nightlogs | I Used to Never Wear a Seatbelt Because I Said I Didn't Care [Closed]

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I Used to Never Wear a Seatbelt Because I Said I Didn't Care [Closed]

Who: Dan and Miguel
What: Dan delivers Miguel's clothing
Where: The Pole
When: (in relation to events/plots if needed)
Warnings/Notes: Typical Dan warnings regarding addiction and mental health; Miguel warnings for Spidey and universe collapse.

Almost as soon as they're back from Project Prometheus, Dan's on the move again, dispatched to Moscow to hunt a babayka, and then to Santiago to track the Dogman, and as such it's about a week before he's back at the Pole and ready to address the unfinished business he left behind.

But first, an offering, a way to try and convey that Dan isn't trying to be defensive; he's only trying to explain himself, to lay it out there why he thinks Miguel is wrong, why he isn't just a fuckup who can't be trusted to make good decisions in life-or-death settings, why Miguel - and everyone else Dan's ever met - aren't wrong to have ever placed their trust in his competence and judgment. He makes Miguel's long coat, undershirt and trousers, like he promised.

Dan doesn't sew any passive-aggression into the garments. He feels strongly that sewing while emotional shows in the finished product, and he doesn't want to punish Miguel or escalate the conflict between them, so instead he's diligent and serene as he embroiders, tacks, trims, laces, so on. Each piece hews closely to the drawings he showed Miguel months ago, masterfully-done but simple, wardrobe daily staples instead of anything flashy.

He knocks on Miguel's bedroom door, having not found him in the lab, hoping he isn't waking him but figuring Miguel's probably as nocturnal as he is, based on their trip to Quebec. He has the clothing on a hanger slung over his shoulder, but even so he has to carry the end of the coat, given how long it is and how much taller Miguel is.

"Delivery," he says, armed to greet with a smile.

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“Inappropriate.” He repeats, almost with the inflection of a question.

“You’re allowed to use stronger language, Dan. I’m not going to be offended by it.”

That was such a polite descriptor for what he said. Miguel doesn’t deny he was rough and out-of-line. That wouldn’t be a problem if it was an equal trade, but it was increasingly feeling one-sided for him act his usual way in the face of Dan’s passivity.

Identical to inviting him to fight and getting an infuriating nothing in return, he supposes.

"I don't got any stronger language I want to use." He shrugs again, with his smile getting a bit wider. "Ain't my style, namecalling."

Unless Miguel particularly wants to be berated, Dan doesn't see any point in putting an insult to what he's already conveyed and what Miguel already knows: Miguel was over the line, Dan's feelings were hurt, and they don't intend to repeat that sort of interaction.

"Bunny's like that too, you know. Goes below the belt when he gets freaked out. I learned long before I met either of y'all not to take it too personal." Most of the time it's only half about him and half about a trail of bodies and losses in someone's past.

"Hm."

There was the easy way to respond to that, which was to nonchalantly mention to Dan that he didn't always have to turn the other cheek. Miguel gets combative fully expecting pushback. But Dan's admission of his biases has a way of coaxing out a more earnest response.

"Well, you were one stumble away from getting turned into a torn-up cat toy." he reminds him. "From where I was standing, it was either jump in or see you become collateral."

Mixed in the 'freaking out' was indeed a lot of fear and old, hurting scars. Rough words, even rough actions felt insufficient enough to express the direness of it.

"You were putting all this work and effort into someone else, but you were ignoring the value of your own life. Or, that's what it sounded like."

Miguel isn't convinced he's wrong about that, even if he can acknowledge he shouldn't have handled Dan the way he did.

Dan's mouth tugs to the side in an ambivalent expression. He doesn't want to get too deep into the way he sees himself with Miguel, because it's as difficult to express as it seems to be for others to wrap their heads around. Dan doesn't feel like he truly exists, and as such it's easy to forget he's there. He feels like there's a blindspot in the world if he were to step outside himself, a part of his brain that never caught up with the fact that he escaped a death that for eight years in his youth he thought was so certain, that he feels like any moment now the universe will right itself and he'll be dead as intended.

It just scares people when he talks like that. It doesn't build any sort of understanding.

"I respect that. I know that's what it looked like from your perspective." And that was a part of it; Dan didn't really consider his own safety except as a distance concern, something to de-prioritize in favor of keeping the manticore grounded. "I did have more of a handle on the situation than it looked like."

Maybe Miguel doesn't believe him. When Dan plays it back in his head, he thinks he was pretty in control, but it's possible Miguel knew or saw something Dan didn't, or possible that Dan's engaging in revisionist history to justify a more dangerous move than it would be acceptable to own.

