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Dan finds the box atop the wardrobe in the guest room during his spring cleaning spree, along with other childhood board games he's never gotten around to throwing away or donating to charity.
It's pretty battered, board torn along the crease where it was folded in half, but a little duct tape fixes that no problem. Enough of the tiles are there – if not all of them – nestling in the green cloth bag, and there's even a notepad scrawled with a tally from the last game he had played, against his father. He rubs the page between finger and thumb before tearing it out and tucking it behind the carriage clock on his mantelpiece.
Smiling to himself, he sets up a game on the kitchen table.
–
"Who are you playing against?" Rorschach asks him later that evening, as Dan tugs suture thread through his left biceps.
It's not a serious wound, not particularly deep and no doubt Rorschach has left worse to heal on its own, but a couple of stitches can only help, and that is more than enough reason for Dan to nag and wheedle him into coming up to his kitchen for first aid and coffee.
"Oh," Dan ties off the last knot and drops the suture tongs back into the medkit. "Myself, pretty much. I know that's traditionally a chess thing, but most of my pieces have gone walkabout."
He knows fine well where the chess pieces went; lost during heated discussions about tactics – scattered in frustration, kicked under the kitchen units or consigned to the deep pockets of a particular trench coat. A black bishop and two white pawns are rattling around in Archie's dash.
"Hn. Cheated with your first word," Rorschach says, pulling his shirt closed and snapping his suspenders back onto his shoulders. He pushes the tiles with gloved fingertips, meticulously lining the letters up over the center star.
"That's not very charitable, Rorschach." Dan puts his hands on his hips, feigning indignation.
"Radiance. Eight letters, Daniel. Players start with seven tiles each."
"Okay, you got me. I just wanted to seed the game with a good one."
"Is a good word," Rorschach accedes, poring over the letters on the rack in front of him while Dan disposes of used iodine swabs. " 'The three things requisite for beauty are, integrity, a wholeness, symmetry and radiance.' "
Dan pauses, the quote resonating with familiarity, dancing on the brink of recollection. He glances over at his partner. "Joyce?" he asks, astonishment lapping over his words.
Rorschach tilts his head, blots surging in a reflection of Dan's surprise, pooling over his cheeks and across the bridge of his nose. "Yes," he says. He sounds inordinately pleased.
Dan slides into the seat opposite, shuffles the tiles around thoughtfully. Click click click.
"Do you want to...play?" Rorschach asks suddenly, and there's something in his voice that Dan can't quite identify, as if he needed to spit the words out before they dissolved.
"Uh, yeah!" Dan stops rattling his tiles about to cover his mouth and cough, hoping to distract from his embarrassing eagerness. "Um. Yeah, I'd like that."
Rorschach strips off his gloves, and his mask dances into that Jack-O-Lantern leer. Dan finds he's grinning widely in response.
–
The game has changed, somehow. Dan is not sure when, or how, but every new word must be accompanied by a literary reference. It's surreal, sitting at his kitchen table at gone four in the morning with his masked-up partner, renowned for his brutality, quoting poetry at him. Surreal and sublime, in the way newly revealed facets of him always are, even after all these years.
He slides his tiles onto the board – DARKEN – hits a double letter score on the K and rests his chin on his hands, raises his eyebrows in challenge.
Rorschach rolls up his sleeves, slowly. His forearms are sinewy and freckled, and Dan would accuse him of employing underhanded distracting tactics, if he didn't know better.
"Quit stalling," Dan says with a grin. "I know you've got something."
And he does, Dan is sure. He always found Rorschach eloquent and incisive, but some logical disconnect (no – some class snobbery, he berates himself) stopped that translating to 'well-read'. The more fool him; the man has a vast literary knowledge that verges on eidetic, and he can spar with words just as well as with fists.
"Hrm," Rorschach shifts in his chair. "Easy, though. 'And, when night darkens the streets, then wander forth the sons of Belial, flown with insolence and wine.' "
"Not so easy if I haven't read Paradise Lost," Dan says, fishing new letters out of the bag.
"You have read it, though," Rorschach responds, and he must be tiring because his voice is whispery, rendering his words strangely reverent.
Dan leans forward playfully, replies in a stage whisper, "I have read it, yeah."
They fall quiet for a long time, only their breathing (Rorschach's is slightly labored through his mask, Dan wonders if his injury pains him more than he lets on) and the muted ticking of the kitchen clock rippling the silence.
Rorschach's fingers hover over his pieces; he doesn't seem inclined to rearrange them, and that makes Dan frown a little. The board is close to full. It'd be typical for him to have nothing to play, but be too stubborn to admit it.
He's just about to say something, call it quits – because no matter how giddy this impromptu game makes him, he doesn't want to sit here all night – when Rorschach ruches up his mask to rub at his chin, fingernails rasping over stubble. With the other hand, he nudges his word into place: PILGRIM
He presses his hands flat to the tabletop either side of his rack, waiting.
" 'But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, and—' " Dan says almost immediately, the quote rising unbidden from his memory. He catches himself, clips off the last word as he recalls the next line. No, that touches too close to something. A long-harbored secret; something unspoken that needs to remain that way, because to say it (to mean it) could break everything.
"More coffee?" he says, chair tipping and rattling back as he stands hastily, turns to the counter where the pot is warming. He can feel the back of his neck prickle, the heat rising to his cheeks. Stupid, foolish. It would be merely a poem to Rorschach, another challenge. That's all. Now he'll know that something is wrong.
"The next line," Rorschach says, and Dan's stomach flips nauseatingly.
He feigns obliviousness as he spoons sugar into his mug, stirs and stirs. "Huh?"
Rorschach is beside him, placing his own empty mug down. His mouth is twitching like he's fighting to maintain his composure. His voice is more even than usual. "Say the next line."
"I—" I don't remember it, he wants to say, but Rorschach's hands have come to rest on his upper arms, fingers bunching the fabric of his shirt and that's so unlike him, it's—
"Say it," Rorschach asks again, and the hands are sliding up to lace behind his neck and bring him down to bump foreheads – and it's just way out there, but Dan's skin raises in goosebumps because he thinks he might understand.
" 'And loved,' " Rorschach quietly prompts. Dan's heart thuds painfully.
" 'And loved—' " he manages, before Rorschach's lips press to the corner of his mouth, not quite a kiss, but confirming everything that Dan has been hoping for in the past few minutes (for the past few years). He leans instinctively to return the gesture, but Rorschach deflects him.
"Say it," he whispers, and he's not trying to fight anything any more. His lips are parted and his breathing is quick and shallow, and he's pressing Dan against the counter.
" '—loved—' "
Another teasing brush of his mouth, brief contact then withdrawing, waiting, warm breath on Dan's lips and warm pools of black ink against his cheeks.
" '—loved the sorrows—' "
Dan thinks he might just burst when Rorschach reaches up with hands that are almost, almost shaking to slip the glasses from his face.
" '—sorrows of—' "
He winds his arms around his partner's waist, pulls him closer to anchor himself, because his legs aren't doing what they should.
" '—your changing face.' "
And then Rorschach's hand is cradling his jaw, pressure of fingers behind his ear and thumb brushing across his cheek, and his lips are on Dan's again, but this time it is a kiss. A real kiss, and that grim mouth is no softer than it looks, throws poetry into high contrast, but that's the only way it could ever be.
–
They make their Scrabble game a regular thing; and whenever Dan finds a tile next to his toothbrush or in one of his pouches or rattling about in Archie's dash, he palms it, smiling.