nightlogs | Everything It Seems I Like's a Little Bit Harmful for Me [Open to All]

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Everything It Seems I Like's a Little Bit Harmful for Me [Open to All]

Who: Dan Sagittarius and you!
What: Dan tools around in the workshop and tests the limits of North's homeowner safety compliance, makes some presents for people, acts helpful.
Where: The Workshop and outdoors near the kitchen.
When: Early October
Warnings/Notes: The usual warnings associated with Dan - alcoholism, drug use, swearing, potential references to dead children, sex work and/or firearms. Lots of nicotine addiction in this one.

Dan hates the cold.

He fucking hates the cold, because his circulation has gone to shit and sucking down cigarettes all his life has left him with a permanent sensitivity to chill along with an inconvenient and unpleasant nicotine addiction, and that combination, here at the North Pole, means he has to run a regular gauntlet throughout the day to go on smoke breaks outdoors. Instead of just popping outside to take a leisurely break from whatever he's doing, he suits up with gloves and coats and hats like he's putting on armor for battle and then houses each cigarette in record time, shivering and wincing the entire time.

When he isn't on smoke breaks and isn't running around with Bunny on missions, he's recuperating from whatever adventure he's been on by working with the elves in the workshop. Dan's father was a carpenter, a tailor and a woodworker who expressed his affection in showering his wife and seven children with gifts and attention. Dan inherited that, and he fills his idle hours with woodworking and sewing, making Christmas gifts for the people at the Pole who've been pulled into this adventure, mostly practical things like warm socks and step stools, but sometimes just tchotchkes like carved effigies. He's excited that North apparently had a bevy of goose down, and is starting to piece together cozy coats for people, and he's been building various hurdles and tunnels for Cammie to test her holon on.

Throughout the day he tries to think of a way to not be colossally rude while smoking indoors. It's poor form to light up under someone's roof and make everything reek of tobacco, and it feels all the more inconsiderate to do so in the Pole, where the merriment is unilaterally pretty child-friendly in a way cigarettes are not, and even more rude to do so while the homeowner is in captivity. Still, after a particularly frozen smoke break where he returned to warmth with his hands so near-paralyzed and bone-white that it took over an hour to get back to doing his woodwork, he decides that North would be understanding, and decides to undo the smoke detector in the kitchen. After all, the kitchen is ventilated, and smoking in here just during the coldest part of the night isn't too harmful.

I. These Are Just a Couple of My Cravings

Most things in the world are made for adult men slightly taller than Dan, but most things at the Pole are made for North and the yetis, and that means Dan can't just accomplish his goals by standing on tip toes. On account of the elves constantly getting into things they shouldn't and causing accidents, the kitchen is equipped with a smoke detector, which is about eleven feet off the ground. Standing on the highest shelf of a ladder, Dan can just barely scrape the corner of it with his fingertips. His only hope of reaching it is to jump, which may be unwise, but the siren song of nicotine has been known to wreck many a man on its rocks.

"Hey, do you mind holding this ladder while I try to reach this?" he asks the next person to come in.

II. A Little Bit Sweeter

By a few days in, Dan's got a straight-up workspace in the workshop, a table festooned with the tools of his crafts. Right now, it's covered in fabric and threads and scissors and rulers and a mannequin and all the deadwood of tailoring and mending as he works on a big, puffy coat to swaddle Elle in. He's at a frustration point, because at some juncture he fucked up the circumference of the sleeves, and he's realizing that his error might be so serious as to necessitate scrapping the coat entirely. He's chewing his nails in annoyance at himself when someone comes in, and he pounces on the opportunity to distract himself with some new task.

"Hey, you need anything mended? The tailor's open for business right now."

III. So Please Be Kind If I'm a Mess

The second Dan's cigarette is burned down, he rushes back into the communal relaxation room, teeth chattering and hands tucked into his armpits. Snowflakes dot his hair, and his cheeks are flush red. He strips off his gloves, and his fingers are a mix of angry red and bloodless white. He hastens over to the fireplace and groans as the transition from too-cold to too-hot makes his hands cramp, then reaches for the rice pack he set over the fire to warm up without having to hunch over the flames.

"Oh God damn it," Dan mutters, as his clumsy-with-cold hands fumble the rice pack and drop it straight into the fire. He huffs with frustration as he gets the fire poker and tries to retrieve the rice pack, but by now the pack is decidedly on fire, looking like a burning baked potato. "I owe North some rice."

