Two days later is a Sunday and the Arcs are sitting down for dinner. Though Mr. Arc is back, the family tradition is maintained. The kids sit spread around the large dinner bench in the dining room as Gia and Mrs. Arc bring out serving plates loaded up with everyone's favorites. Flava is talking with Mr. Arc about some upcoming job opportunities while Rawaya checks her phone. Jaune is trying to reason with his grumbling stomach. Just as Gia sits down to join them, there's a pleasant knock on the door.
Flava, Gia, Rawaya, and Jaune all call, "Not it!"
Amarilla, whose mouth was full of water, glares at her siblings as she rises from the table. She grumbles and leaves the dining room to get the door.
"Tell them we're sitting down to eat," Mr. Arc says as his wife brings the last of the dishes to their long table.
From his seat, Jaune can hear the locks undoing. Then silence.
"Jaune, give me a hand," Amarilla calls. "I think the third bolt is stuck."
"Did you see if the screw is loose?"
"You have a screw loose," she shouts back.
His mother gestures. "Jaune, go help your sister so we can eat."
Jaune sighs and rises. He crosses the house to the door, which is open, and Amarilla, who is smirking.
"Look, see? You got it open without…" Jaune trails off, finally in line of sight of the door.
Ren is standing on his welcome mat.
"I hope we didn't interrupt your dinner," he says, with a tone of voice that is cheeky only by Ren standards.
Jaune thinks he's hallucinating until a flash of pink darts out from somewhere behind Ren and lifts him off the ground.
"I hope we did interrupt dinner and that you saved us some!" Nora announces, carrying Jaune horizontally over both her shoulders and grinning maniacally as she spins him.
"Nora, put him down," Ren intones.
Gracelessly, Nora dumps Jaune back on his feet. By the time Jaune's vision refocuses, he's found his voice.
"Ren!" he says happily, wrapping his arms around the shorter boy's shoulders. Ren shrugs the pack off his shoulder to hug him right back. "Nora! What are you guys doing here?"
"Official hunter business," Nora says with a playful formality. "Pyrrha can explain it."
Jaune's heart jumps into his throat and he looks back out the door. Pyrrha is half-hunched to speak through the window of a taxi cab, offering the driver an autograph. Jaune gives Ren one more squeeze and calls to her.
She looks up, her smile more dazzling in person than he ever remembered it. She gives the pen back to the driver and jogs to the house. Jaune rushes out to meet her and then they...stop. With a foot and a half between them. In silence.
"It's so good to see you again," Pyrrha says awkwardly, clasping her hands in front of her.
"Yeah," Jaune says, playing with the fringe of his hoodie. "You too. What are you guys doing out here?"
"We took an assignment to protect a nearby town from Grimm," Pyrrha says, adjusting the duffel bag on her shoulder. "The hunter we're shadowing isn't due to arrive until tomorrow, but Ozpin said we might want to go early and get a lay of the land." There's a twinkle in her eye as she says it.
"That's...that's a great idea. Go Ozpin," Jaune answers, still smiling.
"He's a very smart man," Pyrrha agrees.
There's another beat of silence.
"I missed you," he blurts. And Jaune...kinda opens his arms for a hug if she's cool with that.
Pyrrha smiles even wider and slowly steps into his arms, her own going around his waist. She closes her eyes and rests her chin on his shoulder and murmurs, "I missed you too."
He missed the smell of her. The Mistrali shampoo, the tang of sweat and metal, and even her stupid spray-on deodorant. Jaune takes one whiff of her and he's back in the JNPR dorm with all three of them like no time has passed at all.
Jaune chooses to ignore that all six members of his family are standing in the doorway when he turns back to his house. Their expressions vary from his parents' confusion to Amarilla's know-it-all smugness. Pyrrha follows him back to the house, close enough to brush the back of her hand with his as they walk, and Jaune introduces his team to his family.
His mother immediately suggests they stay for dinner. Pyrrha's polite deferral that they don't want to impose is counteracted by Nora's ravenous enthusiasm.
