Alright, alright, I'm back now. Here ya go kids. (You're just lucky the other one didn't run out in the middle of my vacation grumble grumble)
Rules of the meme:
1. Anonymously post a pairing and prompt you would like to see written. Since this is a kink meme, there is supposted to be a kink involved, but normal well-written prompts should work just as well.
2. Anonymous will respond to your post and write it for you! Art and such is also acceptable/awesome. Multiple people may respond to the same prompt, if they want.
3. If you post a request, try to fill one too. We don't want this to be all prompts and no responses.
4. No flaming other peoples posts. Don't like, don't read.
5. Remember that this is a WATCHMEN thread. Crossovers are allowed though.
Above all, have fun!
/coq/ - http://plus4chan.org/boards/coq/ .
List of kinks for inspiration-http://eliade.livejournal.com/472331.htm
Kink!meme index's(?)- http://leiadiana.livejournal.com/24552.h
http://users.livejournal.com/_ryouseitek
First kink!meme here: http://spam-monster.livejournal.com/813.h
If you are continuing a thread from the old meme, make an opening post with the prompt and a link to the original thread please.
Next Gen AU inspired by captcha prompts here: http://community.livejournal.com/widows_
Unfilled Prompt index for this meme: http://khilari.livejournal.com/2302.html
- Location:Back in the F.L.O.R...IDA
- Mood:
tired - Music:Desolation Row


Comments
tyvm for the new thread <3
Okay so, this isn’t going to be a really cohesive story or something that updates fast, more just scenes that come to me as they come to me. Writing kids is surprisingly hard.]
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Dan is carefully peeling a maplecopter, thumbnails slid into the seam, concentration absolute. They’re useless if you tear them, if you don’t get them exactly in half, and the plant tissue is so delicate, run through with fine veins. If you don’t get it just right-
“You’re gonna stick that on your nose, aren’t you,” Walter deadpans from the next step down, not even looking up to see what his friend is doing. Bony elbows dig into the concrete of the steps, propping him up, and the thin, ragged T-shirt clings to him in the late summer heat.
The ‘copter finally gives, splitting neatly, and Dan thumbs the seed out. “Maybe?” he answers, laughter tingeing his voice, pressing the split seed-leaves into place.
“Makes you look like a bird.”
“Really?” Dan asks, voice nasally and strange as he struggles to get the ‘copter to stay put.
Walter turns, looks up at him; his hair is flat and sweat-streaked. Dan isn’t doing much better. “A really weird bird,” he concludes, and somewhere down the street, someone puts a record on, way too loud – it’s the O’Learys, because Dan can just about hear the stray splatters of years-old housepaint on the speakers, the sound crackly and resonating strangely. Anyway, they only ever play the same six records.
“Good.” Dan pulls himself to his feet, ignoring the imposition the music makes on the fantasy. The heat is too much for water to hold; The ‘copter shears away, flutters to the concrete. “I am Birdman, after all!”
Laughter from below, rough and careless.
“What?”
“Need a better name. That sounds like it’s from a gas-station comic.” Which are, of course, mostly what they have – they only cost a quarter, and for all that his family is comfortable, nine-year-olds are generally kept to a tight allowance. Walter can’t even spare quarters, so he just reads them after Dan is done or, if he’s feeling particularly impatient, perched over his friend’s shoulder.
Cheap and plentiful they may be, but respectable they’re not, not like Superman and Flashman and all the others that the older kids have, dogeared and rolled into their back pockets. It’s an insult, and Dan is momentarily crestfallen. “Hey, at least I got a name, you still haven’t-”
He cuts himself off when he sees Walter sit up straight, perking to some faraway sound. He only ever alerts like that when…
Yes, there it is, the off-key bells, the tune they’ve spent the last two summers memorizing. Dan digs in his pocket, smile fit to burst right off of his face. Pulls out a handful of loose change. “Does Mr. Unnamed Superhero want a bomb pop?” he asks, fishing little bits of twig bark and other foliage from the pile of coins, flicking away pieces of stone.
“You already spent your allowance… bird-man,” Walter mutters, distaste for the name still obvious.
Dan shakes his head. “Uh-uh, this isn’t allowance. Found it all loose in the gravel pit on the other side of the train track. Y’know, where the grass is growing over?” Which makes it free money. And it really should go into the tin bank next to his bed, his dad’s insistent on that, but it’s so hot. “Enough for two,” he adds, and the bells are getting closer, and Dan’s up before Walter can answer, running barefoot over the sharp asphalt to meet the truck in the street.
When he gets back, one pop unwrapped and already dribbling over his hand, the other still sealed, Walter’s shifted on the stoop, knobby bare knees pressed together where he leans over them. He takes the popsicle without a word.
“Superheroes gotta keep up their strength, right?” Dan offers, chomping hard into the ice.
Walter just hrms and peels back the paper, and does his best to keep the red and white and blue from running over his hands.
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Wish all fandoms had this much high-quality fic in all of the 31 flavors of serious to gleeful, glorious crack for newbs like me to dive into right off the bat. Now sifting through in search of possible prompts to fill.
http://spam-monster.livejournal.com/2617.h
previous thread:
http://spam-monster.livejournal.com/813.h
I'd like to see some Comedian/Rorschach where a young, pre!Rorschach Walter is drafted to fight in Vietnam, and the Comedian, after being impressed by his skill on the field, decides to take him under his wing. Does this lead to sexytime? I think so.
