2020-04-21 - Aw, Alexander picked flowers with his very own two hands <3

Let's face it, it's not that hard to trail Alexander, considering he walks everywhere. Of course, that means it's not that hard for him to pick up on it, either. Or recognize the woman from a castle and a lot of dead people. His jaw tightens, but he doesn't try to confront her immediately. He continues on to the room, two vases in his arms. FLOWERS. They're not fancy or expensive, and some of them look hand picked, but they are flowers. He juggles them around a bit, trying to keep an eye on his shadow while he knocks on the door and tries to pretend he DIDN'T see her. "You both sound alive," he says, tonelessly.

In the hallway, Anne sees Alexander the second the elevator dings open. It brightens her considerably, seeing as she was frowning at the very pleasant nurse who was DENYING HER ABILITY TO GO HOME. Maybe it's because she's still on the IV drip, which she drags into the hospital room via the wheely pole. "They said no," she says to Patrick, "And something about how I should tell you to stop ordering alcohol like this is a bar, are you ordering gin from the nurses?" There's a long stare - she's been drugged up for quite some time, who knows what's been happening, before she beams a smile to Alexander. "Hello Alexander! We are alive, indeed." See? She's even walking. But she has to go sit down now, plopping herself in a big comfy armchair. "How are you?"

"No," Patrick answers immediately for what he's been ordering from nurses. "I've been trying to get them to accept that I'll be a much more tolerable patient if they will bring me a gin and tonic, but they don't seem to listen." All the bits in asterisks are said loudly enough to to carry into the hallway, hopefully to irritate the staff. "I'm not. I'm dead," he tells Alexander grumpily, throwing himself down on his hospital bed and muting the television. Which is playing something stupid about using leftover Easter candy. "Put those on my grave, please." He makes grabby-hands for the flowers.

A muscle jumps in Alexander's jaw, but he's still able to muster up a faint smile for Anne as she returns to the room. "If you still need that," a nod at the IV, "then you should not be going home." Not that he listens to anything like that when HE is in the hospital, but hey. No insurance. He enters the room after her, and closes the door behind him. Possibly in that pleasant nurse's face. Sorry. The flowers are taken to place Anne's on the table by her bed, and Patrick's into his grabby grabby hands.

"I'm alive. Being stalked by a former evil actress. Former actress. Probably still evil. Sorry for bringing her here." It's all very matter of fact, as he moves to take a seat of his own. "What the hell happened to the two of you?"

Just before Alexander manages to slam the door shut in that pleasant nurse's face, Anne leans forward to catch sight of the pretty little actress perching her rear on the seat out in the hall. It makes her raise her brows - hiking even further upward when Alexander closes the door - but his explanation seems to make sense. "Oh. I suppose it's very logical that you'd have a former actress, currently evil woman stalking you," she chirps. This must be some awesome drugs she's on. She leans back and points a finger at Patrick. "He had a stalker once. Marilyn Monroe. Of no relation to the actual Marilyn Monroe. We went to high school together," she wrinkles up her nose at the memory. "Do you remember when she set your lawn on fire in the shape of a heart?" This is lobbed at Patrick.

Patrick is oblivious to the girl sitting in the hallway. She's not bringing him cocktails, so she's not worth his energy. He is busy liberating one of the flowers out of his bouquet, putting the rest on the little rolly-table-thingie so he can clutch this one to his chest, laying flat out on his back like a proper corpse. The flower isn't at all suitable for burial, just some long-stemmed posy that Alexander picked, but he's not really dead, so it works. "I'm sure we have your irresistible charm to thank for that," he says of Alexander's new buddy. He closes his eyes, because he's dead, and answers Anne's story about Marilyn Monroe with a bald-faced lie; "No. I think you make these things up."

As for what happened to them, he sighs from beyond the grave. "Oh, you know how these things go. A ghost comes to a fancy party, certain people can't just ignore him, and suddenly you and a half-dozen of your closest friends are getting dive-bombed by a griffin."

Alexander stares at Anne for a long moment. "You're pretty high right now, aren't you?" he asks, with a clear amusement breaking through the irritation and worry of having a STALKER OUTSIDE. Patrick's dramatics are watched with a sneaking smile. "And yet, somehow, I still believe her version of events over yours, Patrick." A look back and forth between them. "Who ignores ghosts? I haven't seen many, but the ones I've interacted with have been hard to ignore." A pause. "And murderous."

"What? No, I don't make anything up! You remember Marilyn. She was like, six feet tall, red hair, those crazy green eyes?" Anne crosses her own (very pretty, very un*crazy) blue eyes to try and paint this picture a little better. "She used to cut the heads off all your flowers in the garden. Oh! One time, she cut off her whole ponytail and left it on the front seat of his car," she looks at Alexander as she says this, her smile so bright. "She was very much in love. And so very crazy. And I'm not very high at all," some of this isn't true. Then she frowns at Patrick, rolling her eyes. "I *tried to ignore him, but he didn't just go away like you keep saying they will if we ignore them. SO I just thought somebody needed to talk to him. Whatever happened afterward is entirely coincidental and not my fault." Beat. "She doesn't seem very murderous," she says of the actress outside.

