Fic: Little Things (Adult Content Warning)
Title: Little Things
Fandom: Watchmen
Characters/Pairings: Dan/Z!Rorschach.
Date Written: 2009
Summary: Rorschach gives this ‘considerate’ thing a try, and Dan finds himself reacting atypically.
Rating/Warnings: R but only for one scene, so if you just want the fluff you can easily skip it. The rest is probably PG-13 for Dan seeing innuendo in everything. Oh, Dan. <3
Notes: For brancher, as a thank-you and a cheer-up story. Fluff and porn and Ror gradually becoming less broken than usual, as requested. :D Set in the Z!verse just because it’s the only one I have that isn’t depressing in the long run, only a very short time after Lilacs. Buh, I’m gonna have to write something grimdark soon to put things back in balance.
*
It’s the little things.
*
He makes an effort to keep himself clean - partly out of concern for Dan, he suspects, and partly because it’d be unwise to end up upwind of their criminal targets night after night smelling like the nightmare creature they already suspect him to be - but Rorschach’s never been a neat or orderly person, belongings organized roughly into the ‘important things’ heap and the ‘less important things’ heap, and that’s not likely ever going to change.
So when Dan comes in one late afternoon to find him slotting a shipment of books Dan had just received onto his shelves (no, not just the shipment; he’s reorganizing all of them, careful and meticulous) there’s not much he can do except stand there and stare, too dumbfounded at the gesture to bother caring that they don’t seem to be in any order he can make sense of.
Rorschach glances up at him, palming the leather-bound spine of a particularly thick volume in a heavy, possessive way that makes Dan think of-
Makes him want to-
“Had time, and thought you’d appreciate not having to unpack them.”
Dan nods, mouth parched desert-dry. Tries to swallow. “Yeah. Yeah, I… thank you.”
*
He’s not a neat person, and not well-versed in social expectations, and no amount of circumstantial domesticity, all covered over in a veneer of practicality and so easily forgotten out there in the midnight violence of New York, is going to change that. Most of their meals are spent with tactics and plans on the brain, all the day’s gleaned information modifying and shaping the course of the night’s patrol, blunting awareness of the present with the much more pressing consideration of what’s still to come. Weighed down with that, Rorschach’s not going to just realize on his own one day that it’s rude and disrespectful and mostly just annoying when he leaves empty tin cans and Coke bottles and sugar wrappers and plates running with congealed beef drippings wherever they’re sitting. He’s not going to -
And that’s okay, it’s not really that big a deal, not in the wider scope of the things Rorschach does do for him: the unfair fights made fair and the weapons deflected and the wounds patched and the shakes calmed under cover of darkness, cold hands untangling life from the threat of death with uncompromising care, shattering one and wrapping the other around and around him until he’s sure he can survive anything at all.
Dishes left lying around matter so little, next to that.
But Dan still finds himself shadowed to the sink one night, and watches with poorly hidden fascination as Rorschach sets the plate awkwardly into the basin - it clatters, and sticks half-up, wedged on a butterknife, and Rorschach just stands there expectantly for a moment as if he’s not sure what’s supposed to happen next.
And Dan laughs, almost suggests that he try running the water over it, works wonders, but then he catches a wave of anger, sees the evidence of clenching fists in the set of his shoulders, wired predator-tight. Tension ripples through Rorschach’s body like the eerie vibrato of strained steel braid about to give, humming like violence, so he slips a hand down to one of those fists instead; moves behind him and gently works it open, fingers threading their way in against the palm and cracking that iron grip free from around the frustration and doubt it’s trying so hard to hold onto.
This time, his thanks are mumbled quietly into skin and tight, tight muscle, mouth buried in the hollow of Rorschach’s throat.
*
He’s not particularly concerned with smudges and smears and doesn’t know enough about electronics to realize that anything wet can damage them, not just actual water - and anyway, blood isn’t something he’s ever really considered particularly dirty, not like grime and muck and sweat and spit and all the other excrement of the human experience.
