[fic] Watchmen; Moonless Night, Chapters 8-10; Dan/Rorschach
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Chapter Eight
Orange, buzzing security lights throw black, tangled shadows through a cyclone fence. Shadow stretches up, crawling across ground, reaching, entangling him, squeezing around his neck and his body-
When he awakes next he is still hot, too hot, sweat having long since soaked uncomfortably into the hollow his spine makes.
He is painfully engorged.
No, no, no, not here in this clean bed, not here in Daniel's home-
It does not escape him that the only part of him functioning properly is his genitals.
No, not properly. This is not, never has been proper. Once he had wondered what he'd done to have this curse visited upon him. At times, it burns like a brand of judgment, forcing him awake with his tongue already cleaving to the roof of his mouth. It makes him want to pull his own skin off, peel down to the core, become something else made of bone and steel without this imperfect flesh. Why must this lust come to him when he is asleep and off his guard?
His hand remains trapped hot between his chest and the mattress, his forehead pressing in the luscious, (plump,) soft pillow. Not here, not here, he cannot. He will not. It would be a betrayal of everything-
"Rorschach?"
He lifts his head with a start. Of course Daniel would be awake, of course. A man who usually spends the length of every morning dead to the world would be awake this time.
Is it morning?
Floorboards creak just outside the door-was it closed last night? Can Daniel see him even now, the way he lies with his neck arched in tension? Can he seen the sin, the shame, smell it even from there?
"You awake?"
His fingers twitch and he bites down on his tongue hard.
The door opens, gives him enough time to turn his head and sink down to the bed in semblance of restful sleep-never mind that he hasn't had a true restful sleep in five years. Daniel wouldn't know that, assumes all people live as easy lives as he does.
No, that isn't fair, Daniel is only attempting to fulfill his duty (only attempting to be kind) to a former partner.
"Hey. How are you feeling?"
And that question means more than it seems to, because Daniel would never simply ask, can you see yet. It is disturbing-not because Daniel is asking but because he himself didn't check as soon as he woke up. Too fixated on disgusting bodily reactions, and it is almost as if he has already become accustomed to this darkness, as if this is merely a backdrop to his life now.
It has to be soon. It must be soon. It will be soon.
The mattress bows under the weight of someone sitting carefully; the immediate friction is unbearable and it is all he can do to not grunt in pain, to not seek relief by rolling onto his back, to not seek relief of any kind.
"Well," Daniel is clearly fumbling for something to say, is taking his rigid silence as abject depression, is pitying him. "These things take time, I guess. It doesn't have to mean anything."
All he can manage is a raspy grunt in response.
"I'll make a late lunch. You like grilled cheese, right?"
When Daniel leaves and the mattress jumps again, his breath heaves into the pillow, lost. He lifts his hand to his face, presses his thumb to his eyelid to feel the slick eyeball shifting beneath. Nothing. Not even the swirl of sparks which is supposed to come from pressure.
He presses hard, eyelid drawing taut as he waits for pain to spread outward into the eye socket. This at least he can control. This at least still belongs to him. His hand slides down past his jaw, past the rough stubble there to end on his throat. Vital blood pulses beneath his fingertips in twin streams, trachea delicate and just as fragile as Furniss's neck was beneath his hands, so breakable as the man writhed and twisted like a hellish, diseased worm.
His forearm hits piled fabric; clothes have been left beside him.
It isn't until later that he realizes how easy a sandwich is to eat for a man without eyes.
Wind hisses through the gaps in the kitchen window, fall temperatures no match for the furnace he can hear distantly humming, the smell of dust burning off from the ducts in the first heating of the season.
When dishes clatter in the sink, he realizes that this is the point when he usually leaves. He should go, he should, but his head feels heavy and overfull. The trip downstairs left him with mild dizziness and a pervasive ache throughout his body.
"Rorschach?"
A hand, hot and soft, closes around his wrist, fingers seeking the vein like a bird after a grub, tightening to a vice grip when he attempts to jerk his hand back toward himself.
"Stop it. I'm taking your pulse." There's enough command in the tone that he freezes on instinct. "You're clammy. I should have brought the food up to you. Shit."
His wrist is still constricted in that talon-grip. "Not a child."
"No, but you're still recovering." There's a heavy sigh. He wonders if Daniel's combing his fingers through his hair in frustration-it's so easy to picture. "Go lie down on the couch. They told me you'll need a lot of sleep."
They, they, what else did they tell him, had they drawn his blood and determined his identity, all Charlton residents had fingerprints filed with the police in case of runaways, were they sending squadrons even now to his apartment, to Daniel's home, had they told Daniel-
"Hey-"
The next thing he feels is compression and pressure, a blanket tucked securely around his body.
The couch is the same one he slept on ten years ago, when he'd sunk down gratefully after a different injury took him to the Owl's Nest; he'd secretly relished how different it was than everything he owned, how soft, how indulgent.
How foolish he'd been to allow those things back then.
//
The days slide by in endless progression. It could be a week. More. Less.
Sometimes there is lost time and space, gone in the distance between his last memory and Daniel calling his name. Sometimes it is too hard to think of too many things at once.
Dreams slide in and out, time passing like something slipping, wriggling out of this hands. His face never left him but remains tucked inside his pocket, heavy and waiting.
He wakes at strange times, sometimes to the sound of snoring or restless tossing and turning, sometimes to the heat he's learned is mid-afternoon sunlight angling through the window.
//
When he goes down to use the weight equipment he cannot find it; there is only the smell of dust and disuse.
//
It soon becomes apparent that Daniel does little during the day. Nite Owl used to gather information, just as interested (obsessed) with cases as he'd been, running searches of his databases and providing a perfect counterpoint to his own extensive street resources. Now, nothing.
