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Entry tags:
Will these two finally manage to have THAT conversation?
Who: Aiden Price, Dan Sagittarius
What: Price brings Concrete Blonde to Dan and they have a heartfelt discussion about imprisonment
Where: Outdoors
When: After Branch
Warnings/Notes: Prison related topics, Typical Dan related warnings, typical Price related warnings, overall toxic behaviours
Price was going for a walk on his own, figuring that alone meant staying out of trouble - which is not a smart deduction in an unknown place, but nobody tell him, he's just starting to think that maybe the brain damage didn't make him completely useless -, and he happens to run into a pleasant surprise: Concrete Blonde.
He likes to spend time with her, feeding her, and cuddling her. He was about to give her a bath but he remembers reading on the subject while in the Wilderlands library and concludes that it's not the case to do so, especially in these cold temperatures. See? He does go out of his way toserve help, it happens very often! Absolutely appalling that nobody will listen to reason when he calmly - accommodatingly, even! - explains that nothing is his fault ever.
That's why he decided to start refraining from conversations as much as he can. It does pain him because, for all those accusations of being 'antisocial', he really likes people in his own way. Dan, however? He is not like most people. There's something deeply wrong about whatever their friendship is, and Price can't put his finger on it. He feels safest when he avoids him, and yet he needs him. There are so many thoughts and feelings that he has on the matter, but he doesn't feel like being gaslighted about them so, he tells himself, he'll just bring the horse back and then leave Dan alone to his devices.
"I found your horse."
Technically it's their horse, but better not to claim her to make this less difficult. He won't say anything more than what is strictly needed.
"I figured you would want her back."
What: Price brings Concrete Blonde to Dan and they have a heartfelt discussion about imprisonment
Where: Outdoors
When: After Branch
Warnings/Notes: Prison related topics, Typical Dan related warnings, typical Price related warnings, overall toxic behaviours
Price was going for a walk on his own, figuring that alone meant staying out of trouble - which is not a smart deduction in an unknown place, but nobody tell him, he's just starting to think that maybe the brain damage didn't make him completely useless -, and he happens to run into a pleasant surprise: Concrete Blonde.
He likes to spend time with her, feeding her, and cuddling her. He was about to give her a bath but he remembers reading on the subject while in the Wilderlands library and concludes that it's not the case to do so, especially in these cold temperatures. See? He does go out of his way to
That's why he decided to start refraining from conversations as much as he can. It does pain him because, for all those accusations of being 'antisocial', he really likes people in his own way. Dan, however? He is not like most people. There's something deeply wrong about whatever their friendship is, and Price can't put his finger on it. He feels safest when he avoids him, and yet he needs him. There are so many thoughts and feelings that he has on the matter, but he doesn't feel like being gaslighted about them so, he tells himself, he'll just bring the horse back and then leave Dan alone to his devices.
"I found your horse."
Technically it's their horse, but better not to claim her to make this less difficult. He won't say anything more than what is strictly needed.
"I figured you would want her back."
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Seeing the hand gesture, he replicates it easily and complies. He's the type to learn very fast by observing, which once again would make one wonder what the hell did he ever observe to learn certain behaviours. That would be a rhetorical question, of course.
"...I am absolutely not planning on telling him, but...What would happen if your husband found out in what physical state you are?"
Price kind of wants to know what would be the right to do, or rather, he's trying to figure it out as an exercise.
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Dan shrugs. He doesn't want to think about it and doesn't want to have those conversations with Bunny. He can see plenty of ways this scenario plays out and it all ends in a fight where Bunny takes it personally that Dan doesn't have the motivation to take care of himself, that no amount of love will light that candle for Dan.
"Besides, reckon feeling like shit all the time is a rite of passage to being almost forty."
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He gives Concrete Blonde a gentle pat.
"...I do understand why you don't want to have that conversation with him. With all the unpredictable dangers that have come in the way of our group, I suppose you could die from something else before even feeling sick."
If one side of the coin is Price using people's problems against them in a malevolent way by twisting the knife in the wound and triggering them, the other is just the enabling that he thinks is love. By far the more dangerous of the two, but this is affection to him. Besides, he can relate. If the Director were here, he would not want to tell him he has brain damage, although for very different reasons.
"...But all that damage comes from years and years of unstable lifestyles. If he really cares about you, he will understand."
Alright, technically this is just a somewhat triangulating comment because Price dislikes Bunny, but although expressed in an inconvenient way it's a kind sentiment that he's trying to extend.