"You still want to try on some new clothes?"

The silence stretches, and Miguel keeps his eyes fixed on Dan, trying to read anything in his face while he thinks. The lack of immediate denial makes him worry, because that means there was some truth in the statement. Clearly, whatever he had gleaned from Dan in that moment wasn't so wrong that he'd be corrected. That's concerning.

His answer to the question comes in delayed, mulling over whether or not he should push Dan on this. The change in topic was an obvious diversion of what must be a difficult topic. He can tell that much. Miguel's expression softens sympathetically, and he finds himself nodding in return.

"Yeah. Let's give it a go."

Off the exit ramp, into an easier conversation. Turning towards the neat set of clothes on his bed, he moves to slip the loose top off his body. Dan had seen him in his suit, so there's no surprises in the contours - only that the injuries he had sustained over several missions had disappeared under the tide of his body's healing. Not even scars were left.

All that remains is a thinly-lined diamond shape on his back, sitting in the center dip of the musculature of his shoulders. It could have been mistaken for a tattoo, if it weren't for the groove that looked more like a machine-like seam.

Edited 2024-05-18 01:15 (UTC)

Dan averts his eyes and, if he can't resist sneaking a peek, at least makes it very subtle that he's doing anything but checking some of the scabs on his own hands, the ever present wounding and healing cycle he goes through from his bad habit of biting his knuckles and fingers. But he does sneak a peek and sees the shape and the unmarked skin and the comely form that matches about what he anticipated, from measuring over Miguel's suit.

He doesn't ask about the shape. If Miguel wants him to know, Miguel will say so, and to question it would be to give away that he's casting glances.

The shirt and pants are intended to be staples - neutral smoke-grey and black, easy to launder, slow to absorb odors, hard to wrinkle, the sort of clothing that could be thrown in a duffel bag or slept in without becoming too unkempt. The coat is more elaborate, double-breasted with resin buttons Dan made himself, padded with warm blue lining, sleek matte black on the outside. It was many tens of hours of work, but Dan considers that tens of hours not being bored and stuck inside his own head. It was fun to make. He takes pride and enjoyment in his crafts.

He runs his thumb gently over the fabric, more preoccupied with the texture than whether or not Dan was looking at him. Between all the maintenance around his suit and the necessity to be stripped down in a lab or medical context, near-nudeness doesn't cross his mind as a particular issue. He is still used to having Lyla shadow him everywhere, after all.

The old clothes are set aside neatly on the bed; Miguel's mannerisms are all coldly meticulous, as usual. The pants are slipped on first, sitting in a flattering manner over his hips. Shirt in one hand, he takes a closer look at the coat. The pattern is subtle on the dark colors and dim light of his room, but he sees it clear as day.

"You put a lot of work into this." he sounds impressed as he finally turns to address Dan.

The front of him has more of a map of his past life. A faded scar at the collarbone, making its mark long before he had any healing power. Precise, engraved circles at the base of the forearms where he used to have wetware engines for silk. The taper of fine hair down his center line and limbs seems to be the most human quirk of him, softening out the sharp forms of his body.

And then he feels the weight of guilt, for acting so cruelly even as Dan toiled away on the gift for him. "The pattern is quite graceful."

"Thank you. Would could make my dad happy to hear that. He taught me how to do it."

Dan doesn't find what he sees unpleasant at all; that which isn't traditionally handsome is, to Dan, intriguing and unique, imbued with the sort of mystery that begs someone to lean in and ask questions. The markings on Miguel's body, except for the faded scar on his collarbone, are so different than Dan's scarring, which is jagged and organic. Miguel's almost seems refined, and certainly the result of some sort of intention.

"Glad to see the pants sit on you good." If Miguel wants to read flirting into Dan's voice, he wouldn't necessarily be wrong, but it can be hard to hear in Dan's flat, blunt, quiet timbre. There's only so neutral Dan's trying to keep himself when eyeballing the waistband of Miguel's pants means following the body hair softly waterfalling down Miguel's abs.

"Ain't nothing I need to modify for any of your superpower augmentations, do I? For easy access or ventilation or nothing?" That's as close as Dan will get to directly asking about the different marks and shapes. It's an invitation for Miguel to explain or for Miguel to shrug it off and close that door.

He mirrors Dan's glance downwards before meeting him eye to eye. Whether or not he could read the flirtatious color to it, he seems to be comfortable with what was all rather intimate to start with. Miguel doesn't mind the thought of Dan spending an extra second to look at him.

