when your demons return

She hesitated for a moment on the threshold, giving Max one of her ever-famous glares of stone, her Medusa stare. Her gaze seemed to say 'Well, are you coming?' But it seemed that Max felt no need to come and help her seek out any potential Boggarts that were loitering in their front yard. She gladly accepted the role of Scary Bug Squasher, but she did not like the idea of running out to face a faux Vito or Chase alone. She gave him a furtive glare, a undertone scoff, and then slammed the door open, stepped out, and slammed it closed behind her, leaving the room behind her strangely quiet in the wake of her annoyance.

She stood on the stoop for a moment, feeling awkward and uncertain. Such passionate irritation and anger followed by such uncertainty and light fear. She looked across the lawn and then raised her wand, slowly stepping down the steps and onto the little path through her yard. She turned an began across the yard, moving in erratic patterns. She could feel a gaze on her neck and it increased her confidence. She had to look like a fearless bad ass with eyes on her, and that helped her feel more like one as well. She stood a little straighter and her mouth became an unmovable line. She swore - if she id run into the Boggart, it'd be gone in a second, if only to prove to Max how serious she was.

She glanced up, her curiosity wandering to whether or not Max was still watching and there eyes met. She frowned, trying to prove her displeasure, and he gave her a little smile and wave. Her mouth dropped open in shock - did he really just have the nerve to smile and wave at her?

Sunny appeared at Max's side very suddenly as she was oft to do. Jack would often be putting laundry away and as she leaned for the last pile of clothes would find Sunny in its place, like a creepy demon-child from a horror movie. Sunny looked up at Max and said, "That's Jack's angry face. I'm going to go put on my army helmet and hide. I'd lend you one, but in these matters, it's every man for himself." She reached out and gripped his wrist. "Good luck." She turned and marched away, making it up the stairs as the door slammed open.

"What the hell is your problem?" Jack demanded, slamming the door behind her. "You make me go out and look for evil apparations and then have the nerve to give me sass? Are you serious?"

Opps.

Sunny didn't help anything and when she disappeared as suddenly as she had come he had half a mind to run up the stairs after her and hide like a small child. An angry Jack was a very bad thing. But then the door slammed and she was yelling at him in a very loud way and Max realized he wasn't scared of her. The other half of his mind was pissed. Not passively angry, not vaguely annoyed. No. Maximus the Hufflepuff-raised-muggle-relations-never-yelled-at-anybody Morrison was really f**king pissed off.

Max put his mug down on the counter harder than he had intended, splashing the tiniest bit of coffee and he barely noticed. His face had contorted slightly, wrinkling as he restrained the words that so desperately wanted to pour out. "Wow." he said slowly, shaking his head in awe. "You're really going to do this right now? When you're the one who's acting like a nut case?" He moved towards her, the intense desire to shout building in his lungs in a way he had never known before. "I was going to come out and help you but you can't sit here for a second without blowing a lid over nothing." His volume remained level but every word dripped with poison. He hated her for acting so ridiculous.

Oh. Okay. So, Jack hadn't actually expected him to fight back in any way, especially in such a calm, collected matter. That had always been a more impressive way to get angry, she thought. Everyone yelled, but quiet rage always seemed much more distinctive and passionate to her. She was surprised, yes. Max had never once looked so angry in his time in the home. The worst she had seen him get was exasperated, at the most. He had thrown her a curve ball she definitely had not anticipated, but it was one she was only too happy to receive. She could step up to the plate and be pissy, definitely. He was finally giving her the chance to do what she had so wanted to do - throw a fit.

"When am I supposed to do this?" Jack hissed. "Should I schedule another appointment to be angry, because if so, direct me to your secretary." She sneered. "Name calling, how clever of you!" She moved closer into the room, to better bear down upon her tall roommate, her arms expertly folding over her chest tightly. "You were going to come help me, huh? When? Before or after you sneered and gave me a sarcastic little wave? Should I have just waited around for you all day?" She knew she was not angry at Max, and part of her was screaming to shut her the hell up, but she had something to prove. What she had to prove, she had no idea, but she just had to prove it, dammit!

Max glowered, a sneer unlike any he had ever produced resting on his lips as he looked Jack up and down. "This is ridiculous, you're acting like a child." In normal circumstances there would be some irony to this statement, seeing as how Max was the one who hung out with the six year old and enjoyed activities such as coloring and building forts in his free time. But he was furious with her. Jack was better than this. She was taking punches at everything he said and Max couldn't figure out what the real problem was.

