for: dr_oil, from: eka-kwentista [Part 1]
Author: eka_kwentista
For: dr_oil
Title: "A Sensible Chaos" [1/?]
Rating: eventually NC-17
Characters: Adrian, Laurie, Dan, Rorschach, Jon, OCs
Warnings: Absurdity and Crack
Notes: Thank you findmyantidrug for the beta. I did my best to fulfill every request indicated in the form. I hope this goes well. I have to divide this chapter because the post is too big, according to LJ so there's a second post where it continues. Sorry.
Summary: Adrian enjoys broken things
Chapter 1
In Which Foursomes Are Never Too Late To Become An Orgy
Adrian Veidt is a believer of daily learning experiences.
He also knows that the best learning experiences are acquired through means of gratuitous epiphanies and alcohol-induced frivolities.
Case in point: Telling a woman like Laurie Juspeczyk how Egyptians enjoyed sexual congress with crocodiles when she’s one tequila shot away from a nervous breakdown means that, at some point, making out with her becomes excusable, even if for no reason other than she’s broken.
And Adrian enjoys broken things.
“Goddammit, Veidt, get off!” she protests verbally, when she could’ve just punched him to deliver the same point. This means she’s momentarily considering the idea of hooking up with him-but honestly, she could just punch Adrian right now and he would still take it as an invitation.
She squirms like a normal girl for a few more minutes in his Herculean grasp, but doesn’t make any attempt to remove his hand from under her. Still, she continues to hurl out profanities at him, slightly reminding Adrian of a drugged Comedian in the same situation a year ago. He has to smile at the serendipity of it all.
When Laurie has exhausted all of the cussing, she manages to shout another, “Get off!”
“I’m trying to, sweetie,” Adrian answers with the patience of a psychotic aunt.
“I mean, get off me, you asshole!” Laurie kicks at him but he immediately slams her to the floor, almost close to breaking her spine with the impact. He brushes a stray auburn hair from her eyes with one hand and then clutches her throat while his other hand continues to probe her.
“That’s what I’m trying to do, honey,” Adrian smiles at her; she was almost pitiful at this angle.
“This isn’t what I want, jerkface!” Laurie grinds her pelvis against him to get away, but ends up rubbing against his chest. “Now unhand me!”
“And where do you want my hand to go this time?”
“You son of a bitch! Jon can see this!”
“Then why is he not intervening?”
And that’s when Laurie starts to cry like a big dam of tears cracking and drowning him with hesitation and guilt. Adrian softens his grip from her throat and withdraws his fingers from under her skirt for a while, waiting for her to finish. When she just keeps sobbing, he’s forced to pull her up against him in a sitting position and shush her. He hates being the Good Samaritan Rapist, but that’s what Laurie needs right now.
“He doesn’t care anymore, does he? I could light myself on fire and he’d be too busy experiencing time simultaneously to give a shit!” she cries out.
“That’s actually-entirely true,” Adrian replies and then readies himself when she starts shaking him violently like she wants his brain to fall off his skull so she could spit on it.
“Laurie, sweetheart, it’s okay.” He rubs the back of her ear like he would do Bubastis when she’s in a bad mood. “There now, pumpkin, you’re going to be all right, sugar babe.”
Adrian always feels like his tongue burns in acid when he uses pet names on women just to be nice, but in this case, he decides to ignore it. Laurie is different from them. She used to be a crime fighter like he was. She deserves a semblance of respect at least.
“I’m a fucking shithole of a mess,” Laurie says, all tears finally spent. “Look, Veidt, if you try that shit with me again, I’ll kill you for sure...” she trails off, watching him with suspicious eyes before she speaks again. “I need a fucking smoke. Who do I fuck to-” she cuts herself off abruptly when she realizes the horrific timeliness of that statement.
Adrian ignores it and replies, “I don’t condone tobacco indulgence in this place.”
“You’ve got to be shitting me!”
“I can, however, provide you with opium.”
A second passes.
And another.
“Now we’re talking.” Laurie grins at him like nothing happened and makes an attempt to roughen his hair but then he slaps her. She mouths another string of lovely profanities.
“Don’t. Touch. The. Hair,” Adrian warns her.