He would be bored to the point of losing his mind if he could keep track of the days, if it didn't feel like a few seconds of awareness stretched over weeks. Daniel must read; he can hear the thick occasional turning of pages, newsprint rustling, sometimes the scratching of pen on paper. The smell of home-cooking, indulgent fats and oils and spices. Old-fashioned music from when they were children, same music he used to play in the Owlship, jazz his mother used to curse about when she heard it through the wall. Someone always there to change the record. Television set. The World Series. Advertisements serving as living copies of the billboards he already knows, some new, some surprising and insulting. Sports always on and news hastily avoided despite his protests. It hisses like a discontented animal when they fall asleep after broadcast hours.
Daniel tells him of a new archaeological discovery in Manasseh, and he half-dreams of old bones.
//
It takes seven steps from the couch to the bottom of the stairs, three on carpet, three thudding on wood. There are ten stairsteps between upstairs and downstairs. The guest room is three doorframes down: restroom, Daniel's room, his room.
//
In the bath, he thinks about how these decadent comforts are reducing him to something base and filthy. This lack of sight makes him too present in his body.
There are entire sections of time he can't recall. Maybe there has been a doctor visiting or maybe his own dreams have been twisting up at him in a masquerade of reality. When he tries to remember the day before, there is only the trembling, gossamer recollection of Daniel shushing him and smoothing a hand over his head in a gesture that made him feel simultaneously claustrophobic, suspicious, and as if his throat were closing in on itself. He doesn't know when it had happened and doesn't ask in case it had been nothing more than a fantasy from his diseased mind.
He's becoming soft and self-indulgent, he knows. Has spent so long, for too long in this home, eating decadent meals and taking too-long showers and accepting too much kindness. He is supposed to be the terror of the streets, not this weak, contemptible, inactive ragdoll, becoming corrupted by a well-meaning man.
//
"It's beautiful out there today," Daniel murmurs from the direction of the sink.
He only bows his head and continues eating his toast (cared for, as he hadn't been cared for in years).
//
He can't see.
Sleep takes him again.
//
And he can't see-
The sheets have been washed now, and how long has he been here, the smell sweet and innocuous and cloying (tempting)-he buries his nose into the pillowcase, breathing deeply.
His Rorschach clothes have been folded neatly to live inside a drawer until his sight returns. Only until then. (At night, it's almost as if he can sense them there, smell the blood which has been taken away by Daniel's washer.) His things have been put away neatly into a Veidtseal bag next to his grappling gun and some mornings he goes over them one by one, assuring himself of their presence.
As time goes on, he does it less and less.
His city is left empty without its guardian. Out there, the squirming lives of degenerates continue to infect everything decent left until it is all a rotting mass, and there is nothing he can do for now.
He needs to be Rorschach again; but Rorschach is without flaw and he will not sully that. He must be patient.
//
He has learned which television programs Daniel favors, and they have entered several discussions on the merits of fictional characters.
And this is strange, too strange, a blending of Nite Owl and Daniel. It was always so easy for Daniel to slip between the two as if it was only a job for him-maybe it was. When told to quit by his superiors, he couldn't quit fast enough. Chose this suffocating existence of living only for the next day instead of going into the streets and fighting human wretchedness. Refused to listen to reason and this is what Rorschach is having trouble forgetting, keeps thinking of in the middle of their conversations on world events. (Daniel has always quietly listened to his worldview and treated his beliefs as valid, if not correct, despite the liberal sympathies he knows must lurk in this good man. Always respected him until Grice.)
Nevertheless, it has been so long since they have had occasion to talk-so long, so they avoid certain subjects by silent mutual agreement. They talk even when it stops being relevant, because they both know without even mentioning it out loud that this keeps his mind tethered to reality. It's one more kindness his partner has rendered to him-perhaps more than he hoped to deserve.
Sometimes it feels too good, all of it.
//
"I need to change these, okay?"
There are hands, hot, pressing against his forehead through the bandages. He is thirsty, his throat reflexively clenching and swallowing over and over. But Daniel is waiting for a response, as always, always has. There always was an undercurrent of respect in their interactions, the kind usually reserved for high-class people as if Daniel couldn't see the scuffs on his shoes, carefully blacked, or the worn rim to his fedora.
He grants permission by closing his eyes and lifting his head, knowing the gesture will be understood.
Feeling these bandages lift away from his head sparks the kind of anxiety he'd thought he left behind and purged years, years ago-he's not supposed to be afraid, is supposed to be the one to inspire fear-his hand flails up, connects with an elbow, then a meaty forearm, still as strong as ever.
For one trembling knife-edge of a moment, he stares up into nothingness and feels it staring back. No one moves.
His bandages are half-off, this new face nearly unraveled, his old face just as sore and dry and painful beneath, lips cracking at the edges when he grimaces. It is ridiculous. Daniel had already seen this section of hair and forehead before, and yet it feels too much like being unpeeled, flayed to the bone. This, out of everything, after using his food and his shower and his clothing and his bed-how has he let this get so far, intolerable-
Daniel's hand, his right hand since he has made no move to free the other, lays along the side of his face, against the hollow of his cheek. It is such a benevolent, brotherly gesture that a tight fullness thrums in his chest and stomach and he fears he may vomit.
Instead, he closes his eyes again and slackens his grip, acquiescing.
Art by jackiemei
He hardly feels the bandages stick and pull against his closing wound over the sound of another man's breathing.
It only occurs to him later that he is not hungry and has no beard growth, and how unlikely it is that he's been doing those things for himself.
//
He wonders what he's become.
