For findmyantidrug, from slipstreamborne (2/2)
Author: slipstreamborne
Title: Concealed Carry
Rating: R
Pairing: Laurie/Rorschach
Summary: Laurie’s not blind, Rorschach’s not what he seems, and this is not a date.
Notes: For findmyantidrug . At last! Part two of two! 8|
Part one can be found here.
Rorschach doesn’t sputter or choke like Laurie expected. Doesn’t sneer, doesn’t mock, doesn’t bolt suddenly from the table, though every screaming line of the tense body across from her testifies that Rorschach’s fight or flight instincts are in full working order.
The restaurant seems suddenly very loud around them: a baby crying in one corner, a table full of construction workers guffawing at some obscene joke, the kitchen staff banging pots and pans and shouting orders to each other behind the counter. She can see now why such a public place might make good cover for the transfer of stolen goods, the crowd of people large and self-absorbed enough that -even pressed shoulder to shoulder-each individual patron remains anonymous, a single point of color within a larger impressionistic backdrop, so focused on their starring role in their own petty dramas that they’re oblivious to their existence as background noise for a hundred other tiny plays.
Laurie holds her breath, waits.
“Hmmn.” Rorschach snags a fistful of sugar cubes out of the bowl, chewing thoughtfully on two before pocketing the rest. Swallows.
“Good to see you’re not all brawn, Miss Juspeczyk.”
Laurie laughs, loud enough and long enough that a few people crane their necks to see what’s so funny.
“You’re a real piece of work, you know that?”
The corner of Rorschach’s mouth quirks in white might be a smile, might be an aggression display. He’s-she’s missing a tooth, a canine. Probably missing a couple more, given her apparent fondness for sugar.
She grins, baring her own gleamingly complete dentition. Two can play at this game. “Does owl-britches know?”
Laurie takes the glum, pointed silence of Rorschach’s non-answer as all the confirmation she needs.
“He doesn’t, does he? Man, and you two have been working together how long? And he doesn’t- He hasn’t figured-- Christ, is he blind or something?”
“Should be noted,” grits Rorschach, a little defensively. “That this isn’t exactly our own first meeting.”
“Noted,” chirps Laurie. “Don’t care. I still totally pinned you.”
She leans forward, drops her voice. “So how long were you going to leave me to hang as the only woman on the team? Do you know just how much sanctimonious pseudo-feminist bullshit Ozymandius can spew? It seems like every other Crimebuster’s meeting he’s going on and on to me about how much pressure I must feel as a role model, being the only active non-murdered female vigilante. God, if he only-”
Rorschach kicks her sharply under the table, growls. There’s a note of warning there that makes Laurie consider not only the hows of it, but some of the possible whys.
“But if that’s not how you identify, that’s totally cool, too. I’m just saying-“
Another kick, this one hard enough to bruise
“Ouch! Okay, I won’t mention it again, I was just-“
Rorschach nods jerkily towards the door just in time for Laurie to turn and see Shrimpy come slinking in, looking paler and more nervous than ever.
As one, she and Rorschach turn back to their coffees, drinking as casually as is possible. The Gunga Diner is packed with people, all the booths occupied and the only empty seats at the counter down by their corner of the restaurant. Reluctantly, throwing worried glances over his shoulder with every other step, he brushes by their booth and perches himself uncomfortably on the furthest empty stool.
So far, so good. Laurie doesn’t think he ever caught sight of them down in the tunnels, so she’s less worried about being recognized than she might otherwise normally be, and Shrimpy’s even been so courteous as to sit close enough that they can hear him place his order: one coffee, black.
More of a woman of action, Laurie’s never really been one for stakeouts, but luckily for her patience and Shrimpy’s nervous indigestion none of them have to wait very long. At ten after on the dot a man walks through the door, scans the restaurant with practiced, professional efficiency and, spotting Shrimpy, immediately heads their way, stride confident and smooth.
“Here he comes,” she mutters, sizing him up. She’s not sure what she was expecting Jimmy to look like, but this guy ain’t it. Broad-faced, smiling pleasantly at a waitress, black hair slicked back and shining, his red suit and matching hat a little too ritzy for this daytime gathering, this guy looks more like a used car salesman than a mobster. ‘Not that that means much,’ Laurie muses.
“Hey kid, how ya doin’?” He smacks Shrimpy on the shoulder in greeting and takes the empty seat next to him. “Shame to hear about Duke. Nice guy, thought he’d stay outta prison longer, this time.”
To Laurie’s surprise, Shrimpy stares at him, slack-jawed. “F-Frank! Where’s J-J-J-“
“Jimmy says he ain’t coming. Heard something went wrong with the dropoff last night. You know anything about it?” He’s still smiling, tone light, but Laurie would have to be an idiot not to hear the threat beneath his words.
““I made the d-dropoff,” Shrimpy insists. “The e-explosion wasn’t until after I-“
“Mm. So you weren’t there?”
Shrimpy nods vigorously.
“Pity. Boss thought you might know something useful, but if you don’t…”
He trails off with a vague wave of his hand. Shrimpy fills in the blanks easily enough. Laurie can almost smell his fear, a sour, sweaty odor that stands out amidst the background of grease and coffee and Indian spices.
“No! Y-y-yes, I d-don’t- P-p-p-p-p-“
He looks like he might have a fit-stutter worse than ever, barely able to breathe between panicked syllables. Not-Jimmy looks genuinely concerned.
“Here, drink your coffee, you’ll feel better.”
He holds the steaming cup steady until Shrimpy manages to grab it with both shaking hands, and waits until Shrimpy’s calm again before he continues.
“Doesn’t matter, at any rate. Plan’s changed. Jimmy’s got a new gimmick worked out already, so you’re in the clear.”
Shrimpy manages a weak grin and half a laugh, taking another nervous sip of coffee. “S-seriously? Don’t k-kid me, Frank. You know I h-hate when you k-kid.”
“Seriously, don’t worry about it.” He smacks Shrimpy sharp across the back again, causing him to choke on his coffee. “The boss, he understands.”
The motion appears casual, but something about it is just off enough that it makes Laurie go rigid in her seat. Frank stands, something small and glinting tucked into the palm of his hand. Shrimpy’s cough has turned ragged and wet, each inhale weaker than the last as Frank casually plucks a wad of cash out of his wrinkled coat pocket and slips it into his own: the payment intended for the unused explosives. He’s halfway back towards the door when Shrimpy slumps over the counter, a dark stain spreading over the back of his gray suit.
“C’mon!” Laurie hisses, grabbing Rorschach by the arm. It’s her turn to be the one doing the pulling, something like panic in her voice. “C’mon!”
They slide out of the booth, Laurie blindly scattering bills across the tabletop as they go. It’s probably way too much, but she doesn’t care.
They have to get out of here before anyone else realizes that Shrimpy is dead.
*
Quickly, quietly, they can’t call attention to themselves, can’t have their waitress blabbing on and on later to the cops about the weirdo couple in the booth just five feet away from the decease. Maybe they’ll get lucky, maybe she’ll think they left long before the thin man at the end of the counter collapsed dead from a stab wound.
Yeah, and maybe Dr. Manhatten himself will appear suddenly in all his glowing, terrifying godhood and blow Frank into a million bloody fucking pieces.
She keeps her eyes fixed on Frank’s red suit as he slides easily between the crowded tables, serpentine and serene with his hands casually tucked into his pants pockets, and out the door. He’s moving too fast, they’re going to lose him. Abandoning stealth, she lets go of Rorschach and bolts after him.
The intersection of 40th and 7th is completely jammed, cars and people packed together like sardines as they wait for the light to change. Even with the sunglasses Laurie is temporarily blinded by the sudden shift from dim diner fluorescence to glaring concrete. She blinks furiously, trying to force the world back into focus, and catches a glimpse of Frank’s red suit across the street, heading north. She crosses against the flow of traffic, dodging around cars ignoring the angry shouts and blaring horns in her wake, and breaks into a sprint.
What the fucking hell were they thinking, two masked vigilantes out and about in broad daylight, lingering over lunch with Laurie still in costume, Rorschach’s mask and face shielded only by fucking newspaper? As she runs and ducks and dodges through the sidewalk crowd Laurie is conscious of a hundred staring eyes, watching her, but there’s nothing she can do but hope she’s moving too quickly for any one person to catch a good look.
Fifty feet ahead of her, Frank’s red shape is disappearing down the steps of the Times Square subway station. Swearing, Laurie pours on the speed-it’s a miracle she doesn’t fall and snap her neck as she flies down the stairs in her three-inch heels-but she’s too late. The train doors are already closing as she sails over the turnstile, Frank’s red suit just visible in the crush of bodies crammed inside, and she has to pull up short if she doesn’t want to tumble headfirst onto the tracks.
“Shit!” She kicks out at a nearby vending machine in anger as the train pulls away from the station. “Shit!”
With a rapid patter of light feet Rorschach appears at her side, surveying the situation and letting out an oath of her own. Laurie would laugh at the novelty of Rorschach’s profanity if she weren’t so completely and utterly drained by the frustration of it all.
“Police on their way. Would be wise to vacate the area as soon as possible.”
It’s no joke, Laurie can hear the sirens, but the post-adrenaline crash hits her like a brick wall and she sways, exhausted. Barely able to see straight, she follows Rorschach blindly, down the empty platform, down a twisting flight of stairs, down, down, down a long hallway echoing with scarred white tile and the slow, mournful sax notes of a street musician.
It feels like a dream, like she’s following a foul-tempered black and white to some twisted version of Wonderland, but their downward journey doesn’t last forever. More stairs, going up this time, and they emerge street side almost two blocks away from the Gunga Diner.
Rorschach seems poised to dive back into the crowd, back into the mystery, but Laurie grabs at the back of her coat and drags them to a stop.