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[Branch goes over to root through the beads. He clearly has a preference for green. But he suddenly looks up at mention of a bunker.]

You did?

[A pause as he considers all the myriad implications of that. Had something terrible happened to him? Did he make it himself? But he said "grew up" so had his parents built it?]

[Or did he mean "grow up" the way Branch had grown up, living in the bunker from a fairly young age, but independent.]

Did you build yours?

Edited 2023-10-13 05:59 (UTC)

Yeah, first sixteen years of my life. We had farmland and we periodically went down to a bunker whenever- well, I reckon I don't know what signs my folks were divining, but whenever we'd be safer underground that's where we went. One room, concrete walls, vent, security systems, rack of rifles, underground, canned food, whole shebang.

[Dan doesn't typically talk about his childhood. It's almost like it's something precious that he doesn't want to share with anyone else, like it'll be spoiled by people's judgment if he lets too much of it out. Most people don't take kindly to the way Dan was raised; they say things about it that hurt to hear, when Dan longs for nothing more than to go back to those halcyon days.

But it's important to build connection with people who don't yet have it. That's why he talks about going to jail with Price. That's why he talked about his daughter with Cammie. Sometimes Dan can part with a piece of his life held so tight as to be a secret if it'll give someone else a sense of common ground.]

For a bunker, it was a pretty decent setup.

[He isn't sure what "rifles" are but the rest sounds awfully familiar.]

[Branch idly fingers through the beads, not really looking now, thinking about... what?]

["We." He's thinking about the "we." About his foster parents, who wouldn't listen to him about the danger and would neither come with him nor advocate for the village to move farther from Bergentown. (Even though, in the end, he turned out to be right, the Bergens did come back.) And their acrimonous final fight, where he realized they'd never make him feel actually safe and he'd never do anything but upset them.]

[It's amicable since he rejoined village life again, but distant.]

[And he thinks about four of the best rooms that were held aside, empty. But the rare times he went into town, he never heard about his brothers passing through. So eventually those rooms became nothing special. Relegated to more storage.]

[They never came looking.]

[He filled those rooms with more supplies just like he filled his days with constant maintenance. So he could try to ignore the fact he was only surviving, not living.]

[He finally actually looks back at the beads and makes a few selections, walking them over to place them near Dan's hand and retreating again. He goes back to digging through the beads and little odds and ends, but makes it look as if he's just curious about the contents and if something might be useful.]

[It's very obviously an attempt to avoid Dan's eyes.]

Mine's a lot bigger than one room. Technically just the one level, but I burrowed out the storage rooms so I could fill them all from the elevator, so it goes down pretty deep. I live on the bottom level.

["Live." Not "lived." Present tense.]

Edited 2023-10-13 06:20 (UTC)

Well, aren’t we plush. An elevator and storage rooms. Why, I never.

[Dan imbues his ragged, awful voice with enough warmth that he hopes the comment comes across as fond and familiar, not mocking. He doesn’t have any mockery in him.

He makes it easy for Branch to avoid his eyes by starting to hem the cardigan where Branch cut it. It’s a small enough garment that it’ll be easier to do by hand than fight with a sewing machine, and Dan did always love a hand stitch.]

Sounds like you built yours yourself.

[A pause. He reflects on how Branch used the present tense.]

Do you miss it?

Edited 2023-10-13 06:34 (UTC)

[The tone is fine. The joke makes Branch snort.]

[Then he nods.]

Helped that I had a little natural bolthole to work with and part of an abandoned animal burrow but it took a while to get all the levels excavated.

[The thing is he's still proud of the bunker. Everyone thought he was crazy but he'd been right and it'd been a place the whole village had been able to shelter.]

[Still is a place where they can shelter in the future, now that he's treating it like a place he can open up during emergencies.]

Right now I'm trying to retrofit the space I have make it more comfortable for the village. I used to just maintain it for myself but I - I talk to everyone now.

[Implying that he hadn't for a while.]

So I've been trying to make sure the space can fit everyone and have the right supplies in an emergency if I need to open it up to everyone again.

[A pause.]

I do miss it. It's comfortable. [Safe.] But I miss everyone in the village more. Especially my best friend.

Edited 2023-10-13 07:00 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm pretty sure my family's bunker started off as an old well or an abandoned silver mine or something. We didn't never have the equipment handy to do excavating on our own.

