[ kirkwall • i pray i will, i pray i might • lionel ]

Lionel finally loosened his hands from the vice of his arm and torso. She wasn't screaming anymore, although it seemed she'd missed his meaning. "No, I just meant that fifteen minutes ago all you were saying is that you just wished I would talk to you or whatever. I was differentiating that, which is a matter I suppose resolved by this...conversation, from...the rest of it." He ignored the rest of it, having lost most of his will to argue about it. Lionel only enjoyed arguing when it was about something intellectual. He didn't particularly enjoy this very personal sparring that he engaged in only when angry or to the easy targets of people he didn't respect. As he knew in a very personal manner, people held strong opinions that they rarely sought to change. 'Fundamental differences,' a counselor would diagnose.

He furrowed his brows and brushed his hair out of his eyes before scratching the back of his head. "Um. Well. My parents don't bother anymore, and the last time I tried the spell on myself it went...poorly." That had been several years ago, but Lionel was not very proficient in charms, let alone in household ones. Not that they were supposed to be using magic outside of school yet in any case. "Mark's moved to London; Kay's at Anansi, and when he's home he's in too foul of a mood to ask; Lynette hasn't visited this summer; Gaheris is as rubbish with charms as I am; Vivien isn't part of this family; and the only barber in Hogsmeade charges an excessive amount because most people have someone who knows the basic charm at home, so they only do weddings and whatever." Implicit, of course, was the fact that the disposable income of the Sterling family was really quite low at the moment. They needed some kind of windfall in the shop. "So I'm waiting till term starts."

He shifted his robe to re-center it on his shoulders. "It's only a few more weeks, anyhow. It doesn't grow that fast." How had this conversation shifted to hair? Were they just going to talk about nothing for the next ten minutes? Maybe it was for the best if they acted like this conversation never happened. Somehow he doubted it would go that way.

"Mhmm," She tried not to smile around the filter balancing in her mouth and kind of failed, taking it out for a second to laugh a little. "Went poorly, hmm?" Clementine stepped forward to nudge his arm with her elbow and only giggled more, picturing the debacle he'd alluded to in her head. Had he gone bald? Grown some princess hair? She was sort of afraid to ask, but the temptation was absolutely overwhelming. "So uh... what happened, exactly? Perform quite the hack job, eh?" Clementine took the last couple drags of her dwindling cigarette and dropped it close to her feet, stomping out the glow into the cool sand. The nicotine had calmed her a little, made her feel not so... absolutely infuriated. There was really no other way to slice it.

"It's fine, Lionel, I was just curious. You do look kind of broody when it hangs in your eyes like that, though." She pointed out rather matter-of-factly, reaching out with a careful hand to tuck some of the dark curls behind his ear and away from his forehead. Her chocolate-brown eyes lingered on his darker ones for a second and then she looked away, shaking her head to dissolve some of the tension. "I, um. Not that you don't look broody as a general rule. It's sort of your shtick." She smiled again, not as genuinely this time, and shoved her hands into the pockets of her jacket.

"I was thinking about not cutting mine for awhile, but I'm pretty sure Jess will just think that I'm finally coming to terms with my undeniable need to be just like her."  This conversation was headed on a road to nowhere fast. She shifted her weight and picked at her fingernails, sort of unwilling to leave. It was awkward and kind of unpleasant, but leaving meant there wasn't much more to be discussed. The witch supposed that, deep down, she was still hoping he would recant his statements. Wishful thinking, of course. Lionel was stubborn. Once he'd made up his mind, there wasn't much one could do to convince him.

"I, uh..." She paused. "Sorry. Guess you never really gave me that explicit permission to touch you. We were just talking about hair and it was, you know, right there in my face, practically."

Lionel elbowed her back in rebuke. "It grew," he said shortly. Kay was never going to let him live that one down, and he didn't particularly feel like providing her with more ammunition than he already had. Merlin, why did he tell her anything of the sort in the first place? "That's me, always brooding like a--" he said in the spirit of sarcasm, freezing when she moved it behind his ear. I don't have a shtick, said a petulant voice in the back of his head, but he knew better than to say something inane like that.

He ignored it at first, listening to words more than actions, because they were easier to process, more exact. His brown eyes were impassive as he regarded her face with a sort of curiosity that didn't express beyond his corneas. It wasn't the touching that bothered him, he wished she would to understand. It was what it meant, the heavy burden of the implications it carried. To her they were probably the same thing, but to him they were disparate things. If he felt she was able to disentangle them he wouldn't have such an issue with it. But he doubted she could--or wanted to. "I'm sure that how Jess feels about it is the most important factor in the decision," he said automatically. You should do whatever you want, said the undercurrent in his words. As long as it doesn't involve what you want from me, said the depths below that.

