2020-03-04 - Alexanderotic (Or Why You Shouldn't Try To Facetime When You're This Drunk)

As the sun rises in the east, and sets on the west, so as the world turns. And with the way it's turning right now, it means that by the time Easton gets up in the early morning, his smartphone rings.

It's from Isabella's international number. It has to be, at least, given the +44 precursor to the string of otherwise nonsensical numbers that often mark digits originating from another country, and there's only one person he knows right now who's out there.

The bedsheets are a rumpled mess and somewhere in that pile is one Easton Marshall. The buzzing of his phone causes him to sleep swear at it, calling it a useless fucking donkey, apparently confusing it for a lazy Marine in need of berating. Eventually though his mind wakes up enough to realize what is actually happening. And so he sits up, his hair a wild mess sticking in all directions, his beard having been trimmed into a handlebar mustache for the event at the bar, he looks ridiculous. And like he's still asleep.

He picks up the phone and manages to hit the answer button not really comprehending what's happening when it says something about facetime.

It is, indeed, Facetime, and by the time Easton pokes sleepily at his touchscreen, or swipes at it, it's too late.

What is revealed to him on the other line is the living room in a tiny flat no larger than any studio apartment that could be found in cities like New York - just a little bigger than a broom closet. There's a kitchenette, a small window, and there isn't even a bed but a futon that could be unfolded into one. Presently it's got a bunch of throws to make it look less like a college student's dorm room. What is strange, immediately, is that there is a bunch of clumsily arrayed candles everywhere - on the visible windowsill, the coffee table, the mantlepiece on the far wall. An attempt for some kind of romantic lighting, or ambience.

And right in the middle of the room is an extremely drunk Isabella Reede, who still has a bottle of something in her hand, her hair a mess. She points towards the screen with a slender finger, slurring her words. "Hello, Mister Clayton," she coos in the sexiest voice she can muster....but considering how much alcohol she's actually drank, she sounds less like Charlize Theron and more like Kathy Bates from Misery. "You're in for a treat tonight because I'm gonna-- "

Pause. Beat.

"...I'm gonna..." Tug. TUG. She starts pulling at her clothes. It is the clumsiest striptease ever. It's not even remotely sexy, and whatever naughty things she intends to say to the person who she thinks is her boyfriend is muffled by the sweater that tangles into her face, and when she attempts to gyrate her hips, it looks like she's trying to churn butter with her stomach without the proper accouterments. "I'm gonna....gonna...OH MY GOD GET OFF!!"

She finally peels the sweater off her face. She tosses it behind her, but the act of ripping it off her body has her listing sideways and collapsing onto the floor. She vanishes from the screen from just a moment, before she picks herself back up quickly. "I'm okay! I'm okay! I can...totally...where was I...?"

This does put her closer to the screen though, so she can actually see who it is that she's talking to. After a squint, her eyes grow wide, jaw growing slack, because now that she's only seeing double instead of quintuple, not only is it not Alexander, but with Easton's mussed hair, sleepy face and handlebar mustache, she doesn't recognize him.

The camera pans out, and night-birds scatter into the air as a scream that could be heard for miles rattles her single window.

Easton is not awake. His eyes are puffy and so swollen as to be nearly closed. He's also not dressed but that's not a problem, it's probably not the first time Isabella's seen him without a shirt on. He's not exactly what anyone would call modest.

As the screen flickers on he looks at it in confusion and tries to figure out what is going on. There's a room and a girl and she's drunk. And she's going to be stripping? His eyes slide off to the side wondering if this was some porn he was watching on his phone that is still playing? It's not exactly his usual preference and wasn't Bennie here last night? And yea she's hot but the sloppy drunk thing isn't really working for hi-

"NO! OH MY GOD! NO Nononoononooooo!"

Easton's face contorts in horror as he realizes far too long into this whole routine what is going on. "Isabella put your fucking clothes on!" Easton is reflexively scrambling away from the phone even though he's holding it in his hand and he ends up nearly climbing up his headboard to get away from the cursed images. He looks around in a panic for Bennie to try and preempt any misunderstanding here but thankfully she's already left for shift at the diner.

