pet peeve.

[Liadan Whelan] It wasn’t difficult to call around to the hospitals and find the man with the broken face she was looking for. Líadan tells herself that what she’s feeling isn’t guilt, that she’s not responsible for the altercation between Asshole and Ass Face. It’s not her fault that, when Taggart showed up and usurped the conversation and Alexander got upset, the two Fianna flipping him the bird sent him over the edge.

At least, that’s what she tells herself.

It took time to locate the man, when all she had to go by was a description of his wounds. Eventually she got a hold of someone she could just tell was new, first day on the job and everything, and the supervisor’s head was turned the other way. Over the phone she turned on the works. Tears, hysteria, anger, shouting. The poor intern didn’t know which way was up by the time the crazy lady on the other end was finished with him.

She takes public transit to Northwestern Memorial. She bluffs and blusters her way to the room of Alexander Vaughn. They must’ve gotten his name off a license. It doesn’t occur to her that, because of her breeding, bolstered by her profession of stick wrangler, it’s easier to make ordinary people give her her way. She just thinks she’s especially good at lying.

And let’s face it. She is.

When she enters the room, she closes the door behind her. Sets a small bouquet of flowers on a table by the bed. Pulls up a chair.

“Funny, I never would’ve pegged you for an Alexander.” She smiles like she doesn’t expect him to rise out of the bed and pound her face in.

[Alexander Vaughn] There's a cliche that people look smaller when they're ill, or battered, or otherwise in less than peak condition. It's something about the tubes going in and out of them, the bandages, the contusions, the lacerations, the trauma. It's something about the flimsy hospital gowns and the thin hospital blankets. It's something about the grief of their loved ones, or the weight of their own misery.

Since Liadan is not a loved one, and Alexander is more pissed the fuck off than miserable, he does not look smaller. He looks like himself, only somewhat more battered. He shares the room with one other, a skinny guy with a cast on his arm and a sulky look on his face: two losers of barfights stashed in the same space. Alexander has the bed closer to the window, and he's looking out of it when Liadan comes in; he assumes it's one of Slim's girlfriends. Plural. Three have been by already, the first one sobby, the second one pissed off, the third one absurdly titillated by the whole deal.

No one's been here to see Alexander. He's only been here a little over twelve hours, and the first few were spent getting his nose put in a splint and being told he was lucky the break wasn't bad, yadda and yadda. Another few were spent answering questions, to which all he ever said was I don't know and I don't remember. The rest were spent making up stories about Slim's ladies, and whether or not they knew about each other. He's just decided girlfriend +3 must've been the one most directly involved in the altercation -- the fuel for the fire, so to speak -- when someone says she would've never pegged him for an Alexander, and his head turns.

His nose is swollen beneath its splint. The bruising has spread to the butterfly area around his eyes and his cheekbones. The mark on his jaw where (that fuckin prettyboy) Aidan had put out his lights is fading to nothing. The cut on his lip, which he received when his face hit the wall of the booth, is down to a dark red nick. It sounds like quite a litany of injuries, but it's not. On the whole he looks a hell lot better than one might expect of someone who was literally beaten into unconsciousness. Let's hear it for Gaia's medical plan for family and dependents.

He stares at her for a moment flatly, and then he makes up his mind on how to respond. "Nice," he says, somewhat nasal, grabbing the rails of his hospital bed to pull himself a little more upright before he remembers these beds were motorized for just that purpose. "Come to flip my lid again?" He gives an exaggerated look behind her. "Where's the blond and the prettyboy? Maybe you guys can all team up again; that was fun."

There's a pause. Then, perhaps realizing the otherwise pitifully bare state of his bedside table and the fact that beggars aren't exactly choosers, he grimaces.

"How the hell'd you find me? Peeked in my wallet to get my name?"

[Liadan Whelan] Alexander looks like shit. Líadan doesn’t answer him right away, just watches mildly as he shifts in the bed. She doesn’t bother looking over her shoulder to see if someone is actually there.

“They’re off tag teaming some other jack ass,” she says. And for all she knows, it’s true. “I figured in your current state of wellness I could probably take you myself if you started to get out of hand.” And for all she knows, she can. She kicked a ragabash to death once. It was done with the help of a bullet hole or two, but still. This man is only human.

