Daniel was in a decidedly good mood. The snow meant a break from patrolling, and he was free to spend his evenings mulling over newspaper reports instead or slipping in a few Avian-related articles for pleasure. He had spent the day holed up in his house, listening to the comparative quietness of the city and the whistling of the cold, dry wind. It was always satisfying to sit snug and warm at home in bad weather, or to lay curled up in bed when rain lashed against the window pane, protected from the elements. It made him feel more than just content, but grateful. Monotonous daily life often made light of significant things, but his warm house and stocked cupboards were a luxury the songbirds outside didn't have.
He wriggled his toes in his slippers and turned the page. He was thinking about how he might visit the local park to feed the birds tomorrow, when he decided he was a bit peckish himself. He set his magazine aside, gathered up his empty mug and traipsed through to the kitchen, considering how many young red-tailed hawks might be overwintering in Central Park this year. He'd spent many afternoons watching the resident pairs hunting and raising their young, but it was always nice to see a few fresh faces.
As he stepped into the kitchen his senses were assaulted by something like the stench of raw sewage. Once upon a time, that eye-stinging, nasal-hair-singeing smell might have made him wretch, but he had grown used to it after following Rorschach down rancid underground tunnels during their midnight escapades. He sniffed around the bin and the plughole, but the stink seemed strongest near the door to the basement. His broad shoulders slumped inside his thick sweater. The cold had probably popped a pipe somewhere down there, and it was probably disgorging its horrible contents all over the Owl's Nest. It looked like he'd be spending tomorrow at home after all, mopping up faeces or God-alone-knows-what instead of taking his binoculars and a flask of coffee down the park. He sighed, swapped his soft slippers for something more waterproof and wipe-clean, and went to assess the damage.
As soon as he'd unclicked the latch on the door it burst open, and a dark heap spilled onto his kitchen floor. He jumped back, all swift reflexes that had nothing to do with being an ornithologist, and realised that the limp heap was human. A really sickly-looking man with deathly-pale skin who was barely breathing... and oh shit. Even though the stranger was doused in raw effluence, Dan recognised some of the clothes. The pale silk scarf and patches of purple pinstripe poking out from beneath wadded layers were what caught his eye. "Rorschach?" He ventured, crouching down to touch what might be his ever enigmatic partner's face before he gained the presence of mind to check for a pulse. The rough skin of Rorschach's unshaven neck was far too cool to the touch and the sluggish throb of his pulse matched his noisy, laboured breaths.
Dan was inundated by the unbidden memory of the young girl who had lived next door to him when he was a child. Her cat had gone missing and she had been utterly distraught, completely inconsolable despite the money her wealthy father threw at the problem. The cat turned up a few days later dead on her doorstep. It had been hit by a car but it crawled home to die.
He forced the unhelpful thought from his head. Rorschach was cold and was wearing wet clothes. They needed to come off, but that only raised the question of what exactly his obsessively private partner would do to him when he regained consciousness. Dan had only been permitted the briefest glimpses of Rorschach's chin, wrists and injuries before. Just enough to confirm that his partner was human flesh and blood, even if his methods were severely inhumane. It was the first time Dan had even seen his face in its entirety and the next few minutes were filled with the frightening necessity of removing those wet clothes.
Dan raked his fingers through his hair, chastising himself for dithering about this, and set about peeling the sodden layers apart. Rorschach always wore a lot of clothes, even on stifling summer nights, but right now he was wrapped up like Tutankhamen's corpse. Dan wrestled with his limp body, unwinding the scarf from his neck, removing the shoes and darned socks, struggling to drag two pairs of trousers free from his legs without pulling the worn, greying underwear away. The layers kept coming and coming, and Rorschach kept getting smaller and smaller. He was hidden away like a Russian doll, and by the time Dan had dug down to the centre, he was struck by how tiny Rorschach was.
The things Daniel had seen his partner do did not correlate with the little body sprawled on his kitchen floor, so covered in raw scars it looked like the world had chewed him up and spat him out. He'd seen his partner do terrible, powerful things that made hulking, thugs-of-men piss themselves in fear. Dan had always acknowledged that Rorschach was shorter than him, but some primeval part of his instinctual reasoning took sum of what the man was capable of and added it on. Rorschach's indomitable nature and savage willpower made him seem so much bigger than he really was. Granted, him being unconscious would make him seem smaller but... Rorschach picked a punk up and hurled him into a dumpster a month ago. How was that even physically possible?
Dan gently scooped him up, one arm under the back of his knees and one behind his shoulders, careful to roll his head against his chest to stop it flopping backwards. He'd held a baby once, by its proud mother's insistence, who then took a paranoid turn and drummed the importance of supporting necks and heads in so deep it seemed to have permanently stuck.
Dan carried him upstairs with ease, careful not to catch his toes on the hand rail or door jambs. Despite the presence of a guest room and the sewer filth still clinging to Rorschach's skin, he put him in his own bed. There were at least two hot water bottles in the house somewhere and a small electric heater that would up the air temperature, so he set about fetching them.
As he filled the bottles with fresh, hot water he realized that he felt deeply guilty about seeing Rorschach unmasked and disrobed. His partner wouldn't appreciate the scrutiny, but he couldn't help the fact that he analysed everything he saw. The same part of his brain that could map the barring on an individual peregrine falcon's underwing to tell it apart from others had charted the man's features in an instant. His skin was heavily marked with tan freckles of varying shades over a very pale base colour, most densely on his cheekbones and arms from what he'd seen, although his back was probably covered too. He also had a bright reddish-orange shock of hair on his crown, so bright despite the grease and the grime in fact that if it had been anyone other than Rorschach, he'd have just presumed it was a dye job. As it were, it looked as though the guy had been born with built-in warning colours, ready for when he grew up and started breaking people's bones left right and centre.
Dan returned to the bedroom and pushed the hot water bottles under the covers, propping them up against Rorschach's chest. He looked at him again, still shocked about meeting Rorschach face-to-face, despite the circumstances. The feeling was likely to persist for a few days, or even weeks. The strange new face reminded him of the squabs from his youth, angular and odd coloured flesh tones under thin skin broken up by the bristly, coarse stubble, eyebrows and hair. The first time his pet pigeons had hatched out their eggs he'd been shocked by their appearance, with their lumpy bills, ungainly bodies and bruised eyes that managed to look both puffy and sunken.
Dan wondered what colour Rorschach's eyes were, hidden under stubby, ginger eyelashes and dark, sickly circles. People checked unconscious peoples' eyes all the time, didn't they? To check the pupils for concussion? Dan didn't suspect that to be what ailed Rorschach, but it was a good idea to check, wasn't it? Better to be safe than sorry. He reached out but lost his nerve at the last second, fingers frozen an inch away. He licked his lips, unsure of what he was afraid of. Rorschach would have woken up when he lifted him bodily off the kitchen floor, if he was going to be roused by anything. The pad of Dan's thumb came to rest lightly on Rorschach's eyelid, the softest part of that harsh face, and gently rolled the skin back. The pupil was wide, but slowly shrunk under exposure to light. Rorschach's eyes were a savage grey-blue.
Feeling more guilty about the numerous lines he'd crossed, Dan drew the curtains together and closed the door to keep the warmth of the electric heater in, grabbed a book to busy himself and settled on the other side of the bed.