“Hold up,” she pants. “I need a minute.”
Rorschach grunts but waits politely as she pushes up the sunglasses to rub furiously at her eyes.
“God, I’m just absolutely thrashed, you know? I’m seeing double.”
“Hm,” Rorschach rumbles, sounding almost sympathetic. Laurie must be more tired than she thought. “Long night.”
“Yeah,” she laughs, weighing her options against her remaining cash. “Look, I think I’m done. For today, anyway. Is it okay if I borrow your coat a little while longer? My place is up in the Bronx and I don’t think it’d go down too well if I took the train there in full costume.”
Laurie’s more than half expecting Rorschach to say no. Rorschach’s quiet for a long time-hands in pockets, head bent, absently chewing at the corner of her chapped lips-so quiet that Laurie reaches up to start undoing the trench’s buttons, assuming that her silence is meant to punctuate the ridiculousness of Laurie’s request, but then-
“Have a place.” Each word sounds like it’s torn out of her with a rusty pair of forceps. “Closer. Are welcome to-“
Laurie waits, but Rorschach doesn’t finish the thought.
Slowly, it dawns on her. She grins.
“Rorschach, you dog. Are you inviting me over for a slumber party?”
“Hmph,” says Rorschach, but it isn’t a ‘no’.
*
It never ceases to amaze Laurie just how seedy New York can become in the space of a few blocks or even a few storefronts. Not that where they started out the day was the epitome of class and refinement, but there were a few tourists out wandering in search of Times Square and a few Indian grocers with stands of fresh produce and flowers poking out into the sidewalk,
Rorschach’s neighborhood, on the other hand, looks like somebody dropped a bomb on it. Or maybe a giant, rotting squid, to judge by the smell.
They stop at a payphone so that Laurie can call her mother and assure her she’s still not dead. Checking in with Rorschach standing right there, not even bothering to turn her back and at least pretend to not be listening in, makes Laurie feel stupid and sixteen again instead of twenty-three.
The phone rings-
Laurie’s itching for her pipe, wishes for the thousandth time that there was a pocket for it somewhere in the silly skin-tight costume her mother designed.
--and rings-
She wonders how many martinis her mother has had today, if she’s even finished sleeping off the ones from last night. Maybe none. Maybe she called up Uncle Hollis and they’re reliving old times somewhere safe and in relative sobriety. Maybe…
--and rings.
She isn’t sure whether or not she actually wants her mother to answer the phone until she hears the beep of her own answering machine. She’s glad she doesn’t have to navigate her mother’s minefield of mindfuck with Rorschach hovering nearby, but she can’t deny the brief, familiar ache of disappointment that flares up as her own voice echoes lonely and mechanical down the miles of telephone wire.
“Hi Mom. Some business came up while I was out. Don’t worry, I bumped into a colleague and we’re working on it together. I should be back sometime tonight. You know where everything is. Restock whatever you empty out of the booze cabinet.”
She bites her tongue, briefly repentant, but hangs up before she can take back the barb.
Rorschach, damn her, doesn’t comment on the tone of her message, just tilts her head and indicates the direction they should go, leaving Laurie to fill the awkward silence as they walk.
“There was a dinner last night at the Waldorf, honoring the Comedian. She wanted to go- why I have no fucking idea-and made me come along. Wanted me to wear a nice dress and pop champagne and walk around all night like he hadn’t tried to fucking rape her and even if he did, like nobody there knew about it.”
Her anger flares hot and fresh within her, making her clenched hands shake. She shoves them into the trenches pockets, but there’s no hiding it from Rorschach.
“Can’t imagine that went well,” she rumbles.
“No it fucking didn’t.” Laurie sighs. “I don’t even know why they had the fucking thing in the first place, there’s not much ‘honorable’ about him.”
“Brave American.”
“He’s a coward and a creep,” Laurie spits. “And you’re better off if he continues to think you’re a guy.”
“Hnnk. Didn’t mean to justify or condone.” She tilts her head up just enough for Laurie to catch a glimpse of a bitter, cynical sneer. “City prefers its heroes bawdy and patriotic. Clean. Makes them think they’re the same, helps them pretend that filth and corruption outside is not their fault. Keep on pretending that decay is hallmark of next generation, keep on ignoring the filth and horrors of their own youth.”
Somewhere above them, a man screams obscenities at a woman, who screams hoarse obscenities back. Someone else turns up the sound on their radio, trying to drown them out. The tune is cheerful and jazzy and makes Laurie feel sick to her stomach.
At length, Rorschach shakes her head. “Don’t know your mother’s intentions.”
“Well,” Laurie laughs, bitter and hollow. “Mothers, you know?”
“No,” says Rorschach.
They walk together, strides matching, the silence between them a comfort now rather than an awkward barrier. When Laurie links their arms again, Rorschach doesn’t even so much as grumble.
*
Just as Laurie’s aching feet are threatening violent mutiny Rorschach steers them up a set of concrete steps and into the narrow, shabby lobby of the Midtown YWCA.
Laurie raises an eyebrow but doesn’t give voice to her surprise. Before today she would never have thought to go looking for Rorschach in a women’s dormitory, which is probably the exact reason that Rorschach chose the place. That and the lobby staff’s long experience in not giving out the names and details of their lodgers to random people off of the street, lest some abusive ex come knocking.
The woman at the front desk eyes Laurie with cautious reservation-wary of the strange face but sympathetic of whatever circumstances left her so dirty and with a brilliant purple bruise peeking out from the edges of her sunglasses-until she spots Rorschach at her side. With a nod she buzzes them through the security door-a thick steel thing coated with layers upon archeological layers of graffiti and flyers-and to the stairs beyond.
Laurie’s tired enough that by the time they reach Rorschach’s floor her legs feel like she’s climbed the Empire State building instead of seven measly stories. Rorschach stops in front of a door halfway down the hall, pulls out a set of stained brass keys, and lets them inside.
Rorschach’s room is roughly the size of a janitor’s closet and about as cheerful, dingy white paint peeling away like a scab to reveal wounded layers of institutional greens and yellows. Newspapers are stacked on every available surface and the narrow bed is covered in a tangled nest of sheets, dirty clothes, and old bandages. There’s a tiny sink crammed underneath the room’s sole window and-in seeming defiance to all the laws of spacial physics-an actual wooden, full-sized wardrobe shoved into a corner. Though battered and scarred the wardrobe’s lines and wooden inlays attests to its history as a genuine antique, and one door hangs open just far enough for Laurie to see a handful of old-fashioned blouses hung on wire hangers.
“Shower’s down the hall,” says Rorschach briskly. Now that they’re here she seems suddenly eager to have Laurie back out again. “Communal towels.”
“Good. Means they’ve probably been washed sometime in the last century.”
For all her snark, the idea of a hot shower-hell, even a tepid one-is so fucking delicious that Laurie kicks off her heels and turns right back around in search of the bathroom. She regrets her bare feet when she sees the grungy state of the floor tiles, but hell, twelve hours ago she was wading blind down a goddamn New York City sewer, so she sets her reservations aside, grabs a stack of towels, and claims an empty shower stall.
Rorschach’s coat creaks as she shrugs out of it, stiff with grime and already molded to her body after a few hours’ wear. Her costume’s black bodysuit is fine if a little rank with sweat, but the yellow silk shell is criss-crossed with dirt in a pattern reminiscent of her preteen attempts at copying the hippie style. Shaking her head, she sets the whole bundle on the bench where it’ll at least stay dry, peels off her underwear, and yanks the shower handle all the way over to hot.
The shower spits and hisses for several seconds before coughing up its first spray of rust-colored water. Laurie makes a face, but the temperature is decent and the pressure is better than her own tap so she eases gratefully into the spray. There’s a pump of generic soap screwed into the wall, so Laurie takes a handful and starts to work her way down her body, hissing faintly as she rediscovers each bruise and scrape. Her shoulder’s in the worst shape; it takes a few minutes before the shower’s staccato spray eases some of the stiffness from the muscles there, and it leaves her itching for something else that she can’t quite lay a finger on.
When she pads back to the room-body and hair wrapped in thin institutional towels-Rorschach has kicked off her boots and stripped down to trousers and a thin, ratty undershirt. She’s got her mask back on-smooth and perfect and inhuman and pulled firmly down the length of her neck-and is bent low over the room’s tiny sink, scrubbing sourly at the black soot staining the cuffs of her white dress shirt.
From this angle Laurie can just pick out the faint lines of an ace bandage wrapped tightly around her chest, but it’s the spattering of freckles and jagged scars across her wide shoulders and muscular back that holds her attention.
“So what do you do to get all pumped and broad like that?” she asks. Her mother’s prescribed exercise routine had emphasized power disguised with leanness, and as they’re in the same line of work Laurie finds the differences in their bodies genuinely interesting.
“Work,” Rorschach grunts, holding the cuff up into the light for a better look. The room either didn’t come with any curtains or they were pulled down to be used as bandages long ago. In their place, Rorschach has pasted layers of newspaper over the glass. What sunlight filters through the columns of text is dim and yellow-gold, making the tiny room feel warm and sleepy.
Apparently satisfied with the quality of her scrub job-not that Laurie can really see the difference, given the quantity of old blood stains-Rorschach drapes the shirt across an impromptu clothes line strung between the wardrobe and the window to dry.
She gestures for the bundle in Laurie’s arms, but when Laurie moves to untangle the trench from her own clothes Rorschach interrupts with a shake of her head.
“Give me your suit,” she says.
Laurie blushes, clutching at it all the tighter. “I can wash my own costume, thank you.”
Rorschach sighs, holds out a hand, but doesn’t ask again. Laurie hands it over.
“So am I just supposed to sleep naked?” she asks, trying to pick out Rorschach’s intentions.
