[fic] Safe; Watchmen; Dan/Ror
Title: Safe
Fandom: Watchmen
Pairing: Dan/Ror
Rating: R
Warnings: None
Summary: Pre-Roche established relationship. After a bad night on patrol, they need each other.
Originally written 8/29/09 on the KM for an anon who needed some healing d'awww.
He cannot stop looking at the shape it makes on the wall.
Nite Owl is shouting somewhere behind him-at what, he doesn't know. At whom, he doesn't know. He also doesn't know when the light changed from a dim and grimy yellow to a strobing red and blue in metronomic rhythm-red, blue, red, blue, black-casting his shadow against the wall in a slightly different direction each time, making it shudder and jump like something possessed, leaping across the spread of glimmering black blood on brick.
It truly is Nite Owl, not Daniel: there is rage, there is violence in the raw timbre of his voice. Both of them do this on nights when it goes bad, both of them allow the men they must be during the day to hide behind mythical beasts and blank faces.
It can only last for so long. It can only help for so long.
A prostitute died tonight.
//
There is a hand on his shoulder, shaking him, and it is only because his body recognizes the grip by instinct that he doesn't allow the calculated part of his mind to take over and systematically destroy whoever is touching him. (Shame burns low at the realization that it is not only nightly combat which has familiarized him to that touch.)
"Come on, buddy," he's Daniel again, voice breaking in a way which reminds him that they're both only twenty-six years old. Pleading. He has been weeping. "Come on, let's just, let's go home."
Home. That sounds-
Walter can only nod mechanically, his head hanging low at the end. He does not shrug off Daniel's hand.
//
It is not erotic when they strip off their clothes in the basement, shedding costumes that blood has soaked into too warm. They need to peel it away, everything tonight which has invaded dark and ugly to touch something deep. He has not yet allowed Daniel to see his whole body this way, this stark and ugly body, but they are baring themselves together without judgment and tonight it does not matter.
He has unmasked too, and Daniel looks unbearably grateful for it in the few seconds before he strides over, catching him and holding their bodies against each other as their breaths catch unevenly but almost in sync.
His usual objections have deserted him. This is an exception. This is shared grief, this is shared pain, this is two people reaching out to feel the wholeness and humanity of each other in the face of remembered horror. Everything is reassuringly solid beneath his seeking hands as he fights against the images painting the inside of his mind's eye.
Daniel's body is steady and warm. They are naked together. The basement is silent.
There is something he needs, suddenly-perhaps something he's been chasing all along, this entire time since they have started doing these heated illicit things. No, he cannot do that tonight, because he cannot bear to do violence to Daniel's body, not now. It seems like the worst kind of sacrilege. But the need is cresting urgently all the same, something separate and more mysterious than lust. He wants to ask for things he does not know the name of and holds onto Daniel's arms and presses confused fumbling kisses against his throat until Daniel is gasping, "me too."
They've never done this in the bedroom. He's always avoided it for reasons he can't articulate, fearful reasons, but Daniel is kissing his shoulder as they stand at the foot of the bed and he is shutting his eyes.
(There are worse and more brutal things than sexual relations. He thinks he can see that now. He thinks he feels an awakening tearing open in his mind, and it is more profound and frightening than the first night he drove himself deep inside, whimpers forming in his throat over and and over. Like the precursors to an earthquake.)
This is different. This is cracking him open and rearranging the pieces into something new. He shakes but craves more like a man dying of thirst.
The two of them crawl together beneath the cool and clean sheets, pulling up the blankets to their shoulders and shutting out everything. Safe and good. Their bodies turn toward each other, entangling.
They are as close as possible now, and the important part is somehow not that they are rolling their hips together, slowly, but that they are kissing.
He has never been held like this, like something treasured. He is not fighting it, not when Daniel is calling him Walter over and over as if he needs him.
When he moves over Daniel he is careful with him, leaving no bruises on his thighs, and the point is not to satisfy a sharp and grating edge but to feel him and know that he is alive, to allow himself to be felt and drawn in and-is this the way it should be-
More important, much more important than the gathering shake in his muscles are the hands against his back, sliding down, and the whispers against the side of his face, we're okay.
And he allows himself to be seen and allows himself to cry out when his throat clenches and his hips buck helplessly and Daniel is throwing his head back to bare his neck, thumbs sweeping over Walter's hipbones to comfort and steady and he is baptized by the heat coursing up through his veins and to experience this in the arms of another person he has trusted with his life for years is-
In the aftermath he will allow Daniel to be inside him in turn, to put his hands on his face, to take him to pieces without shame.
Money is not the reason for this. Lust is not the reason for this.
They are forming something warm and valuable in this room, hidden from the terrors of the city. This feels like the safest and most central part of the world.
