Alphabet of Niteschach (S-Z)
(I'm done. You know damn well what this is.)
S is for Sadistic
The smaller body thrashes against the sheets, face scrunched in frustration and annoyance as Daniel bends over him, insistent.
“Just take it,” he growls, voice as rough and forceful as Rorschach’s usually is. The other man doesn’t say a word, just presses his lips together and twists weakly away. Daniel huffs a sigh and tries to switch tactics, softening his voice and putting his head to the side. “C’mon, buddy, you need this.”
Rorschach shakes his head silently, keeping his mouth shut and arching his back, like he might sink into the mattress and away. It’s a stalemate, neither willing or able to move, and it goes on and on - until the smaller man it caught by surprise, a cough bursting out of him with enough force that he can’t keep his mouth closed completely.
Dan will feel bad later, but in the moment he seizes the opportunity, forcing the spoon deftly between his partner’s teeth and tipping the liquid down in one smooth motion, so it’s either swallow or choke. The other man sputters and struggles, but in the end more of the violently green liquid goes down than is forced out.
Despite the glare - it lacks the venom to make it much more than sulky - Dan smiles as he sits back.
“Poison,” Rorschach growls, before collapsing into another fit of coughing, heavy and thick with whatever sickness has nested in his chest. And Dan only screws the cap tighter on the bottle, nodding vacantly.
“Yup. I just fought you for half an hour to make you swallow poison.” He paws at his face, smearing cough syrup off his cheek. “Because you’re not sick from wandering the streets in nothing warmer than a soaking wet coat, and I am an evil, evil person who likes watching you suffer, which is why I forced you to take the guest bed in the first place. So I have a prime view.”
Setting the cough syrup on the bed side table, Dan moves from the edge of the bed to the only chair in the room, folding his hands on his lap and meeting Rorschach’s gaze evenly. He tries not to look surprised when the other man looks away, red pooling in his cheeks. “Didn’t say that,” he grumbles, and Dan knows, but it’s like an apology and as close to thanks as he’s going to get for taking care of his sick partner.
Dan doesn’t say anything at all, just picks up his book and flips it open, watching Rorschach settle back into the bed, coughing weakly every once and a while. He waits until the other man has closed his eyes to say, “You’re taking another dose in an hour.”
The other man stays quiet for a moment, pressing his lips tightly together in frowning disapproval before grunting one last word.
“Sadist.”
T is for Twist
Sometimes, when he’s being particularly stupid or has been hit particularly hard, Dan just watches his partner move. It would be better if he could do this discretely while he was taking care of himself, but when he tries (and he calls this being stupid) he almost always freezes up, watching the easy stretch and flex of the lean, muscular body he knows lurks under all those layers. Freezing up is a bad thing, and it almost always leads to excuse number two- getting hit. Hard.
And he’s floored this time, fist hitting his face and sending him reeling back into the wall, cracking the back of his head there and then his temple as he sinks to the ground. He manages to get up on his knees when the boot swings into his chest, landing him on his ass. He can see the punks turned toward him, moving closer in measured movements all too like scavengers descending on a corpse, and he has time to think this is going to hurt before Rorschach is there, twisting fluidly in and out of the rush of bodies. He’s all easy athleticism and defensive fury, snarling and ignoring any hits they manage to land on him.
Dan knows now that Walter is a tailor; he’s seen his work and understands the formation of calluses on his finger tips better. But watching him like this, turning a fall into an easy hand-spring, he can’t help imaging him as a performer, a gymnast in some stretchy, clinging suit, all strength and self-assurance and no pain but for the stretch of muscles and
“Hurt?”
The word snaps him out of reverie, and Dan opens eyes he didn’t realize he had closed, staring into the warping face of concern. He smiles and hooks an arm around Rorschach’s shoulder and kisses him through the mask, muttering something indecipherable about ‘acrobats’ and ‘trapeze’, making the smaller man wonder dimly just how hard he’d been hit.