“Hmph.” Rorschach nods towards the room’s lone rather rickety chair, where another of her undershirts sits folded on the seat. “Have a shirt you can wear. Was getting ready to cut it up for rags, anyway.”
“Gee, thanks.” Laurie picks the tank up gingerly, holding it at arm’s length, but the smell isn’t as bad as she was expecting. Smells a bit like cologne, actually. Nostalgia, or something similar. Dropping the towel, she steps back into her panties and pulls the tank over her head. With the mask on Laurie can’t tell if Rorschach is watching. She sticks her tongue out just in case she is.
The chair looks like it might collapse at the slightest touch, so she flops down on the bed to watch Rorschach carefully rinse the worst of the filth out of the yellow silk. There’s a smoothness to the way she handles the fabric, careful not to snag the sheer fabric with her calloused hands and ragged fingernails, that Laurie finds intriguing. She’s seen those same hands bend a man’s fingers all the way backwards to touch his wrist.
“Fair warning, I sometimes kick in my sleep. If I nail you, you’re more than welcome to nail me back.”
“Won’t be a problem,” assures Rorschach primly. “Will be sleeping in the chair.”
“What?” Laurie looks again to be sure, but the furniture in question doesn’t appear to have grown any sturdier.
“No, c’mon. Look, I can make do with the floor. Don’t let me take the bed from you, not when you’ve given- When you’ve let- ” She cuts herself off, unsure of how to articulate what she means, not even sure what to call this… this thing that they’re doing.
“Have done it before. Insist.”
Rorschach’s tone is final and Laurie knows from experience just how stubborn she can be, but Laurie’s pretty stubborn herself. The argument could have gone on until Rorschach dug out a moldy old copy of Emily Post’s Etiquette and smacked her with it but Laurie is frankly too tired to push it any further.
If there’s a pillow it’s well camouflaged beneath Rorschach’s pile of crap, so Laurie pushes and tugs at the pile of dirty laundry until it looks comfortable enough and leans back against it. She uncovers the corner of a sheet during her digging and, yawning, drapes it lightly over her legs.
She means to stay up a little longer, maybe argue some more with Rorschach about the bed situation once she’s rested her eyes a bit. In the corner of the room the radiator rattles to noisy life; a baby cries out in complaint across the hall; outside the air echoes with the blare of car horns and whirr of electric engines.
Laurie means to stay up, really she does, if only to pick out the particulars of Rorschach’s soft, half-muttered grousing at the sink-something about her tailor and shoddy workmanship-but the drip of the tap and the gentle, rhythmic swishing of fabric through water weaves in and around the sounds of life in the city, muting all of their edges into a New York lullaby.
She sleeps.
*
She wakes.
The room is dimmer but not full-dark-it isn’t night quiet yet. She’s kicked herself free of the sheet at some point, leaving her long legs bare and exposed, but Laurie wouldn’t be running around in a costume as skimpy as hers if she wasn’t comfortable in all but extremes in temperature. She’s about to close her eyes and ease back into slumber when she notices a dark, looming shape at the foot of the bed.
It’s Rorschach. Laurie’s glad to see she’s abandoned the rickety wooden chair for the end of the bed itself. If she’s asleep then she’s even more of a robot than Laurie long suspected. She’s sitting bolt upright, cross-legged, arms folded, shoulders straight and rigid with tension, the resolute austerity of her posture betrayed by the slight, rhythmic clenching of her muscular thighs and the heavy edge to each inhalable of breath.
It takes a moment, but Laurie recognizes the motion from some of her own first naïve experiments with her body. The realization wakes her up fully, makes her heart thump heavily in her chest, but she doesn’t open her eyes fully just yet. Better to survey her opponent for possible weaknesses and unseen advantages before springing to attack.
Rorschach’s blots are pointed straight ahead but Laurie’s not fooled by the mask. She can feel her gaze even through the heavy, swirling ink, can make an educated guess at its direction. Slowly, as if in sleep, she shifts her legs, sliding one smoothly across the other, and grins at the hitch in Rorschach’s carefully measured breathing.
“You know, there are a lot more direct ways to get your rocks off.”
To her credit, Rorschach doesn’t jump, but the guilty way she uncrosses her legs only to clamp back them back together again, as if to erase all the evidence of what she’s been doing, tells Laurie all that she needs to know.
That and the fact that the room stinks like sex.
“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” Rorschach rasps. The pale, freckled skin of her chest and shoulders is brilliantly flushed with a violent red pattern of Rorschach blotches.
“Of course you don’t.” She prods Rorschach’s knee experimentally with her foot; the masked woman tenses but doesn’t move away. “Is that why you wear pants? Jesus, do the seams ever ride up high and tight enough for you to grind against them during patrol?”
The blots on Rorschach’s mask look absolutely scandalized at the idea.
“Kidding, kidding! Besides, I meant what I said about more direct means of stimulation. For example-”
“Know that, Miss Juspeczyk,” Rorschach hisses. “Am not ignorant of the myriad forms of human depravity. No need to list-“
“-you could ask me to go down on you.” To emphasize her point, Laurie slides her foot from the platonic safety of Rorschach’s knee up to rest lightly along the inside of her thigh.
Rorschach’s mouth closes with an audible click. It’s almost a full minute before she finds her voice again.
“That would be-”
“Awesome?”
“Inappropriate. Distasteful, demeaning-“
“And awesome!”
“No.”
“Okay.” Laurie props herself up on her elbows, withdraws her foot. Rorschach makes an indiscernible noise as the loss of contact. “Okay. Too far, too fast. So what do you want?” Rorschach is already shaking her head, so Laurie changes tactics.
“What where you thinking about while I was sleeping?” she asks quietly.
Rorschach is gripping her own arms so hard that her knuckles are white, but Laurie’s already guessed at her weak spot. Arching her back, she stretches her legs, cat-like, moaning softly in genuine relief at the pull of well-used muscles.
“What were you looking at, Rorschach?”
“Your legs,” she chokes.
“Why?”
Rorschach swallows.
“Are strong. Disciplined.” One hand has freed itself from the prison of her crossed arms, is hovering just over Laurie’s ankle, not touching. “Scarred.”
The way Rorschach whispers the word it sounds reverent, like a prayer to some long-forgotten saint. Laurie blinks, looking down the plane of her body to the dimly shining length of her bare legs, the flesh sporadically crisscrossed with faint white lines and mottled with bruises in all stages of healing. When she wears short skirts in civilian life it’s typically with tights.
“Yeah well, they come with the job, don’t they?”
“Yes,” rasps Rorschach, blots thick and dark. “They do.”
*
Rorschach’s approach to foreplay can only be described as ‘glacial’. It takes for-fucking-ever-a touch here, a ghost of breath there-but as the ice sheet of her reservation draws back it reveals a new, rugged territory clawed from the earth, jagged peaks and lush valleys that call for exploration.
Rorschach’s hands are smaller than Laurie expected, cold with panic but dry. The close first around Laurie’s ankles, thumbs pressed into the hard line of her Achilles tendon as fingers trace the shining, circular callous worn by the straps of her heels, before sliding soft and hesitant up the length of her calves, Rorschach’s breathing deep and heavy.
Laurie shifts and squirms down the bed until she can wrap both legs completely around the other woman, pulling her close to rest in the cradle between her legs. Rorschach teeters, briefly off-balance, but manages to catch herself on the bed, letting out a whuff in half-heated protest at the abrupt shift in position or Laurie’s impatience, maybe both.
Grinning, Laurie flicks at the bulge where her mask pulls tightly across her nose, though she manages to resist the sudden, surprisingly strong impulse to give a good solid tweak. Rorschach growls and nips at her knee in retaliation, the scrape of teeth blunted by her mask’s thick latex.
The surprise of it is enough to make her gasp, but the sensation alone is enough to curl her toes and make something throb low and heavy in her belly. “Oh fuck me!” Then, just in case Rorschach needs it spelled out in flashing neon: “Do that again.”
Rorschach hesitates, head tilted as if questioning Laurie’s sanity, but repeats the movement. It jangles her nerves the same way landing a really good hit does, shuddering aftershocks shooting down her spine. Rorschach switches sides, biting softly at her other knee, then sooths the area with a firm press of lips through the mask. It would be chaste if Rorschach didn’t linger so close to Laurie’s inner thigh, if Laurie couldn’t feel the hard muscles of her back fluttering with restraint.
Slowly, with increasing urgency, Rorschach traces up the crooked line of her leg, pausing to mouth reverently at last night’s bruises, the thin white line left across the back of her thigh by a switchblade years ago in her rash and careless teens. Laurie holds her breath, unsure just how far Rorschach is going to go, but rather than balking Rorschach butts up hard against her sex and nuzzles there, breath hitching into deep, desperate sobs as if trying to drown herself in Laurie’s smell.
Christ. Christ.
Between her underwear and Rorschach’s mask there’s not much direct stimulation but the visual is pretty fucking fantastic. Still, no reason it can’t be better. Laurie worms one hand down between her legs, shivering at the contrast temperatures of the heated flesh beneath her palm and the cool slip of latex along the back of her knuckles.
The cotton fabric of her panties is slick with her wetness. Slipping her fingers beneath the elastic, Laurie strokes down through the damp curls of her hair and along the hot, swollen throb of her clit, scratching with the smooth edge of one nail along the edge of her hood. She shivers at the sensation, how it skirts just on the edge of pleasure, and flicks the nail lightly across the taut head.
Rorschach mouths at her through the layers of fabric, growls. The vibration of it and the scrape of her nails are too much, so Laurie backs off, settling into a rhythmic, pressing circling with the pads of two fingers, pace guided by the rise and fall of Rorschach’s head, the push and pull of her body as she grinds against the dirty sheets.
