ITP: LARS DEALS WITH STRESS POORLY (A SHOCKER)

[mossbuds]

Who: Lars and YOUUUUUU
When: S1:D41 morning, afternoon and late night
Where: 1) home trailer, 2) ferriswheel, 3) misc right
What: Lars gets his first changes! And also, loses his mind a little! He's shaken up by changes, and also the events from the Matrix finale.
Warnings: As always, Lars's potty mouth. But also, booze?????

BTW i will mimic format- so if you wanna do prose or action either's cool


➨ 1. Holy Fuck Not This Shit (closed to Strange)
Lars wakes groggily, feeling exhausted. His sleep schedule's all fucked up—he hasn't been able to sleep well since the shooting at the Big Top, and not having work to drag his ass out of bed just makes the problem worse. Miserable as he is, on top of sleepless nights, it's so easy to just stay in bed all day. But even for Lars, it's been a lot of sleep.

Having concluded his 13 hours of recent sleep around 2pm, Lars finally pushes himself up. He then realizes his mouth feels—weird. He moves his tongue in his mouth, which feels too full, and finds his teeth feel... thinner. Horrified and suddenly very awake, Lars lurches forward, parting his mouth a little bit to touch his teeth—which are all thin, long and sharp, doubled in number.

In response, Lars lets out a pretty long, shrill scream.



➨ 2. Drown Your Sorrows (or Don't)
It has been a pretty dang shitty couple of weeks. Besides having his second harrowing near death encounter with Steven, wherein he was almost shot one or nine times, that which Lars has been anticipating with dread for several weeks has finally occurred. After following up the horrifying discovery of his first transformation with an undoubtedly infuriating exchange with his annoying roommate, Lars has decided to finally get the hell out of the trailer, for better or for worse.

Overwhelmed with despair, anxiety and this momentary anger, Lars decides to follow some very stupid advice, because he's completely at a loss. He doesn't have any friends here—besides Steven, who Lars wouldn't want to unload on (he has trouble opening up to even his best friends; he wasn't about to make a kid listen to that), and he doesn't have any sufficient distractions for his rapid firing Gen X brain. So after a few cursory inquiries, Lars gets to the cook house. And with entitled confidence, he swipes a bottle of liquor, but does wait until he's positive he won't really be caught.

He shoves into his bomber jacket side, zipping it, and squeezes it in place with his elbow as he storms out. Kind of following another thread of advice, Lars heads for the ferris wheel. It's currently unmanned, since it's off week, and Lars abuses his POWER OF KEYS!! to open up the gate around it and clamber into one of the low hanging carriages.

There, he shoves himself down on the seat, scowling. He fishes out the bottle, grumbling as he screws off the cap of it, his head a dumb echo chamber of self pity—and naturally, follows that up with a swig of what appears to be some heavy, brown liquor. His eyes immediately go wide and he sputters, only managing to swallow half his swig before he spits the rest out gracelessly. This dissolves into a bunch of coughing and a hard, full body shudder as Lars winces his eyes shut, hiding his mouth behind his sleeve as he attempts to recover.

Whyyyy do people drink this shit, actually?????



➨ 3. Panic! At the Center Stage
Having failed miserably at unwinding his tension that day, and having woken up rather late, Lars is wide awake and anxious around midnight. He made it back to his trailer earlier in the night, but is feeling restless again. He gets up, grabs his bomber and abruptly departs again.

He decides going for a walk—a sober walk (not that he'd even gotten drunk) at night in the crisp air might soothe his brain a little bit. Well, maybe. So he just anxiously strolls about at a quick, unrelated pace, his arms shoved into the pockets of his jacket with stiff, uncomfortable posture. As he's walking, he feels himself actually begin to get worse—he increases the pace of his steps to a jog as he feels his heart race for no reason.