It’s been a long night and they’ve just finished tying a pair of would-be muggers to a signpost, sent the intended victims on their way, and Rorschach is reaching for Archie’s radio with hands so bloody that it stands out against the slick dark leather even in the ship’s dim lighting. Dan winces, moves to intercept-
-but he doesn’t get there, because Rorschach stops short on his own, turning the hand palm up and looking at it speculatively. Looks at the other; it’s just as bad, so he grips one finger between his teeth and peels it off with a long, sharp tug, lets it drop to his lap.
With his teeth. With-
There’s a smear of blood on the corner of Rorschach’s mouth. He doesn’t move to wipe it away.
And Dan watches, shifting against the discomfort of his uniform, as Rorschach calls in the muggers’ location to the local police, growling at the dispatcher’s attempts to derail the conversation. He only pauses once, to bite down on the other glove and strip it away as well when it becomes obvious that the squelch is too high, bare fingers adjusting the knob fractionally. They seem paler than usual in the dash lights.
“…thanks,” Dan says after the call is over, eyes straight ahead again, completely focused on flying the ship. Completely. Not distracted at all. “That would’ve taken hours to clean off.”
“Hrm.” Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Rorschach pocketing the gloves. “Have better things to do with your time.”
…and were it anyone else, Dan would be sure of the innuendo riding in those words, would be sure of the implication. It still might be there, but he can’t tell how much of that is distorted by the blood pounding in his own ears - and there’s no certainty, never is, not in this uncertain space between the street and the sky and adrenaline and violence, familiar and not familiar, treacherous in the way it pretends to be a comfort zone.
Dan reaches across the space between them anyway, squeezes the back of Rorschach’s neck through the layers of trenchcoat collar and scarf. He leaves his grip there, steering left-handed, and after enough time has passed, he’s no longer sure just who it is that’s shaking or why.
*
He’s not a neat person, and he doesn’t value the aesthetic quality of items meant, in his mind, for purely practical uses. Dan’s coffee table is not meant for looking nice; it’s meant for holding up coffee, and cocoa, and bottles of soda, and sometimes Dan’s feet when it’s been a long patrol but never Rorschach’s - because his body is still not set up to shape itself that way, to sink back into sagging cushions and fall into a relaxed curve and not care whether his shirt is bunched under him, to be oblivious to the indignity of letting his guard down that far.
So: Soda and coffee and whatever else and there is a stack of coasters right there but the rings still collect across the wooden surface, concentric and not, interleaving like chain links, patterning themselves into a map of star systems or spy satellite photographic ranges or the sites throughout the city where the contaminants are introduced into the water supply, obviously - except that they’re just cup rings and they wouldn’t be there if he would just use the damn coasters.
It’s been a long patrol, and Dan’s feet are up and he’s sore, and he hears the fridge open and shut from the other room; feels a weight settle on the couch next to him. He presses his thumb and forefinger to his temples, eyes slipping shut and trying hard not to let it bother him because it’s so petty anyway and there are so many more important things and here it comes, here it comes - there will be the clunk of a bottle hitting the table and a careless dribble of cola allowed to run down the neck to gather with the condensation and what’s one more amongst dozens, what’s-
Instead he hears a shuffling of cork over wood and the muffled sound of the bottle settling into the pliant, sound-dampening, absorbent material, and it hits him before he’s even opened his eyes:
Rorschach has just used a coaster.
Rorschach. Has just used. A fucking. Coaster.
Dan opens his eyes, and not only has he used a coaster, but Rorschach’s collecting that stray rivulet of sugar-stickiness on his thumb, running it around the lip of the bottle, putting it to his mouth to not waste a drop. He glances up, meets Dan’s eyes, freezes for a moment with his thumb still pressed between careful lips.
