#elena of the turks
Reno: Don’t do anything stupid until I get back.
Elena: How can I? You’re taking all the stupid with you.
Reno: I’ve come to offer you friendly advice.
Elena: I really don’t want your advice.
Reno: Well, then consider it unfriendly advice.
Elena: May we get what we want…
Rude: …and may we get what we need.
Reno: But may we never get what we deserve.
Reno: Operation “Thong” has commenced.
Elena: Why don’t you stun-gun yourself?
Reno: I knew she’d like that one.
Reno: Excuse me. I’m a mature responsible adult.
Elena: You got your arm stuck in a vending machine trying to get fruit snacks.
Reno: I had a cast on my hand, and if I paid for my fruit snacks, I’m getting my fruit snacks.
Reno: Rude’s on patrol, so while he’s gone I’m gonna cut the sleeves off of all my shirts.
Elena:Why?
Reno: He’s pretty much 85% of my impulse control.
…and that’s how we were banned from the Shinra Member’s Bar.
[Image Description: Digital art of the Turks in the Shinra Member’s Bar in Junon, based on a meme photograph. In the foreground, Reno squats atop a table sticking his tongue out and making the horn sign with both hands for the camera. Behind him, Elena is gripping the shirt of a man in a suit, pushing him backwards into another table. She is glaring at him with teeth grit and her right fist is raised about to punch him. Her suit jacket is open, her tie loose, and one sleeve rolled up. In the farther background, Tseng is seated calmly at the bar with his back to the goings-on. /end ID]
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Fandom: Final Fantasy VII
Shinra Holiday 2020 » Day 1: Bake it til’ you make it
Word count: 1834
Rating: G
Summary: Elena isn’t the best cook. As she is trying to make holiday cookies for Tseng, Reno walks in on her.
Note: A bit late, but here’s my entry for the Shinra Holiday 2020 event. This is also my first time writing the Turks, so hope you enjoy :)
Read on AO3.
~*~*~*~*~
“What are you doing?”
Elena jumped at the sudden voice. Her hand that was stirring another batch of cookie dough jolted to a halt. She knew that voice—that arrogant, half-amused, in perpetual teasing voice. As though he had the entire world in the palm of his hand. Reno stood in the now-open doorway, one brow raised in question.
How had he found her there? Elena had asked to use the kitchen in the dead of night when all the kitchen staff had gone home. They’d let her, albeit begrudgingly, and lent her the key, making her promise to make sure no one came and stole food from the pantry. Apparently they’d had a case of a thief for several nights, and no, it hadn’t been a rat.
“Good thing I’m not Tseng, though, right?”
Reno’s scoff brought Elena’s mind back to the situation. At the tilt of her head, Reno made a deliberate scan of the chaotic counter between them. Flour was strewn about, with splashes of milk and butter and egg, and in the center of it all was a plate stacked high with burned cookies.
Elena’s face went red with mortification.
“It’s not like no one knows,” Reno went on. “Except Tseng, that is.”
He crossed the kitchen, then sat on a stool he pulled from beneath the counter. He picked a cookie from the top of the stack, burned black and cut into what was supposed to be a gingerbread man, but the edges had crumbled, leaving only a decapitated head. Reno’s smile was crooked, but before Elena could warn him, he had taken a bite off the head. The grimace came almost immediately, his brows scrunched in disgust.
“What is this?”
Elena looked away and continued stirring the dough, willing her heated face to cool.
“If you’re thinking of giving these to Tseng, I suggest you think twice before—”
“How did you get here?” She cut him mid-sentence. She didn’t need his lecture to know how badly she’d messed up her first batch—and second. And third. Besides, it was two in the morning and she had locked the door.
“I’m on standby,” Reno replied, as though that justified him visiting the pantry in the middle of the night. “Figured I could swipe a chicken leg or something.” Elena half wondered if he was the one who’d been stealing food, but the thought stopped midway when she heard a soft crunch from behind her.
Her hand paused. Did he eat another? Those ruined, burned-black, disgusting cookies? Her heart had sunk at the sight of them when she’d pulled the tray out of the oven. But she’d figured the taste mattered more than the appearance and had taken a bite from a tree-shaped cookie. She’d almost gagged. Her second batch had come out still burned, but at least it was edible. Still not enough to present to Tseng, though.
“You, on the other hand,” Reno went on. Elena glanced at him. He tossed the last of a star-shaped cookie in his mouth, his grin turning wry. “Didn’t expect you to be the sneaky type.”
“What do you mean sneaky?” Reno waved the cookie as if to make a point. Then he eyed the mess on the counter. Elena’s frown deepened. She set her bowl down and turned around to face him, her hands on her hips. “For your information, they let me borrow the kitchen. Unlike someone.”
“At least I didn’t spend a week’s worth of cooking ingredients.” He picked a cookie from the top of the stack, one of the edible-looking ones, and bit into it. His brows drew together, but he still gulped everything down. “Imagine what the chef would say once he sees his storage is empty.”
Reno was exaggerating. Elena was only into her second bag of flour and had only used half a bag of sugar and several eggs. They were only a fraction of what the kitchen staff used daily. She doubted they would even notice.
“They know I’m making cookies,” Elena said in defense of herself.
“Bet they didn’t know you’re only just trying it out.” Reno picked another cookie from the plate. He inspected the round and plain chocolate chip, his lips pulled into a deep scowl at the black surface. “Tell me, did you follow a bad recipe, or are you just a plain kitchen disaster?”
“If you don’t have any constructive criticism to give, the door’s that way.”