He's lying on the couch, spine sagging sideways, blanket he knows by feel wrapped tightly around his shoulders, a cold night. His sock-clad foot (clean socks, he thinks they must be white) is braced on Daniel's thigh, grounding, as traitorous commentators on the television squawk and squabble. They tremulously ask each other what the Comedian must have done to free the innocent hostages from the Islamists instead of simply praising him for his service to the country. Typical.
They've just finished dinner, chicken florentine. Finally convinced Daniel he didn't need finger foods, could handle utensils just fine; it sits heavily in his stomach.
"Rorschach?" That name, that- "Hey." Dan is hesitating saying this. He slides his foot down to the floor, feeling and hearing it hit the wood beneath hard. "Do you want me to call Dr. Manhattan? Maybe..." The thought of it, those blank and featureless eyes looking all the way into his head, seeing the collection and weave and tangle of neurons, having one of them know, no. Having to ask a favor of him, no. (It makes him think suddenly of the dying rat he found as a child, its tiny lungs heaving, how he prayed to God but it never woke again.)
"No. Have enough doctors."
//
At Halloween, the ringing doorbell jerks him awake even before he's aware he's been sleeping.
Daniel is in good spirits, always has been on this day, most likely due to the inherent childishness of the holiday and the proliferation of Nite Owl costumes.
At some point, a pile of candy has been left in the hollow beneath his ribcage. Chocolate melts on his tongue, his eyes flutter shut, and he knows he is damned.
In his dream he is surrounded by children in masks singing pagan songs and clawing at his legs. All are wearing his face. Everyone but him.
//
He takes his face out of his pocket. Holds it in his hand delicately. Thinks of the gathering black shapes looking up at him when he cannot look back.
He feels afraid.
The night air is cool on his body.
Chapter Nine
The night air is cool on his body as he walks beneath an unseen sky, sidewalk beneath his feet the only guide he has. Night insects chirrup, one of the city's small concessions to nature. Daniel will be asleep for a while yet and will not be able to stop him.
He does not have an answer for himself as to why he is outside, where he is going. There is only the sense of an enormous pressure he needs relief from. For too long he's been burdensome. For too long he's relied on another person.
So many nights he'd walked this city feeling strengthened, emboldened, predatory. The memory of it is like the aftertaste of something sweet, lingering. No one would give him a second thought or second look. Concrete beneath his feet, the city once again recognizing and accepting him into its tangled heart. The bandage had been taken from his head weeks ago. Now there is no face but his own, an anonymous face people usually avoided seeing. And now he won't have to see them either.
The air moves differently at street corners, wind moving in straight-edged currents between city buildings, noticeable when it hits his face and hands. He'd never realized it before.
It isn't until he's three blocks away that he realizes he's been counting his steps and making tactile landmarks out of doorways and corners.
He imagines how Daniel's face will look when he turns down the empty bed, washes discarded sheets and clothing. (All this time, he has never tripped over his clothes in the morning, the floor always cleared.) He would like to imagine that the empty home would bring relief to Daniel; he knows better.
It is time to turn back.
As soon as he enters the living room, he knows someone else is there.
"Daniel?"
"Where were you going?" Daniel's voice is soft and low, a tone he has learned to interpret as veiled hurt. The idea of that his friend has been waiting here makes something itch beneath his skin.
"Taking my evening constitutional."
"That's not funny."
It isn't. But he has little else to say; there is no way to describe how it feels inside this house, air nearly too thick to breathe. It would only hurt his feelings.
"Look, please, just- I'll take you anywhere. We'll figure something out. But going out like that... you could get hurt." And there's an old memory: Nite Owl was protective the first time they met, correctly understanding that he was an amateur at all of this but misunderstanding what that meant. It wasn't until they fought beside each other that Nite Owl understood he could take care of himself. Time is slipping backwards now.
"Made it here fine the first time."
"Yeah, and it was a damned miracle. How many of those bruises did you get from running into things?"
"Hrn."
"Just." A shuddering breath, and he is very glad he cannot see Daniel's expression right now. The brittle sound of that voice alone roots his feet to the floor. "Please."
He should be feeling defiant. His temper should be flaring hot at being told what to do, at being condescended to, at the assumption of his own fragility when he has proven time and time again that he can survive in any situation. He should be going back to his own home to live his own life.
Instead all he can feel is heat from a vent blowing across the nape of his neck, all he can hear is Daniel breathing, all he can think is how valuable it is to have someone who cares for his safety in a world full of people baying for his blood.
His hand accidentally knocks against Daniel's shoulder as he walks past the couch; his fingers curl briefly, giving the slightest pressure possible, then fall away.
//
When he wakes up again, the smell of newsprint and ink is strong.
It reminds him so strongly of his own apartment and his newspaper archives that he wonders briefly if yesterday was a dream, if he went home instead of turning back. It puts a sick, disorienting feeling in the pit of his stomach. How did he get here? Daniel will be worrying-
But this bed isn't his. Soft pillow, smooth sheets.
The newspaper rustles, fans waves of air across his face, thin pages crackling as they open.
"Good morning."
"Huhh-morning?"
" 'An Extraordinary Investigation. Disturbing Messages Printed in Our Children's Textbooks.' "
If he was drowsy he is no longer. A Godfrey headline, unmistakable. Has always been concerned with liberal brainwashing contained within the educational system. New Frontiersman. Daniel is reading his newspaper to him.
The realization causes him to miss three full paragraphs of the first article before his brain engages on it again. They used to argue over this, back in the later years when these articles he'd once thought were harmlessly on the fringe started making more and more sense to him and spoke the kinds of truths no one else would. Daniel dismissed it contemptuously as a rag-a favor he'd been glad to return for his partner's precious Gazette.