Patrick's blissfully unaware of Alexander's stress, too busy pretending he is dead to attend to the problems of his buddy. "You would," he says as if offended - believe Anne's version over his, he means. "Of course you're not high, dear. You're a bit confused, though. You cut off her pony tail, then you used it to knit yourself that red sweater you like so much." In a leading 'remember?' tone. He even sits up a little while he gaslights Anne, scooting up with his pillow behind him, the flower in hand used to point at Anne for the you part of that.

He has a very bland look for Alexander's expertise regarding ghosts, and answers what was probably his rhetorical question: "I do. If you engage them, then - well." He points at dopey Anne over there.

"She used to lure in people and feed them to Them," Alexander tells Anne, blandly. "Also, I'm reasonably certain Patrick is lying to you. About the sweater. There's not enough hair in a ponytail for a whole sweater." That's the important part of this, really. "You seem to /also/ be in the hospital," he points out to Patrick. "So perhaps that's not the best strategy in all cases?" But behind the poke at the man's avoidance tactics, he looks worried. "You're both going to be okay, though, right? Healing up well? Do you need anything?" A pause. "Other than a drink. We'll take that as asssumed."

"Marilyn?" Anne blinks at Alexander, and then shakes her head. "Oh, you mean your stalker," watch her connect the dots. Her focus sliiiides on over to Patrick, and she seems to really be trying to remember this sweater, before Alexander ruins everything. "Stop trying to trick me," she wags a finger at Patrick before she turns back to Alexander and beams at him once more. "I'm fine. They are treating me so nice here. They've been running a Property Brother's marathon. Patrick loves the cute one," aren't they twins? "How are you? And Isabella?"

Patrick's brows raise at the things this actress used to do, and he sits forward enough to peer at the girl that's just loitering in the hallway, not murdering anyone. "Do you want me to have someone tell her to leave?" He exchanges the flower that was supposed to be on his grave for the little clicker thingie that calls a nurse, ready to push the button and save Alexander! Till Alexander points out that Patrick seems to also be in the hospital, at which point he notes with an irritable sniff, "Collateral damage."

He lets Anne chatter, waits till she's done, and answers, "The House has taken to pestering Anne." He talks about her like she's not sitting right over there~ "Apparently, there's a corpse under the fountain. I'm giving this one a generous twenty-four hours after her release from the hospital before she can't stand it anymore and starts trying to move the fountain."

"You're very easy to be nice to," Alexander points out to Anne. He eyes the TV and its bounty of Property Brothers dubiously. There's a snort for Patrick. "That's what you get when you let someone watch countless hours of HGTV while they are on opiates. Massive property restructuring plans." There's a shake of his head when the man reaches for the button, though. "Only if she tries to harass either of you. I suspect I know who has set her on me, and that's complicated." A pause. "I might lose my temper before it becomes uncomplicated, but that won't happen here."

"It's not the house. It's the help. That's the trick to it all. The lady in the chandelier, the fountain man. There are others, too, but we haven't met yet," Anne might be drugged, but she's bobbing her head along as though she was making sense. "And I'm not going to move the fountain, Patrick, we went over this," she sighs at him. "I'm going to dig under it." Her smile brightens before she looks back to Alexander. "Who set her on you? That's not nice. We should tell her to go away. What would she want from you anyway? Maybe if you give it to her, she'll go away." That's Anne's new philosophy, anyway.

Patrick, after Anne's thing about not moving the fountain, tells Alexander, "It won't be for lack of trying." Then Alexander blames it on the Property Brothers and he gasps audibly, laying his hand over his heart nope, that hurt. He lays his hand over his mouth, as if to hide his shock. "I will not have you in here, blaming the quality programming on HGTV for Anne's intractability. She's always been like this." Probably he doesn't mean 'high and nonsensical.' Sniffing as if disgruntled, he quiets to hear wtf an actress wants with Alexander Clayton.

"August could probably hook you up with a backhoe, if you asked," Alexander informs Anne, solemnly. "If you started the tunnel somewhere in the gardens, you could probably make it gradual enough not to collapse the fountain. Of course, the garden would suffer. And the driveway." A sideways look at Patrick: trolling a high Anne is fun, but using a high Anne's grand designs to troll PATRICK is even more fun. Less fun is talking about his stalker and her friend. His shoulders hunch a little. "A friend's sister. It's complicated. And yes. If I give her what she wants, she probably will go away."

