bigapplesauce | So Who's Going to Watch You Die? [closed]

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So Who's Going to Watch You Die? [closed]

Daniel scans the intersection for the twentieth time in the past five minutes, hands crammed in his pockets. He's not anxious and he's certainly not fidgeting. Well. Not overly.

And if he were, hypothetically, fidgeting and shuffling and shifting in one place restlessly, it'd be completely justified given present circumstances. He's just a little on edge, mostly thanks to shared group dreams which are, apparently, possible - something he's recently discovered in the worst way imaginable. He'd been hoping all morning that leaving the apartment and interacting with the real world for a bit would brush away the last few echoes of the nightmare, but there's still a chill in his spine regardless. Expected, but no less unwelcome.

So, yes, he's a little concerned, primarily about Seth. It's true that Seth has lived here for longer - much longer - and he'd acted like he was used to the shared nightmarish experiences by now. Daniel has more than a few issues with that sentiment (the foremost being that horrible nightmares in which people get impaled and imprisoned and die should not be something one gets used to, personal history with nightmares aside) but he's also hoping Seth can clear up a few questions about the Dreaming. It might not have been real in the strictest sense of the word, but it had certainly felt like it.

Also he is worried.

That line of thought just keeps looping on back.

Daniel's phone buzzes, a text from Seth. Soon the phone returns to his pocket as he crosses his arms, takes stock of the intersection again, and waits.

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"Yeah, I," he looks back over at the counter, rubbing at the back of his neck, "I kind of made a mess. Sorry about that." He downs the remainder of his coffee and grabs both plates to deposit them into the dishwasher along with bowl, pan, and spatula.

"Really has been a while since I cooked for anyone." He half-shrugs, returning the carton with its remaining eggs and the nearly depleted milk to their respective places in Seth's fridge. "But, hey - one impromptu dinner slash lunch, mishap-free."

Jeez, Daniel, give him something to work with here. Seth's teasing and he just goes ahead and does it? Which probably means Daniel is far too easy to take advantage of, and that just makes Seth feel strangely protective. Well... more protective than he already is, given how many counts of life-saving happened last night.

"You didn't set anything on fire, break anything, or poison me. Sounds like a win to me," he agrees, leaning back in his chair.

"Yet." Immediately he shuts his eyes. Ah, no. "Bad joke, sorry." Much to his relief (and confusion), Seth has just seemed mildly amused throughout the entire process, though Daniel doesn't fully understand why. It's just dinner. Lunch, even. Between two recently-acquainted friends. Who happened to save each others' lives in a dream manifestation the night before. Not a big deal.

"Well, what's the fun of dying if you can't joke about it?" Seth answers mildly, not sure if that's reassuring or not. It's meant to be. While neither of them wants to dwell on what happened (even though they seem to keep doing so), it's much easier to be flippant about it than tiptoe around and try to avoid it entirely.

Seth makes a good point. Deflecting the gravity of a situation with humor isn't Daniel's typical tactic - usually he's the first one to address it, open and unyielding and overbearing in his desire to understand, or he'll just leave it to drift quietly until someone else is ready to bring it up - but it certainly seems to be Seth's. And in the case of the dying thing, well. He gets that a little.

"What was I thinking?" He tries for a wry grin and leans back against the counter, bracing himself with both arms, but he doesn't think the expression succeeds. It feels more like a grimace. And there's that guilt again, the too-present, too-acute regret over having not done something about everything that had gone wrong in that dream. Daniel can't rationalize any of it, much as he wants to and much as Seth clearly wants to. He's been giving off the "water under the bridge" philosophy all day; if only Daniel could get the irrational parts of his brain to listen.

Well, Seth's not entirely sure that went over well, so he changes the subject.

"So..." he begins, considering their options for things to do now. Since they've covered power returning and repayment meal, but.. well, the company is nice. And Daniel is still pretty new in town and probably doesn't have an awful lot of things to occupy his time with. "How much of the city have you seen so far?"