Rorschach’s hard, bony hands dig and paw desperately at the flesh of her thighs, hard enough that the blunt nails scrape and leave red crescents where they clench, but Laurie doesn’t care. There’s a white heat building between her legs, making her hips buck and her knees quake, the electric buzz of it riding hard and fast just along the edge of numbness, just this side of sensation overload.
With her free hand she cups at the top of Rorschach’s head, feeling the hard contours of her skull, marveling in the way the black twists and coils with the white but never mixes, the pattern scattering in the warm wake of her hand.
She’s so close to-
One pull, one moment of betrayal and she could-
And Rorschach’s letting her, she trusts-
She-
*
Laurie pants, breathless, through the aftermath, hands running loose and vague over Rorschach’s head and shoulders, trying to find enough purchase and grip strength to haul her up to eye-level, but Rorschach’s pulling away from the loose clasp of her limbs, scuttling backward off the bed and tripping over a pile of newspapers in the haste of her retreat.
“Rorschach-?”
Rorschach paces rapidly back and forth across the room, looking lost, arms rigid and hands clenching and unclenching into sweaty, white-knuckled fists at her side.
“Yes,” she answers before Laurie can even begin to voice the rest of the question. “Yes.” She pauses briefly at the window, staring blindly beyond the abstract collage of backlit newsprint, before turning abruptly on one heel and marching to the door. Fumbling one-handed with the locks, she tears off her mask and stuffs it into her pocket a mere moment before opening the door.
Harsh fluorescent light floods in from the hallway. Temporarily blinded, all Laurie can make out of Rorschach unmasked in a black silhouette topped with a halo of bright copper curls before the door closes solidly behind her.
Suddenly alone in the room, Laurie sits up, unsure of what to do. She spends a minute debating following after her but decides it would be better to wait. She has no doubt that Rorschach will come back, if only for the rest of her costume and the leather-bound journal Laurie’s seen her reference on occasion.
If Rorschach needs some time and space to herself after what they’ve done, Laurie is more than happy to respect that distance. It’s been a big day for Rorschach. Hell, if Laurie had somebody see through such a major component of her crime-fighting persona, compromised her secret identity by taking that person home for a nap, and stumbled into heavy petting and kinda oral sex, she’d probably need a moment to herself to process the whole thing, too.
She waits long enough that she starts to doze, dreams a half-remembered dream of smoke slipping through her fingers. The soft click of the door and rattle of the security chain drags her out from the shadows of sleep and back to the dim reality of wakefulness. Rorschach is standing in the doorway, mask back on but pulled upward to rest across the bridge of her nose, watching her.
“Hey,” Laurie whispers, groggy with sleep. She opens her arms. “C’mere.”
Rorschach’s calmer now, breathing even and limbs no longer shaking, but she approaches the bed with the slow, stalking caution of an alley cat investigating a proffered can of food.
It isn’t until Rorschach climbs back on top of Laurie that she realizes that she’s soaking wet, skin slick and cool beneath her fingers. Went to the showers to think, then. Didn’t even bother to dry off, judging by the way her clothes are sticking to her. Her white tank is nearly transparent in places, and Laurie notes with a pleasant buzz that the binding bandage she’d been wearing earlier is gone. The soft shifting of her breasts is faint but noticeable, as are the stiff, dark peaks of her nipples.
“Sorry,” Rorschach mumbles, carefully straddling across Laurie’s hips. Laurie catches her around the waist, pulling at her until Rorschach is firmly seated, the hard bones of her pelvis settled just above her pubis, knees tucked tightly along the stretch of her waist. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Laurie says, pressing her palms up the bunched muscles of Rorschachs legs, over the jutting crest of her hip bones, up the small of her back, and back. Repeats the motion, going a little higher with each pass, digging a little harder, until Rorschach groans and leans forward into the rough massage, bracing her weight with a hand on each side of Laurie’s head. “What do you need me to do?”
“Don’t need-” Rorschach swallows, starts over. “Would appreciate you not mentioning this to Nite Owl.”
“The hot lesbian sex part or the brief interlude devoted to freaking out in the bathroom part?”
“Both, if possible.” Rorschach squirms as Laurie’s hands toy with the hem of her shirt, slipping tickling fingers underneath to brush up her spine and along the hard, ripped plane of her abdomen, but somehow manages to come across as cool and composed.
Laurie smiles. “You got it. Care for round two of hot vigilante on vigilante action?”
“That course of action sounds… favorable.”
“Good.” Rorschach lets out a small ehnk of surprise as Laurie pops open the button of her pants and starts pulling eagerly at her zipper. “Because I’ve been dying to see what those blots of yours look like when you orgasm.”
She expects Rorschach’s underwear to be high-waisted and plain, or maybe-the thought makes her mouth water-a demure silk edged in the same lilac pattern as the handkerchief she’d given her earlier, but no, it’s even better than that.
Rorschach’s not wearing underwear at all.
*
Laurie knows that there’s a whole freight car full of baggage more that Rorschach’s leaving unsaid, but she doesn’t push, deciding that it’s Rorschach business entirely when, or even if, she continues the conversation.
Only later, kneeling together on the bed, their bodies flushed and sticking, Rorschach clinging to her shoulders as if life itself depends on it, will she pick up the train of thought again, whispering so fast and frantic into the long hollow of her neck that Laurie has to strain to make it out.
“It’s just. Sometimes I don’t- Sometimes I wish-“
Rorschach shudders, body arching as deep within, Laurie crooks her fingers again and again, but she keeps talking, voice strained with frustration and despair.
“Partners,” she whimpers. “You know?”
Laurie kisses her then, first at the edge of the snaking blot curled around her eye, then in a slow, soft arc down her cheek to catch hungrily at the corner of her wide, bruised mouth.
“Yeah,” says Laurie. “I know.”
*
Laurie’s costume is still a little damp by the time they suit up that evening, the last flashes of the setting sun flooding the tiny room with an orange glow nearly as fiery as Rorschach’s hair. Her panties aren’t in much better shape, washed last minute and hastily dried under the hot air of the automatic hand dryer in the communal bathroom, but she figures that her body heat combined with the night wind will have both remedied soon enough.
She’s sore, but it’s a good ache, an echo of battles well fought and victories hard won. With each pull and stretch of her muscles as she climbs and prowls and leaps over the city Laurie remembers the pull and stretch of another body intertwined with hers.
It all feels a bit unreal now, away from the close stuffiness of Rorschach’s tiny room and out in the cold night air of the wide, dirty world, Rorschach wrapped once again in protective layer upon layer of men’s fashion, but Laurie won’t soon forget how perfectly Rorschach’s small breasts, wide and faintly flat, had fit into her hands, the pleasant scrape of her nipples along Laurie’s palms.
Leaping from one rooftop to the next, they at last come to a stop atop a factory in the heart of the Garment District. Rorschach looms at the edge of the roof, blots demonic, and stares down into the screaming neon maw of the city below like a modern gargoyle in a blood-stained fedora.
There was a time when Laurie would have been genuinely creeped by the pose, but now it evokes a much more pleasant memory. Rorschach, bent double as if in pain staring down at her with mouth agape, clenching and clenching around her fingers while Laurie sucked mercilessly at her clit until she’d cried out her name-not the name her mother had tried to run from, not the mask her mother had hidden behind before passing down to her-but a high, desperate ‘Laurel’ moments before another shuddering orgasm robbed her of speech.
“So what’s the plan, Stan? Down to the docks to beat up low-level mob smugglers until they drop a tasty lead, or should we leave the tragic death of Mr. Shrimpy to the cops?”
Rorschach tilts her head, hands in pockets. “Been thinking. Said the plan had changed, gotten a new gimmick. For what? Mob not known for themed crimes, also not many circumstances where explosives can easily be substituted.”
“What do you think they meant to use them for?”
“Not sure. Boss could mean Underboss. Power weakened by imprisonment, but has been able to retain enough loyalty and contacts to continue limited form of business. Unclear what use would have for such volatile explosives. Mostly deals drug shipments and counterfeit luxury wear.”
“Is that why we’re here?” She cranes her neck to look over the edge of the building, but from this angle she can’t make out the name of the brand on the building’s signage.
“No,” Rorschach grunts.
“So… what? This your thinking spot, or something?”
This at last earns Laurie an annoyed sort of harrumph. It’s quickly becoming one of her very favorite noises.
“Scheduled to patrol with Nite Owl. This the meet-up point.”
As if on cue, there’s a roar of engines overhead. Laurie looks up just in time to catch the bronze, rounded shape of Nite Owl’s airship break and bank back around towards them Nite Owl himself just visible through the large, round windows of the ship. He nods at them and pulls around to hover alongside their rooftop. Burners flare and sputter as the owlship stabilizes and a hatch opens along its side with a pneumatic hiss.
“Hey!” Nite Owl pokes his head out, waving. “You didn’t head by the Owl Nest earlier, did you? Sorry if I missed you.”
“No.” Rorschach nods at Laurie. “Been working on a case with Silk Specter.”
“Oh, uh.” Nite Owl adjusts his goggles and smiles at her sheepishly, so adorable that Laurie forgives him for being blind as a fucking bat. “Hi. If it’s urgent I’ll leave you to it, but-“
“It isn’t,” Laurie interjects. “Gone cold for now. What’s up?”
Nite Owl jerks a thumb over his shoulder, gesturing vaguely northward. “There’s a riot up at Sing Sing, sounds like they’re really tearing the place apart. You in?”
Laurie looks to Rorschach, uncertain of their dynamic and not wanting to step unintentionally on any land mines, not sure that she’s even still welcome to show her face in Rorschach’s territory after this afternoon, but Rorschach nods and steps aside, indicating the waiting ladder with a slight bow and a sweep of one purple-gloved hand.
“Ladies first,” she growls.
“What’s so funny?” asks Nite Owl as she clambers up the ladder--half-smiling but his eyebrows quirked with worry, probably concerned about her mental health--but Laurie is laughing too hard to make excuses and she’s not about to explain.