And though Daniel's voice sometimes strays into disbelief or disdain or disgust at what he reads, it is forgivable. This is an apology, or a compromise.
Art by radishface
By the time the paper is finished, he has leaned back with closed eyes without even realizing it. Daniel is folding it neatly, and the light weight comes to rest on his lap.
"About yesterday, I-" A pause. Must be cleaning his glasses or picking at lint on his clothing in a gesture of discomfort. "I don't really get why you've been staying so long. I guess I've been afraid that if you got a taste of the outside world you'd be gone again." A soft, dry laugh, and does that mean he wants him here, he- "That's pretty sick of me, huh?"
It tugs hard at something in his chest. He can think of much sicker things, and much sicker men. "Daniel. Understand. Have had to... care for me. Has been a strain." He would have been dead if not for this. Dead, unnamed, to be picked over by alley vermin with no one left to claim him.
Instead he is here, lying in an overstuffed bed and being read to.
His outstretched fingers find fragile paper. On the second try, he finds Daniel's leg and does not remove his hand until the other man withdraws, stuttering about breakfast.
//
It is difficult, thinking of ways to show his gratitude. He burns his fingers while cooking eggs the first time, but not the second.
//
Days pass, weeks pass, but he's more aware now, follows the track of time as it moves in predictable calendar-guided steps. His thoughts begin to take clearer shape. Their conversations last longer, gain complexity.
He is comfortable here. His own apartment (and he is most likely evicted by now) becomes unbearable during this season, nothing like the times when he had nowhere to go before he swallowed his pride and found landlords who would take worn bills and coins for rent, but dreaded all the same. Never complained about summer because he always remembered the ever-present cold of winter hollowing out his bones, and there was not even hot water in the later years to chase it away. All animals remember winter.
But when he stands in the tiny, neglected backyard to feel the cold stinging his bare feet, to feel the weakening sunshine on his face, to hear the occasional airline jet (there will be black zeppelins above too, but he reminds himself that the tree branches obscure his face), he knows he will be able to return to warmth. It reminds him of the brutal clarity of February patrols, how colors turned sharp and the air seared his lungs even through the obstruction of his mask.
He holds his hand before his face and thinks about clarity for a very long time.
Promotional advertisements on the television turn to reminders of Thanksgiving and shopping. Neither of them ever celebrated the holiday for their own separate reasons, but after that first year when they ended up together in Chinatown after busting a drug operation, there had always been shared sweet pork and long noodles and bowls of soup so hot steam rose in clouds to blacken his mask. When Daniel puts chopsticks into his hand one day instead of a fork, he understands.
//
They are listening to the morning news when one particular item in between corporate jingles and the traffic report makes him sit up ramrod-straight, mouth going dry.
"...believed to be Andrew Wilkinson, age thirty-two, five-foot-ten..."
Held up a gas station for money, of all things. Wilkinson, the missing link in the criminal ring he'd been investigating before any of this happened, who he thought had left the city entirely months ago. Vital piece of the case, important, and it's all coming back clearly to him now, every clue and every connection. His fingers twitch for his notes but they're a world away beneath floorboards. He cannot simply forget this. He cannot, but to go out alone would be (impossible) breaking a promise, even if the promise hadn't been spoken out loud.
"Daniel."
His answer comes muffled through a mouthful of breakfast. "Hrnph?"
"Did you hear that."
"Yeah." Serious now, and he knows that Daniel must still pay attention to every crime report whether he wants to or not. Some things are not easily forgotten. "Yeah, I heard it. The police'll catch him, man."
"Need you to investigate." His hands are clenching against the table, fingernails scraping across the surface in tension.
"Rorschach," he says. "We've had this argument," he doesn't say.
"Daniel." His throat works dryly. "I can't. Daniel, please." He can almost feel the look that earns him, the stunned silence vibrating the air. He has only said that word once between them and they both fully understand the gravity.
"...What's he involved in?"
"Child pornography." And he could always trust Daniel to know that there are some things which shouldn't be left alone.
There's a hard exhale, then a slow inhale. "All right. Okay. Tell me what you know and I'll see what I can do. Just this once," he says in the true manner of an addict, "and I'm not dressing up," as if both of them don't already know how fruitless it is to draw that line.
//
He paces like a caged beast across the length of the living room, barely missing the coffee table each time. Feels almost as if he's the one out investigating, gaining the truth and punishing the wicked.
It's hard to tell how long it takes; his nervous agitation has made the hours stretch long by the time he hears the front door close, keys jangling.
He sits and folds his hands in his lap so as not to give the appearance of having waited anxiously this entire time. It's a delicate situation. Never would have thought he could get Daniel out there again, not after their arguments and the years of separation, no matter how often he had thought he saw a cape out of the corner of his eye on darker nights. Only sense memory.
Floorboards creak but the couch doesn't hold anyone's weight but his own. "You were right."
"Yes." It is not easy to be nonchalant.
"I canvassed the neighborhood around that gas station. Did the relative trick." Pose as concerned cousin, nephew, uncle. Ask locals to divulge whereabouts of suspect so he can be 'helped' before police get to him. Daniel, with his expression always halfway toward concern by default, was always especially talented at this. "Uh, got an address. Jimmied the lock and saw video equipment." He's recounting it as dryly as possible but his voice is a fraction of a step higher than usual and too fast.
"Called police?" Wilkinson deserves worse, but he cannot expect anything more than this.
"Yeah. They'll be waiting for him."
"Good." His fingers scrape along where the cushion's rough seam is unraveling. "Daniel. I appreciate this."
