks, eyes focused on her. “I’ve been considering it. Do you want me to?”
She squeaks. “Am I dreaming?” Because this has to be a dream, there’s no way—
He pinches her cheek, hard enough to hurt just a bit. “Are you?”
“I guess not. Are you sure you—“
He leans forward to kiss her forehead. Which isn’t disappointing, not at all— “Nora. There’s no one I’d pick to spend my life with over you. I wish I would’ve realized it sooner.”
Oh. That makes sense, she supposes. “And I you,” she answers, because really her brain is struggling to keep up with all this emotional whiplash. “You can kiss my mouth too. Or anywhere else.”
He raises an eyebrow. “One step at a time,” he tells her, which is fair, really, but she’s been dreaming about him kissing her for a long time and for him to tease her like that isn’t fair.
He lowers himself, just a bit, so she doesn’t have to crane her neck to kiss him. But he still doesn’t go for her mouth, either nerves or playfulness being the root of that, and he kisses her cheek, then her nose, before he presses his lips to hers.
His lips are soft, just as soft as she’d imagined, and she wishes she had control of her hands because she would tangle her fingers in his hair if she wasn’t utterly frozen with every single emotion she’d ever felt at once. It’s electric and soothing and beautiful and wild and she is sure there’s a word for all that, but she isn’t sure what it is. He pulls away, and when gets enough motor skills to open her eyes, he looks concerned. “Did I break you?”
“In the best, best, best way,” she tells him, before she flips him into his back and kisses his face. “I love you so so much.”
His laughter is consoling, and his hands tangle in her hair. “I’ve wanted to kiss you for a while," he admits between kisses. “I just wasn’t sure—“
“You weren’t sure? I don’t think I could’ve been more transparent, Ren.”
“I don’t remember a time when you weren’t clingy or flirty. Maybe I’ve hit my head too many times.”
She laughs between pecks to his cheeks. “I’ll try and make sure you hit your head less. Wouldn't want you to forget any of this.”
“I wouldn’t want to.” And he leans forward for another kiss, soft and tender. Short, but still perfect. She rolls off of him and helps him to his feet, and with the music distant from the roof, she settles her arms around his neck and his hands sit on her hips as they dance down the length of the house, bare feet chilled by the semi-frozen spring earth. It’s peaceful again for a moment, as though nothing had changed between them, but he presses his lips to her forehead every few feet, and she toys with his hair as they move in sync, and it’s the most Nora’s felt at peace in a very long time.
It’s a while before Ren speaks again. “Hey, Nora.”
“Mm?” She’s too busy playing with his hair to try and guess what he’s going to mention.
“How are we going to get back into the house?”
Well. “You’re the one that picked the roof. Plus, your scroll is still playing.”
He hums. “I wonder if anyone has their windows open.”
“We can just sleep out here until someone starts panicking about where we are.”
He shakes his head. “That can be plan C. Do you think Qrow has his window open? Since,” he paused, still looking incredulous, “he’s a bird? I’m still thrown off by that.”
She laughs. “If not, I’m sure there’s a ledge somewhere that we can use to get back onto the roof.”
They inspect the house, finding all the windows closed but an easily-accessible balcony from a tree branch that tests Nora’s catlike abilities (but Ren is just fine like the ninja he is) that will let them climb back in the window they emerged from, Ren going out of his way to grab his scroll.
“We should tell Qrow there are some loose shingles on the roof,” she whispers to him as they sneak back into the mega-bed they’d made to share with Jaune. “Don’t want a leak when it rains.”
“Of course not.” He turns to kiss her forehead as they crawl under the blankets as Jaune mumbles something or another and turns to curl up with both of them.
She’s able to move so she can twirl the strand of pink in his hair around her finger as she nods off. “See you tomorrow, Ren.”
“Goodnight, Nora.” His arm draped over her waist and everything feels so much more right than it had when she’d gone to bed. He kisses her forehead again and it’s all too easy to fall asleep.