Title: Concealed Carry
Rating: R
Pairing: Laurie/Rorschach
Summary: Laurie’s not blind, Rorschach’s not what he seems, and this is not a date.
Notes: For findmyantidrug . At last! Part two of two! 8|
Part one can be found here.
Rorschach doesn’t sputter or choke like Laurie expected. Doesn’t sneer, doesn’t mock, doesn’t bolt suddenly from the table, though every screaming line of the tense body across from her testifies that Rorschach’s fight or flight instincts are in full working order.
The restaurant seems suddenly very loud around them: a baby crying in one corner, a table full of construction workers guffawing at some obscene joke, the kitchen staff banging pots and pans and shouting orders to each other behind the counter. She can see now why such a public place might make good cover for the transfer of stolen goods, the crowd of people large and self-absorbed enough that -even pressed shoulder to shoulder-each individual patron remains anonymous, a single point of color within a larger impressionistic backdrop, so focused on their starring role in their own petty dramas that they’re oblivious to their existence as background noise for a hundred other tiny plays.
Laurie holds her breath, waits.
“Hmmn.” Rorschach snags a fistful of sugar cubes out of the bowl, chewing thoughtfully on two before pocketing the rest. Swallows.
“Good to see you’re not all brawn, Miss Juspeczyk.”
Laurie laughs, loud enough and long enough that a few people crane their necks to see what’s so funny.
“You’re a real piece of work, you know that?”
The corner of Rorschach’s mouth quirks in white might be a smile, might be an aggression display. He’s-she’s missing a tooth, a canine. Probably missing a couple more, given her apparent fondness for sugar.
She grins, baring her own gleamingly complete dentition. Two can play at this game. “Does owl-britches know?”
Laurie takes the glum, pointed silence of Rorschach’s non-answer as all the confirmation she needs.
“He doesn’t, does he? Man, and you two have been working together how long? And he doesn’t- He hasn’t figured-- Christ, is he blind or something?”
“Should be noted,” grits Rorschach, a little defensively. “That this isn’t exactly our own first meeting.”
“Noted,” chirps Laurie. “Don’t care. I still totally pinned you.”
She leans forward, drops her voice. “So how long were you going to leave me to hang as the only woman on the team? Do you know just how much sanctimonious pseudo-feminist bullshit Ozymandius can spew? It seems like every other Crimebuster’s meeting he’s going on and on to me about how much pressure I must feel as a role model, being the only active non-murdered female vigilante. God, if he only-”
Rorschach kicks her sharply under the table, growls. There’s a note of warning there that makes Laurie consider not only the hows of it, but some of the possible whys.
“But if that’s not how you identify, that’s totally cool, too. I’m just saying-“
Another kick, this one hard enough to bruise
“Ouch! Okay, I won’t mention it again, I was just-“
Rorschach nods jerkily towards the door just in time for Laurie to turn and see Shrimpy come slinking in, looking paler and more nervous than ever.
As one, she and Rorschach turn back to their coffees, drinking as casually as is possible. The Gunga Diner is packed with people, all the booths occupied and the only empty seats at the counter down by their corner of the restaurant. Reluctantly, throwing worried glances over his shoulder with every other step, he brushes by their booth and perches himself uncomfortably on the furthest empty stool.
So far, so good. Laurie doesn’t think he ever caught sight of them down in the tunnels, so she’s less worried about being recognized than she might otherwise normally be, and Shrimpy’s even been so courteous as to sit close enough that they can hear him place his order: one coffee, black.
More of a woman of action, Laurie’s never really been one for stakeouts, but luckily for her patience and Shrimpy’s nervous indigestion none of them have to wait very long. At ten after on the dot a man walks through the door, scans the restaurant with practiced, professional efficiency and, spotting Shrimpy, immediately heads their way, stride confident and smooth.
“Here he comes,” she mutters, sizing him up. She’s not sure what she was expecting Jimmy to look like, but this guy ain’t it. Broad-faced, smiling pleasantly at a waitress, black hair slicked back and shining, his red suit and matching hat a little too ritzy for this daytime gathering, this guy looks more like a used car salesman than a mobster. ‘Not that that means much,’ Laurie muses.
“Hey kid, how ya doin’?” He smacks Shrimpy on the shoulder in greeting and takes the empty seat next to him. “Shame to hear about Duke. Nice guy, thought he’d stay outta prison longer, this time.”
To Laurie’s surprise, Shrimpy stares at him, slack-jawed. “F-Frank! Where’s J-J-J-“
“Jimmy says he ain’t coming. Heard something went wrong with the dropoff last night. You know anything about it?” He’s still smiling, tone light, but Laurie would have to be an idiot not to hear the threat beneath his words.
““I made the d-dropoff,” Shrimpy insists. “The e-explosion wasn’t until after I-“
“Mm. So you weren’t there?”
Shrimpy nods vigorously.
“Pity. Boss thought you might know something useful, but if you don’t…”
He trails off with a vague wave of his hand. Shrimpy fills in the blanks easily enough. Laurie can almost smell his fear, a sour, sweaty odor that stands out amidst the background of grease and coffee and Indian spices.
“No! Y-y-yes, I d-don’t- P-p-p-p-p-“
He looks like he might have a fit-stutter worse than ever, barely able to breathe between panicked syllables. Not-Jimmy looks genuinely concerned.
“Here, drink your coffee, you’ll feel better.”
He holds the steaming cup steady until Shrimpy manages to grab it with both shaking hands, and waits until Shrimpy’s calm again before he continues.
“Doesn’t matter, at any rate. Plan’s changed. Jimmy’s got a new gimmick worked out already, so you’re in the clear.”
Shrimpy manages a weak grin and half a laugh, taking another nervous sip of coffee. “S-seriously? Don’t k-kid me, Frank. You know I h-hate when you k-kid.”
“Seriously, don’t worry about it.” He smacks Shrimpy sharp across the back again, causing him to choke on his coffee. “The boss, he understands.”
The motion appears casual, but something about it is just off enough that it makes Laurie go rigid in her seat. Frank stands, something small and glinting tucked into the palm of his hand. Shrimpy’s cough has turned ragged and wet, each inhale weaker than the last as Frank casually plucks a wad of cash out of his wrinkled coat pocket and slips it into his own: the payment intended for the unused explosives. He’s halfway back towards the door when Shrimpy slumps over the counter, a dark stain spreading over the back of his gray suit.
“C’mon!” Laurie hisses, grabbing Rorschach by the arm. It’s her turn to be the one doing the pulling, something like panic in her voice. “C’mon!”
They slide out of the booth, Laurie blindly scattering bills across the tabletop as they go. It’s probably way too much, but she doesn’t care.
They have to get out of here before anyone else realizes that Shrimpy is dead.
*
Quickly, quietly, they can’t call attention to themselves, can’t have their waitress blabbing on and on later to the cops about the weirdo couple in the booth just five feet away from the decease. Maybe they’ll get lucky, maybe she’ll think they left long before the thin man at the end of the counter collapsed dead from a stab wound.
Yeah, and maybe Dr. Manhatten himself will appear suddenly in all his glowing, terrifying godhood and blow Frank into a million bloody fucking pieces.
She keeps her eyes fixed on Frank’s red suit as he slides easily between the crowded tables, serpentine and serene with his hands casually tucked into his pants pockets, and out the door. He’s moving too fast, they’re going to lose him. Abandoning stealth, she lets go of Rorschach and bolts after him.
The intersection of 40th and 7th is completely jammed, cars and people packed together like sardines as they wait for the light to change. Even with the sunglasses Laurie is temporarily blinded by the sudden shift from dim diner fluorescence to glaring concrete. She blinks furiously, trying to force the world back into focus, and catches a glimpse of Frank’s red suit across the street, heading north. She crosses against the flow of traffic, dodging around cars ignoring the angry shouts and blaring horns in her wake, and breaks into a sprint.
What the fucking hell were they thinking, two masked vigilantes out and about in broad daylight, lingering over lunch with Laurie still in costume, Rorschach’s mask and face shielded only by fucking newspaper? As she runs and ducks and dodges through the sidewalk crowd Laurie is conscious of a hundred staring eyes, watching her, but there’s nothing she can do but hope she’s moving too quickly for any one person to catch a good look.
Fifty feet ahead of her, Frank’s red shape is disappearing down the steps of the Times Square subway station. Swearing, Laurie pours on the speed-it’s a miracle she doesn’t fall and snap her neck as she flies down the stairs in her three-inch heels-but she’s too late. The train doors are already closing as she sails over the turnstile, Frank’s red suit just visible in the crush of bodies crammed inside, and she has to pull up short if she doesn’t want to tumble headfirst onto the tracks.
“Shit!” She kicks out at a nearby vending machine in anger as the train pulls away from the station. “Shit!”
With a rapid patter of light feet Rorschach appears at her side, surveying the situation and letting out an oath of her own. Laurie would laugh at the novelty of Rorschach’s profanity if she weren’t so completely and utterly drained by the frustration of it all.
“Police on their way. Would be wise to vacate the area as soon as possible.”
It’s no joke, Laurie can hear the sirens, but the post-adrenaline crash hits her like a brick wall and she sways, exhausted. Barely able to see straight, she follows Rorschach blindly, down the empty platform, down a twisting flight of stairs, down, down, down a long hallway echoing with scarred white tile and the slow, mournful sax notes of a street musician.
It feels like a dream, like she’s following a foul-tempered black and white to some twisted version of Wonderland, but their downward journey doesn’t last forever. More stairs, going up this time, and they emerge street side almost two blocks away from the Gunga Diner.
Rorschach seems poised to dive back into the crowd, back into the mystery, but Laurie grabs at the back of her coat and drags them to a stop.
“Hold up,” she pants. “I need a minute.”
