Flipside
Title: Flipside
Author: quietprofanity
Fandom: Watchmen
Pairing: Nite Owl II/Rorschach
Disclaimer: Characters are not mine and are used for non-profit purposes.
Warnings: Explicit m/m sex. Disturbing imagery/themes.
Summary: When the relationship between Daniel and Rorschach turns sexual, it sparks a change in Rorschach’s once-repressed personality. Unfortunately, Rorschach doesn’t find it to be a change for the better.
Author’s Note: Yeah, I don’t know. I’m fucking with the established fanon formula a bit FOR SCIENCE. I hope it works.
Also, if you like this, you owe mad props to sandoz_iscariot, who wanted this story real bad.
Thank you brancher for the awesome illustration! :D
~*~*~
He has no one to blame but himself.
The New York City subway at 5:30 p.m. is like the orgiastic fever dream of a junkie whore: a mass of bodies, smelling of greasy ethnic food and sweat, colliding and swaying with and against each other as the train jostles through the darkened cavern. Thoughts of tunnels and smooth things plunging inside them run through Kovacs’ brain as he grips onto one of the metal handles hanging above the seats. He tightens his hold, concentrating on the texture of the white paint, trying to make the thoughts dissipate, trying to ignore the heat of those around him.
Kovacs has felt like this a lot since things changed between him and Daniel. The world feels more tactile and bright like the sun’s glare off a car mirror. He’d hoped such heightened sensitivity would help him - particularly in fighting crime - but rather than sharpen, all it does is coat the world in some sort of lascivious haze. Last week, at Daniel’s insistence, they walked together out of costume in Central Park. Daniel had bought himself an ice cream, and Kovacs had been unable to look away as Daniel licked along the cone, as he sucked up the pearly streams of white milk that had dribbled over his fingers. Kovacs had barely been able to contain his disgust, told Daniel how childish and indecent he looked. Daniel laughed at him until they’d both gotten mad.
The brakes of the train scream as it lurches to a stop. A man knocks hard into Kovacs, and Kovacs has to resist the urge to sock the man in the face as he mutters an apology. The man exits the train as the subway door hisses open, is replaced by many more bodies. Kovacs is still shaken from being knocked into, and he tenses every time another passenger slips by him.
The doors hiss again. Kovacs looks back at them. The last passenger to get on the train is Daniel.
Daniel’s eyes widen for a moment, and it’s enough to let Kovacs know Daniel has seen him. Daniel pushes through the crowd, grabs onto the metal pole that stands only a few feet away from Kovacs. Daniel knows better than to be less than discreet in public, and for that small mercy Kovacs is grateful, is glad Daniel is not one of those homosexuals who are predatory or who flaunt their perversion. Although Kovacs worries that it is he who slips closer every day to being like those effeminate, disgusting freaks.
For example, just being this close to Daniel makes him hard as a rock.
“Hey,” Daniel whispers, and the word makes Kovacs stop breathing. Daniel still doesn’t know his name, so when they’re out of costume the words “Hey” and “you” are virtually another alias. He’s grateful his long trench coat covers him.
Kovacs glances at the young woman sitting in the seat below the handle he is holding. She’s young, dressed in dark bell-bottoms, a newsboy cap and a green-and-white striped sweater. Her lipsticked mouth is dropped open slightly as she reads from a thick Jacqueline Susann novel. When she notices Kovacs staring at her, she flushes like she’s embarrassed, and then glares. He briefly looks away, and when he takes another glace at her she’s back to reading.
She’s not looking at him; neither are her seatmates.
The car lurches and Kovacs pitches himself toward Daniel, pretending he’s accidentally bumped into him. His groin makes contact with Daniel, and Daniel swallows.
“You -”
“Don’t look at me,” Kovacs growls. He grabs onto the pole, nods in a simulacrum of an apology.
Daniel deliberately sends a thousand-yard stare off toward the back of the car. Kovacs looks the other way, opens his trenchcoat in Daniel’s direction.
“God, here?” Daniel asks, but the question is too drenched in amazement to be a true protest.
The train makes another sudden turn, and Daniel unbuttons Kovacs’ pants.
Daniel’s touch makes him shudder so hard it feels like a seizure. Every atom in his body has craved this, screamed for it for hours and days. If he were a weak man, he would already be moaning, crying out like a whore on display in front of these people. But he is not yet that far gone, even if he’s not sure if he has much further to fall.
Daniel’s grip is strong; reminds Kovacs of a chokehold. His strokes are hard and fast, their rhythm never falters. Kovacs tries to keep himself quiet as he sucks gasps of air through nostrils and closed lips. He curls his trench coat around himself and Daniel’s stroking hand, closes his eyes and hopes he looks like he’s a derelict who’s so tired he can’t stand up and not the degenerate pervert he has become. He wouldn’t fool himself, but these glassy-eyed sheep, these oblivious zombies who notice nothing, it is enough for them. Kovacs hates them. He always has. Yet it is better that they are there. Their presence, his sense of their bodies surrounding him and Daniel, only makes him hungrier.
It makes Daniel hungrier, too. As his hot palm, slick with sweat and precum, pulls on Kovacs, Daniel looks ahead with a fierce, dangerous stare that echoes his other name. It’s a look Kovacs has only seen Daniel give the Twilight Lady. It’s a look Kovacs has never seen when they’re alone in his house. It’s a look that makes Kovacs want Daniel to swallow him whole.
He comes, shooting his refuse into Daniel’s hand, leaving a white, liquid stain. It’s disgusting, and when Kovacs watches Daniel wipe his hands inside his pockets, Kovacs wants nothing more than the chance to hope this is the last time. He wants to look at Daniel without lust in his heart. He wants to be angry at Daniel for allowing this to happen, for allowing it again and again. Yet Daniel’s mouth is slack open, and when he turns his head to Kovacs there is such longing in Daniel’s eyes, such naked affection and want, that the insatiable hunger inside Kovacs stirs once more.