He squeezes his eyes shut as he begins to run, veering away from the center stage in a hurry. He stops somewhere near the misc right, winded, and rests his palms on top of his knees as he hangs his head. Once he kind of catches his breath, he hiccups a little with a small sob, chin dimpling. He straightens up, putting his hands over his face as he takes a deep breath, trying to get himself to calm down so he doesn't cry in public like a complete fuckin' baby.

[ooc: for reference, he looks like this!]

Comments

2

[atouts]

It just isn't Lars's day, is it? Because the way he lifted that bottle — poorly, by the way — was enough to draw Childermass's attention. He's mostly been lurking, not much interested in chatting after the entire 'agent possession' ordeal, but at the very least he should go after the poor lad and tell him he's a terrible thief.

So he does, only he doesn't bother lifting the 'don't see me' spell right up until after Lars has holed up in the ferris wheel carriage and proven, not only is he a bad thief, but he's also a really bad drinker.

"Have you even ever drunk anything like that before?"

Surprise, surprise, Lars isn't alone in the carriage, though Childermass has at least been kind enough to end up sitting across from him rather than right next to. It's already creepy enough, no need to make it that much worse. Anyway, speaking out is what breaks the invisibility. So, yeah. Just suddenly there. That's magicians for you. He's even acting as though there's nothing weird about it at all, instead holding a hand out for the bottle.

"Here, let me see that."

[mossbuds]

"Duwahghhhgh SHIT!!"

It's startling enough for the ever high strung Lars, and he fumbles with the bottle, nearly dropping it. He gathers himself tensely, eyes wide and angry as he stares accusatorily at the man who just appeared out of thin air to take a shot at his already fiber thin masculinity. These stupid fucking magic men. Rude as hell.

But... Lars doesn't want to possessively cling onto the scotch in defiance. It's gross, and he doesn't want to have to posture by drinking more, so he irritably shoves it in Childermass's direction.

"...I haven't drunk nothin' before," he mutters. He wanted to lie and say he's just used to better stuff, but he's. Tired. Totally deflated and without bravado.

[atouts]

"You made the much apparent," Childermass says, taking the bottle away and giving it a cursory sniff. Yeah, that's definitely scotch. He'll shake his head at that and tip the mouth of the bottle back at Lars, just slightly, which may as well be a scolding finger shake.

"Did you just grab the first thing you saw? You would have been better off with a bottle of wine."

[mossbuds]

Lars takes it as such, leaning away instinctively, his posture tight and rigid as he frowns. He tries to recover by being flippant.

"I dunno, I just wanted to get messed up," he admits. "Figured it would do a better job than somethin' like wine. 'Sides, liquor's manlier."

Two incorrect statements. Oh Lars. He's setting a record.

[atouts]

Lars, the king of making this too easy.

"Only if you can stomach it, which you clearly cannot," he'll oh so helpfully point out. "For you, wine will be more than enough. You may even want to go as weak as ale."

[mossbuds]

"I didn't see anything like beer," Lars says petulantly, folding his arms as he slouches his pelvis forward, sinking in his seat. "Besides, beer's probably gross too. This at least works faster, right? Makes more sense t'me."

Not something someone who has never drank in their life should be gunning for, but okay.

[atouts]

"Again, only if you can stomach it," Childermass repeats, this time with a hint of amusement. "If you don't know what you're doing, chances are you should find a different way to drown your sorrows."

But he isn't actually here to judge. Lars isn't a child (expect, perhaps, by attitude), so he's more than free to make his own mistakes. With that in mind, he'll offer the bottle back to him, though not without adding, "I believe this is yours. Although, if you're still planning on getting drunk, I would suggest going back and making off with a bottle of Port instead. Just not an old one."

Though Childermass would certainly hope the older, better kinds of alcohol weren't kept somewhere a teenager can sidle up to and grab. If not, well, then maybe the cookhouse deserved to lose them after all.

