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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"It's open." he says dryly.

A glint of red thread illuminates the floor gap of the bedroom door as it's tugged open with a web. Miguel's expression starts cold, but turns into surprise upon seeing the clothes in Dan's hands. He had expected that particular promise to be shelved indefinitely with the first argument at the stables. It'd be reasonable to Miguel if Dan lost interest in making a labor-intensive gift for someone he kept butting heads with.

He stands up, in the middle of a fruitless attempt to sleep by putting on something casual and being away from his dozens of self-assigned tasks. Dan had caught him before he gave up and made his way back to his lab. The luck of good timing.

"You finished it."

He can't entirely hide the disbelief in his voice, but knows better than to ask why. Dan had some mysterious and bottomless well for kindness that Miguel could never quite understand. So there he was, with another gift.

"I did. I need you to try them on so I can finish any adjustments." He went off a fairly thorough inventory of Miguel's measurements, but people's sizes shift and Dan always has to approximate just a bit because he doesn't write down numbers exactly. He steps into the room, eyes casting over to see if the ofrenda is still there. "I got pants, a shirt and a coat for you. I have a sweater that needs a few more days too, but I figured it'd be better to bring these over rather than leaving us to stew."

Which is to say Dan is here with the intention of actually addressing the tension between them. He goes ahead and names it as he hands the coat over to Miguel. He names it.

"You know, typically when I ain't get along with someone, they just don't never see me again. What you're seeing here is personal growth." He may as well be upfront with the flaws he knows he has before trying to contextualize the ones he feels aren't applicable.

"On my base, I had the convenient option of booting problems to their home dimensions. So it looks like we're both going to have to deal with each other."

The admission doesn't inspire much confidence from Miguel.

Behind him, the ofrenda is still there - Miguel still didn't have pictures nor artifacts (nothing physical was left from that part of his life) - just the memories and the carvings of a hobby from a happier yesterday. The puzzle box still held its spot. The faintly glowing white marigold had yet to wilt - he never did explain how he got that. Hidden away from all the digital webs, claws and steel, a soft thing remains.

His eyes close to avoid looking at Dan and saying something he'll regret, hating that burning hostility was so easy to fall back on. He could talk shop just fine, but he didn't feel like he deserved to have Dan treat him like a friend. Pushing him away was less painful to do.

"Are you sure you want to give this to me? I'm not in the best mood to talk."

An out. In case Dan really preferred to just cut his losses and leave.

"Back home, I usually just threw everything I owned in the car and drove until a few hours past I stopped recognizing the scenery." So that makes two of them being avoidant.

Dan steps back but doesn't leave. He tucks his hands into his pockets and fingers some lint that's collected at the bottom. He noted the ofrenda, the flower, the puzzle box that hasn't been tossed in the trash or thrown against a wall.

"Are you in a bad mood to talk because it's a bad time right now, or because it's with me?" If it's just a matter of timing, Dan can respect that, but if it's something inherent to both of them then there won't be a better opportunity to hash things out.

And they need to hash things out. They have to be able to work together, because this certainly isn't the last time they'll be asked to, and if Miguel wants to relegate Dan to being a civilian then he's squandering a resource.

"Regardless, I ain't about to withhold the only casual clothing in the Pole that's tailored to your shoulders and your waist."

Well, it looks like Dan was sticking around. His lips press together as he mulls over his answer, investigating a blank corner he has been meaning to decorate all the times he's sat on the bed. The plans never ended up solidifying.

"I'm still frustrated with you." he manages to say. "With your disregard of your own safety."

He opts for the simple truth. Even if he were to get his wish to keep Dan benched unless they absolutely needed him, they would still need to be on good enough terms to collaborate with each other. Before the manticore, it felt like their hiccups had been rather minor. The normal trappings of learning to fight together.

"Let's talk first, and then we can discuss measurements." he adds thinly.

If he doesn't mind letting Dan get close after the fact, if Dan even wants to get close to him in the first place, he supposes he can call their 'clearing of the air' successful. He at least reaches forward to accept the clothing and set it neatly on the nearly undisturbed duvet of the bed.

"I know. And I regret giving you reason to be frustrated. If I'd have could communicated better what I were doing, maybe you wouldn't have could thought I was just disregarding my safety to prove myself or gamble or...well, those were the ways you told me you interpreted it."