Seriously, I was thinking about this, like, yesterday. It could be so hot, with little hero-worshipping, burgeoning-sociopath Walter and blood-thirsty, world-weary Eddie. I'm seeing a lot of dirty talk and bent philosophy. XD
Bonus points if you give them a know it all daughter
So, in an alternate universe, they adopt Hermione Granger?
He couldn’t believe the intensity of his relief when all that perversity was drawn out of him. And it had happened so quickly, not like the long, agonized, sticky dawn hours when he lay in his bed, straining with the effort to do nothing but lie still and stare, unblinking, at the ceiling until his eyes watered. Closer. Closer to being pure like Daniel. All his accumulated depravity broke from him like the foamy, salty, polluted waves in the sound. In its wake he lay splayed, as though he really had just been tossed to shore.
Now he was free to admire and explore Dan’s body without embarrassment. Some morbid part of him tried to whisper envious things to him- why was Daniel free of it? Why not him?- but it seemed to be whispering in a language he didn’t speak fluently. He stroked his partner’s cock, fascinated by its softness, its delicacy. Daniel was making noises now,
familiar noises, the desperate pleas for pleasure that Rorschach himself had made only moments before. But there was a different note to Daniel’s cries. Daniel was free, as no john or back-alley slut he’d ever encountered was free, to truly enjoy the caress. Daniel deserved to make noises like that. Deserved all the pleasure Rorschach could give.
Rorschach sucked gently and steadily on Dan’s cock, enjoying it the way he enjoyed his sugar cubes. He slurped heedlessly, like a greedy child with a popsicle. Drawing his head back a little, Rorschach studied his partner- half admiring, half academic. Dan’s length was obvious, but not obscene. His skin was sleek as that of Rorschach’s own face. The head was smooth and free of the nasty, sliding skin he himself had. Frustrated at Rorschach’s reverie, Dan squirmed and mewled.
“Rorsch- schach- please, please,” the sound of Dan’s voice made him tremble. His partner should never have to beg, not for something he alone deserved, out of the entire city. Rorschach bent his head again, stroking, sucking, prodding the tip of Dan’s dick with his tongue a little too hard for the sensitive flesh. He enveloped Dan’s hot flesh in his hotter mouth until his jaw began to ache. And still it wasn’t enough. He was pleasing Daniel, but not enough. Daniel’s gratification would never result in the sticky, embarrassing filth his own had, but he would receive the profoundest pleasure it was in Rorschach’s power to give. Rorschach knew he would recognize it when it happened, the way he knew just when a blow or kick had finished a would-be assailant. It was the same principle, only in reverse.
Sounds like sobbing came from his partner, and Rorschach worried that he’d disappointed Daniel by returning so quickly to his earlier weakness. He curled protectively over the larger man, the knobs of Dan’s spine digging into his abs, his half-hard cock pressed flush against the small of Daniel’s back. His tongue whispered soothing nonsense to Daniel that his brain did not recognize. Rorschach ran his palm over and over his partner’s back. He watched the motion of his freckled hand moving against Daniel’s unblemished skin. His hands were the only part of his body that Rorschach had ever liked. They were strong, skilled, good hands. He had trained them hard to dole out justice and he was almost proud of him, proud that when Daniel had first sealed their partnership by taking his hand, Rorschach could meet hi s grip with equal strength and steadiness.
Now, seeing his scarred, capable hands sliding over Dan’s muscles, Rorschach knew what to do. Before he could second-guess himself, he slid one finger up to the knuckle into Dan. Dan cried out sharply as the ring of muscle clamped down on Rorschach.
“Nnng, Rorschach, you need more- more lube.” Behind him, Rorschach cocked his head in a familiar gesture. He withdrew and then asked hesitantly, “Don’t have any, Daniel. Should- stop?”
Dan bucked his head madly from side to side, “No! Don’t stop. Just- suck them first.”
Rorschach gingerly lapped at the fingers of his right hand. He circled Dan’s entrance delicately, almost ticklishly with his wet fingertips.
“Rorschach?” Dan’s voice was muffled as his head was buried in his forearms, “Use two this time.”
Rorschach obeyed.
Original prompt:
http://plus4chan.org/boards/coq/src/1240
Thread one, parts 1-25:
http://spam-monster.livejournal.com/813.h
Thread two, parts 26-45:
http://spam-monster.livejournal.com/813.h
----------------------------------------
Dan Dreiberg
September turned into October into November. Dan didn't quite remember where it all went, only that the days had folded into an endless and indistinct haze.
He woke up to find Walter sleeping impossibly close each morning.
It was getting colder then, the open heat which broke in September slowly receding in front of the inexorable advance of winter. The hard blue sky softened gradually to something more forgiving, with a horizon which allowed a pink blush by early morning and a blaze of orange at dusk.
The air was brisk enough by night that Walter made two new long coats (the stitches rested snugly and expertly against his shoulders and back, as if their maker had long ago memorized his body) and Dan knew Walter had used the store's fabric just so he could have an excuse to work it off.
Things between them were still proceeding, delicate as the exposed branches on the maple tree they passed each night.
Sometimes, Walter wouldn't even wait for the secrecy of dark; if only Sally or Laurie were around to see, he'd allow his arm to brush Dan's, their hands to meet. Dan would feel a gentle warning pressure on his shoulder at sudden sounds during their patrols (a habit they couldn't give up) or he would sense their body languages merging into one whole without resistance.