Her brows rise, her eyelids lower slightly and she tilts her head to look at him over the rim of her glasses. Perhaps this makes her look like she doesn’t need her glasses. But she does. She's just not blind without them.

“I just told them I was looking for an asshole, and yours was the only name that came up.”

[Alexander Vaughn] "Very funny," he says, sarcastic, and then turns away to hide the edge of a grin because it was at least mildly funny.

When he's back under control he turns back, nodding at the roll-up chair next to the bed. This is one of the best hospitals in the country, and ergo, one of the busiest, and ergo, not necessarily the most well-stocked and well-equipped in terms of human comfort. The chair he nods her to is rickety, rocks a little. If she doesn't sit he doesn't appear to care.

"So what are you doing here?" It's a valid question.

[Liadan Whelan] She doesn’t notice the grin, or if she does she doesn’t show it.

He nods to the chair she pulled in front of her but hasn’t occupied yet. She’s about to sit when she realizes Alexander’s roommate is watching them. And leering. She walks over to his bed, picks up the TV remote and turns on the small monitor bolted into the ceiling.

“Your eyes go there, wise guy, or I’ll break your other arm.”

Slim obediently turns away. Something in the way the redhead glares at him takes him back to elementary school and the angry, disapproving librarians he met there. Slim probably hasn’t been inside a library since.

When Líadan goes back to Alexander’s side of the room, she pulls the dividing curtain between his bed and the rest of the room closed around them. Slim can still hear them, but he can’t see them, and that’s all right.

She plunks down into the chair. “Figured you might need the company. Didn’t you say you’d only been in town a couple days?” She’s wearing a blue jacket over a yellow t-shirt, jeans, Converses.

[Alexander Vaughn] Alexander gives something like a guffaw, which makes him wince again. "Don't you worry, Slim Jim's got enough of his own female company that he's more interested in crowd control than recruiting at the moment." Raising his voice, "Isn't that right, Slim?"

There's a muffled fuck off, man on the other side of the curtain.

She plunks back down, and he looks at her with some mixture of wariness and suspicion and bemusement. And maybe a shred of amusement. "No, really. What's your game? Last night you join your hairy cousin -- he is a hairy cousin, isn't he? -- in the flipoff fest, and today you're in here trying to make friends? Did he send you to pump me for information? You can tell him I'm not going to press charges or anything stupid like that."

[Liadan Whelan] She arches a brow. “I guess he’s kinda furry, but I don’t know about cousin. And nobody sent me.” She looks offended at the suggestion.

A moment passes as she considers her answer. Why did she come? Certainly she knew it was going to be like this. Wariness, suspicion. Anger.

“Maybe I just wanted to make sure he didn’t kill you.” Her shoulders lift in a shrug.

And maybe, just maybe, she wanted someone to talk to, and no one else was around.

[Alexander Vaughn] Alexander snorts, his pride wounded. "It'll take more than a punch to the face to kill me. They kept me overnight to make sure I didn't have a fucking cerebral hemorrhage or something, but it's just a broken nose. I've had worse playing high school football."

And he's not even going to acknowledge the suckerpunch from the pretty little shit. Well; not until he got around to dealing with it.

"Listen," he pushes himself upright a little more, "you wanna go walk around?" There are no IVs attached to him; his medications list on the chart, if Liadan can read the scrawl, consists of anti-inflammatories and painkillers. He points at a dresser, "They've got scrub bottoms there, if you wanna toss me a pair. I'm not strolling around bare-assed."

[Liadan Whelan] A devil’s grin crosses Líadan’s face. “Aw, but you have such a nice ass.” She goes to the dresser, finds a pair of bottoms for him, and tosses them at his chest.

And then she waits while he dresses himself. If he asks for assistance she moves to help, but otherwise she had enough of lugging his ass around yesterday, when she moved him from the floor back to a booth. While he dresses she looks out the window, not for the sake of propriety, but because she likes looking out windows. A tiny little romantic part of her brain thinks that windows are like life’s viewfinders, only there’s no way to make the picture permanent. Not without an actual camera, anyway.

She remembers something. “Oh yeah. I’m Lee, by the way.”