The three hunters drop their bags and weapons in the living room, then take the spots at the end of the table where the eldest three Arc sisters would have sat. Seats are shuffled so that Jaune ends up sitting next to Pyrrha, across from Ren and Nora, as Mr. Arc eyes the four of them from the other end of the table. He wants to know the details of this supposed 'mission'. Ren obliges Jaune's father as Gia sets the extra plates. Nora helps with embellishment that Pyrrha patiently corrects. At the end of the table closest to their parents, Rawaya keeps shooting side glances at Pyrrha and looking away, blushing and starstruck. Flava is less subtle about her staring. Amarilla won't stop smirking.
But Jaune doesn't care. They're here. He can't keep the smile off his face as he watches them interact with his family.
When his mother sets out the leftover food she'd been planning on refrigerating, Mr. Arc says grace and the family leaps into action, reaching for and playfully fighting over and passing serving plates around. Nora grabs her plate and nearly climbs over Gia to reach the casserole she wants. Ren sighs and apologizes for his partner's behavior. Gia nods good-naturedly and hands Ren the dish he's reaching for. Jaune half-stands and starts loading up his plate. Next to him, Pyrrha sits back in her seat, content to watch the madness and politely wait for everyone to serve themselves before serving herself.
She startles when Jaune clunks a full plate of food in front of her.
"Are you still on that no-carb diet?" he asks, a bread roll in hand hovering over her plate.
Pyrrha blinks at it for a long moment. "Oh...yes. Thank you, Jaune."
Jaune nods and drops the roll on an empty plate. He dives back into the fray for his own dinner, catching only a glimpse of the slowly growing smile on Pyrrha's face as she admires the very meal she would have picked out for herself. Standing fully to reach for the sausages at the other end of the table, Jaune misses Pyrrha's expression as she looks up at him. He definitely misses the knowing looks Gia, Flava, and Amarilla shoot Pyrrha in turn. By the time Jaune sits back down with his food, he's confused by Pyrrha's sudden blush. His former partner dedicatedly stabs green beans onto her fork with the mortifying realization that Jaune's obliviousness is not genetic.
Dinner carries on without incident. Amarilla sits on Jaune's other side and stays unnervingly quiet through most of dinner as Jaune's parents pepper his team with questions about hunting. Rawaya stutters her way through questions about some of her favorite hunting teams at Beacon. Nora regales with stories about their latest adventures, played up for her audience of course, and Ren lazily fact-checks her between bites. Jaune asks them questions he already knows the answer to, about studies and class and such, if only to wholly sell to his parents that he definitely has not been communicating with them in violation of his grounding. Gia ignores everyone and heads to her room as soon as she's finished eating. Flava asks about teaching internships at Beacon and about the upcoming Vytal Festival.
"Oh, we're in the process of qualifying," Nora says off-handedly, going for thirds.
"Qualifying?" Mr. Arc says, coffee mug halfway to his lips. "In my day, you were automatically entered as a student of the academies. You didn't have to qualify for the Vytal Festival."
"You do if you're a three-man team," Ren explains. He's blowing on the tea Jaune's mom set in front of him.
Mr. Arc looks the three of them over, in their impressively vibrant hunting gear, and frowns. "Where's your fourth?"
There's a second where it looks like Nora is going to point to Jaune. But Ren grabs her hand and subtly pins it to the table. Jaune exhales a breath he didn't realize he was holding.
"We're in the process of auditioning for a fourth member," Ren says without inflection.
Jaune feels his mother's eyes dance over him briefly before asking, "Oh? I thought Ozpin said he'd be replacing your team leader at the start of the semester?"
For some reason, the word 'replace' feels like a kick to Jaune's stomach. "It's...not so easy, mom," he says carefully.
"Didn't they just shoot you into a forest and tell you the first people you saw were your team?" Flava asks. She taps her fork to her empty plate. "Can't they, I don't know, do that again ?"
"Sure, it's easy when it's a new team," Nora answers, wriggling her hand out from under Ren's. "But there's a zillion more things to consider when you're adding a stranger to an established team."
