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

Entry tags:

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"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.

That gets a laugh out of Dan, given both how aware he is of his own flaws and how Miguel's own aggravating parts have played out in their short but remarkable friendship. "I'm pretty irresistible that way."

Maybe this has been a factor in their conflicts more than Dan thought, Miguel's entwinement with the metaphysics and topic of time itself and Dan's difficulty fitting any of it in his head. Dan can't imagine a future, dodges reflecting on the past in terror, feels like the immediate present is a temporary shelter from the horrors of what's behind him and the void in front of him.

It took him many years to realize that there was this fundamental difference between how he experienced something as basic and omnipresent as time itself and how others experience it.

"I try to avoid thinking about it all. I can't couldn't do what you do, and I can't hardly wrap my head around it, so I reckon it's easy for me not to realize what it's like to engage with those problems every day." And how it could put someone like Miguel on a hair trigger about certain issues. "If we still know each other when we get too old to chase ghosts and pull burning babies out of buildings, I'll sew the elbow patches onto your tweed sportcoat at the nursing home with all the other old folks."

Dan would rather die than get that dependent, but that, too, is something he doesn't think that hard about, obscured in shadow as it is.

"It's hard to relinquish control, though." He suspects that's why Miguel doesn't consider retiring. Not that others can't step up - Miguel's indicated some trust in some of the other Spiders - but that it's hard to turn that trust into abandon.

The laugh melts away more of that unyielding wall of his, because even Miguel had a human half that could be charmed. In brief moments, he could allow himself to temporarily forget all the lofty, abstract things he always worried about. Yes - the nascent friendship was there, even through all the aggravations.

"I do have a map of the multiverse." he reminds him. "Once this is all sorted out, I would like to see what you are up to from time to time."

It was nice to imagine a freedom like that, how it used to be in the beginning. Infinite possibilities. Sometimes, that meant pretending that things will be all right in the end, for a little bit.

"Besides, Nueva York's sense of fashion is the opposite of yours. I'm not sure if I could find the right tailor to maintain this. "

"Mi casa es siempre su casa...o, eféctivo, la casa de mi esposo es siempre su casa."

Because Dan doesn't really have anything he needs to get back to in his world. His daughter's dead; his home was a sequence of stolen and subsequently impounded cars over the last decade. His family is alive, but because of the way the time travel shook out, he can never risk seeing them, never risk them coming anywhere near him, never risk them even knowing he's sharing a universe with them, without their potential deletion.So he's moved in with Bunny at the Warren when he isn't here at the Pole, trying to forge a path forward when he never thought he'd have to.

"I'd be right honored if you kept and used it enough to need to call on me to fix it up someday." His grin is entirely genuine. He sees Miguel as a friend. He sees a lot of the same traits in Miguel as he does in Bunny - the diligence, the self-possession, the quickness to judge, the sense of purpose that sometimes gets misdirected into aggression - and that isn't a bad thing, but Miguel occupies a distinct space in Dan's social galaxy now too.

"Since you know more about this than I ever might could, I do got a question for you about multiverses. Don't worry, it ain't because I'm planning nothing."

"And I might have an answer." he replies, the banter coming more easily. "Though, I'm still picking up on new information here, myself."

Dan staying in another universe permanently - Miguel had questions about it, obviously, but he didn't seem to find the concept egregious. It seems like Dan and Bunny had stayed together for a time now and the world is still intact. If his own equipment were still working, he'd want to travel there and double check. Just in case.

Providing shelter in Nueva York had shown itself to be safe - or, at least safe enough to keep his paranoia in check. For the agents whose universes glitched out and had nowhere else to go, it was their only option. And given Dan's meddling in his timeline...

"Ain't no worries if you don't got an answer. I been operating for a while on not having an answer. Won't could kill me to keep doing it." But there is a worried tension to his face, and he absentmindedly picks at a scab on his knuckle.

"This is my third time getting pulled into a universe that ain't mind without warning or consent. I got lucky that the first time, I didn't have anything worth salvaging about my life back home."

But now he does. He has a home when he went for decades without one, a spouse whose absence would destroy him, friends whose wellbeing he's invested in, including Miguel.