Rorschach grunts but waits politely as she pushes up the sunglasses to rub furiously at her eyes.
“God, I’m just absolutely thrashed, you know? I’m seeing double.”
“Hm,” Rorschach rumbles, sounding almost sympathetic. Laurie must be more tired than she thought. “Long night.”
“Yeah,” she laughs, weighing her options against her remaining cash. “Look, I think I’m done. For today, anyway. Is it okay if I borrow your coat a little while longer? My place is up in the Bronx and I don’t think it’d go down too well if I took the train there in full costume.”
Laurie’s more than half expecting Rorschach to say no. Rorschach’s quiet for a long time-hands in pockets, head bent, absently chewing at the corner of her chapped lips-so quiet that Laurie reaches up to start undoing the trench’s buttons, assuming that her silence is meant to punctuate the ridiculousness of Laurie’s request, but then-
“Have a place.” Each word sounds like it’s torn out of her with a rusty pair of forceps. “Closer. Are welcome to-“
Laurie waits, but Rorschach doesn’t finish the thought.
Slowly, it dawns on her. She grins.
“Rorschach, you dog. Are you inviting me over for a slumber party?”
“Hmph,” says Rorschach, but it isn’t a ‘no’.
*
It never ceases to amaze Laurie just how seedy New York can become in the space of a few blocks or even a few storefronts. Not that where they started out the day was the epitome of class and refinement, but there were a few tourists out wandering in search of Times Square and a few Indian grocers with stands of fresh produce and flowers poking out into the sidewalk,
Rorschach’s neighborhood, on the other hand, looks like somebody dropped a bomb on it. Or maybe a giant, rotting squid, to judge by the smell.
They stop at a payphone so that Laurie can call her mother and assure her she’s still not dead. Checking in with Rorschach standing right there, not even bothering to turn her back and at least pretend to not be listening in, makes Laurie feel stupid and sixteen again instead of twenty-three.
The phone rings-
Laurie’s itching for her pipe, wishes for the thousandth time that there was a pocket for it somewhere in the silly skin-tight costume her mother designed.
--and rings-
She wonders how many martinis her mother has had today, if she’s even finished sleeping off the ones from last night. Maybe none. Maybe she called up Uncle Hollis and they’re reliving old times somewhere safe and in relative sobriety. Maybe…
--and rings.
She isn’t sure whether or not she actually wants her mother to answer the phone until she hears the beep of her own answering machine. She’s glad she doesn’t have to navigate her mother’s minefield of mindfuck with Rorschach hovering nearby, but she can’t deny the brief, familiar ache of disappointment that flares up as her own voice echoes lonely and mechanical down the miles of telephone wire.
“Hi Mom. Some business came up while I was out. Don’t worry, I bumped into a colleague and we’re working on it together. I should be back sometime tonight. You know where everything is. Restock whatever you empty out of the booze cabinet.”
She bites her tongue, briefly repentant, but hangs up before she can take back the barb.
Rorschach, damn her, doesn’t comment on the tone of her message, just tilts her head and indicates the direction they should go, leaving Laurie to fill the awkward silence as they walk.
“There was a dinner last night at the Waldorf, honoring the Comedian. She wanted to go- why I have no fucking idea-and made me come along. Wanted me to wear a nice dress and pop champagne and walk around all night like he hadn’t tried to fucking rape her and even if he did, like nobody there knew about it.”
Her anger flares hot and fresh within her, making her clenched hands shake. She shoves them into the trenches pockets, but there’s no hiding it from Rorschach.
“Can’t imagine that went well,” she rumbles.
“No it fucking didn’t.” Laurie sighs. “I don’t even know why they had the fucking thing in the first place, there’s not much ‘honorable’ about him.”
“Brave American.”
“He’s a coward and a creep,” Laurie spits. “And you’re better off if he continues to think you’re a guy.”
“Hnnk. Didn’t mean to justify or condone.” She tilts her head up just enough for Laurie to catch a glimpse of a bitter, cynical sneer. “City prefers its heroes bawdy and patriotic. Clean. Makes them think they’re the same, helps them pretend that filth and corruption outside is not their fault. Keep on pretending that decay is hallmark of next generation, keep on ignoring the filth and horrors of their own youth.”
Somewhere above them, a man screams obscenities at a woman, who screams hoarse obscenities back. Someone else turns up the sound on their radio, trying to drown them out. The tune is cheerful and jazzy and makes Laurie feel sick to her stomach.
At length, Rorschach shakes her head. “Don’t know your mother’s intentions.”
“Well,” Laurie laughs, bitter and hollow. “Mothers, you know?”
“No,” says Rorschach.
They walk together, strides matching, the silence between them a comfort now rather than an awkward barrier. When Laurie links their arms again, Rorschach doesn’t even so much as grumble.
*
Just as Laurie’s aching feet are threatening violent mutiny Rorschach steers them up a set of concrete steps and into the narrow, shabby lobby of the Midtown YWCA.
Laurie raises an eyebrow but doesn’t give voice to her surprise. Before today she would never have thought to go looking for Rorschach in a women’s dormitory, which is probably the exact reason that Rorschach chose the place. That and the lobby staff’s long experience in not giving out the names and details of their lodgers to random people off of the street, lest some abusive ex come knocking.
The woman at the front desk eyes Laurie with cautious reservation-wary of the strange face but sympathetic of whatever circumstances left her so dirty and with a brilliant purple bruise peeking out from the edges of her sunglasses-until she spots Rorschach at her side. With a nod she buzzes them through the security door-a thick steel thing coated with layers upon archeological layers of graffiti and flyers-and to the stairs beyond.
Laurie’s tired enough that by the time they reach Rorschach’s floor her legs feel like she’s climbed the Empire State building instead of seven measly stories. Rorschach stops in front of a door halfway down the hall, pulls out a set of stained brass keys, and lets them inside.
Rorschach’s room is roughly the size of a janitor’s closet and about as cheerful, dingy white paint peeling away like a scab to reveal wounded layers of institutional greens and yellows. Newspapers are stacked on every available surface and the narrow bed is covered in a tangled nest of sheets, dirty clothes, and old bandages. There’s a tiny sink crammed underneath the room’s sole window and-in seeming defiance to all the laws of spacial physics-an actual wooden, full-sized wardrobe shoved into a corner. Though battered and scarred the wardrobe’s lines and wooden inlays attests to its history as a genuine antique, and one door hangs open just far enough for Laurie to see a handful of old-fashioned blouses hung on wire hangers.
“Shower’s down the hall,” says Rorschach briskly. Now that they’re here she seems suddenly eager to have Laurie back out again. “Communal towels.”
“Good. Means they’ve probably been washed sometime in the last century.”
For all her snark, the idea of a hot shower-hell, even a tepid one-is so fucking delicious that Laurie kicks off her heels and turns right back around in search of the bathroom. She regrets her bare feet when she sees the grungy state of the floor tiles, but hell, twelve hours ago she was wading blind down a goddamn New York City sewer, so she sets her reservations aside, grabs a stack of towels, and claims an empty shower stall.
Rorschach’s coat creaks as she shrugs out of it, stiff with grime and already molded to her body after a few hours’ wear. Her costume’s black bodysuit is fine if a little rank with sweat, but the yellow silk shell is criss-crossed with dirt in a pattern reminiscent of her preteen attempts at copying the hippie style. Shaking her head, she sets the whole bundle on the bench where it’ll at least stay dry, peels off her underwear, and yanks the shower handle all the way over to hot.
The shower spits and hisses for several seconds before coughing up its first spray of rust-colored water. Laurie makes a face, but the temperature is decent and the pressure is better than her own tap so she eases gratefully into the spray. There’s a pump of generic soap screwed into the wall, so Laurie takes a handful and starts to work her way down her body, hissing faintly as she rediscovers each bruise and scrape. Her shoulder’s in the worst shape; it takes a few minutes before the shower’s staccato spray eases some of the stiffness from the muscles there, and it leaves her itching for something else that she can’t quite lay a finger on.
When she pads back to the room-body and hair wrapped in thin institutional towels-Rorschach has kicked off her boots and stripped down to trousers and a thin, ratty undershirt. She’s got her mask back on-smooth and perfect and inhuman and pulled firmly down the length of her neck-and is bent low over the room’s tiny sink, scrubbing sourly at the black soot staining the cuffs of her white dress shirt.
From this angle Laurie can just pick out the faint lines of an ace bandage wrapped tightly around her chest, but it’s the spattering of freckles and jagged scars across her wide shoulders and muscular back that holds her attention.
“So what do you do to get all pumped and broad like that?” she asks. Her mother’s prescribed exercise routine had emphasized power disguised with leanness, and as they’re in the same line of work Laurie finds the differences in their bodies genuinely interesting.
“Work,” Rorschach grunts, holding the cuff up into the light for a better look. The room either didn’t come with any curtains or they were pulled down to be used as bandages long ago. In their place, Rorschach has pasted layers of newspaper over the glass. What sunlight filters through the columns of text is dim and yellow-gold, making the tiny room feel warm and sleepy.
Apparently satisfied with the quality of her scrub job-not that Laurie can really see the difference, given the quantity of old blood stains-Rorschach drapes the shirt across an impromptu clothes line strung between the wardrobe and the window to dry.
She gestures for the bundle in Laurie’s arms, but when Laurie moves to untangle the trench from her own clothes Rorschach interrupts with a shake of her head.
“Give me your suit,” she says.
Laurie blushes, clutching at it all the tighter. “I can wash my own costume, thank you.”
Rorschach sighs, holds out a hand, but doesn’t ask again. Laurie hands it over.
“So am I just supposed to sleep naked?” she asks, trying to pick out Rorschach’s intentions.
“Hmph.” Rorschach nods towards the room’s lone rather rickety chair, where another of her undershirts sits folded on the seat. “Have a shirt you can wear. Was getting ready to cut it up for rags, anyway.”