Fandom: Watchmen
Pairing: Dan/Ror
Rating: R
Warnings: None
Summary: Pre-Roche established relationship. After a bad night on patrol, they need each other.
Originally written 8/29/09 on the KM for an anon who needed some healing d'awww.
He cannot stop looking at the shape it makes on the wall.
Nite Owl is shouting somewhere behind him-at what, he doesn't know. At whom, he doesn't know. He also doesn't know when the light changed from a dim and grimy yellow to a strobing red and blue in metronomic rhythm-red, blue, red, blue, black-casting his shadow against the wall in a slightly different direction each time, making it shudder and jump like something possessed, leaping across the spread of glimmering black blood on brick.
It truly is Nite Owl, not Daniel: there is rage, there is violence in the raw timbre of his voice. Both of them do this on nights when it goes bad, both of them allow the men they must be during the day to hide behind mythical beasts and blank faces.
It can only last for so long. It can only help for so long.
A prostitute died tonight.
//
There is a hand on his shoulder, shaking him, and it is only because his body recognizes the grip by instinct that he doesn't allow the calculated part of his mind to take over and systematically destroy whoever is touching him. (Shame burns low at the realization that it is not only nightly combat which has familiarized him to that touch.)
"Come on, buddy," he's Daniel again, voice breaking in a way which reminds him that they're both only twenty-six years old. Pleading. He has been weeping. "Come on, let's just, let's go home."
Home. That sounds-
Walter can only nod mechanically, his head hanging low at the end. He does not shrug off Daniel's hand.
//
It is not erotic when they strip off their clothes in the basement, shedding costumes that blood has soaked into too warm. They need to peel it away, everything tonight which has invaded dark and ugly to touch something deep. He has not yet allowed Daniel to see his whole body this way, this stark and ugly body, but they are baring themselves together without judgment and tonight it does not matter.
He has unmasked too, and Daniel looks unbearably grateful for it in the few seconds before he strides over, catching him and holding their bodies against each other as their breaths catch unevenly but almost in sync.
His usual objections have deserted him. This is an exception. This is shared grief, this is shared pain, this is two people reaching out to feel the wholeness and humanity of each other in the face of remembered horror. Everything is reassuringly solid beneath his seeking hands as he fights against the images painting the inside of his mind's eye.
Daniel's body is steady and warm. They are naked together. The basement is silent.
There is something he needs, suddenly-perhaps something he's been chasing all along, this entire time since they have started doing these heated illicit things. No, he cannot do that tonight, because he cannot bear to do violence to Daniel's body, not now. It seems like the worst kind of sacrilege. But the need is cresting urgently all the same, something separate and more mysterious than lust. He wants to ask for things he does not know the name of and holds onto Daniel's arms and presses confused fumbling kisses against his throat until Daniel is gasping, "me too."
They've never done this in the bedroom. He's always avoided it for reasons he can't articulate, fearful reasons, but Daniel is kissing his shoulder as they stand at the foot of the bed and he is shutting his eyes.
(There are worse and more brutal things than sexual relations. He thinks he can see that now. He thinks he feels an awakening tearing open in his mind, and it is more profound and frightening than the first night he drove himself deep inside, whimpers forming in his throat over and and over. Like the precursors to an earthquake.)
This is different. This is cracking him open and rearranging the pieces into something new. He shakes but craves more like a man dying of thirst.
The two of them crawl together beneath the cool and clean sheets, pulling up the blankets to their shoulders and shutting out everything. Safe and good. Their bodies turn toward each other, entangling.
They are as close as possible now, and the important part is somehow not that they are rolling their hips together, slowly, but that they are kissing.
He has never been held like this, like something treasured. He is not fighting it, not when Daniel is calling him Walter over and over as if he needs him.
When he moves over Daniel he is careful with him, leaving no bruises on his thighs, and the point is not to satisfy a sharp and grating edge but to feel him and know that he is alive, to allow himself to be felt and drawn in and-is this the way it should be-
More important, much more important than the gathering shake in his muscles are the hands against his back, sliding down, and the whispers against the side of his face, we're okay.
And he allows himself to be seen and allows himself to cry out when his throat clenches and his hips buck helplessly and Daniel is throwing his head back to bare his neck, thumbs sweeping over Walter's hipbones to comfort and steady and he is baptized by the heat coursing up through his veins and to experience this in the arms of another person he has trusted with his life for years is-
In the aftermath he will allow Daniel to be inside him in turn, to put his hands on his face, to take him to pieces without shame.
Money is not the reason for this. Lust is not the reason for this.
They are forming something warm and valuable in this room, hidden from the terrors of the city. This feels like the safest and most central part of the world.