FIC: Tiny Grains of Earth [2/2] (Adult Content Warning)
Title: Tiny Grains of Earth
Fandom: Watchmen
Characters/Pairings: Rorschach/Dan
Date Written: 2011
Summary: Rorschach is acting funny, not remembering things how he should, and is just inexplicably different. Dan gets paranoid, and seeks his real partner.
Rating/Warnings: PG-13 most of the way through, then NC-17 at the very end of part 2, for explicit sex. Read whatever portion makes you comfortable.
Notes: KM fill. Set in the 60's, early in the partnership.
*
He can't go on like this. Maybe a man made of sterner stuff, one inured to the annoyances of guilt and emotion-Rorschach himself, for instance, although he isn't even sure of that, now-could maintain this kind of investigation indefinitely. A week along and Dan's already exhausted.
Exhausted, and still feeling like an ass come nightfall again. They don't talk about it; Dan's just glad Rorschach's back, hasn't taken the opportunity to pull a two week disappearing act, and Rorschach seems quietly relieved that his moment of verbal vulnerability is being allowed to slide unremarked on. Dan doesn't apologize, but Rorschach probably prefers it that way.
"Let's take Archie, tonight," Dan says, reaching up to release the hatch. From behind his back, a grunt of agreement, and then they're off.
*
It's not so much a leap of faith as a leap of logic. Is the Rorschach he knows capable of shaking off a knife wound without comment, taking a blow to the head so sharp that it scrambles his memories without thinking to mention it? Is he prone to sudden bursts of coldness, refusing to call Dan by his name for fear of the closeness it implies? Is sneaking into Dan's house and checking up on him while he sleeps like some kind of obsessed stalker consistent with his past behavior?
Is he capable of unexpected turns of vulnerability and honesty, after a frustrating patrol and when the morning sun hits him just right, catches him off guard?
Yes, yes, yes, regrettably yes, and a conclusive, definitive maybe.
But more than that, the pragmatist in Dan knows-if Rorschach is dead, then the impostor will inevitably slip up when he runs up against a need for information he no longer has a source for, and Dan will know, and Nite Owl will exact all the vengeance the world has room for. If Rorschach is alive but has been hidden away somewhere for the last two weeks, then he is being kept alive, and Dan will have time to find him.
And if Rorschach is the man next to him, returned out of loyalty after a night of mindgames and borderline emotional abuse, then he does not deserve Dan's suspicion.
So an hour ago, in the kitchen, Dan had steeled himself to go downstairs, made ready for the strangeness and the distance and the terror. He would turn his back, to test for the knife. He would open his hand, to test for the bite.
He would set that hand on a shoulder two inches too high.
Dan had picked up the empty cough syrup bottle, still sitting out on the counter like a totem, and regarded it in silence for a very long time.
Then it'd been time to go change, put on Nite Owl's skin and in doing so own his decisions-the light getting soft and violet through the window, clouds like a string of bruises hanging on the horizon.
*
It isn't easy, but he manages it, calls Rorschach buddy and claps him on the shoulder and puts as much warmth into the space between them as he can. This isn't an act, can't be an act; he has to believe it. He certainly wants to.
He wants to find a way for things to be all right again, for there to be no horror and dread lurking at the edges of his mind, springing out when he least expects them. He wants to have a context that he can consider these questions within, a framework to ask himself What if this really is him? and What if he really wants... and Do you?
For all of this, Rorschach is a little skittish, shying away from contact like every moment spent without a buffer of space between them will lead them closer to all the unnameable things that Dan is just now finding names for. The awareness of it is new, but the behavior is not; Rorschach's been acting like this for a while, well before any of the other oddities cropped up. Maybe it's something to do with them and maybe it isn't, but Dan's done with tests and games. He just lets the observation settle, files it away.
Nights pass in a blur. There are plenty of opportunities for the same sort of observation, but Dan doesn't engineer any of them, and now that he isn't trying, more and more things seem obvious. The hitch in Rorschach's voice when he says 'Nite Owl' like he wants to say something else, is forcing himself not to through force of will. The way he jolts when he catches himself standing too close to Dan, recoiling like he's been struck, and steps back to gather himself back to himself. He's fighting with something, but Dan's starting to realize that maybe it isn't what he thought it was.
*
Street vendor food at a touch before midnight, a ritual to keep their strength up that they haven't indulged in in weeks. The streets are still teeming with activity, crime restricted to the back alleys and warehouses and shadows between patches of shuddery light. It's Dan's turn to pick tonight, and he doesn't choose the Thai cart for any reason other than that he's in the mood for it. He only remembers Rorschach's habitual reaction to chemical heat when he sees the reluctant way he takes the bowl from the counter, the stiff set to his jaw under the mask.
Then the mask shifts up just a fraction, and it's too dim for Dan to be sure whether he recognizes the stubbled chin or not but he's sure he knows that tight grimace, the sharp exhale of breath around the first bite, the almost-whimper of almost-pain that of course isn't either of those.
"Sorry, man," he says, and he really is. "I forgot you couldn't- here, let's go find something else, okay?"
Rorschach shakes his head, fedora shifting slightly, still fighting that first forkful. "No need, Nite Owl," he says, "Can manage," and that's just like Rorschach, too.
Dan shouldn't grin-he's been punched for less-but he does anyway.
*
Three muggers near Penn Station, just down an alley between the deli and the bar next door, fifteen year old kid they'd jumped calmed down and sent on his way-and Rorschach's grumbling about only having one pair of cuffs on him.
Rorschach's always preferred rope to cuffs, especially when there are multiple captives, and when they are not dangerous enough to worry that they'll break free. He likes pulling the cord tight, he's said, one last parting gift in the form of rugburned wrists.
Frustrated, he grouses and stews, then finally accepts the cut rope from Nite Owl's offered hand and lashes the miscreants to each other, to the ladder of a fire escape. Good enough.
*
They stop to leave a note on the door of a family whose daughter they'd seen carted off in an ambulance a half an hour earlier, roughed up but all in one piece, terrified and begging them to please, please tell her parents she's okay. And they usually leave that up to the authorities, but Dan had felt his own weeks-old fear-weakened resolve waver and then break, and a promise is a promise.
Rorschach pulls a stub of a pencil from his pocket, a scrap of paper, and scrawls Daughter is safe. Lenox Hill Hosp. on it, just barely legible. Pins it to the door, and the pencil is in his left hand.
*
"Nite Owl," Rorschach says, sounding a little anguished. His hand is on the sugar canister; Dan looks up from where he's fixing coffee, cowl still up but goggles around his neck. He raises one eyebrow, questioning.
Rorschach shifts his hand to the side of the canister, as if to pick it up. "Do you... nnk. Do you mind if I..."
Dan frowns, flat. Rorschach never asks for sugar cubes; he just takes them, and if it's never been by spoken agreement, Dan's total unwillingness to ever stop him should have served as permanent enough permission.
The mask cants to one side, uncertainty in Rorschach's posture.
"Of course," Dan says, nodding toward the cannister. "Help yourself."
Rorschach does.
*
One week it took Dan to notice, and another week hiding and researching and playing games, and now a third week has passed. Dan isn't any surer of what to believe than he'd been before, evidence stacking up for both cases, and he has to keep coming back to is it possible-if the answer's yes or even maybe, that has to be good enough.
He has to make it good enough.
The cap of the syrup bottle's in his belt pouch now, and he touches it like a worry stone, amazed in his more lucid moments at how much power the symbolic has over the human psyche. It would almost be laughable, but nothing about any of this is laughable, and whether it was a leap of faith or logic or into the abyss, it's still a leap. They all go the same way: the flight, and then the suspension, and then the inevitable fall, the shock of impact rubbery and sharp in the heels and ankles and knees even if he manages to land on his feet.
It's a Friday night, and there's an energy on the streets, all the good citizens uncaged and let loose, morals made slippery with alcohol and the promise of a weekend that always ends too soon. The police are on edge, as always. The criminals are on edge, as always.
Dan can feel the moment of impact coming for an hour beforehand.
It's nothing that should normally be a problem, a scuffle that neither expects to spiral out their ability to handle it. Three Knot-tops, a dog chained to a chainlink alley-ender, two kids from some new gang out by the river. Some drugs, some fighting words, a narrow band of territory in dispute. They drop in from above, Rorschach's plan, and it's over almost before it starts, everyone down except the dog where it's huddled, cowering in the refuse.
"Some guard dog," Dan says, grinning as he lashes one of the thugs, hands behind his back. But he shouldn't discount the creature, because it gives a high, warning whine just as Dan sees motion out of the corner of his eye, turns, cape whipping out-
Rorschach is bent, tying another of the gang kids, hasn't seen the one that wasn't knocked quite cold pulling a knife from his boot and swinging out with it-
The shining blade ripping through the air and then coat fabric, flesh, blood outlining its arc and then Rorschach's fist in the boy's face, dropping him to the pavement in an instant-
Fist, curling in against his side, balling into the wound and it's already bleeding too much, Dan can see from here, and like everything in their lives it's happened so fast.
"...Daniel," the rough voice says, quiet, and all Dan can see is the reality of all his gruesome imaginings; all he can think is, this is what you get.
