Additional Tags: Gender-neutral Reader, Mistletoe, Fluff, Holidays, Unspecified Holiday Celebration, Kisses, Ruby has an obsession with peppermint please help her
Summary: You and Yang find yourselves sharing a gentle moment beneath the mistletoe.
If there was something you could give Beacon Academy, it threw nice parties. Many of the students were far from home, most of them unable to see their families for the majority of the school year. Between training and distance, it was easy to feel disconnected from those around you, dive too far into schoolwork and studying until you were left with nothing but exhaustion and the question if you even made the right choice to enroll in the first place.
But Beacon had a lot more to it than training and homework; it fostered bonds, strengthened old ones and created new ones. Whether it was putting students in four-person teams or, well, having special events on campus, it was obvious enough that the faculty was aware of the need for social connections and time to relax. Being overworked and heavily stressed was a real issue for a lot of huntsman and huntresses, after all--it was not a huge surprise that they’d have things in place to combat those issues early on.
But out of all the events, all the activities and holidays and thensome--the Winter Festival had to be your favorite of them all. It was always so special, an entire week where you could focus on nothing but the things that mattered most: your friends, giving gifts, remembering why you had applied at Beacon in the first place. Plenty of students appreciated the mid-winter week as a break from classes, but it certainly wasn’t lacking in activity.
There were still a few weeks until the festival came, but there was no shortage of decorations around...well, everywhere. From dorms to doors, classrooms to courtyards, hallways and even the headmaster’s office itself--every inch of Beacon seemed loved-over with trinkets from all walks of life.
Including the hallway outside your team’s dorm room.
Especially the hall outside your team’s dorm room. Not a single inch of wall space was spared from being covered by some manner of decoration--colorful paper, pictures, icons and symbols aplenty, showing off the various background and religious heritage of all who lived in the handful of adjoined rooms. The Winter Festival was a Beacon-specific tradition, a celebration of the diversity of students that walked within it’s walls--and it was always nice to see everyone so connected with one another.
As you had been busy with studies over the past several days, you were the last one of your team to include your decorations in the hallway. They weren’t anything too amazing or eye-catching, especially when compared to the level of artistry and passion others tended to put in, but it was special all the same to you. A string of candle-shapes, cut out from paper and lovingly painted--you took the time to string them over the walls, as if leading one through the hall to the next section of the dorms.
For a while, you were alone in the hallway, humming to yourself as you pinned each candle shape to the flat surface. You took the extra care to make sure they were aligned correctly, focusing so hard that you didn’t hear when the door a few feet beside you open.
“I was wondering when you would start putting your decorations up,” A gentle voice rang, startling you enough that you nearly jumped back and pulled out the very same section of the string you’d just pinned into the wall.
A glance to the side put a young woman in your view. Tall, muscled and hardly a force most people wanted to mess with, plenty of people knew Yang Xiao Long; she was one of the best fighters of her year, an absolute up-and-coming fighter and-
most importantly, your girlfriend.
“Classes got really busy the last few weeks,” you say in soft explanation, feeling a bit of heat in your cheeks as you shyly glance away from her gaze. “Professor Oobleck assigned a paper and I needed to make sure I got a good grade on it--took way more research than I thought to verify some of my theories.”
“Believe me, I remember,” Yang’s words were gentle and teasing. “I also remember the three nights in a row that you fell asleep in the library.”
“Eh,” you move a hand to scratch sheepishly at the back of your head. “I’m uh, sorry again about that. I didn’t mean to worry you--I completely forgot to check my scroll and--”
Yang held up a hand, expression firm.
“No need to apologize for that,” She said, dropping the hand and shifting her weight so he wasn’t leaning against the door frame. “It wasn’t all that bad carrying you back to your room--you’re really cute when you sleep.”
More heat in your cheeks, a fluster to your words that you could barely find behind your lips. Yang let it go on for a few moments until, finally, she cut your gentle embarrassment short and reached out to grab your wrist.