And somewhere in the scrambling to get away from the phone Easton forgot he didn't have his leg on, and so he misses with one of those kicks and ends up awkwardly falling out of the bed and onto the floor with a thud, the phone now showing a lovely view of his ceiling.

"Isabella?"

Eventually it refocuses on Easton, leaning up against the nightstand and looking wary.

And then there's screaming.

So much screaming.

Isabella is screaming. Easton is screaming. Except Isabella doesn't know it's Easton and she was relatively certain that she called Alexander, and the only logical explanation her addled, scotch-and-tequila-soaked brain can come up with at the moment is that some pervert stole Alexander Clayton's phone. So as the madly-scrambling bartender attempts to fix the situation from his end, her half-clothed self is backing away rapidly from her phone, covering her chest with one arm while pointing accusingly on the screen.

"WHO ARE YOU?" she shrieks. "Why do you have my boyfriend's phone?! Are you-- oh my god, are you stalking him?! What's your name and social security number?! You give it back to him, or I swear to God-- !"

...except she's still backing up. Her spine hits the wall hard. Her array of candles on the mantlepiece fall in a devastating domino effect, ending with a white one that collapses right into the windowsill, gold-red tongues of flame catching the end of the gauzy drape affording her some minimal privacy.

And now there's a fire. A rapidly spreading fire.

"OH MY GOD!!"

There is a reason why firefighters don't drink on the job; they don't make the mistakes the newly-minted Doctor Reede is doing right at this moment, and that mistake has her snatching her stylish, but overall synthetic-fiber sweater off the floor, and leap into the fray in her half-naked state. She starts batting at the spreading fire with the sweater...which, of course, promptly also catches on fire.

And inspiring more screaming.

She's screaming. He's screaming. Gunner starts barking like crazy from the spare room.

"It's me! Easton! And why the hell are you sexytiming me?! My what? Why would a stalker give you their social?!"

He's almost to the point of being amused by this fiasco when she backs up and knocks over a candle and start lighting things on fire. "Iz! You drunk slut! Put it out!" Yes, that's helpful advice their Easton as you watch her pounce shirtless onto the flames.

"If you die like this I promise I will never tell anyone that this is how you went down."

"Easton?! I wasn't....I thought you were Alexander! Just-- hangon...oh my god, how did it get so big so fast, old buildings are a menace!"

She's still screaming when she attempts to put out the fire. At the very least, the shock of the adrenaline in her system banishes enough of the alcoholic haze to make her realize that throwing the rest of her tequila in the flames is probably not a good idea, and she grabs some water instead. "Oh my god oh my god oh my god my flat is on fire!" Isabella shrieks as she spastically throws water at it. There are sizzling sounds when the small conflagration is slowly brought under control.

She exhales a breath, and her screaming dies down just enough for her to hear her bartender-confessor call her a drunk slut. "Hey!" she cries, and because she's still drunk, she nearly tips over again when she spins around to point a finger at her propped up phone. "I resemble that remark!"

Pause.

"Resent that remark!" she corrects herself. "I'll have you know that I'm Alexander-sexual." Silence. "No....I'm...I'm....Alexanderotic! Don't judge me! You're not in any position, what did you do to your face?!"

"Yes!" Easton emphatically confirms who he is for her, as she is a little busy at the moment trying to set London on fire.

"Not the booze!" He helpfully calls out as he gets to watch her junior firefighting live through the wonders of the internet and well placed phone camera. He has to hold a hand over his mouth though when she starts spins to try and refute that statement.

Alexander-sexual

The look of horror on Easton's face when she breaks out that term is only superceded by the wide-eyed terror at Alexanderotic

"No! No more Alexander sex words. Stop saying his name plus sex thing. It's fucking weird and I'm way too sober."