"Oh. Yeah, sure." Daniel seems taken aback by the gratitude and doesn't move from where he's standing. Something isn't right about the tone of his voice, still. It would be helpful to see his expression. "Listen, Hollis asked me to finally go over and watch a game with him tonight. I put some food in the microwave for you."
A hand closes lightly over his shoulder and then he's gone, the door closing again distantly. There were many times in the days before when they would sit together, too keyed up to sleep, running back through the night's events over and over even though they had both been there. It was a ritual.
He retrieves his food, twists the television knob until he finds the humming roar of a crowd, and waits.
A dog food commercial startles him awake, the plate on his stomach sliding off to land thickly on the floor, unbroken but circling too loudly before it finally comes to a rest. Must be late; temperature has dropped, heating system fighting against the night with discontented rumbles.
There is a clattering in the kitchen and approaching heavy footfalls he recognizes before adrenaline gets the chance to course through his body, even though something is recognizably off about the way Daniel is walking. The couch jolts under the careless weight of Daniel's body and now he can smell it: inexpensive beer and cigarettes, Mason's disgusting habits that Daniel allows himself to be drawn into. The perils of having an idol.
"Hrrm," Daniel groans, muffled by the smooth scraping sound of hands across skin: rubbing his face. The fabric of his clothing protests as he leans forward. Obviously distressed.
"Something wrong." He's seeking out Daniel's upper arm now even though the reek of alcohol makes him curl his upper lip, and he feels the way the bicep is strong underneath even as he attempts to comfort. All the same, a sense of wary unease keeps him back at arm's length.
"Mm. I don't know." At least he is not so intoxicated that he cannot form a full sentence. Comforting. "I'm sorry, I needed to- It's just, seeing you like- oh, hell. Don't listen to me."
"Too late."
A long silence.
"I broke the law," Daniel says as if he's testing out the shape of the words, as if he doesn't yet have a feeling about them. The law. Of course. That dredges up old arguments, old feelings, sour unfair resentments he has been doing his best to forget about lately (and Daniel never had to become an outlaw, never had to descend into the miasma of true mindless violence, never had to see the bones).
"Don't care about the law," he says suddenly, simultaneously wanting to say this and not say it, feeling the bitter truth of it, "care about how good it felt to be Nite Owl. Afraid." He still hasn't moved his hand but the unease has worsened, his stomach tight and mouth dry.
"What the hell?" The clarity of Daniel's voice changes as he turns. "What the hell, man?"
It feels like there's bile at the back of his throat but he can't stop. "Hehn, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe only liked it when you could attract females in heat, rut with Anna, Christine,Leslie."
There are hands on his shoulders, gripping hard, and his skin crawls and thrills at the touch through the layers of fabric. "Rorschach, shut up. You don't know about that. Just shut up."
"Know about you," he growls, his legs twisting up as he's forced roughly against the back of the couch as if that would stop the truth, as if he won't throw his entire weight forward against the resistance, as if he couldn't break this hold so easily despite the disadvantage of weight and-
And now it is claustrophobic, heat welling up between them as they struggle clumsily. This is not the full extent of their strength but it is still a frustrating Sisyphean strain against one another as they claw for an upper hand like squabbling animals, wrapping their limbs in an impossible tangle. It is tumultuous. Daniel's breath sounds ragged in his ear and he springs at the opportunity, sinking his teeth into the other man's vulnerable throat. When his tongue connects with skin he kicks at the armrest so hard it cracks even while a groan vibrates against his mouth.
Daniel stops all at once, panting. They both steady themselves, locked in a stalemate. He unclenches his jaw and draws back, feeling suddenly how quiet the room is above the sound of blood rushing in his ears, how he's staring like a-
"Sorry," Daniel is slurring but is horribly sincere, and he turns his face away as if it will do any good, as if he is deaf and not, not- "I'm so sorry." Hands are pressing up against the sides of his head, too hot, and Daniel is not apologizing for the fight or their struggle anymore, is speaking in a code that he doesn't want to understand, shuts his eyes against and shakes his head against and that wasn't what this was supposed to be about, I'm sorry you're-
Blind.
Though he twists and thrashes his friend is there to hold him down and cradle his wrecked body.
He does not remember being helped into bed.
//
He is walking down the hallway to the bathroom, that long unending path which twists and bends until it seems like miles, writhes until there is gravel beneath his feet and buildings rising up on all sides in place of walls. Electric wires section the sky with black lines. His neighborhood. The alley behind his apartment building. Time to go check on his Rorschach clothes.
It's been the same hiding-place for years now, here beneath the lascivious advertisement of the woman showing her legs, here under garbage.
It isn't just his folded clothes he finds: someone is wearing them, himself and not himself. The body is prone, unnaturally still.
When he touches the coat he realizes that it's made of something hard and fragile, the entire body stiff and smooth as if coated in a thin shell of ice. The mask is unmoving and cold beneath his hands.
("My misery is mine, and shall be borne by none but me.")
"I'm sorry," he's saying, "I'm sorry." His thumbs slide up, over the muted round of cheekbones to that hollow where the eyes should be. That frozen expression stares at him from under the fedora's brim, blank and unprotesting. But it's not even an expression at all, is it? Only shapes. He is pressing down and it's giving way under his thumbs like fine china, spiderline cracks crawling all over the hard surface of the entire body until they split under the pressure, yawning wide. There is whiteness pouring from its face onto his hands and out of all the cracks onto the dirt and he can see now that it was only a body made of salt like Lot's wife: looked too soon and saw too much.
When he steps back to keep the salt from hitting his good shoes the pungent smell of Daniel's cologne is everywhere, he sees that the poster with the woman has changed and now it's Nite Owl with swollen lips and dark eyes, now it's Daniel gleamingly nude in the moonlight which angles into the alley, illuminating skin and soft roundness.
