Familiarity
"Freedom of behavior justified only by the closest relationship; undue intimacy."
The year of their happiness ended with Arthur's return – and almost immediately collapsed in ruin, but not on account of the King. The evening after his home-coming, while he was still giving them details of the defeat of Claudas as they happened to come into his memory, there was a disturbance at the Porter's Lodge, and Sir Bors was ushered into the Great Hall at dinner. He had some news for Lancelot, which he told him in a whisper after dinner – but unfortunately he was a misogynist, and like most people of that sort, he had the female failing of indiscretion.
Dan curled his hand a little bit tighter around his mug, wafting the heavenly smell of hot cocoa under his nose as he continued to read. His legs shifted under the plaid blanket draped over his lap, and he took a quick sip. He knew what was going to happen, of course; he'd read this book a thousand times. Still, there was so much tension in Lancelot and Guinevere's love affair that he couldn't help but follow along avidly, reacting to each plot twist as if it were new.
His nose felt frozen, and when he absently put a hand to it, he found his fingers were even colder. Outside, it was snowing, the first snowfall of the year. The sun had long since set, taking with it the children, squealing as the flakes touched their faces, and the lovers, kissing beneath lampposts. Normally, by now he would expect Rorschach, but in light of Hanukkah coming to a close and the encroaching threat of "Christmas spirit," they'd agreed to take one night off. Rorschach hadn't been too keen on it, saying, "Justice never rests," and insinuating he was being a sissy "just because of the cold," but after six months straight of spending every night cavorting around the city… Hell, they both needed a break.
The fire crackled distantly, bathing the room in a quiet glow. For a moment, he glanced out his window and watched the snow drift gracefully down. So beautiful – he truly loved New York in this season, more than anything. There was something so comforting about seeing Central Park covered in snow, or watching the Rockefeller Christmas tree go up.
With a sigh of contentment, he took another sip of his hot cocoa and went back to the book.
"So this," said Guenever, when she next saw her lover alone, "so this is why you lost your miracles. It was all lies about your giving them to me."
"What do you mean?"
Something below him made a significantly loud thunking noise – Dan jumped a bit, stared down at the floor, and waited for it to repeat itself – nothing. "Huh," he said to himself, setting down the mug. It must have been the heater – his old brownstone tended to clank around, once it got colder.
"Jenny, I wanted to tell you, but it was too difficult to explain."
"I can understand the difficulty."
"It is not what you think."
"Indecent."
Dan yelped, jumped off the chair, and sent everything scattering in every which direction – the blanket tangled around his legs, the book flew across the room, and he just barely saved the full mug before it fell to the ground. Grunting, he hopped around in a circle until he and the intruder were face to face. Still bent over the chair a bit as though he had been frozen to the spot, Rorschach stared at him from behind the mask.
"Evening, Daniel," he said simply, as though he hadn't nearly given his partner a heart attack. Dan cursed under his breath, bent down, and detangled his feet, trying to keep his face blank. After all, their plan was to spend the evening relaxing, and for him, that usually meant alone. He hated spending his free time talking about criminals, whores, and the deteriorating state of morality – which were, of course, Rorschach's favorite things to discuss. Still, at seeing his partner's head tilted just the slightest bit to the left in his "curious" expression, he couldn't keep a small smile from tugging at his lips. He didn't want to give too much emotion away on either side, after all.
"Jesus, Rorschach," he said, deciding it was safe enough. Slowly, he folded up the blanket and set it back down on the chair. "Did you really have to sneak up on me like that?"
Rorschach shrugged. Typical noncommittal answer, meaning both "I suppose not, sorry about that," and "Your own fault for not paying attention." Dan sighed, shook his head, and went to fetch his book, gently folding the bent cover back into place. He felt Rorschach's eyes on him the entire time, a subtle scrutiny he'd pretty much grown used to over the years. Ignoring it, Dan put the book down on the end table next to his hot cocoa, ran a hand through his hair, and tried to re-gather his thoughts.
"Were you reading over my shoulder?" he asked finally, not really knowing what else to say. While Rorschach considered him, he curled his bare toes against the carpet. God, his feet were freezing now – he'd need a pair of socks before long, without that blanket.
"For a moment," Rorschach replied, the closest he would ever get to a confession. He folded his arms and leaned against the back of the chair, tilting his head again to look down at the book. "You seemed interested."
"I was. I am," Dan quickly remedied, rubbing the back of his head again. As per usual, his partner's sudden arrival had totally distracted him from being a good host, and if there was anything Rorschach appreciated, it was politeness. "Do you want anything? Coffee, dinner? I have some leftovers from the Gunga Diner…" He had already taken a step toward the hallway, knowing he was probably going to have to pull out the can opener and serve up another tin of beans up cold, but Rorschach shook his head and gestured toward Dan's mug.