They had never gotten any more daring than the September night when they'd first touched each other and Walter had drawn out his pleasure with his nimble hands and dark, dark, dark eyes—but Dan could hardly consider that something negative. He couldn't imagine being able to survive anything more impassioned than what they already had.
On the first cold snap of the year, dipping low down the length of the plains from the arctic, they had gone to sleep under extra blankets, heavy from a particularly long day.
Whether one of them had woken up and accidentally roused the other, or whether some shared restlessness brought them simultaneously awake, they didn't know; all they knew was that they'd somehow ended up looking across the bed at each other in the middle of the night.
The room was lit by a round and full moon, somehow brighter in the clear night than the sunshine had been earlier.
All at once, Walter's mouth came to rest in the soft spot beneath his chin, and it was all he could do to keep from making a startled sound. A very happy, startled sound.
Dan could feel soft, patient breaths down the length of his throat, and it was almost as if he were back in the early days when he had to be completely still for fear of breaking whatever spell had come over Walter. Except this time, there was something focused, something determined—Walter's hands were holding his arms still—something direct.
No avoiding.
Dan tilted his head back a fraction of an inch, earning a roughly approving grunt from the man currently nipping softly over his jugular. He sucked in air between his tongue and teeth, wondering when exactly Walter had pulled ahead of him in the courage department.
If they were going to compete this way, it was a good competition.
Walter's hands skirted his sides, his hips, his jaw, drawing all his nerves up to the surface and pressing flat where he ached.
He felt as though he were drowning, or being saved from it.
Nothing about the way Walter rocked the heel of his palm against Dan was exploratory or hesitant, it was—oh God—it was a decisive claim. And no one in the history of the world had ever been able to change Walter's mind.
That should have been the most frightening part of all, but instead he studied the patterns of moonlight and shadow on his partner's face and rose up to meet him and curled his fingers into his short hair and held on for dear life.
What felt like hours later Walter was still walking. He rubbed at his bruised shoulder, which felt worse now than when it had happened and was begining to stiffen up. The sky looked darker than it had and he wasn’t sure if it was nightfall or a thunderstorm. The tang of ozone in the air suggested thunder. He stumbled over a tree root, only just catching himself, and admitted that he was exhausted. Which, given that this was a dream, just wasn’t fair. He shook his head and carried on doggedly, refusing to give into tiredness that was, quite literally, all in his head.
The sound of sobbing drifted through the trees and he angled towards it, not sure if he wanted to meet anybody else but still needing information. He missed being big enough to break people’s fingers. The sound led him to a clearing containing a huge black gryphon with a rope around its neck tied to a stake and a mock turtle, who was the one doing the crying. He had a red mask over his calf-like face.
‘Stop crying,’ said Walter. ‘Masks shouldn’t cry.’
‘That’s what I’ve been telling him,’ said the gryphon in a german accent.
‘I can’t help it,’ sobbed the mock turtle. ‘Nobody needs me now. When I was a real turtle back in the army…’
‘Don’t start that or we’ll be here all day,’ said the gryphon.
‘I don’t mind,’ said Walter. ‘My father was in the army.’
The mock turtle looked at him and actually smiled, while the gryphon yawned and buried its head under its wing. Walter sat down in the clearing, wrapping his arms around his knees. They seemed friendly enough, at least by Wonderland standards, and he needed the rest.
‘When I was in the army our drill sargeant was an old narwhal,’ began the mock turtle. ‘He had a nose for drilling. He taught all of us to swim in formation. Turtles are good at that, turtle formation has been famous since the romans. Although we didn’t just have turtles in the army. We had all sorts of marine life, mostly fish. All fish were allowed to join the army except pike.’
‘Why not pike?’ asked Walter.
‘Only a very old fashioned army would allow use of a pike nowadays,’ said the mock turtle. ‘Swordfish swear by the old weapons, but they’re no use at all against a fish in a tank. Now, aside from pike, the army accepted all sorts of creatures. Even jellyfish and squids, and both of them are spineless.’
Walter yawned and missed the next few sentences, something about yellow bellied sliders he thought.
‘There,’ said the gryphon from under its wing. ‘I told you it was boring.’
‘I’m just tired,’ said Walter. ‘I didn’t know you could get tired in dreams.’
‘Go to sleep then,’ said the mock turtle. ‘We’ll keep watch for you.’
Walter nodded, they seemed trustworthy and he wasn’t sure he could go any further without sleep. He curled into a tight ball on the forest floor and drifted into unconsciousness. He dreamt that he was somewhere warm and bright, and someone was calling him. He tried to open his eyes, but couldn’t move at all no matter how he struggled. It was almost a relief to find himself back in Wonderland, and at least able to sit up. He rubbed at his eyes sleepily.
‘Feeling better?’ asked the gryphon.
‘Yes. Less tired, anyway.’ Walter stood up. ‘Do either of you know where the exit is?’
The mock turtle and the gryphon exchanged a look which spoke indecipherable volumes.
‘In the Queen of Heart’s palace,’ said the mock turtle. ‘But you don’t want to go there.’
‘I’ve been told to avoid the Queen of Hearts,’ said Walter.
‘You should,’ replied the gryphon. ‘Since the King of Hearts left no one has been safe. You should stay here, forget about leaving.’
