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The first overtures of a summer dawn are beginning to lighten the sky, slipping its fingers between the slats of Dan's kitchen blind. The clock ticking sedately on the wall says it's four thirty-seven in the morning, and the world feels still and empty. Dan yawns, finishing his coffee while he waits for a basin of hot water to fill.
Rorschach is downstairs, sitting on one of his basement workbenches and bleeding profusely. Dan can't quite muster up the effort to be annoyed. He was awake anyway. His body clock is hopelessly out of sync.
"You better not have ruined those schematics," he says, setting the basin down. Rorschach makes a non-committal noise and shifts his grip on the wadded-up scarf pressed to his left biceps. His shirt is a mess, sopping with blood; the occasional drops patter to the bench top and fleck Dan's sheaves of drafting vellum.
It's the heart of July and the headlines say it's the hottest summer on record. Dan can believe it. The nights are humid and sweltering enough that he begged off patrol, just until the heatwave burns itself out. Even the thought of getting into his suit makes him break out into a sweat. Rorschach's accusations of shirking are easier to contend with—at least he can reason with that. Kind of.
Rorschach, being Rorschach, forged through the streets without him. His only concession to the heat seems to be the lack of his trench coat, and apparently that's the root of the problem tonight.
"Just a flimsy dime-store toy," Rorschach grumbles. There's a bloody pocket knife on the workbench next to him. "Wouldn't have gotten through my coat, normally."
Dan nudges Rorschach's hand aside so he can survey the damage, but the shirt fabric plastered to his skin makes it difficult to see what's going on. "You shouldn't have pulled it out."
"I'm not an idiot, Daniel," Rorschach says with an indignation that is immediately undermined when he admits, somewhat sheepishly, "Dislodged it when I took off my suit jacket."
Dan doesn't know whether to roll his eyes or wince in sympathy. He dabs at the stiffening cotton with a damp cloth instead, to little success. "Well, afraid the shirt has to go, too."
"You can just—"
"Take it off, or I'll cut it off you," Dan tells him, firmly. It's too early for this song and dance. It's not like he doesn't already know his partner owns an actual corporeal body under his many, many layers. "Let's not mess about here, pal. I can't tell if you need stitches."
Rorschach fixes him with a level stare that Dan can feel even through the mask, and pulls off one glove to unfasten the top half of the buttons of his shirt one-handed. He peels the bloody fabric away from the wound, shrugs the sleeve off over his shoulder. The rest of his shirt hangs diagonally over his chest like a toga. He has a graying undershirt on underneath, to Dan's disbelief. It's ringed with sweatstains.
"Better?" Rorschach says, palpably annoyed. His collarbones are prominent and sharp, freckles standing out against his pale skin like bloodspatter.
"Better."
It's not often Dan gets to see him like this, pared so close to the quick. Most wounds he takes care of himself, or are in less awkward places. He doesn't seem any more vulnerable for the exposure but that's probably because the acerbic defensiveness has been kicked into overdrive from the get-go.
There's an old scar over his left shoulder, partially covered by the strap of his undershirt—one from before their partnership, before Dan was there to watch his back. A needle of guilt makes him lift his glasses and rub at his eyes. "Listen, sorry for bailing on you tonight." He holds his tongue before he can tack on an excuse. If Rorschach had considered this Dan's fault, he would have already told him as much, and at length.
Rorschach doesn't respond anyway, just focuses his attention on the floor directly between his feet as Dan presses the cloth over the wound in an attempt to blot the congealing blood from his skin. Looks like it's bad enough to warrant three or four stitches. "Just a toy, huh."
Dan's conversational gambits die in the echoes of the basement, as expected. He keeps an eye on the tension in Rorschach's body instead, the way his jaw is clenching, tendons in his neck standing proud. He pulls his mask over his nose and leans to one side to spit.
"Okay?" Dan asks as he rinses out the cloth. He brushes Rorschach's arm with the back of his hand. He's flushed and hot to the touch; the patina of scarring on his skin stands out a stark white. "You want some water?"
"Hehn. Just get this done."
"Alright, you're the boss."
Dan works as efficiently as he can, but he's never been good at this—the first press of the needle through fragile skin always makes him a little queasy, the way punching someone in the face doesn't—and it takes him a few attempts to tie off each stitch. His hands shake with nervous energy and the caffeine in his system.
When he's finished, he runs his finger over the line of them, tidy if not straight, spidery and black against Rorschach's skin. It's not an unusual gesture, just a small ritual they've had for as long as Dan can remember. There. Whole again. Rorschach had started it, rendered it acceptable in the strange paradigm of their partnership.
Then he flattens his hand over the stiff twist of the sutures, feels the heat of the wound gather against his palm. That is not so acceptable. Rorschach straightens up with an abruptness that speaks of alarm, turns his head toward Dan.
The sutures bristle against Dan's palm as he slides his hand up Rorschach's biceps, comes to rest over the scar on his shoulder. He lifts the material of his undershirt away, and dares to draw his finger over the uneven puckering where the skin was inexpertly pulled together.
The hairs prick up on Rorschach's forearm.
"It shouldn't leave much of a scar," Dan tells him, takes his hand away. "Not like this one, anyway."
Rorschach nods. "Appreciated," he says, though there's a clipped edge to his voice that Dan can't get a read on. It's not hostility, exactly. Unsurety, perhaps. It's unfamiliar enough.
Dan busies himself, disposing of the suture needle and rifling through the medkit for some gauze and tape. "Did you fix it yourself?" He fills in the quiet with small talk, because that's what he normally does—asks questions that he knows Rorschach won't answer.
"Yes," Rorschach says, and maybe Dan's gesture has thrown him off, because he offers more. "Was difficult. Took a long time to heal."