“Gee, thanks.” Laurie picks the tank up gingerly, holding it at arm’s length, but the smell isn’t as bad as she was expecting. Smells a bit like cologne, actually. Nostalgia, or something similar. Dropping the towel, she steps back into her panties and pulls the tank over her head. With the mask on Laurie can’t tell if Rorschach is watching. She sticks her tongue out just in case she is.
The chair looks like it might collapse at the slightest touch, so she flops down on the bed to watch Rorschach carefully rinse the worst of the filth out of the yellow silk. There’s a smoothness to the way she handles the fabric, careful not to snag the sheer fabric with her calloused hands and ragged fingernails, that Laurie finds intriguing. She’s seen those same hands bend a man’s fingers all the way backwards to touch his wrist.
“Fair warning, I sometimes kick in my sleep. If I nail you, you’re more than welcome to nail me back.”
“Won’t be a problem,” assures Rorschach primly. “Will be sleeping in the chair.”
“What?” Laurie looks again to be sure, but the furniture in question doesn’t appear to have grown any sturdier.
“No, c’mon. Look, I can make do with the floor. Don’t let me take the bed from you, not when you’ve given- When you’ve let- ” She cuts herself off, unsure of how to articulate what she means, not even sure what to call this… this thing that they’re doing.
“Have done it before. Insist.”
Rorschach’s tone is final and Laurie knows from experience just how stubborn she can be, but Laurie’s pretty stubborn herself. The argument could have gone on until Rorschach dug out a moldy old copy of Emily Post’s Etiquette and smacked her with it but Laurie is frankly too tired to push it any further.
If there’s a pillow it’s well camouflaged beneath Rorschach’s pile of crap, so Laurie pushes and tugs at the pile of dirty laundry until it looks comfortable enough and leans back against it. She uncovers the corner of a sheet during her digging and, yawning, drapes it lightly over her legs.
She means to stay up a little longer, maybe argue some more with Rorschach about the bed situation once she’s rested her eyes a bit. In the corner of the room the radiator rattles to noisy life; a baby cries out in complaint across the hall; outside the air echoes with the blare of car horns and whirr of electric engines.
Laurie means to stay up, really she does, if only to pick out the particulars of Rorschach’s soft, half-muttered grousing at the sink-something about her tailor and shoddy workmanship-but the drip of the tap and the gentle, rhythmic swishing of fabric through water weaves in and around the sounds of life in the city, muting all of their edges into a New York lullaby.
She sleeps.
*
She wakes.
The room is dimmer but not full-dark-it isn’t night quiet yet. She’s kicked herself free of the sheet at some point, leaving her long legs bare and exposed, but Laurie wouldn’t be running around in a costume as skimpy as hers if she wasn’t comfortable in all but extremes in temperature. She’s about to close her eyes and ease back into slumber when she notices a dark, looming shape at the foot of the bed.
It’s Rorschach. Laurie’s glad to see she’s abandoned the rickety wooden chair for the end of the bed itself. If she’s asleep then she’s even more of a robot than Laurie long suspected. She’s sitting bolt upright, cross-legged, arms folded, shoulders straight and rigid with tension, the resolute austerity of her posture betrayed by the slight, rhythmic clenching of her muscular thighs and the heavy edge to each inhalable of breath.
It takes a moment, but Laurie recognizes the motion from some of her own first naïve experiments with her body. The realization wakes her up fully, makes her heart thump heavily in her chest, but she doesn’t open her eyes fully just yet. Better to survey her opponent for possible weaknesses and unseen advantages before springing to attack.
Rorschach’s blots are pointed straight ahead but Laurie’s not fooled by the mask. She can feel her gaze even through the heavy, swirling ink, can make an educated guess at its direction. Slowly, as if in sleep, she shifts her legs, sliding one smoothly across the other, and grins at the hitch in Rorschach’s carefully measured breathing.
“You know, there are a lot more direct ways to get your rocks off.”
To her credit, Rorschach doesn’t jump, but the guilty way she uncrosses her legs only to clamp back them back together again, as if to erase all the evidence of what she’s been doing, tells Laurie all that she needs to know.
That and the fact that the room stinks like sex.
“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” Rorschach rasps. The pale, freckled skin of her chest and shoulders is brilliantly flushed with a violent red pattern of Rorschach blotches.
“Of course you don’t.” She prods Rorschach’s knee experimentally with her foot; the masked woman tenses but doesn’t move away. “Is that why you wear pants? Jesus, do the seams ever ride up high and tight enough for you to grind against them during patrol?”
The blots on Rorschach’s mask look absolutely scandalized at the idea.
“Kidding, kidding! Besides, I meant what I said about more direct means of stimulation. For example-”
“Know that, Miss Juspeczyk,” Rorschach hisses. “Am not ignorant of the myriad forms of human depravity. No need to list-“
“-you could ask me to go down on you.” To emphasize her point, Laurie slides her foot from the platonic safety of Rorschach’s knee up to rest lightly along the inside of her thigh.
Rorschach’s mouth closes with an audible click. It’s almost a full minute before she finds her voice again.
“That would be-”
“Awesome?”
“Inappropriate. Distasteful, demeaning-“
“And awesome!”
“No.”
“Okay.” Laurie props herself up on her elbows, withdraws her foot. Rorschach makes an indiscernible noise as the loss of contact. “Okay. Too far, too fast. So what do you want?” Rorschach is already shaking her head, so Laurie changes tactics.
“What where you thinking about while I was sleeping?” she asks quietly.
Rorschach is gripping her own arms so hard that her knuckles are white, but Laurie’s already guessed at her weak spot. Arching her back, she stretches her legs, cat-like, moaning softly in genuine relief at the pull of well-used muscles.
“What were you looking at, Rorschach?”
“Your legs,” she chokes.
“Why?”
Rorschach swallows.
“Are strong. Disciplined.” One hand has freed itself from the prison of her crossed arms, is hovering just over Laurie’s ankle, not touching. “Scarred.”
The way Rorschach whispers the word it sounds reverent, like a prayer to some long-forgotten saint. Laurie blinks, looking down the plane of her body to the dimly shining length of her bare legs, the flesh sporadically crisscrossed with faint white lines and mottled with bruises in all stages of healing. When she wears short skirts in civilian life it’s typically with tights.
“Yeah well, they come with the job, don’t they?”
“Yes,” rasps Rorschach, blots thick and dark. “They do.”
*
Rorschach’s approach to foreplay can only be described as ‘glacial’. It takes for-fucking-ever-a touch here, a ghost of breath there-but as the ice sheet of her reservation draws back it reveals a new, rugged territory clawed from the earth, jagged peaks and lush valleys that call for exploration.
Rorschach’s hands are smaller than Laurie expected, cold with panic but dry. The close first around Laurie’s ankles, thumbs pressed into the hard line of her Achilles tendon as fingers trace the shining, circular callous worn by the straps of her heels, before sliding soft and hesitant up the length of her calves, Rorschach’s breathing deep and heavy.
Laurie shifts and squirms down the bed until she can wrap both legs completely around the other woman, pulling her close to rest in the cradle between her legs. Rorschach teeters, briefly off-balance, but manages to catch herself on the bed, letting out a whuff in half-heated protest at the abrupt shift in position or Laurie’s impatience, maybe both.
Grinning, Laurie flicks at the bulge where her mask pulls tightly across her nose, though she manages to resist the sudden, surprisingly strong impulse to give a good solid tweak. Rorschach growls and nips at her knee in retaliation, the scrape of teeth blunted by her mask’s thick latex.
The surprise of it is enough to make her gasp, but the sensation alone is enough to curl her toes and make something throb low and heavy in her belly. “Oh fuck me!” Then, just in case Rorschach needs it spelled out in flashing neon: “Do that again.”
Rorschach hesitates, head tilted as if questioning Laurie’s sanity, but repeats the movement. It jangles her nerves the same way landing a really good hit does, shuddering aftershocks shooting down her spine. Rorschach switches sides, biting softly at her other knee, then sooths the area with a firm press of lips through the mask. It would be chaste if Rorschach didn’t linger so close to Laurie’s inner thigh, if Laurie couldn’t feel the hard muscles of her back fluttering with restraint.
Slowly, with increasing urgency, Rorschach traces up the crooked line of her leg, pausing to mouth reverently at last night’s bruises, the thin white line left across the back of her thigh by a switchblade years ago in her rash and careless teens. Laurie holds her breath, unsure just how far Rorschach is going to go, but rather than balking Rorschach butts up hard against her sex and nuzzles there, breath hitching into deep, desperate sobs as if trying to drown herself in Laurie’s smell.
Christ. Christ.
Between her underwear and Rorschach’s mask there’s not much direct stimulation but the visual is pretty fucking fantastic. Still, no reason it can’t be better. Laurie worms one hand down between her legs, shivering at the contrast temperatures of the heated flesh beneath her palm and the cool slip of latex along the back of her knuckles.
The cotton fabric of her panties is slick with her wetness. Slipping her fingers beneath the elastic, Laurie strokes down through the damp curls of her hair and along the hot, swollen throb of her clit, scratching with the smooth edge of one nail along the edge of her hood. She shivers at the sensation, how it skirts just on the edge of pleasure, and flicks the nail lightly across the taut head.
Rorschach mouths at her through the layers of fabric, growls. The vibration of it and the scrape of her nails are too much, so Laurie backs off, settling into a rhythmic, pressing circling with the pads of two fingers, pace guided by the rise and fall of Rorschach’s head, the push and pull of her body as she grinds against the dirty sheets.
Rorschach’s hard, bony hands dig and paw desperately at the flesh of her thighs, hard enough that the blunt nails scrape and leave red crescents where they clench, but Laurie doesn’t care. There’s a white heat building between her legs, making her hips buck and her knees quake, the electric buzz of it riding hard and fast just along the edge of numbness, just this side of sensation overload.
