Jesus ******** christ, life was conspiring to drive zem insane.

At this point, it was easier for Sparrow to lie facedown on the floor, surrounded by spreadsheets and incomprehensible (to anyone else) annotations and scripts and some eight page essay rant on color theory and grab zyr phone to complain about it on the internet than it was to actually take into account just how much work ze still needed to do here. That was the half-consequence of coming back into town and trying to avoid people who'd known zem before ze'd publicly had any nonstandard pronouns (whole ******** shitshow and a half, but that wasn't the point) and still trying to work theatre: sometimes ze got the s**t jobs, which included coming in halfway through a high school's spring musical because they needed someone who'd work lights for cheap and the person they'd had previously had developed an unfortunate family emergency about five states over. So that was how zyr March was going, and how zyr April was shaping up to be; Addams Family but light it like Beetlejuice was, as ze'd very diplomatically not said to the director's face, a ******** stupid idea. No high school theatre deserved that. Not even good high school theatre.

Admittedly, the show was good, but 'winning a Tony for Best Lighting Design' it would not be. That would also require a significantly higher paycheck, not to mention a significantly higher amount of talent on zyr part. Sparrow was good - but ze wasn't exactly Broadway good, not by a goddamn long shot.

"Guys," ze said, rolling over onto zyr back and making sure ze was in the right voice channel, enunciating to land on just the right side of distressedly dramatic chic, "I'm going to ******** die, and you're going to have to arrange my funeral over the internet. I'll make sure all of you get billed. Make sure you can all let me down one last time into my ******** grave."
"Are you being a freak without your caffeine again?"
"Okay, so - so - yes, but that's not the point, the coffee machine broke and the ******** Starbucks two blocks away has an obscene upcharge and you can't seriously expect me to do that whole thing about making gallons of cold brew by hand -"
"We all saw the post! Collectively at least one of us can totally do it, okay, it's like pooling our skills; at least two of us can drive, Viri can do taxes, I bake, Viri also cooks, you can drive..."
"What were we talking about?"
"Cold brew."
"No we weren't."
"Oh you ******** dipshit. Yes we were. Just because you think coffee tastes bad - "
"It does! It does - "
"Says the eboy who's drunk pepsi milk -"
"Jay can fix computers?"
"Where does that come in??"
"I thought we were listing skills?? She can fix computers."
"Just because she's the only idiot here who knows what RAM is, including me, doesn't mean -"
"Heyyyy. Hey hey hey hey hey. Caffeine. Did we forget about the caffeine deficiency?"
"Okay, okay, god, you win, dad. I've got Gamer Drink in the fridge. Don't blow the channel up while I'm gone."

It was Game Fuel, if ze was going to be persnickety about it. Which ze wasn't. Calling it Gamer Drink as shorthand had gone a little too far, and it wasn't even that good, but sometimes one did stupid things for the point of a meme to not go insane. Seeding all those little things into zyr life made for good humor, made for absurdist grounding devices; 'just one more day' worked so perfectly to stay sane, if it was centered around package arrivals, if it was centered around friend birthdays, if it was centered around anything else at all.

So. ******** it. Gamer Drink. Maybe that'd make any of this make sense. And if it didn't -- there was weeks yet to go, and some stress-relief procrastination with friends might help, might aid.