"Not, uh, not much. Mostly just been trying to get settled." After the mild disaster of venturing into the park, getting lost, and eventually ending up at Wilmot's End with a very drunk and very pissed-off Satan, Daniel is frankly not sure if he trusts himself to go meandering about again until he has a better sense of how to navigate the area. Help from a friend would significantly reduce the stress associated with that period of adjustment.

"Been around the park some and at Wilmot's, which you already knew about. Think the Rift tossed me at, um, what was it - Bathesda Terrace, that's it." He punctuates his next sentence with an apologetic dip of the head. "Last time I tried to wander I ended up repeatedly antagonizing the Devil, so I haven't done a lot of that since."

Seth smiles at the last bit. "Well, that's understandable enough." He could've maybe tried... not antagonising the Devil, but Seth isn't clear on the context, and maybe that's just what Daniel does.

"D'ya wanna... I mean, I know my way around. We could - I mean if there's anything you'd like to see, I could take you there. Like. Sightseeing or something," he offers. Very awkwardly. And not entirely sure why offering it makes him nervous.

"Sure." Daniel straightens at the suggestion. "I should probably get better at not getting lost here and all. And hopefully that way you won't need to walk me home." The last sentence is imparted as a joke, though Daniel is perhaps unaware of the implied next time that comes tacked on the end of it, a simple matter of conversational phrasing.

Seth would walk him home if Daniel needed him to... Or at least to somewhere close by. Even if Daniel is registered with the rebels and everything, he's still living there, and there is not a place Seth wants to be.

"Well, mostly it's a simple grid layout, so it's not actually very complicated once you work it out," he answers, and drains the last of his coffee. "Not like London, where you kind of have to either memorise or just guess."

"Well, that should make it easier." Daniel's directional senses aren't exactly perfect - he's better at navigating alien digsites or hostile motherships than he is at mapping out street names, a bizarrely specific subset of the skill that he blames entirely on his line of work - but he's hoping his capacity to memorize seemingly useless terms and languages will come in handy here. "Thank you."

Well, it gets a bit confusing when you get to the east side, and suddenly it's called 'Park Avenue' instead of just 4th Avenue, and then there's Lexington and Madison... And if you go downtown south of 14th street, everything starts turning a bit messy. Perhaps he should just get Daniel a map...

"So, do you have any specific requests? Big landmarks and tourist attractions? Museums? ..Theatre?" Seth suggests, mostly shooting blind here. He's going to assume Daniel is not overly interested in going shopping.

"You're probably gonna wanna avoid museums with me." Because somehow Daniel doesn't think Seth would enjoy hours of shameless archaeological enthusiasm over the oldest exhibits he can find. And not at all for personal reasons. Daniel's standard definition of "fun" usually includes several large books with unpronounceable names and working until ungodly hours in the morning and as hard as it is for him to accept, that doesn't actually fall into the more universally defined parameters for the concept of fun. "Other than that, well, you do know the area better than I do."

He's putting his trust into Seth's hands. The guy saved his life a couple times and he figures he owes him that much at least. The spontaneous lunch included.

Well, Seth would definitely be confused going to a museum with Daniel, but then again, if Daniel could actually explain things so Seth would get it without much background information, it might be interesting. Probably not his number one choice of afternoon entertainment, though.

"Well, yeah, but... general interests might help," Seth points out. He doesn't want to, say, drag Daniel to a play or something and it's the most boring night ever. Then again Seth is not overly likely to go see a play anyway. ~~Musicals are more his thing.~~

"..Have you even been to Times Square yet?" he asks, it suddenly occurring to him. That seems like one of those all-important Manhattan places. Even if it isn't particularly exciting once you've lived here for a while.

"Not that I can remember. Though, uh, even if I have, it wouldn't actually be relevant because it wouldn't have been in this iteration of the universe so there are differences both vast and critical enough to warrant an almost completely divergent experience."

That's a tangent, Daniel, and that's not very helpful. He aborts in both direction and velocity and returns to the prior line of conversation.

"That would be fine," he finishes in a reduced tone.

