Dan lives an unhappy life, and bursts of pleasure and fixes are like getting just enough air to breathe when mostly struggling in dark water. He's spent his adulthood flitting between sex, drugs, danger, any way to get a shot of adrenalin strong enough to distract him from the dark, frightening territory his heart lives in. And that's all this is.

Except to an extent, it isn't. Dan does care about Price, not romantically - Dan knows what romance feels like now, he can tell the difference - and as such, there are higher stakes to this. He could end up hurting Price's feelings. Price could end up reading more into it than Dan means. Dan can't just slip out and never see Price again when this is done, because Dan is on the Rig, and it goes two miles an hour and you can never get away from it.

But the chance of things going wrong makes it fun, in a way, to Dan. He's morbidly curious what the worst that could happen is. He knows he's the child with a fork and an electrical outlet, and at least that's more interesting and tolerable than just sitting in his feelings of alienation and misunderstoodness, exploitedness.

He kisses Price back, on the mouth.