Anne should be offended about being called intractable. In fact, she does briefly turn to glare at Patrick, opening her mouth to protest - and then she realizes he's probably right. Her expression smooths out, she nods her head, and she sighs as she looks back to Alexander. "He's right. But I think my intractability is why I'm the object of his affection," she practically flutters with those last four words. SHE HASN'T FORGOTTEN, Patrick. But then her eyes brighten a little too wildly at the talk of tunneling down to the bones. "Oh! That's an excellent idea. I bet I can even find the blueprints to the house, they must be somewhere in the archives. We could have a fun night of it, tunneling to the bones!" she claps her hands together giddily. As to Alexander's problem, she asks: "What does she want?"

Patrick points a warning finger at Alexander's talk of backhoes, aiming it at Anne afterward when she goes tearing off with ideas about how to make it work, yay! "You," he means Alexander, "stop encouraging her, or I'm going to invite your little hallway gargoyle in here and ask her what we can do to be of service. And you," he means Anne, "had your contracting license suspended after you exploded that family's house while you were trying to dig them an in-ground pool." Remember? "So just you come up with some other plan." Cheerfully at first, then sternly by the end, "I have one! Don't touch anything."

Alexander just can't help it. He grins widely at both Anne's enthusiasm, and Patrick's attempts to head it off. He does tell Anne, in a stage whisper, "I'm fairly certain you have never had a contracting license. They aren't typically issued to archivists." That cleared up, he gives Patrick a quick shake of his head. "I'd really rather you didn't. I'll stop encouraging her. For now." It looks for a minute like he might not answer Anne's last question at all, and trust in the morphine to smooth it over. But, eventually, he says, "She'd like to burn someplace down."

"It's not nice to call women 'hallway gargoyles'," Anne snips at Patrick, like that's worth arguing. But she fusses with her IV and then rolls her eyes. "I bet August hasn't had HIS contractor license revoked," she mumbles under her breath. And though she says nothing more about digging up the bones beneath the fountain, it can be clear that she's still thinking about it, until Alexander brings up burning things down and bam, her attention's on him again. "What does she want to burn down? It's not the ADdington House, is it? Because that's on the very bottom of my list of ways to find the bones."

Patrick wants to know about what the actress wants to burn down, so he mostly stays quiet. Except... seriously, he can't just let this one go. "But it would fine to call her a hallway gargoyle if she was a man." If Anne wasn't stoned out of her gourd, this is when they'd wind up having a big fight and he'd never find out about what's getting burned down, but it's enough for him to mumble something about how talking about BURNING THINGS DOWN is sort of the opposite of STOPPING ENCOURAGING HER, but really.

He wants to know what she wants to burn down.

"No one is burning down the Addington House," Alexander tells Anne, firmly. "The antiques in there are absolutely priceless. Irreplaceable. A fountain isn't all that, but the archives and the pieces?" A shake of his head. "Take that off the list." He sounds perhaps surprisingly passionate about this. Or maybe he's just trying to put off answering the damned question. Because it takes a while for him to sigh, and mumble, "The Asylum." The capital letters are obvious.

"Calling a man a hallway gargoyle sounds distinguished. Like, you're currently a hospital gargoyle. Big. Rock hard. Oh, that sounds sexy," Anne makes eyebrows at Patrick, then remembers Alexander's in the room and clears her throat. Annnyway. "I wouldn't burn down the whole house," she reassures Alexander, "And I'd make sure all the antiques were outside on the lawn first. But whatever, it's not going to come to that, I just have to get a backhoe and someone who knows how to dig tunnels and we're golden." So sweet, that smile of hers. But it diminishes when he mutters the words THE ASYLUM, the capital letters obvious. "Like.. the one.. over there?" she's trying not to sound too excited. "I didn't think anyone knew how to get there."

With a hand open toward Anne, Patrick says to Alexander, "I am so glad there was a witness for that," whole thing about gargoyles and sexism. He's getting intensely irritated the longer the talk of burning down and/or digging up Addington House goes on, so much so that he starts mashing his little 'call nurse' button. The nurses naturally assume he just wants gin, so they'll be along... eventually... if someone gets around to it. So at least he gets to find out that it's the Asylum that's meant to get torched. "Dear God, that must be nice," he mumbles re: no one can find the joint.

Alexander just kind of stares at Anne for a moment. Then the flat stare turns to Patrick, looking him up and down as if assessing him for rock hard gargoyle sexiness. He makes a sort of noncomittal sound. "He's not bad," he allows. "But you're probably going to make him have a stroke if you keep talking about damaging the house," he informs Anne, although not in any way that suggests that's a problem. "There are ways to get there," he says, after a moment. "I'm...fairly certain that I've been there once." A finger is pointed at Patrick. "/Don't/ say that you're not fucking surprised. It's not as funny as you and everybody else thinks it is." He clears his throat. "But it's not easy, or predictable, usually. She says she remembers everything, though."