And Dan sat and thought on that for a while, and kept coming back to the fact that he didn't think the situation was out of control, but can tell that Miguel did and understands why. That took the teeth out of his hurt, and his hurt was never anger.

"I know more about wrangling big animals than you, I reckon. I went in aware of all the angles it could might hit me from, and I was minimizing that by staying under its throat. It cut me up a little, but it didn't have much of an angle to get a real clear shot at me, and it was working. I was getting it relaxed. It didn't even reach me on the next kick, and that was after you moving the dumpster set me back by startling it."

Unlike Miguel, Dan doesn't expect this to go so poorly that he'll have to abort finishing the clothing properly. He doesn't ask of he can sit on the bed, but he does lean against the desk in the room.

"I been doing this a long time, Miguel. There was a time I would have could run in guns blazing and been a liability. I don't know how to get you to see that I ain't been like that for years. This weren't about suicide or boldness."

"You did run in, Dan. You ran in when I tied it up and was focusing its attention on me. You completely disregarded your safety when it wasnt necessary."

That's where the most egregious and reckless decision took place. One Dan seems to be conveniently leaving out - or, maybe he just didn't see it. There was a whole beginning half to the fight flouting his insistence to be careful that seemed to line up perfectly with throwing himself bodily at a rampaging beast. For what? For the rush of adrenaline?

"You're not chasing monsters on your own, anymore. When you get within killing distance of something, it becomes my problem whether you like it or not."

If he dies, that then becomes a failure on Miguel's part to save him. He already has too much of that on his conscience. Far too much.

"I'm not going to come back here and explain to your loved ones that you got mauled practicing your cat-whisperer skills, and that I sat back and watched it happen."

Dan resists the urge to fold his arms. That would relay a level of defensiveness and even insolence that he doesn't think would further this at all. Instead he digs his thumb into one of the chew-marks in his hand, taken from his pocket and tucked behind his back.

"You didn't trust me to do it right. This was a failure on both of us, as much as one can be when everyone got out alive and well." If their ability to work together is the casualty, that's still a loss that they have to carry forward. "You got to trust that folks besides you know what they're doing. I made a calculated decision and it was working."

But this isn't about Dan, just like this isn't about Miguel. To Dan, Miguel's joining a long list of people who dismiss his competence. To Miguel, Dan figures he must be standing in for some idiot hero who did lose their life, or some other unnecessary tragedy.

"Do you think I did it because I gave you attitude when you were bossing me?"

"Bossing you." he repeats, the wording in of itself confirming his suspicion outright. Yes, he did think Dan's childish response to him fed into it. He thinks that Dan's insecurity made him want to prove his value to the team. He also thinks Dan didn't value his own life enough to interrupt that line of thinking and let Miguel do what he's done a thousand times over.

"I was reminding you to be careful, and then you got in my way and did the complete opposite. You showed me that you'll risk getting yourself killed even when you have back-up that can help you. Whatever calculation you made didn't take any of that into account."

He wants to hear Dan's justification. He wants to walk through it, more carefully this time, since he seemed so convinced that his way was the right call. What did that demonstrate if not a lack of awareness from Dan?

"Why should I trust you not to pull something just as reckless the next time?"

"So that is what you think. You ain't right. Me giving you guff didn't have nothing to do with it." He would have made the same judgment call even if Miguel had deferred to him every step of the way.

He bites down on his desire to analyze Miguel's actions, to shoot back about how he thinks Miguel's paternalism was an ingredient in the concoction that made it all go sideways. No argument was ever de-escalated with a no, you.

"It wasn't near as reckless as you're making it out to be because you ain't considered my expertise as a factor, and I really did think it was necessary to keep that manticore grounded. It was only part about whether it was going for you. I was worried about it changing focus and going for our injured, unconscious, bound friend hanging there like a piñata full of candy."

He sighs. "And honestly, that lack of trust might could be on me, too. I didn't trust you had as big a handle on the situation as you say you did. I reckoned grounding the manticore was something I had to assure."

"Well, I've never shown you how I fight in the air. I could have tethered it and spared your shoulder the trip to a clinic."

He supposes Dan could hardly take the blame for that. It's not like he had a crystal ball to spy on all his past battles with. That Dan came to this conclusion on his own assuages his anger, somewhat. Trust was a two-way street, and yes, it did feel like a lack of it to ask for his help and then assume he'd be incapable of handling the job.

