nightlogs | Will these two finally manage to have THAT conversation?

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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 to ~~serve~~ 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."

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It didn't really occur to Price that it was a non-lethal way to go about it. He merely figured that the enemies were not going to be so stupid to follow them into the ocean and would need to be cornered and killed from behind. He still nods at the compliment.

"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.

Dan smiles when Price agrees to learn. He throws the blanket over Concrete Blonde's shoulders; she's still mulling an apple slice in her mouth.

"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.

Edited 2023-11-24 21:13 (UTC)

Price complies by fetching the needed tools. It's not that he doesn't have fun backstabbing and causing problems on purpose, but he is cooperative to a fault. This will give him something to do, and it's useful, so why not? He can't follow Aziraphale around like a puppy all the time.

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.

Edited 2023-11-24 22:12 (UTC)

"Yeah. I wish you might could too." He still wishes Price would let him teach Price to ride, but he knows why Price won't. He isn't going to try and force Price into anything; Price's privacy is maybe the only thing he feels like he has.

"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."

Well, that little anecdote does not exactly fill Price with confidence. He will not voice it, though, and try to pay attention to the instructions. He has the great gift of fast learning, and he manages to emulate others rather easily when it comes to practical activities that don't require much strength.

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.

"A little less often than once a month. I try and do her every lunar cycle and a half." Dan has two calendars in his mind, the Gregorian calendar and the moon's routine on which the magic of his world is scheduled.

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?"

"Well...The Director and I would occasionally watch a Huragok, we made it repair our equipment and put it back in its box. It looked interesting, but due to the fact that it was a limited resource I was not allowed to study it or experiment on it in any way." Price muses "I suppose that technically they can still count as animals, how would you describe a being that is part alien and part computer? Biomechanical is likely the most appropriate term."

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.

"That might could be considered an animal." Dan thinks it sounds like it was, and he can't say he's sad that Price didn't get to experiment on it. "But I don't know dick about technology. You know I ain't never even touched a computer."

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."

Price is a bit intimidated by the amount of force this appears to take. He gives the horse a quick scan to make sure to understand where the sensitive area begins.

"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.

"You'll know if you do it wrong, which is why I ain't going to put you in a position to do it wrong. I'll be wanting you to watch me do this about forty times before you try your hand at it. I can do a few of the reindeer each day as a demonstration. They need it too." Dan's noticed that due to the snow, the reindeer need to be re-shoed fairly frequently. The snow packs in and then it rusts the nails on the shoe.

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."

"Of course."

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.

If Dan were just idling around, he probably would leap a foot in the air to be touched unexpectedly from behind. Decades of hunting ghosts and monsters have made him hypervigilant, which has gotten all the worse now that he doesn't hear well in one ear. It isn't even out of any sort of intentional self-preservation; it's just some instinct, something in his lizard brain, that's been so conditioned by threats that he responds to being startled by reaching for his gun.

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.

Price hasn't let his guard down around Dan since...Ever, he likes to think. He does still resent what happened at the river when it comes to his mind, especially Bunny telling him to walk it off (the thing that's most enraging is that Bunny is supposed to help kids, does he tell them to walk it off when they say they perceive an abusive behaviour by someone who lured them by being the only nice person to them? No wonder kids don't believe in him, he can keep the chocolate eggs) , but he also understands that there is no use in getting mad at it.

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.

"Don't never got to apologize for showing me affection," Dan says, settling back into scraping away Concrete Blonde's accumulated gunk.

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."

Price nods, looking at him with interest.

"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.

Dan grins. He likes where Price's mind is going with this. Even if Price can't yet see a future for himself, he can see one for Dan, and Dan thinks that's a step forward. He places the horseshoe on Concrete Blonde's foot, continuing the demonstration.

"Well, I can't go back home, but I don't like staying cooped up at the Warren either, so it would be nice to find some reason to get out there in the community when I'm too old to keep up with heroing." But Dan doesn't think he'll live that long. He truly hopes he doesn't. His heart will break in some deep, incurable way if his age and mortality keep him from being able to join Bunny in the field, from being able to work cases.

"You know, many people who are inclined to go on missions seem to have trouble accepting any struggle to...Keep up with heroing, to use your words. I worry about our teammates, sometimes."

