Balance

"Mental steadiness or emotional stability."

It was raining – drops poured from the brim of his fedora, and Rorschach felt soaked to the skin. Patrol would be difficult tonight; although he had complete faith in Archie's ability to withstand any kind of weather, he was sure the rain would put Daniel in a terrible mood. He could already hear the complaints of, "Rorschach, nobody is out tonight," and, "Do you have any idea how spandex sticks when it gets wet?" He had no staying power, unfortunately – the first inconvenience or slight discomfort and he was ready to go home for the night and curl up with a cup of coffee.

Still, Rorschach mused, turning the collar of his overcoat up and drenching the back of his head in the process, he understood a slight dislike of nights like this. All this rain was making each layer of clothes stick to his skin, and he felt like he weighed an extra thirty pounds – it was nigh impossible to move stealthily along the rooftops so encumbered. The early November weather was crisp and cold, and it was all he could do to keep his teeth from chattering. Not to mention, he was perfectly aware that continued exposure to cold weather in a permanently damp state was the practical equivalent of begging for a cold. In all, though he would never admit it, Rorschach was quite anxious to get inside, and couldn't help a slight sigh of relief when he stole his way into the abandoned warehouse that led to Daniel's basement.

Lights high overhead dimly showed the way, in case he ever forgot (he could find Daniel's house in complete blackness, if he had to). He shook himself slightly, almost appalled at how much water simply flew off, before walking briskly into the tunnel. If possible, it was colder in the warehouse than it was outside. Rorschach could almost see his breath, even through the mask, so to compensate for the chill, he hastened his pace – the quicker he walked, the warmer he felt, and the faster he could get to Daniel's.

And yet, something didn't feel right. The ceiling lights were dim, obviously not at full power, and everything was suspiciously quiet. Daniel usually waited for Rorschach in the Nest, tinkering with Archie or working on that ridiculous exoskeleton in full costume, and he was never quiet when he worked. But tonight, there was no clanking of machinery, no faint strains of Billie Holiday or Nat King Cole coming from his phonograph – nothing to suggest that anyone was even in the Owl's Nest.

Nothing.

And that worried Rorschach a lot more than he particularly liked.

At first, he refused to let himself walk any faster – he was not concerned, he was not – but before he realized it he was practically jogging down the hallway, and two blocks worth of abandoned subway sped by within what felt like a few seconds. The lights in the Nest were off; everything beyond a few feet in front of him was draped in shadows. Edging in as slowly and silently as possible, he plunged quite nearly into total darkness. Didn't matter, really, he knew the Nest's floor plan by heart, but something that felt irritatingly like panic niggled at the back of his mind. It was ten o'clock, later than Rorschach usually showed up; but Daniel was always up at ten o'clock, and even if he had decided not to go on patrol, he always left the lights in the Nest on, if only to lure Rorschach upstairs and to a warm dinner or a brief sojourn in front of the television.

Rorschach's imagination, which always decided to start working at the worst possible time, quickly began composing a brief simulation of what might have happened: Daniel was waiting for patrol in the basement, in full costume and tinkering around. Suddenly, he heard intruders, and in the interest of keeping his identity safe put on his goggles, shut off the lights from the remote on his belt, and waited to confront his visitors. In a way even his sometimes morbid creativity couldn't dream up, Nite Owl was overpowered, and spirited away, to be held captive or murdered or –

No. He refused to pay it any attention – if Daniel's identity had been compromised, or if he was injured, there would be plenty of obvious clues here.

At least, there might have been. Although his mask usually gave him no trouble, attempting to peer through the layer of fabric sticking to his face into stark darkness was like giving a blind man a vision test. Rorschach couldn't see anything, not even the ground underneath him or the stairs that were about ten paces away to his left, and it was hard to navigate even a memorized area when Daniel insisted on leaving his things strewn about on the floor. Stretching out a hand, waiting to feel Archie's cool metal hull two and a half steps away, Rorschach instead caught his foot on what felt something like a toolbox and tumbled to the ground with a terrifying crash. He lay there for a minute, blinking and trying to regain the wind that had gone rushing out of his lungs with an undignified "oof," and had only just begun getting up when footsteps pounded down the kitchen stairs.