Walter shook his head. He had given up Rorschach to get this far, now he had nothing left worth losing. ‘I need to get out of here. Can you tell me the way to the palace?’
They looked at each other again, and the mock turtle looked away refusing to answer. But the gryphon pointed with one huge paw.
‘Take care,’ it said. ‘Try not to be seen by any playing cards.’
‘I will,’ said Walter. ‘Thank you.’
And he set off towards a palace owned by a mad queen. He glanced back to see that the gryphon now had its wing around the mock turtle’s shoulders, and the mock turtle was sobbing again.
Either:
1. First time sex after Jon's accident. Does she jump his newly-blued bones, or is she nervous and need some convincing?
2. The two of them experimenting with Jon's new powers in bed. Multiplying, size changing, seeing the future, teleportation. Work it into sex, anon.
Also, this is back in the 60's when they're all young and sexy and Rorschach was eloquent as shit.
Um, yeah OOC like crazy, oh well xD
“Please, just try them on, just for a second!”
Dan breathlessly pushed the pair of black, extraordinarily high stilettos into Rorschach’s hands, his face flushed from hopeful anticipation and embarrassment.
Still dazed from the abrupt interruption of their rather frantic foreplay, Rorschach could only stare back and forth between the shoes and his partner’s lust-filled gaze, trying to put two and two together. “You want me to…what?”
Dan blushed harder, confidence fading fast but obviously desperate enough to power through it. “Rorschach, please, I need you so badly,” Dan whispered, leaning forward to nip at the neck he’d abandoned moments ago, “put on the shoes. For me,” he growled before crushing their lips together in possessive kiss.
Rorschach felt a shiver run down his spine at the words, his hands tightening unconsciously on the grip he had on the shoes. Whore shoes, he thought. But Daniel was touching him like that, and making those noises, and as much as he tried to ignore it he was so hard it was almost painful. He bit Daniel’s lip almost hard enough to draw blood—he knew, Dan fucking knew that he could get him to do things he would normally kill others for even suggesting when he was so…worked up.
Daniel groaned against him and pulled back, looking at him with large brown eyes that made Rorschach want to simultaneously ride his cock till he came and break his fingers. He felt his head nodding, eyes stubbornly not looking at the shoes.
Daniel was back on him in an instant.
“Oh god, Rorschach, you don’t know how badly I’ve wanted this, I’ve fantasized about this for so long…” he murmured against Rorschach’s gasping lips, moving down slowly to place frenzied open mouthed kisses down his throat.
“Ngghh…Daniel—“he writhed against him, each touch of Dan’s hot lips driving the thought from his mind. “Daniel…Daniel wait! I’m not sure how to…I’ve never…,” he tugged on thick brown hair to get his attention back.
Their parental issues have been used to emotionally scar and damage them in canon - let's see it lead to some good old-fashioned porn, anon!
2. Silhouette and Mothman go to the local bar and get totally smashed after Silhouette is kicked out of the Minutemen. I want them to have a "screw-those-fuckers-let's-party!!!" sort of time, because bar-hopping with Mothman would be a crazy party experience.
tl;dr... I WANT SILHOUETTE PARTYING WITH MOTHMAN AND HOLLIS BEING AWKWARDLY IN LOVE WITH LESBIANS
Posting another fill for this below.
"To Harlem, to enjoy the society of some really important people." He growls.
And that's how they end up at Hattie's. It's just Hattie's apartment, and the cover goes to her rent. Sitting in a corner with Byron and Hattie herself, she realizes that she's never actually been around this many negroes. It's not that she doesn't like them, like Nelly, about whom Byron is currently spewing venom. In fact, when she had first arrived in the U.S. she had been struck by their odd beauty, and had immediately felt the unfairness of all the laws and unwritten rules laid on them, so much like the anti-semitism she was fleeing.
Hattie is shaking her head and coming in on Byron's pauses to commiserate with him, the effect of their two voices strangely musical. She's letting Ursula drink for free because 'the poor child obviously needs it bad'. Ursula would suspect Hattie of shuffling a little, if it wasn't so obvious that she has never done any such thing in her life. She's massive and beautiful like a lioness, sitting there in men's clothes with her graying hair cropped down to peppercorns all over her head. Three men who are also drinking for free are finally unpacking their instruments, and Byron perks up. He has played Ursula blues and jazz records before, and really, she had started hating Nelly the day he overheard and said the stuff had no artistic merit.
When the band really gets going, sad but still hot enough to fry an egg on, it's good to be in a place where she can ask a girl to dance. She warms up with Byron of course, but soon enough she's doing the Charleston with a girl who just calls herself T.J., and feeling better than she has all week. She's still alive, anyway. Still able blow wreaths of bright blue smoke, to slug sickly-sweet, burning moonshine out of a mason jar and to move with the woman in her arms, breathing in the clean, bittersweet scent of whatever it she puts on her hair to make it manageable. She's not going to give Angie any cause to cry, but it's good to be with someone who knows
nothing about her.
Later, at an elegant lounge that you can only get to by knocking at a hidden door and giving the correct password, she drinks champange from the slipper of a man impersonating Marlene Dietrich. Everyone else is similarly complicated; boys dressed as girls dressed as boys and vice-versa, a person in white feathers who hails from Berlin and claims to be a true hermaphrodite, and two perfect and identical androgynes in black leather. She feels almost normal.