He gets a confused look when asked about his face and he realizes, "oh! Bar-lympics. I need to send you pics." Because Itzhak and Geoff shouldn't be the only ones who get pictures of Easton in short-shorts, tank-top, mullet wig and headband. Everyone deserves those.

No! No more Alexander sex words.

"But you can't spell sex without..." And then Isabella pauses, counts her fingers and frowns when she seems to have more than absolutely necessary. Thankfully for Easton, she drops that line of thought before she wanders towards the couch and pulls an afghan over herself. Her heavy body collapses into the cushions, heralded by the creak of the springs and a soft, relieved groan that she's no longer standing. She's still holding onto the tequila bottle though.

"Wait, I missed Bar-lympics? God damn it, that sounds fun," she mumbles, turning bleary eyes towards her equally bleary long distance companion. " 'm sorry I thought you were a pervo-stalker who stole Alexander's phone, E. I honestly thought I called the wrong number. I better get those pictures for sure, though. Alexander told me Bennie's out of detox? How you two doing?"

Easton is busy shaking his head when Isabella starts trying to figure out sexual position anagrams for Alexander Clayton, but his fingers are also busy. There's a tell-tale click as he takes a screenshot. Because it's Easton and he's recovered from the shock enough to at least realize that this story requires visual evidence. Granted he will first have to text that to Bennie so there's no question why he has that photo on his phone.

"Yes! It was epic, I need to roll in this morning and figure how much we raised for charity, and check to make sure the bar is still standing." He left early. He's not really going to get into why right now though. "That's okay, I'm sorry I thought you were very specific and confusing porn." He laughs, realizing that he didn't actually tell her that part yet.

"Bennie is out of detox. She was at the bar last night running the show and then.. here." Hence he was sleeping. In a bed. Like an almost normal person. "We're goo-.. Wait. If you are trying to sexytime Alexander does that mean he pulled his hed out of his ass and you two are okay? Or was this your big plan to long distance seduce him? Because if it's the latter we need to work on those planning skills Iz."

Visual evidence is always important, but at least she is promised a photograph of him in a handlebar mustache for posterity.

Isabella is too wasted to realize that Easton has managed to screencap this ridiculous destruction of her dignity within her first day as Doctor Reede, however, and she lifts her head from under her afghan to peer at the screen. "You thought I was what?" There's suddenly a laugh - hoarse, but bright. "I'll take this as a promising sign that I can still be somewhat attractive despite being a drunken mess. Just...remind me next time I can't sexydance worth a damn."

Oh god, if she only saw how she attempted to gyrate her hips that way, she'd probably crawl into a hole and disappear for ten years. Nobody tell her that just yet.

News about Bennie does brighten her drunken visage considerably though. "I'm happy the two of you are good, so what's the next step with Beaston 2.0 then?" And then the query. "I...think so? I mean, he tried to get me to kill him back before I left." She could still be drunk, because from a normal person, that statement makes no sense, but it's Alexander, so it probably does. "...to prove that I could do it if I had to. I refused. Yelled at him. Almost punched him. Like...I really almost did, E. My fist was ready and everything. So we're talking again, and I'll probably return to his house because he mentioned something about it being quiet now that Isolde and Bennie are gone, and I was away and he said that..." There's a half-dreamy look on her expression. "...he loves me to distraction. To distraction, E." There's a long pause, where the young woman basks at the memory, and how adorable it was that he said it so quickly and awkwardly, before she turns her face into her pillows and buries it like an ostrich.

"Oh, god, what am I going to do? I really am serious about him, but he wants...he doesn't really want me to stay. And now that I've got my doctorate, it won't be long before the offers start trickling in when the network gets ahold of the news, and I'm going to have to start thinking about...oh god. Where did I leave my tequila?" She gropes for the bottle.

To be clear it's not a photograph, there are many, because Itzhak and Geoff also missed out and we can't have that.

"Oh fuck off. Unless you have managed to avoid all mirrors and men everywhere you know how hot your are." The fact that she reminded him of Katherine right there is not a good sign. He almost brings that up but it's not really a conversation to be had over facetime, nor a conversation he wants to have sober.