[Dan feels his throat tighten, and he takes a moment to compose himself by focusing on the sewing, focusing on keeping his hands from shaking. So often, he thinks he's got some sort of hook in his back, tying him to the past, and if he thinks about old beloved things too much, that hook gets yanked a little - but since he can't actually go backwards, all it does it tear him up. Thinking of home is just yanking that hook until he's nothing but bloody.

Better to focus on someone else.]

That's generous and good of you, offering up your home like that. Someone's got to do it. Folks don't realize how necessary it is until they need it. [The Sartoris bunker never kept them safe. Dan knows there's no point in saying that. If Branch finds some comfort in a bunker that worked, why should Dan offer a counterpoint in one that failed?] Who's your friend?

Edited 2023-10-13 07:01 (UTC)

[Branch isn't entirely oblivious, even with avoiding Dan's eyes he's occasionally peeked up.]

[And he wonders...]

[But he doesn't say anything. Because he's not going to ask if his family survived whatever they were hiding from when Dan hasn't asked if Branch's family had lived with him at all, despite him saying he built the bunker himself.]

Poppy. She's our queen. She's the one that convinced the Bergens to finally stop coming after us. And she helped me reconnect with everyone.

She sounds like a people person. [Dan smiles and starts to thread some beads.] So am I, if you ain't noticed. I love when I can talk folks into not giving in to their worst impulses.

[He ties off between each bead so he can do the buttons quickly and uniformly, all separate parts of the same line.]

How long did you go without connecting to nobody? Tell me if I'm asking too many questions. It just ain't every day you meet someone who knows the bunker life.

Understatement. She is the peoplest person I've ever met.

[He shakes his head at the rest, though,]

It's okay. You're actually the only other person I've met who lived that way.

[It's also painful, how long he lived alone, but a well known around the village. Something that is just a tacit fact about you that everyone around you knows loses a little bit of any power it has.]

[He also held up well for being that alone.]

Ten years. I moved there when I was 14.

[Which implies he broke ground on it even younger.]

[He's not entirely aware of how tragic this is. If it were any other 14-year-old in the village, he'd be horrified. But he thinks he was a very self-sufficient teenager with a solid head on his shoulders when it came to having a reasonable sense of danger.]

I got back in touch a little over a year ago.

Up until I was a teenager, it didn't never occur to me that there was any other way to live.

[And the world is beautiful, and people are fascinating, and there's so much to see and so much to do, and Dan loves so much about it - but some part of Dan will always yearn for the way things were when he was a kid, because the experiences that tore him up and ruined him are inexorably entwined with the memories of entering a world that wasn't welcoming or gentle with him.

The bunker will always represent some idyllic time before he knew what grief or terror were. It'll always be something he can't look at rationally.]

That's young to head out on your own. [Branch has already said enough that Dan can guess the reasons. He starts to trim little button holes into the cardigan, prepared to do more stitching to make the holes secure.] As if being fourteen ain't enough of a turn, right?

[Branch's idyllic time is now. Or at least, it was before he got here. Back home, where open arms have enfolded him back into village life, where people try to learn his boundaries, and work around his idiosyncrasies, where they help him learn to quiet his anxieties.]

[There is no idyllic part of his childhood though. His teen years in his bunker were unhappy; it was a place of isolation and paranoia and scrawling his nightmares on the walls. And back when he'd lived at the troll tree, even when his brothers had still been there, and it felt like he was encased in the relative safety of a large family, there were still always threads of fear. His brothers and grandma had always kept him close, had warned him to hide from the looming shadows of the big people.]

[When his brothers managed to slip away, he'd felt even less protected, without a fence of family around him. He felt abandoned. And while he'd carry all his grandmother's love and care with him always, the memory will always be intermingled with the fear.]

[Like the way she'd do a puzzle with him every day. A beautiful memory of her telling him that some things fit perfectly, like the two of them fit together as a family of two.]

[But...]

[It was also a place to channel his obvious anxiety. To redirect him from staring fearfully out the window of their pod. A way to give him something he could have tangible control over. Puzzles could make sense in a way that trolls being carried off by massive hands - sometimes randomly, on the days between Trollstices - never would.]

[And all the good memories of his grandma still will always coexist with the memory of when he saw her last. The bad doesn't erase the good, but the good can't erase the way she screamed as she was carried off, either.]

