Alec wasn't expecting to also get the notebook. He'd been considering tearing something off the wall to scribble on, but this is definitely more convenient, which means Ariane gets a distracted head bob of acknowledgement. He flips to the next blank page that's bare on both sides and stares at it, spinning the pencil between his fingers.

When he starts to draw, the vacuousness of his expression shifts. After he sketches out the first few angular lines his disinterest recedes as focus wells up. He curls his arm around the notebook and hunches over it as he works, pausing only to tuck loose hair behind his ears. After he's done, he sits back, tapping the end of the pencil on the table.

"Huh," he says, softly. He puts the pencil down on the top of the notebook and slides it back across the table to Ariane, looking across at her with his chin tilted down and his eyes half-shaded by their lashes.

"That's a zombie."

It's a quick pencil sketch, sharply stylized, of a drooling, half-rotten zombie from the waist up. The zombie's arms are raised in a classic lurching pose, and Alec took the time to strip the meat from one forearm to reveal the bones underneath. One side of the zombie's face is sloughing off, its eye bulging grotesquely in its denuded socket.