Present Overkill

Christmas might have been overkill that year. Normally it was a more subdued affair - a trip to his grandparents, gifts under a big old fashioned tree, church mass... They'd had a small family, so it wasn't as if the house had been filled to the bursting. Last year's christmas had gone by in misery. We The People and the other members of the Sentinels had done their best to celebrate, but...

Well, Jude hadn't been in the mood for it.

This year was a whole other story. This year he'd all but insisted in a small (and synthetic) tree placed in the corner. He had plans for next year, but for that year?

Gifts. There were a lot of gifts under the tree when Basilio woke up that morning. But the most obvious one was already laid out: Overnight, a series of relatively cheap looking rugs had been spread around the apartment, leaving it well padded from the moment you kicked your shoes off at the front of hte door. Against one wall were a few more rugs, obviously for Basilio's bedroom.

Truthfully, Jude had expected his father to figure out the rugs almost immediately, but he supposed he didn't really know what Jude had been up to in the meanwhile. He'd been busy with the restaurant, and Jude didn't sleep, and that was a nightmare for any father who hoped to keep up with their child's doings.

"Rugs," Jude said with a squint towards the floor. They were... well, they were intended to be durable and soft, but they were certainly not stylish. He doubted Basilio would have let the rugs in his house back in Halcyon, but you made do with what you had, didn't you?

"You can take your slippers off," Jude said, tapping his foot on the floor. "There's two layers, so it's kind of, uh, uneven in places, but I wanted to make absolutely sure that they weren't going to fail."

He wasn't going to entrust that Basilio wouldn't go through the floor to one layer of rug.

He wouldn't have. Angelo had grown up with more or less nothing to his name, and everything to his fathers. The money he had was from allowances, not really his own, and since their arrival on Manta Carlos the shoe had, more or less, been on the other foot. Angelo had savings. His father did not.

His father had always struck him as equal parts proud and not. Certainly he felt proud of himself, yes, but he'd never let pride get in the way of things. Even so, Angelo couldn't help but imagine that going from being one of the richer men in Halcyon City to having to live off welfare probably didn't sit right with Basilio.

"My gifts were... underwhelming in previous years. And we missed last Christmas. So I'm making it up for you."

Because, of course, that couldn't just be it. No no. Tucked in one corner is something that could absolutely, unmistakably, only be a lamp. There wasn't much else it could be. A thick base. A long, thin stem up. Then a hanging, bend over shade. Like a reading lamp. Only wrapped, comically, in cheap wrapping paper.

There wasn't much hiding what it was, was there?

It was, realistically speaking, nothing compared to the gifts he'd gotten in the past. Basilio was not a stingy man, but even so his gifts, as presented, felt... personal.

They were closer than they'd been, and Angelo leaned against his father for a moment before unwrapping the jacket, pulling it on for size and completely missing the ticket. He'd just have to find it later, assuming Basilio didn't point it out.

The lamp, which Angelo gestured to, was not actually a lamp. It was, once unwrapped, something that made very little sense. It had obviously been a lamp, but there was no longer any place for a lightbulb, and the inside of the metal shade had something like a thin metal liner, snapper on with magnets.

There was also a stack of cigars, including one that was labelled as endless, and a cuter.

No need for a lighter.

"Smokey helped me with it," Angelo explained. "It collects smoke. Sucks it out of the air, more or less, and then you can dump it outside like dumping an ash tray. So you can smoke in here without having to shuffle outside every time."

It was hard to miss that smoking helped keep Adraxis from being too cranky, living with his father as he did.