Ruby felt absolutely confident in the fact that she had no confidence at all.
She stared at the skillet in front of her with trepidation. 'Just make eggs,' Yang said. 'It's easy,' she said.
Well even making them scrambled was beyond her knowledge in the kitchen. She knew how to bake. Gods did she know how to bake. She was like… the master of baking. She could put the entire Cake Butler business to shame.
And yet, she herself was being put to shame by a small, off-white ovoid object that came out of a chicken's-
"Ruby? Are you listening? You gotta crack it on the bowl."
Ruby shook her head, pulling herself out of her head as she stared at Jaune in disbelief that he would insult her intelligence like that. She knew how to crack an egg. You can't make cookies or cakes without eggs.
Well, you could. But the best cookies and cakes were made with eggs. And that was just a fact.
"Jaune, I can crack an egg," she replied in a deadpan voice. She grabbed the offending ovoid and firmly but gently tapped the sucker on the edge of the bowl, making it split open perfectly. As the yolk poured into the bowl, Jaune leaned against the counter with a smirk.
"Alright, and what do you do now?" he asked smugly. Ruby just stared down at the bowl, the yolk floating in the whites. She was only using one for the lesson, but she desperately wanted to crack another. If only to delay the inevitable pain.
"We take a fork…?" Ruby stated slash asked, reaching down to grab a fork from the drawer by her right hip. She turned to see him nodding slowly.
"And then?"
"We… scramble the egg?" She looked back down at said egg with confusion. She had never bothered to watch Yang or her father make breakfast. She had never bothered wondering how the egg became scrambled.
"And how do we do that?" Jaune asked with a smile, his tone a cross between patient and teasing.
"W-we…" She looked at the fork in her hand, and then back down at the egg in the bowl. Putting two and two together, she stuck the fork in the egg, turning to see his nod of approval. She kept her eyes on him as she started stirring. He just kept nodding.
Emboldened by her right answers, she began stirring with more vigor. A cocky smile soon graced her lips as she started scrambling with the best of them. "Yep, thought so. I'm the best. World renowned chef, Ruby Rose at your service! Five stars? Please, I got ten! You're staring at a master with cookware, a ninja in a white apron!"
"Ruby you set a bowl of cereal on fire once," Jaune reminded her.
"I was experimenting! All the best chefs experiment, Jaune!" She replied as if it were the most natural thing in the world to set a bowl of corn flakes ablaze. Jaune felt that, for her, it might as well have been.
"Well, experiment less this time around, you're making scrambled eggs not an omelette." Jaune watched her carefully as she kept stirring the egg. He didn't have the heart to tell her she was scrambling too much.
"Now I pour it on the skillet right?" She turned to make sure that the skillet had been heating up like it should have been. Low heat, it had been a decent amount of time… Her instincts told her that it was time.
Without even waiting for his signal she brought the bowl above the skillet that Jaune had poured a tiny bit of olive oil in and poured it out, almost immediately she puffed her chest out pridefully.
This was the work of a true artiste.
"Wow, clearly you don't need me anymore, great and venerable chef Rose," Jaune said, faux bowling in her presence. She laughed like a power drunk queen.
"Yes, yes… bow before me in praise!"
A few moments passed with only the sound of the egg cooking to keep them company. She stared down at the egg and experimentally poked at it a few times.
"I-is it supposed to be cooking this slow?" she asked with the slight fear that she had somehow messed something up.
Jaune shrugged. "I don't know. You're the master chef here, so you tell me."
Ruby's eyes widened, panic gripping her heart in its icy tendrils. What in the heck was she supposed to do if Jaune kept playing into this little game of theirs? She didn't know what the heck she was doing! She couldn't be trusted with this! She was baby!
BABY!
"J-Jaune, I'm serious, what do I do now?" Ruby watched as the egg cooked very slowly. Was the heat too low? She was getting impatient! She just needed some big, strong muscle man to come in and guide her!
Maybe grab her hands from behind, wrapping her up in his chiseled and warm embrace as he guided her hands and showed her the exact perfect way to make the fluffiest most delicious scrambled egg-
"Oh, great and powerful chef Rose, you humble me with your display of humility. Truly, I think that you know best. You have no need of a peasant like me to even be in this, your most sacred of kitchens. Please, allow me to get out of your hair."
Ruby's left eye twitched as she watched her boyfriend turn tail and walk away. This was not what she expected. In fact, when she had proposed the idea of him teaching her how to cook, she had initially envisioned it to be more… romantic.
This was not romantic, this was nerve wracking!