With her free hand she cups at the top of Rorschach’s head, feeling the hard contours of her skull, marveling in the way the black twists and coils with the white but never mixes, the pattern scattering in the warm wake of her hand.
She’s so close to-
One pull, one moment of betrayal and she could-
And Rorschach’s letting her, she trusts-
She-
*
Laurie pants, breathless, through the aftermath, hands running loose and vague over Rorschach’s head and shoulders, trying to find enough purchase and grip strength to haul her up to eye-level, but Rorschach’s pulling away from the loose clasp of her limbs, scuttling backward off the bed and tripping over a pile of newspapers in the haste of her retreat.
“Rorschach-?”
Rorschach paces rapidly back and forth across the room, looking lost, arms rigid and hands clenching and unclenching into sweaty, white-knuckled fists at her side.
“Yes,” she answers before Laurie can even begin to voice the rest of the question. “Yes.” She pauses briefly at the window, staring blindly beyond the abstract collage of backlit newsprint, before turning abruptly on one heel and marching to the door. Fumbling one-handed with the locks, she tears off her mask and stuffs it into her pocket a mere moment before opening the door.
Harsh fluorescent light floods in from the hallway. Temporarily blinded, all Laurie can make out of Rorschach unmasked in a black silhouette topped with a halo of bright copper curls before the door closes solidly behind her.
Suddenly alone in the room, Laurie sits up, unsure of what to do. She spends a minute debating following after her but decides it would be better to wait. She has no doubt that Rorschach will come back, if only for the rest of her costume and the leather-bound journal Laurie’s seen her reference on occasion.
If Rorschach needs some time and space to herself after what they’ve done, Laurie is more than happy to respect that distance. It’s been a big day for Rorschach. Hell, if Laurie had somebody see through such a major component of her crime-fighting persona, compromised her secret identity by taking that person home for a nap, and stumbled into heavy petting and kinda oral sex, she’d probably need a moment to herself to process the whole thing, too.
She waits long enough that she starts to doze, dreams a half-remembered dream of smoke slipping through her fingers. The soft click of the door and rattle of the security chain drags her out from the shadows of sleep and back to the dim reality of wakefulness. Rorschach is standing in the doorway, mask back on but pulled upward to rest across the bridge of her nose, watching her.
“Hey,” Laurie whispers, groggy with sleep. She opens her arms. “C’mere.”
Rorschach’s calmer now, breathing even and limbs no longer shaking, but she approaches the bed with the slow, stalking caution of an alley cat investigating a proffered can of food.
It isn’t until Rorschach climbs back on top of Laurie that she realizes that she’s soaking wet, skin slick and cool beneath her fingers. Went to the showers to think, then. Didn’t even bother to dry off, judging by the way her clothes are sticking to her. Her white tank is nearly transparent in places, and Laurie notes with a pleasant buzz that the binding bandage she’d been wearing earlier is gone. The soft shifting of her breasts is faint but noticeable, as are the stiff, dark peaks of her nipples.
“Sorry,” Rorschach mumbles, carefully straddling across Laurie’s hips. Laurie catches her around the waist, pulling at her until Rorschach is firmly seated, the hard bones of her pelvis settled just above her pubis, knees tucked tightly along the stretch of her waist. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Laurie says, pressing her palms up the bunched muscles of Rorschachs legs, over the jutting crest of her hip bones, up the small of her back, and back. Repeats the motion, going a little higher with each pass, digging a little harder, until Rorschach groans and leans forward into the rough massage, bracing her weight with a hand on each side of Laurie’s head. “What do you need me to do?”
“Don’t need-” Rorschach swallows, starts over. “Would appreciate you not mentioning this to Nite Owl.”
“The hot lesbian sex part or the brief interlude devoted to freaking out in the bathroom part?”
“Both, if possible.” Rorschach squirms as Laurie’s hands toy with the hem of her shirt, slipping tickling fingers underneath to brush up her spine and along the hard, ripped plane of her abdomen, but somehow manages to come across as cool and composed.
Laurie smiles. “You got it. Care for round two of hot vigilante on vigilante action?”
“That course of action sounds… favorable.”
“Good.” Rorschach lets out a small ehnk of surprise as Laurie pops open the button of her pants and starts pulling eagerly at her zipper. “Because I’ve been dying to see what those blots of yours look like when you orgasm.”
She expects Rorschach’s underwear to be high-waisted and plain, or maybe-the thought makes her mouth water-a demure silk edged in the same lilac pattern as the handkerchief she’d given her earlier, but no, it’s even better than that.
Rorschach’s not wearing underwear at all.
*
Laurie knows that there’s a whole freight car full of baggage more that Rorschach’s leaving unsaid, but she doesn’t push, deciding that it’s Rorschach business entirely when, or even if, she continues the conversation.
Only later, kneeling together on the bed, their bodies flushed and sticking, Rorschach clinging to her shoulders as if life itself depends on it, will she pick up the train of thought again, whispering so fast and frantic into the long hollow of her neck that Laurie has to strain to make it out.
“It’s just. Sometimes I don’t- Sometimes I wish-“
Rorschach shudders, body arching as deep within, Laurie crooks her fingers again and again, but she keeps talking, voice strained with frustration and despair.
“Partners,” she whimpers. “You know?”
Laurie kisses her then, first at the edge of the snaking blot curled around her eye, then in a slow, soft arc down her cheek to catch hungrily at the corner of her wide, bruised mouth.
“Yeah,” says Laurie. “I know.”
*
Laurie’s costume is still a little damp by the time they suit up that evening, the last flashes of the setting sun flooding the tiny room with an orange glow nearly as fiery as Rorschach’s hair. Her panties aren’t in much better shape, washed last minute and hastily dried under the hot air of the automatic hand dryer in the communal bathroom, but she figures that her body heat combined with the night wind will have both remedied soon enough.
She’s sore, but it’s a good ache, an echo of battles well fought and victories hard won. With each pull and stretch of her muscles as she climbs and prowls and leaps over the city Laurie remembers the pull and stretch of another body intertwined with hers.
It all feels a bit unreal now, away from the close stuffiness of Rorschach’s tiny room and out in the cold night air of the wide, dirty world, Rorschach wrapped once again in protective layer upon layer of men’s fashion, but Laurie won’t soon forget how perfectly Rorschach’s small breasts, wide and faintly flat, had fit into her hands, the pleasant scrape of her nipples along Laurie’s palms.
Leaping from one rooftop to the next, they at last come to a stop atop a factory in the heart of the Garment District. Rorschach looms at the edge of the roof, blots demonic, and stares down into the screaming neon maw of the city below like a modern gargoyle in a blood-stained fedora.
There was a time when Laurie would have been genuinely creeped by the pose, but now it evokes a much more pleasant memory. Rorschach, bent double as if in pain staring down at her with mouth agape, clenching and clenching around her fingers while Laurie sucked mercilessly at her clit until she’d cried out her name-not the name her mother had tried to run from, not the mask her mother had hidden behind before passing down to her-but a high, desperate ‘Laurel’ moments before another shuddering orgasm robbed her of speech.
“So what’s the plan, Stan? Down to the docks to beat up low-level mob smugglers until they drop a tasty lead, or should we leave the tragic death of Mr. Shrimpy to the cops?”
Rorschach tilts her head, hands in pockets. “Been thinking. Said the plan had changed, gotten a new gimmick. For what? Mob not known for themed crimes, also not many circumstances where explosives can easily be substituted.”
“What do you think they meant to use them for?”
“Not sure. Boss could mean Underboss. Power weakened by imprisonment, but has been able to retain enough loyalty and contacts to continue limited form of business. Unclear what use would have for such volatile explosives. Mostly deals drug shipments and counterfeit luxury wear.”
“Is that why we’re here?” She cranes her neck to look over the edge of the building, but from this angle she can’t make out the name of the brand on the building’s signage.
“No,” Rorschach grunts.
“So… what? This your thinking spot, or something?”
This at last earns Laurie an annoyed sort of harrumph. It’s quickly becoming one of her very favorite noises.
“Scheduled to patrol with Nite Owl. This the meet-up point.”
As if on cue, there’s a roar of engines overhead. Laurie looks up just in time to catch the bronze, rounded shape of Nite Owl’s airship break and bank back around towards them Nite Owl himself just visible through the large, round windows of the ship. He nods at them and pulls around to hover alongside their rooftop. Burners flare and sputter as the owlship stabilizes and a hatch opens along its side with a pneumatic hiss.
“Hey!” Nite Owl pokes his head out, waving. “You didn’t head by the Owl Nest earlier, did you? Sorry if I missed you.”
“No.” Rorschach nods at Laurie. “Been working on a case with Silk Specter.”
“Oh, uh.” Nite Owl adjusts his goggles and smiles at her sheepishly, so adorable that Laurie forgives him for being blind as a fucking bat. “Hi. If it’s urgent I’ll leave you to it, but-“
“It isn’t,” Laurie interjects. “Gone cold for now. What’s up?”
Nite Owl jerks a thumb over his shoulder, gesturing vaguely northward. “There’s a riot up at Sing Sing, sounds like they’re really tearing the place apart. You in?”
Laurie looks to Rorschach, uncertain of their dynamic and not wanting to step unintentionally on any land mines, not sure that she’s even still welcome to show her face in Rorschach’s territory after this afternoon, but Rorschach nods and steps aside, indicating the waiting ladder with a slight bow and a sweep of one purple-gloved hand.
“Ladies first,” she growls.
“What’s so funny?” asks Nite Owl as she clambers up the ladder--half-smiling but his eyebrows quirked with worry, probably concerned about her mental health--but Laurie is laughing too hard to make excuses and she’s not about to explain.