Wolfgang likes to have projects. He's always fixing something — fiddling with the sink, messing with squeaky cabinets, poking at appliances he probably shouldn't be given how often he nearly sets himself on fire. This kind of domesticity plainly makes him happy, and if anything breaks he will leap at the opportunity to learn how to fix it. Sometimes making it worse, at which point he ends up relying on magic to do it, but he prefers to work with his hands. Magic scares him less the more he learns to control it, but it's still unpredictable and chaotic.
He's on the roof a lot — there's a trap door in the hall with foldout stairs that leads up to it, and he's somehow managed to get a recliner and a beat-up old work table up there. He goes up there to smoke — comes back down mellow and hungry — or to do work, the creepy kind. Once he takes a saucepan from the kitchen up there, because he refuses to own anything that could be called "a cauldron."
The 19th is his birthday, he's pretty sure. He goes out drinking, comes back pretty drunk and makes a lopsided cake. He's twenty-two, and he acts happy, but there's a deep anxiety undercutting that beyond how anxious he normally is.
As far as food goes, everything he makes is spicy and rich and he cringes visibly whenever anyone says "exotic" because this was what he ate every day at home, why are people so weird here. He's pretty good at this — "my grandma said anyone old enough to wipe their..." Pause. "...nose is old enough to learn to cook," he explains if asked — but given how erratic his hours are he can't really be relied on to cook meals at regular times normal people eat at. He has his bike fixed finally and every Sunday he goes to the local farmer's market and comes back with bread and honey, which is his favourite. He doesn't eat much himself, picks at everything, gives it to the goats, forgets entirely.
He is extremely vain and it bothers him that people see him in a state less than absolutely pristine, but it's impossible to live with people and not be seen in a dressing gown with unbrushed hair, or having just woken up, or covered in grease from some project or other. He'll live. He spends a lot of free time reading, mostly boring nonfiction from which he takes a lot of notes, but in his room there's a small amount of books that are meant for children, buried underneath his physics and alchemy notes. He owns a copy of Where the Wild Things Are.
That Wolfgang is sick is something he takes pains to conceal, but he's not as discreet as he thinks he is. For one thing, he is constantly sleeping. Half the time he doesn't even make it to his room, but passes out on the couch, feet dangling over one side because he's too long for it, or in the backyard, or on the roof, or — once or twice — on the floor. Weird shit happens all the time when he sleeps; things moving, fixing themselves, doors shifting themselves around, ghosts plainly visible in broad daylight across the street that are gone when he wakes up.
Sometimes he sits very still, not moving, not responding to anything, for hours at a time. He is breathing and can be moved, but limply, like a puppet. He comes back from wherever he goes confused about the passage of time and unable to answer what he was doing. If he's still having seizures, he's not sure, because it happens when he's asleep. He wakes up feeling like he's been hit by a truck and his tongue is sore (his everything is sore), but he doesn't know what happened. There are a lot of times when he's not sure what happened, when it's suddenly a lot later than last he noticed. He'll stand on the edge of the roof staring at the ground hearing a voice in his head and feeling an urge that scares the shit out of him but every time he goes more than three days without an incident he assumes he's cured and everything is fine now and he doesn't need help he's fine.
He's constantly finding empty wine glasses in places he forgot he put them. He drinks a lot.
no subject
He's on the roof a lot — there's a trap door in the hall with foldout stairs that leads up to it, and he's somehow managed to get a recliner and a beat-up old work table up there. He goes up there to smoke — comes back down mellow and hungry — or to do work, the creepy kind. Once he takes a saucepan from the kitchen up there, because he refuses to own anything that could be called "a cauldron."
The 19th is his birthday, he's pretty sure. He goes out drinking, comes back pretty drunk and makes a lopsided cake. He's twenty-two, and he acts happy, but there's a deep anxiety undercutting that beyond how anxious he normally is.
As far as food goes, everything he makes is spicy and rich and he cringes visibly whenever anyone says "exotic" because this was what he ate every day at home, why are people so weird here. He's pretty good at this — "my grandma said anyone old enough to wipe their..." Pause. "...nose is old enough to learn to cook," he explains if asked — but given how erratic his hours are he can't really be relied on to cook meals at regular times normal people eat at. He has his bike fixed finally and every Sunday he goes to the local farmer's market and comes back with bread and honey, which is his favourite. He doesn't eat much himself, picks at everything, gives it to the goats, forgets entirely.
He is extremely vain and it bothers him that people see him in a state less than absolutely pristine, but it's impossible to live with people and not be seen in a dressing gown with unbrushed hair, or having just woken up, or covered in grease from some project or other. He'll live. He spends a lot of free time reading, mostly boring nonfiction from which he takes a lot of notes, but in his room there's a small amount of books that are meant for children, buried underneath his physics and alchemy notes. He owns a copy of Where the Wild Things Are.
That Wolfgang is sick is something he takes pains to conceal, but he's not as discreet as he thinks he is. For one thing, he is constantly sleeping. Half the time he doesn't even make it to his room, but passes out on the couch, feet dangling over one side because he's too long for it, or in the backyard, or on the roof, or — once or twice — on the floor. Weird shit happens all the time when he sleeps; things moving, fixing themselves, doors shifting themselves around, ghosts plainly visible in broad daylight across the street that are gone when he wakes up.
Sometimes he sits very still, not moving, not responding to anything, for hours at a time. He is breathing and can be moved, but limply, like a puppet. He comes back from wherever he goes confused about the passage of time and unable to answer what he was doing. If he's still having seizures, he's not sure, because it happens when he's asleep. He wakes up feeling like he's been hit by a truck and his tongue is sore (his everything is sore), but he doesn't know what happened. There are a lot of times when he's not sure what happened, when it's suddenly a lot later than last he noticed. He'll stand on the edge of the roof staring at the ground hearing a voice in his head and feeling an urge that scares the shit out of him but every time he goes more than three days without an incident he assumes he's cured and everything is fine now and he doesn't need help he's fine.
He's constantly finding empty wine glasses in places he forgot he put them. He drinks a lot.