Wondrous Master | boyxboy | (alternate happy ending)

IX - The Promises We make

A couple days later, Broderick wasn't very happy when he woke up to find his parents missing. Damn them for leaving him here yet again with all of these responsibilities, but he should have anticipated their unannounced departure. Apparently there was a party going on somewhere in the north, so the Young Master took it upon himself to go through the impending occupational schedule Stanley had lined up for this week. Investments, investments, how dull. Sitting in his father's office, Broderick planned out these next couple days to correlate evenly with the meetings he had to attend. Given the first one wasn't until tomorrow, he could breathe easy knowing he didn't have to meet face to face with anyone today.

After refreshing his memory on who a man named Kendall Longstock was, and his association with the investment Stanley wanted to make, Broderick suddenly rutted his brow when an unfamiliar young man waltzed by the doorway of the office. He wasn't too tall in stature, but a bit of muscle was toned beneath the crispness of his pure black suit. He had rich sun-tanned skin and a full, lengthy mane of reddish, dark-brown hair. Put off by the nameless stranger, Broderick stood quickly from the chair and hurried for the corridor. "Pardon me," he called out, snagging the outsider's attention.

When he turned around, the young man appeared to be about twenty-one years old, very handsome with a femininity to his soft facial structure and sharp light brown eyes, but the lightness of his features didn't take away from his durable frame. "Humph," he puffed out with a belittling smirk, the tone in his deep voice more like a sound of disappointment when he said "You must be Broderick." At that, the young man then turned and kept walking, "Where is your nearest bathroom, I've got to relieve myself before I piss my trousers."

Broderick, keeping up with the long stride of the young man, hurried on and rounded in front to cut him off. "Who the hell are you?" he said, "And what the hell are you doing in my manor?"

"Your manor?" the young man scoffed, "I could bet my life you hardly own the clothes on your back. Come now, boy, where is the bathroom?"

Though he was only relatively smaller than the person before him, Broderick wasn't about to allow some unfamiliar to roam freely about. Besides, Otis had been ordered to accompany Stanley this week, and Oscar was out with Tabitha searching for a place to live, leaving Broderick the only one with a say so under this roof. Thinking of Jamie, Neville, Romani, and Luna, the closest people who he'd want to protect at all costs, the Young Master shoved the twenty-one-year-old back, and said, "Get your arse out of my manor this instant or I'll have you dead for intruding on my father's property."

The young man barely stumbled from the shove and he huffed an amused laugh, "At least you know everything is under your father's name, but I can assure you your sister wouldn't appreciate it very much if she knew you were knocking around the love of her life. My name is Nicholas Johnson, your, soon to be, brother-in-law."

"Sister?" Broderick stood confused, "Johanna is here?"

"Yes, you dunce, I wouldn't just meander around someone else's home if—."

"Never mind, never mind," Broderick fanned his hands, "The bathroom is passed the stairs to your left. Where is my sister?"

"Upstairs with your ailing brother."

Broderick fumed at Nicholas's disrespectful tone as the young man continued down the corridor. Instead of stopping to pound a bit of veneration into him, the Young Master took to the stairs to his little brother's room, and as promised, Johanna Thorne was at the boy's bedside. She was just nineteen years, and dressed prettily in a turquoise gown that laced around her shoulders, long black hair held up in a coiled bun knotted with jewelry, and a silver necklace laid around her neck.

Having heard the bedroom door open, Johanna glanced towards it, "Oh, good afternoon, Broderick. I didn't know anyone else was here besides Jamie. Where were you hiding?"