He has no one to blame but himself.
~*~*~
Ever since he was young, Kovacs has prided himself on his self-control.
He remembers from his days in Charleston the sound of other boys in lust. Curled up on his hard mattress he would squeeze shut his eyes, trying to ignore the steady wheezes, the soft slapping of skin being yanked, the final desperate gasps followed by silence and then a sigh. It was the last that disturbed him the most, hearing the boys he knew reduced to something so base and weak, and while occasionally the urge to touch himself grew too strong to ignore, he swore never to make a sound, never to be like them.
Kovacs kept to that promise when he and Daniel first had sex, even if Daniel had moaned louder than any of them.
He hadn’t meant to do it. In the first hours after, as Kovacs sat on the edge of his bed, dry-heaving between his knees, he’d blamed it on Daniel. As if Daniel was to blame for the eager longing in Kovacs’ chest whenever Daniel showed concern or did a favor for him, as if he were to blame for the sick reactions that followed. Yet Daniel had been the one to ask first.
Kovacs had avoided Daniel the next day. Then he realized he was only hurting himself and his mission by cutting himself off from a steady fount of information and resources. Kovacs came back the day after but was curt with Daniel, brushed off any affection or concern with assurances that what they had done was a mistake and would not happen again.
Treating Daniel so coldly made it easier for Kovacs to ignore the heat he felt whenever Daniel was near. When he left for the night, the thudding of his heart echoing the steady beat of water dripping from the leaky pipes overhanging the alleyways, he had felt proud of himself, almost righteous.
Two days later he stood in the Owlship bent at the waist, leather gloved-palms straining against the convex glass of Archie’s right eye, mask folded up over his nose, trench coat bunched around his waist and pants dropped down to his ankles. Daniel had entered him slowly at first, opening him with vegetable oil-slick fingers before he pressed his thing inside. Kovacs could feel his muscles spasm around it. The sensation was maddening in how it just skirted along the edge of pain. Whenever Daniel moved, Kovacs held his breath. Then, whenever Daniel asked how he was doing, Kovacs growled at him to go faster.
The next day, as he slipped out of the subway tunnels and into the Owl’s Nest, Kovacs told himself once again he would not do this. His resolve had lasted until Daniel touched him.
For weeks, his resolve always lasted until Daniel touched him. Then he stopped waiting for Daniel to do so.
It’s pathetic how quickly moral lapses became patterns of behavior.
~*~*~
It would probably be less humiliating if Kovacs were the one to take Daniel.
A part of him wants to do so. Daniel is not handsome. He’s not ugly, like Kovacs is, but his long nose and his unruly hair make clear that he’s a Jew. Yet his body - toned and strong from training, contrasted with the childlike softness that edges about Daniel’s face - holds a strong allure for Kovacs. When their bodies are pressed together, up against the walls of the Owlship or above the sheets of Daniel’s bed, Kovacs’ fingers itch to stroke along Daniel’s costume and feel the muscles beneath the fabric.
But Kovacs does not.
Part of it is because it disgusts Kovacs how Daniel is a slave to his own eagerness. Daniel does not touch Kovacs so much as grasp him, a rough embrace that never stays still, rubs against every part of his body. He kisses nearly every part as well, sometimes licking against his skin. His actions remind Kovacs of a dog, and when Kovacs looks at him he can hear his mother moaning behind the walls of his childhood apartment, a male voice answering “bitch, you like that, bitch?”
Once, because he was thinking about his mother, he said something he really shouldn’t have to Daniel. Daniel ordered Kovacs out of his bed, then out of his house. Kovacs had apologized the next day, although it was a hard apology, one where he had to bite down his repulsion - not because he truly believed what he had said before, but because a part of him wanted to get down on his knees.
Yet if Daniel’s rough affections embarrass Kovacs, it is because it is such a temptation to behave in the same way. It is easy to imagine himself moving inside Daniel, pinning him by the neck as Daniel lies prone underneath him, his desire heightened by Daniel’s every wince and moan.
It is difficult enough to be beneath Daniel, difficult enough to be lost, difficult enough to want nothing but more of Daniel hard and slicked-up inside him, want it with such a fever that he sometimes, in those moments, feels in the end this is all he is.
It is difficult. To be a more active participant in his own degeneration would be impossible.
~*~*~
Yet it may not be avoidable.
Sometimes Daniel refuses him. He always makes an effort to be apologetic about it, as if Kovacs’ feelings were to be hurt or something equally ridiculous. Kovacs never pushes further whenever Daniel refuses, even though, as he lies in his room and closes his eyes against the encroaching dawn that seeps between the blinds, he can feel his body scream for it hours later.
Even refusing his body its urges while alone no longer works, and after he breaks that vow the one to never think of Daniel when he does it falls soon after. Is it really accepting Daniel’s refusal if Kovacs conjures him up again?
Once, Kovacs doesn’t even make it home. The taste of bile stings the back of his throat as he huddles against a dumpster in an alleyway, hand snaked between the folds of his trench coat. It occurs to him he may look, at best, as if he’s urinating. As he pulls on his flesh, he imagines slamming Daniel to the couch. He would tangle his hands in Daniel’s hair and force him still, would take Daniel hard as punishment him for refusing because Kovacs would not be like this if not for him.
As Kovacs nears climax he remembers the sting of his mother’s hand on his cheek. She stood in their kitchen, the straps of her clothing fallen beneath her shoulders, exposing her bloated chest and her pockmarked flesh. “Look what you made me do,” she said, sneering out the words between gritted teeth.
