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Just after midnight, they pull off the interstate into a rest area to get some sorely needed sleep. Dan carefully parks the car in the row farthest away from the road, its out-of-state license plate faced toward the woods. Beside him in the passenger seat, an exhausted Walter is already out cold. Within minutes, Dan is also asleep and snoring lightly.
Hours later, the pitch-black night sky is fading to a luminous purple-gray on the horizon. Dan stirs, hearing the first tentative notes of an avian dawn chorus twittering and chirping from the woods that edge the parking lot. Hovering in a peaceful limbo between waking all the way up and sliding back into slumber, Dan waits quietly until there's enough light for him to squint through the windshield and make out, at a distance, the letters on the rest area’s kiosk. Looking at the legend, he thinks "If it’s Tuesday, this must be Devola, Ohio," and a hard-edged smile pulls his mouth into a thin line. Partially hidden beneath the base of the kiosk, a grey tabby cat watches their car with distrustful pale feral eyes.
A breeze blows a breath of cool, moist air in through the two-inch gap he’d left open in the driver’s side window for ventilation. Inhaling, Dan can smell the clean, sharp odor of fresh water and green growing things and knows there's a body of water somewhere nearby, probably a small pond.
He slants a sideways glance at his companion, who's still sound asleep beside him in the shotgun seat. The emerging pale light makes the severe angles of his partner's face even starker than they normally look. Dan shifts and reaches out to brush his fingertips lightly across curly getting-long-enough-to-need-a-haircut hair. He smiles, gently this time, when the other man stirs and turns his face into Dan's touch without waking.
Walter's brow, creased with worry even in sleep, smoothes out a bit as his cheek comes to rest in the gentle curve of Dan's palm and his body relaxes into a deeper sleep. Dan brushes his thumb over a sharp cheekbone in a light caress and huffs a short, humorless laugh. I always wished I could talk you into going on a trip with me, get you away from New York for a while. Finally got my wish, didn't I?
Rubbing sleep crustiness out of his eyes, Dan retrieves his glasses from the dashboard and fishes his wallet out of his pants to count their remaining cash and travelers’ checks. After counting twice, he frowns. They're lower on money than he’d thought; he'll need to risk making a bank withdrawal soon. Hopefully his accounts haven't been frozen yet.
What they really need is to chance spending a night in a motel, in a room with a real bed and, more importantly, hot running water. Well, Dan really needs it, anyway. He knows that Walter would be just as happy to keep sleeping in the car each night, parked in an endless procession of dirt roads and the backs of rest areas and parking lots. For the hundredth time, Dan wishes there had been time for him to get to the safe where his false identities were stored. But there hadn't been, so Samuel Hollis and William Chase are still tucked away, sleeping in Dan's safe downstairs in the Nest. Or possibly, they've been ousted from there and are now residing in a different safe in some FBI office, or at Veidt Towers. Dan hopes not.
***
They pass through the pineywoods of eastern Texas and move south along the Gulf Coast. Somewhere between Port Lavaca and Aransas Pass, they stop to buy gas in a little coastal village that consists of a few scattered buildings and an ancient-looking gas station. Attached to the gas station is a shack with the unpromising sobriquet of ‘Senor Bill’s Bar-B-Q’ lettered in faded red paint on a weathered sign above the door. By now Dan's pretty tired of roadside diner and convenience store food, but Walter never seems to mind it, so they buy some takeout barbecue from Senor Bill and hit the road again. As they drive, the savory smell rising from the foil-wrapped packages cradled in Walter’s lap promises that this food, at least, is a notch above the usual fast-food tourist fare.
Dan spots a narrow dirt track branching off the main road and follows it to the water's edge, where they sit on the hood of the car and eat surprisingly delicious barbecued beef brisket on huge soft rolls while talking about what they're going to do next. As they talk, the vast golden disc of the moon, made huge by atmospheric distortion, starts to rise over the Gulf of Mexico.
Walter's hand curls viselike around Dan’s forearm. His grip has the strength of real fear and his voice sounds thoroughly unnerved as he says in low intense tones, "Daniel. What's wrong with the moon? What happened to it?"
Wincing under the strength of Walter's sinewy fingers, Dan looks at the huge orb emerging from the water's horizon line, four times larger than it ever looked rising up over Jamaica Bay back home. He feels a pang for his partner who, up until a few weeks ago, has never been further abroad than New Jersey. He also feels a familiar spur of guilt at being the one who has travelled to every continent in pursuit of a mere hobby.
Dan lays his hand over Walter’s and leans in to nuzzle into his companion’s neck for a moment before he murmurs, "There's nothing wrong with it. It just looks bigger here sometimes when it’s coming up over the ocean. I think it's because when conditions are right, the warmer water in the Gulf makes the atmosphere magnify the moon's image near the horizon more than it would rising over the colder Atlantic water back home. But don't quote me on it. I'm honestly not sure why it happens, really."
