Working Things Out
If someone stood outside RWBY team's door just now, that someone would likely hear such a chorus of giggling as to think an entire class of middle school girls was having a slumber party within the dorm room. Such an assumption would be unlikely - Beacon is a prestigious Huntsman academy, after all - but for the most part, it would be correct. If that hypothetical eavesdropper happened to peek inside the room just to verify that no middle-schoolers had infiltrated the campus, he/she would indeed find a slumber party in progress - though one attended by teenagers, and only a pair of them at that. Said voyeur might also be surprised to spy team RWBY's leader with someone who isn't even a student of the Academy - though of course, she is none other than Ruby's bubbly android friend, Penny.
Ruby's bed sheets are spread out in the middle of the floor as a mattress for the two friends as they point up at the ceiling with barely-restrained laughter. The lights are off, casting the room in darkness except for the projector aimed at a spot above them. The projector came from Beacon's library, available for check-out by students as a study aid, though Ruby had had a much more entertaining use for the device in mind as she hooked it up to her scroll and set it to cycle through her photo album. Between the mis-matched image resolutions, the wide focus of the projector, and a couple of wonky input settings, each picture is projected and warped to comical proportions against the ceiling and part-way down the walls.
"Oh, this one's hilarious!" Ruby snorts as the image above flickers and changes. Weiss's angry face now glowers down at them, her features blown up ten times their natural size and stretched horizontally by nearly half. Each of her pouting cheeks extends onto an opposite wall of the room, her forehead taking up the vast majority of ceiling space. The famous Schnee Scowl™, normally a deadly weapon in Weiss's arsenal, now more closely resembles a harmless puckered frown thanks to the quirks of dated rendering technology.
Another picture appears and Penny slaps her hands to her mouth in a futile attempt to stop the shriek of laughter that explodes out of her. The image proudly displays the aftermath of the food fight between team RWBY and team JNPR that took place earlier in the year. Ruby stands prominently in the center of the image, grinning smugly at the camera with a peace sign; the wall in the background resembles an abstract painting, though at such a large resolution, the members of team JNPR can be easily seen mixed in with a mess of colorful foodstuffs plastered to the wall.
"Ruby! How did you do that?"
"I used my super speed!" Ruby says in a prideful tone. She sits up to wave her hands around in imitation, punctuated by energetic whooshing sounds and mimicked cries of surprise and defeat.
"Incredible," Penny says fondly and giggles at the reenactment.
The projection changes once again to show a snapshot of Blake and Weiss sharing a furtive kiss. Because of how the image is warped, their lips meet in the middle of the ceiling but their heads stretch all the way onto opposite walls. The effect is such that their lips make an absurdly long and narrow bridge connecting two squashed-in faces. But the icing on the cake is Yang's face, barely visible in the background between the two as she mocks them with fish-lips in view of the camera. Ruby and Penny both fall onto the blankets clutching their sides.
"How- how did you get this picture?" Penny asks through a fit of giggling.
"They don't know- that I have it-" Ruby forces out between breaths. "Weiss- she'd kill me if- if she did-" Unable to contain her mirth any longer, Ruby flops over onto her side heaving for breath with her face buried in the crook of her arm. Penny's fit subsides first and she waits until Ruby is able to breathe again before asking a follow-up question.
"What I meant was, why were Weiss and Blake kissing in the first place? I didn't know that was something friends do." Having led an even more sheltered life than Ruby, Penny knows of kissing, but not why people do it and with whom.
Ruby wipes tears from her eyes but stays lying on her side, facing Penny.
"Um, no, they're girlfriends now," the team captain says slowly as if broaching a difficult subject. "It's kinda sweet sometimes, but mostly it's just awkward. Painfully awkward. Like, worse than the thing with Jaune and Pyrrha..."
Penny absorbs this information, her mind still on the picture of the other two girls kissing as the metaphorical gears turn within her head - through there are probably real ones spinning away in there, too.
"Thanks for sharing these memories with me, Ruby," Penny says suddenly. "You all seem to have so much fun here, surrounded by... friends... all the time."
Ruby catches the wistful tone coloring her friend's voice, but her face immediately brightens with an idea.
"Wouldn't it be great if we could convince headmaster Ozpin to let you join our team?!" Ruby's hands move without thinking to take hold of Penny's in her excitement. "I mean, I know you aren't enrolled or anything, but maybe they could let it slide. Although, I guess that would make our team name spell BWRPY (burpy) or something. Not the coolest name, but we'd still be the coolest team."
"Oh, how I wish we could spend more time together, too," Penny says, smiling at her friend's attempt to cheer her up.
By now, the two have forgotten the projector entirely. Ruby's mind wanders as she thinks up more team names if Penny were to join RWBY. Penny, on the other hand, has become very conscious of the fact that her hands are still held between both Ruby's. They're warm, just like everything else about her... friend? Her eyes wander up to Ruby's lips, which move silently as the girl whispers letters distractedly to herself. Suddenly, an urge that Penny has never felt before overtakes her - an urge to experiment with their friendship. Leaning in just like the picture of Ruby's teammates, Penny closes the already small gap between them.