Anne also looks Patrick up and down, wagging her eyebrows at him again. She thinks she's being sexy - but in reality, she doesn't exactly have great control over her brows (she's no Daenerys Targaryn), so she sort of just wiggles the whole top part of her head for half a second. "He's gorgeous," she scoffs at Alexander, sighing dreamily. "And if he has a stroke, we're already in the hospital. He'll be fine. I'm not really going to burn it down, Patrick, promise." She even crosses her heart, hopes to die and become a ghost to haunt him forever, etc. etc. She returns her focus to Alexander afterward, frowning slightly. "What do you mean, you've been there before? Not as like.. a patient," she's relatively sure. "I don't think it's a good idea to go and burn down anything in the Veil. We already know touching things has ramifications on our side." God, listen to her, she's starting to sound like Patrick.

Patrick points a finger right back at Alexander, though he's not making a particularly strident point. Just giving as good as he gets. "If it wasn't happening to you, you'd probably be able to see the humor in it." The pointed finger becomes a hand batting at the pair of them while they discuss his gorgeousness (or is it gargoyleness?), and that hand then rests lazily across his abdomen, since apparently the nurses are just going to ignore him now. So when Anne suggests that Alexander wasn't there as a patient, he's left looking all around the hospital room except at Alexander, not gonna touch that one with a ten-foot-pole.

"So tell her and her sister," he hasn't been paying the strictest attention to the details, "that you're not interested in being an arsonist and call it a day." In a 'what's so difficult about that' tone.

Alexander sees that lack of looking, Patrick, and his expression turns sour. "I /wasn't/ there as a patient," he says, half in agreement with Anne, and half arguing with that not looking. "And no, I don't think it's a very good idea. But I don't think a 'not interested' is going to be--" he breaks off, sighs, and shakes his head. He runs a hand through his hair and looks, for a moment, very tired indeed. After a moment, he smiles - it's a terrible, unnatural sort of thing. "I'll try that. Anyway. Not important. What about you two? Other than getting dive bombed by mythological creatures, are you well?"

"If she's stalking him around town, I don't think an 'I'm not interested' is going to necessarily work. But maybe you could say you're going to help and then just.. never show up at the appointed time," Anne suggests helpfully. "I just would still hesitate because we don't know what it means to burn the place down. What about the patients there? They are real people. Maybe you can convince them to try something else instead? Like... petition the doctor for better living conditions!" Yes, petitions. Those always work. At Alexander's question though, she sits up a little straighter, her happy face returning. "Patrick and I are moving in together," she announces.

Already with his mouth open to seize on some reply about Alexander's incarceration, Patrick stops about the time Alexander breaks off, and his expression goes from sympathy when the guy is scrubbing his hair to EW ICK when he's smiling at them. "Stop that." His obviously not enjoying it at all. Distracted by the smiling (srsly stop!), his performance is a little flat when he tacks on after Anne, "Yes, dear. He knows. That's why the two of you were talking about renting a backhoe, so the contractors can get to work on the new house."

The smile cuts off, and the room is better off for it, even if it's replaced by Alexander's typical flat expression, instead. At Anne's announcement, he glances sidelong to Patrick, clearly checking to see if this is an actual thing, or a thing that the morphine and Patrick-trolling has told Anne. Patrick's corroboration triggers a roll of his eyes, but his tone is gentle as he says, mostly to Anne, "I'm glad, and I hope that it goes well for you both." But mostly for Anne.

"Is it? I could've sworn we needed a backhoe for the tunnel.." Anne slumps back into her chair, frowning at herself. And at Patrick. Mostly at Patrick. But then she blinks. "Oh, right. So you have your entrance and the dogs have their own. I remember now," she bobs her head slightly in a nod, beaming another smile at Alexander. "He asked while we were both busy trying not to die. He thinks I'm going to forget, but I haven't, just like I didn't forget that he called me the object of his affection," which still makes her flutter. "But it's about time, you know. Just a big step from him not leaving a bag at my place to having a whole house to mix my stuff with his stuff. I don't know what we're going to do about the pianos. We have two of them."

"We're going to donate one of them to poor people." Patrick, with the most ludicrous thing he can think of regarding the dual piano problem they have. Presumably, these three are going to sit in here a while, chatting and pushing each others' buttons, till Alexander does that thing where he suddenly walks off. (Unless he's not doing that anymore, because of his neat new Composure Dots, in which case... a nurse comes in to give Anne more drugs.)

Anyway, on the way out... the actress is gone. And nothing got burned down. So mark it in the win column.

Alexander will definitely just WALK OFF at some point. Composure is no excuse to start developing MANNERS. But he does tell them not to die. So. Don't die.

Anne is going to start researching how to donate pianos to the poor.