"Particularly when the candidate needs to be a team leader and partner to Pyrrha Nikos," Ren adds solemnly.
Attention turns to Pyrrha, who had been focusing on her food for most of dinner, if only to avoid the knowing smirks Amarilla kept sending her behind Jaune's back. She looks up from her plate at the mention of her full name. "Oh, yes, it's been quite the interview process," she agrees neutrally. She nods her head towards Jaune warmly. "Jaune is proving to be quite irreplaceable."
He takes a drink of water to swallow down the lump in his throat, the thrumming in his heart. "It's just taking some time," Jaune tells his family.
Pyrrha eyes him through her lashes, confused, and Jaune reaches for some food, whatever's left. Anything to get out from under her gaze.
"We've been considering candidates all semester, but it doesn't seem we'll have one in time for the Vytal Festival," Ren continues. "Hence why we're qualifying to compete as a three-man team."
Mr. Arc scowls. "And they'll let you do that?"
"Well," Rawaya says quietly, "they do have Pyrrha Nikos on their team."
Pyrrha smiles graciously. Rawaya means well, but Jaune knows that smile far too well to believe even for a second that Pyrrha is comfortable with the sudden attention. Jaune changes the topic as his mother stands to go grab desert from the kitchen. "Hey, so, I meant to ask… Who is team leader now?"
Ren, Nora, and Pyrrha exchange an awkward look. Then Ren and Nora's looks turn to Pyrrha expectantly. She puts down her fork with the last bite of food. "Well, we take turns leading in training and in group sparring. It goes alright." Pyrrha throws Nora the whisper of a glare. "Most of the time." The smaller redhead shrugs. "We've...mostly been running your old formations," Pyrrha finishes in a small voice.
Jaune stares at her. "My old formations."
"Yes. We've gotten some input from Ruby and Coco, but they both agree that the foundations are pretty solid."
There's a clatter from the other end of the table. Rawaya quickly straightens the plastic mug that had slipped out of her hands. She looks from Pyrrha to Jaune. "Coco Adele thinks your formations are awesome?"
"She said pretty solid," Jaune corrects quickly. Then turning back to Pyrrha, he says, "Pyrrha...my old formations were garbage."
"Nah, they were pretty great. We won most of our team battles with them," Nora says proudly. Ren nods his agreement.
Jaune gapes at them. "Not because of me!"
"Because we were a team, Jaune," Pyrrha says, quietly but firmly.
Jaune looks at the three of them, only dimly aware that his family has gone quiet through all this. He doesn't understand — until Ren raises a brow at him, and Nora gives him a come on look, and ever so gingerly, Pyrrha nudges his knee with her own. They didn't come all the way out to his town in the middle of nowhere for a Grimm sweep, or at least, not only for a Grimm sweep.
They were there to bring him back to Beacon. To prove to his parents that they needed him there.
Jaune's blood pounds in his ears. His heart does this strange flip-flop of emotion. He opens and closes his mouth a few times before murmuring, "Guys…"
Mrs. Arc returns with a cake in hand. Discussion pauses for everyone to get a plate and a slice.
"So what plans did you three have before your hunter arrived?" Mrs. Arc asks, oblivious to the prior conversation.
"They were just saying how they wanted to go into town tonight," Amarilla says suddenly, the first thing she's said all of dinner. "Jaune and I can take them."
Jaune's father raises a brow. "They were?"
"They were going to," she says casually. "They're visiting from out of town, dad. They probably want to see things, get the lay of the land for their mission, stuff like that."
"That would be helpful," Pyrrha says.
"Could we?" Jaune asks, finding excitement in the prospect of having an evening out on the town with his team.
"You're grounded , Jaune," his father reminds him.
"That's alright!" Nora says, kicking her feet under the table and bouncing in her seat. "We could stick around in your house. Oh! Do you have any board games? We could play board games. Or do farm stuff! Like chasing chickens."
Mr. Arc assesses Nora and reconsiders.
His wife puts a hand on his shoulder. "The Vytal Festival is right around the corner, dear. And Jaune has been very good about his grounding," she tells him.
