[fic] Human; Watchmen; Dan/Rorschach
Title: Human
Fandom: Watchmen
Pairing: Dan/Rorschach
Rating: NC-17/Adult
A/N: Written for the "Samson" prompt over on the porn battle, set post-GN.
Spent all day writing it and then forgot to spellcheck before posting it over there. Lol D:
They'd been on the run ever since Veidt's assassination. If the police were willing before to leave masked heroes alone for a little while as the stark depth of human suffering disgorged itself in New York, they suddenly weren't anymore. Splattered across papers and television were quotes from Rorschach's published journal, proof that he hated Veidt, proof of his undeniable insanity. No one but a few crackpots and dedicated Rorschach fans cared when the New Frontiersman began running its series. Everyone started caring quite rapidly when Veidt turned up dead in his office.
Rorschach's journal was finally getting the exposure he'd wanted for an entire year, and he wasn't even guilty of the murder. Not for lack of trying.
Only a handful of people would ever believe the accusations inside. A handful was enough. Adrian Veidt, possessor of monstrous cunning in hand-to-hand combat and devotee of ancient men, had been done in by a modern machine gun. He caught the first bullet. It didn't make much of a difference.
An enormous, terrible relief flooded through Dan when he read the paper that day. It meant he didn't have to wake up in the middle of the night and find Rorschach gone, didn't have to endure any more nightmares of Veidt tearing his partner limb from limb like a wild-jawed beast. It was over.
Except it wasn't.
If anything, Rorschach got worse.
He perched on the edge of their dingy old hotel mattress every time there was a report about it, his face rapt in the glow of the television screen. He spent all hours writing in a new journal of his, forsaking sleep and developing an increasingly illegible chicken scratch. He turned away food in favor of poring through the newspaper for new leads on local crime, getting sharper and thinner and filthier than Dan had ever seen him. Dan watched him from the opposite bed at night sometimes, worrying over the defiant ridge of spine showing through his clothes.
Every place they moved seemed darker. Even in Birmingham, where a riotous green of grass and trees burst out under the sunshine, Dan could hardly see it. His hands gripped the motel balcony as he wondered what everything was coming to. He wondered if Rorschach was right, if no mask ever had a chance to die happy.
What he did after that day was an enormous risk, but not doing it would have been an enormous risk in an entirely different way. He rented a house.
The house was small but enough for two men to live in comfortably. Shaded by the spread of branches, located on the outskirts of a quiet town, it had no dirty carpets, no maid service, and was the kind of thing normal people lived in.
Rorschach nearly exploded when he saw it and sensed what Dan was trying to do, but some remaining human part of him which feared loneliness prevented him from ever following through on his threats to leave.
There was a sour cherry tree by the driveway and finches cleaning their beaks on the windowsill. Dan might have lived somewhere like this if he had done what his father wanted, if he'd become a mild-mannered banker and gotten married.
But instead, he was a retired masked vigilante and the girl he had loved lived on Mars.
The neighbors and the people he passed in the grocery store tended to leave him well enough alone ("Dreiberg? I guess I look like him a little. Distant cousin on my mother's side, never knew him. Crazy, huh?") and if they suspected anything, he never knew it.
One evening, Rorschach wasn't even pretending to eat, mask firmly shoved down while Dan looked across the little kitchen table at him. There'd been an urgent, tense silence all day, an unspoken question. Dan waited.
Finally, "Need to move on."
It came out as a flat demand, but Dan had known him long enough that he could tell it was a flimsy cover for his nervous agitation. Why haven't we moved on?
Dan speared a piece of chicken, affording him the respect of being honest. "We're not."
It wasn't often he said no to Rorschach. Really, it wasn't hardly ever he said no to Rorschach, but watching him wither down to nearly nothing gave Dan a steel and resolve he didn't even know he could have without the owlsuit on. It was too important.
Rorschach stood up abruptly, his chair clattering down behind him.
"Getting soft, Daniel. Weak."
He held his head up under the insults, recognizing him for the distractions they were. Rorschach spoke just like he fought: direct and spare and when he was calm, wild with too many feints when he was angry.
"Pick up the chair and eat."
Rorschach froze in place, his head slowly turning toward Dan, inkblots gathering like the ominous clouds outside.
Angry? Make that furious.