"What are you..." Ruby squeaks, startled out of her thoughts. Her hands tighten around Penny's.
"I would like to conduct an experiment. May I...?"
Penny's eyes are big and innocent, her breath warm on Ruby's face. There's a questioning spark floating in the sea of green that seems to fill Ruby's vision and all she can do is nod. Despite the consent, Penny doesn't immediately move closer. The gap separating them seems to hum with electricity; Ruby isn't sure if this is caused directly by Penny or simply an imagined effect of their closeness.
Then, with a few rapid blinks of her eyes, Penny's lips find Ruby's. She probes cautiously but curiously, as if she has become a bomb diffusal unit and Ruby's lips are particularly volatile explosives in deceptive wrapping. Her eyes flutter closed in concentration as her artificial lips graze real human flesh for the first time. She holds still for a moment just after contact, awed and delighted by the texture and gentle warmth. She would be content to stay like this for a while longer, but curiosity quickly spurs her into action to see how friction enhances the experience.
Ruby goes very still, hardly breathing as soft lips ghost across her own. They shift horizontally with painstaking slowness in what can only be called exploration. She can't help but watch wide-eyed as Penny's expression shifts subtly with each passing moment of discovery. The pressure never increases beyond a feather-light touch, yet Ruby can feel everything with acute hypersensitivity. Like a shimmer of static prickling her skin, she can imagine the charge building up along her lips to eventually burst behind her eyes like fireworks. Her muscles tense for the imminent electrical discharge, but before it comes, Penny's nose bumps against the side of hers and the feeling disperses.
Green eyes open in surprise and Penny pulls back an inch to stare back at her friend hazily. She briefly wonders if her entire system is undergoing a catastrophic meltdown - her visual receptors seem to be malfunctioning; her tactile response is feeding back old data as phantom sensations continue to play across her lips; her artificial heart has gone into overdrive in the same way it would had she sensed a threat, though none are present. None of it makes any logical sense to Penny, yet the most pressing concern amidst all these warning signals is that her experiment is still incomplete.
The projector continues to cycle through Ruby's Scroll in the background, long forgotten. Still lying face-to-face on their mattress of blankets, neither girl notices as a photo of a rose from Ruby's first arrival on campus blooms to life above. The warm crimson hue settles over them like a mood spotlight.
Deciding to delay her diagnostics until a later time, Penny's right hand moves to cup Ruby's neck just below her jaw line as she leans in closer once again. Another warning barely registers in her mind as the scent of roses threatens to engulf her, but she finds the fragrance comforting and deigns to ignore it as another negligible malfunction.
The touch seems to pull Ruby out of her own thoughts and she meets Penny half-way, this time in a true kiss. Their lips meet in a moment that lasts ten before Ruby takes the lead and starts moving hers in a gentle pulsating rhythm. She has zero first-hand kissing experience, but she recalls Blake and Weiss doing something similar so she just goes with it. Penny doesn't offer any complaints as she matches the movements and pace.
Ruby doesn't know if this is the moment she was waiting for, but her entire body trembles with frightening fascination. In a desperate search for something grounding as lightning crackles between their lips, the fingers against Ruby's neck move up to rest just below her left ear, drawing a tingling path over her skin. This makes her breath hitch in surprise, breaking the kiss. Both girls fall apart to regain their breath; the moment had only seemed to last a heartbeat, yet their oxygen deprivation indicates otherwise. When Penny's hand moves back down to join Ruby's, the other girl finally meets her eyes hesitantly.
"Penny, I don't know were to go from here."
Ruby's voice sounds small in the darkness of the room; the projector had turned off automatically to save power long ago.
"Neither do I," Penny says slowly, "But it's okay. We're friends-"
"Girl - friends?"
The first syllable comes out of Ruby's mouth automatically, but she stalls when she reaches the second, turning it into question as she fully comprehends what it is she's actually saying. Her eyes are wide in the low light, full of uncertainty.
"We're girlfriends," Penny corrects herself with more conviction as a warm smile blooms on her face. "We'll figure it out together."
Ah yes, Nuts and Dolts. I started out as a die-hard Monochrome shipper (which I still am of course, I didn't miss the chance to slip that in here *wink*) but these two are sooooo cuuuuute together. Normally I like seeing Ruby protrayed as aro/ace, but guhuhuh these two were made for each other (hmmm, I wonder if Penny's 'father' was a family friend or something... hmmm). Seriously though, this ship has given me more fic ideas in the space of a week than any other has thus far. There are just too many possibilities, and no time to write them all!
This must surely be the truth of shipping hell.
This story was mostly written while listening to Boop and Shine from the Volume 2 soundtrack. They were great for getting into the light-hearted romantic mood for this fic. I really hope Penny gets her own character song in Volume 3, she's quickly become my favorite character. She also needs more screen-time and development.
-yurImperial