Then Rorschach is struggling to his feet, is saying, "Could use some assistance," and Dan is there, arm around Rorschach's back, taking his weight. In Dan's night vision, the glove balled to Rorschach's side looks brilliantly red and wet, and he feels the ground approaching faster than he thought possible.
Archie is a block away. They can do this, they have to do this. They have to land on their feet.
"Come on," he says, taking the first shuffling step, pavement heavy under his boots. "It isn't far. You'll be fine."
*
Rorschach's never stripped his entire shirt off for a patch-job-Dan's had to try to see the whole picture by looking at one puzzle piece at a time, a flash of pale skin here and there where the shoulder of a sleeve is shrugged down or the tails of coat and shirt are both lifted just a tiny bit. This is an awkward spot, though, and serious enough that when Rorschach lets him take the jacket and starts unbuttoning the dress shirt on his own, it doesn't even occur to Dan to question it. This isn't Amateur Detective Hour anymore; his head's squarely in the situation.
The dress shirt drops to the workbench, careless. There's still a thin undershirt clinging to him, rapidly going red on one side, and he makes an aborted motion against its shoulders; gives a faint grunt, and then glances over his shoulder at Dan. The angle of his face is low, like he doesn't know whether to ask or not, is ashamed to admit he needs the help.
Dan meets the gaze, takes a breath.
"Here," he says, setting the suture packs back on the bench. His gauntlets are gone; his fingertips tingle in the still, still air. "Let me help with that, you're only going to tear something..."
So much skin, taut with lean muscle, cool with system shock and blood loss, skimming under his fingers as he insinuates them between flesh and fabric. He peels the undershirt up and away, and.
And this is not something he ever knew he wanted to touch so badly. God.
"...squirming around, trying to get out of it," he trails off, slipping it off over the clean white dome of Rorschach's skull, then leaving him to work his arms out himself. "You've already done enough damage to yourself tonight."
Rorschach just grunts, a thin shiver passing through him that could be the cold or the pain, could be anything.
The back laid bare in front of him is narrow and angular, well-defined at the shoulders but there's old malnourishment chewing a path up the knobby spine. The shoulders are hunched, down and in, shielding. Dan realizes, distantly, that his hand is still on one of them, has been for maybe too long.
"Okay," he says, "okay," because there are a million details he could choose between here but the only one demanding his undivided attention is the bloody gash, torn-rough edges, too low to have glanced off the ribs, bleeding too well even now to be ignored. "Looks like that knife was pretty dull."
"Probably rusty, too," Rorschach mutters, "knowing my luck."
Dan picks up a washcloth, bends to wash the blood away so that he can see what he's doing, sets in with the needle and thread as soon as he can tell which end is which. "Drop into a clinic tomorrow," he says, quiet, working the first stitch. "They'll give you a tetanus shot if you're worried about it."
A sharp harumph, definitely not in pain. "Yes, and also receive yearly dose of lead, fluoride, and latest experimental behavior-altering pharmaceuticals. Sounds like an excellent idea, Nite Owl."
"Oh, come on." Second stitch, third. It's deep but it's all just skin, he can handle this. "They give those to kids, do you really think-"
Rorschach just turns to look at him through the mask, and Dan breathes out through his nose, gets back to his work. "Right, of course you do."
"Explains delinquency of current generation of...agh-"
Dan looks up again; now Rorschach is hunched even further between his shoulders, and his hand hovers in front of where his mouth should be, like it wants to stifle the sound.
"Sorry," he says, too little too late and he knows it. "But it's pretty deep, it's going to-"
Rorschach balls the hand into a fist. "Finish it," he growls into his knuckles, mouthing them like he wants to bite down, and buried in the words: Stop being so soft.
So Dan puts aside all thoughts of coddling, like he usually eventually does, and just works the needle in and out, as mechanical as he would sew the leather of his boots or something else dead and unfeeling. He ignores the increasingly harsh sound of Rorschach's breath, ignores the jump in his skin, and when Dan ties off the last stitch the wound is nothing more than a scar-in-progress, one more to join the map of-
The scars. Dan's breath catches; it's so obvious, and he's been so stupid.
There, on the shoulder: last year's fight on the docks, the first one he'd needed stitched. Low across the small of his back, a serpentine and irregular line where he'd been caught by the very end of a chain he'd been a millimeter too close to. Up along the curve of his shoulderblade, and that one's messy because he'd refused to bare enough skin to let Dan suture it but he remembers the knife sinking into Rorschach's coat, going in and in, and how jackrabbit-terrified he'd been in that moment. A map of their shared career, tiny details that roll into the freckles and the knobs of his spine and the way his hips jut above the line of his slacks and the way his shoulders hitch, just like endless bits of sand, every one a little different, rolling up into rocks and bounders and eventually into a mountain.
His inimitable, irreplaceable, stubborn as hell mountain of a partner.
Dan rests his bare forehead between Rorschach's shoulderblades. He's not sure if he's laughing or crying or exploding; all he knows is that the pressure release is too much and it needs out.
"...Nite Owl," Rorschach says, cautiously. "I'm... nggh. The one who is supposed to be in shock. If I understand it correctly."
The laughter trails off into something not entirely distinguishable from a sobbing. "Stop calling me... you know my name, damn it."
The thought surfaces through the hysteria: He did, in the alley. He did.
"Daniel," and Rorschach sounds more forceful now, straightening up against the way Dan's hands have started to drift down his sides. "Why are you-what's wrong?"
"Nothing," Dan laughs, tries really hard to make it sound like a laugh. "Nothing. I'm just so glad it's really you."
No reply, just the sob-laughter and Rorschach still working to get his breathing under control.
"So happy, god, I can't even-"
"Expecting someone else?"
Dan lifts his face; over Rorschach's shoulder, the mask is turned toward him, and it's hitched up over his nose now in all the bright light and all he can think is, I know that chin, and that is somehow paralyzingly hilarious. The laughter redoubles, his thoughts shatter, and he is lost.
*
It's probably only five or ten minutes before he's calmed down enough to just be breathing against Rorschach's scarred, beautiful back, cheek against his spine. Feels like longer, spent laughing all the doubt and suspicion and terror out, all the grief and rage. Feels like hours, like years.
"I thought you were dead," he says, feeling a little stupid as he says it but not giving a good goddamn. "Working theory was... that someone had killed you, taken your costume to try to imitate you."
Under the side of his face, the spine uncurls, straightens up as the body it belongs to pulls taut. Dan ignores it, continues on because if he doesn't get this out now, he won't ever: "So I was trying to find ways to know if it was... that was the secret you said I was keeping, god I was such an ass that night, I'm so sorry..."
More stiffening, and Dan's sure he's about to be chewed out but instead Rorschach just asks, quietly, carefully, "Thought you were working with an impostor, a murderer?"
A nod against the bare skin, fingers curling a grip in Rorschach's side. Clinging.
"For three weeks." Another nod. "And you stayed in that that trap, for that long, putting yourself at risk?"
"I had to know. If I was right, then... I'd have to do something about it." A long, precarious swallow against a mouth gone totally dry. "Avenge you, you know?"
Seconds stretch, then, into minutes. At first, Rorschach is just shaking; then he's shaking his head, violently-Dan can feel the muscle play against his face-and lifting his arms and ducking his head. "Irresponsible of me," he says, working at something with his hands. "Could have been exposed, exploited, killed."
"I knew that going in."
"Still an unacceptable risk for you to have to take," he says, and his voice is wavering and strange with something dark and then he's pulling away, turning on the bench to face Dan.
The mask is held in his hands like an offering.
Dan stares, suddenly doubting his own ability to discern reality.
"So you have an easy way to check," Rorschach says, "If it happens again," but they both know nothing this ludicrous will happen again and Rorschach is shaking from more than shock and his voice sounds run through and wrecked.
When Dan cups his hands around that face-familiar, unfamiliar, ugly and flawed and perfect, the sum of a million tiny details he'd spent a year counting and adding up through the ink-and pulls Rorschach in toward himself, there is no resistance.
*
Another leap, another sharp, sudden descent. Dan can't see the bottom from where he is, but he doesn't care, just pressing his forehead against his partner's, lacing his fingers to cup the back of his skull, pull him in. The eyes watching him are sharp and intent, unforgiving.
He can't rush forward, under that gaze-just angles his face in to catch Rorschach's lips glancingly, like it's an accident that they both know it isn't, and Rorschach doesn't know how to do this at all but at least he's trying and god, Dan doesn't even feel the fall.
"Shh," Dan soothes, because Rorschach's heart is racing, shocky and bright, when Dan slides his hands around the front of his throat, spreads his fingers to take in the exact curve and muscle tone and the way it all jumps when Rorschach swallows. He feels like he's been struck blind, the way he feels a need to map everything out by touch, sliding his cheek across Rorschach's, nipping at the corner of his jaw, hands spreading over his collarbone and his chest and fanning out over his firm stomach. It's all too hot, too burning and amazing to be real.
He presses his lips to Rorschach's throat, sucks hard, and that's apparently where the line is because Rorschach chokes against it. "Daniel, what... what are you doing?"
"Getting a baseline." He believes it himself, kind of, hands working in methodical arcs over Rorschach's chest now like he's building a topographical map. They only pause for moment when they brush over the hard tiny nipples, giving a quick circle to gauge his response-Rorschach buckles over on himself, and if he's this sensitive then all the layers make sense-then he does it again, just because he wants to.