Without a word, he bolted for the back door, Dan scrambling up from his chair a half-second later with a curse. His steps fell heavy and his vision jarred as he sprinted through the living room and backyard, straining his entire body to catch up with Rorschach where he was heading for the back gate, heading for the alley and gone forever-
Dan slung one arm around Rorschach's waist as he made a nearly inhuman growl, and the force of it sent them both colliding to the ground with a jolt. They struggled and scrambled for a solid hold, instantly recalling by muscle memory all the times they'd trained together.
"Let. Me go." Rorschach's fingers were vice-hard on his arm, his voice hoarse and brittle and desperate.
"No, no, Goddamn you, Rorschach!" It nearly shocked him to hear his own voice so raw and scared. "You need to eat, you need to bathe, you need to sleep, be a fucking human again!"
Rorschach made one long, low, awful sound before struggling harder, hands pulling up tufts of grass as he clawed for purchase against the ground. Dan hauled him toward the house's wall, arms and legs quaking under their combined weight, adrenaline spiking hot in his blood.
He turned on the water faucet by pure impulse.
It felt right, it felt like he needed to, Jesus, he was so filthy and he had to do something, anything to bring him to his senses and make him be like he was before Adrian, the kidnapping case, before all of it. So he held Rorschach by the wrist and started hosing him down.
Rorschach made a strangled hrrk! and pulled so hard on his arm it nearly popped out of socket, but Dan refused to give up. He sprayed Rorschach's back, his legs, his sides, watching accumulated grime and filth run off his clothes and into the dirt, old bloodstains streaming down his coat like fresh wounds. When Rorschach had to throw off his mask to keep from drowning Dan attacked his hair too, rubbing hard at the shaggy, stringy mass until the water ran clean.
He wasn't struggling anymore. Dan let the hose go slack, faint horror creeping up on him as he watched Rorschach stand still, his head bowed, his too-long hair plastered in strands against his forehead.
Dan was the only person Rorschach even remotely trusted, and he'd just-
Sickness roiled up in his stomach as he realized Rorschach was quietly weeping. And then he finally understood.
He remembered standing on the roof during a stakeout, sunset sky brilliant behind them. It was during the time when Rorschach used to narrate volumes of his thoughts out loud just for Dan, a comforting and endless stream. Kitty Genovese, he'd said, Human beings killed her. Human beings let her die.
A human being had killed the Comedian. A human being had killed the little girl he couldn't rescue. A human being wiped out three quarters of New York.
Except there was nothing left for Rorschach either: there was no Veidt to exact vengeance on, and no crime scene he could show his face at without being hunted down like a dog.
Dan exhaled sharply, leaning against the wall and turning the faucet slowly closed. The strength in his muscles felt as if it had drained out through his feet.
They didn't say a word. He felt suddenly and devastatingly tender.
He still remembered every word from the special report bulletin on VNN: Rorschach captured, identity revealed: Walter Kovacs. Stay turned for more shocking developments. "Walter-?" It felt unfamiliar in his mouth.
His partner hunched his thin shoulders forward, trying and failing to make his voice a low growl. "Don't."
Dan swallowed, bracing his fist against the wall. "Walter."
He turned his face further away, but said nothing, looking impossibly small and defeated.
"Hey, buddy. Come on. Let me cut your hair for you. Okay?"
Walter may have nodded, may not have, but when Dan walked into the living room and trusted him to follow behind, he did.
Neither of them cared that he was dripping onto the kitchen tile. Walter slid into a chair, waiting for Dan to retrieve the scissors, quiet and upright as if this were a daily, mundane routine.
Dan combed his fingers through wet strands, pressing his fingertips gently against the scalp. Walter let out a quiet, shuddering breath, clenching his hands to the sides of the chair but apparently unwilling to move.
Swathes of hair fell in rust-colored crescents around them. The floor was a mess. Dan didn't care.
The tension in Walter's arms eased gradually as Dan worked quickly over his head, as if all of the strength were being sapped out of his muscles too. It was a deeply, intensely private act, and he kept remembering the night Rorschach had wordlessly sewn together the gash over his shoulder blade, his entire focus concentrated on Dan's back, requiring no gratitude.
Dan paused, intending to ask if he wanted the back cut shorter, but his mouth went dry at the way Walter's whole body was slumping forward out of the controlled posture, his back arched.
He almost missed the whisper. "Can't go back. Can't go back once you know how the world is."
The scissors' handle was cold where he shifted his fingers. "Where else can you go?"
Then it was only silence as metal slid across metal.
Dan cupped the back of Walter's neck with his hand as he trimmed the last of it, feeling the difference in temperature between them soaking through his palm. "Uh. That should do it for a while." His voice was trembling and for the life of him he didn't know why.