Amarilla and Rawaya nod their agreement. Flava looks like she might rat him out, but Jaune locks eyes with her desperately and she groans.
"He's been a real boy scout about the whole thing," Flava intones with an eye roll.
Mr. Arc sighs. "Alright. I suppose we can lift your grounding early."
Jaune grins from ear to ear as he stands and gestures for his team to do the same. "C'mon, I can't wait to take you guys into town."
"Maybe they should change," his mother suggests, looking Jaune's friends up and down. "People are going to see a team of hunters walking around downtown and think there's something going on. You know how people worry."
Pyrrha, Ren, and Nora glance over in the direction of their bags, at the casual change of clothes not in those bags, but Amarilla butts in before Jaune can make excuses for his friends.
"Don't worry," she says, heading for the stairs. She beckons JNPR to follow. "Rawa and I got this."
Ren is deposited in the foyer five minutes later in a unisex green plaid shirt that Jaune is pretty sure belonged to one of his eldest sisters. He's in a pair of Jaune's bleached jeans that are rolled up at the bottom to adjust for the height. Jaune's sisters let him keep his hunting boots on.
He drops down on the couch next to Jaune with a sigh. "Not one word."
"You look great," Jaune says anyway, grinning.
Ren leans his head back, crosses his arms, closes his eyes. "Wake me when the girls are ready."
Nora skips down the stairs ten minutes later in a short pink ballet dress with blue and white hearts that Jaune's seen Rawaya wear before. She's in a matching headband and little tie-up sandals and looks like she should be running through a cornfield for a healthy brand commercial. Ren too for that matter. Jaune starts to feel underdressed in his usual hoodie and jeans.
Fifteen more minutes and there's still no sign of Pyrrha. Ren is dozing lightly on the couch and Nora is looking around the house at all his family's knick-nacks and whispering, "I feel like I'm in an old-timey movie." Jaune takes the stairs two at a time to see what the hold-up is.
Outside Rawaya's door, he hears, "She still looks like Pyrrha Nikos."
"That's because she is Pyrrha Nikos, Rawa."
Pyrrha tries to interject. "It's really no trouble—"
"I would feel better with a little more disguise at least," Rawaya mutters.
"You don't have to give her a full makeover," Amarilla says, exasperated. "Benefit of the doubt does half the work. No one's going realize she's Pyrrha Nikos, because no one in their right mind would expect her here, of all places."
Jaune knocks on the door. "Can I come in?"
Pyrrha's "Yes" supersedes both of his sisters' "No."
Jaune pushes the door open to find Pyrrha sitting on Rawaya's bed. Her headpiece is gone; instead, half of her hair is done up in a fancy braid crown, while the other half falls loosely down her back. She's wearing Amarilla's jean shorts and a burgundy strappy top that looks like something Flava would have owned. It matches with Pyrrha's brown and gold hunting booties which she taps together as Jaune appraises her.
"What's the issue?" he asks. "She looks fine."
Pyrrha smiles gratefully. Rawaya scowls.
"Jaune, I know you are desensitized to all this, but she is going to get mobbed the moment someone realizes who she is."
Jaune looks Pyrrha over again, feeling even more underdressed, and snaps his fingers as a thought comes to him. "One second."
He darts across the hall to his and Amarilla's room, yanking out a box from under his bed. There's a navy blue V-neck shirt in there that Amarilla always teased him about wearing. Jaune pulls off his hoodie and puts on the shirt as he keeps digging. He finds what he's looking for at the bottom of the box with the rest of its costume. He throws on a jean jacket as he returns to Rawaya's room.
"Here," he says, settling the glasses on Pyrrha's face. "They're from my old X-Ray costume. They're not real, of course," he says quickly as Pyrrha adjusts the frames experimentally. "Ha ha. You don't need real glasses or anything like that. Obviously."
Pyrrha half-smiles at his attempts to lampshade her secret. "Thank you, Jaune." She turns to his sisters. "Well?"
Rawaya tilts her head. "It works. Somehow."