And ‘thank you’ is trying to crawl up Dan’s throat as usual, riding on a swell of heat; the words stick there and refuse to come out, because Rorschach’s just darted his tongue out to catch at the bit of cola pooled in his nailbed and the look on his face is utterly oblivious and he has no idea at all what effect this is having, what effect all of this has been having-
Dan’s wedged Rorschach’s knees apart and dropped to his own on the floor between them before he has a chance to think better of it.
*
“Daniel. Why are you - hnh.” Rorschach thumps his head roughly back against the top of the couch, fingers digging into the cushion. He seems suddenly disinclined to complete the question. And, well, at least he isn’t asking ‘what’ anymore - the first few times it’d been mutually disarming and almost funny to reply that it really should be obvious, but the humor’s worn thin.
Dan pulls his head back, flesh slipping wetly from between shining, smiling lips. He doesn’t miss the disappointed hitch in Rorschach’s breath. “I could stop for long enough to hold a conversation on the subject, if you really want.”
A noise that sounds like he’s very, very torn, and Rorschach’s hand uncurls from the cushion and hovers near Dan’s face, like he wants to touch but isn’t sure if he should, if he can stand the contact; Dan takes the decision out of his hands when he catches a finger up in his mouth, grazes teeth over the tip, sucks hard enough to pull the digit in clear to the joint. Works it, rough and languid, over his tongue, and never breaks eye contact because it is his eyes that are saying it: This is ‘why’, this is the explanation you’re looking for. This is what you’ve been doing to me, you bastard.
“…oh.” Rorschach swallows thickly, and there’s something like understanding in the single cracking syllable.
“Yeah,” Dan says, releasing his finger with a small sucking sound. Leans low into the open front of his pinstripes to curl breath over the skin, working a grip into the waistband and jerking the slacks down and out from under him until they’re taut around shaking thighs; just unfastened had been fine in practical terms, but he wants more skin, wants to roll it under his hands and smell the sweat and watch it shiver and jump - watch the cracks in the surface tension splinter, spread. “…‘Oh’.”
And he’s halfway expecting a minor freak-out when he moves to take Rorschach back into his mouth, hands settling over narrow hips, digging in around the bone. Expecting him to protest like he sometimes does when he’s caught by surprise like this, divested of his shielding under the uncompromising glare of day-bright lights. Expects panic because this is still such a new thing, and Rorschach has said before, words jumbled and incoherent in the aftermath, that being taken in so completely like this - it’s so much more shockingly close than just hands fumbling over hot and cold flesh in the dark - makes him feel like his skin is melting, dissolving away.
But he doesn’t protest or panic this time, just holds mostly still, controlled, head rolled back and hips inching incrementally forward. A faint stress-tremor starts to hum somewhere under his skin and builds with every pass of tongue and lips and heat.
“You okay?” Dan pulls far enough back to ask, fingers loosening to trace tiny circles into the skin under them, to drag through cool sweat and slip up under shirtcloth and scrawl patterns over the tight-stretched canvas of his stomach.
No answer - just a guttural sound that could be an affirmative or just a choked-off whine, catching hard, but Rorschach’s always so quiet that either is a novelty. He’s not panicking at least, not sliding down that perpetually greased slope into fight-or-flight that he spends most of his time, in and out of costume, teetering on the edge of. He just claws fingers into Dan’s shoulders, into his hair, letting this be done for him without alarm or difficulty and god, it’s not about the books or the dishes or the goddamn coaster, it never was. It’s about these concessions, these small gestures that feel so normal and human and everyday but in the context of who Rorschach is and all the things he carries with him-
He’s letting this be what it is, no more or less, and that’s all Dan can do in return, and he closes his eyes and bears down and gives up on caution or subtlety, pulling the reactions free in relentless, broken pieces; here a hiss of breath, there a shuddering in the skin under his fingers, there again a jerk of one leg up against Dan’s arm, and he’s rocking his own hips helplessly and wishing there were something there to rock against because yes, that’s definitely a low groan this time, raw and complicated and vulnerable and the sound of it makes him ache. Whatever’s left of the night’s violence is all his own, pinning this strangely compliant creature with mouth and hands and not yielding until the noise changes, draws out and deepens and takes on a wanting edge and something shudders out of Rorschach’s tense, coiled body that sounds almost like a name, that feels almost like actual, honest release.