Walter turned in the chair and looked at him with those serious eyes that Dan wasn't used to yet. Looked at him like he did know why. And didn't remove Dan's hand from his neck.
Oh, Dan swallowed thickly, oh Hell.
That was too much for him, too bare and too real, too close to the surface of a lot of things he didn't like thinking about. He pulled his hand back as if he'd been stung.
Walter hardly blinked. "Tell me about being human, Daniel." His whole body language looked like something a little different than defeat, maybe resignation or acceptance- "Tell me about quitting to hide in books and facts."
The tone of his voice was gentle for once, but it stung like a slap. Several things went through his mind at once: The Comedian's voice, any group a' masks has always got homos, and it ain't me, boys; Laurie's voice, Y'know your trouble? You're inhibited; his own thoughts, I'd probably live somewhere like this if I were married.
He stepped back carefully from Walter's chair, setting the scissors down, unable to look away.
There was something triumphant on Walter's face, as if they'd just drawn a tie on some unspoken game, as if Rorschach had just gotten his final act of retribution. If I have to do this, his expression said, then so do you.
Rain was starting to hit in fat drops against the window.
Dan took two steps forward, bent down, and kissed Walter as hard as he could.
There was a harsh noise panted in his mouth, Walter's lips slackened in shock-shit, it had been a dare?-before Walter responded, shoving his mouth against Dan's bruisingly, surging up out of his chair and nearly tangling his feet in the rungs, all heat and all fire and Dan hadn't even been sure he liked it at first, but oh, God-
The water from Walter's clothes was starting to soak through to his chest and he pulled back, gasping for air. His hands had somehow landed on Walter's elbows, clenching hard.
Walter looked like he felt just as scared and screwed-up and stupid as he did. It wasn't even worth asking how long he'd known; right before Karnak, he'd been dropping hints bigger than an H-bomb. "Good seeing you in uniform, Daniel. Like old times." Probably thought he would die in Antarctica. He almost did. They both almost did.
He steadied his old partner's face and kissed him again, letting himself feel the twisting upswell of emotions that came with it. Emotions he'd been dodging so long.
Walter had let go of his shirt and was resting his hands flat against his chest, fingers shaking.
"Come on," Dan rasped, voice sounding nearly as hoarse as Rorschach's used to.
They were in the bedroom and Walter was just staring in that unnerving way he had, making Dan feel like his skin was on fire as he pulled off his own shirt and went to untie the belt to Walter's coat-
Walter pushed his hands away, shuddering back against the wall, finally breaking eye contact and making Dan's breath hitch in his throat from fear.
After a few seconds he leaned forward again, leaving a drying pattern of moisture on the wallpaper. He bent to remove his shoes and socks, then straightened to peel his gloves off carefully one after the other, slowly, revealing bony knuckles and bare wrists. It was the hottest goddamn thing Dan had seen in his life.
The wet layers were peeled back, one by one: his worn coat, his suit jacket, his scarf; the pants and wifebeater that clung to him like a second, nearly translucent skin. He was concentrated and focused, as if being reminded why he was doing this would be too much.
Dan felt as if he were holding his breath the whole time.
Walter left himself standing in his own underwear, either unwilling or unable to go any further, but Dan could see the fabric straining there and the way his Adam's apple bobbed when he swallowed. Suddenly a self-conscious teenager. Dan understood; he felt the exact same way.
He stepped closer, but this time it was Walter pulling him into a kiss, harsh and awkward but somehow enough to make Dan whine in the back of his throat and start to ache, God, this was Rorschach, used to be Rorschach, used to patrol through the dark streets together and plan out raids and stand side by side panting at the end of a fight and Walter's whole body was rigid like he wanted to run but was daring himself not to, daring Dan to see how serious he was.
When Dan drew the pad of his thumb over Walter's erection through the cotton briefs, Walter bit down so hard on his lip he thought he tasted blood and he meant to go toward the bed really but instead he was pushing Walter back and back against the wall, lifting his hips up with the old strength still in his shoulders, grinding against him so hard he saw green-and-black sparks.
Walter was using all the strength in his body to draw Dan's hips sharp against his, already bucking, clawing at his back and groaning Daniel against his mouth and Dan could only whimper in response as his hips jerked involuntarily in helpless orgasm and now it was him who couldn't stop staring and staring at Walter's face, flushed and lost and finally human.
They leaned against the wall, shaking as the distant sound of rain pelting their roof filtered down into the quiet room.
