an altercation with gabbie.

[Alexander Vaughn] As it turns out, Alexander isn't home at midnight.

Or one am. Or two. Or three.

Sometime well past dawn, past even when he would usually rise for the day, the back door of the Brotherhood opens. It's Friday and the kitchen's in the middle of breakfast rush. Alexander looks exhausted, unshaven, drawn, maybe more than a little hung over. He looks like shit.

Alex borrows a blender and makes himself a protein shake. Then he heads upstairs, trudging, not stomping. He's thinking of a hot shower. He's thinking of crashing for fourteen hours or so. He's thinking --

It's hard to say exactly what his reaction to all his shit sitting out in the hall. Alexander just stops in his tracks for a moment, his face too tight to reveal emotion.

Then he covers the six, seven feet to his door in two steps, snatches up his pillow, shoves it under his arm, grabs his comforter too. His key grates into the room door. Once the knob turns he shoves it open with his foot. The comforter gets whipped across the room to collapse against the wall, and then his bed. The pillow follows, smacking the headboard hard enough to slam it into the wall.

Alexander slams the room door shut behind him.

Plenty of people have seen Alexander out of control. Plenty have seen him lashing out with his fists or his feet on what seems like very little provocation. Plenty have been on the receiving end of one of his furious rants, all invectives and shouts.

Gabriella has the dubious honor of being the very first to see this particular shade of fury: controlled, black, vicious.

"Get my shit back inside." Alexander is neither shouting nor growling; he's speaking to her, very low. "I am fed up with your little temper tantrums."

[Gabriella Bellamonte] Thwak!

Gabriella was startled awake by the sharp noise generated by the slapping of the headboard against the wall. His pillow and comforter landed on top of not a blank mattress, but the same set of sheets and quilt that had been there in the first place. She wanted to forget he was even there, so she worked to put the room back the way it was even harder than she might have if she would have been able to get the drumkit out into the hallway.

She had been asleep on her stomach, so when she woke she pushed herself up onto her elbows, blinking through sleep-blurred eyes at Alexander as he slammed the door, stood, and glared at her. He didn't quite warn her or ask her, but more ordered her to put his things back where they belonged, accused her of throwing temper tantrums.

One hand lifted to scrub over her face, and she was suddenly awake. She pushed back her blankets, put her feet on the floor, knees together since she'd opted for a yellow nightie instead of a shorts-cami combo. He may be staring her down, but she glared right back. Her voice was a little rough from her having just woken up, but her way of speech didn't suffer any.

"You can take your things up the hall to the empty room. I will not tolerate the presence of a brute."

[Alexander Vaughn] It's an effort of will to hold onto his temper. Alexander had a fucking rough night, and after the delusions of grandeur from the elder Bellamonte sister, he was in no mood to deal with the younger.

"If you can't tolerate me, move your own shit out. I'm going to bed." As he speaks he's going over to the bed, spreading the comforter on top of Gabriella's quilts and sheets, slamming his pillow back into place. Then he yanks his shoes off one by one, throwing them down hard enough that they bounce two feet before tumbling helterskelter. "My crap better be back in the room by the time I wake up."

He doesn't bother to undress. He's in the same brilliant orange fitted tee and the same off-white, baggy pants he wore last night. He doesn't even take his belt off. Alexander just turns his back to the room, pulls the comforters up and closes his eyes.

[Gabriella Bellamonte] Alex, again, told her that if she didn't like him she should move out. This time he gave her an open-ended threat when he told her to move his things back. She watched him with narrowed eyes as he arranged the bed to his liking, slapped his shoes down onto the floor, then laid down, rolled over to face the wall, and tugged his horrible blue comforter up to his chin.

Gabbie felt like she could spit poison.

So she acted in a way that was undignified, perhaps even rash. But let's be honest, Alexander wasn't one to call her such. He'd done much, much worse in the fit of a temper, and she didn't even need to know of specific instances to know that. The manner in which he conducted himself the night she had to call him an ambulance was example enough.

