Liam circled round back to familial stomping grounds but once a year: the week before Christmas he mailed out letters to Jamie and their parents, and the week of, there was always an unproductive, guilt-laden trip back to York. Hard to say why; Liam was hard-pressed to put explanation in words even for himself, nevertheless his left-behind family. All which mattered was that it was but the once annually, a time when he'd watch the elder Wards from afar and talk Jamie into meeting for a drink or three if little brother were feeling benevolent. (And didn't he always, their Jamie? Of course he did -- he was the good one.) The key feature, the lynch-pin to his little plan of holiday-themed torture, was that when he left a day or two later, it was in such a way where he disappeared back into the ether, untrackable and untraceable.
Except that was Jamie standing across the flat right now, little brother grown up strong and tall as any Ward boy ever did. Liam, while a good and proper philanthropist, had been conning people in some capacity since childhood. His smile, then, stayed firmly fixed and did not so much as flicker despite the drop in his stomach. "Hello, Jamie," and his voice was low and warm and just a touch scratchy, a warm flannel thing which offered comfort rather than warning. He took long strides across the floor as though this were an expected thing, planned for, and dropped his bag on the butcher block table used for both cooking and magic alike. No thread of tension in Liam's shoulders or on his face, not when he turned to glance over the others, nor when he raised his voice in a no-questions-asked "clear out, the lot of you".
They obeyed; they always obeyed, too grateful and perhaps a little too in need of direction or guidance to do anything else. It was only when the handful of acquaintances had shuffled out the door and onto the street that Liam spared his brother a glance -- as if this were common, as if they saw one another all the time and as if he hadn't abandoned Jamie to life's wolves. "Wandered a bit far from home, didn't you?"