Author's Note: This doesn't really have a canon set time, but it takes place after Volume 3 in an AU where the Fall of Beacon never happened. Everything's fiiiiiiiine. Also, the reason this isn't in which my oneshot/drabble collection for Renora ("Boop!") is because this is significantly longer than those, and because I'm planning to start posting more Renora stories around this size.

Chapter 1: Does This Count As Rejection?

The day had been relatively normal for Lie Ren, right up until his childhood best friend asked him out.

She had been nervous, understandably, and he had not made it better. He didn't reject her, that much was certain. But apparently the response he gave was not the ideal.

10:00 am, Saturday

The kitchen at the end of the hallway, next to the floor's student lounge, was essentially JNPR territory. Ren and Pyrrha were among the few students on the floor who knew how to cook, and most of the others on the floor preferred to visit vending machines for snacks and the cafeteria for meals- whereas Team JNPR (and sometimes RWBY if they were in the mood for pancakes) generally ate breakfast in the student kitchen and would occasionally eat lunch in there as well.

Even so, the kitchen was JNPR territory but only two of them cooked on a regular basis, so the current situation was new to them.

"Nora, why did you make these?" Ren picked up one of the few pancakes she hadn't haphazardly poured syrup on yet.

"I just felt like making something," she said quickly. The ginger was crouched over a plate of pancakes, around half of which were splotched with pink.

"You don't cook."

Nora scoffed, "It's not that I don't want to-" "You just can't." Ren finished. Seven members of the RWBY/JNPR alliance likely still had war flashbacks as a result of Nora's last attempt to make food. "But Pyrrha helped me this time!" she smiled. The dark haired boy sighed deeply and set down the lone pancake.

He faced her with a neutral expression, "You know the cafeteria has pancakes, and vending machines around campus certainly have similar things as far as sugar content goes."

She put down the bowl of pink batter and pointed the spatula at him accusingly, "You weren't listening, silly!" she gave a small "hmph!" and wagged the spatula, "I wanted to make something!" She went back to smiling as she set the pink batter aside, and stood on her tip toes to reach more red food coloring.

Ren gave a small smile, "Alright then." He had long since learned that if she was doing something that wasn't destructive, no matter how strange, it was just easier to go along with her randomness. He hadn't even bothered to ask why she was making so many or why they were pink. He reached over her and effortlessly grabbed the food coloring, handing it to the short girl. "Would you like help putting more of these on the stove?"

Immediately, she dropped the food coloring in the bowl, "Uh, no, I'm doing fine." She recovered.

He cocked a brow, "It's just batter, Nora, if you want help I can-"

"Nope!" she said, hastily mixing spilt red food coloring with more batter.

Confused, Ren asked anyway, "Would you like company then?"

"No, you can go back to whatever you were doing before this if- if you want."

He stared at her for a moment, blinking, "What?"

"I can do this by myself," She smiled uneasily. Strange, he thought. She's never shooed him away, she never cooks...today was full of firsts, he guessed.

Ren blinked again, "...Alright," He got up slowly, and walked back to the dorm at the end of the hallway as Nora cleaned batter off the food coloring bottle.

10:37 am, Saturday

"What the-" Ren was interrupted in his quiet reading as Nora set a pancake down on top of his book.

"Hi!" she said cheerfully, not making any move to explain. He looked up at her, utterly perplexed, "Thank… you?"

She waited expectantly, beaming with her hands clasped together. Ren glanced back and forth, looking at Jaune, not paying any mind as he played on his scroll, and then to Pyrrha, who looked nearly as excited as Nora at the scene unfolding. He held it like a taco and took a bite, wondering if that was what Nora was waiting for.

"Do you like it?" she asked, and though her tone was cheerful, her voice wavered in the middle of asking.

Ren merely nodded and asked, "Are you okay?"

The next moment was a complete blur of confusion after confusion, as Nora blurted, "Oh, I'm so glad you like it, Pyrrha said cooking was a good idea as a way to ask you out, since you like cooking and I thought it was awesome to make pan-"

Ren almost choked, "Wait what-? What do you mean 'ask me out'?"

Nora stopped dead in her tracks, "Oh, um… Will you go out with me?"

Ren's eyes were wide, "What do you mean?"

Nora stammered as Pyrrha shot her a thumbs up to show her encouragement, "Like…dating. Do you maybe wanna start dating? If- if you don't wanna we can forget this happened and...and…" she trailed off.

Ren's eyes were wide, and gave her a look as though he'd just realized he'd left the oven on, "Oh."

Nora took a shaky breath and let out a small laugh with no humor in it, "Uh, what- what does 'oh' mean?"

"I thought we were already a couple."