The floors were sturdy and she light enough that they didn't creak when she rose to her feet. They were bare, so they didn't make much noise when she walked across the room, leaning down to gather up his large shoes as she moved. She came to stand a foot or so away from the end of his bed, glared down at his close-cut thick black hair, and felt that bite of poison and wickedness in her chest again.

Were she born blessed/cursed as her siblings had been, she may well have put claws down the side of his face to get her point across. Unfortunately, she didn't have claws. So, instead, she used shoes.

One after the other, she chucked the shoes down at Alex, one smacking him squarely in the shoulder that was turned to the ceiling, the other hitting him between hip and ribs. She was just short of yelling when she opened her mouth while doing this.

"You put Aidan in a hospital! You brute, you uncivilized animal! Hatchet broke your face, and you knew he would put you in the ground so you jumped the one you could take it out on! You could have killed him!"

[Alexander Vaughn] Aidan again.

Gabriella doesn't get past that word. Actually, by the time the first shoe hits him he's boiling up out of bed, whipping his comforter off and surging to his feet. The second shoe smacks him in the stomach. His flesh doesn't seem to have an ounce of give. The sneaker bounces right off and thumps onto the ground, and by then Alexander's reached out, grabbed Gabbie, slammed her down on the rumpled bed.

"I AM SICK," he bellows in her face, "OF HEARING ABOUT AIDAN."

He leaves her to pick herself up. He goes across the room to her bed and, in something like turnabout being fair play, starts to strip her comforters and sheets to the floor.

"That shit," he shouts -- a pillow goes flying, "was between Hatchet and me. I tried to brain Hatchet, Hatchet beat my face in. Fine. Fuckin' prettyboy" her blankets heap to the floor "had nothing to do with it. He stepped in because his fucking guard wolf was there and he felt safe. He started that shit." The sheets tumble down too, and he kicks the pile of bedding viciously toward the door. "I finished it."

Which he yanks open. More shit joins the accoutrements out in the hall: Gabbie's bedding, kicked out in a rumpled mess. The armchair follows, sailing out to slam into the wall and land on its side.

"And you tell him, if he keeps sending girls to fight for him," now Alexander's crossing the room to rip Gabriella's drawers out of the dresser, "I'll fucking put him in the hospital again."

[Gabriella Bellamonte] She expected physical retaliation of some sort, but even so expecting something didn't mean that you were always ready for it. Alexander rolled out of the bed faster than she could throw the second shoe. It thumped off his stomach, hit her in the shin, and bounced away. Then she was siezed by her upper arms, physically lifed from the floor, and slammed down into the mattress.

For a half a second, she feared for her life and safety in a way that she didn't think she would ever be accustomed to.

Then he pushed away from her, stomped across the room, and started tearing her blankets and sheets off the bed, tossing them onto the floor. She stared at him, mildly in shock for a few seconds, glanced around the room to try and find something to subdue him with. Chair? No. Pillow? What the hell was this, a slumber party? Hell no. Easel? She'd have to drag that out of her closet? Violi-- no.

Her armchair flew out through the doorway, put a fine looking hole in the plaster of the wall across from the room, and she scrambled up off the bed and half-marched, half-charged across the room to meet him at that point.

Stupid stupid stupid, she chanted to herself, and she didn't know if that was directed inwardly or outwardly.

Even so, stupidity aside, she found herself trying to shove the enraged man out into the hallway along with his belongings and her sheets and chair.

[Alexander Vaughn] Gabriella intercepts Alexander halfway across the room. He's got one dresser drawer under each arm, each stuffed with Gabriella's clothes, and since he's headed for the door anyway, he doesn't much resist her shoving. When he gets there he upends the drawers. Gabbie's camisoles and underwear and socks and t-shirts, if she even owned any t-shirts, spill out across the floor.