U is for Unclean
Daniel’s shout of negation still rings in his ears, caught like a ravaging creature in his head, tearing through his chest in pain he didn’t know he had room to feel. Some dim part of him knows Daniel never should have been there to see what they had found together; never should have taken the case with him. He’s taken it badly himself, but Daniel has taken it worse - this unforgivable failure on both their parts, this knowledge that they are still fallible, still capable of terrible mistakes.
He was surprised when it was Daniel who leapt on the child-murdering piece of scum, beating him first with fists and finally hauling him bodily into a wall. More surprised by the noise he was making while he did it (and he had been so close, hitting just as hard, just as angry and desperate). It was an animal noise, a shuddering growl that rose and fell with rage and misery, and Rorschach recognized it because it so often left his own lips.
What he had most wanted to do was kill the man, and he could tell by that noise that Daniel wanted it too. But he wouldn’t allow it; acknowledged it was what the man deserved but said they didn’t deserve to do it, didn’t have the right to become executioners on top of all the other liberties they took with the judicial system. And his voice had been so stern and unforgiving that Rorschach had let him take the matches, let him throw them in Grice’s face with another wordless growl.
Daniel is strong and good and Rorschach believes him when he says Grice will get worse in prison than they could dish out in one evening. So it feels wrong that he’s bent over the basement sink, back in the Owl Cave, weeping and broken and clawing at his hands. The soap is forgotten in the basin and Daniel’s hands are red and raw under the steaming water, trembling as he digs one set of nails into the back of the other and scrapes.
He was wearing gloves the whole time; his bare hands cannot have been contaminated, but Rorschach knows better. He knows the sinking feeling of bone-deep filth, knows that blood sinks through leather and cotton and skin and bone, seeping into the soul and staining you forever.
But it does him injury to hear that noise, high and keening like a dying bird, echoing in the cavernous room, and as much as he wants to disappear and give Daniel his privacy, some part of him knows that would be the worst possible thing. Daniel is strong and good, but he’s also so badly hurt now that those things mean nothing to him. He needs stitching to hold him together or he’ll fall apart like a badly pinned gown going down the runway.
So Rorschach steps quietly behind him, catching his arms at the wrist and holding them still, prying them apart and away from the scalding water. Daniel struggles at first and then sinks back against him, babbling about being wrong and too late and pain and dirty filthy stupid unclean unclean unclean.
He doesn’t let go, lets the other man talk until the words fail and falter into hiccups and sighs. When he finally speaks, the words are maybe not the right ones, not the most comforting, but they make Daniel still and calm. “Never washes away, Daniel,” he says softly, “Only builds up, second skins to make us stronger.”
V is for Vacation
They never leave the city because the city needs them. Nights off are rare and usually mean one or both of them are injured or for some reason otherwise occupied. ‘Nights off’ also usually entail recon and foot work and all the little things that fit together to make a bust.
“We should go somewhere,” Dan mutters, his voice obscured by Walter’s shoulder. He grins lazily as the other man shifts slightly, knowing he wants to get out of bed and start the day, and also knowing that he wants to indulge in this moment a little longer. “Somewhere nice and quiet.”
“Quiet here,” Walter says, crisp and awake despite the early hour and his broken wrist.
Dan laughs, tightening his grip on the other man’s waist. “Maybe I want to go somewhere new, explore something. Distract myself.”
Fluidly, Walter has rolled over in his arms, facing him. His homely face is brightened by those intense eyes, meeting Dan’s with no hesitation as he presses a silent kiss to the corner of his mouth. “Go somewhere new every night, Daniel,” he says. “Distracted enough, don’t you think?”
W is for Wedding
The question comes with dry laughter, slurred by the cigar hanging out of the Comedian’s mouth. It makes Dan freeze in his seat, head turning slowly to regard Rorschach, who is staring sternly at the older man, rigid with what Dan knows can only be contained violence.