It had been three days since Rorschach had been to his house, and Dan was starting to worry. Three days wasn’t really long enough for him to be legitimately concerned about his partner, but under the present circumstances…. Dan really wished his partner would come.
Three nights earlier, Dan hadn’t even felt a hit. No strange rays or needle sticks or chemical sprays. He’d gone home feeling no worse than usual and only realized something was wrong when he woke drowning in his own pajamas two hours later. Waking up in his bed and having his bed be the size of an Olympic pool, totally naked but suffocating under the weight of his cotton pj bottoms and bald eagle t-shirt had been more disorienting than anything in Dan’s life. He flailed around the bed, tripping like someone trying to run through rough surf, and finally curled up, panting, in the middle of his pillow.
He thought about reaching for the phone to call someone, but abandoned the idea as ludicrous. There was only one person he would trust to see him like this, and he’d never give Dan his phone number- if he had one. Also, Dan was still giddy and lacked the courage to venture off the pillow, across the bed and over the gap between bed and nightstand to reach the phone.
Dan gave himself a series of genuine pinches on the leg. When he didn’t wake up, he curled up in a ball and pressed his palms firmly over his eyes. Dan focused on his breathing and tried to remember any of the prayers he’d learned in Hebrew school. He was sure there wasn’t a prayer for being restored to normal human-size, but he wasn’t going to discount it. Things had gotten weird enough already that having prayers answered would seem like business as usual.
When he was still six inches tall when he awoke, Dan had something like hysterics. He rolled around on the rumpled sheets, kicking his feet like a two-year old. Only when he shrieked at the top of his voice, and realized that the echoing shrieks were nowhere near the right volume did he pull himself together. The precarious trip off the bed, down the hall to the stairs, down the stairs and into the kitchen left him exhausted and rug burned in places he didn’t like to think about. It had taken nearly all morning and still left him sore, hungry, panicky and without a route up onto the table.
Getting to the top of the table was the extent of his plan. Rorschach had left the bag of sugar cubes out the night before and Dan intended to sit there, where his partner couldn’t possibly miss him, until Rorschach reappeared. He’d had a brief, terrifying vision of Rorschach slipping in and out with his usual feline speed and silence, while Dan tried to shimmy down the stairs before he left.
In the end, he compromised. He couldn’t spend three days in the same spot, but he did stay in the kitchen. For three long, disorienting, boring days. Dan couldn’t read anything, he couldn’t get the type the right distance away from his eyes to make it focus and fit it all into his range of vision. He crouched on the window over the sink, watching the passersby, hoping, in the wee hours, to see a familiar trench-coated figure. But Rorschach didn’t come, and Dan worried that someone would see a tiny, naked man sitting on the window, worried that whoever had done this to him would come. He slept on a dishtowel folded into a sleeping bag (glad he had set his thermostat to 74 even though he hadn't planned on running around naked for an extended period) and anxiously bided his time.
Rorschach swung the door open, already in a defensive stance. The swirling masked face swept the room, then lighted upon the miniature of his partner, hopping up and down on the table, smaller than Rorschach’s own hand. The masked stretched strangely, making patterns Daniel had never seen before and he realized Rorschach’s jaw was hanging open. The noises his partner was making were not his usual grudging, noncommittal grunts, he seemed to be gasping for air.
“….Daniel?!”
It's Halloween at Studio 54. Ozymandias and Bowie, by prior arrangement, show up dressed as EACH OTHER. Discuss.
(I apologize in advance for being emotionally manipulative)
---
He had known it would end like this.
Not standing before a god while snowflakes hung unnaturally in the air, that hadn't been one of the hundreds of scenarios he had imagined; but he knew it would end like this, in a Cornelian dilemma. He'd worked tirelessly to purge his streets of its filth, knowing he could never exist in the ideal he had been striving for. And now, now it was done. Veidt had neutered his city, annihilated his purpose in a tangle of otherworldly limbs and a shockwave of nightmares.
What to do now. Live, and fight, tug at the frayed edges and unravel the conspiracy for all to see, plunge the world into war and assure its destruction?
Or– no.
Never compromise.
Rorschach can see Nite Owl on the periphery of his vision, dark against the snow.
He'd felt it coming, aching bone-deep in his limbs, but Daniel hadn't, oblivious to the writing on the wall. Even when Rorschach had clasped his hand, proclaimed him a good friend and apologized, he'd not known it was a goodbye. The gesture had made Daniel furrow his brow, and for a searing instant Rorschach wished he had pulled his friend close, at least once, worked out how to embrace him and the connection they'd always had thrumming softly between them; fall, and I'll catch you. Let yourself–
His words hadn't been enough, not enough to–
The only person he–
Only Daniel, who would ever–
The antarctic air is punishing against his damp face, and the words choke him, knowing Daniel has to bear witness.
"What are you waiting for?" He asks his executioner, words torn away by the wind. "Do it."
"Do it!"
*
Laurie can't quite bring herself to cut her hair. Instead, she bleaches it blond and puts it up in Heidi braids. A very popular style with high-school girls, and the pink-framed sunglasses she affects complete the image. Dan bleaches his hair as well, and pulls it back with a bandanna folded into a headband - technically a gang style, but commonplace enough on the streets. Rorschach harrumphes and mutters something about necessity in desperate times. Laurie laughs when she sees it, and ruffles his hair, and he blushes and says at least she kept her good looks. They both go wandering the streets, one at a time on planned routes, and nobody so much as looks at them funny. It works.
