Seventeen more will bury me [Thoth]

"You're sure you're just hung over?" Lochlann frowned at him. His hand was still on the man's shoulder and he pulled it back.

"I've been hung over. A lot. Like, more often than not," Lochlann said. He wasn't exactly sure where he was going with this. It's not like he missed being hung over--far from it--but he missed the benefits the hang over gave him. He missed feeling safe.

This was Lochlann's favorite kind of hang over. it was the kind of hang over he got when he'd get mad drunk and high until he had spots dance on his vision and he'd just pass out wherever he stood.

"What are you punishing yourself for? Or do you just not know how to stop punishing yourself?" he asked, and then he was surprised he asked. He shook his head.

"I mean, I don't know. I don't think I live here. I've been gone for a really long time, Donnie wasn't clear on what that did to my lease," Lochlann said. "But either way it's going to look really shitty if you die in here."

The look Lochlann gave him was incredulous.

"Right," he said, waving his hand at the man's rather grim smelling, sprawled out form on the floor. "Explain to me what part of this is fun."

The question sounded rhetorical or even sarcastic, but Lochlann was serious. His mouth was set into a firm line.

"It looks an awful lot like a punishment to me, but what do I know?" Lochlann said. He was serious. What did he know? He licked his lips. He was hungry. It was a different place, a different time, but Lochlann wanted to eat him. He wasn't sure if that's what made him want to help him, or if helping him was Lochlann's way of convincing himself he wouldn't eat him.

Lochlann laughed.

it wasn't exactly a warm sound. Lochlann was a monster, and sometimes, his laugh betrayed that. He tossed his head for a second, as if expecting it to move his mop of hair out of his eyes but it didn't.

"How much do you weight?" Lochlann asked him.

Appearances were deceiving on the island, but Lochlann was willing to take a bet that this man weighed, at most, a fourth of what Lochlann actually did.

"I used to drink your body weight in alcohol in a matter of days," Lochlann said. "I did this almost every single day for three years. And then I stopped. So don't tell me I don't know about this."

He shrugged.

"But when i was like this," he motioned to Nicolas. "I wound up in the hospital and it fucking sucked. Have you even been to the hospital on this island? it's a shit show."

"Fuck no, being sober doesn't just happen magically," he said. If it did, juvie island wouldn't be nearly as terrifying as it was. He considered, this, though. Good for him?

He shook his head.

"No," he said. "Being sober sucks, especially in the beginning. Everything is so much...."

He struggled to find the word.

"Noisier," he said.

If he drank as much as Lochlann did, maybe he'd pick up on what Lochlann meant. It was that ever-present tension that being sober brought. The lack of relaxation in the muscles. The inability to effectively tune out what he could on alcohol. That painful lack of numbness.

god, Lochlann missed it.

The sad truth about Lochlann's drinking was that it almost had killed him, and that hadn't even been what made him quit. He didn't consider himself an addict, even though he kept drinking after he was hospitalized for his liver. Truthfully, he didn't really consider this man an addict, either, even if he smelled what Lochlann expected addicts to smell like.

"But it makes you less of a target," Lochlann said. "And right now, you look like I could probably kick your ass. Not that i'm going to. I get the impression that's not normally how you're used to looking. But do you realize how weak this makes you?"

Lochlann was not a good fighter.

He was all instincts and bad decisions. In fights he'd won, it was because Lochlann was fast, and he had a good track record for breaking jaws or bones with a well-placed kick. But someone with actual training would be able to pown him.

Not if Lochlann was sober enough to transform.

They were on an island full of monsters, after all.

When he told Lochlann that he could try, Lochlann just shook his head.

"No thanks man," Lochlann said.

He wasn't that hungry.

Instead, he picked himself up a moment after the man did, recognizing the end of the conversation as it came. He shrugged off his thanks.

"Yeah, no problem," he said. Lochlann hesitated for a moment, and then grabbed the rest of his few items from the room. There wasn't much he actually needed right now, but he wanted the music box on him, and there was a few shirts he was partial to that he'd miss.

"My name is Lochlann, by the way," he said. "If you're ever looking for...I don't know. Whatever. But I'm easy to find."

He wondered if maybe he should have given him Cabel's name instead, but Lochlann still wasn't even sure what exactly it was he wanted from this man. He shook his head and let it go at that.