[He's not sure how honest to be with any of these big people, though. It's hard to figure out how much they'll understand, whether they'll see vulnerability as something to exploit. A terrifying prospect when he's already so vulnerable - by default, by sheer virtue of scale. And he's not inclined to share much, as a rule.]

[But he also has been slowly gleaning that many of them seem to understand hardship and pain and fear. That they've probably experienced it. And to see them not just plastering a smile on their faces and singing songs has him burning with curiosity about how alike they may be. Their attitudes aren't constantly upbeat and saccharine and that means they might be more alike than unlike. Maybe even more alike than himself and some of his people.]

It wasn't safe in the village. My people like to sing; it's important to our culture. After we escaped Bergentown and built the village, I thought the singing would let the Bergens find us again. I thought we were still too close to risk it.

It took twenty years after we escaped but I wasn't wrong. We're lucky we all got out alive thanks to Poppy. And thanks to Bridget - she's the only Bergen that ever helped us.

[It's a terrible thing when reality 100% justifies your fear. Even making friends with the Bergens would never change that the bunker wasn't built for nothing. It's why he still can't make himself leave it to live in a pod in the village.]

[He goes back to looking at the beads, still mostly just sorting them to have something to do with his hands.]

That's why I'm still wrapping my head around you guys. Bridget is special. She shouldn't have been, but she was. [It feels a little too negative to say, when the village is trying to befriend the Bergens now. But he's feeling weirdly daring while talking to these people.] Even if you didn't want to eat me, I would've expected...I don't know. Something else.

Wanting to squish me. Or put me in a cage to do little dances for you. Something.

[The sense of it isn't entirely wrong. There are humans out there who would, just because they could. He wouldn't be surprised to learn they exist. He's just surprised they're not the only types of humans to exist, that they're not all uniform. Even his own people are pretty much all on the same general caterbus the attitudes they face the world with. Relatively uniform. He's the odd one. (One. Singular).]

[Dan doesn't rush people when they're opening up to him. He's known since he was young that that's the way to get people scared off for good, not just from him, but from opening up to anyone. The stakes of vulnerability are high, and he's sure that if he gave Branch the hint of a reason to be scared, Branch would interpret that as evidence that all his walls and boundaries aren't just prudent but necessary for survival.

And Dan's patience is rewarded with the gift of Branch's honesty and forthcomingness. Trust is a gift. Dan sees trust as something precious and sacred, generous to give and a blessing to receive.]

I can't could know exactly how you feel, but...I know a similar feeling. That whole part where you're vulnerable for reasons you can't fix and you just anticipate folks taking advantage of it even if you can't wrap your head around why they would.

[He keeps threading beads as Branch selects the desired ones.]

It ain't the same as being a different size, but I can't read none. [Dan figures he doesn't need to ask Branch to keep that a bit of a secret.] It'd be really easy to take advantage of me. Folks have in the past, sometimes with malice on their mind, sometimes just because they think it's funny, and sometimes the stakes can be pretty high.

[Dan's wound up in jail quite a few times on account of his illiteracy, gone through the trauma of arrests and the humiliation of courtrooms that he didn't understand. He's been iced out of so many places in the world, had so many doors closed on him, been treated as a novelty or subhuman.]

I don't trust many folks, so don't think I'll be pushing you to.

[Branch tries to digest that. It's a stretch of the imagination to understand why that might be hard on someone.]

In my village, that wouldn't matter. When someone can't do something, everyone else just helps them with it. Like if they can't walk. Or can't see or hear.

[Laurel Sunbloom, who's about fifteen years older than him, has a wheelchair and despite her lack of mobility they managed to keep the Bergens from getting her and had gotten her out of Bergentown safely during the evacuation. Since her old wheelchair couldn't handle the loose dirt of the tunnels and over the difficult terrain as they wandered, he remembers seeing the adults taking turns carrying her on their backs or linking their hair together in a little swing. When they finally stopped and started building the village, they'd made her a new wheelchair and made sure there were plenty of low-hanging travel lines and rings so she could also reach the higher travel lines and travel using her hair.]

[Ash Mistcloud can't hear so the whole village knows sign language, developed ages and ages ago for just the purpose. They all keep up on it in case an elder goes deaf, teaching it to the trollings, and it's also handy for the trolls who are born that way. Everyone always makes room near the wooferbugs during parties so she can enjoy the vibrations from the bass.]

