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Giyuu Tomioka wasn't used to celebrating Christmas. But apparently, after the Hashira had finally realized that he wasn't all that bad, and that he didn't think he was better than all of them (thank you, Sanemi), they'd decided to include him in their Christmas celebrations.
Which meant he had to get a gift for each one of the Hashira, and wrap them before the party date that Mitsuri set. He had already bought all of the gifts, but he was genuinely struggling to wrap them.
He'd never gotten people gifts before, because nobody had really ever cared—not since Sabito, at least. And while he was with Sabito, he had more pressing things to think about then gifts—like surviving.
But now, he was stuck with far too many gifts to wrap and the party tonight. And he needed help. So of course, he was going to enlist the help of his lovely, hot-headed boyfriend, Sanemi.
❅
"Yes, Giyuu?" Sanemi said, poking his head into their shared bedroom, then raised an eyebrow at the amount of random boxes lying about their room. "The fuck is this?"
"Presents. I can't wrap them." Giyuu said, gesturing to the roll of decorative paper with kanji that said: Merry Christmas, all over them. "I need help."
"But won't I see the gift you got me?" Sanemi said, eyes narrowing as if he hated the idea.
The Water Pillar shook his head. "No, I put yours in a bag so you wouldn't see it, 'nemi."
His boyfriend rolled his eyes affectionately at the nickname, then walked over to Giyuu, sat down next to him, and gestured to the boxes. "How come you don't know how to wrap presents? Didn't you have a sister?"
Sanemi for sure knew that Tsutako was a sensitive subject, but surprisingly, the memory of her brought up no bad memories and Giyuu was able to answer the question easily.
"She wrapped all the gifts. And to be honest, we didn't have many." he admitted sheepishly. "We were kind of focused on just… training, I guess."
"Oh. Well, I'll teach you." Sanemi said, sitting next to Giyuu.
"Really?" Giyuu said, surprised. He'd expected Sanemi to just do it himself, instead of actually offering to help him. Even though they were officially dating, Sanemi sometimes wouldn't do things for Giyuu, so that was why him offering to help was a little surprising.
But obviously he wasn't going to say no, because a) Giyuu liked hanging out with his boyfriend, and b) he needed help wrapping the gifts.
"So first, you want to get a big enough piece of the paper." Sanemi said, pointing to the paper. "Cut it out."
Giyuu cut out a big enough piece of paper, then placed it on the floor by the first gift. It was the gift he'd gotten for Kanroji, a bunch of baking supplies because Sanemi found that she liked baking from Obanai, his best friend.
"You need to fold them like this." Sanemi said, folding the paper onto the box. Giyuu had already boxed all of the gifts to make wrapping easier, so there wasn't any weird wrapping around baking supplies.
"Okay…" Giyuu said, cutting out another piece of paper to wrap another present while Sanemi demonstrated. "Like this?" he asked, folding the paper onto the box. This gift was for Kyojuro, he could tell by the orange box he'd put the gift in. He had colour coded all of the gifts so that he wouldn't mix them up.
"Just like that! Good job." praised Sanemi, making Giyuu flush. He always got super flustered whenever the Wind Pillar praised him, because he'd never been praised for anything ever in his life. Literally never.
And now that he had a boyfriend who enjoyed dishing out praise whenever he was happy, Giyuu got flustered a lot.
"Okay, next, you go like this, and tape it down." Sanemi showed Giyuu how to properly do it without taping anything to the actual box, just taping paper onto more paper.
"So I don't tape the box." clarified the Water Hashira, gesturing to the box.
"Right. You're… catching on quickly." Sanemi huffed, then continued his demonstration.
Pride swelled in Giyuu's chest at the compliment, because though praise was somewhat common-ish from his boyfriend, compliments were rare. And he would take whatever he would get to boost his self-esteem.
They finished wrapping the gifts rather quickly after that, and with lots of time to spare. Giyuu felt thankful for his boyfriend's help, because without him there, he would have been stuck for hours just trying to wrap the gifts and ending up with a hot mess, or all of the gifts in bags.
Together, they taped the cards that Giyuu wrote the night before onto the now-wrapped boxes, and made sure that they had the right names for the right Hashira.
"Are you sure you got them all right, 'nemi?" Giyuu asked, pointing to the pile of presents they had hap-hazardly created.
"Shouldn't you have been keeping track, idiot? They're your presents." Sanemi muttered, but nodded. "Yes, I got the right ones. Don't worry about it."
"Okay. Thank you." Giyuu said, shuffling closer to Sanemi. He wanted a hug, but he wasn't exactly sure how to ask for one. It was something that they were working on together—Giyuu learning to ask for things… or to not always ask for things and just take some for himself.
But when it came to affection, Giyuu wanted to make sure that Sanemi was in the mood before giving it so he wouldn't punch the living daylights out of the Water Pillar.
Sanemi seemed to get the memo and wrapped Giyuu in a hug, which the shorter man (only by a little, but Sanemi would always, always brag about the mere inch he had on Giyuu) eagerly returned by wrapping his arms around his boyfriend and burying his face into his shoulder.
"…thank you…" Giyuu mumbled, his voice slightly muffled by Sanemi's shoulder.
"It's no problem. Don't worry about it." Sanemi said, pressing a kiss to Giyuu's forehead in a rare moment of soft affection. "You better pray I like your gift, though." he teased, ruffling his hair. "Nah, I'm kidding. I'm sure it's great."
And they stood there for a while, just holding each other in comfortable silence.