Disclaimer: I don't own the Watchmen or any of its characters. Wishful thinking aside.

Warnings: See original chapter for full warnings/disclaimers. This is a Rorschach fic, with Nite Owl II/Rorschach slash. Light slash, adult situations, adult language. Not your cup of tea? I suggest you pass it by. Still with me? Fabulous!

Authors Note #1: Please read and review. I am open to comments, advice, and constructive criticism. This is my first Watchmen story so I am especially looking for constructive feedback.

The Definition of Humanity

Chapter 2

…He smelt the malignant tang of expelled power and the obscene stink of seared steel before he felt the pain…

The world regressed, narrowing down to single observations and sensations. But even that was too much. He blinked slowly, struggling to understand.. The sidewalk surrounding him was painted in a muted halo of dirty orange and sickly yellow as the low, sparking hum of the flickering street light above them became deafening. He could hear it. The thrum of electricity, the creak of metal, and screech of slowly scorching glass..

Awareness flickered as dark splotches of color bled into his vision. Sensation itself registered slowly, as if even his very senses had become somehow overloaded. The synapses and nerves left decimated in the wake of a single point of steel.

He had never thought much of guns, having always dismissed them as cowardly and dishonourable rather then effective and convenient. They were the weapons of the faint hearted, the insecure, and the inglorious. He believed that if you were committed to the course of killing someone, it should be an act done with the strength of your wits and bare fists. Like nature had intended. Not hiding behind a machination wrought of cool steel and human wickedness.

He turned in place, instinctively hunching away from his attacker, and perhaps somewhat ironically, towards his partner who was fighting only a mere ten metres away. He was watching Daniel's face when the pain hit, eyes caught on the way Daniel's mouth had gone wide. Lips pulled back in a graceless snarl as the sluggish thump of his own pulse echoed hollowly in his ears.

..And for a long, puzzling moment, he wondered why Daniel would be yelling..

And then almost like an afterthought, the world simply imploded. Pain, shock, confusion, searing flesh, Nite Owl. It was all there, every unconscious thought, every sensation and extreme. It was all there, stuck in a whirling mess of mental flotsam and debris. Jockeying for position like greyhounds salivating at the starting gate.

He didn't make a sound. He couldn't. He had forgotten how.

The percussive, bone grating sound of his knee caps hitting the pavement thrummed up through his nervous system in a vulgar, mind splintering rush that stripped him bare. It wasn't like anything he had ever experienced before. It took him down to bone, to nothing but a gaping maw of raw hurt and biting sensation, until the pain was all that he was, all that he could be, all that there would ever be..

His vision filmed over in an encompassing bath of static hewn grey, threatening to overtake him completely as he shook his head, desperate to clear it. Momentarily blinded he staggered backward, his back hitting the light pole as his back screamed, hazing liquid fire down his veins as the sound that had been building up in the back of his throat broke loose. The wordless exclamation echoing out in a rolling, half feral sound that spoke of utter misery and a shock loosened tongue.

And he wondered innately, for a long, almost frantic moment, as the sound seemed to grow, offending even his own ears as it bounced back and forth off the crumbling brick and concrete pavement, if Daniel with his ever present goggles, could now see right through him.

The man was all over him in less time then dispatching the three remaining thugs should have rightly taken. He didn't even hear the sound of their breaths exploding outwards, ripping up from bruised lungs, or the full, meaty sounding thunk of unconscious flesh dropping to the pavement. The twisting threads of reality had already become elusive.

But he did recognize the feel of strong arms curling around his, and the subtle, barely there sensation of lips moving against his neck, his skin suddenly alive with echoes of meaningless base sounds. Because in spite of the pain, he understood the nature of the light press of gauntlet covered fingers as they slid along the worn leather of his palms. Encouraging, but fluttering with an emotion he struggled to define. Worry? Desperation? Fear? Did Daniel fear for him? Was that what this strange, barely fathomable emotion was?

He didn't understand.

Unconsciously he realized that he was counting out the beats between each breath. Already his pulse was far too loud. Splintered with a thick, choking mass of uncleared phlegm, and tinged with the unmistakable tartness of oxygenated blood.

He couldn't control it.