Fandom: Watchmen
Pairing: Dan/Rorschach
Rating: NC-17/Adult
A/N: Written for the "Samson" prompt over on the porn battle, set post-GN.
Spent all day writing it and then forgot to spellcheck before posting it over there. Lol D:
They'd been on the run ever since Veidt's assassination. If the police were willing before to leave masked heroes alone for a little while as the stark depth of human suffering disgorged itself in New York, they suddenly weren't anymore. Splattered across papers and television were quotes from Rorschach's published journal, proof that he hated Veidt, proof of his undeniable insanity. No one but a few crackpots and dedicated Rorschach fans cared when the New Frontiersman began running its series. Everyone started caring quite rapidly when Veidt turned up dead in his office.
Rorschach's journal was finally getting the exposure he'd wanted for an entire year, and he wasn't even guilty of the murder. Not for lack of trying.
Only a handful of people would ever believe the accusations inside. A handful was enough. Adrian Veidt, possessor of monstrous cunning in hand-to-hand combat and devotee of ancient men, had been done in by a modern machine gun. He caught the first bullet. It didn't make much of a difference.
An enormous, terrible relief flooded through Dan when he read the paper that day. It meant he didn't have to wake up in the middle of the night and find Rorschach gone, didn't have to endure any more nightmares of Veidt tearing his partner limb from limb like a wild-jawed beast. It was over.
Except it wasn't.
If anything, Rorschach got worse.
He perched on the edge of their dingy old hotel mattress every time there was a report about it, his face rapt in the glow of the television screen. He spent all hours writing in a new journal of his, forsaking sleep and developing an increasingly illegible chicken scratch. He turned away food in favor of poring through the newspaper for new leads on local crime, getting sharper and thinner and filthier than Dan had ever seen him. Dan watched him from the opposite bed at night sometimes, worrying over the defiant ridge of spine showing through his clothes.
Every place they moved seemed darker. Even in Birmingham, where a riotous green of grass and trees burst out under the sunshine, Dan could hardly see it. His hands gripped the motel balcony as he wondered what everything was coming to. He wondered if Rorschach was right, if no mask ever had a chance to die happy.
What he did after that day was an enormous risk, but not doing it would have been an enormous risk in an entirely different way. He rented a house.
The house was small but enough for two men to live in comfortably. Shaded by the spread of branches, located on the outskirts of a quiet town, it had no dirty carpets, no maid service, and was the kind of thing normal people lived in.
Rorschach nearly exploded when he saw it and sensed what Dan was trying to do, but some remaining human part of him which feared loneliness prevented him from ever following through on his threats to leave.
There was a sour cherry tree by the driveway and finches cleaning their beaks on the windowsill. Dan might have lived somewhere like this if he had done what his father wanted, if he'd become a mild-mannered banker and gotten married.
But instead, he was a retired masked vigilante and the girl he had loved lived on Mars.
The neighbors and the people he passed in the grocery store tended to leave him well enough alone ("Dreiberg? I guess I look like him a little. Distant cousin on my mother's side, never knew him. Crazy, huh?") and if they suspected anything, he never knew it.
One evening, Rorschach wasn't even pretending to eat, mask firmly shoved down while Dan looked across the little kitchen table at him. There'd been an urgent, tense silence all day, an unspoken question. Dan waited.
Finally, "Need to move on."
It came out as a flat demand, but Dan had known him long enough that he could tell it was a flimsy cover for his nervous agitation. Why haven't we moved on?
Dan speared a piece of chicken, affording him the respect of being honest. "We're not."
It wasn't often he said no to Rorschach. Really, it wasn't hardly ever he said no to Rorschach, but watching him wither down to nearly nothing gave Dan a steel and resolve he didn't even know he could have without the owlsuit on. It was too important.
Rorschach stood up abruptly, his chair clattering down behind him.
"Getting soft, Daniel. Weak."
He held his head up under the insults, recognizing him for the distractions they were. Rorschach spoke just like he fought: direct and spare and when he was calm, wild with too many feints when he was angry.
"Pick up the chair and eat."
Rorschach froze in place, his head slowly turning toward Dan, inkblots gathering like the ominous clouds outside.
Angry? Make that furious.