"It's horrible how little I know about you," he murmurs into Rorschach's mouth, trying to bolster up the lie.
"Very... intimate baseline." Bullshit, his tone says, but he'd never be that vulgar aloud. "That you're aiming for."
Dan waves one hand, dismissive. "Hardest to imitate. Anyway, I don't see you pushing me off?"
"Did... keep your secrets well," Rorschach says, like that explains it, makes his acquiescence make sense. Maybe this is a reward, here, have a gold star. "Better than I would have expected."
"I had to."
"Even this one," he says, and there's no audible question mark but it's still a question.
A pause, drawing itself out to a fine point. "I.... actually, I didn't know this one myself." Dan laughs, a little light-headed. Presses his face back into Rorschach's throat, stifling it there, and he still feels a little hysterical. "Until now. I guess I'm just that good at keeping secrets."
"Ridiculous," the word buzzes under his lips, and god, the things Rorschach's voice are doing to him right now... if he has to feel it too, he's going to do something stupid. Stupider.
So Dan ducks his head, follows his hands with his mouth, lips that he keeps having to re-moisten and tongue that wants to dip in and out of other secrets, follow every line and curve. "Yeah, buddy, I know. Trust me, I know."
The angle's awkward, their height difference more obvious now that Rorschach's off his feet, and Dan finally just sinks to his knees between Rorschach's thighs. His hands skate down Rorschach's sides, touching and not-touching, avoiding his injury but measuring finger-lengths between scars and freckles and thick knots of muscle, bone.
There's a hard, full-body shudder when they come to rest on his hips, waistband of his slacks pulling low. Shaking hands settle on his cheeks, and Dan lets them lift his gaze, watches expressions shift across the unfamiliar face. They finally settle into something open-mouthed and slack, flush rising along the lines of Rorschach's cheekbones.
"Would have avenged me," he says, voice full of awe.
Dan closes his eyes, opens them again, thumbs circling the closure of Rorschach's slacks. "Of course."
"What would you have done to them?"
He's just gotten the button undone and the zipper worked far enough to bare an edge of curls, rust-colored and brambly, and is leaning forward to nose into them when Rorschach's question stops him cold.
He's looking for something specific, here. Some turn of violence or dedication, the loyalty of blood spilt in kind, the smell of it thick and heavy in the city's closeness-layered in the air with adrenaline and sex, indelible. Dan searches for an appropriately ghastly image, for the hanging end of his own sentence, if you've killed him...
There's nothing there. And he can't bring himself to lie right now, to make something up; there have been too many lies already.
"I... I don't really know," he says, voice quiet, breathing in the hot mustiness here as he runs one cheek along the straining line of Rorschach's zipper. There's a disappointed noise at his words, but it shifts halfway along into something wanting. Do that again, it says, and Dan does, opening his lips over the taut fabric, mouthing him through it. Rorschach sucks a breath through his teeth, fists tightening on the edge of the workbench.
"I didn't think that far," Dan says, pulling away for a moment, just breathing over the damp fabric. "I think if I was planning for that..."
"Would make it true?"
Dan bites his lip; works the zipper farther, eyes down and burning a little damp and he's never been so glad that he knows exactly how long scars take to heal, or he'd still be wondering, god.
"Maybe, yeah," he says, slipping the band of the underwear down before either of them can think better of it, watching Rorschach's knuckles go white from the corner of his eye. "Superstitious, I know."
Rorschach opens his mouth to comment, probably a backhanded insult. Dan cuts him off before he can, swallowing the head of his cock, and it pulls a noise from Rorschach that is completely unmistakable. Agony threaded through with the fear of obliteration, it's the same noise he's made whenever a blade has struck either of them too close to bone, dropping him roughly to his knees, cradled in the arms of a bleeding city.
Then Dan pulls back, letting his lips slip off over the flared edge; gives the slit a hard suck, and what the noise changes into is new, has no point of comparison. Dan will never be able to mistake it for anything else.
"Tell me if you need me to stop," he finally thinks to say, voice stuttery and maybe just as afraid as Rorschach feels, body trembling under his hands and mouth. His lips form the words against the hard curve of Rorschach's erection, and he mouths there when they're gone, drags his tongue over the length like he's mapping it, aimless and exploratory. And he really doesn't know what he's doing, here, has never done this before-though he's always kind of wanted to try, in a weird way-and is just going off of what he's liked himself in the past. Foreskin is a fucking mystery in that respect, and he slips his tongue under it, testing.
The response is immediate and explosive; Rorschach's hands on his shoulders, pushing him back and off of him so hard and so fast that Dan's a little afraid he might have taken some of the skin with him, teeth unshielded.
Just breath between them, for a long moment, labored and damp.
And shit, he must have gone too far somehow, and Dan's about to stammer out an apology that he barely means because of course he didn't mean to upset him but yeah, he really had meant to stick his tongue there, had really wanted to, had loved how hot and musky it'd been in the second before he'd been pushed away...
"Don't-" Rorschach says first, words coming out all jagged and wrong. "Shouldn't. Need you up- want you. Up here."
The hands are under his arms now, trying to haul him back up to his feet. Leverage isn't in his favor.
"Shouldn't be on your knees," he says as Dan finally obliges, one hand heavy on the bench for balance, pressed up against the inside of Rorschach's thigh. "Don't deserve that, after- too good. For that."
"I don't-"
"Too good for any of this," he mumbles, as Dan leans in against him, fingers coming up to stroke jutting cheekbones. "Debasing yourself, for me. Don't know why."
"For you?" Dan laughs again, but it's more even now. "Here I was, disbelieving my luck because you hadn't knocked all my teeth out yet."
"Have been distant," Rorschach says, the meander of explanation in it, then gasps as Dan's hand closes around him. Dan's hard as hell himself, has been for a while and it's getting uncomfortable; he grinds himself against the side of the bench, trying to take the edge off. "Because I... oh."
"Oh?"
"Oh," Rorschach repeats, with a growl of sarcasm. "Need the word defined?"
"No, I think I got it-" and then it's Dan's turn to cut himself off, moaning brokenly, because Rorschach's suddenly tugging his shirt out of the belt and running his own hands up under the spandex. Shaky, but undeterred.
"If you can do reconnaissance," he says, ducking his head to the side in embarrassment at what he's saying, "I can too."
Dan's costume doesn't leave much to the imagination; there's nothing Rorschach can learn this way that his eyes hadn't already told him. He smiles, almost says so, but then Rorschach's working at his belt and any inclination to pedantry evaporates.
"Of course you can," he says, dragging the heel of his hand over Rorschach, smearing the beading dampness down along his length. Rorschach bucks, almost off the bench, and Dan has to steady him with one hand to his hip; then Rorschach has his belt off and his costume bottom pushed down, an inexplicable time lapse, and has him in hand.
His grip is unsure, unpracticed, like he's never even touched himself. He seems to just do whatever feels right, pumping steadily up and down, and for all the lack of finesse Dan still feels his knees go to water.
"God," he says; Rorschach grunts at the blasphemy. "That's..."
"Could happen to you, after all," Rorschach says, trying to keep his voice at a rational, even keel. It's mostly not working, and he's falling further into Dan's grip every time Dan runs his hand up and down, coaxing. "Need to know what you really... that you're really..."
"It's okay," Dan says, circling his thumb hard around the head; he can feel how swollen it is now, feel how close his partner is, hear it in his voice. He loops his free arm around Rorschach's shoulders, steadies him flush against himself, nearly off the bench. "You can let it go now."
A sharp jerk into his hand; a tightening in the grip around him; a sharp, mournful noise.
"We both can," Dan says, and then there's a hot stickiness and all of Rorschach's weight is against him, and it's all he can do to brace him against the bench with both arms and rut into the relaxing grip until it's enough for him to let go, too.
*
At first, Rorschach seems content to just lie back on the bench where he's collapsed, among all the cut thread ends and bloody washcloths, severe eyes pressed closed. Dan sits on the edge next to him, slumped, one hand tracing idly over the flat of his stomach. As afterglow goes, it's better than he expected.
Then Rorschach seems to hit some internal limit or timer, and he tries to sit up abruptly; gasps when the motion pulls on his stitches, and would fall back to the bench if Dan weren't so quick to get an arm under him, catch him up.
"You rip those out," he says, easing Rorschach's unsteady frame up to sit, "and you'll just have to spend longer with your shirt off, while I put them back in."
"Hehn."
"Wouldn't want that, would you." Dan's hand smoothes from the base of his skull to just between his shoulderblades and back again, making it clear that he, at least, wouldn't mind it.
Rorschach just ducks his head, like he's trying to hide his face. Dan thinks he knows why, isn't blind-just a little terrifyingly in love, and that brings its own myopia-and he could say Hey, it's okay, or I don't care what you look like, but nothing really sounds right, in his head. So he just reaches for Rorschach's jaw, turns his face back toward himself, holds him there.
The fierce eyes bore into him, challenging.
When enough time has passed that there's no arguing that everything's sunk in, Dan leans in and kisses him again, soft and hungry; feels warm all the way to his toes when Rorschach responds, self-consciousness dropping away. It ends quietly on its own, and they drift a bit, propping each other up where their foreheads meet.
"Okay?" Dan asks, after a moment passes.