Almost at the same moment he realizes it was a dream, he realizes that he is swollen and aching, is already clawing frantically down past his stomach to grasp at himself. The orgasm is nearly instantaneous, an explosion unfurling up the length of his spine and rushing his blood hot and shaking his legs as he turns his head and clamps his teeth into the pillow, whimpering into it, nearly suffocating when the hard arch of his neck presses his nose down.
Eventually, his mouth slackens.
//
As he washes himself, as he rinses the evidence away, his legs are still trembling from the aftershocks but inside he feels blank, like an empty stretch of shoreline.
He can feel every knot and warp of wood beneath his bare feet as he walks and he has stopped one doorway too soon. There is a drawer sliding open or closed, there is the doorframe beneath his hand.
"Hey, everything all right? You look a little sick."
Sick, Daniel doesn't know the half of it, but already he's moving forward, already before shame crawls up into his throat, stepping and reaching forward. Bare skin and the edge of an unbuttoned shirt catches between his middle two fingers. Was changing clothes for the night, or for the morning. Doesn't matter which because now he is feeling the geography of a body he has only ever dared to look at, never touch, new curves revealing themselves over muscle which is still hard-packed, only hidden.
"What are you doing?" Daniel's voice is wavering, fearful.
They both know.
Daniel withdraws first, breaths coming quick and tight, and he withdraws second, steps back, walks to his own room with a numbness in his head and a tingling in his fingertips.
He sits upon his bed, and waits.
It is hours later but he is still somehow awake to hear the footsteps, even, slow. Hears the breaths and counts them.
"You're right. I have been afraid."
It's as if Daniel has said it for both of them because a pressure releases somewhere, allows him to tilt his chin up just enough that Daniel can view it as an invitation, can move with a sigh that sounds like relief and crawl up the length of the bed until they are pressed together. The heaviness of the other man's body is an intrusion (but no, it cannot be an intrusion if he allows it and wants it and he does, he is in control here and this is still happening).
He presses the flat of his palm against Daniel's face, curling his fingers until he feels the bunching of fine muscles where his eyebrows are drawn together, the curving path down the side of his nose, his open mouth where humid breath ghosts across Walter's fingertips. It is such a helpless expression that his own lips twist, grimacing, that his neck arches up and his head twists to the side as soon as warm breaths land on his face because they're not like this.
"I never even knew you," and Daniel does not say it with recrimination or self-pity, only quiet and factual as he always was when he uncovered some immovable truth about a case and Walter wants to say yes you did or nothing at all.
And now his hair is being touched, the hollows of his cheeks, the line of his jaw but he is the one who is leaning up, tilting forward in this directionless blackness until his mouth hits clumsily against Daniel's cheek, lower until the metal eyeglass frame hits at an angle below his eye, and the intention is clear.
It is every bit as slick and heated and debauched as he as always imagined a kiss to be and he hates himself for the twin impulses of repulsion and magnetism, for how a profound stillness is suffusing throughout his body, for how this is something he has ached for and fought back against for decades now but to finally lose here, at the very end-
"I missed you."
And Walter doesn't even know which one of them has said it.
Chapter Ten
The mattress above him, the heavy solid body above, and himself (whoever he is) in between.
"What do you," he pants into a mouth entirely too close to his, "what do you expect from me." And no, that's too weak, it comes out accusatory and complaining as if he isn't the one who invited this, asked for, wanted it. It hangs in the air, too stark.
(Early in their partnership, there was a time when strings of assaults brought them on patrol through Central Park at night. It was all smooth blackness, the two of them shadows slipping between pools of light and dark silent foliage. Nite Owl had crouched once to show him a chrysalis hanging below jagged-toothed leaves, cupping the strained, fat casing in his gauntleted hand, brown on brown. And although Walter already knew about metamorphosis, he had listened patiently anyway.)
But Nite Owl understands, always has understood because there's only a second's pause before he clears his throat and says, commandingly: "touch me again."
To have the choice be someone else's, just for once to be only following orders instead of the last one left fighting, to be blameless-
Walter does nothing but run his hands over Daniel's shoulders and back even though he's touched them before, but this time he's wondering how pleasurable it feels, now he's no longer carrying the lie of what this means. There's a strange sound building in the back of his throat.
And it feels far too much like supplication but hasn't he succumbed, aren't the people who do this-because like mother, like-
"C'mon, man." That commanding tone in his ear; strong hands holding on. "This isn't like you. Come on."
And he bites and he claws because violence is the only language he knows how to use, but Daniel is there panting oh, absorbing his blunted attacks and making them something welcomed, gentling and transforming this. Taking everything he can give in the only way he knows to give it and despite the fact that anyone else in the world would know how to be softer and better, Daniel doesn't care. Walter does not know what to think and for once isn't thinking, just grasping, writhing, feeling.
The roundness of Daniel's cheek shapes itself in his palm.
When he scrambles up and away, back hitting the headboard with a loud crack (but feet not hitting the floor, not yet) he is not ridiculed or slapped or anything else he always vaguely expects. There is understanding. There is distance allowed but distance challenged, Daniel hovering at the very edge of what he will allow and waiting. How did he forget that Nite Owl is a hunter of the damned and Daniel is a hunter of wary animals? Between them, he was doomed from the beginning.
//
There are some things he will miss.
Rain-slick streets had shimmered white with headlights, gifting the both of them with their own reflections on black, their other perfect halves. Nite Owl's mask was insufficient due to Daniel's cheerfully unwavering childishness and they always argued over it half-heartedly, but on nights like those Walter was glad for it because he could see that openmouthed sharp-edged grin and think maybe somehow Nite Owl could see his too.
