Who: Ren and Nora When: Recently Where: Their Place What: Girl Scout Cookies!! Rating/Warnings: Low/None (adorableness) Status: Complete
Nora and Ren didn’t always have a lot of money. Actually, they rarely had a lot of money. This was kind of a big deal, since she’d only ever had Girl Scout Cookies in small portions. Five dollars was a lot of money to spend on cookies, and they normally didn’t go for such things.
But this year, with her job working for Kanan, Nora had a little extra money to spend on frivolous things. Maybe a little more than a little extra money. She was sitting on about a hundred dollars--pretty much a fortune to the redhead.
So she bought cookies. There were girls outside the supermarket selling, and Nora bought one of each kind. When she came home she was bouncing off the walls.
“REN!” She cried out. “REN! WHERE ARE YOU? I BOUGHT GIRL SCOUT COOKIES!!”
Ren was sitting on their computer. He had a paper that he needed to write, and he needed to do get a fairly high grade on it if he wanted to make up for how much he had fallen behind earlier in the semester.
He sighed when she burst through the door, finished his paragraph and turned around in his seat. He did like Girl Scout cookies, and he wondered what kind Nora had brought back with her. He was not expecting the mountain of cookies that she was carrying, and his mouth dropped open.
Nora gave a squee of delight and laughter, then marched in place to try and alleviate some of that crazy energy. “RIGHT??” Then she rushed into the kitchen to dump the boxes onto the counter. “I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHERE TO START!” She called out, pouring over the boxes.
Ren didn't either. He sat in his computer chair for a few moments longer, before he got up and followed Nora into the the kitchen. It really did appear that she had spent every last spare dollar she had on cookies. There was a part of him that was annoyed. Yes, they had a little spare money now, but they should have been saving it for the next time when they didn't, not continuing to live paycheque to paycheque.
But there was a bigger part of him that realized that it was Nora’s money, and Nora was Nora. No amount of scolding would ever change that, and he wouldn't have wanted to even if it could. “Did you get every kind?” he asked.
“I did! One box of each! I can’t wait to try them all! We should do a taste test. Maybe even a video for my blog!” Nora bounced a little on the spot, and picked up the red box to show it to Ren. She wasn’t thinking about saving for a rainy day, wasn’t thinking about anything except for how much she liked cookies. Part of her charm was her short-mindedness, right? “This one’s peanut butter and chocolate. Want to try it first??”
Ren sighed heavily. He had never really been a fan of featuring in Nora’s blog videos, but he never really put up much of a fuss if she insisted on him being in one. At least she didn’t expect him to match her enthusiasm. “Next time you have spare money, you should only spend half of it and put the rest in your savings account.” After all, Nora might have been short-sighted about these kind of things, but that was what Ren was around for. And now that he had said his piece on the matter, he could enjoy the cookies. He reached for one of the cookies. “Are we going to try all of these tonight?”
“One of each?” Nora suggested, looking hopeful. “What do you think? It’s not that many! And you can tell me what you think!” She didn’t take a cookie, however, she grabbed a plate and started to put cookies on the plate. After opening each box, she set the cookies by pairs around the plate so they could taste test in the living room area instead, sitting on the sofa.
“One of each,” Ren agreed, though that did seem like a few too many cookies. Still, it wasn’t like Nora or him would have much trouble packing away eleven small cookies. Once Nora was done plating the cookies, Ren followed her out to the sofa.
Nora finished putting the cookies on the plate, then moved over to the sofa and sat down with him. She settled the plate between their knees. Then she lifted the first cookie. The one with the chocolate and the peanut butter. She held it toward his face, grinning brilliantly. “Here!”
Ren leaned forward and took a bite of the cookie in Nora’s fingers. He chewed thoughtfully for a minute. He probably could have made better chocolate and peanut butter cookies himself, but they were very good for cookies from a box. “It’s good,” he said.
Well, Ren made the best cookies. There was no doubt in Nora’s mind about that. She popped the other half of the cookie he’d bitten into her own mouth, and then closed her eyes with a sigh as she chewed. “It’s really good.” Her voice was dripping with appreciation and enjoyment. “Which one do you want to try next?” There was a shortbread, a lemon cookie covered in powdered sugar, one with coconut and caramel, another peanut butter one...
Ren looked at the choice of cookies, trying to decide which to choose. With so many choices, it was a bit of a hard decision, but after a few moments he picked up one of the Savannah Smiles and offered it up to Nora.
Nora was more than willing to take any food that Ren offered. She leaned in to nibble off the edge of the powdery cookie, getting a little of the powdered sugar all over her face.
Ren smiled, exhaling through his nose in something that could almost be considered a laugh, at least by Ren’s standards. He wasn’t quite sure how she’d managed to get sugar from such a small cookie, which he was feeding her, all over her face, but he supposed she wouldn’t be Nora if she hadn’t. He reached forward to brush some of the sugar off the corner of her mouth, letting his hand linger at her cheek.
Ren’s hand was warm. His fingers soft. Nora felt her breath catch as his fingertips touched her face, and then her eyelids fluttered. She’d turned into a total girl. It wasn’t like they’d never done things like this before--when Nora went through her “eating everything with chopsticks” phase? She’d fed him off them for practice. But at some point her feelings for her roommate-slash-best-friend-slash-soul-mate had gone from brotherly to something else entirely. And it was getting harder and harder to hide it.
Her cheeks went pink. She stared into his eyes. It was almost as if she couldn’t look away. Not that she wanted to look away. She rather liked looking up into his eyes.
Ren looked back into Nora’s eyes, his gaze gentle. Had her eyes always been this clear? He had always been very good at controlling his emotions, but his heart was thumping. He brushed his thumb across her cheek.
Well, this was… both incredibly comfortable and incredibly terrifying at the same time. Something about it felt… intimate. Which was good. But different. And different could be scary. Nora wondered for a brief second if he could feel her pulse thundering, if he knew what she was feeling.
“I like this,” she whispered. Did she mean the cookie? Did she mean the closeness with Ren? Yes.
The two of them never had discussed what had happened over Christmas. Instead, life had just carried on, mostly the same, but with subtle differences. Like now, how having Nora so close made his heart thump. He leaned in toward her.
She leaned in, too. Nora’s eyes fell closed. She could feel the warmth radiating from him, the comforting, familiar warmth that she’d spent so much of her life enjoying. It was comfortable, and exciting, and she just wanted to be close to him. So she leaned in, her face mere inches from his. She assumed they were having a moment. Like over Christmas. Only… this felt like more?
Ren bumped his forehead against Nora’s, and tucked a lock of her hair behind her ear. This, here, made him completely and utterly content.