Another stretch; then a nod against him, and Rorschach is leaning away, sliding to the edge of the bench, hands already working to hide himself away, put himself to rights.
Dan watches. Rorschach doesn't seem to mind.
Somewhere between the run of the zipper and the tugging slide of the undershirt going back on, it occurs to Dan just how young Rorschach is, teetering somewhere between twenty and thirty, but he supposes he's just as young and why he expected his partner to be so much older, he isn't sure.
He wonders, given the nature of this thing they do, if they will ever actually be old.
"Hey," Dan says, reaching out to snag Rorschach by the wrist, before he can shoulder the dress shirt on. The whole arm stiffens, then the rest of him, and Dan quells the instinctual alarm, forces himself to hold on until it relaxes again.
When it does, he turns Rorschach's hand palm up, thumbs at the knobby bones of his wrist. "Come upstairs with me," he says, "We both need the rest."
Rorschach just stares at him, unreadable; pulls on his hand, and Dan lets it slip out of his grip. Watches him shrug the shirt on, the suspenders, and reach for his jacket.
"I need-" Rorschach starts to say, then cuts off, picking up the mask. There's got to be something soothing, Dan thinks, in the way it drifts to life in the warmth of his hands.
Then it's pulled on, low over the bridge of his nose, and the hat drops into place and all of a sudden all Dan can see is the outline, the sharp silhouette cut against dawn light, lingering in alleys and in his bedroom doorway. Rorschach reaches out with a still-bare hand, touches Dan's mouth just there, where the lip was split in a fight last spring, where the scar still lingers.
"Time," he finally says. "Need to..."
Dan nods, saving him from having to struggle for words-because it's okay, he understands.
*
Dan cleans up the mess by himself, scoops the detritus into a biowaste bin and collects the pieces of his costume that he'd thrown aside in the haste of Emergency. He really had hoped he wouldn't end the morning watching the back of a trenchcoat disappear down the tunnel, but you don't always get what you want.
Anyway, all he'd said was time, and what does that even mean? Days, weeks? After tonight, the thought of Rorschach working alone for any length of time bothers him.
In the kitchen, he goes through the drawers, finds the bundle of unsolved cases Hollis had left with him, and drops them into the trash can. Not satisfied, he pulls the entire bag, only half-full. Outside the air is cold, that biting October chill, and the bag swings against his calf all the way to the street.
The sky is hours from lightening; the night had ended so early for them. But the moon's still out, low and heavy, and the skyline is sharp, jagged teeth against the sky.
He leaves the bag by the curb, contents exorcised from his home and his life.
Upstairs, the bed is warm and welcoming, and maybe a little too empty but he is still asleep in minutes.
*
He's not sure exactly what time it is when he's awoken by a shuffling noise nearby-even the bedside clock is beyond him without his glasses-but it's after dawn, because his room has that diffuse glow of being on the edge of a dream.
The mattress sinks, next to him, and the blanket pulls across his chest. The body curling up against him feels bulky, and the sound of fabric over fabric fills his half-asleep mind with the image of a thin man in thick layers, bundled away in them for safekeeping. He can feel something plasticcy, against his shoulder.
The plastic something moves, stretches over a mouth opening and closing in too many false starts. Dan drifts back toward sleep.
"I've been distant," a voice finally says, rough and low, cutting through the quiet. The words sound familiar; Dan thinks he's heard them before, though he doesn't know what comes next. "Because I've been feeling like. Like this. About you. If you could just be the mask, then there wouldn't be anyone to want-this. From."
Nite Owl, Dan hears in his head, but now he hears the nuance, the tightness in his partner's throat.
"Knew it was bound to happen eventually," Rorschach continues, and the canvas of his coat is rough where Dan can feel it against his skin. "Wouldn't be strong enough forever, but if I could just delay it..."
"Hours," Dan mumbles. Time is apparently measured in hours. He grins, rolls over toward the intruder in his bed, slings one arm around the narrow waist.
Rorschach makes a confused noise, and Dan isn't sure he's said anything aloud, but he shakes his head anyway. "Nothing," he slurs. "Why didn't you just... ask me?"
A long silence then, and it could be a few minutes later or an hour, he could have slept between. He isn't sure.
"Certain of rejection," Rorschach says, pure practicality. "Knew you were a good man, above this sort of... casual dalliance."
Dan makes some kind of noise in the negative, nuzzles up under Rorschach's chin. He's not sure what he's saying no to, his being a good man or this being casual; he's not awake enough for this, and damn him but Rorschach must know that. He takes a hard breath in defiance, bites his lip until the pain gets some adrenaline going, forces his eyes open.
In front of them, nothing but the mystery of shifting ink. Which reminds him...
"So, explain this to me," he says, carefully picking through the words, forcing out the slur. "What's been going on, the last few weeks?"
The ink fans out. Rorschach is holding himself awkwardly, like he doesn't really know how to lie in a bed. "I just told you, don't need to-"
"No, I mean," and Dan leans in again, grazing the latex with his cheek. "I get all of that. But what about your coat, it looks like you got stabbed."
"Did," he says simply, half into the pillow.
"And you tried to hide it from me."
"Knew you'd worry, fuss over it. Like-"
Like tonight. Like he did tonight, and look what terrifying new territory that has landed them in.
Rorschach makes a throaty noise, almost like laughter. "Old laundromat threw me off the premises when I walked in with a bloody coat. Said she didn't want to be involved in it. Had to find a new one. Don't like them, believe they specialize in that kind of work, too many convenient chemicals on hand." The smell, of course. "Possible underworld connections, we should look into it."
And Dan does laugh, because it is something he knows how to do. "Of course we should. Might give us a lead on the Underboss."
A quiet grunt in agreement, and nothing more.
"Okay, so," Dan finally says, "What about you not remembering the monkeys, come on."
A memory-pulling pause. "I remember them now. Not sure about the other night. Might have sustained a head injury, it's not uncommon."
"That you also didn't think to mention. For the same reason?"
"...yes."
Dan sighs, pulls his arm tighter around Rorschach's back. Runs through the list in his head: Rorschach coming onto him out on the street makes some sense now, whether it was intentional or not, but... "The stuff with the cats? I've never seen you act like that before."
Silence, tightening into something uncomfortable.
"Haven't ever encountered... nng. Have my reasons, don't really want to-"
"Okay, okay," Dan says, and he's just realizing what an interrogation this is turning into. He has been a terrible friend, lately, and now he's being a terrible... whatever it is that they are, now, and he isn't even sure. "I get it, my imagination running away with me. That's probably what most of it was."
Another careful stretch, Rorschach shifting against him, uncomfortable.
"Not... not just your imagination," his partner finally says, and the breath of it comes lower, tucked up under Dan's chin. "Very astute observations. Had no idea you'd collected so much evidence."
"Mmm," Dan says, letting his eyes slip closed again.
"Impressive." Rorschach finally touches him under the blanket, gloved hand coming to a tentative rest on his shoulder. "Understandable that you'd want answers."
Dan smiles, sleepiness drifting back in. There's other things but he understands, now, can see how he'd let it all snowball, how his own cagey behavior had been feeding the cycle.
"This isn't casual," he says, remembering. "At least, not to me."
Rorschach just hrms against his throat, lets it go.
It's quiet, and everything seems pretty much how it should, and the bed is warmer now, less empty. Somewhere out in the street, he can hear the slinging metal noise of trashmen out, collecting. Everything is mundane and wonderful.
Except.
"Wait a minute," Dan says, eyes snapping open; next to him, Rorschach makes a disappointed noise. He'd obviously hoped this was over. "Wait, I have to ask one more thing."
"Impressive and insufferable."
"Yeah, yeah, but look," and Dan shifts back, looking Rorschach straight in the blots. The mask's gotten pulled up to his nose somehow; Dan has a vague, shifting memory of lips on his throat, mixed in with all the warm dawn normalcy and street noise. "How the hell did you change your height?"
A long, long-suffering sigh. Rorschach doesn't answer, but he shifts under the blanket, working something with his feet, and Dan hears one hard clunk of something hitting the floor, then another. Sounds like...
"You were wearing your boots in my bed?" Dan laughs, pushing himself up to a sitting position, then flops face first in the other direction, runs one arm off the foot of the bed to snag at the offending shoes. He'd been naked under the sheets, and from the choked sound it seems like this is the first time Rorschach's realized that. Dan ignores it, grabs up a boot by its heel, turns it upside down. "You probably got mud all over-"
Wait. Dan feels around inside again, wanting to be sure he's right; the lift comes away in his hand, fished out of the shoe like it's some bizarre treasure.
"Seriously?" Dan asks, grin splitting his face. "Elevator shoes?"
Rorschach's pushed himself up, is as beet red as he's ever been, just under the line of the mask. He sputters for a moment, then hangs his head. "Thought it would make me more..."
"Intimidating?"
A grumbled, mumbled string of very sharp invectives, then: "...yes."
God, that's... that's hilarious, but Dan does his best not to laugh. He drops the shoe back to the carpet, crawls over to straddle Rorschach through the blanket, peels the mask away and hangs it carefully on the bedpost.
Through the blush, Rorschach glowers up at him, menacing. Dan shivers all over, from more than just the morning air on bare skin.
"Trust me," he says, leaning in meet that menace, take it and hold it close and own it, tucked in under his ribs. "You're intimidating enough just as you are."