With a growl he thought was particularly terrifying, Rorschach leapt to his feet and faced the sudden intrusion, his fists raised and ready to beat the living daylights out of anyone. This person, he thought in a split second, must have made off with Daniel, and was returning to the scene of the crime to rob him and add insult to injury. It was a plausible theory; they'd met criminals desperate or ridiculous enough to pull such a stunt, and who wouldn't want to help themselves from Nite Owl's amazing stash of gadgets and inventions?

The lights came on with an awful suddenness, and Rorschach threw a hand over his eyes before he could get a good look at whoever had taken Daniel. When he'd blinked back into sight, the first thing he saw was a soaking umbrella closed and pointed at his chest. Being threatened with a weapon didn't surprise him much, but the person holding it with a vicious expression was a bit of a shock.

"Daniel."

It was Daniel – perfectly unharmed, from what he could see at a glance, and looking a little bit surprised himself. Eyes wide behind fogged glasses, he lowered the umbrella and a tint of red came into his cheeks.

"Oh… oh hey, Rorschach. I… oh." He set the tip of the umbrella on the floor, leaning on it as if it was a cane. It bent dangerously in protest, shaking rain onto the floor and Rorschach's shoes, but he was a little more concerned with the sheepish look on his partner's face. "I didn't tell you I wouldn't be able to go out tonight, did I?"

Rorschach squinted and frowned, aware that even though he couldn't see it, Daniel could feel the glare aimed square at him. He felt absurd, worrying about him when there was no reason to worry at all, and in panic's place he felt a dull fury rising in his chest – he had no right to go and make a fool out of him like that. "No," he said shortly, turning to the side and adjusting his scarf. "You didn't." With a heavy sigh, Daniel turned and slowly walked toward the stairs into the kitchen, and though he knew he was expected to and hated it, Rorschach followed him at a safe distance.

"Man, look, I'm sorry," he said, gesturing with his free hand and peeking back over his shoulder. Rorschach grunted. "I really thought I had. I just–" Enough of that, Rorschach thought with another frown; he had every right to be angry and furthermore, he had every right to know why Nite Owl – his partner – had found it necessary to skip a night on the streets. The second his feet touched tile, and the basement door was shut, he folded his arms and refused to budge another inch.

"Where were you?" Daniel flushed again and took his glasses off to clean them on a handkerchief for cover.

"…Out," he tried, replacing his glasses and fiddling with his hands nervously. Rorschach was used to such attempts to deflect conversation.

"Out where?"

He sighed and rubbed the back of his head, tilting the umbrella up against the refrigerator. "…I was at a play, all right?" he said finally, putting a fist on his hip as he moved his hand to a temple. "It came out a few weeks ago, and the review said a lot of really good things about it. I thought it might be… nice. I haven't done anything fun like that in a while." Rorschach didn't answer for a moment, so Daniel directed his attention and hands to the tie at his neck and walked towards the sink. After he'd had enough time to absorb this information, Rorschach snorted and shook his head.

"Huh. At a play. Not surprising." Daniel turned with his hands full of the tie he was attempting to loosen and held them up in an "all-right-you-got-me" way oddly similar to the way criminals usually begged them for mercy.

"Now, don't be like that. I happen to like going to the theater every once in a while. Besides, we–" Now, that was a surprise. Despite himself, Rorschach jerked a bit and fought desperately to keep his countenance from changing. We, we, who could possibly be the counterpart to that?

"We?" he managed to vocalize, putting more of a curious lilt into it rather than outright indignation. Free of his tie by now, Daniel threw his hands up into the air and scoffed exasperatedly.

"Jesus, Rorschach, what is this, one of your interrogations? Are you going to break my fingers next? Yes, we. I went with a young woman I'd made brief acquaintance with at Harvard."