Dan supposes it was. He imagines him struggling with the needle in his non-dominant hand, tugging the stitches through roughly just to have it done. "Was that the first time you stitched yourself up?"
"No."
Rorschach pulls off the rest of his shirt, and tugs his undershirt up. Way up. Dan stands and watches stupidly, gauze forgotten.
"Here." He leans back to show Dan a sliver of shiny skin, trailing a good five inches over his ribs, diagonally bisecting his sternum. "Fall, '64. Knot Top with a samurai sword."
This is an unprecedented amount of sharing, and they both know it. Dan stares at him. Rorschach stares back, all of him pulled bowstring-tight, maybe already regretting the position he's put himself in.
"Impressive," Dan says. He keeps his tone light and tries not to be too obvious while he gives Rorschach a surreptitious once-over. He's every bit as lean and efficient as his manner; there's as much give in him as a slab of concrete.
Dan reaches out, and catches himself just short of touching. His hand hovers over the curve of his partner's ribcage, over the pale skin knitted over it. This is where we keep our history, he thinks. Close to our bones.
"Looks worse than it was," Rorschach admits, and breathes in deeply, so slow as to be deliberate. His chest rises, skin meeting Dan's fingertips. He's warm, vital under a film of sweat.
"He came at you wrong," is the safest thing Dan can say.
"They usually do." Rorschach shifts under his touch, just enough to create a small drag of friction. He isn't pulling away.
Dan's never had such an invitation, so he draws his fingers down, across Rorschach's heart and over the indents of his ribs, following the scar. The last of the caffeine has washed out of him, and he suspects he'll wake up tomorrow and feel like he was the wrong side of sober.
Rorschach is quiet, mask placid, giving nothing away as he lets Dan touch him.
Dan comes to the tapered end of the scar. He should probably take his hand back, but this is rare and strange and he wants it to last, so he keeps trailing his fingertips down and alights on the waistband of Rorschach's pinstripes.
Rorschach makes an ambiguous noise. His tongue flicks out, touches his lower lip.
"Do you—" Dan begins, and hesitates when Rorschach gently takes Dan's wrist and removes his hand. Dan takes a step back, rubs his palms together. He's suddenly self-conscious and a little embarrassed, though he's not sure if it counts as a rejection if he doesn't know what he was about to propose.
"Show me," Rorschach says, "your first scar."
Dan coughs, covering his reaction because the first thing he thinks of is his bris. "I—uh, I don't remember," he says, because he doesn't want to lie, but Rorschach probably isn't expecting him to drop trou.
"Yes, you do. Show me." Rorschach hops down off the workbench, pulling his shirt back on with a stiff roll of his shoulders.
He decides to err on the side of caution and show him Nite Owl's first scar, and not Daniel Dreiberg's.
He tilts his head back, brushes his hair away from where it curls behind his ear. It had happened in the first few weeks. He'd panicked at all the blood and gone to Hollis, who had scolded him for turning up in uniform, for being careless, and for bleeding on his stoop—then got him into civvies and marched him to a walk-in to get patched up. Afterwards, he got him royally drunk.
What Dan gained from that night was a storming hangover, an acute awareness of his mortality, a redesigned cowl, and a knife-thin run of scarring behind his ear, trailing under his jaw. It's been a few years but he still feels a little unsteady when he thinks about it.
Rorschach grunts, turns Dan's chin aside with his fingers and leans in to inspect him. There's dried blood under his nails and in the crease of his knuckles. The ink of his mask swarms as he looks at Dan's neck, and at this proximity, the low-level warmth Dan has been fending off all morning finally ignites.
"It looks worse than it was?" The grin Dan offers is meek, and his heart pushes against his ribcage. He doesn't understand himself, sometimes.
"Could have sliced your jugular." Rorschach doesn't sound particularly concerned, but his mouth is pursed. "Bled out in the gutter."
"Missed by a mile," Dan tells him.
"Millimeters." Rorschach presses his fingers under Dan's jaw, right over his rabbiting pulse, and follows the line of the scar, reads it like braille. Dan's breath catches, and there's no way that Rorschach can have missed it, not that, not the flush on his face, and not the blood pounding under his fingertips.
"It's okay," Dan says, in his best impression of a man who doesn't have Rorschach's hand at his throat. His voice has blown out, gone low and hoarse. "I have someone to watch my back, now."
Rorschach huffs out a dry noise, maybe amusement. "See you tomorrow night, then," he says, pointedly, and lets his hand fall away. He turns to retrieve his suit jacket and bloodied scarf. The strange atmosphere gradually dissipates as he pieces his uniform together.
Soon he is retreating down the service tunnel, back to wherever he calls home.
-
In his bedroom, Dan undresses slowly and lies on top of the sheets. He starts at his feet, runs his fingertips over a curved scar behind his ankle. Then there's an arced welt on his left thigh, the bike-chain imprint still healing. He imagines Rorschach running his knuckles over it, the discomfort of the pressure and the texture of his partner's skin.
He slides his hand over his stomach, and knows how Rorschach would examine the marks there, how his breath would be hot and his hands firm. On his hip there is a notch taken out of his skin—an accident when he was building Archie, so much exposed jagged metal it was inevitable—and it's easy to imagine his thumb rubbing over it, clad in warm glove-leather.
Dan turns, presses himself down into the mattress, and thinks about the long scar on his shoulder blade. His hips rise and tilt, imagining Rorschach curved over him, his own scars bared as he presses his mouth to Dan's back and buries himself. His fingernails will leave marks, long white scores in Dan's overheated skin.
Maybe he will sink his teeth into Dan, write a little into his history. Something that will endure until the end.