A white comb moved through the blue hair to stylize it into his signature look. A finger pressed against his eyebrows to flatten any stray hairs back into place. He straightened out the black tie worn over the white shirt and pulled on the black leather jacket to align it with his shoulders.
"Perfect!" Neptune was brimming with confidence as per usual. He pulled out his scroll and snapped a obligatory selfie, writing the caption see you soon 3, before sending it to his intended recipient. His eyes wondered towards the clock on the top of the screen.
"2:15, better get going." Neptune closed the messenger app, locking the scroll and slipped it back into his pocket before leaving the rest room and into the hallways. Beacon at this time of year was pretty empty as most of it's students were out for the Yuletide break. The remaining students were either preparing to leave or staying due to reasons. Either way, Neptune was walking down the corridors with his usual swagger: shamelessly smiling at any man or woman who came across his way. His path ended in front of the JNPR dorm room...and so did his confidence.
He just stood there – frozen. Hesitation kept him from knocking at the door, a sudden blush crept on his face as thoughts of him and Jaune being alone in his room, the things that they could possibly do together sent his heart pumping mad. He exhaled and moved to knock on the door when he heard a crash inside followed by a groan.
"Uh, Jaune?" Neptune called out.
"Nep?! H-hold on a second please?!" Jaune sounded a bit scrambled. He heard footsteps and the crinkling of paper from the other side of the door. A loud crash followed by Jaune saying a g-rated replacement of a swear caused Neptune to barge into the room worried.
"Jaune?" Neptune scanned the room quickly only to find Jaune bent over a table holding his knee while being covered with all sorts of materials on his hair. Wrapping paper of various holiday designs were strewn across the room along with ribbons, a pair of scissors and two different presents that laid on top of his teammate's bed. He turned to see Neptune standing at the doorway, jaw agape at the mess in front of him.
"H-heeeeey Nep!" Jaune greeted his partner, "Don't mind the mess, just doing a little bit of gift wrapping for Yuletide is all."
"I can see that." Neptune tip-toed around the floor as to not step on anything important and gave a small kiss on Jaune's cheek.
"Looks like you had a major fight with the wrapping stuff and lost." Neptune grinned as he pulled off the ribbon from Jaune's hair.
"They didn't win, we settled on a truce." The way Jaune crossed his arms and pouted eased Neptune and made him more relaxed.
"I was trying to remember how to do that thing with the ribbon to make it curly and pretty but, I couldn't remember and then I slipped on the paper that I left on the ground and then that's how the fight started. Blood was shed this day." Jaune said dramatically.
Neptune couldn't help but, arch a brow at his boyfriend's story. He eyed the giant bear that was sitting on top of red wrapping paper.
"So whose the bear for?" Neptune asked.
"Wha?" Jaune looked at the bear and made an O with his mouth.
"Oh that's Pyrrha's! She's not really materialistic despite being super rich. I figure something simple would be nice. Just trying to get the damn thing wrapped without messing up the fur is kind of a pain."
"Say no more, I understand." Neptune stepped forward and in a flash, wrapped the bear within the red paper with ease. He then cut an adequate amount of white ribbon and did some hand magic to make it look nice and flowery, folding a small piece of tape to adhere the ribbon to the paper. He looked over it, marveling at his work and gave it to Jaune
"Wooooow!" Jaune said in awe, those blue eyes of his went big like a child's. "How did you do that so quickly?"
"Carefully." was Neptune's reply, "Bring the other gifts over here, I'll help you wrap them up."
Jaune nodded and moved towards the beds on the left, dropping the bear on Pyrrha's bed and picked up an average-sized box. Meanwhile Neptune unrolled a bit of green wrapping paper, smoothing it flat with his hand. Jaune came back with a rather large in his hands and with great caution, placed it down on top of the paper. Images on the face of the box showed an exquisite tea set made of glass jade, each one adorning with various gemstones to form the shape of a dragon.
"That looks really expensive." He was impressed, not just at the incredibly well-made silverware but, the fact that Jaune apparently had the lien to afford that.
"Yeah." Jaune weakly chuckled, "After me and Nora uh – accidentally broke his last set, Pyrrha forced us to save up money to get him a new one. We both decided to go all out cause we felt really bad about it. He said that he didn't mind but, he looked angry. I could see it in his eyes! Saw him punch a basket of lemons into smithereens the other day!"
"Wait, why lemons?" Neptune was genuinely confused about the lemon thing. Jaune shrugged.
"Dunno, he always had a thing against lemons. It's a question that I never really asked now that I think about it. Huh."
The two stood in silence for a moment before Neptune called for the gift preparation to continue. This time, he moved over to let Jaune work on his teammate's gift himself.
"Right, so you are gonna take this corner and fold it over this way." Neptune calmly guided Jaune through the wrapping, carefully guiding Jaune's hands as all four corners met at the center of the box. Jaune held the corners together while Neptune cut a small piece of tape and placed it on top.
"So what's your plans for Yuletide?" Neptune asked, preparing the pink ribbon to finalize the package.
"Well I know that Pyrrha is going to her family home this year." Jaune took the ribbon from Neptune's hands after he was done with it and put it as neatly on top of the box as possible.
"Ren and Nora are coming with me to spend Christmas with my family as they don't really have anyone to go back to. What about you?"
Neptune shrugged, "Me and the team are just gonna spend it together as usual which reminds me."
Neptune pulled out his scroll and started going through his photo gallery while Jaune moved Ren's gift towards his bed and went to grab the final gift which belonged to Nora.
"Ah, here we go!" Neptune flipped the scroll as Jaune returned. On the screen was a photo of Sun and Scarlet posing alongside Sage who was wrapped in decorative lights. Jaune busted out laughing while placing the box on the table. Neptune returned the scroll into his pocket and saw the giant, modular foam gun with multiple attachments to equip onto the toy. The large number of darts that were already loaded into the three clips, ready to be fired upon loading them into the magazine.
"I feel like that's gonna cause problems in the future problem." Neptune chimed in, "Didn't you guys get in trouble for breaking windows the last time you shot darts at each other?"
"Yeaaahhh." Jaune smiled almost fondly, "It was the greatest battle we ever had. The retribution that was brought upon us from Glynda was massive! Detention for like a month!"
Neptune could only smirk though he was kind of scared at the destruction that his boyfriend was capable of.
"I can't imagine Pyrrha was happy about that?" Neptune asked while Jaune was wrapping up the massive gift. The blonde could only chuckle, carefully pulling the corners around the box.
"Nope, gave me and Nora a pretty lengthy lecture about what we did. Ren made a comment about her being the team mom and she was blushing all over." Jaune finished wrapping the gift and put it to the side.
"Woo! Finished!" Jaune high-fived Neptune in celebration.
"Hey, you picked that up really quick. I'm proud of you." Jaune blushed at the small but, always appreciated praise.
"Now, we gotta clean up the mess. Cause you made a lot of it."
"Oh crap you're right. Come on, help me out."
The two spent the few minutes picking up the scattered across the floor before hiding away the presents. After a shower, Jaune came out of the bathroom wearing a red buttoned-up shirt with denim jeans and white sneakers. Neptune whistled at the sight of his boyfriend looking clean.
"Looking good babe." Neptune leaned in for a small kiss on the cheek which glowed a rosy red.
"Hate it when you do that." Jaune said meekly as he looked to the side smiling.
"Ready to go? I found a nice place we can go eat. My treat."
Jaune nodded, "Lead the way."
Both held hands as they left the dorm room, the door closing behind them and the click of the lock shutting.