WHO: Howell Williams & an unexpected someone
WHAT: Oh snap
WHERE: Saoirse & Nona's
WHEN: April 6th
He had borrowed one of his mate’s cars to make the journey from campus to the middle of nowhere, Somerset, but Ronan didn’t mind the three hour drive. It gave him time to think, which he had been doing a lot of as late, as well as get away from the hectic Uni lifestyle he had become accustomed to after the past two and a half years.
As he got out of the parked car and slammed the car door shut, Ronan Mullet took the moment to look over the idyllic view before him. It was not hard to imagine why his sister would pick living here, as the scene before him was beautiful, though he couldn’t help but compare the stark differences in their lives purely based on where they lived. And how. But at that thought, Ronan rubbed the front of his face and shook his head. He had come to see her now, not druge up more of the past.
On the front doorstep, Ronan found that there was no doorbell, so he was left only to rap on the front door. He also, while doing so, chose to ignore the strange looking, and smelling, plants lining the front of the house, despite feeling a peaked curiosity at what they were, and thought that his trip might end up fruitless. It rather looked like no one was even home... until the door swung open, and he was met with a face, and a thought that this person looked vaguely familiar, but was certainly not his twin.
Waiting a beat in silence, and then another, Ronan took the time to openly take in this burly greeter until it clicked. He remembered him, from the
hospital, last year. He had been there, then, and was still around, now? Ronan’s eyes tightened while attempting his best to not so obviously keenly observe this apparently consistent male presence in his sister’s life.
“Is Saoirse here?” Ronan asked pointedly, resting his hands at his sides as he spoke.
It took a wizard with a lot more strength than Howell possessed to be all right with his girlfriend being kidnapped, held for ransom, and escaping, and then turning around several days later to leave the country for almost a week on a birthday sojourn with her suspiciously quirky best friend.
But there wasn't a lot he could do and still remain in the role of supportive boyfriend. Had he been tempted to, in the wee hours of the morning, tie her to their bed and under no circumstances let her out of his sight?
Yes.
And he would have done it too, if he'd believed even for a second that he could have gotten away with it.
Instead, he contented himself with house-sitting, letting the ocelot and the flying pig alternatively terrorise and annoy Jago, and generally wondering what he was supposed to do with himself if not worrying himself sick over the absence of his trouble-magnet girlfriend.
So when there came a knock on the door, he was surprised. But when Howell saw the face that greeted him, he got the real shock. The person was unfamiliar, yet something about the pale skin, white blonde hair, and glass blue eyes tugged at his memory.
When he tilted his head to the side, however, he was surprised he'd missed it to begin with. They were twins for a reason, weren't they? It was like staring at a very unsettling version of his girlfriend.
Before his mind could really even process what was happening, he felt his initial inklings of suspicion harden into a definite prickle of irritation, and his expression turned stony.
"She's not," Howell said succinctly, crossing his arms.
While it wasn’t the most directly informative of responses, Ronan wouldn’t say it left him feeling clueless. It verified that she did, in fact, live here (something he had been not completely sure of), therefore ensuring that if she presumably was not here now (which he hadn’t decided if he fully believed yet), then she would be eventually, at some point in time in the future. This trip hadn’t been fruitless yet. He could always come back at a more efficient time.
But while Ronan wanted above all to speak, see, his sister, and felt deterred by little to achieve that, he also knew that battling for information, here and now, that could potentially never be obtained, wouldn’t be wise. It was prudent, however, to discover anything else that he could while he was here. Or perhaps, Saoirse would be above, or around, listening silently, which would be how their conversation would go anyway, so...
Ronan pulled his lips back and nodded vaguely for a moment. Looking to the plants lining the front of the house again, it took him a moment to direct his gaze back to the person standing before him. Peer? Peer at the door.
“Is this your house?” he asked, feigning simple curiosity as he returned to intensely observing.... what had been his name? Ronan thought back for a moment, only to realize he hadn’t caught it then. The only name that Ronan carried with him from a year ago was Arista Sykes, and not entirely because of his excellent memory, but because of how forcibly memorable she had made herself.
Already thrown by Ronan Mullet's presence, Howell was suddenly unbelievably angered by the idea that the man who couldn't even bring himself to leave flowers for his suffering sister could stand so casually in front of her house and ask idle questions of him. Nothing further about his sister. No inquiring of how she was faring. Did he even know the ordeal she had suffered through in the last month?
"What would you care if it was?" Howell snapped, unable to help himself.
For the first time in two days, he was gladdened by Saoirse leaving. She rarely spoke about her family, but he knew her well enough to know the kind of hurt she had to be feeling, and how she was determined to lock it away.