Daniel was talking again, but he had forgotten how to listen. The intricacies of conversation suddenly lost to him. Instead he chose to concentrate on the pulsating thrum of pain leeching out from the meat just below his left shoulder rather then on the way Daniel was eventually forced to half carry him up the basement steps, steering him, like a boat slowly returning to harbour, along the narrow hallway and up to the master bathroom. Drifting..

He hadn't even been able to summon up the energy to protest, too caught up the way the mans bare palms were curling around his sides, feeling reldiciously large against his smaller, more compact frame. And he privately marvelled at the way the feeling seared through him despite the layers of the trench coat and suit jacket that stood between him.

And as they stumbled through the bathroom door, Daniel already muttering on about first aid cases and hot water, repeating them like they were religious mantras that deserved reverent repetition, he realized that it probably wasn't a good sign that he felt strangely disconnected from the sluggish trickle of fresh crimson that came burbling out from the wound with each staggering movement they made. Or that it took him far longer to realize that the trickle was coming from out from two separate wounds..

He knew what that meant. A through and through..Maybe he had been lucky..

'Luck'..It was a strange, disproportional word when one really thought about it. For instance he didn't understand it as well as he did the word 'coincidence'. Because he was certain of the connotations of that particular word, he was sure because he didn't believe in coincidence. Just in the same way as he didn't believe in that of predestination or love. But luck..luck was a slippery, elusive term. Was it luck that caused him to stumble upon Daniel that first night? Was it luck that enabled him the honour of spending almost every night since then fighting at his side? Was it luck that from the very beginning, out of virtually every other person in his life, Daniel had accepted him, respected him, and even called him friend?

He didn't know. He didn't understand..

He swayed in place, lips thinning as the rough edges of Daniel's suit jostled against his injured shoulder. The movement itself nearly toppling them both as the man chose that moment to bend down, retrieving the first aid case from underneath the sink as Daniel tried to balance both their collective weights. He experienced a disconcerting moment of vertigo as they straightened; belatedly registering that somewhere along the line Daniel's hands had moved worrisomely close to his trench coat lapels.

And before he had a chance to remember why it was a bad idea, his coat had already hit the floor with a blood sodden slap. The sound quickly followed by the soft slough of his suit cuffs sliding to the floor, and the sharp metallic click of his tarnished, silver clipped suspenders falling against his pant legs. Even his waist coat was quickly dealt with. The painfully tiny buttons practically wrenched from their stitching as Daniel cursed inventively under his breath.

"Language Nite Owl.." He muttered automatically, legs almost buckling as pain scored across the length of his shoulder once more as Daniel delicately lifted the blood soaked fabric of his dress shirt. And he couldn't help but stare as he watched the plushness of the man's lip yield, caught between Daniel's teeth in anxious concentration as he worked. The man only snorted in response, his breath huffing against the newly mangled skin in a way that should have been painful, but instead only sent shivers of indefinable sensation rippling up his spine.

It was so very different from that of pain.. For once he truly knew the distinction..

The man's movements were slow, and far too gentle. But when he made to do it himself, unable to bear another moment of the man's well meaning gentling, Daniel only pressed his hands away. Doing it once, twice, and then finally a third time before he eventually deferred, exhaustion mounting in spite of his innate stubbornness. Yielding. So instead it was Daniel's fingers that curled around the straps of his dirty grey wife beater, lifting them up from his pale, heavily freckled shoulders, the man's thumbs catching against the dips of his shoulder blades as he inspected the wound.

It took him a moment to realize that they were still standing there, swaying unsteadily in middle of Daniel's bathroom, as muck, blood, and other bits of unidentifiable dirt littered the floor in their wake. The shucked layers of their clothes soiled the shining olive and white patterned tiles at their feet, standing out like fallen petals from a withering flower. Frenetic and unpalatable. The moment stretched on as they shivered in place, Daniel still continuing to support most of his weight as the man subtly rearranged his hold, moving until their hips slotted together in a way that seemed all but provincial.

He said nothing.