Then Alex is turning around, and Gabbie's shoving at him to try to get him outside with the rest of their shit in the hall. Burdened by drawers, he can't fend her off -- so he just lowers his head and bulldozes blindly forward, pushing his way into the room.

He drops the drawers in front of the dresser. Then he bends and rips her rug up from the ground, raising a small puff of dust. This he heaves at the door. It lands rumpled, half-in-half-out, and Alexander follows to kick it all the way out into the hall.

Gabriella is still batting at him. Exercising in futility, one might say. His arms are free now and he holds her back one-handed while grabbing the drawers out of the desk with the other. It's another trip for the door. Deliberately, without even any apparent haste now that the first of his fury is past, Alexander's dumping all of Gabbie's shit out into the hall.

Sort of like she dumped his. Only a lot less politely.

[Gabriella Bellamonte] She had tried to shove him out the door, and since he was heading there anyways all he got was hands urging him quicker along his back. She reached to slam the door in his face, but she wasn't quite fast enough, and he just shouldered his way past her and the door flew open once more.

It was a wonder that people were actually sleeping through this ruckus.

Drawers were emptied in the hallway, her rug was kicked out, drawers wound up dropped back onto the floor, and all of this was done with Gabbie struggling to fight back the tears that came with the choking sensation of helplessness, and the brute himself.

He had one hand clamped onto her shoulder to hold her back, and that was downright humiliating. She hated this, hated it, and didn't know how to cope. Having her things thrown out of her room so unceremoniously was something she'd never experienced, and the fact that she couldn't do anything about it made it that much worse.

Finally, her hands grasping at his forearm to try and move it from her shoulder, she cried out while he was pawing through her closet, getting dangerously close to flinging the delicate violin inside its case against a wall to suffer the same fate as her chair. "Please! Just stop!"

[Alexander Vaughn] Heedless, Alexander grabs up an armful of Gabriella's dresses and clothes from the closet, marches this to the door, flings this out into the hall, too.

Then. Then, finally, he stops. Momentarily, anyway.

The room is wrecked. So's the hall. Gabriella's belongings are strewn everywhere. Alexander's belongings are not strewn, but they are piled everywhere. Bedding, clothing, drawers, rugs: it looks like a twister hit Room 4.

Panting faintly from exertion, flushed beneath his tan, Alexander gives the rug one last vengeful kick that sends it folding over itself out into the hall. Then he turns to face the younger Bellamonte sister, all belligerence and instability, jagged nerves and jangling temper, ready to explode into room-clearing violence again at a moment's notice.

"I met your precious big sister last night," he tells her abruptly. "I can see where you get it from. Real piece of work, that one. Stuck her nose where it didn't belong, bossed everyone around, acted like she was the queen of france and tried to scare the shit out of a mouse of a girl so pathetic even I felt bad for her. Then when I told your sister to fuck off, you know what she did? She nearly tore my fucking face off because god forbid the plebes disobey their betters.

"So you'll forgive me," he doesn't sound like he wants forgiveness at all, "if I'm not in the mood for your goddamn high-maintenance bullshit today. Sweetpea."

[Gabriella Bellamonte] She stared up at him while he talked, eyes red and wet with tears that she simply would not let fall. The morning had turned out to be humilating enough as it was, she didn't need to make it worse by lowering herself to yet another level of patheticness.

He met Katherine. Apparently she was back in town.
She was compared to Katherine. That was only natural.

But all the same, he snarled his story to her, slandered her sister (or it would be slander if it wasn't true. unfortunately, even Gabbie couldn't deny the truth in his words), and ended the note with an insult and a petname on the same breath. All she could do was chew the inside of her lower lip for a few moments, then step around him and walk out into the hall. A pair of jeans, a T-shirt, and some fresh undergarments were plucked out of the strewn pile of her belongings, and she disappeared into the bathroom.

Two minutes later she exited the bathroom by way of the door closest to the common room, and barefooted she made her way down into the kitchen, because she wasn't going to go back in that room even if she did need shoes.