*
Fandom: Watchmen
Characters/Pairings: Rorschach/Dan
Date Written: 2011
Summary: Rorschach is acting funny, not remembering things how he should, and is just inexplicably different. Dan gets paranoid, and seeks his real partner.
Rating/Warnings: PG-13 most of the way through, then NC-17 at the very end of part 2, for explicit sex. Read whatever portion makes you comfortable.
Notes: KM fill. Set in the 60's, early in the partnership.
*
He can't go on like this. Maybe a man made of sterner stuff, one inured to the annoyances of guilt and emotion-Rorschach himself, for instance, although he isn't even sure of that, now-could maintain this kind of investigation indefinitely. A week along and Dan's already exhausted.
Exhausted, and still feeling like an ass come nightfall again. They don't talk about it; Dan's just glad Rorschach's back, hasn't taken the opportunity to pull a two week disappearing act, and Rorschach seems quietly relieved that his moment of verbal vulnerability is being allowed to slide unremarked on. Dan doesn't apologize, but Rorschach probably prefers it that way.
"Let's take Archie, tonight," Dan says, reaching up to release the hatch. From behind his back, a grunt of agreement, and then they're off.
*
It's not so much a leap of faith as a leap of logic. Is the Rorschach he knows capable of shaking off a knife wound without comment, taking a blow to the head so sharp that it scrambles his memories without thinking to mention it? Is he prone to sudden bursts of coldness, refusing to call Dan by his name for fear of the closeness it implies? Is sneaking into Dan's house and checking up on him while he sleeps like some kind of obsessed stalker consistent with his past behavior?
Is he capable of unexpected turns of vulnerability and honesty, after a frustrating patrol and when the morning sun hits him just right, catches him off guard?
Yes, yes, yes, regrettably yes, and a conclusive, definitive maybe.
But more than that, the pragmatist in Dan knows-if Rorschach is dead, then the impostor will inevitably slip up when he runs up against a need for information he no longer has a source for, and Dan will know, and Nite Owl will exact all the vengeance the world has room for. If Rorschach is alive but has been hidden away somewhere for the last two weeks, then he is being kept alive, and Dan will have time to find him.
And if Rorschach is the man next to him, returned out of loyalty after a night of mindgames and borderline emotional abuse, then he does not deserve Dan's suspicion.
So an hour ago, in the kitchen, Dan had steeled himself to go downstairs, made ready for the strangeness and the distance and the terror. He would turn his back, to test for the knife. He would open his hand, to test for the bite.
He would set that hand on a shoulder two inches too high.
Dan had picked up the empty cough syrup bottle, still sitting out on the counter like a totem, and regarded it in silence for a very long time.
Then it'd been time to go change, put on Nite Owl's skin and in doing so own his decisions-the light getting soft and violet through the window, clouds like a string of bruises hanging on the horizon.
*
It isn't easy, but he manages it, calls Rorschach buddy and claps him on the shoulder and puts as much warmth into the space between them as he can. This isn't an act, can't be an act; he has to believe it. He certainly wants to.
He wants to find a way for things to be all right again, for there to be no horror and dread lurking at the edges of his mind, springing out when he least expects them. He wants to have a context that he can consider these questions within, a framework to ask himself What if this really is him? and What if he really wants... and Do you?
For all of this, Rorschach is a little skittish, shying away from contact like every moment spent without a buffer of space between them will lead them closer to all the unnameable things that Dan is just now finding names for. The awareness of it is new, but the behavior is not; Rorschach's been acting like this for a while, well before any of the other oddities cropped up. Maybe it's something to do with them and maybe it isn't, but Dan's done with tests and games. He just lets the observation settle, files it away.
Nights pass in a blur. There are plenty of opportunities for the same sort of observation, but Dan doesn't engineer any of them, and now that he isn't trying, more and more things seem obvious. The hitch in Rorschach's voice when he says 'Nite Owl' like he wants to say something else, is forcing himself not to through force of will. The way he jolts when he catches himself standing too close to Dan, recoiling like he's been struck, and steps back to gather himself back to himself. He's fighting with something, but Dan's starting to realize that maybe it isn't what he thought it was.
*
Street vendor food at a touch before midnight, a ritual to keep their strength up that they haven't indulged in in weeks. The streets are still teeming with activity, crime restricted to the back alleys and warehouses and shadows between patches of shuddery light. It's Dan's turn to pick tonight, and he doesn't choose the Thai cart for any reason other than that he's in the mood for it. He only remembers Rorschach's habitual reaction to chemical heat when he sees the reluctant way he takes the bowl from the counter, the stiff set to his jaw under the mask.
Then the mask shifts up just a fraction, and it's too dim for Dan to be sure whether he recognizes the stubbled chin or not but he's sure he knows that tight grimace, the sharp exhale of breath around the first bite, the almost-whimper of almost-pain that of course isn't either of those.
"Sorry, man," he says, and he really is. "I forgot you couldn't- here, let's go find something else, okay?"
Rorschach shakes his head, fedora shifting slightly, still fighting that first forkful. "No need, Nite Owl," he says, "Can manage," and that's just like Rorschach, too.
Dan shouldn't grin-he's been punched for less-but he does anyway.
*
Three muggers near Penn Station, just down an alley between the deli and the bar next door, fifteen year old kid they'd jumped calmed down and sent on his way-and Rorschach's grumbling about only having one pair of cuffs on him.
Rorschach's always preferred rope to cuffs, especially when there are multiple captives, and when they are not dangerous enough to worry that they'll break free. He likes pulling the cord tight, he's said, one last parting gift in the form of rugburned wrists.
Frustrated, he grouses and stews, then finally accepts the cut rope from Nite Owl's offered hand and lashes the miscreants to each other, to the ladder of a fire escape. Good enough.
*
They stop to leave a note on the door of a family whose daughter they'd seen carted off in an ambulance a half an hour earlier, roughed up but all in one piece, terrified and begging them to please, please tell her parents she's okay. And they usually leave that up to the authorities, but Dan had felt his own weeks-old fear-weakened resolve waver and then break, and a promise is a promise.
Rorschach pulls a stub of a pencil from his pocket, a scrap of paper, and scrawls Daughter is safe. Lenox Hill Hosp. on it, just barely legible. Pins it to the door, and the pencil is in his left hand.
*
"Nite Owl," Rorschach says, sounding a little anguished. His hand is on the sugar canister; Dan looks up from where he's fixing coffee, cowl still up but goggles around his neck. He raises one eyebrow, questioning.
Rorschach shifts his hand to the side of the canister, as if to pick it up. "Do you... nnk. Do you mind if I..."
Dan frowns, flat. Rorschach never asks for sugar cubes; he just takes them, and if it's never been by spoken agreement, Dan's total unwillingness to ever stop him should have served as permanent enough permission.
The mask cants to one side, uncertainty in Rorschach's posture.
"Of course," Dan says, nodding toward the cannister. "Help yourself."
Rorschach does.
*
One week it took Dan to notice, and another week hiding and researching and playing games, and now a third week has passed. Dan isn't any surer of what to believe than he'd been before, evidence stacking up for both cases, and he has to keep coming back to is it possible-if the answer's yes or even maybe, that has to be good enough.
He has to make it good enough.
The cap of the syrup bottle's in his belt pouch now, and he touches it like a worry stone, amazed in his more lucid moments at how much power the symbolic has over the human psyche. It would almost be laughable, but nothing about any of this is laughable, and whether it was a leap of faith or logic or into the abyss, it's still a leap. They all go the same way: the flight, and then the suspension, and then the inevitable fall, the shock of impact rubbery and sharp in the heels and ankles and knees even if he manages to land on his feet.
It's a Friday night, and there's an energy on the streets, all the good citizens uncaged and let loose, morals made slippery with alcohol and the promise of a weekend that always ends too soon. The police are on edge, as always. The criminals are on edge, as always.
Dan can feel the moment of impact coming for an hour beforehand.
It's nothing that should normally be a problem, a scuffle that neither expects to spiral out their ability to handle it. Three Knot-tops, a dog chained to a chainlink alley-ender, two kids from some new gang out by the river. Some drugs, some fighting words, a narrow band of territory in dispute. They drop in from above, Rorschach's plan, and it's over almost before it starts, everyone down except the dog where it's huddled, cowering in the refuse.
"Some guard dog," Dan says, grinning as he lashes one of the thugs, hands behind his back. But he shouldn't discount the creature, because it gives a high, warning whine just as Dan sees motion out of the corner of his eye, turns, cape whipping out-
Rorschach is bent, tying another of the gang kids, hasn't seen the one that wasn't knocked quite cold pulling a knife from his boot and swinging out with it-
The shining blade ripping through the air and then coat fabric, flesh, blood outlining its arc and then Rorschach's fist in the boy's face, dropping him to the pavement in an instant-
Fist, curling in against his side, balling into the wound and it's already bleeding too much, Dan can see from here, and like everything in their lives it's happened so fast.
"...Daniel," the rough voice says, quiet, and all Dan can see is the reality of all his gruesome imaginings; all he can think is, this is what you get.
Then Rorschach is struggling to his feet, is saying, "Could use some assistance," and Dan is there, arm around Rorschach's back, taking his weight. In Dan's night vision, the glove balled to Rorschach's side looks brilliantly red and wet, and he feels the ground approaching faster than he thought possible.