[Alexander Vaughn] (stam/ath: i'm totally not dizzy from percocet and a mild concussion!)
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 7, 8, 8, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)

[Alexander Vaughn] Alexander, of course, does not ask for help. There's a flurry of panic in the way he catches the scrub bottoms, as if he were afraid they might smack him in the nose, and he's also careful not to bend over too far and raise the blood pressure in his head. Other than that he gets them on with minimal effort, and then turns his hospital gown around so he wears it more like an actual shirt, fastenings in front.

The view outside the window isn't particularly thrilling. NWMH is just off the Mile, and on the higher floors the east-facing windows have a view of the lake. However, Alexander's window faces west, and he's on the third floor. He has a view of the opposite skyscraper and the street, busy with midday traffic.

She introduces herself. He's tying the ties on the once-back, now-front of his shirt, and he looks up at her with a faint frown. Then he nods.

"Alexander." Obviously. Slim puts in from the other side of the curtain, At least I know my visitor's names before they show up, and Alex doesn't bother to reply. "Come on."

It's visiting hours, and regular working hours. The in-patient wing is busy. Nurses bustle around. Patients keep to the sides, most with a visitor, some with a particularly good-tempered nurse. There's a large atrium in the middle of the first three floors; indoor trees reaching for the skylights, their crowns just about at eye level here. Alex squints in the light then reaches into his shirt to scratch at his skin, briefly.

"I think it's quieter down that way." He nods left. "And if he wasn't your 'cousin', why were you two so damn chummy? He your boyfriend?"

It's not resentment or inadequacy, for once. It's something like fiendish delight. Lee gets the sense Alexander would love nothing more than to cuckold a Garou. And probably end up right back at NWMH. Or the morgue.

[Liadan Whelan] Líadan flips Slim off on her way out the door, apparently a favored gesture of hers. When the man with the broken arm makes a lewd remark she just laughs.

“Ohhh honey. I am way over qualified for your harem.”

They walk down the hall together, Lee with her hands clasped behind her back, taking in the sights. She’s taller than most of the people they pass. The difference between her height and Alexander’s is negligible. If she stands not ramrod straight, they are the same height.

A laugh. “Most definitely not my boyfriend. He’s…”

She goes in the direction he indicates, thinking. What is Taggart?

She would say friend, but…

She would say protector, but…

“We just drink together sometimes. I don’t actually know him that well.”

[Alexander Vaughn] Alex snorts audibly. It is quieter down the hall; less traffic as the bulk of the patient rooms fall behind them. At the very end there's a window, two chairs arranged around an end table with a flower arrangement on it. This is where they keep the more stable patients. This ward is distinctly cheerier than some of the others -- the burn ward, oncology, the trauma center.

Alexander would love to sit down, but his pride, which is a prickly and volatile thing, keeps him on his feet until Liadan takes a seat first. In the meantime he frowns out the window a moment, then looks at her directly.

"I don't understand how you can be drinking buddies with a guy like that." A guy that beat my face in, Lee might think he means at first -- maybe he was jealous; maybe that one night had a much bigger effect on him than it did on her. But; no, closer inspection reveals it has nothing to do with that. What he means -- though it's not a slamdunk that Lee will be able to tell at a glance, or just by the tone of his voice -- is a guy that can pop fur and grow nine feet tall. "I mean, Jesus, doesn't the attitude bother you?"

[Liadan Whelan] Líadan takes one of the seats, slouches down, stretches her long legs in front of her. She wouldn’t for a moment imagine Alexander was jealous because of her. She would be shocked if he said that night meant more than what it was, two strangers deciding to act like lunatics for the night.

She shrugs at him. “Is it really so different then fucking someone and learning their name a week later?”

“And your attitude doesn’t bother me, so why should his? Just because it’s worse,” she adds. And she shrugs again. What can ya do?

[Alexander Vaughn] So why should his?

And Alexander gives Lee that look again; the one he gave her in the parking lot days ago. It's the one that says: what planet are you from?

"You don't mind that he treats you and I like second-class citizens," Alex says, flatly. "You really don't see how that's worse than a one night stand between consenting adults."

[Liadan Whelan] She rests her elbows on the arm rests of her chair, pointedly ignore his look. Her fingers lace together, and she presses both index fingers against her chin.

“Hm.” A sarcastic remark floats into her head, but she resists the urge to say it aloud. Sometimes she actually uses her common sense.

“I never really thought about it. We’ve only hung out a couple of times, but he’s never really treated me like a second-class citizen.”