Kovacs pushes the memory away, replaces it with the image of Daniel pushing him to his knees, urging open his mouth and throat. Kovacs jerks on his flesh in punishment and then he comes.
He wants to blame Daniel, but after it’s all over, the humming of car engines on the street outside the alleyway, the honking of horns, reminds him that he is alone.
~*~*~
Now, on the subway train, they are far from alone.
Daniel raises his hand to his mouth, coughs into it. (Kovacs remembers the first time he touched Daniel, and wonders if Daniel too can smell Kovacs on his hand.) He does not look at Kovacs, but nevertheless reaches for him. Kovacs flinches back from Daniel’s touch. Daniel sighs in frustration as the train sways and stops.
The young woman snaps shut her filthy book as if she were squishing a bug between it. She pushes her way through the crowds, eager to be the first when the door opens. She is. Kovacs wonders if she saw them, if they had something to do with her behavior. Then he notices Daniel walking away.
This isn’t Daniel’s stop. Kovacs follows.
The bathrooms of the New York subways have been named some of the most notorious by the tourists. This one is particularly foul. The floor sticks to his heels as he walks in. Two of the mirrors over the sinks have been shattered, the rest - along with the walls - are covered in dueling swirls of multi-colored graffiti. The smell of urine hangs in the air.
He would be disgusted, but it feels somehow appropriate.
Kovacs can hear the sound of a toilet paper roll rattling in a nearby stall, but no men are at the sinks or the urinals. Kovacs follows Daniel into a stall.
As soon as the latch is shut, Daniel’s hands are on him.
The wall of the stall feels cool and hard on Kovacs’ back as Daniel pushes him against it. Daniel never restrains him unless Kovacs asks, but Daniel can be forceful in his way. He kisses Kovacs hungrily, his warm and soft lips a contrast to the five o’clock shadow that scratches against his cheek and chin. Then Daniel’s hands roam over his chest, and it always surprises Kovacs how reverent they are, how they take, how they demand, but don’t hurt.
Kovacs would hurt Daniel.
Daniel unbuckles his own belt, and Kovacs takes that as an indication to pull down his pants. Daniel isn’t as hard as him just yet - it always angers him how Daniel cares less for propriety and morals yet seems less degenerate - although Daniel is working toward being so. He spits on his palm and rubs himself until he’s completely stiff. The spit is not enough for Daniel to enter him, but Kovacs turns around and bends over, and Daniel feels warm and wet as he thrusts against Kovacs’ rear.
It feels maddening. It’s so close to being penetrated, and it makes Kovacs crave it all the more, despite how humiliating it is, how much more it would hurt without anything slicker. Daniel’s hands grasp Kovacs’ hips as he moves, and Kovacs wants them to dig into them a little harder, wants Daniel to bruise. He also wants Daniel to take Kovacs’ penis in hand again, because even though he came just a few minutes ago it may as well be months and why is this happening and why won’t it ever stop and it will never stop it never ever stops it never …
Kovacs hears a door swing open, then the sound of men’s voices. Daniel still thrusts against him, unheeding.
“Stop!” Kovacs hisses. Daniel opens his mouth to speak but Kovacs turns around and clamps a hand over his mouth.
The sound of a zipper opening echoes throughout the room, followed by the sound of urination. Kovacs looks at the door, then at Daniel. Daniel’s eyes are pointed in the direction of the door, and he strains his face to look beneath Kovacs’ clamped hand. Kovacs hears the door swing open again as the men leave.
Kovacs’ blood freezes in his veins. He knew what they were doing, he thinks as he removes his trembling hand from Daniel’s mouth. Someone finding them was always a possibility. It was possible when he was alone in the alleyway, or when they did it on the rooftops of a brownstone a few months ago. It was always possible so …
“Hey,” Daniel whispers. “Hey, you all right?”
Kovacs drops to his knees, mouth over the toilet. He vomits once, then twice. He hears Daniel swear. When he’s done, he’s shaking. Kovacs feels Daniel’s hand hovering over his shoulder. He snaps at him, and then somehow feels so much worse than he does already.
“Um,” Daniel says. “I think maybe we should talk.”
~*~*~
The last thing Kovacs wants to do is talk, but he also feels it’s the least he can oblige Daniel.
So they sit next to each other on the purple couch in Daniel’s living room, wearing the clothes of ordinary people. It’s appropriate, Kovacs thinks, pretending to be normal in this room where Daniel most often pretends to be normal. Kovacs can’t look at Daniel, so he stares at the carpeted floor, his knees spread wide, his elbows resting on his thighs, his hands locked together.
“Look, uh, I …” Daniel trails off, coughs and shuffles. The way he sounds makes Kovacs imagine Daniel speaking at one of his ornithological meetings, and Kovacs guesses this speech too has been rehearsed. “It’s not that I don’t like what we do, but … well, I’m wondering if we’re getting a little too crazy. I mean, I really like it. But I feel like we’ve never really talked about why we do things and I just … I just wish I could understand … ”
“Stop talking in circles,” Kovacs snaps. He does not look up.
Daniel sighs. “Is there anything I can do to make this better for you?”
Kovacs doesn’t remember when he’s heard a question so puerile, but Daniel sounds so genuine that Kovacs doesn’t criticize him. “Getting what I need,” he says.
“If you’re getting what you need, then why are you so miserable?” Daniel asks. He almost sounds desperate.
Kovacs does not respond. After thinking for a few minutes of something to say, he lets his mind wander. He wants this conversation to end. He wants, he realizes, for any tension between them to be gone and when he looks at Daniel’s legs he imagines bending down in-between them and …
Kovacs rubs his eyes. “I don’t want to talk about this, Daniel. It solves nothing.”
“But …”
“You prefer me as a degenerate,” Kovacs grips onto his knees, stares hard at the floor because if he looks at Daniel’s face he will hit him. “Have nothing to complain about.”