Well. There was little Rorschach could say to that. He almost spouted off on his typical topic of conversation after a woman came up, about how they were usually nothing more than degenerate whores looking for easy money or simple, sick pleasure, but funnily enough, he didn't really feel like it. Of course, he knew women were like that, and he'd said so many times, but this time it wasn't just some anonymous prostitute lit unflatteringly by streetlights. This woman… Daniel knew this woman. He went to a play with her. Was she simply deceiving him, pulling the wool over his naïveté, or was she really…?

Daniel shuffled his feet awkwardly, looking as though he expected Rorschach to reach out and punch him in the nose. Earlier, he really wouldn't have minded doing so, seeing as how he was still a little sore about not even being given a quick addendum about his partner's intended absence. Right now, however, all he seemed capable of was staring blankly at the tiled floor. The silence practically drowned them, squeezing the breath out of their lungs before Rorschach became capable of forcing his mouth open again.

"It went well?"

They both blinked back surprise, 'why would you care?' obvious on Daniel's lips. Instead, he chuckled nervously and moved the umbrella out of the way before opening the fridge door. "Well… no. Not really. She kind of walked out in the middle of the play." Before Rorschach could even get a word out, Daniel turned around with a beer bottle in one hand and a water bottle in the other. He shrugged apologetically and held it out. "Said she couldn't handle it anymore, and if I wanted to join her, she'd be getting coffee down the street."

Rorschach couldn't help but feel a little amused as he took the plastic water bottle. Somehow, he already knew where this was going. "And?" he asked, slipping the bottle into one of his pockets. Daniel pulled out one of the kitchen chairs and half-sank into it, hovering over the seat with the beer between his fingers.

"I stayed until the end." Rorschach snorted." It was good!" he cried, standing up again, throwing up his hands. "What else was I supposed to do?"

"Also unsurprising," Rorschach said. He stuck his hands in his pockets, still damp enough that the paycheck he'd kept in there for safekeeping felt like little more than a wet tissue. That would be difficult to explain to the bank – no one kept checks in their pockets for a week and a half, especially not if it were raining. He shook his head. "Sounds just like you, actually."

With a heavy breath, Daniel flopped into the chair and popped the cap on his beer with a miserable expression. He took a swig before he answered, probably a little more than was appropriate for one gulp. "Okay, okay, I know. It was stupid." Gesticulating with the neck of the bottle in his fist, he looked like one of the drunks Rorschach saw tonight on the way over – deluded with drink and narrating what might have been an interesting story were it comprehensible. The comparison didn't really amuse him much – had he already had a few drinks before this? "To be honest, though…" Daniel continued as he put his head on a fist, "…she wasn't the same. I didn't like her as much as I thought I would."

"Obviously." With a huff, Daniel set the beer down with a loud clunk.

"You know," he said a little bitterly, "for someone who has such a stunted sense of humor, you seem to be getting quite a laugh from this." On the contrary, Rorschach thought with a frown, this was perhaps the farthest thing from laughable. He could pretend it was of no concern, play it off like one night of self-gratification in the midst of many others spent serving justice, but this sudden frivolous nature concerned him. What if deciding to attend a play wasn't just a spur of the moment thing, and was merely the prelude to many other nights where Daniel would put off patrol simply because he didn't feel like it? The city needed its crime fighters, every one of them, and could not afford to lose someone so good as Nite Owl.

However, instead of expressing his concerns (which was entirely out of the question), Rorschach bobbed his head. "I apologize," he replied simply, and Daniel sagged in what looked like dejection. He took off his glasses and covered his eyes with a hand, rubbing his temples.

"…It's okay," he said, muffled from underneath his hand. "I didn't mean it like that. Oh, Jesus, look at you!" Suddenly, he leapt to his feet, almost knocking over both chair and beer bottle in the process. "Here I am whining about my evening and you're soaked. Do you want something hot to drink? Fresh clothes? Let's at least go into the living room where it's warmer." Rorschach shook his head no to the drink and the clothes, but he followed his partner down the hallway and sat on the couch with him. Daniel tossed a blanket his way, but Rorschach pushed it off his lap and let it pool around his feet. After another minute's stunted conversation punctuated by blatant worrying, Daniel seemed to melt into the couch and closed his eyes. "You were right, though. It was kind of shitty of me, just letting her go like that."