"You want my help but you push me away and I'm sorry - I'm sick of it." Half of the time he would follow her into the yard and she would just yell at him to get into the house. Jack was a ticking time bomb and only now did Max realize he was too. Every bit of anger and frustration that he had felt over their months together was bubbling to the surface and stronger than anything was his anger over what hadn't been said the night before. "You can't ask for my help and then lie to me." As awful as it was, Max knew he couldn't trust her unless she trusted him. He needed to know. He needed to know everything.

"That's not fair, Jack, and I won't take it anymore " his voice shook slightly, deep and intense. Fear and anger bubbled under the surface of every word and he had to hold himself back from raising his voice from heightened emotions.

This was such a strange situation for Jack, as she had never suspected Max even had the potential to look angry, let alone feel angry. She swore that his default emotions were pleasantly content or violently confused, with no deviation from those defaults. To have him looking so fed up and confrontational was a stark change from the Max who allowed Sunny to stick crayons in his ears without so much as an argument. But still, Jack could never be surprised out of an argument - she was always perfectly situated to argue the tar out of someone else.

"I'm acting like a child?" she repeated. With a sarcastically cheerful smile, she threw her hand in a wave that accentuated the movement he had done just a minute before. He continued on though, doing something she swore was not allowed in a fight - he was telling rattling truths. Color flushed up into her cheeks, burning on her neck and throat. "I don't-" Sounded too defensive. She cleared her throat and tried again, trying to keep a cooler head as she said, "I don't push away. If I want help, I want help and I get help." Jack had never been one to lie, and something was keeping the confidence out of her voice. But that wasn't a lie, was it?

"I'm not lying!" Jack said, definitely sounding defensive. "What have I lied to you about? I've tried being honest with you, so I have no idea what you're talking about!"

Okay, it wasn't so much that she had lied. She just didn't tell the truth. The secrets surrounding her past tormented him as he tried to unravel her mysteries without any help or guidance. The boggart and the two forms it took had only been another puzzle piece that didn't quite seem to fit anywhere. It ate at him, how little he knew about her. She was a stranger in his house but somehow he still managed to feel like he knew her inside and out.

Shaking his head slowly, Max grimaced, both from her tone and his own thoughts. "You do know." He stepped back and scoffed slightly. "But if you don't? You're just lying to yourself instead. And that's even worse."

"I'm done with this." he muttered, his low voice filling will malice. Max moved past Jack with a whoosh of his clock and in moments he was out of the door. He hated both himself and Jack for what scene had just occurred but couldn't bring himself to stop and turn back inside. Even if Jack where in a more hospitable mood, he wasn't. The friendliest man alive was not in the mood for making friends. The sun had risen higher in the sky and illuminated Max's face as he started down the walkway.

Just as he reached the gate he stopped and for a moment he considered looking back. But instead he closed his eyes and apperated into London with a loud CRACK!. Max leaned against the brick wall of the ally he had appeared in and breathed heavily for a moment, his mind still racing. Within a minute he had calmed himself down and turned the corner to enter St. Mungos and begin his morning visit.

Her heart was pounding in her temple as she stared at Max, who was delivering terrible blows to her sense of security and confidence. She swallowed slowly, so as to attract the least amount of attention in her flatmate. It already seemed that he had noticed too much about her, she wanted to make sure anything else was indiscernible to his keen eyes.

Damn it, he made her so mad. This was her home! And yeah, he paid for his place in it, but, but... still! Just because they shared the house did not mean they had to best friends. Even as she tried to reassure herself with these thoughts, she felt oddly guilty for thinking them. Because she knew a home was more than the structure, and it was made up of the people who kept it happy and warm. Max was just as essential to her happiness as the house, as essential as her female relations, and as essential as her pets. She really should have been better at making it clear they were all family - and family didn't lie to each other.

Furious he had won, Jack clamped her jaws together and stared at him, feeling angry - but more than angry, she felt ashamed and lost. He stared at her a moment and then announced his intention to leave. "Fine," she croaked, her voice sounding hollow and unpersuasive. He stormed out the door and, suddenly, Jack found herself hurrying after. Something within her told her to open the door, to reach out, grab him, apologize.

The door had closed, so she reached out and pulled it open. He was just reaching the gate. "Ma-" Crack! He disappeared. Jack blinked, staring at the spot a long while, feeling defeated in every possible way. She slowly closed the door and approached the kitchen table, slowly sinking down into one of the chairs. She placed her elbows on the table and dropped her face into her hands, taking long slow breaths as she felt absolutely miserable at the mess she had just made.