A month and change out from that fateful warm late evening's dappled light and heavy-aired mystique, Ron stood distracted by its memory behind his Venture's pristine bar. He'd been passing a shining cloth over the same tumbler for a good ten minutes now and had no designs on stopping. The eve was young, the patrons seen too by his staff, and some traitorous thing in him, some thought, some notion wisped up through mind's distraction like it had done many a time since his return to the city--
A passing barman heard his boss huff and thought nothing of it, sparing but a glance for the distracted man before wending his way back to his duties. Ron paid him no mind. The notion was bollocks really. He did need to be here. Businesses didn't run without their boss being present - not businesses like this one, where name and face and rapport and repeat custom were important. This place was his pride and joy, his home from home, his foothold in the American market and the money-spinner behind future growth. He couldn't arms length it because his brain had decided it preferred life in the fucking wilds!
Ron set his now well-buffed tumbler down and cleared away some now empty glasses that been bought over by the wait staff. His P's and Q's well in place as he popped the glassware into the dishwasher, Boss Kray checked in with his staff amiably before slipping out from behind the bar to walk a round of the premises. It was a habit of his, proper London landlord stuff, to check round and make sure everyone was taken care of. He knew some regular faces, shook hands, shared little bits of gossip, how are yous, where yah beens - all standard fare that didn't replace the scent of a billion wild flowers on warm afternoon air and couldn't touch, couldn't even think to touch the wonderment he'd felt when he'd found--
If the memory was hazier Ron could've convinced himself he'd dreamed it, or that his brain had just...done its thing and took him on a tear; turned nature magical round him, something like that. But it was clear as crystal, moment to moment; hadn't faded or malformed like his poorly turns often did once they were over with. That wildling, that not-wolf was real as Claude and the rest of his pack was and he knew it 'cos they'd reacted to it too. And that actual fact absolutely did his crust in.
Even a month out he was still pawing over tomes on folklore, myth and old wives tales, trying to tease out what precisely he'd encountered and what that encounter meant, if it meant anything at all. Every esoteric book seller in the city knew his face by now. Shit some had even started offering him refreshments he got so engrossed between their shelves and among the dusty piles of pages. That he'd come up with nothing concrete besides the ill-fitting notion of there werewolf and the even worse-fitting concept of the grim was by the by. He'd been looking and would keep looking because it was all he could do. Letting that trip and all that happened on it lie was not an option.
It had too much wonderment tied up round it now.
Half wrapped up in thoughts of the book pile waiting for him up in his apartment, Ron only clocked the body coming in through the pub's main door at the same instant he was stepping out through it when they collided mid-stride and, like two same-ended magnets, yanked back from each other in almost comical unison. A stunned moment of silence followed, and then-
"Oh mate, I do apologise!"
-there we go. The courtesy kicked back in. Stepping aside, Ron gestured this unnamed new face past him into the pub's warmth.
"Come on in, please-" Black eyes flicked skyward, clocked the moisture on the man's jacket, on the tiled stoop of the pub's frontage. "Sky's fallin', look. Go on t'th bar there, yeah? I'll come wiv 'n gettcha a drink on th'ouse f'knockin' inta yah." Full-on committed to the social mores show, Ron tsked at himself. "Y'can't get th'staff" he chastised, shaking his head before ushering gently at the gentleman he'd bumped into. "Lemme close this door at yah back, yeah?" He pulled the heavy oak to as he spoke, banishing outside's cold wet with inside's low-lit warm.
"Go on, I'll follow yah jus' now."