Rorschach crossed his legs, balancing his ankle on his knee and tilting his hat down over his eyes. The sudden temperature change wasn't making him sleepy. It wasn't. "Probably too good for her anyway," he muttered, and he meant it, especially since his nit-picky partner wasn't complaining about his assuredly ruined couch cushions.

"Uh… thanks." It went quiet again, Daniel's fingers twitching a bit as though he ached to get up and switch something on to drown out the stillness. Rorschach simply waited, unscrewing the cap on the water bottle and raising his mask a smidge to take a quick drink. Mid-gulp, however, Daniel turned to him and gave him a strange little smile that set him on edge a little bit. He didn't like where that smile was going. "You can ask, you know," Dan said, rolling his shoulders, "I know you've been dying to."

"No idea what you're talking about." He really did have no idea – he wasn't dying to ask anything; as far as he was concerned, the conversation had already curled up and died.

Daniel drummed his fingers against the armrest. "We saw Equus – it just opened not long ago." Rorschach thought for a moment about word association, pondering the sudden remembrance of the only glimpse he'd caught of the Summer Olympics two years ago – some dive in Queens, a brief glance at the ratty television on the bar during a drug bust, in the midst of the equestrian events (an exceedingly odd choice for a legendary opium ring)… Equestrian?

"…About horses?" he asked, shocked when Daniel nodded in the affirmative. Who would want to spend three hours watching a play about horses? He could understand if it were about owls; then perhaps he could imagine his aviation-obsessed partner sitting in rapture up 'til the last second, but how could a person tolerate hours of simply horses? How much could be said about a horse?

"Sort of. It's basically about some kid who has this psychological problem; he's religiously and sexually fascinated by horses."

What?

He what?

"It was a little surprising, mentally, but the play was very well done, and would you believe it, the actors dressed up like horses didn't look like idiots, one way or another. I mean, they had giant fake horse heads on, but it just didn't look weird. It would have definitely made an interesting case study if it were true…"

It was impossible to register anything coming out of Daniel's mouth, all of it just white noise with no comprehensible worth. Impossible – this was on Broadway? He knew the theater was practically a hub for liberalist propaganda, openly homosexual actors and other vices, but he couldn't imagine such immorality being at the public's fingertips. And Daniel, Daniel, went and saw and enjoyed… he couldn't have heard right. No, he hadn't heard right.

Daniel paused mid-chatter and cocked his head a little. "…Are you okay, man?"

"The play is about…" Rorschach gesticulated meaninglessly in the air to replace the phrase, as at the moment he was having trouble with remembering what it was. "…With horses."

Daniel shrugged, nonplussed. "…Sort of. It's more a psychological drama than anything else –"

"No wonder she walked out."

"Oh, Rorschach, come on; it wasn't that bad –" Rorschach got up from the couch, kicking the blanket off his feet and fixing his fedora.

"Immoral, Daniel," he said as he adjusted the tie on his coat and fixed the collar. "Unnecessary for any literary work, much less forcing it down the throats of innocent theater goers." Daniel reached out and grabbed his sleeve before he could walk a single step, getting up himself. He had a weight advantage, being of a different build and quite a bit taller. Rorschach wasn't going anywhere, unless he felt like tearing his sleeves, which he didn't – he'd just sewn a hole in his suit jacket last week, and was of no mind to do it again.

"They didn't show us anything, and he didn't even really do anything to the horses besides put their eyes out, and –" Rorschach fixed him with a glare, making sure Daniel saw his frown before he pulled the mask back down. He sighed and brushed a few unruly curls back into place. "…Okay, well, I guess that is something, but Jesus, Rorschach. Sit down, for Christ's sakes; it's nothing to throw a fit about." Daniel sat back on the couch, dragging him down as well before Rorschach dislodged himself and sat down as far away from him as possible. "You didn't even see the play. I did. And believe me, I was in no way morally offended and I thought it was a spectacular performance."