He was leaving her alone with a hot skillet filled with hot, half cooked egg! Her! A child!
Well she wasn't a child really, but that's exactly what she felt like. A child. Because without his supervision she felt like everything she did was going to cause a nuke to go off. Localized entirely within the Beacon Academy kitchen.
But who was she kidding?
She didn't need him! She didn't need anyone! She was Ruby Rose, master chef! Ten star chef of legend!
She knew just what to do to really get this egg cooking!
She turned the burner up, watching with glee as the fire rose in intensity!
Yes! Yeeeees! Burn! Buuuurn! Cook with the speed of an unladen swallow!
"No," Jaune said, reaching to turn the flame back down to low.
She looked up at him with an indignant pout, but all he did was push her out of the way and begin to move the egg around in the skillet with the fork he snatched out of her hand.
"Jerk," she said with a huff.
"Come here, look. I'll teach you how to do it right. That way, you really won't need me next time," he chuckled.
She kept pouting, but after a moment her pout turned to a smile and she sidled up beside him happily, leaning into him as he began to walk her through the very simple process of making the fluffiest, most delicious scrambled eggs ever.
Bonus:
"Well, well, well… The spider has caught something in her web, it seems," Ruby said in a sisterly sinister voice, shining a flashlight from under her chin to give her a look more befitting a villain.
She paced slowly around Jaune, who was currently bound up tight in a wooden chair, tape being the only thing holding him in place.
He couldn't move his legs, couldn't move his arms… his wrists were taped together with multiple layers of the adhesive material. There was absolutely nothing he could do, a slave to Ruby and her diabolical whims.
Only one thing was on his mind; 'Man this tape is stronger than it looks. Is it duct tape?'
"What do you have to say for yourself, you poor helpless soul?" Ruby asked with an evil grin, suddenly flashing the light in his face. He blinked away the disorienting feeling, letting his eyes adjust.
"Is this duct tape? It's really strong."
Ruby's grin fell. "Jauuuuune! Play along! This is supposed to be sexy! How can it be sexy if you ask something like that?" She turned off the flashlight and switched the light back on, revealing her team's totally normal and average dorm room, and not some evil villain's lair.
"I never agreed to this," Jaune reminded her with an inquisitive eyebrow.
"But you did say you were interested," Ruby fired back. "Besides, you promised you would try things for me!"
Jaune shook his head, her tone getting dangerously close to the one she took when she did her puppy dog eyes. He didn't like the puppy dog eyes. He feared them. They held a power over mortal men and women.
"Ruby, I don't even know what we're role-playing right now," he laughed, his eyes focused right on her own. She blushed and turned away, her voice growing quiet and mumbly. He strained his ears, but all he could hear was the blood rushing from every point of his body that was currently being taped down. "I'm sorry could you repeat tha-"
"I said we're roleplaying a villain who captured her hero nemesis!" she admitted much louder this time. Jaune would have been thankful if not for now having the added problem of tinnitus. "I thought it was obvious, what with the flashlight and the dark room and the chair and the duct tape!"
"So it is duct tape!"
"You're missing the point!" Ruby sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. "I thought you would appreciate the setup! I read like… so many comics to research the part!"
"So this was just an excuse for you to read comics all day," Jaune deadpanned.
"No! I mean, maybe a little! But you're still missing the point! It's supposed to be sexy!" Ruby flung her arms outward, an expression of just how fed up she was getting. How was she ever expected to do anything spicy for her lovable himbo of a boyfriend if he just didn't play along? Was she just not doing good enough? Was the setup too cliche?
Perhaps she would have been better off going with the much more classic setup of 'alone in a zombie apocalypse and there's nothing better to do than repopulate.' She felt that one was a bit much though.
That and she had really wanted an excuse to duct tape him to the chair.
"Ruby, the circulation in my wrists is being cut off."
"Agh! Whatever! I'm done!" Ruby chucked the flashlight across the room and onto Weiss' bed. "Try to do something sexy for your boyfriend, and this is what you get?" Her voice grew high pitched, a mocking tone to her words. "Ruby, is this duct tape? Ruby, my circulation is getting cut off!" She scoffed, her voice going back to normal. "Well that's the last time you'll see me doing anything sexy for Jaune Arc!"
She stormed off out of the room, her ranting growing quieter and quieter, finally cutting off entirely as the door shut behind her.
Silence. Cold, dead silence. Jaune tried to shimmy his hands free of the tape to no avail.
"Man this is some really strong tape! I gotta get me some of this!"