Eddie can't really hide his scar. He's starting to go stir-crazy. He spends his days pacing around and around the Owlship, waking up Laurie and Dan. Rorschach has taken to vanishing back to, presumably, his daylight identity. His real face. Well, it's not like he's wanted by the police. Or the CIA.
*
"All this farting around," Eddie announces over dinner one morning. (Curry from an all-night restaurant, his treat. They're almost through the cash he brought with him, and he'll - no, someone else will have to go raid one of his stashes.) "S'all very well to be getting back to our roots, but we havn't had a big heist in weeks."
"Need information," Rorschach mutters, between bites. He's getting panang curry sauce all over his cheeks. "Can only do so much on the spur of the moment."
Dan flushes. He used to be the information go-to guy, but he hasn't gotten all his systems up and running here. "We've been doing useful work," he says, waving his hands defensively. "Every little bit helps. And between the Royal Isabella and those three truck convoys, we're still putting a dent in the drug trade - "
"Shut it, kid, you sound like Nelly." Eddie leans back and blows a smoke ring from his cigarette. "You know what I mean. We didn't go rouge to do NYPD's work for them."
There's an uncomfortable silence. Laurie is suddenly aware that it's for Dan's sake that hey've been so careful about the no-killing rule. Rorschach thinks that letting scum live is soft. Eddie is a war vet, and gleefully brutal, and thinks of deaths as a hazard of the trade. And she - somehow she's picked up Jon's indifference toward life. She doesn't know how or when, and it scares her. She doesn't want to kill. But the idea no longer repulses her.
Collateral damage. Sometimes she thinks of taking Dan by the shoulders and telling him, go back. Retire. Ask Ozymandias for a favor, and I bet you could get the charges killed. You have a life left. You could be a normal person.
We can't.
"If you've got something in mind, say so," Laurie says aloud, and sets her fork down. "We'll back you up. You know it."
"Don't have something specific in mind. But I have a hell of a lot of dirt on the CIA, and some documents that could mess up Nixon bad." Eddie shrugs, as if this was a perfectly normal thing to have. "We could work something out. Hell, what're we here for if we don't make life difficult for people?"
She thinks of Jon's hands tingling on her skin, of his calm voice. They come to recognize that I am not uder their control. "Government people? Sure. Sounds good. Nobody else will."
Dan is holding Rorscach's elbow, clutching it like a kid trying to hide behind his mother. She wonders what about that exchange scared him so badly. Rorschach's expression is as always unreadable, but he doesn't seem to be struggling.
Laurie realizes she and Eddie are grinning in just the same way.
The flush on his skin that had begun to recede returned with a vengeance, as if she’d suggested something unbelievably filthy. She held up her hands.
“I’m not trying to get into your…er…brains. I don’t think that’s even possible. It’s the best solution we’ve got – if you let yourself stay this exhausted and Dan does need help, you’ll be useless. Do you want to leave Dan without back-up?”
“Shameless ploy,” he muttered. “Keep pop psychology to self.”
He ruined the hard-man affect by yawning through the final word. Laurie raised one eyebrow, unconsciously imitating her mother’s Pert Expression #4 (For When Male Lead Is Veering Off Script), and peeled away the synthskin covering the jack in her left wrist. “Hook me in before you pass out,” she demanded.
Kovacs growled but reached into the mess on his floor without looking and produced a length of cable. He jabbed one end into her wrist without touching her skin, and Laurie shivered at the brief shock of static electricity that shot up to her elbow. She reluctantly pictured the delicate filaments along her own nerves, designed to capture and enhance sensation – the exact opposite of Kovacs’ virtual armor. No heroics in cyberspace, she reminded herself sternly. Out there, she was nothing but bait on a hook.
She couldn’t imagine how her mother had ever endured it, leaping in to fight the bad guys completely exposed, with every nerve lit up like Christmas and recording. Sure, she’d had Hollis and the rest at her back, but one good blast…
Kovacs changed some settings through the datapad on his temple and visibly steeled himself before sliding the cable into the base of his skull. Laurie gritted her teeth, tasting copper, and shuddered while the snap of connection worked through her bones.
“Ooooooh, that’s unpleasant,” she murmured.
Kovacs grunted and refrained from pointing out the lack of a checkered blanket and basket of al fresco edibles on his end of the wire. Laurie mentally edged away from the edge of his thought and focused on her own projection, making it tight and impermeable. Hardware wasn’t really designed to be used by more than one person – it was physically possible for any number of techs to port in, but uncomfortable. Laurie felt like Kovacs was looking over her shoulder, breathing down her neck, while she did the same to him, and behind them another Kovacs and another Laurie and another Kovacs, an infinite chain of too-damn-closeness.
Laurie clamped down on the thought that Kovacs must be suffering from an advanced case of man-love, if this cheek-to-cheek smash-up was preferable to possibly missing a message from Drieberg. She suspected a little trickled through anyway, as Kovacs stiffened and moved as far away as the cable would allow.
Projecting was tricky. It was best to come in with a mission, stay focused, and get out as soon as you’d completed it and your mind started to drift to what you wanted for lunch. If you lingered, the best disaster you could hope for was discovering your projection had changed to a giant banana; at worst, you’d find legmen for the megacorp you just burned waiting for you at the produce stand you’d decided to patronise. The human consciousness was just…leaky.
Bahaha let us hope so ♥
God I love this.