"Every time it's with a different bunch of folks, but I been lucky and Bunny and Stacia and Cammie and Price have always been part of it. I'm just..." Dan sighs and breaks eye contact. "I'm terrified it's going to happen again and I'll be the only one pulled, or one of them will get pulled without me and I won't never could know what happened to them, or..."

He isn't going to go so far as to ask Miguel how he could stabilize himself, because for all he knows, that's just as dangerous as meddling with the timeline, and he doesn't want to go down that road with Miguel again. But the potential of being separated from the people he's overcome so much anxiety and self-sabotage to love haunts him.

"Is there a way to know if it'll happen again?" Dan's voice breaks slightly.

Edited 2024-06-10 04:56 (UTC)

His hands slip away from Dan's and rest at his hips as Miguel burrows through his thoughts for a moment. Frankly, despite figuring he'd managed to form a decent map of his end of the multiverse and expanded it outwards, there were still unknowns. Too many for his liking.

"Your situation is unusual." he admits. "Surprise jumps from one universe into another would be identified as an anomaly back home. Anomalies tend to be completely random in where they are drawn from and dumped off."

But when it happens three times, with the same individuals, its natural to want to see some kind of pattern. He doesn't know what it could mean. It could very well all be random acts of gods or complete accidents, like with the Collider. The lot of them just found themselves lucky. Or unlucky, perhaps.

"It seems like worlds in trouble just like to call you over." he says lightly, admitting he didn't know. Miguel addresses his watch, summoning the orange screens with a few taps at the wrist.

"I have your signature, if it's of any comfort. When I get access to my base again, Lyla is quite good at tracking someone who's been misplaced out there."

'Tracking anomalies' seems a little callous to say, so he avoids it.

Dan finds himself torn between a kneejerk, bone-deep desire to reject any surveillance whatsoever and the knowledge that this is Miguel's offer to try and assuage some of Dan's fears. Logically, it makes sense that this would be a practical benefit to consider, no matter how much the idea of being tracked down makes Dan's stomach turn.

"It'd be nice to be tracked by someone who don't want to torture me to death for once."

Dan says that as if he's making a joke, but there's only so lighthearted he can make himself sound when discussing this hard topic and thinking of how he came to this point, of why being followed from afar like that feels threatening. He also has the sense, based on what he knows of Miguel's world and the priorities the Spiders have, that maybe he isn't totally wrong to feel threatened.

But he was hoping Miguel would be able to give him a definitive answer and a plan, and he knows, intellectually, that this is the next best thing, so he's grateful.

"I'll keep my prayers up that don't no one go missing, myself included, before you get your base back. I just, I know what I would could do if one of them were to die. But if we get separated, I reckon the only thing in my capacity would be to just hope that it's temporary, and hoping ain't my strong suit."

Hm. Distress. He picks up that Dan isn’t quite so comforted by the thought, and fishes for a better way to rephrase things…

“I’m limited until I can crack building portals here, but if we’re allowing ourselves to daydream… I could make you a goober to send messages.”

He covers the watch with his hand, dismissing the screens of data. Nothing like his own watch, of course, for the sake of his own peace of mind. But a little multi-dimensional Nokia Phone. That could work. He could even put a game of Snake onto it.

“It can be like a signal flare. So if you need me to come over, I’ll know.”

That way Dan has input, and it isn’t just him being tracked and surveilled at some unknown time from some nebulous, unseeable nowhere.

That clearly sits a lot better with Dan, and he stops picking at that scab on his knuckles. "That'd give me a lot of peace of mind. It keeps me up at night."

Dan feels like he's about to crawl out of his skin every second of the day that he isn't too deeply intoxicated to feel anything but drunk or high, talking himself out of worst-case scenarios, and this concern has been one that's so hard to uproot because he understands it so little. He doesn't know why he keeps getting chosen to wake up some days in wholly different universes, but he feels a sense of powerlessness that's plagued him his entire adult life amplified. Dan's always felt, to some degree, like his life trajectory was derailed and has been determined by forces far beyond his ken, like things just happen to him without his input, and since getting snatched that sense of a lack of agency has gotten louder.

He'll cling to even the slightest sense of control like a lifeline.

"It ain't that I don't trust you to know where I am." At the very least, he assumes that Miguel wouldn't use that knowledge for ill, although he suspects Miguel wouldn't hesitate to use that knowledge in ways Dan disagreed with if Miguel saw it as important. He rubs the scar on the back of his neck. "I just got a bad history with being tracked, and then with the electric collars...I really do appreciate that you hear me out when I get gunshy about stuff like this."