***
They lay like dying cicadas in the ruby-encrusted ivory floor, weak in their vaguely indirect lust.
Adrian uses a fine-toothed comb on Laurie’s hair, moaning once in a while as the strands look like sparkling diamonds that smell like peaches and tobacco ash.
Laurie keeps her eyes closed, humming what sounds like Davie Bowie, and Adrian combines and deconstructs the lyrics in his head as he remembers his first trip to Morocco where a beautiful middle-aged gypsy and her fifteen-year old son took care of him and filled his senses with sensual music and history of antiquity. He was eighteen then, and coming to terms with the greatness he was meant to thrust himself upon.
“Veidt,” Laurie’s voice echoes in his ears, making his skin crawl.
“Anything else you desire, darling?”
“I came to you because I had no one else to talk to right now. Don’t misinterpret that again.”
Adrian presses his lips on her chest, creating butterfly kisses on her moist flesh while his fingers delicately count the diamonds in her hair. His other hand encircles around Laurie’s left breast, pushing his thumb against her nipple as he imagines it’s a button of the ragdoll he used to own as a child instead of a comfort blanket.
“Cards on the table? All I want is a gay friend,” Laurie adds, purring into his ear. She wraps her legs around his waist and pulls his head from her chest so she can look into his eyes.
Her sincerity destroys him for a moment.
And then Adrian chuckles and says, “Then that’s exactly what you’ll get.”
***
Somewhere in Mars where Dr. Manhattan takes mini-vacations, the said demigod watches quietly as Adrian caresses his girlfriend. He marvels at how beautifully entwined those two are in their opium-shrouded loneliness.
It has to be said that what is more marvelous is how he’s not getting an erection from this.
***
It’s two weeks before Christmas when Laurie decides to surprise Adrian with a date.
He expected this. Perhaps he even brought this upon himself. This is always a possible danger when he shares an opium session with a woman he unsuccessfully raped: he managed to make her like him somehow. How convenient is that? Doesn’t matter now. He has to keep himself distracted anyway. The Karnak project is becoming a time-consuming activity that has yet to yield any promising results. Except for that. He’d rather not think about it too much.
And he had quite enough of Jon’s doppelgangers walking around naked while they’re working. He has supreme tolerance for almost anything (incestuous relations, interspecies relations, Madonna-themed parties) but there’s a certain limit of nudity he can handle, especially when he can’t even have sex with nude person in question. Not like if he is ever given a chance, he would sleep with Jon. Probably not.
So enter Laurie. “I hope I’m not being too forward or anything, but outside Jon, there are no other people I can talk to. All I know are goddamn superheroes.”
Laurie is wearing a tight-fitting green turtleneck sweater and red leather skirt with matching high-cut brown boots. All that’s missing are elf-ears. Adrian pretends the outfit didn’t just give him an asthma attack as he focuses his attention on trying to stop Bubastis from clawing one of his pillowcases made of rare Grecian silk.
“I hope this isn’t a bad time. Is Bubastis always like this?”
“When I administer her kitty medicine, she isn’t!” he finally grabs the pillowcase from Bubastis but ends up ripping it in half anyway. “Oh, that’s it. You’re getting the mammoth needle!”
“What’s that?” Laurie follows Adrian to his desk.
He responds by pulling a syringe made of genetically-produced Mammoth tusk.
Laurie gasps. “That’s a big-ass needle you got there!”
“Now try saying that without sounding turned on.” Adrian retorts.
The two of them chase Bubastis for a minute before the giant cat finally got her medicine. She lay on her back, her paws cuddling an imaginary big ball of thread.
“The medicine is half-hallucinogenic,” Adrian explains. If his baby is going to get drugged, it had better be something she’d enjoy.
He sits behind his desk, crosses his legs and steeples his fingers-this pose always looks dead-gorgeous on him. “So why are you here again?”
“I was just thinking,” Laurie begins.
“That's never a healthy thing.”
“Shut the fuck up. I mean, I was wondering if you want to go to New York with me.”
He can’t resist mocking her then. “And do what exactly? Go sight-seeing? Have a modest dinner at Gunga Diner?”