Archie is a block away. They can do this, they have to do this. They have to land on their feet.
"Come on," he says, taking the first shuffling step, pavement heavy under his boots. "It isn't far. You'll be fine."
*
Rorschach's never stripped his entire shirt off for a patch-job-Dan's had to try to see the whole picture by looking at one puzzle piece at a time, a flash of pale skin here and there where the shoulder of a sleeve is shrugged down or the tails of coat and shirt are both lifted just a tiny bit. This is an awkward spot, though, and serious enough that when Rorschach lets him take the jacket and starts unbuttoning the dress shirt on his own, it doesn't even occur to Dan to question it. This isn't Amateur Detective Hour anymore; his head's squarely in the situation.
The dress shirt drops to the workbench, careless. There's still a thin undershirt clinging to him, rapidly going red on one side, and he makes an aborted motion against its shoulders; gives a faint grunt, and then glances over his shoulder at Dan. The angle of his face is low, like he doesn't know whether to ask or not, is ashamed to admit he needs the help.
Dan meets the gaze, takes a breath.
"Here," he says, setting the suture packs back on the bench. His gauntlets are gone; his fingertips tingle in the still, still air. "Let me help with that, you're only going to tear something..."
So much skin, taut with lean muscle, cool with system shock and blood loss, skimming under his fingers as he insinuates them between flesh and fabric. He peels the undershirt up and away, and.
And this is not something he ever knew he wanted to touch so badly. God.
"...squirming around, trying to get out of it," he trails off, slipping it off over the clean white dome of Rorschach's skull, then leaving him to work his arms out himself. "You've already done enough damage to yourself tonight."
Rorschach just grunts, a thin shiver passing through him that could be the cold or the pain, could be anything.
The back laid bare in front of him is narrow and angular, well-defined at the shoulders but there's old malnourishment chewing a path up the knobby spine. The shoulders are hunched, down and in, shielding. Dan realizes, distantly, that his hand is still on one of them, has been for maybe too long.
"Okay," he says, "okay," because there are a million details he could choose between here but the only one demanding his undivided attention is the bloody gash, torn-rough edges, too low to have glanced off the ribs, bleeding too well even now to be ignored. "Looks like that knife was pretty dull."
"Probably rusty, too," Rorschach mutters, "knowing my luck."
Dan picks up a washcloth, bends to wash the blood away so that he can see what he's doing, sets in with the needle and thread as soon as he can tell which end is which. "Drop into a clinic tomorrow," he says, quiet, working the first stitch. "They'll give you a tetanus shot if you're worried about it."
A sharp harumph, definitely not in pain. "Yes, and also receive yearly dose of lead, fluoride, and latest experimental behavior-altering pharmaceuticals. Sounds like an excellent idea, Nite Owl."
"Oh, come on." Second stitch, third. It's deep but it's all just skin, he can handle this. "They give those to kids, do you really think-"
Rorschach just turns to look at him through the mask, and Dan breathes out through his nose, gets back to his work. "Right, of course you do."
"Explains delinquency of current generation of...agh-"
Dan looks up again; now Rorschach is hunched even further between his shoulders, and his hand hovers in front of where his mouth should be, like it wants to stifle the sound.
"Sorry," he says, too little too late and he knows it. "But it's pretty deep, it's going to-"
Rorschach balls the hand into a fist. "Finish it," he growls into his knuckles, mouthing them like he wants to bite down, and buried in the words: Stop being so soft.
So Dan puts aside all thoughts of coddling, like he usually eventually does, and just works the needle in and out, as mechanical as he would sew the leather of his boots or something else dead and unfeeling. He ignores the increasingly harsh sound of Rorschach's breath, ignores the jump in his skin, and when Dan ties off the last stitch the wound is nothing more than a scar-in-progress, one more to join the map of-
The scars. Dan's breath catches; it's so obvious, and he's been so stupid.
There, on the shoulder: last year's fight on the docks, the first one he'd needed stitched. Low across the small of his back, a serpentine and irregular line where he'd been caught by the very end of a chain he'd been a millimeter too close to. Up along the curve of his shoulderblade, and that one's messy because he'd refused to bare enough skin to let Dan suture it but he remembers the knife sinking into Rorschach's coat, going in and in, and how jackrabbit-terrified he'd been in that moment. A map of their shared career, tiny details that roll into the freckles and the knobs of his spine and the way his hips jut above the line of his slacks and the way his shoulders hitch, just like endless bits of sand, every one a little different, rolling up into rocks and bounders and eventually into a mountain.
His inimitable, irreplaceable, stubborn as hell mountain of a partner.
Dan rests his bare forehead between Rorschach's shoulderblades. He's not sure if he's laughing or crying or exploding; all he knows is that the pressure release is too much and it needs out.
"...Nite Owl," Rorschach says, cautiously. "I'm... nggh. The one who is supposed to be in shock. If I understand it correctly."
The laughter trails off into something not entirely distinguishable from a sobbing. "Stop calling me... you know my name, damn it."
The thought surfaces through the hysteria: He did, in the alley. He did.
"Daniel," and Rorschach sounds more forceful now, straightening up against the way Dan's hands have started to drift down his sides. "Why are you-what's wrong?"
"Nothing," Dan laughs, tries really hard to make it sound like a laugh. "Nothing. I'm just so glad it's really you."
No reply, just the sob-laughter and Rorschach still working to get his breathing under control.
"So happy, god, I can't even-"
"Expecting someone else?"
Dan lifts his face; over Rorschach's shoulder, the mask is turned toward him, and it's hitched up over his nose now in all the bright light and all he can think is, I know that chin, and that is somehow paralyzingly hilarious. The laughter redoubles, his thoughts shatter, and he is lost.
*
It's probably only five or ten minutes before he's calmed down enough to just be breathing against Rorschach's scarred, beautiful back, cheek against his spine. Feels like longer, spent laughing all the doubt and suspicion and terror out, all the grief and rage. Feels like hours, like years.
"I thought you were dead," he says, feeling a little stupid as he says it but not giving a good goddamn. "Working theory was... that someone had killed you, taken your costume to try to imitate you."
Under the side of his face, the spine uncurls, straightens up as the body it belongs to pulls taut. Dan ignores it, continues on because if he doesn't get this out now, he won't ever: "So I was trying to find ways to know if it was... that was the secret you said I was keeping, god I was such an ass that night, I'm so sorry..."
More stiffening, and Dan's sure he's about to be chewed out but instead Rorschach just asks, quietly, carefully, "Thought you were working with an impostor, a murderer?"
A nod against the bare skin, fingers curling a grip in Rorschach's side. Clinging.
"For three weeks." Another nod. "And you stayed in that that trap, for that long, putting yourself at risk?"
"I had to know. If I was right, then... I'd have to do something about it." A long, precarious swallow against a mouth gone totally dry. "Avenge you, you know?"
Seconds stretch, then, into minutes. At first, Rorschach is just shaking; then he's shaking his head, violently-Dan can feel the muscle play against his face-and lifting his arms and ducking his head. "Irresponsible of me," he says, working at something with his hands. "Could have been exposed, exploited, killed."
"I knew that going in."
"Still an unacceptable risk for you to have to take," he says, and his voice is wavering and strange with something dark and then he's pulling away, turning on the bench to face Dan.
The mask is held in his hands like an offering.
Dan stares, suddenly doubting his own ability to discern reality.
"So you have an easy way to check," Rorschach says, "If it happens again," but they both know nothing this ludicrous will happen again and Rorschach is shaking from more than shock and his voice sounds run through and wrecked.
When Dan cups his hands around that face-familiar, unfamiliar, ugly and flawed and perfect, the sum of a million tiny details he'd spent a year counting and adding up through the ink-and pulls Rorschach in toward himself, there is no resistance.
*
Another leap, another sharp, sudden descent. Dan can't see the bottom from where he is, but he doesn't care, just pressing his forehead against his partner's, lacing his fingers to cup the back of his skull, pull him in. The eyes watching him are sharp and intent, unforgiving.
He can't rush forward, under that gaze-just angles his face in to catch Rorschach's lips glancingly, like it's an accident that they both know it isn't, and Rorschach doesn't know how to do this at all but at least he's trying and god, Dan doesn't even feel the fall.
"Shh," Dan soothes, because Rorschach's heart is racing, shocky and bright, when Dan slides his hands around the front of his throat, spreads his fingers to take in the exact curve and muscle tone and the way it all jumps when Rorschach swallows. He feels like he's been struck blind, the way he feels a need to map everything out by touch, sliding his cheek across Rorschach's, nipping at the corner of his jaw, hands spreading over his collarbone and his chest and fanning out over his firm stomach. It's all too hot, too burning and amazing to be real.
He presses his lips to Rorschach's throat, sucks hard, and that's apparently where the line is because Rorschach chokes against it. "Daniel, what... what are you doing?"
"Getting a baseline." He believes it himself, kind of, hands working in methodical arcs over Rorschach's chest now like he's building a topographical map. They only pause for moment when they brush over the hard tiny nipples, giving a quick circle to gauge his response-Rorschach buckles over on himself, and if he's this sensitive then all the layers make sense-then he does it again, just because he wants to.