I've always thought the whole point of rorschach's costume was for him to look normal from a distance, only for then to realize HE HAS NO FACE, making it scarier than if he was wearing something outlandish. Willow here, why would she wear striped socks and a large black hoody, not exactly indistinct ladies' wear, if that's the direction you were going.
That aside, this was very moody and I enjoyed it a lot.
“I don’t know,” she replied, surprised. “I’ve never tried. He’s, you know, dead, and I’ve mourned, and talking to what’s left of him…I just can’t make myself do it.”
“Try.”
There was a fleeting sensation of her hand grabbing itself, her own lips twisting in disgust. Laurie split her attention between cyberspace and the real world (the first Thou Shalt Not every cowboy learned and Kovacs’ standard operating procedure) and self-consciously stuck her tongue out. Her nerves reported both the slide of saliva along her lips and the clenched teeth that made a raspberry impossible. She held her hand in front of her face and waggled her fingers, but even as she stared at them she was simultaneously sure her eyes were rolling toward the ceiling.
“Miss Isham…”
She dropped her hand and focused on the pixelated world inside her eyelids. They were staring at a small box. It hummed to itself.
“Oh,” Laurie replied. “Um. Okay. What do I do?”
Her shoulders shrugged. “Daniel knocks.”
“Brrrr. Can you stop twitching me around like a puppet? It’s giving me the willies.” Not half as much as the living grave in front of them, though. She nodded (the gesture cutting off abruptly as Kovacs shifted the nanometre or so away from her that was the limits of their shared mental space), shivered, and touched the box.
“Hollis? Uncle Hollis? It’s Laurie.”
Nothing. The box vibrated sickeningly underneath her hands, as if it was stuffed full of bees.
A sigh gusted in her ear, and they were abruptly elsewhere, another stretch of identical formless nothingness that was nonetheless obviously different, and far away, and her stomach wanted to turn inside-out and be worn as a shoe before it would take any more of this.
Laurie really hated cyberspace.
“Only keyed to Daniel,” Kovacs said thoughtfully. “Suspected as much. Inconvenient, but safer from tampering.”
“Hmm,” Laurie replied, focused on not puking. “If you say so. It’s still creepy. Echoing around cyberspace forever, no body to ever return to.”
“It’s perfect,” Kovacs shot back, then fell abruptly silent, and Laurie suspected he hadn’t meant to reply.
“Where are we now?”
“Safe here,” he said. “Usual message drop. Disused Veidt-Ashpool server.”
He hesitated, and Laurie briefly felt like her own teeth were gritting together before Kovacs remembered himself and forced out, “Daniel may also make contact here – ” they stretched together, limbs thinning to filaments “– or here,” the filaments looped, and Laurie nearly lost the struggle with her belly. “But most likely here. Can watch all three simultaneously.”
He pulled as far away as he was able, and Laurie opened her eyes to watch him slither out of both jackets, careful not to disturb their connection, and awkwardly drape them over his torso.
“It helps to lie down,” she vocalised, the words slow as refrigerated syrup.
“Hurm,” he muttered and cleared a space on the floor. He turned and wriggled until Laurie was ready to scream in annoyance, trying to find a position that didn’t rest on his neck jack or strangle him with the short cable.
Laurie crawled over to the small window, dragging the cord behind her, and lit up another cigarette. She suspected no amount of blowing would keep the smoke off her new shades, but it was the only distraction at hand to prevent her braining her partner with the closest blunt object. Which happened to be Blake’s little Russian death trap, so she’d not only be down her only available hardware but destroy their best avenue of investigation into the bastard’s death.
She picked it up, carefully, tempted to peek despite what it had done to Kovacs. If it was a recalcitrant witness, she could break it easily, with charm or, if that failed, a vulnerable little finger. No waiting for the right prince to come along and waken the comatose mess of circuits and wire. Just one reason of millions she never regretted rejecting her mother’s way.
Kovacs finally settled down after what felt like hours – no, it had been thirty seconds at most, since her cigarette was still freshly lit; that was just the ghost-time of cyberspace creeping into her mind – but struggled against the unconsciousness that swamped him. Daniel, Daniel, Daniel, he went on projecting, shuffling restlessly between the points he’d shown her and three others, and it was easy to piggyback on his signal. The harmony of their dual projecting finally seemed to sooth him enough that his limbs went limp, his jaw slack and revealing a ragged set of teeth.
She thought of orphanage medical care and tried not to be disgusted, tongue tracing the even lines of her own set. They’d been removed and re-set in her jaw twice, once as a young girl and again when her wisdom teeth undid the orthodontist’s hard hours of work. Her teeth had then been veneered, and cleaned and polished twice weekly by a small team that did nothing but monitor her and Sally’s dental condition. Without all that care…
Well, they still wouldn’t even approach those monstrous choppers. What did he teeth on, barbed wire?
The steady rhythm of their entwined projection was started to mellow her agitation as well. She flicked the butt out the window – hoping immediately afterward she hadn’t thrown it anywhere particularly flammable – and sat down next to Kovacs, carefully placing a hand on his shoulder as she felt him go fully under.
Which was when everything he’d been so desperately trying not to think about that it was foremost in his mind began to spool out into their shared space.