Laurie kicks him from under the table. He doesn’t avoid it because it doesn’t even hurt. “I’m just trying to be friends with you, shithead!”
Adrian examines her for a while, taking his time scrutinizing her general attractiveness and sameness of personality with the Comedian; both of which are a pleasant combination. He remembers that he did promise to be her ‘gay friend’ after all. He isn’t sure about the extent he will have to go through to keep his word but it wouldn’t be a bad thing to indulge her.
Laurie flips her hair (actually flips her hair, how unlikely feminine of her) and says, “Forget it, I’m just gonna call Dan. Goodbye, Veidt.”
But Adrian stands up and slowly approaches her. “You managed to find time to teleport here just to invite me to spend time with you, and I would hate it if that goes to waste.”
He gently places a hand on her cheek and realizes how cold her skin feels. Their eyes linger for the most aching ten seconds and then she looks away. “You are such a jackass.” She wriggles his hand away from her face and, because she’s the queen of passive-aggressiveness, she still asks, “So you’re coming or what?”
Adrian looks up from her face and calls. “Jon?”
“I am here, Adrian.” Dr. Manhattan appears from behind them, floating in the air.
Adrian turns to him with his arm encircling Laurie’s waist (she doesn’t seem to mind this time) and says, “I certainly miss the Big Apple, don’t you?”
***
Initially, Laurie felt like Adrian Veidt couldn’t fit anywhere else in her life right now.
But that’s how she used to think about being the next Silk Spectre, as well as the prospect of living together with Jon.
In a nutshell, first impressions are bullshit.
Adrian Veidt is not at all gay, or maybe he’s too gay to even be considered typically gay-or whatever. What she knows now is that he promised to be her gay friend; someone who can understand what she’s going through and keep her company in her loneliest nights.
And because Laurie wants to begin their friendship with a comfortingly familiar cliché, she decides to start their BFF date by shopping at several local boutiques that afternoon.
Adrian is very willing-and so fucking hot it’s almost impossible that no one else decided to name a religion after him. Stop it, Laurie. He’s your gay friend.
He sits there in the dressing room lounge as she tries on clothes one set after another. On her seventh change, she chooses a purple chiffon cocktail dress.
“I like this one so far,” she comments. “Do you think it looks good on me?”
Adrian surveys her in a brisk manner and then clicks his tongue. “No. Not really.”
Laurie rolls her eyes at him and is tempted to kick him again but resists. “You’re just saying that because I do look good on it. And it’s hardly your size so I’m pretty sure you can’t wear it.”
To further deliver the point home, she buys the dress, much to his concealed dismay.
As they walk towards Gunga Diner, Adrian puts a hand around Laurie’s waist again and asks, “Have you noticed the growing swarm of people behind us, my dear?”
“Yeah, you’re a famous piece of shit, that’s why.”
“Don’t you think it wise if we go to somewhere more private?”
Laurie doesn’t look at him because she’s afraid she’ll get flushed again. If he’s suggesting that and she wishes he isn’t, it would ruin this fantasy he helped created. There’s just no way she’ll screw her new gay friend. It would defeat the whole purpose of having one to begin with.
She swings her shopping bags for a while as she thinks of where to take them next. The government facility which serves as her living quarters wouldn’t be so deserted. There are soldiers mucking about in that horrid place. But then again, Adrian Veidt is a respectable diplomat and businessman, isn’t he? And people have already seen them together. There are probably photos by now. And Jon doesn’t mind. So fuck it.
“Fine, let’s head back to my place. I’m itching to wear my new purple dress anyway.”
“Are you sure there’s no other itch I could scratch for you?”
“Jesus, Adrian, easy on the innuendos.”
She gets behind him and shoves him into an alleyway. Once they are near the dumpsters, they start to run. She can hear the collective sound of disappointment from the crowd following them but they’re) getting farther away now. At some point, their hands clasp together and she is distinctly reminded of the first time he held her hand during a patrol night so many years ago. And they run and run like the city is just a never-ending landscape of nothingness. It was a horrible and wonderful feeling altogether.
Laurie starts giggling as they finally come to a halt. She catches her breath easily and isn’t that surprised to see that Veidt hardly perspired from that sprint. He’s already standing still, waiting for her next move.
