He HATED being ordered around. It was his least favorite thing in the world, even below playing stupid games with no point (re: gobstones) and listening to idiots talk. Taking orders and Lanse were two very incompatible things.
And the money? It wasn't good enough. Yet.
"They succeeded. Damn." He sat down on the couch and leaned his head back on the arm of it, staring at the ceiling in that dazed way that often accompanied sleep deprivation. And then he started muttering. "did you know that sleep deprivation severely handicaps the body of its ability to process glucose? It can also cause hand tremors, hyperactivity, hypertension, irritibility---" he stopped before he went through the entire rest of the alphabet.
When she walked back in, however, he was still rattling things off in a monotone, as if he'd repeated the passages from his textbook aloud to himself far too many times. Sleep deprivation can also result in reduced cortisol secretion the following day. Long-term it can cause adrenal insufficiency as a result of such idiopathic hypersomnia."