“What?” He growls, leather creaking as his fingers fold into fists on the table top. Adrian coughs and starts to say something, likely an attempt at changing the subject before the situation can escalate. But the slight turn of Blake’s head toward him shuts him up, and the older man just grins wider.
“I said,” he enunciates, plucking the cigar from between his teeth to remove any chance of being misheard, “When’s the wedding? Don’t wanna be late finding a gift fer you.”
There’s a strangled sound from Laurie’s side of the room, too close for a laugh before it’s turned into a disapproving grunt. Dan is on his feet, just holding his breath, not daring to move his hand from the table top and further incriminate them by touching the other man. He doesn’t move toward the Comedian, but he’s waiting for Rorschach to uncoil, to spring at the older man in a flurry of fists and wild kicks and denial; waiting for the breaking of furniture and bones and maybe of this tenuous alliance.
He’s prepared to reach in to the fray and drag his partner away, to block his hits and brush away his insults and do what it takes to get them out of their without anyone hurt more than is unavoidable.
He’s not prepared for a hand sliding over his, a noise like defiance slipping into the growl emanating from Rorschach’s throat. “Gay marriage is illegal,” is all the smaller man says, before leaning back into his chair, seeming to ignore the sound of the Comedian’s laughter as it cracks across the room.
It says something about what they’ve done for each other that he’s the one to lurch to his feet and Rorschach is the one to give the glib response and let it wash away… but Daniel is too distracted by the warm feeling crawling around his guts to think too hard about what it might be.
X is for Xerotripsis
It almost burns, this tension between them. Dan is waiting for it to snap like a rubber band, to explode and sting them both. Fling them apart or force them together - plays out differently in his mind every time he contemplates it.
As it is, each night of patrol is agony, and he’s worried he’s getting sloppy. The only thing that makes it okay is knowing that Rorschach is just as awkward and distracted, just as jumpy.
The early morning hours spent stitching each other up are almost laughably uncomfortable, hands ending up where they shouldn’t and yanked away before any response can rise. Neither of them know what the hell they’re doing, any more than they can admit that anything is happening at all. Dan won’t make Rorschach any more ill at ease than he already is by pushing things, figuring it’s better to see how it plays out on its own. Things usually work out okay.
He’ll take what he can get now, each brush of leather-clad hands on unwounded skin burning like dry friction, promising something he knows he can never have.
Y is for Yield
A lot of this relationship is work for Dan. It’s intricate, delicate work, not unlike working on a particularly fragile piece of machinery. And it’s just that important to do everything right, to make sure to use the right tools and the right amount of torque and push all the right buttons in all the right orders.
He enjoys the work in the same way he enjoys working on his gadgets. It’s frustrating at times, and there are moments when he just throws his hands up and says enough. But it’s never enough and he always comes back, fiddling and tweaking and making it all just so.
Because he knows that, like anything involving so much work, the end result is going to be something beautiful and precious and unforgettable. And when he reaches that, he can bask in what his work has yielded with no guilt at all.
Z is for Zoetic
He never meant for this to happen, but it’s done now. Love is a line, a rope that has wrapped around him and snared him into something that he cannot survive escaping. But it is also a rod of power running through him, something pulsing and vital and completing.
Maybe it’s wrong. Probably it is. All these moments are is indulgence, setting aside duty and propriety to be needy, holding each other back out of selfish need for safety.
But Rorschach cannot lie, not even to himself. These things they do together, sins committed in the sanctuary and cover of darkness; they are wrong. They must be. But they feel so good, so beautiful and whole and right in the moment, and the guilt come slower and with less force every time.
They need each other, and these things they do might be wrong, but it holds them together and lets them work all the closer, stronger than they ever could be alone. If he could go back and stop himself from meeting Daniel, maybe that would be better - but he can’t do that, and so he has to live with this current stream of events. Part of that is having Daniel at his side, a weakness and strength all at once.