Daniel groans. “Jesus, man. I hate it when you talk like that! Having sex doesn’t make you a degenerate.”
“You said yourself we were going too far.”
“I was just saying multiple times a day and handjobs on the subway may be a little much. Especially when you say you need it but never seem to like it.”
Kovacs sighs. It takes him awhile, but he finally thinks of something to say.
“Wouldn’t do it if I could stop.”
He wonders if he’s said too much.
“You know,” Daniel says after a pause. “The way you’re feeling now ... This, uh, increased sex drive. I don’t think it’ll last forever. These things are like, y’know…”
Kovacs looks up. Daniel moves his hand up and down.
“ … waves.”
In this moment, Kovacs decides he hates Daniel a little bit.
But Daniel keeps talking. “I mean, I don’t have the sex drive I did when I was 15, you know? God, back then I think I once masturbated eight times in a day …”
Kovacs shudders. Why is Daniel telling him this?
“I’m not like that now,” Daniel says, a hint of offense in his voice.
“Hurm. Yes. Instead wonder if you shouldn’t fornicate in the subway.” Kovacs stands up. “I’m leaving.”
“Hey!” Daniel stands up as Kovacs takes a step toward the door. He grabs onto Kovacs’ shoulders. “You know that’s not what I meant. In fact, that’s why we should talk about it, I …”
Kovacs grabs onto Daniel’s forearms, and Daniel stops talking. Then Kovacs leans upward to kiss him.
Later, down on his knees, Kovacs takes what he wants but the tension is still not gone.
~*~*~
Yet Daniel, in his own way, turns out to be right.
The night’s work had been a dead end. When they entered Victor Coe’s apartment - a rotting studio reeking of coke, blood and mildew - they’d come looking for information about one of the suppliers of King Mob’s drug ring. He wasn’t alone, a woman - thin, with dark eyes and long, matted hair - was with him. Possibly a whore, but Kovacs observed from the line of bumps along the inside of her elbows that if she was, it was not the only reason she was here.
She’d been an annoyance during the questioning. Kovacs tried to get information about the suppliers: first with threats, then with force. As he broke Coe’s fingers, then his wrist, Daniel held the woman back from Kovacs and Coe. She clawed at Daniel’s back, screamed obscenities in a voice incongruously deep for her slight frame, called the two of them fascists and queers and much worse.
All for naught. While Coe was a seller - they would still tie him up later for the police - he knew nothing of importance. When they tried to take him out of the apartment, though, the woman pounced upon Coe. Although Daniel eventually pulled her away, the woman wrapped her arms around Coe and kissed him. He was a hideous man - long nose, sunken and beady eyes, face craggy and beard unshaven - but she held onto him like she needed him to live.
Daniel apologized to her as they took Coe away, dropped him off with his hands and feet bound in front of the nearest precinct. Throughout the exchange Kovacs felt like lice was crawling up his skin, and the feeling got worse as Daniel flew the Owlship away from the precinct, and they were alone.
They’re still alone now.
Daniel is the first one to suggest it tonight. Kovacs doesn’t respond at first, his mind drenched in a burning need to rip off his trench coat and scratch his arms until he bleeds. Then Daniel asks if he is all right, if they shouldn’t do this tonight, and Kovacs says, “no.”
The oil feels cool on his skin as Daniel opens him, and Kovacs realizes that it’s getting easier and easier lately. Daniel practically slides inside, yet Daniel, for some reason, still urges him to relax.
“You’re fucking shaking, man.”
Kovacs tells him to shut up.
Daniel pushes in and out of him, rocking him against the wall of the ship. Kovacs’ naked legs are hitched up around Daniel’s waist, his arms clasped around his neck. He’s prone and opened and humiliated. He wants it to end, wants to hear Daniel moan and feel the sudden filling of liquid inside him, but he also wants to stay here. Wants to be invaded again and again until he can feel nothing else.
Kovacs digs his fingers into Daniel’s shoulders, and he remembers how the woman clung to Coe. Daniel moans and pushes into him harder, and he can hear his mother cry out that she’s been hurt. Kovacs bites Daniel’s neck, and he needs it. Needs Daniel like a drug, bad as that woman. There’s a stinging on his cheek and his mother says, “Look what you made me …”
“Make it better …”
Kovacs whispers the words, can barely hear them himself, but Daniel stops.
“No,” Kovacs moans. “No, no. Don’t stop. Don’t stop.”
Daniel takes up his rhythm again, but harder, then faster. Kovacs can barely think, doesn’t want to think and never wants to think again. But he’s shaking and shaking and Daniel is so close to him that Kovacs’ groin is rubbing against his stomach. And it’s awful except it’s not. It’s everything he wants, and …
When it ends, Kovacs screams. He screams louder and more ragged than any of the boys back in Charleston, screams so loud that his voice cracks before the scream stops.
“Oh my God,” Daniel moans. “Oh my God.”
Kovacs wonders if Daniel’s about to come, but instead Daniel pulls out. As Kovacs slumps to the ground he can see his own issue splattered across Daniel’s stomach. Then everything becomes blurred.
Nothing is worse than this, Kovacs thinks as he sobs into his hands. His penis is flaccid and wet with semen and pre-come. The metal of the Owlship feels cold on his sore buttocks. Daniel’s arms wrap around him, and Kovacs’ first thought is to push him away, but he can’t.
“I’m sorry,” Daniel whispers to him. “God, I’m so sorry.”
“Not your fault,” Kovacs croaks, the palms of his hands still wet with tears.
Daniel keeps his hold on him, and after Kovacs calms down, he returns Daniel’s embrace. After a few minutes he realizes, for the first time since he can remember, for now he wants nothing more.