And he wondered vaguely why he hadn't pulled away yet. Why he hadn't made his own way to the toilet lid and sat down. Or why, in fact that he had allowed any of this to happen in the first place? He had dealt with worse before and he knew it. This, all else considered was a flesh wound. He had dealt with half a broken rib cage and a wound that had needed over twenty-five stitches before. All at the same time..and alone. He didn't need this..He didn't need Daniel..

'Weak.' His mind hissed, tone vehement and backed by a wordless snarl. But it wasn't enough..

It was Daniel that eventually broke the silence, letting loose a long, pent up breath that still lingered with the remnants of stale coffee and tooth paste as he took a step towards the toilet, palming the large, neon red kit in his free hand as he made to speak.

"Come on buddy. Let's sit down before you fall down." The man remarked softly, his voice going unaccustomedly hushed as he steered him towards the toilet. And after a moment of consideration, where in which he almost shook off the man's hands entirely, he finally acquiesced to the man's well meant man handling. Because it was either that, or risk his weakening composer even further by possibly collapsing halfway there. He had to admit that neither option was particularly appealing.

The man's actions were uncomfortably rough, yet somehow still all too painfully gentle as he lowered him onto the seat, arranging him on the lid so that he faced the half open bathroom door before he finally moved away. Seating himself on the edge of the tub as he began stripping off his gauntlets, his movements quick and efficient as the heavy Kevlar hit the bathroom floor one after the other.

For a long moment he entertained the flighty, half formed notion of simply leaving. Staring out at the small sliver of empty hallway he could see from his vantage point with notable longing. It wouldn't be that hard, injury or not. Daniel wouldn't go so far as keep him here..would he?

But he lost the thought only a second later when Daniel settled in behind him, balancing on the tub as he unzipped the kit and began rifling through it. He relaxed incrementally, forcing himself to uncurl his spine, hunching into himself only slightly when he realized how foolish the notion actually was. This wasn't a wayward knife thrust or a half score of broken ribs, something he could patch up himself without Daniel being any wiser. This was different. Besides, the man was defiant, and irrepressibly determined this time.

He couldn't help but wonder if Daniel was picking up some of his own bad habits..

The man was so close that he could feel the occasional brush of the mans knees as they rasped against the small of his back, catching gingerly against the waist band of his trousers as Daniel muttered on about sterile gauze, blood pressure, and antibiotics. He let the words wash over him. Concentrating instead on the tone..basking in the heady normality of it. This was Daniel after all. Daniel.

He rolled the mask up just below the bridge of his nose, easing the passage of air to his bruised lungs, calming himself by concentrating on the unforgiving bite of the night air rather then focusing on the presence of the man at his back. Or that of the course of the man's thick fingers as they began tracing around the edges of the wounds. The definition of the man's ridged calluses and smooth, silk-like imperfections of the occasional electrical burn were all too identifiable beneath the thin covering of the wetted down cloth Daniel was now wielding.

He tensed as the man's bare hands returned. Nearly vibrating out of his skin as the full breadth of his sudden venerability fell suffocatingly over him. Exposed, weak, stripped, wounded, broken, and pathetic. He felt as though it was all Daniel could see. That he would see him as he was, wrong, bent, perverse.. He couldn't let Daniel see.. He couldn't-

"Shh.. I gotcha buddy." The man murmured, his accent deepening as his tone turned easy, calming. Almost as if he were soothing a skittish, half feral animal rather then a man. A rather apt description in the scheme of things, he figured. But despite it all he gradually he felt himself give, lulled into a sense of false compliancy as Daniel pulled away, fiddling instead with something just out of sight.

A pained howl built in the back of his throat. But he swallowed it down in favour of letting loose a tormented sounding grunt as an awkward splash of medicinal alcohol scorched across his torn flesh. He tasted fresh copper as he bit right through his lower lip, blood seeping down his chin as the ink blots became frenetic, chasing each other in hazy, barely visible spirals that clouded the fabric underneath his eyes.

Sneaky Daniel. He hadn't even seen the bottle.

Only in the end, he ruined his stoicism somewhere in between the last tugging stitch and Daniel's unneeded fussing as he selected bandages. Because he slipped up and growled, calling the man by his given name for the first time since he had rifled through the man's mail and discovered it. When he tried and failed to yank himself back from the man's well meant, but overly insistent grip. Unable to help himself as his body reflexively flinched, brain and bone finally snapping under the man's touch as Daniel shifted impossibly closer.

He wasn't used to this. He had never..

The silence was palpable. And he couldn't help but watch as Daniel's face changed, staring unabashedly out of the corner of his eye. Waiting for the anger and disgust that experience had taught him would be quick to form. But that only served to confuse him further, because in the end, instead of anger, rage, and righteous indignation, Daniel's face was a vaporous mix of surprise, easy pleasure, and growing frustration at his continued stubbornness.

In fact he realized that the man didn't even seem surprised that he knew his name…In fact..he looked, pleased. As if this were some sort of milestone that they had reached rather then a gross invasion of personal privacy.

He tried to struggle his way out of the man's grip, regretting the action almost immediately as pain coursed up the line of stitches, tugging painful in that strange, nerve rending way that only comes when fresh stitching rubs against raw flesh. His brain shorting out for a moment and running on the sensation of pure pain alone as a darker, more instinctive parts screamed at him to curl away and lick his wounds in private.

This didn't feel right..

But the man was having none of it. And instead he bullied him back into position, sliding them both backwards until he was forcefully perched atop the lid once again, only this time he was turned towards the tub, coming eye to eye with the man for the first time since Daniel had begun stitching. And for reasons beyond him, as he stared back at the man through the thin, barely veiled protection of his face, watching as an errant bead of sweat slowly worked its way down from the mans hair line, his cowl long since pushed back and left abandoned on the tile floor below, he felt the fight leave him.

..Like helium hissing out from an overfilled balloon…Even then however, he didn't know what that meant..He didn't understand the reason, the cause..

Their eyes caught awkwardly, and this time he caught himself looking back through the lenses of the man's black, horn rimmed glasses rather then his costume goggles. It was an image that provided a fascinating contrast between Daniel the man, and Nite Owl the city Watchman as the man sat opposite him, still decked out in his Kevlar and high topped boots. It was Daniel that eventually broke it, eyes shuttering momentarily behind the thick reflective glass as he blinked, lashes fanning down to fill the subtle, fitted hollows beneath his eyes before looking back down at his work. A roll of thick, name brand medical tape ringing his index finger as his free hand reached blindly behind him for the scissors.

The man seemed mercifully content to let his lapse slide. For now..

In short order the man had taped up the bandages, using the edges of his palms to firmly situate the tape, his movements pointed, but lingering. Almost if the man was trying to tell him something that lied beyond the merger use of words and their commonly vapid, surface meanings..

He almost keened when Daniel's hand fell on his face, cupping the dip of his chin with a single, wide palmed hand. The limb itself a confusing mixture of sculpted, steel covered softness as he went deadly still beneath it, caught in the void somewhere in between panic and numbing uncertainty.

He could feel it, the definition of every muscle, every tendon and nerve as Daniel's palm rasped nakedly across his face, sliding away almost immediately when he reminded motionless. As though its placement had been merely accidental, and not deliberate as he knew the action had been. At the same time he was struck dumb by the absurdity of the moment, stricken by the knowledge that he should have known what to do in that moment. That anyone would have. But not him. He never had..He didn't know..

His thoughts were fleeting, retreating back into phantom impressions, like the whirls and blots that coursed across the expanse of his face as Daniel's voice rose again in the background. Because somewhere along the way, possibly in between being stripped of his waist coat, and the tangy sting of antiseptic being sloshing across his skin, an invisible line had been irrevocable, and very much inexcusably crossed. He could feel it..

Because it occurred to him rather rapidly, that these were not platonic touches. That much he understood. Perhaps they had never really been between them. It was hard to tell..

Under the protection of his face his color went high. The flush only deepening, as the color leeched up from where the man's hands still lingered, traversing up from the small line of stitches that now adorned the flesh just below his shoulder blade. The man's hand pebbling up along the length of his spine with the loud whisper of heavily calloused finger tips trailing across sweat moistened skin. Their meaning deafening, and utterly unmistakable..

He didn't understand this. Daniel had finished. Why wasn't he moving? Why wasn't Daniel saying anything? He didn't-

The man's thumbs brushed needlessly along the fluttering muscles of his sides. Following the jutted points of his ribs all the way up before retracing them back down the small of his back once again, almost as if he were following some sort of strange, obscure pattern that he himself didn't completely understand. His neck lolled almost imperceptivity as air suddenly became scarce, and the gentle clamp of fingers digging into his flesh morphed into a sensation that he had never before experienced.

Even then he wasn't sure why he allowed it, why he didn't hunch into himself and pull away. …He should go.

"You stupid, stubborn son of a bitch…" The man murmured, his hands running over the bumps and ridges of long healed scars and still healing wounds. The pads of his fingers sliding awkwardly over the macabre collage of scars, his skin still slick with a thin film of sweat as he listened in silence. Suppressing a shiver as some part of him registered the way that Daniel's voice had turned rough, devolving into a tone that was all hard edges and puckered gravel.

Even then he wasn't sure if the man was referring to the present ones, or towards all of them. Because he knew what it looked like. What he looked like. His skin was a mottled, wrecked canvas of old scars, half healed wounds, and fresh, dark patterned bruises. Nothing like Daniel's.

Only Daniel didn't seem to care, because the man's hands were all over him now. His splayed palms firm, but gentle against his mangled flesh as he investigated every ridge, every dip, freckle and imperfection he had to offer. It would be a long quest. The years had not been kind, but then again, neither had he. He worked his body like it was a tool, a mere extension of the mind made available for the higher purpose he set for it. Nothing more, and nothing less.

Only now, for the first time in his life, that mantra suddenly fell short. Because now there were fingers ghosting over the tombstones of those long faded scars, ones that finally felt healed, and whole for the first time since they had been dealt. As if all this time they had been somehow left untended and ignored, festering one on top of another until his very skin was consumed by a mass of broken down flesh and weary bone, held together only by stubborn will power and unbending pride.

It felt remarkably as though he had spent his entire life waiting for this very moment, for the touch of the man now all but breathing down his neck, so close that he couldn't help but breathe in the scent as the man's emotions tinted the air. Close and potent.. Like a savoir or a personal messiah...

He couldn't help but suppress a shiver as the man's fingers returned. Pressing indelicately at the bruise ridden flesh that spanned the breadth of his right side, hard won trophies from a brutal fight dealt out the night before. He had received two strokes from a nine iron before he was able to drop to his haunches and sweep the perpetrator's legs out from under him. It had been a small time dealer from out of state, now safety locked away and awaiting extradition. A victory well worth the pain of the moment.

But Daniel had been unexplainably furious on his behalf, looking more affected by the attack then he himself outwardly expressed. Stewing in bad temper and kicking the man's weapon away with a wordless snarl over brimming with condensed distaste and barely contained fury as he had extended an arm to help him up. Their forearms brushing companionably as the man plucked at his mussed up collar, setting it to rights before kneeling down to deal with their suspect.

At the time he hadn't thought much of it..but now..

Until now he had viewed those bruises, those dull, throbbing aches and pains as the price of justice. Only now he wasn't so sure, because the way that Daniel's calloused fingers thumbed upwards, raking gently through the light, orange-red hairs that trickled down from the base of his neck, it was almost as though those bruises had taken on a whole new meaning.

Daniel..

It took him a moment to realize that the man had stopped to take in the stark, neon color of the sparse hairs that arrowed down from his hair line; fingers grazing just overtop them, much like the Owl Ship when it hovers overtop a shadowed city street, unobtrusive, but undeniably present. His flush only deepened as the thought spread, turning warm and molten hot as it hit the empty pit of his belly and traveled downward. He swallowed thickly, his throat spasming dryly in clear protest as he forced the action, almost desperate to ease the sudden dryness there.

"You damn fool." Daniel bit out. Words trickling past his lips in a coming torrent as the man's fingers fisted themselves unconsciously, clenching dangerously close to the bandage that now decorated the wound on his back.

He felt something snap inside as the feeling spread. Splintering, breaking, ending. And it felt something like release. Like that moment of utter and complete blistering clarity that comes right before you knowingly take your last breath. His body burned with it, consumed. Willing lost to it..

"Despite what you'd like to think you are just as human as the rest of us.." Daniel began again, voice edged with something so close to violence that he was nearly distracted by the unfamiliar feeling of trepidation. "You have no idea what-.." But he cut him off before he could even get started, he couldn't hear anymore.. He just couldn't.

He didn't think. He had no idea how to deal with this.. He wasn't- No. He didn't-..

He whirled in place, nearly reeling right off the closed lid as his move took both Daniel and himself by surprise, causing the man to startled backward, mouth falling open in shock as he nearly slipped right off the edge of the tub. But he didn't let the man go far, because before he could even think the action through, his hands, which had been clenched around the edges of the toilet seat for what felt like hours, had abruptly uncurled. Coming up to dig into the curves of man's shoulders for the first time as his blunt nails sunk deep into the taunt Kevlar, brute force and sheer willpower forcing the material to give. His fingers digging into the meat of the man's shoulders, wrenching him forward into the hollow of his chest, unable to hear another word as he silenced him with his lips.

Everythingstopped everything but the feeling. Everything but Daniel and the sensation of the man pressed roughly against him, fever hot and horribly real under the span of his hands and the roughness of his split lips.

Though perhaps what was more surprising was that Daniel let him. No..not only that, but his lips were moving back against his. Fast, wet, and hungry..

No!

Daniel blinked, as if stunned when he abruptly pulled back; recoiling as though he had been burned. His mind all but screaming as the full connotations of the act hit home. He teetered dangerously on the very edge of the toilet seat as his brain reeled. Why had he done that? Why?

He didn't..he wasn't..except as it turned out, apparently he was. Because this..this was something he didn't know. Something he wasn't used to. These feelings, the ones thickening in this throat and coursing through his blood even now, running rampant, terrified, angry, and heaven help him, even hopeful, all arrowed down to something he had never had. Something he had told himself he didn't want, and could never have.

This was wrong.

No not wrong. Daniel wasn't wrong, not like him..not like that. He was sullying Daniel, spreading his sickness… But before he could get too far into reclamation, self loathing and that same utter disgust in himself he had felt that first time Daniel had smiled at him, the first time he had grinned and called him 'partner', something rather unexpected happened.

Because he realized in one, all inclusive rush that Daniel wasn't moving away. In fact, he was closing in..

"I can't believe you. You-You…All this time?" The man began, sounding torn between frustration, lust, anger, and something that sounded suspiciously like fondness as he hooked him by the catch of his ears and towed him in. Ignoring his strangled, scandalized sounds completely as he propelled him forward, not stopping until he rested his flushed forehead against his own, a furnace of barely contained heat beneath the thin fabric of his mask as their lips brushed together once more.

Tentative, inquisitive, but undeniably heated..

His mind started stuttering. Distracted by the fiction strewn slide as skin brushed against skin as Daniel drew him in impossibly further, his large fingers curling around the straps of his wife beater, scratching against the curve of his spine, as a heady groan issued from the man's open lips as he dug his fingers into scruff of the man's neck in response. He didn't know this..But now, with his mind left stripped and bare of every defence, every wall and barrier he had ever constructed through his short, but admittedly difficult life, he knew that he very much wanted too.

A moan of aroused understanding jolted through him then. And unbidden, in spite of the provocative, unprecedented nature of the moment, in spite of the sparking drag of skin against skin and the feeling of soft, but growingly confident lips brushing teasingly against his own, his mind cycled back to that moment in the clinic. The moment where his disgust and derision had been practically tangible as he had faced down that picture. The one that had had the gall to proclaim it held the 'true' definition of humanity.

..As if such a term could be so accurately quantified by the likes of the privileged elite and inherently corrupt. By people who had never truly lived, nor seen the world as it really was..

Because it suddenly occurred to him that perhaps it was not the definition of humanity that was inherently flawed, or indeed even his understanding of it. Perhaps it was simply that he had been looking for its examples all the wrong places.

Daniel..

A/N #1:I wanted to thank everyone for your comments and reviews. They definitely helped me finish off this story. This story is now complete!

A/N #2: Please let me know what you think? Reviews and constructive critiquing are love! If you took time to read it, please let me know your thoughts. This is how I go about improving my writing.