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Let it be said that he tried to trust her with something delicate. "Suit yourself," Jack said as he took the scissors and began to cut through the material with some difficulty. "So, anything new happen since your last visit I should know about?"

"Mm. Nothing major." He focused on his cast for a while, gnawing away at it with the scissors determinedly. "Your usual psycho trips when you're pumped full of drugs and in pain. Navel gazed. Made a candy cane shiv until I got my dagger back. Assaulted someone. Had Ian read Twiight to me." Just as blase as Chel.

His smile was wry, but it was a smile nonetheless. The scissors were forked over with a gesture: be my guest.

"Navel gazing: way too much existential thinking," Jack began as he held still for her. The casual tone wasn't what he wanted to adopt, but as with many things he seemed only able to address it if he pretended it was another joke. "Candy cane shiv is just a natural necessity if you happen to have one. It's not runic, but it felt good to have, you know? Not...helpless."

The word felt foreign in his mouth.

"I think I tried stabbing the air a few times when I woke up," he added as an attempt at humor. "Anyway. Creedy was being a b***h again and I was really high on meds. Almost rebroke my shoulder, but the point is I didn't. Then I told Ian to get me Poe and he ******** picks up Twilight instead." That was a better joke; Jack chuckled. "Like I said, nothing major."

His arm was a display of fading green bruises, faint burn scars that were on their way to being healed completely, and a few inches of a much deeper wound that disappeared beneath his shirt sleeve. Jack carefully flexed and turned his arm once it was freed, pleased that beyond the usual sense of weakness from disuse that his arm didn't feel like death anymore. Movement was still limited, though, thanks to the bandages around his shoulder.

"No. The real question is when doesn't she deserve it," he corrected her, though he did glance at Chel with mild surprise. "Not going to chastise me?"

His lips parted, but the story wouldn't come out. (He missed the ease and excuse of medication.) Instead he waved her hand off and scoffed, "Who wants to be an angel anyway?" as he grabbed his milkshake and brought it with him to the couch, this time settling in more slowly to avoid the jarring sensation from last time.

Jack nursed the cup as he looked for the melody in his head, humming snatches between sips. "Jingle Bell Rock? Yup," he said. "Had to learn it for band one year--the class, not my actual band. When omma--When my mom saw me play it, she insisted I play every goddamn Christmas song there is for guests every year. Like a human iPod," he added with a snort. Setting the now half-empty drink down, he tugged Barbara back into his lap and after a few seconds muscle memory kicked in: he played the intro guitar riff as he stretched out, foot tapping in the air as he watched her for signs that she'd continue the song and accompanied.

"Jingle bells swing and jingle bells ring..."

Jack hadn't been kidding: years of playing the damn song had ingrained not just the lyrics but the chord progression and tab. He closed his eyes, kicked back, and sank against the couch as he played, occasionally providing a second voice but mostly content to just play and tap his foot like a mindless machine--a mindless machine that was starting to relax. Initial contact had been...not rocky, but bland. He wasn't one for small talk, but so much had built up at this point that he didn't know where to start digging or if he even wanted to be holding a shovel in the first place.

So for the moment he just focused on Barbara and Chel's individual voices, how very different they sounded--one smooth and bright, the other much lower and rougher than expected--and the interesting mix they made.

When the song finished, he let the last chord reverberate for a few extra seconds before hushing it, sighing, "Not the same as with an electric guitar, I know."

Opening his eyes, he made a noncommittal noise at the first question and then made a slightly confused face at the presents. He sincerely hoped he wasn't getting more than one...Multiple was just making things even harder.

Putting Barbara off to the side, he reached into his coat pocket and produced his single gift: an official looking letter with Chelsea Craft written in cursive. "I don't honestly know what to get people," Jack explained as he traded with her. He slid his finger under the joints of tape in a personal if pointless game: unwrapping gifts without tearing the paper. "I have a list of ideas, but I've divided them amongst your birthdays, assuming you live long enough to cull the list down...And, well, I haven't really had time to get anything, so s**t's probably out of stock." He didn't know why he was talking, he wasn't nervous. "You in particular are hard to shop for."

<******** was all he could think as they came one by one. No matter how fast he completed his useless challenge, the gifts kept coming. <******** had never been in this situation before, where there would be such a huge disparity between two gift-givers: there was supposed to be a silent understanding, like "no gifts above $30" and "three max" and "you need to first tell them you can't accept this so that they will tell you that's nonsense and then you bow and tell them thank you for their thoughtfulness" followed by a written card detailing the name and each individual gift as well as a purpose for each in order to cement the sincerity of your gratitude. Old habits died hard, older ceremonies of society died even harder. He hadn't had to worry about this last year because he didn't have people to ******** shop for or expect something from. Now he sat there with a handful of gifts and more incoming and the best he could come up with was <******** was very hard to make Jack Hawthorn feel guilty; Christmas presents--hell, presents in general--were one of the few ways to get to him. The feeling of indebtedness or inequality in need of repaying, like "Jingle Bell Rock", had been an innate part of his childhood and upbringing. A part he absolutely hated.

"What the--Chel," he couldn't help but laugh as he read the front of the shirt again, then the post-it, then at her back as she headed for the closet again. "Even for Christmas you're starting to go overboard, what the ********. Look, get a pen for me while you're up? And pass me my letter before you drown me in more newspaper."