“I’m just saying.” Reno tossed the cookie back onto the plate before picking another—a cane-shaped cookie with white icing on top. She’d hoped it could have masked the burnt taste, but she’d made the icing too salty. “Don’t be too ambitious if you don’t have any baking experience, and—” Reno swiped at the icing and licked it off his finger. He didn’t bother to hide his revolt. “Don’t mistake sugar with salt, please.”
That was only one time, though now a bag of icing lay in waste on top of the counter. That would earn her an earful from the head chef.
Reno exhaled a loud, exasperated sigh. He pushed himself off his stool then moved around the counter, taking the mixing bowl from Elena. “You don’t have enough flour,” he said with a click of his tongue as he tested the gooey consistency of her batter with the spatula. He pinched a little of the batter with his finger, and Elena held her breath as she watched Reno taste it. “At least you used sugar this time.”
“Of course I did!”
He glanced around, then grabbed the measuring cup sitting next to the flour bag. “How many cups of flour did you use?”
Elena bit back her frown as she wondered what Reno was going to do. “Three?” she said. Reno quirked a disbelieving brow at her, and Elena folded her arms. “I followed the recipe okay! It’s not my fault it doesn’t go the way it’s supposed to.”
“Then whose fault is it? The oven?”
Reno scoffed and reached toward the bag of flour to scoop for another cup. Elena’s eyes grew wide in horror and she was about to stop him. She could do this herself—she had to do this herself. What would be the point if she didn’t make the cookies she would give Tseng tomorrow?
“Just tell him you spent all night at the kitchen,” Reno said, adding half a cup of the flour into the dough through a strainer. He set the cup down, then began mixing the batter. “That’s not exactly a lie.”
“But—” Elena pursed her lips and looked away, ignoring the way her cheeks burned. “Stop reading my mind.”
“Then stop being an open book.”
Elena huffed and gritted her teeth. She could never win against her particularly obnoxious senior.
Reno mixed the batter with the spatula with expert dexterity. He added more flour when the batter was still too viscid, then mixed it some more until the consistency resembled a cookie dough. Elena found herself entranced by the way he moved with ease, the blue in his eyes focused solely on the task at hand.
“Can you really bake?” she asked.
Reno’s laugh surprised her—the sort of startled laughter as if she’d said something stupid. “I’m a Turk,” was all he said, as though that answered everything. She was a Turk herself, but she knew nothing about the kitchen. Though that was nothing new. Her own family had forbidden her to enter the kitchen, even when nobody was home. That was why she had to use the company’s kitchen in the small hours.
What if Reno was only putting on airs and the cookies he made now turned out worse than her own burned batch? What if he was playing her? Elena wouldn’t put it past him. Then Tseng wouldn’t look at her the same way ever again—and not in the way she hoped.
“You don’t believe me that much?” Elena blinked. Reno was looking at her from the corners of his eyes, a frown playing across his face. “All I want is to save Tseng from getting hospitalized. Now, either you get out of my way or you get me the parchment paper.”
He’d sounded so stern that for a split second, Elena had thought she was on a mission and he was her field superior. She stood at attention, then responded the way she would have as a member of the Turks. It wasn’t until she caught his tiny, teasing grin as she was turning around that she realized he was messing with her. Unease, mixed with exasperation, creeped its way into her heart.
“You’re not pulling my leg, right?”
His delayed answer made her think of the worst. He hadn’t added anything strange into the bowl while she wasn’t looking, had he? She could just imagine Tseng’s expression. The cookie would look good on the outside, but the moment her superior bite into it—the grimace, the disgust, the gag. What if he threw up in front of her? He’d get hospitalized for sure!
“You like him that much, huh?”
Reno’s eyes were uncharacteristically drawn, a slight crinkle around the corners that made him look… gentle, for once. Teasing still, but kind. In a blink-or-she’d-miss-it moment, his smile turned tender. Then he looked away and resumed his mixing.
“Relax,” he said. “After tasting your cooking, I fear for Tseng’s life if he has to eat it.” She took offense, her lips pulling into a scowl as a retort formed behind her mouth, but then he said, “Just take it as me trying to express Holiday spirits. I’m being sincere here for once, you know.”
That was the last thing Elena expected him to say. Holiday spirits? Sincere? Elena never thought those words existed in his vocabulary. For all she knew, her senior’s sincerity only existed on the battlefield when his target stood at the other end of his electro-mag rod. Elena had no reason to trust him, yet she had no reason not to trust him either. Maybe Reno really was doing her a favor. Whatever his reasons had been for visiting the kitchen so late at night, he was here helping her bake cookies when he was supposed to be on standby. Should she take him up on his offer? He’d do things his way no matter what she said.
“Fine,” she finally said. She turned around on her feet, then reached for the parchment papers in the cupboard. She spread it over the counter, but before Reno could scoop the now-thickened dough onto the paper, she held her hand over it, stopping him. “But if Tseng throws up in front of me, I’m going to say you made it for him.”
A pause, in which Reno’s turquoise eyes met her dark brown ones. The grin that spread over his face was almost challenging, but then he laughed a hearty laugh that came from his stomach and shook his shoulders.
“Deal,” he said, then he scooped the dough onto the parchment.
~ END ~
Elena used to work at a bar before she joined the Turks, so I like to imagine her and Tifa bartending together at Seventh Heaven sometimes post-Advent Children.
Tseng: You can’t wake up if you never got to sleep.
Elena: *cocks gun* Go to Bed. This is no longer a request, This is now a Threat.