"What do you have in that?"
"Er… hot cocoa. I can get you some."
"Please," he said politely, and with a jerk of his head, Dan found himself moving automatically toward the kitchen with his partner trailing behind. Hot cocoa was one of his favorite things about winter. His first memories of it were from his childhood, when he would come in from the cold with his glasses all fogged up and his nose bright red, and his mother would smile and hand him a steaming mug so it could warm his fingers. He drank it now in part because he liked it, but mostly because it made him think of his mother, and it made him feel young again – sans all his responsibilities, as a superhero and as an adult.
Rorschach reached out and flicked the light on as they walked in, and Dan walked over to the cabinet with all his glasses. Picking out a mug at random, he looked over his shoulder as he reached for the cocoa powder container he'd left out from earlier. Rorschach – at home as usual – situated himself at the kitchen table, the book in hand, and thumbed through it quite without permission. Dan rolled his eyes and went back to the counter.
"What made you call it indecent?" he asked, spooning powder into the mug. It was one of his favorites, printed with multicolored owls, a gift from his family. Rorschach made a noise that could have been indignation, surprise, or a simple acknowledgement of the question. The cocoa powder swirled around as he poured hot water from the kettle, reminding him of the blots on his mask, but before long the leftover powder lumped together at the top and ruined the effect. As Dan stirred it with a spoon, the clinking echoed noisily around the kitchen until finally Rorschach grew tired of the racket and deigned to reply.
"The knight, and the queen," he said carefully. Dan turned around and leaned his back against the counter, lazily stirring as he listened. "They betrayed the king's trust. Women are weak, naturally, but both are guilty – especially the knight. Succumbed to lust. Deserves what torment he feels."
Dan could argue several points, having read the book enough times that he could have recited it, but instead, he smiled as he set both mug and spoon down on the kitchen table. Rorschach pulled it toward him and snorted at the tacky pattern. "You know the story of Lancelot and Guinevere?" Dan asked, reaching behind him and holding up the bag of marshmallows as a question. Rorschach leaned forward and took it from him as an answer.
"I know some," he said as he rolled up the bottom of his mask. Automatically, Dan studied what little of the face he could see: freckles here and there, thin lips, and the occasional surprise of a missing tooth. He knew it by heart already. "I know the queen was married. Had a husband. And yet she…" He gesticulated vaguely, which Dan had long-since learned to understand as anything referring to sex, romance, or anything else he felt uncomfortable discussing. "Indecent."
"She loved Lancelot," he argued half-heartedly.
"Had a husband," Rorschach repeated. Dan watched him pour dozens of mini-marshmallows into his mug until they formed a thick white mound sitting on top of the cocoa. He knew better than to reprimand him about how much sugar he had to be eating – he'd learned that lesson a long time ago.
"She loved him differently. That's the point of the story." Rorschach rolled his shoulders, immediately dropping the subject, and Dan sighed. They were done with that – if he didn't want to talk about it, they didn't talk about it. One of the cardinal rules. His mind wandering, he glanced toward the living room, remembering the mug he'd left out there. It was probably getting cold, and hot cocoa was never any good when it was cold…
As if Rorschach had read his thoughts, he stood up and stalked back down the hallway, the book tucked under his arm, his mug in one hand and the bag of marshmallows in the other. Turning off the light, Dan followed behind at a distance and leaned against the doorframe after his partner filed in. Rorschach examined the room briefly and seemed to weigh his options before he settled on the couch. He looked almost comical, the fedora tipped down over his forehead, his ankle sitting on one knee, the book on his lap and the mug never far from his lips. Somehow, he kept all those marshmallows in place, and Dan sort of wished he hadn't handed over the bag. He could go for one or two, but now he probably wouldn't even see the bag again.
Chuckling lightly, he moved around to hunker back down into his chair and replaced the blanket over his legs. At the sound of his laughter, Rorschach's head tilted up the slightest fraction, and he knew he wasn't imagining the slight lilt of sarcasm in his voice.
"Something funny, Daniel?"
"No, no," Dan said, retrieving his own hot cocoa. It was still warm, thank goodness – he took a sip. "Just thinking. It's really not a bad book, Rorschach. It's one of my favorites."
"I'm not surprised," he muttered, picking a marshmallow off the top of his pile. Dan didn't know what to make of that comment, so he ignored it. That was something else you got used to doing, after spending time with Rorschach – if he listened to everything his partner had to say, he'd probably go crazy before long. Hell, he didn't see how Rorschach stayed as sane as he had, with all that stuff floating around in his head.
"Yeah. I even named Archie after a character in that book." At that, Rorschach looked over at him, the rumpled inkblots moving slow around his eyes and cheekbones. He could sense the unasked question (Really?) and nodded in response. "Well, technically," he amended, "I named Archie after the owl from the Disney movie. The Sword in the Stone, you know? That was based off that book."