* * *
parts 1-20:
http://spam-monster.livejournal.com/813.h
parts 21-22:
http://spam-monster.livejournal.com/813.h
He'd like to say that it was the current state of the world, necessary fretting in general that made him hesitant to succumb to much-needed sleep, wary of what war-ridden nightmares his subconscious mind would churn up - but that would be the biggest self-serving bullshit he'd ever dredged up since convincing himself in '77 that the Keene Act was his full reason for retiring.
This wasn't entirely his fault - not really.
They managed to make to make the most innocent things look like the most intimate - whether it was Laurie idly stroking his hair, trying (and failing) to flatten it, or Walter merely watching her with that steady, knifelike gaze, a glint of... want?-- no, not want, hunger-- apparent even beneath the dispassionate mask.
The man worked at a local dry cleaners making a little above minimum wage, was under copious amounts of medication to keep him strangely docile, and had gone from being a name synonymous with a city paralyzed by fear - someone used to making his own rules and scorning everyone else's - to just another average (almost excessively bland) denizen of it. For all intents and purposes, he had little reason to actually be content at all, but he was; of that much Dan was certain. It was the only thing he didn't feel like a traitor for admitting in the weekly reports Long requested during this "adjustment stage".
Hell, sometimes Dan felt like he was still getting used to the whole goddamn thing, even though the honeymoon period was more than over. His partner's old stubbornness was readily apparent in the way he refused to completely accept "charity", insisting on not only helping with groceries once he'd received that first sparse paycheck but also fixing things around the house. And it sure as hell wasn't easy those first few weeks just watching him walk around, so fascinatingly exposed, lean muscle straining under that small collection of faded undershirts--
(--wasn't easy to keep from imagining that same body working overtime in combat, in swift uppercuts, as well as other, seedier endeavors, both more violent and twice as compelling.)
As much as the doctors tried to stress that Rorschach and Walter Kovacs were two distinctly separate personalities, Dan wasn't sure he believed it. Walter Kovacs was-- well--
It was like someone had taken a blade to what was Rorschach and pared him down mercilessly, stripped away not just that sinister mask and heavy trenchcoat carefully layered in dirt and reeking of death (a warning to anyone who dared try and get close) but another, unidentifiable part of him, maybe a touch of violent fanaticism - had just peeled it all down to the grim, quietly furious core of who he was.
This, frankly, was what was so reeling about the man becoming involved with Laurie and her fiery temperament.
"We have a very Tracy-meets-Hepburn relationship," she'd once told him dryly. "I'm not sure who's who in this scenario. Regardless-- I wear the pants but let him think that he does."
It was the first time either had admitted to him that something more than offbeat friendship was at hand.
First half is here:
http://spam-monster.livejournal.com/813.h
February 15th, 1967
Staying at Daniel’s house again. Only doing it because he asked me to; said he needed the company. Don’t want to be here. Uncomfortable. Wasn’t hungry, so we watched television for some time. Daniel kept trying to start a conversation. Could tell he was annoyed that I wasn’t responding and he went to bed soon enough. Don’t mean to be the cause of his bad mood, but I have no interest in idol chatter tonight.
A weakness, for him to rely on people like this, to need others around him. And yet I agreed to stay. Same shortcoming developing in me? Plausible, unfortunately. My weaknesses regarding Daniel have already been made obvious.
Reread last night’s journal entry. What I wrote about Daniel. Wrote that I
The pen stopped, hovering over the word that stood brazenly in the forefront of his mind. Unwilling to let it escape to be sealed in ink and paper, permanent and inescapable. He moved lower to start on a fresh line.
Don’t know what to do. Avoiding Daniel a possibility, but not an ideal solution. Even if I informed him about leaving beforehand Daniel would not be happy. Would worry about me. Don’t want to avoid him anyway. But unsure if I should stay if these feelings cannot be subdued.
Pointless, luxurious sentimentalities, distracting and dangerous to rational thinking. Ridiculous too, to think that I could lo
Rorschach wrenched the pen away from the paper. He looked at what he’d just written; his fingers twitched around the pen but he forcibly stilled them and kept staring at the word that was almost there.
Suddenly irritated, he jammed the pen between the pages and tossed the journal on bedside table, upsetting a small wooden owl figurine sitting next to the lamp.
He started pacing the room, bed to door, door to window, window to bed, but his thoughts wouldn’t stop racing. And that word, always there no matter how much he tried to ignore it and force it back and despise it.
Before he knew it he was out in the hallway, and four quick strides later outside Daniel’s bedroom. The door was open just a crack.
The bedroom was darker than the hallway. Strange shapes that that he recognized as furniture broke up the shadows with a more solid darkness; stretched on the bed was the one particular lump of darkness that drew his attention. His eyes adjusted as he crept forward, and when he reached the bed he looked down with clear vision and a less than clear mind at Daniel, wrapped against the winter chill in a green and white comforter. Hair that he knew looked flatly monochromatic under the harsh light of the Owlship and took on a more bronzed sheen in the light of the kitchen spread dark across the pillow; eyes that he knew could spot a red-tailed hawk nesting on a ledge twelve stories up and would shimmer with delight as they followed its path through the sky lay shut and relaxed. The shape of Daniel’s body was clear even through the thick blanket and Rorschach drank in the sight.
He didn’t know how long he stood there. Watching, thinking, knowing the deviancy of what he was doing and watching some more anyway. When seeing wasn’t enough and his hand reached out almost of its own volition to brush across Daniel’s shoulder, shaking as it withdrew, he knew what he had to do.