The End.
Author: quietprofanity
Fandom: Watchmen
Pairing: Nite Owl II/Rorschach
Disclaimer: Characters are not mine and are used for non-profit purposes.
Warnings: Explicit m/m sex. Disturbing imagery/themes.
Summary: When the relationship between Daniel and Rorschach turns sexual, it sparks a change in Rorschach’s once-repressed personality. Unfortunately, Rorschach doesn’t find it to be a change for the better.
Author’s Note: Yeah, I don’t know. I’m fucking with the established fanon formula a bit FOR SCIENCE. I hope it works.
Also, if you like this, you owe mad props to sandoz_iscariot, who wanted this story real bad.
Thank you brancher for the awesome illustration! :D
~*~*~
He has no one to blame but himself.
The New York City subway at 5:30 p.m. is like the orgiastic fever dream of a junkie whore: a mass of bodies, smelling of greasy ethnic food and sweat, colliding and swaying with and against each other as the train jostles through the darkened cavern. Thoughts of tunnels and smooth things plunging inside them run through Kovacs’ brain as he grips onto one of the metal handles hanging above the seats. He tightens his hold, concentrating on the texture of the white paint, trying to make the thoughts dissipate, trying to ignore the heat of those around him.
Kovacs has felt like this a lot since things changed between him and Daniel. The world feels more tactile and bright like the sun’s glare off a car mirror. He’d hoped such heightened sensitivity would help him - particularly in fighting crime - but rather than sharpen, all it does is coat the world in some sort of lascivious haze. Last week, at Daniel’s insistence, they walked together out of costume in Central Park. Daniel had bought himself an ice cream, and Kovacs had been unable to look away as Daniel licked along the cone, as he sucked up the pearly streams of white milk that had dribbled over his fingers. Kovacs had barely been able to contain his disgust, told Daniel how childish and indecent he looked. Daniel laughed at him until they’d both gotten mad.
The brakes of the train scream as it lurches to a stop. A man knocks hard into Kovacs, and Kovacs has to resist the urge to sock the man in the face as he mutters an apology. The man exits the train as the subway door hisses open, is replaced by many more bodies. Kovacs is still shaken from being knocked into, and he tenses every time another passenger slips by him.
The doors hiss again. Kovacs looks back at them. The last passenger to get on the train is Daniel.
Daniel’s eyes widen for a moment, and it’s enough to let Kovacs know Daniel has seen him. Daniel pushes through the crowd, grabs onto the metal pole that stands only a few feet away from Kovacs. Daniel knows better than to be less than discreet in public, and for that small mercy Kovacs is grateful, is glad Daniel is not one of those homosexuals who are predatory or who flaunt their perversion. Although Kovacs worries that it is he who slips closer every day to being like those effeminate, disgusting freaks.
For example, just being this close to Daniel makes him hard as a rock.
“Hey,” Daniel whispers, and the word makes Kovacs stop breathing. Daniel still doesn’t know his name, so when they’re out of costume the words “Hey” and “you” are virtually another alias. He’s grateful his long trench coat covers him.
Kovacs glances at the young woman sitting in the seat below the handle he is holding. She’s young, dressed in dark bell-bottoms, a newsboy cap and a green-and-white striped sweater. Her lipsticked mouth is dropped open slightly as she reads from a thick Jacqueline Susann novel. When she notices Kovacs staring at her, she flushes like she’s embarrassed, and then glares. He briefly looks away, and when he takes another glace at her she’s back to reading.
She’s not looking at him; neither are her seatmates.
The car lurches and Kovacs pitches himself toward Daniel, pretending he’s accidentally bumped into him. His groin makes contact with Daniel, and Daniel swallows.
“You -”
“Don’t look at me,” Kovacs growls. He grabs onto the pole, nods in a simulacrum of an apology.
Daniel deliberately sends a thousand-yard stare off toward the back of the car. Kovacs looks the other way, opens his trenchcoat in Daniel’s direction.
“God, here?” Daniel asks, but the question is too drenched in amazement to be a true protest.
The train makes another sudden turn, and Daniel unbuttons Kovacs’ pants.
Daniel’s touch makes him shudder so hard it feels like a seizure. Every atom in his body has craved this, screamed for it for hours and days. If he were a weak man, he would already be moaning, crying out like a whore on display in front of these people. But he is not yet that far gone, even if he’s not sure if he has much further to fall.
Daniel’s grip is strong; reminds Kovacs of a chokehold. His strokes are hard and fast, their rhythm never falters. Kovacs tries to keep himself quiet as he sucks gasps of air through nostrils and closed lips. He curls his trench coat around himself and Daniel’s stroking hand, closes his eyes and hopes he looks like he’s a derelict who’s so tired he can’t stand up and not the degenerate pervert he has become. He wouldn’t fool himself, but these glassy-eyed sheep, these oblivious zombies who notice nothing, it is enough for them. Kovacs hates them. He always has. Yet it is better that they are there. Their presence, his sense of their bodies surrounding him and Daniel, only makes him hungrier.
It makes Daniel hungrier, too. As his hot palm, slick with sweat and precum, pulls on Kovacs, Daniel looks ahead with a fierce, dangerous stare that echoes his other name. It’s a look Kovacs has only seen Daniel give the Twilight Lady. It’s a look Kovacs has never seen when they’re alone in his house. It’s a look that makes Kovacs want Daniel to swallow him whole.
He comes, shooting his refuse into Daniel’s hand, leaving a white, liquid stain. It’s disgusting, and when Kovacs watches Daniel wipe his hands inside his pockets, Kovacs wants nothing more than the chance to hope this is the last time. He wants to look at Daniel without lust in his heart. He wants to be angry at Daniel for allowing this to happen, for allowing it again and again. Yet Daniel’s mouth is slack open, and when he turns his head to Kovacs there is such longing in Daniel’s eyes, such naked affection and want, that the insatiable hunger inside Kovacs stirs once more.