[And, he knows, they do the same with him. They put up with his fussing about clear paths to exits for emergencies during parties and make sure they exist. They take less risks while swimming in the creek if he's being anxious about the state of the currents that day. They wear safety gear during the more aggressive games if he's fretting over them getting hurt. They could ignore it, they could say he's worrying too much, they could grouse about him damping their fun. But they know he'll be pacing back and forth in a state of anxiety, hovering around waiting to make sure they don't wind up needing help.]

[But his talk with Tim and others has made it pretty clear how unique his people may be.]

So I don't think there's anything back home like that. Our scrapbooks all have pictures that make them pretty easy to understand if you can't read anyway. Some books only have pictures. And we just read things to the people who can't see.

But I can see how it must be hard if they put things that are important for you to know in books without pictures. And then nobody tells you what's there or they straight up lie about it.

[Despite how alien it all is, he's doing a lot of mental stretching to try to understand and empathize, not realizing what it shows off about his character.]

I won't tell anyone you told me. [He comes to it automatically like Dan thought but also thinks to reassure him unprompted.] So I don't accidentally tip off someone who'd try to trick you.

[Dan said he wouldn't push Branch to trust him. Branch straight up Uno reverse cards that all the way into sincerely trying to be trustworthy with something vulnerable. Dan's already taken extreme care with Branch's vulnerability, especially during that day he'd been cowering away from him against a table, bloody and terrified, so he absolutely plans to do take care with his vulnerability in turn.]

You got a nice village. [Dan threads another needle and starts to sew the edges of one of the miniature buttonholes to keep it from ripping.] Reckon we need more nice villages like that in the world. Most of the places I been ain't nearly so accommodating.

[Dan's had to get very good at accommodating himself, at developing workarounds and excuses and backup plans, and even with his sharp mind and his decades of experience navigating a world that expects literacy from him, he still exists on the margins. He still feels like he's distinct from society, someone who engages with it but isn't in it. He still feels a profound sense of being unwanted and unaccommodated, of being inconvenient because of his shortcomings. He still feels like no one ever stops to think about the help he might need.

It's not just the literacy, but it's probably most pointed there. So he thinks he does understand a little bit about what it must be like to be small in a world of giants, what it's like to just not be considered, what it's like to need accommodations and have to be the one to self-advocate and find workarounds and never know if being forthcoming will be treated with respect or will be treated as a weakness to exploit. It's a hard position to be in, and it's vulnerable, and Dan hasn't met a person yet who enjoys being vulnerable.

But, unlike Branch, he also has the opportunity to keep that handicap hidden from most people.]

Thank you. I appreciate it. [He sees the trustworthiness as a gift too.] A few folks know already, but it ain't what I want people to remember me for, you know? Anyway.

[He shows the buttonhole to Branch for approval. It's not as tidy as he'd like, due to the small size and the fact that his hands shake a lot these days, but it'll do the trick.]

You found a place to post up in the Pole that feels safe?

Yeah. I'm already set up.

Lots of hollow spaces in the walls and floors. Tunnels in the wood, too.

[There's no risk in telling him. He trusts him a little more than the others and it wouldn't be easy for anyone to find him, even if they know he's in there. The Pole is huge. Everything is made of wood.]

[Branch goes over to the buttonhole to touch it. Tactile about it. He's done a lot of building and crafting and it's less to be demanding and more so he doesn't have to bother Dan again if there are any loose stitches or if it's not the right size for his tiny fingers to use.]

[He steps backs and nods his approval.]

That's perfect. It's just the right size.

[A pause.]

Thank you.

Good. Glad you have a place to hole up. You ever want to borrow a sock full of rice to keep you warm, let me know. [Dan figures a small body probably doesn't keep heat as well, and he has plenty of rice-filled heating packs for his hands. He doesn't outright offer to make Branch one, because he worries that if he gets too generous he's going to start looking like he's got an ulterior motive, and he really doesn't. He just wants to make sure everyone around him is safe and warm.

He smiles at the approval and takes the garment back.] Alright, I'll keep working on this then. I'm happy to be of help. Keeps me out of my head when I can't go run around outside.

[The less Dan has to do, the darker it is outside, the colder it is, the easier it is to fall into the anxious, depressed smear of days where his sleep schedule fully disconnects from the clock, so he has to stay busy. He has to.

In a way, by having him do some sewing, Branch is doing him a favor.]

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Everything It Seems I Like's a Little Bit Harmful for Me [Open to All]

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