"Breakfast?" Easton says of next steps but then shrugs and admits, "Finding her a place. Maaaybe finding us a place. I don't know Iz, 'm trying not to fuck it up." It is both too early and too late, too drunk and too sober, for serious conversations like this. He's glad when the subject switches back to Alexander and Isabella. His eyebrows go up when she talks him through how it went down. He quirks an eyebrow and says, "Yea maybe work out the whole not asking one another kill each other before you move in? I mean fuck, I've gotten at least that far on the checklist of things when thinking about a place with Bennie." The basics, you know?

To distraction, E

The 'Ok?' is nearly visible on Easton's face as she emphasizes this phrase. Yes, it's very romantic but nearly completely lost on Easton. He chalks that up to the tequila.

"What?!" She blows right through the fact that she has her doctorate now and Easton holds up a hand, "Stop. Am I right now talking to Doctor Hot Scotch Drunken Slut?!" Oh good, that might be sticking. "Way to bury the lead! Is that why you're drinking like you're De La Vega right now? Shit, are we celebrating?" He starts to stand up and sighs when he realizes he doesn't have his leg on yet. He makes a hand motion towards the kitchen and obediently a can of beer appears. Yes, he's cracking a beer first thing in the morning, but it's a celebration!

"The last time I did anything off, I nearly burned the house down," Isabella reminds him soberly despite her decidedly un-sober state, eyeing the sodden mess by her kitchenette. "At least gimme a couple of days, smartass!" All said with the unmistakably affectionate way a person could demonstrate towards a sibling - or someone like a sibling.

She must catch the look on his face, though she's less psychic here now that she's away from Gray Harbor. Her voice gentles as she promises, "Whatever it is, we can talk about it when I get back, shut down TIBS per our usual tradition." It's an offer and a suggestion.

Her place, or their place, it clearly doesn't matter, because she's still drunk, and mostly, ludicrously happy, and even a little emotional, because she looks a little teary as she says: "I'm so happy the two of you are back together again, and even if you guys fuck it up, the point is never to stop trying, right?" she sniffles. "Oh god, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, because now I'm picturing you and Bennie in a cute little house somewhere with all of your attractive one-legged babies." They're not usually born that way Isabella, but clearly the brain and the mouth are still languishing in their alcohol-induced disconnect, she doesn't even seem to be aware that what she just said makes no sense.

His exclamation earns him a long pause. "...oh....yeah. Yeah! I've been celebrating since..." She counts her blurry, double-visioned fingers again. "....four....this afternoon? I haven't even told anyone else yet, I got kidnapped almost immediately, I think my colleagues here were seriously considering locking me in a trunk if I even hesitated to make the drive to London to get absolutely fitshaced." Fitshaced??? "I was going to tell Alexander after my few hours as a Cabaret dancer, but...I called you by mistake. Maybe I should just tell him in person before I set another apartment on fire. After I tell my dad..." She points towards the screen at him. "So keep it under your hat until I get back? I'll be back in town on the seventh." The rest of his words catch up eventually, and she makes a face.

"How is my nickname getting longer?!" she cries, hurling a pillow towards Easton, and considering how her hand-eye coordination is at the moment not the best, it flies well past its mark. "And I already told you, I'm not a slut, I'm Alexanderotic."

The fact that she catches the look doesn't escape him, he also doesn't fight the gentle reassurance that they will get around to talking about it.

Easton is giving her a patient smile of yes, yes you're drunk about the fantasy she's concocting for him and Bennie right up until the one legged babies and he grimaces, "Yikes! Let's not got chopping off imaginary never gonna happen babies' legs here Iz."

The part about celebration causes Easton to shift the camera so he can raise his beer to her and says, "Well cheers doctor!" He is all about trying to leave this on a high note of friendship but the she has to go and use that word again.

"AAAAH! NOOO"

The screen goes black. A man can only take so much.