"It's okay," he said, waving it off with a gesture. "I get it. ...where did she go off to for the last while, anyway?" He wasn't intending on pressuring her to leave, merely responding to the only thing that was there to respond to, although he realized it might be taken poorly.

"Like a boy? Orrrrrrrr a Slytherin?" She teased him, her wide grin dimming to a much less shiny, much gentler kind of smile. "You kinda left it open-ended. There's a lot of things that could slot in there." Clementine knew he'd probably stopped speaking because of her touch. She wasn't sure whether to be flattered or scared, because of that. Annoyingly enough, their eyes seemed to meet. Frequently. And for awhile. When they engaged in eye contact -- the rare times it happened, when they both felt secure enough to indulge -- it didn't seem that he shied away from it. That intrigued her about him. Other boys feared her presence. They shrank into themselves swathed in her aura. Whether she liked it or not, and truth be told, she hated it sometimes -- Clementine's presence was hard to deny.

"It's not the only factor," She amended, still watching the way his eyes moved over her face. She liked that they both had brown eyes. Different browns, but, same lack of uniqueness. She'd always liked brown eyes. "When it gets longer, it's harder to keep up with. It's nice and thick. Harder to brush. Bicep workout, that. Like a fuckin'... horse's tail, or something. Braiding for quidditch games or runs around the black lake kind of hurts my scalp if it's too long. Jess' hair is more flowy. The whole long-curly thing works better for her, I think." Her eyes twinkled, and she toyed with the ends of her own hair. It wasn't as fun, being straighter than his. His was textured and interesting. Just like so many other things about him. She knew he was still uncomfortable. It was time to go, soon.

"Is it okay, though?" The witch pressed, studying his expression carefully. "I suppose there's a difference between being okay with something and welcoming something, isn't there." She pressed her lips together and let the severity of the situation set in. It wasn't going to happen. Not anytime soon, and maybe not ever. The thought rattled her to her core, and she wished it didn't. Clementine wished with all of her might that he wouldn't have that kind of power over her, but there was no denying that it existed, so maybe there were things she could do to eliminate it.

"I've no idea where she went. Probably just dicking around behind the house or standing freezing with her arms crossed. Or maybe she went inside to talk to your brother." Clementine smirked, quirking her brow mischievously. She wondered how much Lionel knew about that. Her own sister would deny those things to her if she were to ask.

"--red-necked phalarope, actually," he said crisply. "Orkney is within their breeding range, and in this species the males are known to incubate eggs." Lionel might not consider animals anything close to one of his passions, but he never let a fact escape unnecessarily. One never knew when they might be useful for deflecting certain jabs. Besides, when he was seven he had spent a summer observing a breeding pair at sunset while awaiting nautical twilight.

Everything she said about hair went clean over the Slytherin boy's head, so he raised an eyebrow by two millimeters and nodded. "Difficult, I'm sure." Lionel didn't really pay much attention to his hair until it got into his face. It was just there. On his head. As expected. It seemed sufficient.

"...Yes," he said simply. To both her statements. Internally, he felt her continued--frustration? agitation? maybe something cooler, less fraught, heavier--butt up against his own presence. He didn't feel like dealing any more blows than he already had, but he couldn't refrain from it while she was still here, still pressing like the flat of a blade that had started to dig in. He mentally added another layer of ceramic to his, buffering himself. This wasn't exactly how he'd imagined this conversation going. Not that he had envisioned anything, he just hadn't realized how...cold and empty and pointless it would end up to be. The surgeon's clinical detachment. He hadn't realized that he'd be so uncomfortable with both potential outcomes.

Lionel shook his head, trying to clear it and focus on the mundane. "All sound like terrible ideas. I'm sure we'd hear the latter from this far away though, frankly." Kay and Jessalyn's fighting felt like it had hovered around behind him all of the past year.

"Uh huh. Red-necked phalaropes. Men -- males -- incubate the eggs. Got it." She held in waves of laughter thinking about Lionel studying the strange birds. He hadn't mentioned it, but of course he had. He studied everything. Even things he didn't really care about that much. She wondered why. Maybe it was just so he could use the information in weird-ass situations like this one. For a second, too, she wondered why he was still in Care of Magical Creatures. Lionel had never really given much indication that he cared about animals much.

She didn't know which thing his affirmation was in response to, really, but she could've guessed well enough. The words between them were dwindling and so were the reasons for her to still be here. She'd leave now. Should she hug him? Would that be weird? Probably. Was she still gonna do it? Also probably. The blonde tucked her hair behind her ears and looked at him expectantly, though she wasn't quite sure what she was expecting. He was the one who lived here. She should be the one to leave, of course. "Um," Clem began, brown eyes sliding down his body to gaze at the sand.