“Oh, I know where we are. Hollis Mason’s repair shop is just a block away.” She really isn’t suggesting anything with that.
Adrian allows a little smile as he remarks, “There’s a world out there where Hollis Mason is a different man of different values and aspirations, living a much more luxurious yet less noble life.”
“’The fuck are you on about now?” She realizes they are still holding hands, so she disengages from him. “You’re so queer it’s unbelievably out-of-this-world, Veidt.”
“Do you not believe in parallel universes, Laurie?” he asks as he begins to walk away from the direction of Hollis Mason’s repair shop.
Laurie lifts her shopping bags to her shoulders as she follows him. “Well, living with Jon, I won’t be surprised if they’re real. Why, do you?”
“Don’t you think it beautiful and poignant? Several overlapping realities and consciousness and there is only a single fork in the road that may enable you to cross each one? The boundaries of imagination only limit us to some extent but if we find a way to re-wire our thinking, expand the scope of what we can achieve by means of opening other worlds-oh, we could do much more indeed.” He walks with his hands behind his back, reminding Laurie of college professors. It also reminds her about Jon. Laurie’s always thought Jon was fond of Adrian a little.
“That sounds great, sure. Uh, so do you want to head back to my place or what?”
Adrian stops walking and looks down. Laurie walks closer to see what he’s looking at. And then she glances and sees Adrian is watching her now, his face too sad and knowing.
Laurie wants to say something mean to him just to ease the tension in the atmosphere, but he cuts through the silence first. “You were beautiful in that dress earlier, Laurie.”
She lowers her shopping bags and stalks off, unable to handle the heat palpitating in her neck and face. She just dismisses him by saying, “It’s gonna get dark soon. Better hurry.”
***
For the first hour, they did have sex.
And then after that Laurie drinks herself into a mindless stupor. She wishes she started drinking earlier on so she could use that an excuse for why she fucked Adrian, in case Jon asked. Not like Jon doesn’t already know. Or had known, depending on where his clairvoyance arrow is pointing at this moment. Whatever.
“Don’t beat yourself up too much, Laurie.” Adrian says as he continues to run his fingers on her purple chiffon dress as it clings gloriously on her body. “Your mother had walked the same thread before and she fell just as hard.”
“What the fuck are you babbling about? You know what, I’m not sure if which one between you and Jon talks the most goddamn shit so just to settle it, you both win.” She smashes the bottle of cognac on the floor and watches the shards of glass with a newfound interest.
And then she asks, “So there is more than one reality around us? Are they better than this one? Or is it all shitty wherever universe we go?”
“Oh, my sweet, pessimistic girl,” Adrian cups her chin to get her to look at him. “Don’t be so limited in your vision. Don’t let feelings and shortcomings belittle what you can discover if you just stop feeling too much. It is not your own fault, of course. Humans are creatures designed to want and hurt. If you transcend that, as Jon and I have, you will experience this world and the other worlds without being burdened by the weight of emotions.”
“Shit, Veidt, I want a gay friend, not whatever this is,” she interjects. “And I’m not a machine.”
“Oh, you’ll be better than a machine,” Adrian whispers into her ear. “You’ll be Endless.”
He withdraws and stares intently into her face. Laurie has nothing to say.
“Do you want me to show you?” he asks.
“Maybe later.” She pulls away from him. “For now, I just want to go out.”
She stands up and almost steps on the broken glass, but Adrian picks her up in one swoop and carries her. He sets her down near the door and asks what she wants to do this time.
“The city is infested with filth,” Laurie gives her best Rorschach impression and then giggles. She talks normally again and says, “And I’m in a very bad mood.”
***
Adrian enjoys broken things.
He prefers watching the process unfold more than anything; a little dent here until the cracks start to resonate inside the shell itself. It satisfies him to witness the whole thing blow apart and its splinters wound the next object within perimeter. He’s immune to almost any kind of raging emotion but he’s not so fortunate when it comes to this one.
It’s the only weakness he allows to dominate him, although he still remains in control.
And Laurie Juspeczyk, second Silk Spectre-this wild apparition of a woman-is a repeated set of accidents happening all at once.
It’s so devastating and sexy.
Part 2 Here