Warn: Masturbation
Wondering
The cot's empty, now, but there's evidence still of Rorschach's hours there. Dan doesn't look at it directly as he carries a bundle of clothes to the washing machine; it feels almost as if confronting it will draw out of him the hesitant feelings he has for his partner. They're still too new for Dan to be uncomfortable with, each bit of tenderness as fragile as old leaves.
It's not about lust, Dan tells himself when he catches himself early mornings with his thoughts straying to Rorschach, hand curled around the heartbeat warmth of his penis. That's not it. It's not love, either, he decides, even when he can feel his heart in his throat when his partner takes hits. It's…well. Whatever it is. Partnership. He cares, and at least that is unapologetic.
Dan shuts the washer lid and brushes his hands off on his pants. He's half-hard underneath his slacks, and he keeps remembering last night, when Rorschach groggily shrugged off the trench coat though he wasn't even the one wounded, and it wasn't even that late.
"Worry me, sometimes," he'd muttered, head turned away.
In the low electrical light of the basement, Dan touches the stitches of his arm and looks at the cot.
-
"Quiet," Rorschach growled, the hands pulling at Dan's sleeve alive with frantic energy.
"Worry me - " and Dan had shut his eyes and imagined Rorschach awake in a small bed, mask rolled up to his nose, journal in hand. He could see the pause in Rorschach's scribbling, the slight tilt of his head towards the streetlight of an open window, thinking of him.
-
Dan sits at the edge of the cot, then gently lays down face-first. His hand slips under the coarse fabric of his pants and starts to stroke, without any real discretion. He knows that Rorschach only turned restlessly and slept, but it doesn't stop the images from flashing across his eyelids as he breathes deep. He thinks - about if only he'd had the courage to slide behind Rorschach and rest his hand at his chest, feel the shuddering breath underneath, close enough to feel his heat. If. A hundred different things that he knows he'll never do, because he values too much the violent way Rorschach stitched his arm, as if he wanted to hurt the same body that would let Dan down by bowing to knives.
He thinks about the look he knows he'll never see first-hand; the pause and lift of chin, wondering.
Dan's starting to pant, the dull throb between his legs pressing instead of secondary. He turns his head so his cheek rests on the pillow, glasses skewed and cutting against his temple. " - schach," he breathes, and thinks quiet. Pulling his hips up, Dan spreads his knees as wide as the cot allows and peels down his pants around his thighs, working at his erection.
Rorschach would have no patience for him if he knew; Dan braces his healing arm above his head, pulls the pillow closer to him with the motion. Dan doesn't believe Rorschach would drop their partnership over this; not with Big Figure and Underboss behind them, hewouldn't - but Rorschach knows without trying how to make warm shame work its way down Dan's stomach and if he was disgusted - Dan cuts his thoughts away from that and tries to envision Rorschach's expression if Dan's hand was wrapped around Rorschach, body pushing him into the flimsy support of the cot.
And then the pushing turns to imagined pressure, some unknown force holding them together until Dan sinks into him, not fucking or making love but existing that way because there's no other choice, because they are inseparable already and what's one more connection? Buried in each other's presence, nose brushing the crook of Rorschach's neck, nosing at the coarse red curls at the base of his neck, rutting into him.
Dan feels his orgasm catching through him before it peaks and he tries to imagine something else, someone else, because it's too much - but when he shuts his eyes he sees the expanse of Rorschach's neck turning up and to the side, and he comes with a sharp shudder. When he relaxes again, sweat-slicked and panting, he tastes the cloth of the pillow and the faint trace of Rorschach on his tongue.
Dizzy, Dan slumps against the cot again. He's not bothered by the slick feel of his come on his stomach or hand, and though he's going flaccid he continues to lightly rub at the inside of his thighs.
He watches the tunnel, and wonders distantly what Rorschach is doing out in a New York illuminated by sunlight.