He has no one to blame but himself.
~*~*~
Ever since he was young, Kovacs has prided himself on his self-control.
He remembers from his days in Charleston the sound of other boys in lust. Curled up on his hard mattress he would squeeze shut his eyes, trying to ignore the steady wheezes, the soft slapping of skin being yanked, the final desperate gasps followed by silence and then a sigh. It was the last that disturbed him the most, hearing the boys he knew reduced to something so base and weak, and while occasionally the urge to touch himself grew too strong to ignore, he swore never to make a sound, never to be like them.
Kovacs kept to that promise when he and Daniel first had sex, even if Daniel had moaned louder than any of them.
He hadn’t meant to do it. In the first hours after, as Kovacs sat on the edge of his bed, dry-heaving between his knees, he’d blamed it on Daniel. As if Daniel was to blame for the eager longing in Kovacs’ chest whenever Daniel showed concern or did a favor for him, as if he were to blame for the sick reactions that followed. Yet Daniel had been the one to ask first.
Kovacs had avoided Daniel the next day. Then he realized he was only hurting himself and his mission by cutting himself off from a steady fount of information and resources. Kovacs came back the day after but was curt with Daniel, brushed off any affection or concern with assurances that what they had done was a mistake and would not happen again.
Treating Daniel so coldly made it easier for Kovacs to ignore the heat he felt whenever Daniel was near. When he left for the night, the thudding of his heart echoing the steady beat of water dripping from the leaky pipes overhanging the alleyways, he had felt proud of himself, almost righteous.
Two days later he stood in the Owlship bent at the waist, leather gloved-palms straining against the convex glass of Archie’s right eye, mask folded up over his nose, trench coat bunched around his waist and pants dropped down to his ankles. Daniel had entered him slowly at first, opening him with vegetable oil-slick fingers before he pressed his thing inside. Kovacs could feel his muscles spasm around it. The sensation was maddening in how it just skirted along the edge of pain. Whenever Daniel moved, Kovacs held his breath. Then, whenever Daniel asked how he was doing, Kovacs growled at him to go faster.
The next day, as he slipped out of the subway tunnels and into the Owl’s Nest, Kovacs told himself once again he would not do this. His resolve had lasted until Daniel touched him.
For weeks, his resolve always lasted until Daniel touched him. Then he stopped waiting for Daniel to do so.
It’s pathetic how quickly moral lapses became patterns of behavior.
~*~*~
It would probably be less humiliating if Kovacs were the one to take Daniel.
A part of him wants to do so. Daniel is not handsome. He’s not ugly, like Kovacs is, but his long nose and his unruly hair make clear that he’s a Jew. Yet his body - toned and strong from training, contrasted with the childlike softness that edges about Daniel’s face - holds a strong allure for Kovacs. When their bodies are pressed together, up against the walls of the Owlship or above the sheets of Daniel’s bed, Kovacs’ fingers itch to stroke along Daniel’s costume and feel the muscles beneath the fabric.
But Kovacs does not.
Part of it is because it disgusts Kovacs how Daniel is a slave to his own eagerness. Daniel does not touch Kovacs so much as grasp him, a rough embrace that never stays still, rubs against every part of his body. He kisses nearly every part as well, sometimes licking against his skin. His actions remind Kovacs of a dog, and when Kovacs looks at him he can hear his mother moaning behind the walls of his childhood apartment, a male voice answering “bitch, you like that, bitch?”
Once, because he was thinking about his mother, he said something he really shouldn’t have to Daniel. Daniel ordered Kovacs out of his bed, then out of his house. Kovacs had apologized the next day, although it was a hard apology, one where he had to bite down his repulsion - not because he truly believed what he had said before, but because a part of him wanted to get down on his knees.
Yet if Daniel’s rough affections embarrass Kovacs, it is because it is such a temptation to behave in the same way. It is easy to imagine himself moving inside Daniel, pinning him by the neck as Daniel lies prone underneath him, his desire heightened by Daniel’s every wince and moan.
It is difficult enough to be beneath Daniel, difficult enough to be lost, difficult enough to want nothing but more of Daniel hard and slicked-up inside him, want it with such a fever that he sometimes, in those moments, feels in the end this is all he is.
It is difficult. To be a more active participant in his own degeneration would be impossible.
~*~*~
Yet it may not be avoidable.
Sometimes Daniel refuses him. He always makes an effort to be apologetic about it, as if Kovacs’ feelings were to be hurt or something equally ridiculous. Kovacs never pushes further whenever Daniel refuses, even though, as he lies in his room and closes his eyes against the encroaching dawn that seeps between the blinds, he can feel his body scream for it hours later.
Even refusing his body its urges while alone no longer works, and after he breaks that vow the one to never think of Daniel when he does it falls soon after. Is it really accepting Daniel’s refusal if Kovacs conjures him up again?
Once, Kovacs doesn’t even make it home. The taste of bile stings the back of his throat as he huddles against a dumpster in an alleyway, hand snaked between the folds of his trench coat. It occurs to him he may look, at best, as if he’s urinating. As he pulls on his flesh, he imagines slamming Daniel to the couch. He would tangle his hands in Daniel’s hair and force him still, would take Daniel hard as punishment him for refusing because Kovacs would not be like this if not for him.
As Kovacs nears climax he remembers the sting of his mother’s hand on his cheek. She stood in their kitchen, the straps of her clothing fallen beneath her shoulders, exposing her bloated chest and her pockmarked flesh. “Look what you made me do,” she said, sneering out the words between gritted teeth.
