2020-02-03 - Drunk Speak

Alexander does his homework. Usually. And he's seen the man here in the Pourhouse before, so it's not too hard to pick him out of the crowd. He buys two bottles of beer, only slightly better than Walter's usual drink, and slouches his way over to where he's sitting, offering one of the beers over to Walter. "Mind if I sit?" he asks. He hasn't tried to dress up; they're both locals, and Alexander doesn't expect that Walter won't recognize him to some extent.

Alexander assumes that's an enthusiastic welcome, and sits ungracefully nearby. He accepts the beer back with a shrug. "It does. Sorry." Well, it's true. He pops the top on one of the bottles and takes a drink anyway, studying Walter thoughtfully. "Want something else?" he offers, offhand. "My treat, if you'll answer a couple of questions for me. About your girls." As he asks, he reaches out with his mind, trying to get a sense of his emotional state beyond 'drunk' and probably 'irritated'.

Alexander doesn't slam Walter's head into the table until his nose splits open when he calls Violet a 'devil whore', and that is absolutely his good, sane deed for the day. He's nowhere near enough a good actor to act like he's feeling in a friendly sort of manner, but he does manage to keep his sudden rage off his own face - or at least hide it under a swig from the bottle. "Fine." It's not fine. "Tell me about Alice, then. Your girl." He's really not guilty about taking his mind and pushing at Walter, feeding him loneliness and trust at the same time.

"Now that's not very Christian," Alexander mutters, eyebrows rising. "Devils need to hear about angels more than most people, I'd think." He takes another sip of his beer. The question makes him hesitate. "Yeah. Think so." Another sip. "Didn't see your girl there, though. Maybe she's been released?" He's watching the other man carefully for the reaction to that.

"I've been known to enter the building without catching on fire," Alexander says, perfectly seriously. Then he waits. When Walter swivels, he meets his eyes squarely. "You've seen her, then." He sighs. "Mister Whitehouse. I don't want to cause Alice harm. Quite the opposite. She left a message, of a sort, and the last place it brought me was to you. I don't think she'd have done that if she didn't want me to reach out to her, and I'm hoping you'd be willing to help her with that."

"Well, perhaps, if you happen to see her, you could tell her that I'd be open to a visit," Alexander says, after a moment. It looks like he might then start to get up and leave the older man alone, but his continuing words cause another flicker of rage to surface. "Had," he says, curtly. "Right one or not, they had Violet. She's dead." He leans in to study Walter, eyes narrowed. "And what the fuck made you hate her so much? She was a good person. Did her best to live her life even though everyone in this fucking town hated her, including her own father. She didn't deserve that. No one does, but particularly not Violet. She was kind."

Alexander's hands clench, one into a fist, and the other so tightly around the bottle of beer that it's a wonder it doesn't just shatter and cut his hand to pieces. A brief, pleasing set of images run through his head, mostly involving dismemberment and Walter's dead face locked in an eternal scream, but he manages to hold on to his temper by the skin of his teeth. The name and incident are marked, but he's trying to strangle down the red at the corners of his vision, and so just marks them for further study. "You are a wretched, twisted, horrorshow of a human being. Violet was worth ten of you. And her doctor was worth...at least five." He does stand up, now. "I only hope that your sanity collapses before your liver does." With that, he starts to make his way out of the Pourhouse.

Alexander stops as that righteous indignation settles in upon him. It's right, that voice. It's not fair. Walter's life is, by all accounts, pretty miserable - but at least he gets to have one, and Violet no longer does. Alejandro no longer does. Why should they die, while people like that continue to live? Alexander could fix it, though. He could...correct the issue. It wouldn't even take much - it's not like the Pourhouse's wiring is top notch, and dangerous shorts happen all of the time. Drunks make mistakes, wires fray, people get electrocuted. It's tragic, really.

His hand is halfway to his temple, already starting to gather his focus to unleash some sort of havoc on the man when he freezes. "No. No no no no no," it's a desperate chant. "I won't. I won't. I'm going to be good. I'm going to be good." This is not his inside voice, and heads probably start to turn, noting Crazy Clayton. But Alexander doesn't notice; instead, he's tucking his head down and rushing to the door, trying to get as far away from the sweet temptation of murder as he can manage.

Alexander's bell is rung. The jibes and taunts he was half-expecting, but he wasn't actually expecting the beer bottle to the head, and he staggers as it connects, knocking into a table full of drunks and going from seeing red, to seeing stars, and then back to seeing red in an instant. "FUCK YOU!" He whirls around in the direction the beer bottle came from. And he never actually dropped that bottle that he was holding, a fact that he realizes about a microsecond before he flings through the air towards where the other bottle came from. He doesn't know which one of these assholes threw it, and filled with righteous indignation and a throbbing headache, he doesn't much care.

Alexander twists in Orange Hat's grip and stumbles back, falling into a defensive stance by instinct. He's outnumber, and really, really should run away right about now. But the anger is surging through his veins, and there's those horrible, nasty taunts digging into his skin. Hell, a few of these people he's known since grade school - and honestly? Kind of hated them since grade school. So he throws himself at the guy with the bottle shard, grabbing a chair of his own on the way to try and smash it in his face and take him out of the fight before he cuts someone. Like Alexander. Before he cuts Alexander. If that guy goes down, then he just start laying about him with the makeshift bludgeon, smashing as many faces as he can manage.

About the only restraint he's showing is that he's not zapping anyone. His face is twisted in a snarl, and when he notices Walter's apparent enjoyment of the proceedings, his urge to commit violence ramps up another notch.