Rorschach huffed. "Hardly helps your case. Can't believe you took a woman to see that–"

"Will you knock that off?" Daniel cried, slapping the couch cushion. "I'd wanted to go to the theater for a while, and the review said it was a great show! You know what," he continued, gesturing towards the ceiling as though appealing for divine intervention, "I almost thought about asking you, but since you're too high and mighty to appreciate anything that offends your sensitive moral constitution –"

For the second time that night, Rorschach found himself paralyzed and almost incapable of thought. "You what?" he asked, tongue heavier than lead or thirty pounds worth of sopping coat. Daniel turned an embarrassing pinkish color, flushed with what must have been frustration. He didn't look like he'd meant to say that.

"Almost, anyway. I know you'd never go anywhere without your mask. And Rorschach couldn't very well show up on Broadway with front-row tickets. Besides," he said, fixing Rorschach with a very serious stare that hinted at no joke or pun intended, "friends see plays together. And we're friends. Aren't we?"

He didn't answer – couldn't. Were they friends? He knew it was possible to work with someone every day and feel nothing for them whatsoever, just an impersonal indifference, but with Daniel, it was different. As Walter, he'd worked with some of the same people for nearly fifteen years of his life, but he'd fought with Nite Owl at his side for less time than that… and it didn't feel the same. That semi-irritating twinge of warmth he felt in his gut when they worked or talked or even just spent time in each other's company – was that friendship?

Daniel coughed uncomfortably, and from the look on his face, Rorschach knew he was going to change the subject. "…You've seen a play before, haven't you? Everybody's seen at least one."

The answer was out of his mouth before he could second-guess it: "Yes. I have." Seemingly relieved that the bait had been taken, Daniel relaxed back into the cushions. Rorschach followed suit – even if he was uncomfortable with revealing too much of his past, this topic was quite a bit less dangerous than their previous conversation.

"When was it?"

"A long time ago." He remembered standing outside the theater, seventeen years old, dressed in a tweed suit he'd poorly made himself and feeling out of place among Jewish fat cats with expensive clothes and rotund stomachs. "Went with a girl – coworker set us up. Had terrible taste in theater." Despite all his attempts to repress it, he remembered that, too: she hovered over him by two or three inches, had too much make up on, and was obviously as disappointed with him as he was with her. "Awful night. Didn't like the girl, and hated the play, so I left early. Never saw her again."

Daniel suddenly looked uncomfortable again, and seemed to cast around for something to say for a moment. "Oh… I'm sorry. Um… what was the play?"

"...The Music Man."

This time, the silence only lasted a second or two – Daniel hadn't been able to contain his uproarious laughter for long. It really wasn't a humorous memory, and in fact was one of the worst nights he'd ever spent before giving up being just Walter, but in the warm, brightly lit living room, he spared a little smile as his partner wiped his eyes and attempted to control himself.

"Oh, Jesus, Rorschach; I couldn't imagine you liking a musical anyway, but… the Music Man? That must have been torture for you."

"Like I said – terrible taste in theater."

AN: This is the most ridiculously long chapter I've ever written, and I'm part proud of myself and part appalled. So far, it is also the chapter I've done the most research on – I read New York Times reviews and plot summaries for both Equus and the Music Man, which opened in 1974 and 1957, respectively; studied the blueprint for the Nest found in the Sourcebook; very seriously memorized the layout of Dan's house; looked up popular 60's suit styles for a paragraph I ended up editing out (I figured Dan would be behind the times and have an older suit); and even looked up whether or not spandex chafes when wet to correct a mistake I made. There might still be some inaccuracies, but I tried my best. I also picked Equus because it fit the timeline perfectly (about a year before Walter's downfall) and was likely the play Rorschach would most be offended by, and the Music Man because that's also a play I figure Rorschach would hate with every fiber of his being.

And it's been a month again. Time flies, I suppose, but I must apologize for the lateness. To be frank, I'm sort of running out of ideas. I still have six words to go, all of which have already been picked out, one completed, and one three-fourths done, but topics are running thin and I have to rack my brain for new ones. Hopefully I can come up with a few new ones before school starts – although I would love to spend all my time on this story, senior year comes a-callin'. I also wouldn't mind some requests, if there's some topic or scenario you'd like to see our boys in. :)