Kovacs pushes the memory away, replaces it with the image of Daniel pushing him to his knees, urging open his mouth and throat. Kovacs jerks on his flesh in punishment and then he comes.
He wants to blame Daniel, but after it’s all over, the humming of car engines on the street outside the alleyway, the honking of horns, reminds him that he is alone.
~*~*~
Now, on the subway train, they are far from alone.
Daniel raises his hand to his mouth, coughs into it. (Kovacs remembers the first time he touched Daniel, and wonders if Daniel too can smell Kovacs on his hand.) He does not look at Kovacs, but nevertheless reaches for him. Kovacs flinches back from Daniel’s touch. Daniel sighs in frustration as the train sways and stops.
The young woman snaps shut her filthy book as if she were squishing a bug between it. She pushes her way through the crowds, eager to be the first when the door opens. She is. Kovacs wonders if she saw them, if they had something to do with her behavior. Then he notices Daniel walking away.
This isn’t Daniel’s stop. Kovacs follows.
The bathrooms of the New York subways have been named some of the most notorious by the tourists. This one is particularly foul. The floor sticks to his heels as he walks in. Two of the mirrors over the sinks have been shattered, the rest - along with the walls - are covered in dueling swirls of multi-colored graffiti. The smell of urine hangs in the air.
He would be disgusted, but it feels somehow appropriate.
Kovacs can hear the sound of a toilet paper roll rattling in a nearby stall, but no men are at the sinks or the urinals. Kovacs follows Daniel into a stall.
As soon as the latch is shut, Daniel’s hands are on him.
The wall of the stall feels cool and hard on Kovacs’ back as Daniel pushes him against it. Daniel never restrains him unless Kovacs asks, but Daniel can be forceful in his way. He kisses Kovacs hungrily, his warm and soft lips a contrast to the five o’clock shadow that scratches against his cheek and chin. Then Daniel’s hands roam over his chest, and it always surprises Kovacs how reverent they are, how they take, how they demand, but don’t hurt.
Kovacs would hurt Daniel.
Daniel unbuckles his own belt, and Kovacs takes that as an indication to pull down his pants. Daniel isn’t as hard as him just yet - it always angers him how Daniel cares less for propriety and morals yet seems less degenerate - although Daniel is working toward being so. He spits on his palm and rubs himself until he’s completely stiff. The spit is not enough for Daniel to enter him, but Kovacs turns around and bends over, and Daniel feels warm and wet as he thrusts against Kovacs’ rear.
It feels maddening. It’s so close to being penetrated, and it makes Kovacs crave it all the more, despite how humiliating it is, how much more it would hurt without anything slicker. Daniel’s hands grasp Kovacs’ hips as he moves, and Kovacs wants them to dig into them a little harder, wants Daniel to bruise. He also wants Daniel to take Kovacs’ penis in hand again, because even though he came just a few minutes ago it may as well be months and why is this happening and why won’t it ever stop and it will never stop it never ever stops it never …
Kovacs hears a door swing open, then the sound of men’s voices. Daniel still thrusts against him, unheeding.
“Stop!” Kovacs hisses. Daniel opens his mouth to speak but Kovacs turns around and clamps a hand over his mouth.
The sound of a zipper opening echoes throughout the room, followed by the sound of urination. Kovacs looks at the door, then at Daniel. Daniel’s eyes are pointed in the direction of the door, and he strains his face to look beneath Kovacs’ clamped hand. Kovacs hears the door swing open again as the men leave.
Kovacs’ blood freezes in his veins. He knew what they were doing, he thinks as he removes his trembling hand from Daniel’s mouth. Someone finding them was always a possibility. It was possible when he was alone in the alleyway, or when they did it on the rooftops of a brownstone a few months ago. It was always possible so …
“Hey,” Daniel whispers. “Hey, you all right?”
Kovacs drops to his knees, mouth over the toilet. He vomits once, then twice. He hears Daniel swear. When he’s done, he’s shaking. Kovacs feels Daniel’s hand hovering over his shoulder. He snaps at him, and then somehow feels so much worse than he does already.
“Um,” Daniel says. “I think maybe we should talk.”
~*~*~
The last thing Kovacs wants to do is talk, but he also feels it’s the least he can oblige Daniel.
So they sit next to each other on the purple couch in Daniel’s living room, wearing the clothes of ordinary people. It’s appropriate, Kovacs thinks, pretending to be normal in this room where Daniel most often pretends to be normal. Kovacs can’t look at Daniel, so he stares at the carpeted floor, his knees spread wide, his elbows resting on his thighs, his hands locked together.
“Look, uh, I …” Daniel trails off, coughs and shuffles. The way he sounds makes Kovacs imagine Daniel speaking at one of his ornithological meetings, and Kovacs guesses this speech too has been rehearsed. “It’s not that I don’t like what we do, but … well, I’m wondering if we’re getting a little too crazy. I mean, I really like it. But I feel like we’ve never really talked about why we do things and I just … I just wish I could understand … ”
“Stop talking in circles,” Kovacs snaps. He does not look up.
Daniel sighs. “Is there anything I can do to make this better for you?”
Kovacs doesn’t remember when he’s heard a question so puerile, but Daniel sounds so genuine that Kovacs doesn’t criticize him. “Getting what I need,” he says.
“If you’re getting what you need, then why are you so miserable?” Daniel asks. He almost sounds desperate.
Kovacs does not respond. After thinking for a few minutes of something to say, he lets his mind wander. He wants this conversation to end. He wants, he realizes, for any tension between them to be gone and when he looks at Daniel’s legs he imagines bending down in-between them and …
Kovacs rubs his eyes. “I don’t want to talk about this, Daniel. It solves nothing.”
“But …”
“You prefer me as a degenerate,” Kovacs grips onto his knees, stares hard at the floor because if he looks at Daniel’s face he will hit him. “Have nothing to complain about.”