The unconscious awe in Walter’s face cuts Dan surprisingly deeply and he swallows against a sudden ache in this throat. His dearest friend should have seen things like this earlier in his life, at a time when everything wasn’t overshadowed by the pall of smoke still rising from the open grave of New York. Walter should have had the chance to see things like this when he could enjoy them freely.
And suddenly, Dan wants nothing else but to show him everything, to travel all over the country--hell, all over the world with Walter at his side, to show him that the planet is far larger than Brooklyn and Hell’s Kitchen. To help him realize that, despite the ugliness that seemed to infect everything back home even before the catastrophe, the world still contained wonders and beautiful things that served to balance out the horror. But the time when that might have been possible is long gone, and Dan knows it.
His voice thick with suppressed grief, he continues. "I know some people say it's just an optical illusion and that the moon actually isn’t any larger-looking than it would be anywhere else, but I don’t see how that can be true. It sure looks huge to me."
Walter nods and continues to look, his eyes fixed on the brilliant apparition and Dan sees some faint ghost of the inquisitive youngster his friend must have been a long, long time ago surface in Walter’s dull, mud-colored eyes, kindling them briefly. Then it’s gone, and his partner’s voice is flat again as he says, "We should keep moving, Daniel."
***
In North Carolina they drive past a series of farms and Dan stops for a while to watch a family of Northern Harriers work a field. As Dan admires the economical hover and swoop of the silvery white male, Walter watches a tractor carve dark loops and scallops into the red clay of a jewel-green hillside, like a rusty lace collar hanging around a vast green neck of land. He runs his fingers over his own throat as he observes the tractor, then pulls his hand away suddenly as if startled to find bare skin there instead of a scarf.
Walter turns to Dan, who’s grinning at an intricate stoop and barrel roll one of the immature harriers just made. Dan laughs and says, "Look at that one. Now he’s just having fun and showing off. Ravens do that all the time, but I’ve never seen a harrier do it before."
"You miss Archie."
Startled, Dan turns from the hawks to look at his partner. After a moment when it seems like he’s going to bluff it out, he slumps a bit and his gaze drops down to the ground. Then he looks up again as Walter moves to press lightly against his side, an unobtrusive but ironclad support, and his smile is less forced than he thought it would be. Dan nods, tears stinging his eyes. "Yeah. I really do."
***
A few hours outside of Huntington, Kentucky, a powerful storm front heading east meets them going west. It approach is like a gray ragged cloak being drawn across the sky. When it reaches them, the deluge is so sudden and complete that it's almost shocking and they pull to the side underneath an overpass to wait it out. Stepping out of the car to stretch his legs while they wait, Walter paces back and forth for a few minutes, then sits on the sloping concrete near the edge of the overpass to stare out into the rain, his expression flat.
Dan gets out and stretches too, then approaches his partner. Walter turns his head to watch him, his eyes unreadable. It’s cool enough that they are both wearing gloves and even though the leather is brown, not purple, Walter’s hands reaching for Dan are like ghosts of an earlier time and their touch evokes an aching tension in Dan as he is drawn down to sit behind Walter. With Dan’s bulk sheltering and warming his back, Walter returns his attention to the downpour as it drenches their immediate world and sighs deeply. Dan wants to ask him what he’s thinking about but he already knows, and his answering sigh mirrors his partner’s.
***
Later that day they encounter another band of rainstorms, even heavier than the ones they stopped for earlier.
It's like a giant bucket of water being dumped out over the landscape. The car cruises along like a submarine, water obscuring Dan’s view of the road. He spots a rest area sign and gratefully takes the turnoff for it. As he does, for a moment he envisions the Bates Motel swimming up out of the blinding downpour and smiles. At this point, a crumbling American Gothic hotel with a murderous, batshit-crazy proprietor would actually be a relief. It's something they would know how to deal with, anyway.
But there's no hotel or visitor center, or even rest rooms here. It's just a big flat deserted parking lot hanging off of the highway like an asphalt appendix. But it's at least a good place to stop and wait out the worst of the downpour.
Once parked, it feels to Dan like they're in a bathysphere in the ocean, isolated from the outside world. The violent rain drums loudly on the roof of the car and sluices down the windows in silvery sheets, obscuring them from any casual view.
Walter mutters something and slumps down in the passenger seat, his face pale and washed-out looking in the storm-dimmed grayish afternoon light. He reaches out and tugs once, sharp and urgent, at Dan's sleeve, then crawls awkwardly into the back of the car, elbowing Dan lightly in the face as he does. Rubbing his stinging nose, Dan takes the silent invitation and follows his partner. In the back seat, Walter is waiting and impatiently reaches out to pull Dan to him.
He tumbles the rest of the way to land clumsily on Walter’s body in the cramped confines of the car’s back seat. Dan feels the first sharp edges of arousal light up his nerves and tighten his groin as Walter slips a hand under his collar and runs nervous fingers along Dan’s shoulder, his other hand pulling Dan’s shirt up to expose his stomach. Walter’s rough fingertips drag across the warm skin of Dan’s belly, firing bright signals of anticipatory pleasure that travel straight to his groin and need intensifies into urgency.