Without a word, he bolted for the back door, Dan scrambling up from his chair a half-second later with a curse. His steps fell heavy and his vision jarred as he sprinted through the living room and backyard, straining his entire body to catch up with Rorschach where he was heading for the back gate, heading for the alley and gone forever-
Dan slung one arm around Rorschach's waist as he made a nearly inhuman growl, and the force of it sent them both colliding to the ground with a jolt. They struggled and scrambled for a solid hold, instantly recalling by muscle memory all the times they'd trained together.
"Let. Me go." Rorschach's fingers were vice-hard on his arm, his voice hoarse and brittle and desperate.
"No, no, Goddamn you, Rorschach!" It nearly shocked him to hear his own voice so raw and scared. "You need to eat, you need to bathe, you need to sleep, be a fucking human again!"
Rorschach made one long, low, awful sound before struggling harder, hands pulling up tufts of grass as he clawed for purchase against the ground. Dan hauled him toward the house's wall, arms and legs quaking under their combined weight, adrenaline spiking hot in his blood.
He turned on the water faucet by pure impulse.
It felt right, it felt like he needed to, Jesus, he was so filthy and he had to do something, anything to bring him to his senses and make him be like he was before Adrian, the kidnapping case, before all of it. So he held Rorschach by the wrist and started hosing him down.
Rorschach made a strangled hrrk! and pulled so hard on his arm it nearly popped out of socket, but Dan refused to give up. He sprayed Rorschach's back, his legs, his sides, watching accumulated grime and filth run off his clothes and into the dirt, old bloodstains streaming down his coat like fresh wounds. When Rorschach had to throw off his mask to keep from drowning Dan attacked his hair too, rubbing hard at the shaggy, stringy mass until the water ran clean.
He wasn't struggling anymore. Dan let the hose go slack, faint horror creeping up on him as he watched Rorschach stand still, his head bowed, his too-long hair plastered in strands against his forehead.
Dan was the only person Rorschach even remotely trusted, and he'd just-
Sickness roiled up in his stomach as he realized Rorschach was quietly weeping. And then he finally understood.
He remembered standing on the roof during a stakeout, sunset sky brilliant behind them. It was during the time when Rorschach used to narrate volumes of his thoughts out loud just for Dan, a comforting and endless stream. Kitty Genovese, he'd said, Human beings killed her. Human beings let her die.
A human being had killed the Comedian. A human being had killed the little girl he couldn't rescue. A human being wiped out three quarters of New York.
Except there was nothing left for Rorschach either: there was no Veidt to exact vengeance on, and no crime scene he could show his face at without being hunted down like a dog.
Dan exhaled sharply, leaning against the wall and turning the faucet slowly closed. The strength in his muscles felt as if it had drained out through his feet.
They didn't say a word. He felt suddenly and devastatingly tender.
He still remembered every word from the special report bulletin on VNN: Rorschach captured, identity revealed: Walter Kovacs. Stay turned for more shocking developments. "Walter-?" It felt unfamiliar in his mouth.
His partner hunched his thin shoulders forward, trying and failing to make his voice a low growl. "Don't."
Dan swallowed, bracing his fist against the wall. "Walter."
He turned his face further away, but said nothing, looking impossibly small and defeated.
"Hey, buddy. Come on. Let me cut your hair for you. Okay?"
Walter may have nodded, may not have, but when Dan walked into the living room and trusted him to follow behind, he did.
Neither of them cared that he was dripping onto the kitchen tile. Walter slid into a chair, waiting for Dan to retrieve the scissors, quiet and upright as if this were a daily, mundane routine.
Dan combed his fingers through wet strands, pressing his fingertips gently against the scalp. Walter let out a quiet, shuddering breath, clenching his hands to the sides of the chair but apparently unwilling to move.
Swathes of hair fell in rust-colored crescents around them. The floor was a mess. Dan didn't care.
The tension in Walter's arms eased gradually as Dan worked quickly over his head, as if all of the strength were being sapped out of his muscles too. It was a deeply, intensely private act, and he kept remembering the night Rorschach had wordlessly sewn together the gash over his shoulder blade, his entire focus concentrated on Dan's back, requiring no gratitude.
Dan paused, intending to ask if he wanted the back cut shorter, but his mouth went dry at the way Walter's whole body was slumping forward out of the controlled posture, his back arched.
He almost missed the whisper. "Can't go back. Can't go back once you know how the world is."
The scissors' handle was cold where he shifted his fingers. "Where else can you go?"
Then it was only silence as metal slid across metal.
Dan cupped the back of Walter's neck with his hand as he trimmed the last of it, feeling the difference in temperature between them soaking through his palm. "Uh. That should do it for a while." His voice was trembling and for the life of him he didn't know why.
