Let's get the party started!

[poor_unlucky_girl]

Who: Everyone including YOU
What: Pride month celebration!
Where: Mess hall
When: First weekend of June, after the brain quest.
Warnings/Notes: Probably alcohol, language, might lead to sexy stuff

Ah yes, Jennifer is in pure delight. Back in her day, this wasn't a thing and now not only she, who will romanticize everything, gets to celebrate love, she gets to witness people be happy as they celebrate with her. She waves happily at whoever enters and nods towards all the available material.

There is indeed lots of booze, which one wouldn't expect from Jennifer but hey, Price helped. There's rainbow cake, and biscuits with the flags on it. Before everyone arrives she innocently asks one of the staff members in the kitchen if she can eat a lesbian one. There's a box with pins and facepaints. Some people are sporting funny or sexy costumes. She is wears her usual hairdo, but decorates it with a rose, paired with a simple white dress. She drinks her tea and is happy, and just a little bit too clueless of what can happen during these kinds of celebrations...

Comments

[hallelujahjunction]

"If that's what you want, I reckon I can oblige."

Dan's not a big fan of cuddling unless it's with Bunny; he generally considers it a sort of social tax he willingly pays in exchange for a roll in the hay, going through the motions of intimacy so no feelings are hurt in Dan's pursuit of a sexual encounter. But he does want Price to be comfortable, whether they end up sleeping together or not, and he suspects that to shoot Price down here would fuel Price's insecurities some way or another.

[myagents]

Price loves cuddling. Sadly, he doesn't really get the chance to cuddle. Predictably, the contact he was experiencing in prison was not sweet, especially since due to the nature of his crimes he'd mostly spend time in solitary confinement - the exception being the Tartarus where he got to attend more common areas as he was being transferred, that's how he noticed Sharkface - and the guards could only be bribed so much if there was nothing to bribe them for. Especially when they saw someone who they deemed 'the worst of the worst' be so physically weak that upon being beaten up would obey to any request and order. Sure, sometimes it would work, but it was definitely not sweet.

The last time he cuddled with someone was with a friend he made after he got divorced, which was twenty years ago. No one has been soft with him ever since. Well, no one except for Dan.

He shifts, hugging Dan from the side. He rubs his face on Dan's chest like a cat, then rests it to listen to Dan's heartbeat because he's curious about it.
He doesn't know what to think of all the understanding that he's offered, and while he's afraid of it he can't help but seek it, seek the reassurance, seek some sort of love although he knows he won't have it. Everything is slipping right through his fingers and he wishes Dan could somehow convince him otherwise, all while actively fearing the idea that if he wanted he could make it worse very easily.

[hallelujahjunction]

Dan smells like tobacco, menthol, rose, ginger and verbena, the combination of his cigarettes and the herbs and oils he uses to ward away and trap the most common subtypes of ghosts and monsters on his world. His heart is loping along, a little quickened with arousal but not in a state of discomfort or panic at all.

He's a good cuddler, gently running his hand over Price's hair, pulling him into an embrace. He's relatively certain that this kind of positive touch isn't something Price has had since getting to the Rig, given that Dan seems to be the only person having a meaningful positive relationship with the Counselor. He wonders if a happier version of the Counselor - one who still was finding purpose, at least, in the evil designs of Project Freelancer - had more touch in his life.

[myagents]

Funnily enough, the moments he thinks he was the happiest were the ones that were actually the most loveless, more than he realizes. He always had to pretend to be human, anyway, and of course Project Freelancer would make him happy when not only he didn't have to pretend, he was required, needed to be his destructive self.

Studying and torturing everyone was so much closer to the traditional love he was unable to give. The pure devotion, attention, care that it took. It was a form of worship, in exchange for them giving him their entire being as they begged him to ease the pain not in a close minded and selfish way, rather in a deep and intimate way, grasping at his hand to be led down the path of self discovery. It was like setting off a firework: you destroy something, it emits its pained whistle, but then it explodes and culminates in a beautiful spectrum of colours, drawing petals of this majestic flower that blossoms and keeps expanding until it disappears, and it's right because it disappears so soon that it is beautiful, because you have to catch the moment, and no moment is ever as intense as the last one. That's why the light in people's eyes is such a treasure.