He knows it isn't always easy to do.

"One of the original goals of the Spider Society was to keep all our agents connected." he says. "Going on missions was always optional."

He understands Dan's anxiety. After knowing there were people out there that understood and cared about him, it would be quite isolating to get cut off.

"Maintaining double-lives in our home universes made things lonely, as you can expect. There didn't seem to be any harm in letting someone know they always had people looking out for them, if they needed it."

Things got more complicated from there, especially with regards to Miles... But in the brief moments he allows himself to be optimistic, he remembers the positive aspects of what he helped build. The things that felt less like a burden.

"That sounds nice. Real nice. I ain't had nobody looking out for me since I was a kid, not until the last few years, so it's an adjustment, but it's nice. I'm sure it is for the Spiders, too."

Dan for so long was someone nobody would miss, detached from social connections, and it does feel nice to know he has someone at his back, but terrifying, too. It makes him feel dependent and vulnerable in a way loneliness didn't. Loneliness was his to control. Loneliness kept his world small and on a tight leash, an ecosystem cramped enough for him to build walls around it.

He pivots again.

"Well, since the clothes seem to could fit you good, any other wardrobe pieces you're hankering for?"

"For them, yes. Many of the new arrivals are maybe a year or two into getting their powers. Aside from similar company, some guidance eases the more frightening parts of our work."

It looks like Dan was warming up to the idea of being part of a group, himself. It took a while for solo actors to properly settle into it. At the question, he holds his chin pensively. Sure, he had some things he missed, but asking Dan to build it from scratch made the ask feel rather involved.

"Hm. Nothing specific comes to mind. I suppose we will eventually be encountering some hot weather." he muses, keeping his eyes on Dan to see if that caught his interest at all.

"Most folks get their powers young, right? Teens?" Dan suspects that some teenagers might take to Miguel's brand of do-as-I-say about as well as Dan did, but he's just speculating.

Miguel's next thought does perk Dan up; he takes Miguel's suggestion as evidence that the door isn't closed on their friendship, that they've done a decent job repairing it with this conversation today. "I could put you together something that breathes. Lightweight shirt, pants with some flex to them. It didn't could occur to me to do something for warm weather given, you know."

He gestures with his nose towards the window, where snow is still dumping down, as it seemingly always is.

"Yeah." he sighs, fully aware of the hassle of getting Teenagers to Follow Rules. "They have enough angst about feeling misunderstood by the world before their powers, so..."

A support system of people in similar straits, the core of which could lend their experience and structure. Risky for his more paranoid side, but the kind gesture seemed harmless enough to avoid disturbing the delicate balance of the web.

He doesn't miss the change in Dan's expression, and reacts with an endeared sort of softness. Yes, asking for summer clothes on the North Pole would be absurd, but they'll eventually have to venture somewhere a little warmer.

"I can't give a timeline for your watch, studying this dimension has been slow going without my usual equipment." he adds. "But how would you feel about a proper tour of the lab? The map displays better in there."

If Dan was going to continue to give him nice things, he'll put in the effort to make it reciprocal.

"Teenagers are hard. I got a way with the, but I reckon it won't surprise you that I got my weaknesses at enforcing rules and limitations." He couldn't get his younger siblings to stop drinking themselves to death, for example; they were all cursed to die anyway, and he was the biggest drunk out of any of them, so why would they listen to him?

He's already plotting summer clothing for Miguel, lightweight, breathable, sweat-wicking.

"I'd love that." Dan actually feels daunted and intimidated by Miguel's lab, but he isn't about to turn down a gift. "So long as you don't mind me asking stupid questions the whole way."

"You're welcome to ask whatever comes to mind." he adds, wanting to emphasize that Dan shouldn't feel lesser for not immediately understanding his world. It was a cryptic labyrinth of overly-specific expertise, and even Miguel missed having Lyla to help him wade through it. Plus, he was a scientist. Explaining himself was just part of the job.

"Very few of our recruits came in knowing the ins and outs of the multiverse." he reminds him. "And I don't believe you've met Catalina."

Unless Stacia had mentioned her. He found the presence of the spiderbot made his space a little more welcoming.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject