Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/780159.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage, Graphic_Depictions_Of_Violence
  Category:
      F/M
  Fandom:
      Watchmen_(Comic)
  Relationship:
      Dan_Dreiberg/Laurie_Juspeczyk
  Character:
      Dan_Dreiberg, Laurie_Juspeczyk
  Additional Tags:
      Masturbation, Dubious_Consent, One_Shot
  Stats:
      Published: 2013-05-01 Words: 1397
****** Hiding ******
by black_lodge
Summary
     "Why bother with reality when the fantasy is so much brighter? The
     idea of duty had died in 1977 as had any shred of self-respect." Dan
     wrestles with his costume kink, his self-loathing, and his
     imagination.
Notes
See the end of the work for notes
Six years had passed and she still glowed and flirted like a teenage girl, but
with the grace and confidence that she wore as naturally as that slinky
strapless dress, baring shoulders and more without compunction, without regard
for what she did to him.
Sitting across the table from her, he'd felt pinned, a bug on a specimen board,
carefully flayed for her scrutiny. Torture, every minute of it; the wanting and
the knowing-he-couldn't, while she chatted on, not oblivious so much as
unconcerned. On the terrace outside, talking about that weirdo with the pain
fetish -- almost too close for comfort. Because all this -- the anonymous
nightly violence in the name of the greater good -- was just a stand-in for
their own darker desires which, given free reign, might uncomfortably mirror
those of their own victims.
At that moment, he wanted to drop to his knees and worship her, unworthy as he
was, drink her in and be glad for the pain which she would inevitably bestow on
him. He wanted her to take him apart. He would beg for it. She could do it with
a single touch, her finger to his wrist, her lips (God forgive me) light on his
cheek. Simultaneously he wanted to rip her apart, like peeling apart a fresh
spring leaf and admiring the way the flesh separates around the branching
veins, for the sheer pleasure of seeing which parts will give and which will
remain intact. He wanted, he wanted.
But no. Dan was a Gentleman now. That fizzy current of sexual tension
underlying their amused discussion of that weirdo's practices shorted out when
Dan mentioned Rorschach's characteristically businesslike end of him. And their
evening concluded on that note, sour like the breath of an alcoholic dreaming
of better days, vivid hallucinations in the dregs of a whiskey stupor. Why
bother with reality when the fantasy is so much brighter? The idea of duty had
died in 1977, as had any shred of self-respect.
Dan escorted Laurie to the car, his gut twisting because she'd paid for the
meal, and he knew that with Jon she could afford expensive food and private
taxi service, and all he could give her was maybe a burger and a ride home in a
grubby yellow cab. But her fingers entwined with his around the handle of the
umbrella, and helping her over the gutter and into the vehicle, smelling the
waxy hot smell of her and the electric storm, seemed like an experience as
eternal as it was brief. How could an event so everyday and routine (Being A
Gentleman) transform itself, in the twisted recesses of his mind, into
something so much more?
He trudged home, thinking about her smell, wondering, wondering. A dangerous
daze but he arrived at his apartment and let himself in without incident.
Later, sitting on his couch in the dark silence of his living room, he wasn't
sure how he managed to arrive there in one piece. His mind was still buzzing
with Laurie, the lingering scent of her, but his mind had pulled up the
familiar smell of blood and dirty alleys to go along with it, recalled the
pound of fist against flesh, the deep ache the next morning. The deep ache...
he was hard before he even realized it, dazed and confused on the couch in his
living room, wondering if it was the thought of Laurie or the vivid memory of
violence that made him so horny.
He rested his head against the couch, his hand doing what it did, and he could
vaguely see his reflection in the shadowy glass of the television. He shut his
eyes, squinted so it hurt. The smell of blood and filth intensified, and he saw
Laurie before him, in that outfit - that outfit, which he had never forgotten,
but had hung in the back of the closet of his mind. One of those night patrols
- he so rarely patrolled with her, and probably a good thing, because at
sixteen she had been as unbearably alluring as she is now, and if she had ever
turned her attention on him, that intense gaze, facing him full-on with that
glorious lithe body encased in transparent golden vinyl –
Go with it,his unconscious mind instructed, and there they were, returning from
a particularly violent patrol, no different from the others except he didn't
drop her off at headquarters for her mother to get her at the end. The ship
plunged into the river and navigated to the tunnel which led back to his place.
Covered in someone else's blood and muscles thrumming with everything, a shower
is called for, but they don't get out of the dungeon.
Beneath the building, in the fluorescent lighting, he kneels before her,
stripped down to his goggles and his cape, aware he should look ridiculous but
this time his worship isn't hopeless, demeaning, desperate. This time, she begs
for it, trembling, alight, and he doesn't war with his ethics. Morality doesn't
twist his ear and shrilly reprimand him. His youthful body is hard and
practiced at brutality, and what is sex if not a redirected sort of brutality?
He takes on the boldness of the Comedian, pinning the girl to the wall,
grinding into her, dominating her mouth with his. Her moans are edged with
hunger and a delicious panic, and that panic is what gets to him. In battle
she's vicious, cool as a snake, but as he spreads her legs apart and presses
his mouth to the hot muddy core of her, she shudders and twitches and her hands
don't know where to go -- in his hair, on his shoulders, clenching and
unclenching until he redirects them to her own breasts, instructing her,
watching as she lights up with the sweetest kind of shame.
She makes such noises... this takes the most imagination, because in the years
of fighting alongside her, Dan has never known her to be a vocal combatant.
Even when she took a beating, she never made a sound. But in this dungeon of
his, sixteen-year-old Laurie whines and cries and it's shockingly candid. She's
a virgin and this is an altogether new kind of violence for her. He finally
hoists her up and pins her, straight through, no wiggle room, no priming other
than a grunt and a nip on her neck to distract her. She bites back, her teeth
leaving a mark in his shoulder, stifling that one cry of pain, which will be
the most significant in her life.
This is all for him - her halfway willing flesh, the excruciating pull between
her lust and her terror, the taste of her as he bites down, her fingers curling
into his back, the stench of her sweat, her thighs clenching around his waist.
He pounds into her, and now her sobbing moans are just gasps, measured in time
with his thrusts, more and more ragged as the minutes pass, until he's coming,
and coming, and he's drenched with his fluids and hers.
Her rough breathing is the only noise in the cool dungeon and she's clinging to
his neck like an exhausted, bewildered toddler to a parent. He knows she didn't
come, and now she's too far gone to do so. Her thighs tremble around his waist.
He disentangles her, and as he wonders what he can say, what he can do, Dan
comes back to himself in his dark little living room, ungluing his eyes to find
himself middle-aged, pot-bellied, uncomfortably sticky, and miserable beyond
belief, more disgusted with himself now than he was before.
Sick sick sick sick sick.That was not him in his fantasy. If Dan had ever had
such an opportunity - well, that was moot, but he could never demonstrate such
violence in bed. There would be tender kisses, soft caresses, declarations. A
virginal Laurie was too much to hope for. Why desecrate such a holy thing?
He wiped his hands on his trousers, suddenly desperate to get clean. He
stripped once inside the bathroom, door locked, as if he wasn't a bachelor in a
large empty flat, as if he had somebody to hide from. But, he thought as he
stepped into the scalding water, clenching his teeth and watching the florid
red patches that sprang up on his skin, the only person he had ever hidden from
was himself.
End Notes
     Originally written for the Watchmen Kinkmeme on LJ and later posted
     to my writing journal, 2009.
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