The Director more than everybody else gave him this thrill, because he teased him. He let him in on his most precious, glorious, genius idea and allowed him to assist him, to witness him, to experience him in this indirect way that became more and more direct as the Director's addiction grew. It felt like a one night stand that they both knew was damaging but it was so good they just had to come back to it and repeat it, repeat it, repeat it.

Price always liked to think that the Director was attracted to him right for this reason and was in complete denial because he was in too deep in 'doing it for this wife' that it was the only way he could justify it to himself. Price liked to lie to himself, yes, the Director didn't care about him, but that remote possibility enticed him because come on, the man gave him everything: a place to live, a role in making a great discovery, a redemption as they were going to save the galaxy, a family, an army of interesting people, and toys. There was only one thing missing, and if that was fulfilled too it would have been better than Price's 'great love' back when he was married, because the Director needed him as he is even while being so full of emotions, unlike everybody else the more that man got filthy the more he got purer, which made Price the perfect fit for him. Or at least, in Price's special conception of love. He felt perfect and beautiful when he was trusted with everyone's pretty emotions.
Then it all went out of hand and everything was yanked away from him, and the Director ratted him out. That's some recognition for someone who's lived with you for ten years, obeyed your every order, and took care of you and your daughter more than your wife ever did! Ungrateful bastard...

He thinks of him, then he thinks of Wrath who was so quick to judge him because of his involvement with Project Freelancer (being completely right about it) and then suddenly telling him she was wrong about him because he was nice to her and helped her make a cake. Of course she disappeared from the Rig and he never saw her again, God forbid he gets to have friends. Not a problem, though, she was fooled by some gesture and he would have had to walk on eggshells to secure whatever bond with her, so maybe it was for the best, and as for Dan...

Well, he feels like Dan is somewhere halfway through those two cases, and it's very confusing. Does Dan need him as he is for real? Or is he just fooling him to turn it against him later, like in some sort of cruel test where he has to second guess everything he says, thinks, and does? It's scary. Oh, but the way Dan strokes his hair feels very nice. It makes him feel a tingle that goes down to his back to the rest of his body, and his breath hitches. Then he hums to communicate his enjoyment. He looks up at Dan, and timidly kisses his cheek.

[hallelujahjunction]

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.

[myagents]

Upon receiving the kiss, he closes his eyes and hums, holding onto Dan. He reciprocates slowly and tenderly, wanting to give sweetness even if he's rotten inside and out. How strange that for now, just for now, he is not second guessing himself. He knows that he doesn't mean any harm and just wants to experience connection because it's something he genuinely enjoys. He wonders if Dan knows it, and how he feels about it.

It's not a secret that Dan is self destructive, that he finds solace in reckless activities to get something temporary to excite him or numb him just as long as it distracts him. He doesn't care about guarding himself from pain, which makes Price wonder if Dan is actively asking to be hurt. He doesn't mind complying, but he wishes Dan - or anyone, really - could see that just because he was tasked with breaking people it doesn't mean that he is not capable of fixing them and helping them, he wishes Dan could confirm his almost delusional idea that he is capable of doing things right, of doing 'good'.


He slowly starts reciprocating more intensely. Not sloppily, but somehow desperately, with Dan holding him like that the arousal is starting to become more than a fleeting thought. He suspects that Dan will regret this soon and that the possibilty of regretting it is exactly what's fueling him. Which is exciting, but he wishes he could aspire to be more than someone's mistake.

fade 2 black

[hallelujahjunction]

Dan falls right into it like he always does when he's seeking some blowing-off-stress making out, letting himself be directed entirely by the little voice in his head that's always going if it feels good you should do it- so few things feel good- because Price does, in fact, feel good. And Dan, for all his experience, is desperate right back.

When this is over, they'll cuddle a little while longer, and then Dan will excuse himself back to the party, and then avoid Price like he's been avoiding everyone for weeks.