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He thinks of how he just told Price that the last time he was in solitary, he bit himself down to the bone. It wasn't being in solitary that did that to him, he thinks. It was being wrenched away from his ability to self-medicate, and that left him with no way to distract himself from all those things that hide in the periphery of his mind except to feel pain.
"He does care about me." There's a flatness to Dan's tone, like he's stating a fact, a law like gravity, something that isn't up for debate. "We have conversations like this. They're- they're private. Just between us."
He doesn't want to shut Price down, but he doesn't want Price prying into his marriage.
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Price could only state that someone cares about him with the same certainty if that someone was being hugely manipulated and misled. So he understands everything but that part.
"Well...I can make some ice, too, if you or anyone needs it."
He ponders for a bit on whether to say or not, and then concludes it that he can turn it into a test:
"However I did not regain the hot laser. It could do plenty of useful damage, although I do not think we need to break into a safe or anything of that sort."
Dan won't tell him if he regained his Rig powers either way, but seeing how much he trusts this could probably be useful.
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He gives Concrete Blonde a pet and steps away from the stable stall. "I won't let nobody know about the lasers if you don't want me to. I didn't get none of my powers back, but I can summon Concrete Blonde whenever and she's got an upgrade in terms of speed and durability."
Dan feels a bit uncomfortable with the idea that Concrete Blonde is more his horse than Price's, when Price helped him get the horse in the first place, but Price is the one that grew up on a space ship and Dan's the one who grew up on a farm. The powers that be seem to think him more fit.
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The way Dan mentions not having regained his powers seems casual enough, sincere enough, because he didn't look like he thought about it much, but who knows, Dan is a good liar.
"Durability as in stamina or can she also withstand violent attacks?"
Price likes animals but he doesn't mind verifying. He doesn't mind doing most awful things. Certainly he's not offended by this world registering Concrete Blonde as mostly Dan's horse, it is true, Dan is the one who can take care of her more properly. Price may have not technically spent his childhood on a space ship but he still had little room to interact with nature before he sailed to space.
His guardians would make sure he wouldn't get any pet therapy or another type of chance to interact with animals because he would have hurt them. What those people failed to understand is that sometimes you need to practise. The normalization of sim troopers hasn't exactly helped Price see those gratuitous sacrifices as something bad.
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"I ain't put her up against violent attacks. I ain't sure how I'd test that without potentially harming her." And Dan wants to treat this horse well. She's been a sturdy companion since the Wilderlands. "But she can go faster and further than she used to. Now I'm the one tapping out because she goes faster than I can weather the wind resistance, so I don't know her top speed, and I think she can run on water."
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Price has plenty of viciousness in him, sure, but he mostly likes to think of what is convenient and channels his energy in that direction. He also figures that it's sensible to focus on combat strategy so it doesn't even register as a habit, the fact that his mind immediately goes to dangerous scenarios.
"...Right?"
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"Hey, on that note, do you want me to show you how to shoe her?" Dan pats Concrete Blonde's haunches as he gets her big blanket out. "I'm out with Bunny often enough that I don't get to fix up her feet as much as I might could like."
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"Oh, yes, I would like to. It's always good to acquire new skills." and nobody can really blame him for not knowing how to shoe a horse when he never saw one in real life before Wilderlands. He lets it known more, now:
"Is she going to get taller or is she finished growing?"
He can't tell how old Concrete Blonde is, never really learned how - he's more of a bird guy, if only because he liked how they could just fly away and envied them for it - , and honestly he had always imagined horses to be bigger.
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"Reckon this is about as big as she gets. She ain't a Clydesdale. She's a quarter horse, about sixteen hands high at the most, built for agility and racing." That places her shoulders at eye level for both Dan and Price. "That's why I don't never ride more than two people on her at a time, and not more than one if I can help it. That's about as much as she can take without wearing out, or at least, before she got whatever boost she got here."
He gestures with his nose to a wooden trunk in the stall, tucked underneath where Concrete Blonde's reins and saddle are hanging. "That's where I keep most of her tools. Can you grab me the bag of nails, a shoe, the hammer and the knife? I'll show you how to clean her up and re-shod her so her hooves handle being a workhorse better. It might could look a little alarming, since I'll be stabbing the soles of her feet and driving nails into them, but I promise it don't hurt her."
He wonders if the violent but harmless action will feel therapeutic to Price. Dan finds it relaxing, though not because of the stabbing and hammering. He just likes working on the horse. He pulls a stool out from the side and sets it near Concrete Blonde's withers. He pets her neck again, feels the way she's casually finishing her apple and investigating the bale of hay hanging in front of her.