*
He knows that plates will still be left out, that there will be more rings added to what’s almost become an art piece across the top of his coffee table, that he will spend other hours scrubbing blood from radio grilles. That sometimes Rorschach’s demons and fears and need for control will rise up and overwhelm this delicate intimacy they’ve built, leave him shaking and lost on the far side of the bed - never angry, never running away from it, but laid bare in a way that feels like pain under the careful, tender press of Dan’s hands, pulling him back.
These things aren’t trends, aren’t signs of greater change. But right now, an extra plate sits in the sink and Archie’s radio is clean and a weight slumps bonelessly forward against him, fingers still wound through his hair and feeling like contentment, and even taken on their own, they are enough.
*
Dan laughs airily, leaning sideways against Rorschach’s leg, still nestled down between his thighs. One arm snakes up around Rorschach’s waist. “…it’s by smell, isn’t it?”
Rorschach just makes an inarticulate questioning noise into Dan’s hair.
“The books. I’ve been trying to figure it out. It’s nothing visual I can see, and I didn’t see you licking them, so it has to be smell.”
He feels the face lift from the top of his head, assumes it’s looking where he is, at the bookshelf across the room. “Yes,” he mumbles, muzzily but with a note of uncertainty, of embarrassment. “Didn’t know how you wanted them, and thought that would reflect where they came from-”
“Yeah,” Dan interrupts, before that self-doubt can take root. He nuzzles into the cool and sweaty space between Rorschach’s thigh and hip, pressing swollen lips to the skin, still jumping and humming with nerves, and his arm tightens. “It’s fine, really. It’s perfect.”
*
Fandom: Watchmen
Characters/Pairings: Dan/Z!Rorschach.
Date Written: 2009
Summary: Rorschach gives this ‘considerate’ thing a try, and Dan finds himself reacting atypically.
Rating/Warnings: R but only for one scene, so if you just want the fluff you can easily skip it. The rest is probably PG-13 for Dan seeing innuendo in everything. Oh, Dan. <3
Notes: For brancher, as a thank-you and a cheer-up story. Fluff and porn and Ror gradually becoming less broken than usual, as requested. :D Set in the Z!verse just because it’s the only one I have that isn’t depressing in the long run, only a very short time after Lilacs. Buh, I’m gonna have to write something grimdark soon to put things back in balance.
*
It’s the little things.
*
He makes an effort to keep himself clean - partly out of concern for Dan, he suspects, and partly because it’d be unwise to end up upwind of their criminal targets night after night smelling like the nightmare creature they already suspect him to be - but Rorschach’s never been a neat or orderly person, belongings organized roughly into the ‘important things’ heap and the ‘less important things’ heap, and that’s not likely ever going to change.
So when Dan comes in one late afternoon to find him slotting a shipment of books Dan had just received onto his shelves (no, not just the shipment; he’s reorganizing all of them, careful and meticulous) there’s not much he can do except stand there and stare, too dumbfounded at the gesture to bother caring that they don’t seem to be in any order he can make sense of.
Rorschach glances up at him, palming the leather-bound spine of a particularly thick volume in a heavy, possessive way that makes Dan think of-
Makes him want to-
“Had time, and thought you’d appreciate not having to unpack them.”
Dan nods, mouth parched desert-dry. Tries to swallow. “Yeah. Yeah, I… thank you.”