Amarilla steps back and squints. "Why does this work ?"
Jaune smiles at his sisters as Pyrrha stands. "It makes her look softer."
Pyrrha's face invents a new shade of scarlet. "...Soft?"
Jaune gasps and backpedals. "Good soft! Soft is good. Soft like— Like…"
"Like you would not crush a man's head between your thighs," Rawaya says by way of explanation.
Pyrrha crosses her arms over her stomach. "Do I usually look like I could do that?"
"No," Jaune says firmly. He gives Rawaya a pointed look. "No she does not." Rawaya holds both hands up in surrender. Jaune turns back to Pyrrha. "Pyr, you look great. Let's go before Ren starts to snore."
Pyrrha nods and relaxes at the compliment. She heads out of the room and down the hall.
"Nice shirt, by the way," Amarilla teases.
Jaune turns to glare at his sister, only just realizing that Amarilla is in going-out clothes as well.
"You're not coming with us," Jaune says sternly. Amarilla just smiles.
"Of course I am." She pats Jaune's arm as she leaves. "Someone's going to need to chaperone."
Jaune sputters after her, turning to Rawaya for support. Only to find her smoothing out the creases on a pin-up photo of Pyrrha in hunting attire that is freshly signed to Rawaya, With love.
"Rawa!"
"I was not going to have another opportunity," she defends, moving to put the photo up on her wall, beside the one of Neptune and various other junior hunting teams.
Pulling his hair, Jaune grumbles something about never letting his friends near his family ever again. Rawaya hushes him with a giggle.
As Jaune heads out back to the foyer, the door to his parents' room opens and his mother steps out.
"Wherever did you get this handsome jacket?" she asks, fixing the twisted collar and rubbing out a small stain on the denim sleeve.
"You got it for me," Jaune answers, smiling reluctantly at his mother's teasing. She smiles back.
"Keep an eye on your friends tonight when you go into town," she says absently, setting his hair back into a proper arrangement.
Jaune fidgets. "Mom, they're all hunters."
"Yes, but I'd feel better if you kept an eye on Ms. Marshmallow Flakes," she says, attempting to tame a difficult cowlick.
"Pyrrha can take care of herself." He chuckles. "She's won like a bazillion tournaments."
With a feigned disinterest, Mrs. Arc clucks her tongue. "I'm not talking about Grimm, honey. She's very beautiful and you may be the last gentleman in Remnant."
"Mom."
"I mean it." She tips Jaune's chin to look at her. "You don't think so?"
Jaune can't meet her eye. "I guess..."
Mrs. Arc smiles knowingly. "Honey, wars have been fought over women less stunning than your friend."
He's sure he's blushing furiously now. "She's just Pyrrha, mom," he insists. "She gets embarrassed when people fawn over her. She doesn't like it."
The teasing look drops from his mother's face. She doesn't say anything as Jaune takes a step back, waiting for her approval to go. Mrs. Arc regains her smile after a long minute of consideration and cups her son's face in her hands. "Of course, sweetie. You're so busy seeing people for their hearts, you forget that there's a rest of them." She leans in and kisses his forehead. "There are worse problems to have. Have fun in town."
"Thanks, mom," he says awkwardly and heads towards the foyer.
Ren's been woken from his eternal slumber and is standing by the doorway. Amarilla and Nora are marvelling at the convenient pockets in Nora's dress. Pyrrha is waiting for him by the stairs.
"Everyone good to go?" he asks, trying to will away the lingering color in his cheeks. His team and his sister nod. Pyrrha smiles at him in a way that makes him briefly wonder if she could hear his conversation with his mother from the stairs. His blush comes back in force.
Ren, Nora, and Amarilla head out. Pyrrha pauses beside him, holding her scroll in her hand while Jaune locks the door.
"I like your shirt, by the way," she says as they start to walk. Jaune smiles at her.
Author's Note: Hey look! It's that JNPR reunion everyone was dying to see! Arcs + the JNPR berries = all the feels.
Also, all you people faving and following from a distance: I see you and I appreciate you :)