Terminus

It's 1977, early March, and Dan is sick of everything.

His ship is charred from molotovs, coated with egg and graffitied with obscenities on the outside, and reeks of cigar smoke and whiskey on the inside. His eyes feel tight and sore from tear gas despite the protection of his goggles. His shoulders ache from the night's tensions—both from the rioters and the prolonged company of the Comedian—and as far as he can tell, all they accomplished was making an already shitty situation worse.

The only thing, he thinks as he strips off his gauntlets and cowl and fumbles for his glasses, the only thing that could make this night perfect in its awfulness, would be a visit from Rorschach.

So of course he's there in his workshop, lurking like the ghost of violence past, present and yet to come. He's rifling through Dan's medikit, a furtive shadow hunched in the corner of the basement, but straightens up when he hears Dan approach.

Dan can smell him from six feet away: blood and pollution and old sweat. "What are you doing here?"

Rorschach says nothing, pocketing a bottle of painkillers.

Dan sighs and rakes his hands through his hair. Okay, the usual then. "How'd it go on your side of town?" he asks, even though he really doesn't want to know the answer. He will find out tomorrow on the front page of the Gazette. All the lurid, gory details.

Rorschach shrugs. "Kept things under control."

"Mm." Dan gestures at his face. "You got a little something."

Rorschach mirrors him, touches his gloved fingertips to a gout of blood congealing on the cheek of his mask. He grunts and wipes it off on his trench coat lapel.

"So," Dan asks, conversationally. "How many people did you put in the hospital?"

"Hn. No more than necessary."

"All of them, then."

"Like I said."

"Christ," Dan says. The cold basement air prickles his skin as he strips off the top of his uniform; it's damp with perspiration and starting to chafe. He shrugs on a tee. "Between you and the Comedian, I'm starting to think the Keene Act is a good idea."

Rorschach is in front of Dan in two long strides, suddenly animated instead of rooted in his stony indifference. "What do you mean by that," he growls in Dan's face, and anyone else might find it intimidating but Dan is very used to this man's unsubtle bullying tactics.

"You," Dan says, and prods him in the chest. "Are out of control."

Rorschach punches him without preamble. Dan would like to say he's not surprised, but he is. He expected vitriolic ranting, had braced himself for a long drawn-out argument laced with Rorschach's venomous brand of personal insults, but not this. His mouth is a sharp ache; he's cut the inside of his cheek.

"Out of control," he repeats. He checks for loose teeth with his tongue, then spits bloody saliva onto the basement floor. He's never been more sorry to be right.

To his credit, Rorschach also seems at least a little surprised at himself. He pulls off his gloves, mask sliding through a confused arrangement of blots. "Daniel," he says.

"No," Dan says mildly. "Ow. I'm done. I quit."

"You can't," Rorschach says.

Dan laughs. "Says who? Look. The cops hate us, New York hates us, the press hates us, we hate each other and this whole shitshow is gonna be illegal by summer, so I don't know what you want from me."

Rorschach seems to consider this for a moment. "Don't hate you," he says.

Not the most pertinent thing, Dan notes, but the easiest to address. It's almost touching, from him. If Dan didn't know better he'd even say there was a hint of petulance creeping in the monotone. Regardless, he shouldn't need to point out that Rorschach just suckerpunched him in the mouth.

"Could have fooled me," he says.

"...not entirely," Rorschach amends. "Just disappointed in you."

"When are you not?" Dan shakes his head, slings his utility belt onto a workbench and upsets a stack of blueprints. "Look, if we're done here I'd like to take a tylenol and go shower."

Rorschach has apparently returned to his steadfast impassiveness, so Dan heads up to his kitchen. Maybe he'll skip the tylenol and go straight for the beers in his fridge instead.

"Daniel," Rorschach says again. He's hiked his mask up over his nose. There's a bruise yellowing on his cheek. "Wait."

Dan turns on the stairs, rests on the railing, and prepares himself for whatever misguided damage control Rorschach is going to attempt.

"Hit me."

"What?"

"Only fair."

"Why don't you just apologize like a normal person?"

Rorschach stares at him like he's a complete idiot.

"You need help," Dan tells him. "Jesus Christ."

"So, help."

Like he hasn't been trying for years, desperately gathering up his frayed edges only to have him find a new thing to snag and unravel on. Dan moves back over to him, stops short of putting a hand on his shoulder because he kind of enjoys his fingers being intact.

The muscles in Rorschach's jaw tighten, teeth clenched tight. "Help," he repeats, under his breath. It sounds like a demand.

Dan exhales shakily. A deep throb has set in his side of his face. He considers for a moment how it would feel, the contact of his fist against Rorschach's skin, how he'd grunt and sway with it, blood limning his teeth. He'd wipe his mouth with the back of his hand—his bare hand, bony and freckled, with raw knuckles and chewed down fingernails—or maybe he'd just lick the blood from his lips.

