Summary: They get on in years and Dan seems to be leaving Rorschach behind, but the city always surprises.
Type: Captcha fic: 'grey suffuses'
Rating/Warnings: T.
Characters/Pairings: Dan/Rorschach.

as time goes by

.

There are many ways their time together could end.

They worry over the usual things, when they have time to worry at all– violence in all its varied forms, disease, the vicious unpredictability of chance. They worry about the unusual, too, as Daniel starts finding fine grey hairs mixed in with the rest and Rorschach doesn't, remains stubbornly unchanging. It prompts halted conversations in the dark, fingers drifting through shadow to touch hair, face, throat, soft like reverence: What if I– and you don't–

There's so much about mortality they don't understand, yet.

Neither is slowing down, so they don't even consider abandoning their city. What they lose over the years in raw strength and reaction time they gain back in experience and precision, and even as Daniel is turning 40, they are a force to be reckoned with.

Still, more grey hairs, more fine lines, What if I get old, and you–

Of course, one of them will go before the other does. That goes without saying, barring some catastrophic accident. But Rorschach starts hating the haunted shine in his eyes with a passion he's never brought to bear on it before. It is no longer just a badge of how different he is, how other – that stopped mattering years ago – no, now it's a constant reminder, sliding in and out of the mirror, that he may have uncounted decades to walk the streets alone.

When he was young it was a certainty, a thought he bore gracefully. Now, he does not think he will allow it to happen.

.

The question comes up all the time now, among scientists and doctors: how long do the infected have to live? Not six months or a year or even two – it's a grotesque inversion, and across the city, its ghouls don't seem to want to age. It might be in people's heads and expectations, or it might be real.

It comes up over and over, but no one has an answer.

.

"We don't know," Daniel says in bed one morning, and it's come out of nowhere but really it hasn't. They're both shining with sweat and breathing hard, a tangle of limbs, and Daniel's hand is on his face, hot. "No one knows for sure. You might just have better… it doesn't mean anything."

Rorschach doesn't say anything, even when Daniel smoothes his hair back with a broad, damp palm, presses a kiss next to his eye.

"We don't know."

.

It's the first steaming cup of coffee of the morning, breakfast carts out at seven AM, Daniel's treat. They're in their street clothes, and the sun's just made it far enough over the line of buildings to hit them directly, sharp and toothy from the side.

Daniel looks down at him through the miasma of steam, through a thousand huddled secrets in this space, and now there's another: he smiles, thumbs over the stiff bristle off hair at Rorschach's temple, spreading it into the light.

Rorschach asks the question without asking it.

"Yeah," Daniel says, and the sun's hitting him too, diffusing through the brown of his hair and catching the off-color striations like quicksilver, making him glow.

Around them, the street's stumbling to life, its daily resurrection, but Rorschach has never been so content to know he won't be continually reborn with it. He never thought he could find so much comfort in the knowledge that old age will come for him, that he will become creaky and ancient alongside Daniel; that in time, he will die, too.

Daniel leans in, brushes the spot of grey with his lips – then straightens and orders his own coffee, and the morning goes on.

.

(c) ricebol 2010