"You measured everything well." he adds, wishing to credit Dan's part. The pants were quite comfortable and matched his proportions perfectly. What more could he ask for?

Whatever-it-is ends on Miguel's part when he slips on the shirt to answer Dan's question. The coat follows, sitting easily on his shoulders and draping down. He tests the shoulders a bit - carefully - mostly seeing how much give he has with unusually flexible joints.

"No, this all works fine." he says, businesslike as he adjusts the lapels. "What you probably saw was the control implant for my suit. A suitable replacement for organic webbing would need to be intuitive. So, I guess you could say it's a part of me."

For the convenience of controlling lightweb like he did the silk. And because he doesn't ever see himself retiring.

"You held still long enough for me to do it right." Dan winks, and he's fairly pleased with how the outfit falls along Miguel's body. It gives him a lot of flexibility and warmth. Dan selected the fabrics and customized the design with mobility and function in mind, and the work is built to last. All Dan's clothing is. As a farm kid growing up without any real contact with the outside world, his outfits had to be sturdy and reliable, and so that's what he learned.

"So you kind of think how you want it to move, and it does? We'd might could mistake that for magic in my world."

He grins a little wider, this time until that missing tooth shows.

"I'm too afraid of commitment for even so much as a tattoo. I admire your ability to invest in your body like that." He taps his forearm. "Those ring shapes part of that too?"

"Yes. That's where the - we'll call it the machinery to make silk grew in. Not a pleasant experience. I was just thankful it didn't end up elsewhere."

The whole process of his mutation had been so life-altering and terrifying, he always took it with a little humor. He even manages to laugh to himself a little, something subdued and caught on a breath.

"Spider silk is all protein, so you can imagine what the cravings were like. I would call it a quality of life improvement to have the implant instead."

He remembers how absurd it felt to be hit with the subsequent changes over that fateful week. As if to test it, or maybe demonstrate a little 'magic' to Dan, he flexes his hand and summons his suit over it and the subesequent arm. It slots in neatly under the clothes, with no discernable difference to the silhouette.

The joke gets a chuckle out of Dan.

"May I?" He approaches, reaching out to touch Miguel's suit over his forearm gently, inquisitively, softly. He's felt Miguel's suit before when Miguel pulled him away from the manticore, but that was in the moment and he had other things on his mind. Now he feels it under his fingertips, the texture and the warmth.

"It hurt, didn't it?" It's not that it looks like it did. It's just that the way Miguel seems to relate to his augmentations seems loaded. Dan thinks Miguel's at a sort of uneasy peace with his current physiology, a balancing of practicality and power and something close to shame or regret. "I'm sorry. How long have you had the implant?"

“The splicing? Not as much pain as you’d expect.”

He casts an even look as Dan approaches, nodding yes to his question. For how different his insides were after the accident, he supposes it was surprisingly painless.

“It was more like an itch that couldn’t be scratched. And then you wake up, and your body is different in some new way while still trying to puzzle out how it works.”

Horror and wonder and disgust all at once. The hand remains palm-up, tolerant of the exploration. The weave would not have much unusual texture to it. Just the invisible bump of micro-threads held together and a light tingle of something energized. The surface reacts to Dan like a skin, or maybe an exoskeleton would be a better comparison, glowing gently at the point of contact.

“It’s been a while now since I’ve had it. The replacement was at least a change that happened because I wanted it to.”

Edited 2024-05-23 01:50 (UTC)

"Not all hurt's pain." Dan runs his fingertip down Miguel's palm like he's reading his lifeline. Horror and disgust are hurt too. "Especially when you don't want it to happen."

He steps back and straightens the sleeve of the coat, looking at where it falls along Miguel's wrist, feeling the sense of static electricity as he pulls away.

"I don't mean to stare. It's just fascinating to look at. It's something I ain't seen before." And Dan finds just about everyone fascinating in some way or another. Everyone has some detail that could transfix him, some part of them he wants to know more about. Miguel's just got more of that on the surface than some.

His hand grasps gently at Dan’s as he pulls away. It isn’t a firm hold, just an invitation to stay there if he wanted to.

“That was more than a decade ago. Whatever hurt I felt had plenty of time to fade."

Miguel doesn't want Dan to worry about him, or pity him. His metamorphosis had been rougher than many of the others, but more severe sufferings were out there. Beyond that, he’s managed his condition to the point where he’s carved out a comfortable, if lonely existence.