"I dunno where she is, but I guess we should go and find her." Clementine admitted this quietly and then stepped closer to him, awkwardly stopping and starting a couple of times before she got close enough to him to pull him into a hug. She hoped that he wouldn't just stand there like a day-old green bean. She closed her eyes tightly and lingered there for a second, pretending she wasn't trying to catch a whiff of his hair or his neck or anything that her face barely reached, even on her toes, now. There were quite a few inches' difference between them.

After a minute that was a little too short and a little too long all at once, she pulled away and turned on her foot to walk the other way. "Walk with me? It's dark. Might biff it."

Lionel pressed his lips together. The fifteen-year-old didn't see what was so funny about it. What was wrong with paying attention to what was going on around you? And what was wrong with males of a certain species incubating their eggs? She was being childish, and it was another reason why he wasn't ready to submit his life to this type of reaction with any constancy.

"Might be a good idea," he said carefully. A cloud of awkwardness hung around them, nearly visible and tangible. Lionel felt her arms go around him and after a moment of uncertainty placed his arms around her, tentatively, hands light on her upper back. She was so small, and he had not stopped growing. Something in him vacillated between shying away from her and skipping a beat to feel her frame against his. After a moment, he lifted his hands and she pulled away.

"Sure," he said gruffly. "Lumos." He'd never had a problem casting this at this distance from the house. The Trace was surprisingly generous when it came to underage magic in some ways, and Lionel frequently preferred to read and study long after dark. Jess's figure eventually appeared in eyesight, and Lionel stopped. They weren't far from the house now. "So...I'll see you around when term starts." They were a few weeks out now--it was early-mid-August, and September 1st would find them all on the Hogwarts Express again. This time, hopefully, without stopping on the way.

He watched her go, then turned to his own door, stopping in front of the doorframe. Everyone should have cleared the table by now, although that also meant that he might not eat anything else for the night. He turned the knob and entered into the dark.

Clem wasn't sure whether to be relieved or not when his arms coiled around her. He wasn't hugging very tightly, and she'd sensed his hesitance, but it was better than him just standing there. She was kind of tired of feeling so many lukewarm vibes from someone who possessed such depth and passion for the right things. However, even though it tore the teenager apart a little, there was no way to convince him she was the right thing for him. He was the only one who could see that, on his own, if he ever did. If she thought in certainties it would destroy her.

So. For the time being, she'd just float along, as much as a girl like her could really float. What was a better phrase? Words kind of failed. She'd find other things -- or people -- to fill the large spaces he would no longer occupy. She'd shove him out. Make him jealous. Make him regret it, whatever she had to do to feel better about herself. Rejection was a funny thing -- and to her, it justified a lot of behaviors she wouldn't normally indulge in. Clementine was fully intending to chalk it all up to coping mechanism and leave the rest to fate. He would come to her, or he wouldn't. She wasn't positive what she'd do at that point, but as she improvised most everything in her life, she'd cross the bridge when she came to it.

"Yeah. Maybe." She barely agreed to his sentiment. They wouldn't. Not if she had anything to say about it. Not for awhile. If he wanted to speak to her, he could come find her. She'd be doing her strategizing from afar. If he didn't want her around, that's where she would stay. Not around. "Bye, Lionel." She called, just loudly enough for him to hear, and then she grasped her sister's arm. Too tightly. Jessalyn hissed, but her sister wasn't a stupid girl, even if they didn't always get along. "Go. Just go. Hurry up, I've got to get out of here." Clementine muttered, only loud enough for her sister to hear.

A swirling minute later, they were back in Suffolk, at their beloved childhood home. Her mother's kind voice could be heard just inside the door, inside their bright, white kitchen, so different to the Sterlings' stony walls, but Clementine didn't stick around to listen. It was rude, she knew, but the pressure she felt building inside of her chest was about to teeter right over the edge and into hysteria and she couldn't be around anyone else. The blonde practically sprinted up the stairs, leaving the front door hanging wide open for someone else to take care of, and then she slammed the door to collapse onto the floor of her bedroom.

Her back rested against the hard frame of her bed, and her head lolled into her hands, which were prepared to catch it before it fell onto her knees. It was scary, how well humans could smother emotions until they were alone. In private. In a place that they could rip off all the excess and indulge in some good, old-fashioned self-loathing. And she did. Her head hurt from the strain of bawling so hard. It felt like years of convoluted emotions were seeping out through her eyes and her pores and her hair and every part of her.

"Go away!" Periodic knocks at her door in the hours following were met with feeble barks to ward concerned visitors off. She didn't cry much. Like, ever. Not even when she broke bones or sprained ankles or got hit in the face with metal balls. Weeping was her sister's job. Clementine did the consoling -- she didn't know how to receive it. Could crying become white noise? At least then the rest of the house could fall asleep.

No.

They wouldn't be seeing each other.