*
He’s not a neat person, and not well-versed in social expectations, and no amount of circumstantial domesticity, all covered over in a veneer of practicality and so easily forgotten out there in the midnight violence of New York, is going to change that. Most of their meals are spent with tactics and plans on the brain, all the day’s gleaned information modifying and shaping the course of the night’s patrol, blunting awareness of the present with the much more pressing consideration of what’s still to come. Weighed down with that, Rorschach’s not going to just realize on his own one day that it’s rude and disrespectful and mostly just annoying when he leaves empty tin cans and Coke bottles and sugar wrappers and plates running with congealed beef drippings wherever they’re sitting. He’s not going to -
And that’s okay, it’s not really that big a deal, not in the wider scope of the things Rorschach does do for him: the unfair fights made fair and the weapons deflected and the wounds patched and the shakes calmed under cover of darkness, cold hands untangling life from the threat of death with uncompromising care, shattering one and wrapping the other around and around him until he’s sure he can survive anything at all.
Dishes left lying around matter so little, next to that.
But Dan still finds himself shadowed to the sink one night, and watches with poorly hidden fascination as Rorschach sets the plate awkwardly into the basin - it clatters, and sticks half-up, wedged on a butterknife, and Rorschach just stands there expectantly for a moment as if he’s not sure what’s supposed to happen next.
And Dan laughs, almost suggests that he try running the water over it, works wonders, but then he catches a wave of anger, sees the evidence of clenching fists in the set of his shoulders, wired predator-tight. Tension ripples through Rorschach’s body like the eerie vibrato of strained steel braid about to give, humming like violence, so he slips a hand down to one of those fists instead; moves behind him and gently works it open, fingers threading their way in against the palm and cracking that iron grip free from around the frustration and doubt it’s trying so hard to hold onto.
This time, his thanks are mumbled quietly into skin and tight, tight muscle, mouth buried in the hollow of Rorschach’s throat.
*
He’s not particularly concerned with smudges and smears and doesn’t know enough about electronics to realize that anything wet can damage them, not just actual water - and anyway, blood isn’t something he’s ever really considered particularly dirty, not like grime and muck and sweat and spit and all the other excrement of the human experience.
It’s been a long night and they’ve just finished tying a pair of would-be muggers to a signpost, sent the intended victims on their way, and Rorschach is reaching for Archie’s radio with hands so bloody that it stands out against the slick dark leather even in the ship’s dim lighting. Dan winces, moves to intercept-
-but he doesn’t get there, because Rorschach stops short on his own, turning the hand palm up and looking at it speculatively. Looks at the other; it’s just as bad, so he grips one finger between his teeth and peels it off with a long, sharp tug, lets it drop to his lap.
With his teeth. With-
There’s a smear of blood on the corner of Rorschach’s mouth. He doesn’t move to wipe it away.
And Dan watches, shifting against the discomfort of his uniform, as Rorschach calls in the muggers’ location to the local police, growling at the dispatcher’s attempts to derail the conversation. He only pauses once, to bite down on the other glove and strip it away as well when it becomes obvious that the squelch is too high, bare fingers adjusting the knob fractionally. They seem paler than usual in the dash lights.
“…thanks,” Dan says after the call is over, eyes straight ahead again, completely focused on flying the ship. Completely. Not distracted at all. “That would’ve taken hours to clean off.”
“Hrm.” Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Rorschach pocketing the gloves. “Have better things to do with your time.”
…and were it anyone else, Dan would be sure of the innuendo riding in those words, would be sure of the implication. It still might be there, but he can’t tell how much of that is distorted by the blood pounding in his own ears - and there’s no certainty, never is, not in this uncertain space between the street and the sky and adrenaline and violence, familiar and not familiar, treacherous in the way it pretends to be a comfort zone.
Dan reaches across the space between them anyway, squeezes the back of Rorschach’s neck through the layers of trenchcoat collar and scarf. He leaves his grip there, steering left-handed, and after enough time has passed, he’s no longer sure just who it is that’s shaking or why.