Daniel groans. “Jesus, man. I hate it when you talk like that! Having sex doesn’t make you a degenerate.”
“You said yourself we were going too far.”
“I was just saying multiple times a day and handjobs on the subway may be a little much. Especially when you say you need it but never seem to like it.”
Kovacs sighs. It takes him awhile, but he finally thinks of something to say.
“Wouldn’t do it if I could stop.”
He wonders if he’s said too much.
“You know,” Daniel says after a pause. “The way you’re feeling now ... This, uh, increased sex drive. I don’t think it’ll last forever. These things are like, y’know…”
Kovacs looks up. Daniel moves his hand up and down.
“ … waves.”
In this moment, Kovacs decides he hates Daniel a little bit.
But Daniel keeps talking. “I mean, I don’t have the sex drive I did when I was 15, you know? God, back then I think I once masturbated eight times in a day …”
Kovacs shudders. Why is Daniel telling him this?
“I’m not like that now,” Daniel says, a hint of offense in his voice.
“Hurm. Yes. Instead wonder if you shouldn’t fornicate in the subway.” Kovacs stands up. “I’m leaving.”
“Hey!” Daniel stands up as Kovacs takes a step toward the door. He grabs onto Kovacs’ shoulders. “You know that’s not what I meant. In fact, that’s why we should talk about it, I …”
Kovacs grabs onto Daniel’s forearms, and Daniel stops talking. Then Kovacs leans upward to kiss him.
Later, down on his knees, Kovacs takes what he wants but the tension is still not gone.
~*~*~
Yet Daniel, in his own way, turns out to be right.
The night’s work had been a dead end. When they entered Victor Coe’s apartment - a rotting studio reeking of coke, blood and mildew - they’d come looking for information about one of the suppliers of King Mob’s drug ring. He wasn’t alone, a woman - thin, with dark eyes and long, matted hair - was with him. Possibly a whore, but Kovacs observed from the line of bumps along the inside of her elbows that if she was, it was not the only reason she was here.
She’d been an annoyance during the questioning. Kovacs tried to get information about the suppliers: first with threats, then with force. As he broke Coe’s fingers, then his wrist, Daniel held the woman back from Kovacs and Coe. She clawed at Daniel’s back, screamed obscenities in a voice incongruously deep for her slight frame, called the two of them fascists and queers and much worse.
All for naught. While Coe was a seller - they would still tie him up later for the police - he knew nothing of importance. When they tried to take him out of the apartment, though, the woman pounced upon Coe. Although Daniel eventually pulled her away, the woman wrapped her arms around Coe and kissed him. He was a hideous man - long nose, sunken and beady eyes, face craggy and beard unshaven - but she held onto him like she needed him to live.
Daniel apologized to her as they took Coe away, dropped him off with his hands and feet bound in front of the nearest precinct. Throughout the exchange Kovacs felt like lice was crawling up his skin, and the feeling got worse as Daniel flew the Owlship away from the precinct, and they were alone.
They’re still alone now.
Daniel is the first one to suggest it tonight. Kovacs doesn’t respond at first, his mind drenched in a burning need to rip off his trench coat and scratch his arms until he bleeds. Then Daniel asks if he is all right, if they shouldn’t do this tonight, and Kovacs says, “no.”
The oil feels cool on his skin as Daniel opens him, and Kovacs realizes that it’s getting easier and easier lately. Daniel practically slides inside, yet Daniel, for some reason, still urges him to relax.
“You’re fucking shaking, man.”
Kovacs tells him to shut up.
Daniel pushes in and out of him, rocking him against the wall of the ship. Kovacs’ naked legs are hitched up around Daniel’s waist, his arms clasped around his neck. He’s prone and opened and humiliated. He wants it to end, wants to hear Daniel moan and feel the sudden filling of liquid inside him, but he also wants to stay here. Wants to be invaded again and again until he can feel nothing else.
Kovacs digs his fingers into Daniel’s shoulders, and he remembers how the woman clung to Coe. Daniel moans and pushes into him harder, and he can hear his mother cry out that she’s been hurt. Kovacs bites Daniel’s neck, and he needs it. Needs Daniel like a drug, bad as that woman. There’s a stinging on his cheek and his mother says, “Look what you made me …”
“Make it better …”
Kovacs whispers the words, can barely hear them himself, but Daniel stops.
“No,” Kovacs moans. “No, no. Don’t stop. Don’t stop.”
Daniel takes up his rhythm again, but harder, then faster. Kovacs can barely think, doesn’t want to think and never wants to think again. But he’s shaking and shaking and Daniel is so close to him that Kovacs’ groin is rubbing against his stomach. And it’s awful except it’s not. It’s everything he wants, and …
When it ends, Kovacs screams. He screams louder and more ragged than any of the boys back in Charleston, screams so loud that his voice cracks before the scream stops.
“Oh my God,” Daniel moans. “Oh my God.”
Kovacs wonders if Daniel’s about to come, but instead Daniel pulls out. As Kovacs slumps to the ground he can see his own issue splattered across Daniel’s stomach. Then everything becomes blurred.
Nothing is worse than this, Kovacs thinks as he sobs into his hands. His penis is flaccid and wet with semen and pre-come. The metal of the Owlship feels cold on his sore buttocks. Daniel’s arms wrap around him, and Kovacs’ first thought is to push him away, but he can’t.
“I’m sorry,” Daniel whispers to him. “God, I’m so sorry.”
“Not your fault,” Kovacs croaks, the palms of his hands still wet with tears.
Daniel keeps his hold on him, and after Kovacs calms down, he returns Daniel’s embrace. After a few minutes he realizes, for the first time since he can remember, for now he wants nothing more.
The End.