"It's horrible how little I know about you," he murmurs into Rorschach's mouth, trying to bolster up the lie.
"Very... intimate baseline." Bullshit, his tone says, but he'd never be that vulgar aloud. "That you're aiming for."
Dan waves one hand, dismissive. "Hardest to imitate. Anyway, I don't see you pushing me off?"
"Did... keep your secrets well," Rorschach says, like that explains it, makes his acquiescence make sense. Maybe this is a reward, here, have a gold star. "Better than I would have expected."
"I had to."
"Even this one," he says, and there's no audible question mark but it's still a question.
A pause, drawing itself out to a fine point. "I.... actually, I didn't know this one myself." Dan laughs, a little light-headed. Presses his face back into Rorschach's throat, stifling it there, and he still feels a little hysterical. "Until now. I guess I'm just that good at keeping secrets."
"Ridiculous," the word buzzes under his lips, and god, the things Rorschach's voice are doing to him right now... if he has to feel it too, he's going to do something stupid. Stupider.
So Dan ducks his head, follows his hands with his mouth, lips that he keeps having to re-moisten and tongue that wants to dip in and out of other secrets, follow every line and curve. "Yeah, buddy, I know. Trust me, I know."
The angle's awkward, their height difference more obvious now that Rorschach's off his feet, and Dan finally just sinks to his knees between Rorschach's thighs. His hands skate down Rorschach's sides, touching and not-touching, avoiding his injury but measuring finger-lengths between scars and freckles and thick knots of muscle, bone.
There's a hard, full-body shudder when they come to rest on his hips, waistband of his slacks pulling low. Shaking hands settle on his cheeks, and Dan lets them lift his gaze, watches expressions shift across the unfamiliar face. They finally settle into something open-mouthed and slack, flush rising along the lines of Rorschach's cheekbones.
"Would have avenged me," he says, voice full of awe.
Dan closes his eyes, opens them again, thumbs circling the closure of Rorschach's slacks. "Of course."
"What would you have done to them?"
He's just gotten the button undone and the zipper worked far enough to bare an edge of curls, rust-colored and brambly, and is leaning forward to nose into them when Rorschach's question stops him cold.
He's looking for something specific, here. Some turn of violence or dedication, the loyalty of blood spilt in kind, the smell of it thick and heavy in the city's closeness-layered in the air with adrenaline and sex, indelible. Dan searches for an appropriately ghastly image, for the hanging end of his own sentence, if you've killed him...
There's nothing there. And he can't bring himself to lie right now, to make something up; there have been too many lies already.
"I... I don't really know," he says, voice quiet, breathing in the hot mustiness here as he runs one cheek along the straining line of Rorschach's zipper. There's a disappointed noise at his words, but it shifts halfway along into something wanting. Do that again, it says, and Dan does, opening his lips over the taut fabric, mouthing him through it. Rorschach sucks a breath through his teeth, fists tightening on the edge of the workbench.
"I didn't think that far," Dan says, pulling away for a moment, just breathing over the damp fabric. "I think if I was planning for that..."
"Would make it true?"
Dan bites his lip; works the zipper farther, eyes down and burning a little damp and he's never been so glad that he knows exactly how long scars take to heal, or he'd still be wondering, god.
"Maybe, yeah," he says, slipping the band of the underwear down before either of them can think better of it, watching Rorschach's knuckles go white from the corner of his eye. "Superstitious, I know."
Rorschach opens his mouth to comment, probably a backhanded insult. Dan cuts him off before he can, swallowing the head of his cock, and it pulls a noise from Rorschach that is completely unmistakable. Agony threaded through with the fear of obliteration, it's the same noise he's made whenever a blade has struck either of them too close to bone, dropping him roughly to his knees, cradled in the arms of a bleeding city.
Then Dan pulls back, letting his lips slip off over the flared edge; gives the slit a hard suck, and what the noise changes into is new, has no point of comparison. Dan will never be able to mistake it for anything else.
"Tell me if you need me to stop," he finally thinks to say, voice stuttery and maybe just as afraid as Rorschach feels, body trembling under his hands and mouth. His lips form the words against the hard curve of Rorschach's erection, and he mouths there when they're gone, drags his tongue over the length like he's mapping it, aimless and exploratory. And he really doesn't know what he's doing, here, has never done this before-though he's always kind of wanted to try, in a weird way-and is just going off of what he's liked himself in the past. Foreskin is a fucking mystery in that respect, and he slips his tongue under it, testing.
The response is immediate and explosive; Rorschach's hands on his shoulders, pushing him back and off of him so hard and so fast that Dan's a little afraid he might have taken some of the skin with him, teeth unshielded.
Just breath between them, for a long moment, labored and damp.
And shit, he must have gone too far somehow, and Dan's about to stammer out an apology that he barely means because of course he didn't mean to upset him but yeah, he really had meant to stick his tongue there, had really wanted to, had loved how hot and musky it'd been in the second before he'd been pushed away...
"Don't-" Rorschach says first, words coming out all jagged and wrong. "Shouldn't. Need you up- want you. Up here."
The hands are under his arms now, trying to haul him back up to his feet. Leverage isn't in his favor.
"Shouldn't be on your knees," he says as Dan finally obliges, one hand heavy on the bench for balance, pressed up against the inside of Rorschach's thigh. "Don't deserve that, after- too good. For that."
"I don't-"
"Too good for any of this," he mumbles, as Dan leans in against him, fingers coming up to stroke jutting cheekbones. "Debasing yourself, for me. Don't know why."
"For you?" Dan laughs again, but it's more even now. "Here I was, disbelieving my luck because you hadn't knocked all my teeth out yet."
"Have been distant," Rorschach says, the meander of explanation in it, then gasps as Dan's hand closes around him. Dan's hard as hell himself, has been for a while and it's getting uncomfortable; he grinds himself against the side of the bench, trying to take the edge off. "Because I... oh."
"Oh?"
"Oh," Rorschach repeats, with a growl of sarcasm. "Need the word defined?"
"No, I think I got it-" and then it's Dan's turn to cut himself off, moaning brokenly, because Rorschach's suddenly tugging his shirt out of the belt and running his own hands up under the spandex. Shaky, but undeterred.
"If you can do reconnaissance," he says, ducking his head to the side in embarrassment at what he's saying, "I can too."
Dan's costume doesn't leave much to the imagination; there's nothing Rorschach can learn this way that his eyes hadn't already told him. He smiles, almost says so, but then Rorschach's working at his belt and any inclination to pedantry evaporates.
"Of course you can," he says, dragging the heel of his hand over Rorschach, smearing the beading dampness down along his length. Rorschach bucks, almost off the bench, and Dan has to steady him with one hand to his hip; then Rorschach has his belt off and his costume bottom pushed down, an inexplicable time lapse, and has him in hand.
His grip is unsure, unpracticed, like he's never even touched himself. He seems to just do whatever feels right, pumping steadily up and down, and for all the lack of finesse Dan still feels his knees go to water.
"God," he says; Rorschach grunts at the blasphemy. "That's..."
"Could happen to you, after all," Rorschach says, trying to keep his voice at a rational, even keel. It's mostly not working, and he's falling further into Dan's grip every time Dan runs his hand up and down, coaxing. "Need to know what you really... that you're really..."
"It's okay," Dan says, circling his thumb hard around the head; he can feel how swollen it is now, feel how close his partner is, hear it in his voice. He loops his free arm around Rorschach's shoulders, steadies him flush against himself, nearly off the bench. "You can let it go now."
A sharp jerk into his hand; a tightening in the grip around him; a sharp, mournful noise.
"We both can," Dan says, and then there's a hot stickiness and all of Rorschach's weight is against him, and it's all he can do to brace him against the bench with both arms and rut into the relaxing grip until it's enough for him to let go, too.
*
At first, Rorschach seems content to just lie back on the bench where he's collapsed, among all the cut thread ends and bloody washcloths, severe eyes pressed closed. Dan sits on the edge next to him, slumped, one hand tracing idly over the flat of his stomach. As afterglow goes, it's better than he expected.
Then Rorschach seems to hit some internal limit or timer, and he tries to sit up abruptly; gasps when the motion pulls on his stitches, and would fall back to the bench if Dan weren't so quick to get an arm under him, catch him up.
"You rip those out," he says, easing Rorschach's unsteady frame up to sit, "and you'll just have to spend longer with your shirt off, while I put them back in."
"Hehn."
"Wouldn't want that, would you." Dan's hand smoothes from the base of his skull to just between his shoulderblades and back again, making it clear that he, at least, wouldn't mind it.
Rorschach just ducks his head, like he's trying to hide his face. Dan thinks he knows why, isn't blind-just a little terrifyingly in love, and that brings its own myopia-and he could say Hey, it's okay, or I don't care what you look like, but nothing really sounds right, in his head. So he just reaches for Rorschach's jaw, turns his face back toward himself, holds him there.
The fierce eyes bore into him, challenging.
When enough time has passed that there's no arguing that everything's sunk in, Dan leans in and kisses him again, soft and hungry; feels warm all the way to his toes when Rorschach responds, self-consciousness dropping away. It ends quietly on its own, and they drift a bit, propping each other up where their foreheads meet.
"Okay?" Dan asks, after a moment passes.
Another stretch; then a nod against him, and Rorschach is leaning away, sliding to the edge of the bench, hands already working to hide himself away, put himself to rights.