"Horses got better senses than humans do, and they're panicky animals. Freak out and bolt at the drop of a hat. If you're near a horse and they're calm, that means ain't no danger nearby."
Dan always feels like there's some danger nearby, always feels the pulse of fear chemicals in his brain, that sense of dread and hypervigilance and paralysis, and here he is next to a horse that would die of fright if some mortal threat approached. That's calming. That's a beacon of ain't no danger here pushing back against Dan's inner but there must be.
"I find it helps when I can't seem to stop feeling shook up. Being around her."
He figures Price is afraid and anxious all the time too. He thinks that's a commonality between them.
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There is also the medical help he offered, but not many people seem ready to accept it. One day, he secretly dreams, he will prove that he is helpful and needed because of the way he is rather than in spite of it, but that's more something he tells himself in fits of anger and bitterness rather than something he believes to be feasible. Not until he relearns how to live outside of prison.
"It's good that you can summon her."
He doesn't expect Concrete Blonde to have a calming effect on him. In a way, he is always calm? But he has to scan for threats, for one reason or another. Problem solving (or problem causing as a step of problem solving) is vital to understand any situation, anything in the world around him. There is no such thing as an environment without problems, or an individual without mental issues, that's why studying is fundamental.
The degree to which he has witnessed environments and people be insane, though, doesn't fully occur to him. He just figures that it's a greater challenge that he should take on because he technically has the skills for it. Or the creativity of his unconventional ways, at least. If he doesn't want to revert back to the violent wounded animal he was at peak untreated brain damage and while being cornered, then he can't acknowledge that things that happened to him were messed up. When you're the messed up one, it cancels it out, they say.
Which makes him feel silly about ever bringing up the Director and not being able to get over the fact that he was left to die after a decade of loyalty and zero mistakes. There, maybe the horse is the only one he can talk to about that.
[cw: a little suicidal ideation]
"Thanks," he says, taking the tools and setting them next to his stool. He chooses the knife for now. "Alright, so when you shoe a horse, you don't never want to be anywhere that she can kick you or stomp on you if she gets spooked."
He pulls the neck of his shirt aside. There's a light scar where his shoulder and neck meet. "I got kicked once when I was young and stupid and careless shoeing, and I'm lucky that it was just a glancing blow that gave me a little slice. A few inches to the side and she would have smashed my brains out."
He says that like he's genuinely glad he didn't get kicked to death. As far as he's concerned, he could have just taken a hit to the head and never gotten up. It would have been quick.
"First, I'm going to make sure everything looks right, no nails pulled out, shoe flush to foot. Then I'm going to start taking the nails out so I can trim the hoof and clear out all the grime. Can you give her some more apple? She trusts you."
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He complies and feeds the apple slices to Concrete Blonde. It's crazy to him that she trusts him. He didn't trick her or anything, he likes animals but has barely ever interacted with them, he doesn't know how to handle them...But whatever, she 'trusts him' somehow.
"How often is this required?"
The idea of scheduling something, even if it's shoeing a horse, gives him relief. It's the illusion of control, as always.
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He gets Concrete's Blonde foot into position, demonstrating where to place pressure and how to arrange both his own body and the hoof to keep her from being able to kick him, and then starts to remove the nails. All throughout, he coos and praises her; she may be one of the few living creatures who likes Dan's voice, and between her two masters with their praise and the apple, she seems quite calm.
"Alright, this is filthy work. All this is dirt and manure and hay." Dan gets the knife and indicates what he's talking about with the tip. "You didn't get to spend much time with animals before the Wilderlands, right?"
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He's going off topic.
"Either way, we did not keep it in the most humane conditions, but I enjoyed having it around."
Price enjoys 'being around' most people and things, without specifying how, so that's not really an answer.
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He feels sad at the idea of this mystery creature languishing.
"Here, come around here so I can show you how I'm doing this." Cleaning out a horse's hoof looks violent from the outside as Dan uses force to scrape and dig out the grime caked into Concrete Blonde's foot. He looks a bit like he's trying to stab her foot to death, but she remains unbothered as dirt and pieces of hoof peel away and off. "It's a bit of a workout. See the parts I'm aiming for? I'm avoiding hitting near the quick of her foot. It's a bit like cleaning under someone's fingernails."
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"This looks...Difficult. Any signs I should look for to understand if I'm not doing it correctly?"
Hurting the horse is not a big deal but making mistakes is. He doesn't think that Dan or anyone else might come for him over this, but...Force of habit, probably.
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It gives him and Price an opportunity to spend time together working towards a goal, instead of just circling each other like two prey animals unsure if the other's a predator.
He looks up at Price and grins. "I'll make a farrier of you yet."