Seth can't help but grin a little at the tangent, though. "Times Square first, then," he decides, checking his pockets for wallet and keys and everything, heading for the door. They can figure out where to go from there. Get the main tourist thing out of the way first. Hey, maybe Daniel wants to check out Hard Rock Café or something, who knows. There's plenty of distractions there. "Wanna grab a cab or walk? It's a bit further than where you came up from the subway."

"Either one's fine," Daniel says, unhelpfully neutral. "If money's an object I'm definitely all right with walking." Manhattan is no rocky alien planet, after all.

"So, Times Square." He nods to himself, jams his hands into his pockets, and follows. "That's good. Good, uh, good central reference point." He's big on reference points. Reference points are the cornerstones of both translation and navigation, a common ground, and thus a doubly important factor. Times Square sounds like a better reference point than the one he's been using, namely Lucy's apartment. At least he now knows how to get to and from there which is a marked improvement from a few days ago.

Edited 2014-10-13 02:26 (UTC)

"It's not," he answers immediately, to the topic of money. Did he mention the not paying rent bit? Because that really helps a lot when it comes to amount of spending money he has - or leeway for variation in income. And he's pretty sure Gabe wouldn't let him starve if it got that bad.

"Well, as long as you don't ask anyone to meet you just 'at Times Square'," he answers, also stuffing his hands in his pockets. "It's a surprisingly big area, like four blocks long, and generally pretty tourist-filled."

"Well, yeah, I just meant, uh, you know." One hand dances in an animated, lateral circle. "Generally. Directionally. Logistically. You know." He walks a half-step behind, maybe slightly nervous. Not nervous. It's standard anticipatory jitters, the same old excitement that comes from entering a new environment. Because on some level, yes, it is just Manhattan, New York, Earth, the Milky Way, a standard location in a recognizable section of the universe, but it's also Manhattan, New York, on an Earth in a universe that has entirely deviated from the one he knows in a multitude of ways. The differences could be immense. The potential for discovery could be huge.

Also Seth is being very kind and very patient in willingly showing it to him. That may be a related aspect.

"Well, you've got Bethesda, Times Square, and Tompkins Square Park. Got some good reference points uptown, midtown and downtown," he answers, leading the way outside and heading east, keeping an eye out for a cab.

"Um, Tompkins Square Park is the one right outside Wilmot's," he adds, realising Daniel might not know that even if he was there. Presumably he hasn't been north of the Upper West Side, but then, Seth hasn't really either. And you get in trouble if you try to leave Manhattan. That's something Seth knows very well.

"Did we pass through there when I was drunk?" Daniel asks in the most politely neutral tone he can gather. Thankfully he hadn't been completely wasted, maybe just mildly tipsy, so he still has a mostly full memory of the whole thing. He might be having trouble recalling specific scenery, but he's choosing to own that one up to being distracted and tired at the time. And not that drunk.

He files away the other names for reference and possible future research. Getting lost has not resulted well for him in the past.

Seth smirks a little at the question, especially the tone it's asked in. "No, it's like, across the street from the pub. You know, the huge green area right across from where you entered?" he answers, just a little teasingly.

"Right. That. Makes sense. A lot more sense." He was not that drunk. He just can't remember the specifics after leaving Wilmot's. Which is normal. "Okay, good to know. So that's Tompkins, all right. I know about Bethesda courtesy of the Rift and Times Square is, well, a given," he rattles off, ticking them off on his fingers. "Those are the majors, then?"

"Well, no," Seth answers, though doesn't elaborate for a second, busy hailing an oncoming cab. "They're just, you know... Places you've been - or will be at very soon - that people generally know where are. To be honest, people most just use street intersections and districts for reference. Maybe subway stations," he explains, getting into the cab.

"44th and 7th," he says to the driver, then turns back to Daniel. "Like, right now we're in the theatre district. More specifically, Hell's Kitchen."

"Ah," he says in succinct reply, getting into the cab after Seth. "So that's the area you live at. And the place I'm at is, uh." Lucy told him once, he remembers. He made a point of memorizing the area to avoid getting lost and having to ask directions from people who very obviously do not want to give directions. "Right - Upper West Side. Columbus and 92nd."

There, he's not a complete directional loss. He's already mentally mapping out the city as best as he can.

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