[mossbuds]

Lars takes the bottle, staring at it kind of dubiously. He then looks back up at Childermass, the look in his eyes kind of lost and searching. It's pretty obvious Lars has no idea what the hell he's doing; he doesn't even necessarily want to get drunk, but he definitely wants to escape all of his terrible feelings and has come up completely short on how to get away from his own mind.

"I dunno," he says finally, looking a little sour and wilted with how he scowls, his eyes falling, brows knit with a sort of pensive crossness. His head is a little warm and foggy. Part of him wants to keep going to see where it takes him, but the other part of him recognizes this is kind of pathetic. And also, the scotch is fucking disgusting. "I don't wanna get caught stealin' nothin' else from the cookhouse. I'll deal."

Though, truthfully, he had no intention of drinking any more of the scotch.

[atouts]

If he's searching for an answer, he's sure not going to find it on Childermass's face. Even if he does find this funny, it barely shows through on such an impassive man as himself. At best, there's mild curiosity, but certainly no worry. Declining to drink further or proceeding with suffering through the scotch, it'd have made no difference.

But that Lars doesn't seem inclined to do the latter does mark him as possibly more sensible than expected. That's a point in his favor, so hey, there's that, even if he'll never know.

"Very well," is the only answer that comes towards that, along with a slight, one-sided shrug, and since he doesn't seem to be planning on moving on anytime soon, he's going to lounge back against the seat on his side of the carriage, propping an below up on top of the seat's backing.

Then it's his turn to pick a topic, one that avoids pointing out any weird changes in appearance or the incredible lack of alcohol tolerance.

"You're the poor fellow who's stuck with Strange, aren't you?"

[mossbuds]

Lars is thankful for no further pressing, and he kind of fiddles idly with the bottle as nothing more than anxious occupation—when Childermass asks Lars about his trailermate, his eyes widen a little, then he rolls his eyes.

"Ugh!" He sticks out his ultra violet, forked tongue. "Yeah, that guy's nuts." He looks back at his present company, raising an eyebrow. "How d'you know 'em?"

[atouts]

The eye roll alone is a good confirmation. He only knows one person who can earn an eye roll like that and that person happens to be Strange. The man wasn't as worthy of it as some other Englishmen he knew from before, but seeing as none of those were here...

"We're from the same England," Childermass replies, which might explain the whole 'magicians are rude as hell' problem. "He hasn't been causing you too much trouble, has he?"

[mossbuds]

"Plenty 'nuff," Lars grouses, crossing his arms with petulant, bratty stiffness. "He's nosy."

Honestly, Strange had been largely leaving Lars to his own devices, for the most part. He'd learned his lesson about invading Lars's personal space unannounced when he caught Lars naked a handful of times—which, you know, if Lars wanted to sleep naked, he had the right to do so in his own damn privacy.

But this morning had been another story altogether; while Lars was distressed and mortified, Strange had been...invested and interested, from his magical scientific perspective. Sure, Lars hadn't missed his concern, as well, but it was like Strange couldn't help himself; like he couldn't reign back his truer intentions for even a minute. Lars didn't expect a lot from him, but also, it's easy to hurt Lars's feelings.

"...I just got this stuff today," Lars says, looking distantly at the ground as he gives a helpless kind of toss of his hand in a loose gesture towards his face. "Wouldn't leave me alone about it."

[atouts]

The excessive curiosity is not surprising in the least.

He makes a mental note of that, perhaps to bring up with Strange later. He's almost positive he'd told the man not to bother the other workers too much regarding their changes, but he's also positive a lot of his warnings had gone right out the other ear. Childermass does offer a nod, as though confirming, yes, that's a normal thing. He won't apologize for Strange. He's not about to mention that he may or may not speak with him about it, either. What he can do, however, is offer some advice, one sane man to another.

"It is, unfortunately, in his nature to be that way, though it was not always as bad as what you've seen here," he says. "The best you can do when he gets that way is either leave or change the topic. Mind, if you go with changing the topic, you'll be stuck listening to him go on about that instead."