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He doesn't feel confident but he's willing to try. Price has always been the curious type. To a fault, perhaps. Curiosity is such an easy angle to corrupt someone, his fascination with possibility paired with a generous dose of repressed rage lead him down questionable roads, but he feels more questionable now than ever.
A farrier? Him? Right...If the Director could see him right now he would barely recognize him. That's why it's good that neither him nor the agents are here. There has to be something missing, some variable that Price didn't take into account back in the day. If he had, the Director would have cared enough to keep him by his side even in the worst case scenario. Not that the worst case scenario would have happened, they really would have served their purpose as the silver bullet to win the war. There would have been no prison, no desperate attempts, no missteps on the Rig, no brain damage in the Wilderlands.
Inevitably, he gets sad. He knows that if he were to ask out loud the questions that plague him they would not be received well, so he asks them in another way: reluctantly, he hugs Dan from behind and rests his head on his shoulder. If Dan lied about the powers, he understands, and can at least express what probably, he acknowledges, looks like a very childish, raw, underdeveloped version of heartbreak.
Why couldn't he care about me? What did I do wrong that made me not good enough for him? What was I supposed to do? Didn't he know that he was everything to me and I would have done anything for him? Didn't he know that I would have been useful, that I would have helped him, if only he allowed me to be by his side? Why couldn't we run away together? Why didn't he come back for me? Why did he leave me to die?
Those are the question buzzing through Price's mind. Would they be there if his plans somehow were not ruined without the Director? No, of course not, but that is not what happened. He hates the man. If they weren't so compatible and perfect to rule together forever, he would wish to kill him with his own bare hands. He would deserve it.
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But he no longer lets his guard down around Price, so he sees the hug coming, and he relaxes into it, only shifting slightly on the stool to make sure they're out of the way in case Concrete Blonde gets spooked and kicks behind her. He gives Price's wrist a squeeze he hopes is reassuring.
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If Dan chose him to be his toy for self harm purposes then that's what his use is, it's not like he can defend himself from that disrespect without it biting him in the ass, too many people see him as someone you can be near only if you want to hurt yourself anyway. It's not that he's no longer capable of lying and scheming, but he already has enough of a constant headache.
He tightens the hug for a moment. Maybe not thinking about the future is a way to avoid a worse headache. What lies would he have to keep up with to create a home for himself? He likes helping, and doing chores, and providing services, but if that was enough he would have already had proof of it on the Rig. He will keep doing all those things to make himself less disposable, less worth killing, but other than that it's going to be mostly unnoticed effort. Does Dan really think that there is a place for him somewhere - like Aziraphale's library, for example? He seems so convinced, but then again, Dan is a good liar.
Price supposes that if Dan doesn't have his friends give him shit for it, he can be his toy. Also, he hopes that whatever percentage of their friendship which is genuinely kind, he can keep it up too. He really is proud of Dan for coming so far, so if he doesn't have to be his poison maybe he can give him his nurturing too...
"Oh, I'm sorry." he lets go "I did not mean to distract you. Go ahead."
And with that, he steps back to where he was to absorb the knowledge carefully.
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He realizes at this moment that he's started mentally categorizing Price into the same place he's been slotting so many other people at the Pole, the ones who's worked their way into his heart, the list that's already gotten so much longer than he's comfortable with. For as much as Price has been a project and a tool to Dan in the past, Dan does care for him, deeply.
He thinks that's what makes Price's self-sabotage hurt. It isn't the threat to Dan's life or safety. It's just the tragedy of seeing someone he cares about hurting and hurting himself, over and over, but Dan's seen the way Price has tried over and over again to make human connection. He sees the way Price has made gains in that regard.
"Alright, see, this area is where you aim for. And missing that ain't just a problem for the horse. You stab into her nerves and she'll thrash and kick you. And once you get all this clean..." Dan picks up a horseshoe. "These ain't standard size, so you got to mold them to fit her. I already took the time fitting these for her."
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"When you come back home you could set up a class of some sort, where you can teach important manual tasks to all kinds of people."
He's not sure why he's suggesting it. Probably because he can see that this has a bit of a therapeutic effect on Dan.
"You could do it for short periods of time, to have the opportunity to travel the world."
If he should have a future, then Dan should too. There is so much he can give and so much he can do to improve anyone's quality of life. Price might be very different from him, but he can see him without judging him for being illiterate, or doing drugs, or committing crimes. Perhaps many people here can do it, but he likes to think - maybe out of conceit - he can extend a special type of kindness that can only come from him.
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[cw: allusions to sexual assault]
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