*
He’s not a neat person, and he doesn’t value the aesthetic quality of items meant, in his mind, for purely practical uses. Dan’s coffee table is not meant for looking nice; it’s meant for holding up coffee, and cocoa, and bottles of soda, and sometimes Dan’s feet when it’s been a long patrol but never Rorschach’s - because his body is still not set up to shape itself that way, to sink back into sagging cushions and fall into a relaxed curve and not care whether his shirt is bunched under him, to be oblivious to the indignity of letting his guard down that far.
So: Soda and coffee and whatever else and there is a stack of coasters right there but the rings still collect across the wooden surface, concentric and not, interleaving like chain links, patterning themselves into a map of star systems or spy satellite photographic ranges or the sites throughout the city where the contaminants are introduced into the water supply, obviously - except that they’re just cup rings and they wouldn’t be there if he would just use the damn coasters.
It’s been a long patrol, and Dan’s feet are up and he’s sore, and he hears the fridge open and shut from the other room; feels a weight settle on the couch next to him. He presses his thumb and forefinger to his temples, eyes slipping shut and trying hard not to let it bother him because it’s so petty anyway and there are so many more important things and here it comes, here it comes - there will be the clunk of a bottle hitting the table and a careless dribble of cola allowed to run down the neck to gather with the condensation and what’s one more amongst dozens, what’s-
Instead he hears a shuffling of cork over wood and the muffled sound of the bottle settling into the pliant, sound-dampening, absorbent material, and it hits him before he’s even opened his eyes:
Rorschach has just used a coaster.
Rorschach. Has just used. A fucking. Coaster.
Dan opens his eyes, and not only has he used a coaster, but Rorschach’s collecting that stray rivulet of sugar-stickiness on his thumb, running it around the lip of the bottle, putting it to his mouth to not waste a drop. He glances up, meets Dan’s eyes, freezes for a moment with his thumb still pressed between careful lips.
And ‘thank you’ is trying to crawl up Dan’s throat as usual, riding on a swell of heat; the words stick there and refuse to come out, because Rorschach’s just darted his tongue out to catch at the bit of cola pooled in his nailbed and the look on his face is utterly oblivious and he has no idea at all what effect this is having, what effect all of this has been having-
Dan’s wedged Rorschach’s knees apart and dropped to his own on the floor between them before he has a chance to think better of it.
*
“Daniel. Why are you - hnh.” Rorschach thumps his head roughly back against the top of the couch, fingers digging into the cushion. He seems suddenly disinclined to complete the question. And, well, at least he isn’t asking ‘what’ anymore - the first few times it’d been mutually disarming and almost funny to reply that it really should be obvious, but the humor’s worn thin.
Dan pulls his head back, flesh slipping wetly from between shining, smiling lips. He doesn’t miss the disappointed hitch in Rorschach’s breath. “I could stop for long enough to hold a conversation on the subject, if you really want.”
A noise that sounds like he’s very, very torn, and Rorschach’s hand uncurls from the cushion and hovers near Dan’s face, like he wants to touch but isn’t sure if he should, if he can stand the contact; Dan takes the decision out of his hands when he catches a finger up in his mouth, grazes teeth over the tip, sucks hard enough to pull the digit in clear to the joint. Works it, rough and languid, over his tongue, and never breaks eye contact because it is his eyes that are saying it: This is ‘why’, this is the explanation you’re looking for. This is what you’ve been doing to me, you bastard.
“…oh.” Rorschach swallows thickly, and there’s something like understanding in the single cracking syllable.
“Yeah,” Dan says, releasing his finger with a small sucking sound. Leans low into the open front of his pinstripes to curl breath over the skin, working a grip into the waistband and jerking the slacks down and out from under him until they’re taut around shaking thighs; just unfastened had been fine in practical terms, but he wants more skin, wants to roll it under his hands and smell the sweat and watch it shiver and jump - watch the cracks in the surface tension splinter, spread. “…‘Oh’.”