There are some things he will not miss.
(When it was too bone-deep cold to stand outside she used to lie in bed all day, too ruined to dress or cover herself, a riotous mess of flesh. Worse were the times she had real boyfriends, them together making a knotted tangle of limbs and hair like a giant slumbering ogre's-nest on the bed. He always lowered his eyes but it didn't help much, and if she ever knew why he never complained about making their errand runs by himself despite how the winter wind snapped at his ears, he really would have been in for it then.)
It's different. That, doing that, feeling the exact measure and expanse of a back he's known by eye for a decade is different despite his knowledge that every person is exactly the same as all the others: skin, bone, muscle, fragile, weak. He's seen so many things but touched so few. If he can't look, it's not-
//
Heating system cuts on and off throughout the night, alternating between roaring and silence.
Breath on the back of his neck as an arm tightens around his chest, displaces air from his own lungs. It is uncomfortable but Walter allows it because he can (and because it is perhaps not entirely uncomfortable).
Daniel is not awake. Daniel hums one long syllable into his shoulder, huhhh, and then is quiet.
It's a matter of breathing.
//
Walter sits on the edge of his guest bed, hands gripping onto the mattress edge only enough to keep himself from falling. His shoulders ache with tension gained or tension released, and understands how sometimes the body cannot tell the difference. He thinks about the waking city in front of him and the sleeping man behind him. He thinks of two equal parts being pulled away from a center in opposite directions.
He wonders why humanity flaunts all its killings and perversions and genocides but has places and feelings like this hidden behind closed doors, secret, so secret he never knew about them at all. Now he is beginning to understand why there are people like Daniel who believe so strongly in the presence of goodness that they think there must a universal justice or karma or a god protecting that goodness. Walter knows that the only real justice or karma or god in New York has ever been people wearing masks, but this thing which has passed between the two of them tonight reminds him how important it is to keep the forces of corruption and degradation at bay, has given him something pure and unsullied to protect.
The world has become something respectfully black-shrouded as if it finally understands its own shame. It only forms itself when he reaches out to touch and then recedes again. Walter could choose to be the only person in the world if he wanted to. He won't; there are people and a city he vowed never to turn his back on. Even though this makes it more difficult than he's used to, Walter has always found a way out of everything.
Blind dogs still have teeth.
He closes his eyes.
//
Walter is just out of the shower. Everything smells humid, florid. There are things he can't help but notice: the way the pipes protest in this old building, the way water feels going down his throat, thick.
If he flattens his bare hand against the glass, he can feel cold and the individual vibrations of raindrops hitting the window.
Weeks and weeks. They haven't shared a bed again but they share physical space, presences resonating, attuned to each other. The home feels smaller now than the owlship's interior ever did; they stumble into one another sometimes. Despite all of this-Daniel's bitten-back irritation when he makes a mess of his meals, the vibrating anxiety of two solitary men learning to cede personal space and time, how just yesterday Daniel mentioned something about Disability Services and his own response was of such a volume that he was asked not to be 'a dick about this'-it isn't something he wants escape from.
//
With the mask and the suit he'd been handsome, intimidating, professional. Underneath he's always been scrawny, flat-faced, jug-eared. Now the flaws of the man have overtaken the mask and there are things he has been forced to see and acknowledge. There are things which cannot be ignored once known.
Daniel kisses the tendon between neck and shoulder and it is sincere, as if he cannot see the wretchedness and sickness of his old partner, as if he is the one blind.
//
Daniel's fingertips skirt over his eyebrows and his thin closed eyelids.
"Don't you want to know?"
"No."
//
In the kitchen, there are the carefully domestic sounds of cooking; a liquid already boils on the stovetop. Neither of them have to greet each other anymore since his presence at mealtime has remarkably become an unremarkable thing.
A rustling like thin newsprint makes Walter stop, brows drawn together, thoughts spidering out into memory to place what this sound is. It isn't until a pungent smell stings the inside of his nose that he remembers: onion. That sound returns when Daniel moves to peel the second onion and Walter thinks of blunt, strong fingers shearing off dried flesh to expose a soft and pearlescent inside. His heart quivers hard in his chest like a rabbit sighting a predator and a faint heat floods the skin of his face.
He is no stranger to lust, but never before has it tried to trick him by seeming so innocuous or such an extension of himself.
//
They used to pore over entire oceans of papers spread between them: annotated newspapers, plans written in his own crabbed and scrawled handwriting, attack schematics drawn by a careful draftsman. Their intellects meshed and merged and built one on top of the other, a strange adrenaline shared in those mental connections made over a kitchen table.
Now there are radio reports, television news broadcasts, the owlship's police scanner. Sounds of crime committed and crime averted stretch between them in connecting threads. Both still remember the police codes. It has been different since the night Daniel investigated the Wilkinson case. Neither of them can help it lately; being around each other brings up old mental associations and a very ingrained habit. A very expensive habit, expensive maybe for both of them.
Daniel's getting back into the game. Walter can hear it in the way his voice is getting stronger, surer. Addictions are hard to purge. Some are worse than others.
//
With stealth necessary in their line of work and hearing always muffled by costumes (aside from one version of the owlsuit Daniel made but never wore, a running theme Walter privately found amusing), so much of their communication had relied on the non-verbal. Gestures, body langauge: Daniel has five different ways of pursing his lips. Those are gone, but they always had the systematic communication of touch as well: Daniel has six different ways of clasping his shoulder. That, he still has. That hasn't changed; maybe nothing has changed.
So when Walter's in a bad mood and habitually shoves his hands down to pockets which aren't there in nervous agitation, Daniel understands immediately and makes an excuse for them to get out of the house. Needs to go down and talk with the accountants at that gym he still owns despite the fact that there's a perfectly functional phone in the hallway. Walter doesn't call out the lie in gratitude.
