Because of the tattoos that split his arms, Lawrence developed a strange form of dissociation. During intimacy (or killing), he sometimes can’t feel his own palms. It feels like his hands are acting on their own—choking, caressing, gripping. Afterwards, he can spend hours just watching his fingers, wiggling them to “prove to himself” that they obey him. This is one reason he avoids tactile contact—he’s afraid his hands will do something he doesn’t want them to.
Lawrence drinks herbal tea, but he never finishes the mug. He always leaves about a sip at the bottom. It’s an unconscious ritual tied to his fear of “completeness.” Finishing the tea feels the same as finishing something in life, putting a period at the end of a sentence. He leaves it unfinished so he has a reason to come back an hour later, when the tea has gone cold and bitter. He likes that bitterness.
He likes physical labor because it shuts off his brain. When his body is exhausted, the voice in his head—the one that keeps going on about emptiness and hatred for people—goes quiet. He deliberately takes the heaviest, most monotonous warehouse work so that by morning he’s worn out enough to fall asleep without dreaming.
He hates the smell of other people. In canon, it’s said he avoids people and finds them deceitful and dangerous. My headcanon: this is made worse by a hypersensitivity to smells (possibly a side effect of the fact that he himself smells like decay). He’s disgusted by perfumes, deodorants, the smell of sweat, the smell of other people’s food. It causes physical revulsion, almost nausea. The only person whose smell he can tolerate (and even find calming) is someone he feels a strong attachment to. But there have been almost no such people.
He’s afraid of dogs. This might seem illogical for someone who kills people, but Lawrence avoids dogs. It goes back to when he was a kid, after he “came back”—a neighbor’s dog started growling and baring its teeth every time it saw him. Animals can sense something wrong in him. Dogs especially. He still crosses the street if he sees one.
He leaves plates and mugs sitting on the table for days, until the food starts to get moldy. Only when there’s a distinct smell and a film of growth does he blankly take them to the sink and wash them. The dirt doesn’t bother him—only the fake cleanliness that pretends to be life bothers him. His perception of “normal” is twisted. Rot feels natural to him. He’s unbothered by the fact that his food spoils faster because of him.
He hates open spaces and instinctively hugs the walls. Even when he’s alone in the woods, he never walks to the middle of a clearing. He always stays along the tree line, brushing his hand against the trunks. In the city, he also walks as close to the walls of buildings as possible, preferring narrow alleys over wide avenues. It’s not fear—it’s a tactile need. He has to feel a boundary, a limit.
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