Price might be the cowardly type but he's not meatheaded nor stupid.

"How do you mean? Folks burning themselves out, running straight into danger, that sort of thing?"

Dan lines up the horseshoe and gets the nails in place. "See these marks? That's where you're going to aim your nails at. You just hammer them in carefully."

"Yes. I feel they might overestimate their abilities to withstand the circumstances. Coping mechanisms should not go unexamined and carried over without a second thought. I know I have made the mistake of thinking that two similar looking environments would mostly work the same way," he is referring to Project Freelancer and the Rig "and I have been humbled in a way that left me alive to talk about it. They might not be so lucky."

Dan has known the reckless part of Price but as he's picking up the pieces of himself, he is rebuilding that caution that surprisingly made him the straight man to the Director's antics. When he was not enabling them, that is.

"Mm, so what are you thinking?" Dan starts to hammer. "That folks need to test out the limits of their myth powers before they go in the field? That ain't the worst idea ever."

It's also not exactly what Price is talking about, but Dan doesn't like his coping mechanisms called into question, and running into danger is one of them.

"While I am not sure on what would be the best method to do so, I believe that yes, it could be beneficial. A good dynamic between teammates is crucial to our overall success, however I can guarantee that the power of friendship is not a big enough counterbalance to deadly threats, except for a few...Very peculiar cases."

How do you even explain the Reds and Blues? The group did meet Tucker for a while, but Tucker was the most competent one, arguably the closest to a freelancer. That insane interview with Donut is burned into Price's mind still. It was fascinating, for sure.

"And I can guarantee, as someone who has witnessed such cases, that our group is way smarter than that."

"That sounds a little like you think we ought to get organized." Dan raises an eyebrow while he hammers into Concrete Blonde's foot - she remains unbothered, despite the fact that Dan knows she must pick up on his agitation at the topic. "You remember from last time I prefer the power of friendship to...whatever you mean in terms of fostering a good dynamic between each other."

"I don't mind getting organized. However, it doesn't have to go to such extent."

Price explains calmly, although he too is picking up on Dan's discomfort.

"To put it simply, it would be wise to be mindful of our own capabilities and our weaknesses. Sometimes that entails sitting it out without running into unnecessary risks. While I can perform surgery, I would be more comfortable knowing that we collectively decided against the probability, slim as it might be, that all our combat oriented people get incapacitated at once. Not to mention that some in our group have a very peculiar biology that I have to study secretly because they do not trust me enough with that information. In that case, we might need someone to help me with surgery...Especially since I am not at my most confident in my skills following my own injury. Which brings us once again to my point."

He still has his usual quiet monotone, but the content of his sentence suggests a certain frustration clearly enough. Also, anxiety. Did Price ever mention that brain damage comes with tons of anxiety? The fact that he was already a control freak before does not exactly help.

"Mm. I ain't against sharing information. I just ain't fond of organizing. You know that about me." Dan, satisfied with Concrete Blonde's shoeing on this foot, moves his stool to get to her front hoof, all the while positioning himself so that Price can see his work and continue learning.

"Are you thinking emergency surgery? Folks who don't want you nosing around with their physiology might not could be keen on letting you operate on them unless they're at death's door."

Dan doesn't want to highlight that a lot of people don't trust Price. He knows Price is aware of that. He wants to encourage Price to use his medical skill to help others, but privacy is such a loaded topic, and bodies are so personal. Bodies are sacred. Dan's had his used by others enough that he's aware of how scary that can be, and the idea of someone secretly studying his body doesn't necessarily upset him, but he can imagine it upsetting others deeply.

"I don't know, actually. Not to a full extent. I would prefer if you would elaborate on that, just to make sure to find the best solution."

Price doesn't want to be kept guessing, he doesn't even want to give himself room to make missteps.

"Well, yes, that would the plan. I do not understand what is the use of letting someone die. Everyone is useful, here."

Bodies are sacred and personal, in theory. In practice, some bodies are more sacred and personal than others. Price is surprisingly a great defender of the majority, for someone who has never ever been part of it. His docility is not as fake as it looks.

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Will these two finally manage to have THAT conversation?

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[cw: a little suicidal ideation]

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[cw: allusions to sexual assault]

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