This was one of the people responsible for that pain. And he had the gall to simply appear on her doorstep, without one word, without an apology, without the slightest bit of notice. What had Ronan expected from simply attempting to ambush Saoirse? She'd been through enough in a short amount of time without dkhg g trying to further disrupt her life. His jaw clenched.
Howell knew all about losing family, but it was one thing to have them taken from you. It was another thing entirely when they chose to leave you.
Squaring his shoulders, he blocked the view inside the house from the already thin sliver of the door opening. With disgust dripping from every word, he asked, "Do you think I don't know who you are?"
His brow rose, but Ronan gave no more reaction to Howell’s hostility than that. So this person was her roommate? Boyfriend? Saoirse didn’t have boyfriends. Acquaintance from school? That school of hers... Ronan couldn’t say he thought Saoirse had ever gone out of her way to make friends of the male persuasion, but that was more likely than the alternative of her living in this house alone with this dark-haired giant at the ripe age of twenty. Their mother would just---
Ronan’s lips tugged into a slight frown, and he squinted his eyes thoughtfully, perhaps a bit guilty as well. He had forgotten his place, for a moment, and had let his thoughts and mannerisms wander into a potential reality he had already assumed was well on its way into creation. He didn’t have much right being here, but didn’t overseed his right by blood. They were twins, it was different than brother and sister. You could always... it was different, different rules, many of which Saoirse had broken upon choosing to become ‘magical.’
“It’s obvious you do,” Ronan let out in a low tone, now glancing his gaze down at the ground. He supposed he knew he most likely shouldn’t have used Louis Bonaccord as a messenger either, but the situation was precarious and delicate enough that it seemed the only way to get a hold of her.
“So you know you can’t truly bar me from seeing her.” Ronan shrugged, slightly, as he spoke. He picked his gaze back up, returning to watching Howell intently. “Regardless of whoever
you think you are.”
"What I
know is I don't have to do a thing," Howell replied tightly. "You've dug yourself a large enough hole."
He recognised his behaviour was unusual for someone so taciturn, but it was purely reflexive. Something about Ronan stirred an unexpected emotion inside Howell—fear. Not
of Ronan, but he felt he faced what would one day be a painful possible future. With the passing of their father, and them being naught but babes still, his mother and he had thought it best to hide his magical abilities from his siblings… They hadn't, after all, demonstrated any concrete magical ability yet, and it was such a rare occurrence for there to be more than one witch or wizard in a Muggle family, regardless. If one day—his throat closed—if one day, it was one of
his siblings standing in such a way on his doorstep, well… he didn't think his heart could handle being broken in such a way.
So Howell's anger stemmed not only at the outrage that someone could be lucky enough, blessed enough to have Saoirse in their life and then be careless and cruel enough to cast her away, but that one day, he might risk the same fate befalling him. He didn't believe Rowan deserved any kindness or empathy from him, but his own twisted nerves made the ordinarily placid Howell lash out without a thought and with very little remorse. His lip was curling in distaste when the pattering of claws on tile brought him back to attention. He wedged the door more closed around himself, not bothering to see which four-legged creature had wised up to their guest.
An uncharacteristically surly look crossed his face as his brows pulled together. "Now I'll suggest you leave, and I won't make it again. I'll be sure to tell Saoirse you were magnanimous enough to trouble with stopping by." He narrowed his eyes slightly. "She can decide what to do with you."
Ronan’s other brow rose to meet his already high one. Wasn’t that... intriguing. Interesting? An interesting development. All along, he had been expecting resistance from Saoirse, it was understandable, but he hadn’t thought there would be others just as hostile. Others that were... for the first time in the last few minutes, it occurred to Ronan that the male standing before him must be magical as well. Did he play that sport Saoirse had been so keen about all these years?
His jaw set, finding the unusual circumstance that the more he stood here, and sparingly interacted with Howell, the seemingly less and less he could detect about the potential magical roommate/boyfriend that seemed to be perpetually attitudinal. That was not a usual occurrence to him, he usually did not meet such an opposition of information withholding aside from, well, Saoirse.
Whom was
still currently not even-- feeling a bit of stubbornness course through him, Ronan crossed his arms heavily over his chest, and dug his heels to stand firm on the front step. His expectant, and defiant, stare couldn’t be mistaken, as he suddenly felt rather noncompliant of this possessor of the door that ‘didn’t have to do anything but except apparently did anyway.’
“I don’t think I’m going to---” Ronan began, but before he could finish, the wind from the door slamming shut hit his face, and he stuttered. He stood silently, a bit impressed and entirely stunned before dropping back off the front step to inspect the flora at the base of the house. Well then.