She might not be close to Taggart, but she still always tries to go to him when she wants…something. She can’t even name what she wants from him. But she remembers the things he’s said to her. Mostly they’ve been good, nice things. But when they’ve been bad, they’ve knocked her feet out from under her, landing her on her ass.

Her shoulders lift and fall in another shrug. "I guess if he starts, then I'll let you know if I mind or not." She doesn't want to start a fight with him. She has no one else to talk to.

[Alexander Vaughn] Whatever drove Liadan to seek conversation from an obviously self-centered man with a ego both fragile and vast, she might well be regretting it now. She tries for diplomacy, or placation, or simple disengagement. Alexander doesn't go for it. He grabs the subject like a bull terrier with a bone. He sat when she did, trying to hide that he was rather grateful for it, immediately slouching back -- but now he's sitting up, charged with his own conviction.

"Come on, babydoll," apparently that nickname sat better than 'Lee', "he did it just last night. If he didn't think he and his own concerns were somehow more important than you and yours, would he just barge the fuck in on your conversation without so much as a pardon-me? Look, I know it wasn't like we were having the conversation of the decade, but would you do that to someone you respected as an equal? Would you? Sit down and start talking to them about what's on your mind, nevermind what they were doing?

"That's not even getting into how he treated me. Because to him, I was just a human, maybe a kin at most. Weaker than him and therefore not a threat and therefore not worth his respect. Lesser. Second class. Someone he could treat however the hell he pleased because there isn't a thing I can do about it.

"I know I picked the fight. But I'm talking about what led up to it. And if you think you're gonna be exempt from that sort of treatment just because you're his drinking buddy, and maybe because he's given you some sort of lecture about how he'll protect you and be nice to you, blahblah, condescension, claim, bullshit -- well, shit, babydoll, just wait until the day what you want doesn't match up with what he wants."

Alexander's done. The rant, because that's what it was: a furious, low rant, sizzles in the air between them. He leans back in the chair again, his face dark with anger. Or bruises. Or both. He rubs a hand over the side of his face, the bristles of 36 hrs worth of beard growth scratching against his palm.

"Sorry," he says at last, not sounding the least bit sorry. "Just my goddamn pet peeve."

[Liadan Whelan] [Deep breaths!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 6, 7, 8, 9 (Success x 4 at target 6)

[Liadan Whelan] Alexander rants, and Líadan breathes deep. Exhales long. Another deep breath, and another exhalation.

When he's finished, when he's said his peace, Líadan sits still a moment. Then she grips the arm rests and pushes herself out of the chair. It looks like she's walking away when she takes a few steps, and that was certainly a thought she'd had. But she stops and turns, comes back to stand in front of him.

When she speaks, her voice is low, even, and flat as a slap to the face.

“You self-centered mother fucker. What the hell do you know? You waltz over and sit down at my table, uninvited, and you get pissed off at him for taking over your conversation? I was waiting for him, asshole. I was there because I needed to talk to him. Not you. I don't even know you.”

[Alexander Vaughn] "Good for you," Alexander snaps right back. "Does that negate that he treated me like a piece of shit because he knew he could get away with it?"

[Liadan Whelan] [DEEP BREATHS, WOMAN!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 4, 7, 8, 8, 9 (Success x 4 at target 7)

[Liadan Whelan] And with that remark, her temper flares. She keeps in check. Barely.

Instead she puts hands to hips and laughs derisively. “Honey, if anyone treated you like shit, it was me.” She jerks a thumb at her chest, then moves the hand back to her hip. “I'm the one who ignored your ass. I flipped you off, too. Or are you so fucking infatuated with me you'd rather place all the blame on the person you tried to bludgeon with a fuckin' bike helmet?

Her voice is rising slightly. Footsteps can be heard from one end of the hall, most likely a nurse coming to tell them to keep it down. Remind them that this is a hospital, a place of healing.

Líadan doesn't give him a chance to answer. Her eyes widen suddenly. “No. No. You're not infatuated with me, are you. You think I'm just some fucking waste of time. Well I've got news for you, shit bag.” She wants to punch him in the face, but unfortunately two other people already beat her to it. “Go fuck yourself!”

And with a squeak of rubber on linoleum, she turns on her heel and storms away.