"Again," Rorschach said, a quirk of his lip betraying the beginning of a smile. "Unsurprising." Everything was silent again, for a few minutes, Rorschach busy with the book and Dan quietly sorting through his thoughts. With anyone else, a lasting stillness like this might have been awkward or off-putting, but it wasn't so with Rorschach. It never was.
"I wanted to be a knight," Dan said suddenly, setting his mug down on the end table. "When I was a kid, you know. I had dreams of living next to the White House, ready at a moment's notice to spring into action and ride off to save the day." He laughed at himself, smiling fondly at the memories of dressing up and parading around the backyard with a stick, pretending to go on quests. Once, he'd even taken one of their good wine glasses and buried it in the garden, a Holy Grail he could dig up later and present. His father had simply shook his head and left the glass on the counter, marveling at how it hadn't broken.
Rorschach flipped the book shut, not sharing in his amusement (but then, he never did laugh, did he?), and fixed him with so serious a stare he could feel it through the mask. "Aren't you a knight already?" he asked, perfectly free of inflection and inference. Dan sobered up at that and considered the question. Sure, he didn't ride on a horse, and he didn't wear armor or believe too much in medieval chivalry, but Rorschach had a point.
"I suppose," he conceded. He smoothed the blanket over his legs, playing with the little creases and folds in the fabric. "I guess you could look at it that way. Knights were more of a government thing, though – getting dressed up and going out there every night is decidedly not."
"No," his partner agreed, bending down to set his empty mug on the floor. "But the principle is the same. Saving people, Daniel. Every night. In a modern age, that is close as you're going to get."
"But, Rorschach," Dan said, reaching out across the room. "Doesn't that make you a knight, too?"
This time, Rorschach considered what Dan had said, stretching and passing the book back into his grasping fingers. He thought for what felt like a long while, his hands empty and curved upward in his lap, occasionally twitching. The gloves were dirty, to be sure, and stained with blood from noses broken long ago. His coat didn't look much better, covered in grime and probably smelling faintly of sewer, if he got close enough to smell it. It was a far cry from the flashing silver of armor, his fists a poor substitute for a sword or a lance, but the nobility he always imagined knights possessed in multitudes was there. You couldn't see it just by glancing at him, but it certainly was there, in the rigidity of his shoulders and spine, and in the undertones of his voice.
"Not a very good one," Rorschach finally said, lacing his fingers together as though self-conscious of his gloves.
"A great one," Dan defended, and Rorschach's mouth twisted into a half-grimace mixture of disapproval and assurance. "Why did you come here tonight?" he asked, suddenly very interested in the answer. After all, he could have spent an evening at home, or out with friends, or… no. That wasn't Rorschach. He didn't know for sure, but from what Dan had gathered, his partner's apartment wasn't exactly a nice place to be. On the other hand, he was very sure that Rorschach had few, if any, friends, too reticent and demanding for anybody to willingly put up with him. The idea made him sad, a little, but it also made him guiltily pleased, because that meant he was the only person he had to depend on.
Of course, he didn't expect Rorschach to say anything like that. His pride wouldn't let him admit any weaknesses, big or small, so Dan wasn't surprised when he shifted a bit on the couch and said, "Got bored. Too quiet."
Dan left it at that, not wanting to push him any farther than he was comfortable. At Rorschach's request, he turned on the television just in time to catch the news, but since that seemed like a dangerous way to provoke Rorschach into heading out right now to beat up some criminals (and he was quite comfortable), he quickly changed the channels until he found that new show, "M*A*S*H." They sat in silence, neither of them really paying the show any attention, but even so, Dan couldn't get over the feeling of just how nice this was – just spending time with someone. He hadn't had friends to invite over to his house in a long time anyway, but there was something different about hanging out with Rorschach. They didn't need to be constantly talking, or even really doing the same thing. What mattered was that they were there, in the same room, just sharing each other's company.
After a half hour or so, he'd gone back to his book, and Rorschach was rooting around his bookshelves. Dan sort of wanted to make a quip about how it was kind of boring here, too, so really it was a waste of time for him to have left his apartment… but he didn't. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched as Rorschach pulled out a book of poetry and cocked his head, his mask still rolled up past his nose and his lip between his teeth. Without a word, he turned the page and settled back into the novel, half of him wrapped up in the story and the other half firmly grounded in the real world. He didn't want to say anything that could jeopardize this strange, wonderful feeling of quiet friendship.
They thought that they understood each other once more – but their doubt had been planted. Now, in their love, which was stronger, there were the seeds of hatred and fear and confusion growing at the same time: for love can exist with hatred, each preying on the other, and this is what gives it its greatest fury.
AN: Ladies and gentlemen:
The End Is Nigh.