Dan greedily tastes his partner’s skin, lingering over it, nipping and sucking on a tiny hard nipple, loving the shudder and thin, needy groan it wrenches out of Walter. In a welter of sliding caresses and exploring hands burrowing under clothing to stroke hidden skin, this feels like some precious timeout, isolated from everything else that's happened to them and for Dan, in this moment, the fact that they are safe and together is the most important thing in the world.
The rain sheeting over the windows makes it feel like they’re in a bubble of air deep underwater. As they move into a gentle tangle in the backseat, Dan thinks of seals rolling together in the surf off the Maine coast, sleek bodies turning easily like spindles in the foam-capped water. Driven by a visceral animal need to be close, to touch and smell and taste everything about each other, the language of instinct informs the mating ritual bred into all flesh and bone and makes them strain and nuzzle into each other. Slick and caged in Dan’s hand, hard flesh slides against equally hard flesh as Walter arches up, his back pushing against Dan’s other hand in an achingly perfect curve.
It doesn't take long before they are both on the edge, gasping, nerves stripped raw by an arousal so intense that it can't be sustained for long. Dan's hand grips and moves, twisting, and Walter curls around him and keens, biting down on Dan's shoulder as he shudders, his spend pulsing out across Dan’s stomach, slick and hot as blood. Dan follows soon after, groaning helpless endearments into Walter’s hair as he tries to hang on to the other man, to cling to the feeling of Walter held tight against him as long as he possibly can.
Afterward, they fall asleep in the back seat, limbs enmeshed, inhaling each other's breath.
***
When they wake up, it's hours later and pitch black outside the car. Far away from any settled areas, this part of the highway is a lonely umbilicus connecting the places where background light from towns and cities fades the night sky, drowning out the stars. The storm has long since passed by, leaving the sky a crisp undiluted black spattered with brilliant points of light. They get out of the car to stretch their legs.
Dan walks a short distance away to unzip and urinate into the damp weeds fringing the edge of the parking lot. When he comes back, Walter is a dark silhouette leaning against the car. The tiny bit of illumination from the interior car light outlines his face, picking out the sharp cheekbones and flat planes. Dan can see he's looking up into the sky.
"So many stars, Daniel."
"Yeah. Out here away from the cities they really stand out, don't they?"
"White and black. Very beautiful."
Dan looks at his partner's upturned face and nods. "Yes. Beautiful." He joins his partner, leaning against the car and looking up at the sky. After a few minutes of silently studying the stars, Dan starts slightly as Walter's hand comes to rest on his shoulder. Its touch is light as a snowflake or a drift of ash, but Dan still feels its animal warmth through the thin cotton of his shirt.
He draws in a deep, shuddering breath and turns to his partner, his brother, his other half. Walter's eyes are strangely luminous in the dim light from inside the car and for a surreal moment Dan wonders if he might be dreaming all of this, after all. Perhaps they both really died at Karnak and this is some kind of twilight afterlife. It’s not the first time the idea has occurred to Dan, but this time he finds himself actually giving it some thought before shaking his head and pushing the notion away (because in that direction lay real madness).
He reaches up to grip Walter's hand, anchoring himself to reality and the moment. Dan wants to remember this. He needs to remember this, to remember everything and store it away in his mind with all his other memories of this man against the time he fears is coming sooner rather than later; when this interlude of traveling will be over and there will likely never be any such moments again, ever.
They stand for quite a while, each studying the other’s face. What’s going on in his partner’s mind, Dan is afraid to even try to guess, and budding apprehension quickens his breath. Walter’s grip on Dan’s hand tightens and there’s a strange quality to his expression that Dan doesn’t recognize and can’t pin down. And for once it’s Walter who finally breaks the silence. "Daniel. Where are we going?"
Dan draws a slow, deep breath, calming himself before he answers. "I don't know, buddy. Somewhere new." He leans in and rests his forehead against Walter’s, breathing out in warm intimate puffs across the other man’s face. "Somewhere better, I hope. We just have to keep moving, at least for a while longer."
***
Sometimes Dan thinks that maybe there's no one looking for them, and wonders why they are doing this. It would be the final insult, of course, that Adrian never even considered them worth chasing.
But truth be told, Dan can’t bring himself to be completely unhappy about their current lot. He’s not sure how much longer it will be until the whirling, unstoppable and unquenchable engine that is Rorschach’s sense of justice and moral outrage will demand that they turn and take the fight back to Adrian, as hopeless as Dan knows that campaign is bound to be. Maybe weeks, or months. Maybe days.
But until then, the hidden paths and byways of the disenfranchised are theirs to explore. The vast country of their birth spreads out before them, intricate and dark, and the cool night air brings with it a thousand unknown perfumes.
They get back in the car and drive.