Dan watches. Rorschach doesn't seem to mind.
Somewhere between the run of the zipper and the tugging slide of the undershirt going back on, it occurs to Dan just how young Rorschach is, teetering somewhere between twenty and thirty, but he supposes he's just as young and why he expected his partner to be so much older, he isn't sure.
He wonders, given the nature of this thing they do, if they will ever actually be old.
"Hey," Dan says, reaching out to snag Rorschach by the wrist, before he can shoulder the dress shirt on. The whole arm stiffens, then the rest of him, and Dan quells the instinctual alarm, forces himself to hold on until it relaxes again.
When it does, he turns Rorschach's hand palm up, thumbs at the knobby bones of his wrist. "Come upstairs with me," he says, "We both need the rest."
Rorschach just stares at him, unreadable; pulls on his hand, and Dan lets it slip out of his grip. Watches him shrug the shirt on, the suspenders, and reach for his jacket.
"I need-" Rorschach starts to say, then cuts off, picking up the mask. There's got to be something soothing, Dan thinks, in the way it drifts to life in the warmth of his hands.
Then it's pulled on, low over the bridge of his nose, and the hat drops into place and all of a sudden all Dan can see is the outline, the sharp silhouette cut against dawn light, lingering in alleys and in his bedroom doorway. Rorschach reaches out with a still-bare hand, touches Dan's mouth just there, where the lip was split in a fight last spring, where the scar still lingers.
"Time," he finally says. "Need to..."
Dan nods, saving him from having to struggle for words-because it's okay, he understands.
*
Dan cleans up the mess by himself, scoops the detritus into a biowaste bin and collects the pieces of his costume that he'd thrown aside in the haste of Emergency. He really had hoped he wouldn't end the morning watching the back of a trenchcoat disappear down the tunnel, but you don't always get what you want.
Anyway, all he'd said was time, and what does that even mean? Days, weeks? After tonight, the thought of Rorschach working alone for any length of time bothers him.
In the kitchen, he goes through the drawers, finds the bundle of unsolved cases Hollis had left with him, and drops them into the trash can. Not satisfied, he pulls the entire bag, only half-full. Outside the air is cold, that biting October chill, and the bag swings against his calf all the way to the street.
The sky is hours from lightening; the night had ended so early for them. But the moon's still out, low and heavy, and the skyline is sharp, jagged teeth against the sky.
He leaves the bag by the curb, contents exorcised from his home and his life.
Upstairs, the bed is warm and welcoming, and maybe a little too empty but he is still asleep in minutes.
*
He's not sure exactly what time it is when he's awoken by a shuffling noise nearby-even the bedside clock is beyond him without his glasses-but it's after dawn, because his room has that diffuse glow of being on the edge of a dream.
The mattress sinks, next to him, and the blanket pulls across his chest. The body curling up against him feels bulky, and the sound of fabric over fabric fills his half-asleep mind with the image of a thin man in thick layers, bundled away in them for safekeeping. He can feel something plasticcy, against his shoulder.
The plastic something moves, stretches over a mouth opening and closing in too many false starts. Dan drifts back toward sleep.
"I've been distant," a voice finally says, rough and low, cutting through the quiet. The words sound familiar; Dan thinks he's heard them before, though he doesn't know what comes next. "Because I've been feeling like. Like this. About you. If you could just be the mask, then there wouldn't be anyone to want-this. From."
Nite Owl, Dan hears in his head, but now he hears the nuance, the tightness in his partner's throat.
"Knew it was bound to happen eventually," Rorschach continues, and the canvas of his coat is rough where Dan can feel it against his skin. "Wouldn't be strong enough forever, but if I could just delay it..."
"Hours," Dan mumbles. Time is apparently measured in hours. He grins, rolls over toward the intruder in his bed, slings one arm around the narrow waist.
Rorschach makes a confused noise, and Dan isn't sure he's said anything aloud, but he shakes his head anyway. "Nothing," he slurs. "Why didn't you just... ask me?"
A long silence then, and it could be a few minutes later or an hour, he could have slept between. He isn't sure.
"Certain of rejection," Rorschach says, pure practicality. "Knew you were a good man, above this sort of... casual dalliance."
Dan makes some kind of noise in the negative, nuzzles up under Rorschach's chin. He's not sure what he's saying no to, his being a good man or this being casual; he's not awake enough for this, and damn him but Rorschach must know that. He takes a hard breath in defiance, bites his lip until the pain gets some adrenaline going, forces his eyes open.
In front of them, nothing but the mystery of shifting ink. Which reminds him...
"So, explain this to me," he says, carefully picking through the words, forcing out the slur. "What's been going on, the last few weeks?"
The ink fans out. Rorschach is holding himself awkwardly, like he doesn't really know how to lie in a bed. "I just told you, don't need to-"
"No, I mean," and Dan leans in again, grazing the latex with his cheek. "I get all of that. But what about your coat, it looks like you got stabbed."
"Did," he says simply, half into the pillow.
"And you tried to hide it from me."
"Knew you'd worry, fuss over it. Like-"
Like tonight. Like he did tonight, and look what terrifying new territory that has landed them in.
Rorschach makes a throaty noise, almost like laughter. "Old laundromat threw me off the premises when I walked in with a bloody coat. Said she didn't want to be involved in it. Had to find a new one. Don't like them, believe they specialize in that kind of work, too many convenient chemicals on hand." The smell, of course. "Possible underworld connections, we should look into it."
And Dan does laugh, because it is something he knows how to do. "Of course we should. Might give us a lead on the Underboss."
A quiet grunt in agreement, and nothing more.
"Okay, so," Dan finally says, "What about you not remembering the monkeys, come on."
A memory-pulling pause. "I remember them now. Not sure about the other night. Might have sustained a head injury, it's not uncommon."
"That you also didn't think to mention. For the same reason?"
"...yes."
Dan sighs, pulls his arm tighter around Rorschach's back. Runs through the list in his head: Rorschach coming onto him out on the street makes some sense now, whether it was intentional or not, but... "The stuff with the cats? I've never seen you act like that before."
Silence, tightening into something uncomfortable.
"Haven't ever encountered... nng. Have my reasons, don't really want to-"
"Okay, okay," Dan says, and he's just realizing what an interrogation this is turning into. He has been a terrible friend, lately, and now he's being a terrible... whatever it is that they are, now, and he isn't even sure. "I get it, my imagination running away with me. That's probably what most of it was."
Another careful stretch, Rorschach shifting against him, uncomfortable.
"Not... not just your imagination," his partner finally says, and the breath of it comes lower, tucked up under Dan's chin. "Very astute observations. Had no idea you'd collected so much evidence."
"Mmm," Dan says, letting his eyes slip closed again.
"Impressive." Rorschach finally touches him under the blanket, gloved hand coming to a tentative rest on his shoulder. "Understandable that you'd want answers."
Dan smiles, sleepiness drifting back in. There's other things but he understands, now, can see how he'd let it all snowball, how his own cagey behavior had been feeding the cycle.
"This isn't casual," he says, remembering. "At least, not to me."
Rorschach just hrms against his throat, lets it go.
It's quiet, and everything seems pretty much how it should, and the bed is warmer now, less empty. Somewhere out in the street, he can hear the slinging metal noise of trashmen out, collecting. Everything is mundane and wonderful.
Except.
"Wait a minute," Dan says, eyes snapping open; next to him, Rorschach makes a disappointed noise. He'd obviously hoped this was over. "Wait, I have to ask one more thing."
"Impressive and insufferable."
"Yeah, yeah, but look," and Dan shifts back, looking Rorschach straight in the blots. The mask's gotten pulled up to his nose somehow; Dan has a vague, shifting memory of lips on his throat, mixed in with all the warm dawn normalcy and street noise. "How the hell did you change your height?"
A long, long-suffering sigh. Rorschach doesn't answer, but he shifts under the blanket, working something with his feet, and Dan hears one hard clunk of something hitting the floor, then another. Sounds like...
"You were wearing your boots in my bed?" Dan laughs, pushing himself up to a sitting position, then flops face first in the other direction, runs one arm off the foot of the bed to snag at the offending shoes. He'd been naked under the sheets, and from the choked sound it seems like this is the first time Rorschach's realized that. Dan ignores it, grabs up a boot by its heel, turns it upside down. "You probably got mud all over-"
Wait. Dan feels around inside again, wanting to be sure he's right; the lift comes away in his hand, fished out of the shoe like it's some bizarre treasure.
"Seriously?" Dan asks, grin splitting his face. "Elevator shoes?"
Rorschach's pushed himself up, is as beet red as he's ever been, just under the line of the mask. He sputters for a moment, then hangs his head. "Thought it would make me more..."
"Intimidating?"
A grumbled, mumbled string of very sharp invectives, then: "...yes."
God, that's... that's hilarious, but Dan does his best not to laugh. He drops the shoe back to the carpet, crawls over to straddle Rorschach through the blanket, peels the mask away and hangs it carefully on the bedpost.
Through the blush, Rorschach glowers up at him, menacing. Dan shivers all over, from more than just the morning air on bare skin.
"Trust me," he says, leaning in meet that menace, take it and hold it close and own it, tucked in under his ribs. "You're intimidating enough just as you are."
*