And he’s halfway expecting a minor freak-out when he moves to take Rorschach back into his mouth, hands settling over narrow hips, digging in around the bone. Expecting him to protest like he sometimes does when he’s caught by surprise like this, divested of his shielding under the uncompromising glare of day-bright lights. Expects panic because this is still such a new thing, and Rorschach has said before, words jumbled and incoherent in the aftermath, that being taken in so completely like this - it’s so much more shockingly close than just hands fumbling over hot and cold flesh in the dark - makes him feel like his skin is melting, dissolving away.
But he doesn’t protest or panic this time, just holds mostly still, controlled, head rolled back and hips inching incrementally forward. A faint stress-tremor starts to hum somewhere under his skin and builds with every pass of tongue and lips and heat.
“You okay?” Dan pulls far enough back to ask, fingers loosening to trace tiny circles into the skin under them, to drag through cool sweat and slip up under shirtcloth and scrawl patterns over the tight-stretched canvas of his stomach.
No answer - just a guttural sound that could be an affirmative or just a choked-off whine, catching hard, but Rorschach’s always so quiet that either is a novelty. He’s not panicking at least, not sliding down that perpetually greased slope into fight-or-flight that he spends most of his time, in and out of costume, teetering on the edge of. He just claws fingers into Dan’s shoulders, into his hair, letting this be done for him without alarm or difficulty and god, it’s not about the books or the dishes or the goddamn coaster, it never was. It’s about these concessions, these small gestures that feel so normal and human and everyday but in the context of who Rorschach is and all the things he carries with him-
He’s letting this be what it is, no more or less, and that’s all Dan can do in return, and he closes his eyes and bears down and gives up on caution or subtlety, pulling the reactions free in relentless, broken pieces; here a hiss of breath, there a shuddering in the skin under his fingers, there again a jerk of one leg up against Dan’s arm, and he’s rocking his own hips helplessly and wishing there were something there to rock against because yes, that’s definitely a low groan this time, raw and complicated and vulnerable and the sound of it makes him ache. Whatever’s left of the night’s violence is all his own, pinning this strangely compliant creature with mouth and hands and not yielding until the noise changes, draws out and deepens and takes on a wanting edge and something shudders out of Rorschach’s tense, coiled body that sounds almost like a name, that feels almost like actual, honest release.
*
He knows that plates will still be left out, that there will be more rings added to what’s almost become an art piece across the top of his coffee table, that he will spend other hours scrubbing blood from radio grilles. That sometimes Rorschach’s demons and fears and need for control will rise up and overwhelm this delicate intimacy they’ve built, leave him shaking and lost on the far side of the bed - never angry, never running away from it, but laid bare in a way that feels like pain under the careful, tender press of Dan’s hands, pulling him back.
These things aren’t trends, aren’t signs of greater change. But right now, an extra plate sits in the sink and Archie’s radio is clean and a weight slumps bonelessly forward against him, fingers still wound through his hair and feeling like contentment, and even taken on their own, they are enough.
*
Dan laughs airily, leaning sideways against Rorschach’s leg, still nestled down between his thighs. One arm snakes up around Rorschach’s waist. “…it’s by smell, isn’t it?”
Rorschach just makes an inarticulate questioning noise into Dan’s hair.
“The books. I’ve been trying to figure it out. It’s nothing visual I can see, and I didn’t see you licking them, so it has to be smell.”
He feels the face lift from the top of his head, assumes it’s looking where he is, at the bookshelf across the room. “Yes,” he mumbles, muzzily but with a note of uncertainty, of embarrassment. “Didn’t know how you wanted them, and thought that would reflect where they came from-”
“Yeah,” Dan interrupts, before that self-doubt can take root. He nuzzles into the cool and sweaty space between Rorschach’s thigh and hip, pressing swollen lips to the skin, still jumping and humming with nerves, and his arm tightens. “It’s fine, really. It’s perfect.”
*