He thinks about how it was always terrifying out on the streets when somebody got the upper hand. How it would be safe, here. He thinks of all the asshole things Rorschach has ever said to him, the calculated barbs that find their way to his most vulnerable spots, embedding deep between the links of his armor. He thinks about how it would feel to unleash that hurt for once, instead of choking it down. Like a normal person.

Yeah, maybe they both need a little help. Dan says, "Uh," then swallows and clears his throat. "How about we spar, huh? For old time's sake."

Rorschach seems to find that acceptable. He rolls his shoulders and drops into a low stance, bare hands fisted. He starts with a slow and telegraphed left hook, probably just to get Dan moving.

Dan dodges easily and retaliates in kind. Rorschach twists to catch it on his upper arm. "Pulling punches," he says, accusatory. As if he thought he'd tricked Dan into doing what he wanted.

"Well, yeah."

They exchange blows in a faltering rhythm; Dan has to work harder than he used to—Rorschach's technique has developed an erratic edge that's an entirely different beast from his usual unpredictability. Rorschach himself seems content to soak Dan's hits. Dan knocks his hat off out of spite.

Rorschach swings low suddenly and Dan only manages to half-avoid it, breath soughing out of him as Rorschach's fist plants in his stomach. "Son of a bitch," he huffs, and kicks him in the ankle. "Below the belt."

"If you insist," Rorschach says, and then backhands him instead.

Dan blinks in astonishment, mouth watering from the live pain in his injured cheek and an uncomfortable heat swelling in his gut. Today has been disgraceful. Enough is enough. He grabs Rorschach by the front of his trench coat and body drops him, pins him with the first judo hold he can remember that doesn't involve full-body contact.

"Okay? Are we even now?" He finds that he's a little short of breath.

Rorschach doesn't reply for a moment. Then he scrapes his teeth over Dan's neck. Dan isn't naive enough to think that Rorschach is trying to bite him, and he wonders if Rorschach is naive enough to think that Dan doesn't realize, and if it really matters either way now that he's thoroughly and unavoidably hard.

He twists them into a new hold, one that he definitely didn't learn in judo class, straddling himself across Rorschach's thighs. He can't tell if he's hard as well, under the thick material of his trench, but Dan doubts he isn't. Has probably been since he asked Dan to mess him up, if not before.

"If this is what you want, there are more straightforward ways to get it," he says. "That don't involve you punching me or me punching you, or—"

"Shut up." Rorschach jams the heel of one hand against Dan's crotch and plucks at the knot of his trench coat belt with the other.

Of course, Dan's never mistaken Rorschach's bluntness for straightforwardness, and given everything he knows about the man, there's no reason he would approach this with anything other than violence. He indulges himself with a roll of his hips against Rorschach's palm and then dismounts, bats Rorschach's shaking hands aside to pull his trench coat open.

Oh, yeah, he's hard. Thick where Dan grips him through the fabric of his pants, and throbbing hot when he unzips and pulls him out of his underwear. Dan takes a moment, but to his relief it looks like he's showered recently if not today, and most of his sour odor is held in his coat and suit.

Rorschach goes very still. Dan can feel his heartbeat in his dick, twitching against his palm. He's uncut, which is something of a novelty. Dan runs his tongue against the soft edge of his foreskin in curiosity, then mouths down his shaft. Rorschach's precome wets his cheek. He is rigid with arousal, absolutely solid, and Dan is half-tempted to try his teeth.

Rorschach whines and bucks his hips and then comes up the side of Dan's face. It spatters his glasses.

Somehow this hair-trigger reaction seems like the most unsurprising thing that's happened to him today. He can't even summon any disappointment. Dan sits back and wipes his face on his hand then his hand on his pants, takes his glasses off. "Well," he says with careful neutrality, cleaning the lenses on the hem of his t-shirt.

Rorschach sits himself up, dick softening in his lap. He pulls his mask up further, up to his forehead, and Dan catches a glimpse of a police identikit face: misshapen nose, stick-out ears and high, sharp cheekbones—then Rorschach presses his hands over his eyes, drags them over his face, and takes his mask down with it.

(It will be another eight years until Dan sees that face again, his mugshot on the front page of every newspaper in the city.)

He tucks himself in and rolls to his feet, staggers back a step or two while he gathers his coat back around himself. Dan watches him put his armor back into place, ass cooling on the concrete floor and stomach dropping in jags. He knows what's coming.

"Just going to leave me in a state, huh?" he says, tries to make it a joke. He's not sure he'd trust Rorschach to handle him with anything less than cruelty now, anyway.

"Not my job to take care of you," Rorschach says. He sounds as bitter as he does uneven. "Not any more."

He jams his hat back onto his head, turns on his heel and leaves.