The coat he wears is a new one. Good stitching, feels like a wool blend with satin lining and he's told it's black; he can approve. The weight of it is heavier than his usual coat and it closes securely around his body.
Remnants of ice and sidewalk salt crunch beneath their shoes, charged holiday atmosphere becoming apparent as soon as they walk out of the quiet residential areas. Bustle and hurry infect everyone's voices and footsteps, familiar music streaming out from shops and tinny taxicab speakers. The air is sharp in his lungs and he breathes deeply to feel the cut of it.
"Hm. We're not taking the subway?"
A laugh, hoarse and deep in the cold. "I'm still getting used to seeing the Terror of the Underworld in pajamas. I don't think I can handle seeing you sitting calmly on the subway."
"Hehn."
If he walks with hands in pockets and lets his elbow stay against Daniel's arm, it is only the necessity of walking in a crowded city and no one is the wiser. If Daniel occasionally guides him around parking signs or sidewalk vendors, it is only the kindness of an old friend. If he utilizes his knowledge that wind comes in harder at intersections because it's channeled between buildings, he is not showing off.
Art by jackiemei
He's left to stand against the gym's inside wall while Daniel goes off to conduct his business. The smell of sweat and effort prickles at old memories and it is almost as if those memories have been summoned into real life when he wanders a few feet and encounters a mat. It's possible he wasn't left here accidentally, but Walter will decide to let this slide too. His tongue presses up against the backs of his teeth as he surveys around the mat's edge to get an idea of its size.
It is also not showing off when he shucks his overcoat and new shoes to practice double back handsprings, not even when he knows Daniel has come back to watch. (The heavy hit of hands and feet, tendons straining, ribs spreading, everything stretching away from a position of compact tension. It has been so long and he botches a few landings, but the body always remembers.)
Walking back, chill air bites at his skin where sweat had gathered and his joints will not be forgiving in the morning, but he cares little.
They're just two men walking down a street until there's a choked-off scream and they're already haring off toward it before Rorschach realizes they've both been waiting for this. Instincts snap cleanly into place as always, despite their varying lengths of time away from the job and if he tracks where Nite Owl is he knows where he is too, fears no corners or cars or obstacles. Blood rush and the rhythm of running and he's wearing a sharp-edged grin, thinks maybe Daniel is too.
Sodden ground underfoot, then: a wet smack of fist-meets-face and the impact of a disgraceful heap hitting the ground. Undoubtedly a narrow alley by the way the smell of refuse collects here, and Nite Owl will be positioning himself so the perpetrator is caught between them in a pincer. They never liked allowing people to escape.
Walter has always known black is a terrible color for him, washes him out and makes him look unsettlingly close to ghostly. An advantage now. He removes his fists from his coat pockets, hardens his mouth, and glares as severely as possible in the general direction of pathetic whimpering.
This one doesn't even try to rush him.
Nite Owl slides directly into his old 'aw shucks ma'am' routine so easily it has to have been practiced recently, and sets to his job of wheedling the near-victim into making a police report down at the station.
When it's finished, they stop outside the station doors to take a simultaneous deep breath.
"Broke the law," Walter mutters, pointed and entirely approving.
"Hey, we're just a couple of old guys who like to tip off the police, right? It's not like we're Nite Owl and Rorschach or something." He pauses, considering. "I mean, come on, masks and spandex? That's just tacky."
It's such a simple solution that it was looking them in the face the entire time. Walter is having trouble keeping his mouth in a straight line. "Mm. Wonder what happened to those two."
As he squares his shoulders, lifts his head, and grumbles something about the coat's suitability he feels purposeful, like a man again.
//
The route to the gym becomes so well-practiced he could walk it alone, but rarely does. Up on the parallel bars he swings weightless, feet together and body arcing through the air until his muscles ache with pleasurable fatigue. Shared adrenaline and endorphins afterward when they collapse washed and boneless on the couch back home.
Daniel says that it's snowing like crazy and Walter can imagine it, an even whiteness covering everything while the city sleeps beneath it, cocooned.
//
When he was first making his mask its inner layers spilled out like something disgorging itself inside out. It was the white which was the most beautiful, viscous and glistening and still warm from his hands. Walter curves his tongue and draws deeply until Daniel makes a sound like he's turning inside out and he does this not because he is dirty or low but because he wants to.
//
"You never told me when your birthday is, you secretive bastard." Walter pretends not to enjoy the jocularity. "So uh. Happy Christmas or New Year's or something." There is something bashfully pleased in Daniel's tone and it's almost like that night he handed over the grappling gun as if it was a trinket and not the only real gift Walter ever had.
"Hmm. An old basement. Unsure how to express my gratitude properly." They must be close to Daniel's mainframe computer, unless the entire basement has been rearranged in the years between. It hasn't.
"Shut up," Daniel laughs, "and listen to this."
The casual contact of a shoulder against his and keys clattering beneath sure fingers. An unnatural automated voice: "Madison, crime family. 14 Records."
Oh.
This, he-
"A guy from my old engineering department's been working on, you know, computer voice simulation. It's really fascinating, the process is-anyway. Sorry, I couldn't ever work out the voice recognition algorithms so you'll have to touch-type, but. Yeah."
Sometimes he thinks their partnership is unfairly balanced in his favor. His mouth opens but words do not come to him.
Walter's fingers spread over the keys as if he can feel the entire database of news, police reports, and files waiting for him to wring knowledge out with his bare hands. He and Daniel both know he can't type, but it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter at all.
"I'll learn."
(end)