He couldn't possibly guess why Dan concluded that, though. Miguel considers himself to have both the appearance and the credentials of being reliable in a fight. The only answer that made sense was that Dan was just used to going solo.

"I've had a lot of practice catching flying things in a web." he adds with a lighter tone. "Even large, flappy, pissed off things."

A soft smile flicks across Dan’s face at the lighter tone. It’s better than they’ve managed to connect so far.

“And I got a lot of experience wrestling big animals with lots of points that might could kill me. I knew that about myself and I didn’t know that about you.”

He exhales through his nose.

“Prior to meeting Bunny, I went about…at least ten years, ish, without nobody who shared my values in a fight. Almost everyone I’ve ever worked with would have de-prioritized our injured friend, especially with the crimes he done committed, and a lot of them might could have used him as bait to protect me or themselves. I didn’t - don’t - think you’re like that, but I didn’t want to roll the dice on it.”

So he did what he thought was necessary to control the situation. It wasn’t just Miguel’s competence that was an unknown; it’s a career-long fight Dan’s waged to get his way in an industry that doesn’t care about collateral damage or civilians. It’s reinforced his independence. It’s made him good at digging his heels in and going rogue to get results and bad at collaborating, because the results he gets tend to be different than the ruthlessness everyone around him works for.

“It’s rare I work with folks who care about damage control. Reckon I just fell into a habit.”

“Like I said -” he begins. “You’re not hunting on your own anymore.”

There are times when he can’t save everyone - Miguel is acutely, painfully of aware of that limitation. But when the fate of an entire world was not at stake, he had to at least try.

He wishes Dan could see the benefits of more structured teams and training. It could have ironed out the issue beforehand. They could have had a protocol, of sorts. (As much as this merry band could follow one.)

“I know there will be times where you’ll need to jump into danger. Wanting to take a few of those times off your hands is what having back-up is for.”

It is as simple as Miguel having a lot of means to protect others, and wanting to do so.

“I know. But I been on too many missions go sideways because I was the only one who cared about the collateral, or someone talked a bigger game about their skills than they had. It’s part of the culture in the industry I’m from. Add that on top of some of our own people acting bloodthirsty…”

Seeing Jack in particular wanting to slaughter in revenge was, no pun intended, chilling. It shoved Dan back into feeling like the only way to do things correctly would be to do them himself.

“I appreciate you taking the time to talk this out with me. Next time I’ll trust you better, and next time I hope you don’t read so much…smallness into my motives.”

He sighs and shrugs. Smallness. That’s the word he comes back to for how he feels Miguel sees him. Not someone motivated by expertise, practicality or professionalism but insecurity, selfishness, ego, mental health hangups. It hurts deeply, and that wound sits inside Dan along an array of others.

Edited 2024-05-15 16:28 (UTC)

“Anger will do that.”

Jack had all the reason to be enraged at the horrors inside the building, but that doesn’t mean indulging it would help anything. He doesn’t judge, though. Miguel doesn’t think himself so much the saint that he was immune - he just had the focus of a mission and enough of a distance from the victims to keep his wits about him.

“I shouldn’t have let mine get the better of me, either.” he adds. There was no bloodshed in the end, but there didn’t need to be for hurt to still float there between them.

“There are just enough lives I’ve failed to save, even before the collapse. I won’t add any more to that number, if I have a choice to.”

It’s not an excuse - but at least Dan could hear where he’s coming from.

"I ain't blaming them. They were right to be angry." Just because anger doesn't find many deep holds in Dan doesn't mean he doesn't respect that it can come from righteous places and can be too heavy to set aside in the moment. "But it made me concerned about what losses folks were willing to write off."

He nods at Miguel's explanation, too. He understands it. He's always had much more of an ability to disconnect from his work, to just walk away because there's never been anything centralized and the whole business has tried so hard to force him out instead of pull him in, but he knows the regret of a life lost on his watch. Even the ones that couldn't be avoided are devastating; the needless deaths are all the worse. A needless death is interminably wrapped in what if I had just..., cannot be untangled from unproven hypothetical, can't be banished in the dead of night with the knowledge that one did all they could do.

"Yeah, you were a little bit inappropriate with me," he says with the lightest laugh and smile. "Don't worry, I won't tell nobody you dragged my marriage and made like you were going to smack me. All's forgiven."

“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.

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

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