The second layer of hard-light disappears with a flicker of threads, leaving just the shimmer of his palm and the soft layer of his fingertips keeping the talons sheathed.

"There were times where I considered fixing my condition altogether, but came to the realization that it’d feel more alien to live unaltered than not."

So, here he is. He finds he doesn't mind the attention. Dan's curiosity was nicer than being feared, or his own half-detached acceptance of the quirks of his body.

Dan senses the invitation for continued intimacy and while he doesn't step back in, he doesn't pull further away, either.

"I wouldn't could know how long it takes hurt to fade."

People always tell Dan it just takes time to process things, that eventually it won't feel as close to the bone as it does now. After twenty-odd years, Dan doesn't know if he believes them. Dan always feels like every horrible thing that's happened to him happened so recently that he hasn't even started to process it, hasn't even let it sink in enough to be real.

When he and his little brother found his mother's body, he didn't let himself feel the horror of it because he had to get his sibling away, so somehow made some decision to feel it all later, used what he had to get done to shove it all out of the forefront of his mind. And then it all just kept adding up, losing his home and losing his father and losing his siblings and losing his daughter, and he kept shoving it away with needing to keep it together, needing to get to the next thing, with drugs and alcohol and chasing monsters and dangerous sex, with lives at stake.

And now it's there, out of the corner of his eye all the time, at his back, crushing the air out of him, and he doesn't even know how to turn and face it and feel it. Some part of it doesn't feel real, and so he worries that he can't survive feeling it in full, feeling it for real. It hasn't gotten easier as time has gone by. It's just gotten heavier, like a bridal train dragging in mud, like an anchor in sandy shallows, and it doesn't feel any more remote than it did the day it all started.

"I'm glad it all feels like home to you now." Dan reaches up and taps the back of his own neck with his palm. "You might could have heard folks talking about the Rig. That was a place some of us got kidnapped to in another dimension, and they put shock collars in our necks."

He turns and tilts his head forward so Miguel can see the scar along his cervical spine. "I must have could acclimated, because I feel its absence more than I ever felt it. It feels like being back to an unaltered body should could feel natural and organic, but instead it just feels...I don't know. Alien's not quite the right word to me, but it's close."

He touches Miguel's hand again. "Yours is prettier than a shock collar, though."

"It depends on the hurt."

He doesn't pretend to know how deeply Dan's particular flavor of it had taken root in him, spreading its tendrils throughout his thoughts and his everyday mannerisms. What Miguel knew was enough to understand why he'd feel haunted for the rest of his life. Misfortune seemed to always be hounding him in the stories he's glimpsed of Dan's past.

The mention of the shock collars incites a tension through his face that may be recognized as a subdued anger on his behalf. There was nothing to be done about it now, so it remains choked at ground level where it sprouted. Miguel lets the lines of his face soften when Dan's fingers brush his palm again.

All the odd little tactile differences are more subtle, hidden by an appearance that seemed unsuspicious at first or second inspection. The parts that glimmered brightly had more texture to them; more grooves, a rougher sandpaper bite if stroked at the wrong angle. Invisible structures for amplifying touch, and to a more limited extent, adhesion.

And of course, the claws might fold out at the right cajoling of the tendons. Something that needed to withstand all the force in the altered muscles of his arms wouldn't be easy to manipulate, but Miguel can relax a bit to accomodate if he wished.

"It took a long time for it to feel that way. The physical hurt is always the quicker one to adjust and heal over." he says, mulling over how long it took him to disabuse himself of his desire to 'fix' himself once and for all.

Dan traces Miguel's lifeline again, then gently presses his fingertips against the grain, feeling the little bit of bite there. "This is how you cling to surfaces, huh? It's so...elegant."

It's subtle, it feels organic yet intentional, it's artful. Dan sees a beauty there. He goes back to stroking Miguel's palm with the grain.

"How long?" He tugs the end of Miguel's sleeve and follows the line of the cloth up to Miguel's shoulder, making a satisfied face. He doesn't think there's much in the way of tailoring he needs to do. "And what was it that changed your feelings?"

His thumb touches over the scarred tissue of Dan’s knuckles, glancing down at their hands together. Something about the reciprocity of it made this unexpectedly nice rather than feeling like a lab rat under observation.

The story of Dan’s life doesn’t disappear within a few days of rest, which is what holds his attention. It’s still there on his body, if he looks carefully.

“At the start, I swore I’d find a way to reverse my condition. And in the meantime, I would try to do good with the hand I was played.”

So it began. Life had a way of panning out differently.

“The longer I spent fulfilling that, the less of my old life remained to justify going back. Too much was sacrificed to just give up.”

As badly as he craved that respite of a regular life, or maybe his dream of one, he couldn’t do it. Using a cure now felt like cheating, like making all the previous struggles not important.

“A few years down the line, retiring just doesn’t feel like an option anymore.”

"People don't retire in my line of work. They don't live long enough." Maybe that adds some context for Miguel to why Dan makes the decisions he does in the field, or what attracted him to it in the first place, aside from the right skillset and a motivation to understand those which average people seek to dehumanize. "The folks that live long enough to age out of the field all got life paths I can't get to."

Sitting behind a desk doing dispatch and research isn't an option for Dan. The world doesn't have much room for someone like him once their looks and athleticism fade, and Dan feels like that's increasingly true in a world of accelerating technology and background checks and paperwork and certifications. He was never good at envisioning the future, and it feels as if the world doesn't envision one for him either aside from an early grave.

He traces some of his own scars on his hands and forearms, noticing how Miguel's eyes are following them. "Those are cuts for blood sacrifices. That's a hellcat bite. That's from a harpy. That's gunpowder. That's just a table saw I got careless with."

He wants to tap Miguel's chest to knock on the heart there. "Doing good with the hand we're played is why you and me always seem able to get back to getting along, I reckon. Same goals. Same values."

Dan will find him tolerant of the extra touch. Fair game in their mutual perusing of each other. His gaze glows with a calm, wine-like burgundy as he follows Dan's fingers up the scars of his arms, letting his thumbs sit gently at the scarred knuckles.

Miguel doesn't find it impossible to believe that an older version of Dan would continue plugging away at one of his many accumulated skills, even if Dan doesn't seem to believe that. So his plan was to keep throwing himself at monsters until one near-death escape goes wrong, huh?

"So, what happens if Plan A fails?" he asks."You graduate to being one of the greybeards. What would you want to do then?"

He doesn't expect Dan to have a structured plan. He just wants Dan to let himself imagine a future, even if it seems fantastical.

Dan doesn't like hearing it called a plan. It isn't a plan. It's a passive wish, some sort of gravity pulling on the trajectory of his life.

"If Plan A fails, I better hope to God Bunny don't divorce me," he says with a laugh, trying to deflect and pull the conversation out of the dark. He neither needs nor wants Miguel to see Dan's work as a means to a grisly end. That Dan's infatuation with death has influenced his decisions doesn't mean his driving motivation isn't a genuine concern for the wellbeing of others, a desire to use the skills he has to protect and understand, a foundation of deeply-held principle.

He doesn't want Miguel to lose sight of that and to think that Dan's just using heroism and adventure as a slow-motion suicide attempt. He's already had to earn Miguel's trust back.

He makes an amused noise in his throat, whether it be from the joke or recognizing his attempt to deflect was unclear. Still, it didn't have to be a grim conversation to get to the same point.

"Let's hope not." he says, maintaining steady eye contact with Dan, searching his face for whatever answer he was trying to twist away from.

"You've never entertained what quieter years might look like? Even the pessimists have their pipe dreams in there, somewhere."

Dan's face gives little away. He doesn't like the direction this conversation has taken. He doesn't like having to try and put words to that strange sense of distance he has from the rest of the world, but he's good at masking discomfort, and that's what he does now as he lays it out fairly bluntly.

"No, I ain't. I had a dead-by date of twenty-four years old when I was younger, so I reckon I just lost the capacity to think ahead like that. Didn't see the point in envisioning a future I weren't never going to get to, so I forgot how to do it."

So it isn't pessimism; it's a lack of foresight entirely.

"So, now I'm fifteen years past that expiration date and I ain't ever set myself up for success, so it's a damn stroke of luck that I got folks that love me enough to see me through anyway."

"You should give yourself more credit. It's hard to dislike the whole of you, even with the aggravating parts." he adds, meeting honesty with honesty. For what it's worth, Miguel doesn't seem to judge him for the answer.

"I won't pretend to know what that is like," he begins, letting Dan's hand warm up in his grasp as long as he'll tolerate it. "In my base, monitoring the threads of a hundred futures was just a swipe away. It can be easy to get lost in it if you look too deep."

Barring their vastly different upbringings, perhaps that explained the obsession. Past, Present, Future - it was on his mind quite often. Not just his own, but the fates of many others and their fractally branching consequences. It wasn't easy to keep a balance.

"I don't have a retirement plan. I still daydream about it from time to time, though."

He knows better than to act on that yearning.

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