Walter turned in the chair and looked at him with those serious eyes that Dan wasn't used to yet. Looked at him like he did know why. And didn't remove Dan's hand from his neck.
Oh, Dan swallowed thickly, oh Hell.
That was too much for him, too bare and too real, too close to the surface of a lot of things he didn't like thinking about. He pulled his hand back as if he'd been stung.
Walter hardly blinked. "Tell me about being human, Daniel." His whole body language looked like something a little different than defeat, maybe resignation or acceptance- "Tell me about quitting to hide in books and facts."
The tone of his voice was gentle for once, but it stung like a slap. Several things went through his mind at once: The Comedian's voice, any group a' masks has always got homos, and it ain't me, boys; Laurie's voice, Y'know your trouble? You're inhibited; his own thoughts, I'd probably live somewhere like this if I were married.
He stepped back carefully from Walter's chair, setting the scissors down, unable to look away.
There was something triumphant on Walter's face, as if they'd just drawn a tie on some unspoken game, as if Rorschach had just gotten his final act of retribution. If I have to do this, his expression said, then so do you.
Rain was starting to hit in fat drops against the window.
Dan took two steps forward, bent down, and kissed Walter as hard as he could.
There was a harsh noise panted in his mouth, Walter's lips slackened in shock-shit, it had been a dare?-before Walter responded, shoving his mouth against Dan's bruisingly, surging up out of his chair and nearly tangling his feet in the rungs, all heat and all fire and Dan hadn't even been sure he liked it at first, but oh, God-
The water from Walter's clothes was starting to soak through to his chest and he pulled back, gasping for air. His hands had somehow landed on Walter's elbows, clenching hard.
Walter looked like he felt just as scared and screwed-up and stupid as he did. It wasn't even worth asking how long he'd known; right before Karnak, he'd been dropping hints bigger than an H-bomb. "Good seeing you in uniform, Daniel. Like old times." Probably thought he would die in Antarctica. He almost did. They both almost did.
He steadied his old partner's face and kissed him again, letting himself feel the twisting upswell of emotions that came with it. Emotions he'd been dodging so long.
Walter had let go of his shirt and was resting his hands flat against his chest, fingers shaking.
"Come on," Dan rasped, voice sounding nearly as hoarse as Rorschach's used to.
They were in the bedroom and Walter was just staring in that unnerving way he had, making Dan feel like his skin was on fire as he pulled off his own shirt and went to untie the belt to Walter's coat-
Walter pushed his hands away, shuddering back against the wall, finally breaking eye contact and making Dan's breath hitch in his throat from fear.
After a few seconds he leaned forward again, leaving a drying pattern of moisture on the wallpaper. He bent to remove his shoes and socks, then straightened to peel his gloves off carefully one after the other, slowly, revealing bony knuckles and bare wrists. It was the hottest goddamn thing Dan had seen in his life.
The wet layers were peeled back, one by one: his worn coat, his suit jacket, his scarf; the pants and wifebeater that clung to him like a second, nearly translucent skin. He was concentrated and focused, as if being reminded why he was doing this would be too much.
Dan felt as if he were holding his breath the whole time.
Walter left himself standing in his own underwear, either unwilling or unable to go any further, but Dan could see the fabric straining there and the way his Adam's apple bobbed when he swallowed. Suddenly a self-conscious teenager. Dan understood; he felt the exact same way.
He stepped closer, but this time it was Walter pulling him into a kiss, harsh and awkward but somehow enough to make Dan whine in the back of his throat and start to ache, God, this was Rorschach, used to be Rorschach, used to patrol through the dark streets together and plan out raids and stand side by side panting at the end of a fight and Walter's whole body was rigid like he wanted to run but was daring himself not to, daring Dan to see how serious he was.
When Dan drew the pad of his thumb over Walter's erection through the cotton briefs, Walter bit down so hard on his lip he thought he tasted blood and he meant to go toward the bed really but instead he was pushing Walter back and back against the wall, lifting his hips up with the old strength still in his shoulders, grinding against him so hard he saw green-and-black sparks.
Walter was using all the strength in his body to draw Dan's hips sharp against his, already bucking, clawing at his back and groaning Daniel against his mouth and Dan could only whimper in response as his hips jerked involuntarily in helpless orgasm and now it was him who couldn't stop staring and staring at Walter's face, flushed and lost and finally human.
They leaned against the wall, shaking as the distant sound of rain pelting their roof filtered down into the quiet room.