Patience’s headphones, already a few years old when she’d got them as a hand-me-down from her friend Mia, were dying a slow death.
One of the speakers had started to crackle if she turned the volume up any louder than a whisper, and the pleather coating on the pads was flaking, leaving little bits of black plastic everywhere. One of the hinges was broken, too, so the ear cup was all wobbly.
Patience didn’t have the cash to replace them. And she didn’t want to ask her mum—things had been tight, lately, although Mum was doing her best to act like that wasn’t the case. Patience wouldn’t even have known if she hadn’t overheard her on the phone, once, talking to Sebastian. It had sounded like he was offering to send some money, but Mum had politely, obliquely turned him down.
So Patience just put up with it, keeping her music low and constantly brushing little black flecks off her clothes.
The headphones hung around her neck as she scrolled aimlessly on her phone, ears strained for the sound of a car coming up the road. Sebastian was supposed to arrive round about six. He’d missed Christmas last year, which wasn’t exactly a surprise; he hadn’t been around all that much when he was stationed in Hereford, and Patience saw him even less now that he was living in London. But he’d promised he was coming to visit this year—and he was bringing Jay.
Patience wasn’t sure about Jay. He wasn’t mean, exactly, but she’d be hard-pressed to call him nice. Although he’d helped take care of that whole AlgoDV thing. And it seemed like he and Sebastian were a package deal, these days.
She’d made Jay promise to take care of Sebastian, but she was learning that sometimes people just … said stuff. Especially if they thought it would make her stop bothering them and go away.
From outside came the rolling crunch of tires against pavement; Patience bolted up off her bed and hurried outside. A small sedan had pulled up the drive in front of the house, and a familiar figure was climbing out of the driver’s seat.
Patience dashed down the drive, colliding with Sebastian in a fierce hug. Sebastian’s arms wrapped round her, squeezing tight—a bit too tight. Like he was afraid to let go.
It was past midnight by the time Patience decided she was too hungry to sleep.
That was annoying—she’d eaten plenty at dinner. The big thing with the goose wasn’t ’til tomorrow, but Mum had thrown a ham in the oven and everyone spent the evening sat round the table, chatting and catching up.
It’d been nice, but … weird. Mum had got Sebastian talking about some holiday he and Jay took to Yorkshire, but all his stories ended a little too soon. It was like there was something big and important that all of them were trying really hard not to talk about.
Patience shuffled quietly out of her bedroom and down the hall, where she found Jay on the sofa in the sitting room. He was curled up in the corner section, tapping at his phone; he glanced up as Patience stepped into the room, acknowledging her with a quiet nod.
With an answering nod, Patience headed for the kitchen and grabbed a packet of crisps from the cupboard. There was no way to open the bag quietly, so she just ripped it open as quickly as possible.
Patience briefly considered asking Jay if it was all right to join him on the sofa—but, well, it was her sofa. She dropped down onto the other end.
“Couldn’t sleep?” she guessed.
Jay glanced past Patience, down the hall to the guest bedroom. “Didn’t want to keep Sebastian up.”
If Patience didn’t know any better, she’d think he was sad; his eyes were a little red, damp around the lashes, and there was a quiet heaviness in his voice.
“Did—” she hesitated, not sure if this was a question she should ask. “Were you wanting to spend Christmas with your family, instead?”
The corner of Jay’s mouth twitched in something that wasn’t quite a smile. “My family doesn’t want anything to do with me.”
“Oh.” Patience had known for a while now that Sebastian was the only member of the Moran family who acted like she and her mum even existed. It was hard for Patience to care much about the approval of people she’d never met, but sometimes Mum got quiet and sad the way Jay was now. “Do you miss them?”
“Sometimes,” Jay said. “On holidays, mostly.” He sniffed and quickly rubbed his eyes—as if he didn’t want Patience to see him doing it. “It’s like … wanting to go home, but home isn’t there anymore. You know?”
Patience couldn’t honestly say she understood. “Have you told Seb?”
Jay shrugged. “It’s not like he can do anything about it. He’d just feel bad. Guilty, maybe.” A complicated expression flickered across his face. “He doesn’t need that right now.”
That feeling from dinner was back, and Patience was done not talking about it. “Did something happen?”
Jay studied her for a long moment. Patience was used to people assuming she was stupid, or not worth paying attention to—because she was young, and a girl. It occurred to her, now, that Jay had never treated her like that. He looked at her like he could actually see her.
It didn’t feel as good as she’d thought it might.
“Yeah,” he said, finally. “Something happened.”
Patience’s heart did something uncomfortable behind her ribs. “Is Seb okay?”
Jay blew out a breath and tipped his head back against the sofa. “I think so.” After a moment, he added, “I took care of it.”
There was a finality to the words that made Patience uneasy. “You did?”
Jay shrugged, eyes on the ceiling. “I told you I’d look after him, didn’t I?”
A new, meticulously-wrapped box had appeared discreetly beneath the tree not long after Sebastian and Jay arrived. Patience had pretended not to notice it had her name on it, but by the time Sebastian retrieved it on Christmas morning, she was vibrating with anticipation.
“This one’s from me,” he said, pointlessly.
Patience tore the wrapping off a bit too quickly.
Underneath was a shrink-wrapped box with a picture of a pair of headphones across the front. They were a rosy pink. Patience quickly flipped the box over, scanning the specs on the back: high-fidelity sound, sixty hours’ battery life, active noise cancelling and transparency mode, nice big cups so her ears wouldn’t hurt after she’d been wearing them for a few hours—
“Your mum told me your old pair were falling apart,” Sebastian said. “I hope they’re the right type. Jay helped me pick them out—“
“They’re perfect,” Patience assured him, realising she’d been staring at the box in silence for too long. She set it aside and shuffled along the sofa to give Sebastian a hug.
She caught Jay’s eye over his shoulder and offered him a nod of thanks, too. Jay nodded back.
“Okay,” Patience said, sitting back. “Who next?”
Sebastian reached over to the tree and plucked a simple white letter envelope from between its branches. It was addressed only to “Jay.”
Jay had a sceptical look as he took the envelope and opened it. Inside were about a half dozen different fabric patches; there was one of an old medieval building with “Whitby Abbey” stitched across the bottom, another with a bunch of those Viking runes on it, a rainbow flag, a pink and white and blue flag, and several more in the pile.
“I found some of those in the gift shops while we were in Yorkshire,” Sebastian explained. “The rest are from that museum in Kings Cross.”
Jay didn’t answer; he was staring down at the patches.
“If you like any of them, I figured you could put them on your laptop bag,” Sebastian continued, hesitantly, “if you don’t have a jacket to—”
The envelope crumpled a little in Jay’s hand as his body collided with Sebastian’s in a fierce hug. Patience could see tears welling in Jay’s eyes for about half a second before he hid his face in Sebastian’s neck.
“Thank you,” he whispered, muffled against Sebastian’s skin.
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