Two black kings, one red queen. Dan looked down at the cards in front of him. Solitaire was supposed to be a relaxing activity, yet every time he started a game, he found the decisions a little bit uncomfortable. One of those black faces was going to be alone. What if he chose wrong?
"Left one," Rorschach said, over his shoulder. Rorschach was on the couch, using a spoon to eat a bowl of cereal with no milk. He hadn't even looked over to see that Dan, at the table, was debating his next move. The first few times they had worked together, Dan had found Rorschach's prescience to be, well, creepy, but now it seemed natural, even if Dan still couldn't bring himself to trust a knowing that he couldn't make sense of empirically. Rorschach always went left to right, always focused, always methodical. He did what needed to be done, and he didn't ponder the moral weight of things. He just knew.
Dan put the red queen on the black king.
"Are you coming tonight?" Dan asked, knowing the answer.
"Work to do," came the predictable response. Dan had no idea what Rorschach did when the two of them weren't together, save from the tv reports attributing criminal deaths to him. Did he have a home, a family, a name? If he did, he never mentioned it to Dan, and Dan knew better than to pry. There was, really, no actual value in it. After all, he too put on a mask to do his work, he too hid his true identity from the world. Only three people in all the world knew that he, Daniel Dreiburg, was the Nite Owl, and none of them were any position to talk - or to judge.
Still, he worried about Rorschach. It was true that he could look after himself - it was everyone else who needed to worry about physical safety - but Rorschach was so basically alone.
"You know, you're welcome to stay here while I'm out," he said, for perhaps the thousandth time.
"Work," Rorschach replied, covering his mouth again with his mask and setting the empty bowl on the coffee table. Dan instinctively got up and slipped a coaster under it. Then he stood in front of Rorschach, looking down at the smaller man on the couch. He took off his glasses and began to wipe the lenses with his handkerchief, thinking about what to say. Dan wouldn't have minded it a bit if Rorschach just took over the guest room in Dan's house. At the very least it would relieve him of the unfounded worry he felt whenever Rorschach left the Owl Nest by himself.
"Yes, Daniel?" Rorschach intoned, gruffly, breaking Dan's reverie. Dan sighed. Oh, he could say aloud what was going through his mind, try to insist that Rorschach just return to the Nest when he was done fighting crime for the night, listen to Rorschach refuse, again, and then watch him leave even more brusquely than usual, but Dan had played out that scene so many times that he no longer had any need to experience it in person. It happened in its entirety in his mind, all in a moment. He sighed again and started walking toward the kitchen.
"Just let yourself out. There's an escape hatch two blocks -"
"Know how to get out, Daniel," Rorschach replied. There was no need for a 'goodnight'. Perhaps it wasn't really so much prescience, Dan mused, climbing the stairs to his bedroom to get changed, as it was familiarity.