“C’mere,” she said, gently pulling you into her room. “I wanna show you all the things I’ve put up.”
You followed her without much argument, feeling a smile pull at the corners of your lips as you step inside and kick the door shut behind you.
Almost instantly, you’re hit with the smell of peppermint. The air is warm, warmer than it was in the hall, and every breath is oddly refreshing despite it all. You let yourself fall against Yang’s body as her arms curl around you, her laughter more than sufficient to make up for her taking you away from your task but a moment before.
“As you can see, Ruby has been....well, busy.”
Yang gestured her hand to her younger sister’s side of the room where it was absolutely covered in red-and-white trinkets and decor. It seemed as if the young huntress had replaced nearly everything she had with something sharing the color-scheme, though peppermint-shaped garland hung from the sides of her bed. As your eyes shifted, you caught sight of a lit candle on the bedside table, the most-likely cause of the scent in the room.
You can’t help but giggle, arms wrapping in kind around the woman’s waist.
“I get the feeling she likes peppermint.”
Yang chuckles in her own wordless agreement, then gestures towards a huge bowl of peppermint candies sitting beside the flickering candle.
The rest of the room is mostly untouched, at least by the others of Yang’s team. Weiss’ bed was nothing but the unfortunate casualty of Ruby’s exuberant decorating, Blake’s was touched only by several small cards hanging from above it (in a script you weren’t familiar with, perhaps from home?) and then Yang’s bed lay equally undecorated, unless one counted the bits of plastic wrapping that must have come from eating the peppermint candies from before.
It caused a quirk of your brow to see.
“I thought you were going to show me all the decorating you’ve done,” you say, words losing much of their accusatory tone when you were otherwise busy with pressing your face into her shoulder.
After a moment, the woman merely laughs and carefully unwraps her arms from around you.
“It’s pretty spectacular,” she assures, expression leaning into mischief as she gently presses a palm to your cheek. “But you have to close your eyes first.”
“Close my eyes?”
“Yeah,” Yang says, taking a step back. “Look, just close them alright? No peaking, trust me on this.”
You stared at her for a few moments, caution turning into curious bemusement at what sort of trick or prank she had planned behind the not-so-innocent-sounding request. Nevertheless you shut your eyes and wait.
There’s a sound of shuffling, footsteps--Yang going through a drawer, perhaps-- and then footsteps approaching you once more. You feel one hand gently touch against your hip, but not a second one.
“You can open your eyes now,” she murmurs, voice almost too soft and gentle for what you were nearly convinced was a prank.
The world came back into view slowly. As you opened your eyes, you weren’t entirely sure what to expect from her, what mask or silly accessory would meet your gaze--but all there lay was Yang’s lavender eyes and gentle expression.
You looked at her with but a moment of confusion before you realized that she was holding something above you with her free hand. You glance upwards--
-and find a small bundle of mistletoe held between Yang’s fingers, crudely tied with a golden bow. The plant itself looked fake, most likely synthetic, but the gesture was all the same.
It took but only a moment for the realization to filter through you, leaving you with a smile as you look back to your partner’s face.
“Fake mistletoe?” Is all you could ask at first, words spoken between half-muted giggles.
“Hey, it’s not that easy to keep plants alive!” Yang looked only momentarily offended by the accusation, though her smile never dropped. “And besides, that means I can carry it around with me. For very important reasons.”
“You could have kissed me without it, you know.”
Yang let out an amused chuckle, then winked.
“Of course I know that,” she said. “But, tradition, yanno? I think it's pretty important stuff to kee-”
She didn’t even get the chance to finish her sentence before you had your arms thrown around her, pressing your lips together in a simple, gentle gesture of love. Yang almost immediately dropped her hand, arms encircling your waist as the two of you shared such a simple, warm moment of intimacy together. The kiss was soft and sweet and lovely, a reminder of all the things you loved about being able to spend the winter holidays with the people you cared about most. Yang was perfect, was warm, was everything you could want from someone--
