Chapter Text
Pipes clank in the walls of the brownstone, the sonorous rumble of the boiler disrupting the stillness of the kitchen. Weak morning light is diffusing into the room, playing across the withered leaves of a neglected houseplant and along the rim of a saucepan, upended on the draining rack. Motes of dust hung suspended like flakes of gold.
Rorschach nurses a mug of viscous black coffee, fingertips warming against the ceramic. If Daniel were to walk into his kitchen right now, he'd find a stranger sitting at his table; rawboned and haggard, an inkblot face next to his left hand, folded carefully. For the first time he can remember, Rorschach felt claustrophobic under the fabric, the roiling patterns fraying his temper and making it difficult to gather his thoughts.
He breathes deeply, noisily exhaling through his lips, trying to settle the lurching in his stomach. Things aren't so clear anymore. The past few weeks have shaken him more than he'd willingly admit, ragged emotions prickling at him from the back of his head and deep in his gut; foreign and uncomfortable and with barbed edges that hook themselves into every thought. He nudges at their periphery in a fit of masochism and feel his insides drop away, like they do when Archimedes hits a pocket of turbulence. As if he were in free-fall.
There are framed pictures on Daniel's wall. Birds, of course. His skin looks gray in the reflection of the glass, stark shadows beneath his eyes and in the hollows of his cheeks.
He feels sick.
Upstairs, the muted patter of water ceases, pipes shrieking their last before falling silent. Rorschach snags his face and slides it to the edge of the table. He makes a V, stretching the fabric between two fingers and watching the black spread over white, white over black, neither diluting the other. It should be that simple. Had been, for a long time. Disturbing how suddenly the status quo had shifted.
Footfalls, creaking stairs. For a fleeting moment—a moment that makes his heart thud heavily and raises the hair on the back of his neck—he considers laying himself bare. He could abandon his mask, just this once, and let Daniel see his fault lines. Let him pry at them, deepen them even as he would try to fix them. He could bleed out over his hands.
He pulls the latex over his head roughly, self-disgust burning like bile in the back of his throat.
*
Eyes closed, Dan tilts his head up under the shower head, sluicing away the sweat and grime of the night's patrol. The water beats out a tattoo over his shoulders and back, pressure easing his aching muscles.
With restless inevitability, his mind turns to his partner. The thread of something that is pulled taut between them is knotted with all kinds of signals that Dan doesn't have the first clue how to interpret, and it is getting to him. God, he'd actually snapped at the man over something that should have been almost touching. Coming from him, anyway.
So Rorschach was guilty that Dan had taken a beating. Okay. He'd figured that out, eventually. He can understand that. He's felt it himself, whenever he's had to stitch up the worst of Rorschach's wounds.
The sudden physical neediness though, that's just—
Dan sighs, lathering the soap. His hands glide over his stomach and hips, and with an unheralded stab of lust that darkens the edges of his vision, he imagines it's Rorschach's hands on him, filthy leather tracking through the suds; a visceral, tactile fantasy. His rough, hungry mouth at his neck, teeth and latex scraping his skin, hot breath on his throat.
Oh.
Oh God, that's just fucked up.
But you're still thinking about it, aren't you?
He ups the shower temperature to a notch below unbearable, scalds his skin pink under the steaming water.
*
Dan shuffles into the kitchen, clad in sweatpants and a shapeless t-shirt, toweling his damp hair. His bare feet leave rapidly evaporating halos of moisture on the tile. Rorschach is still here, trench thrown over the back of a chair, mask bunched across his nose, palms laid flat to the tabletop. Dan leans against the sink unit and cast around, trying to think of something to say that wouldn't immediately betray him.
He decides on something excruciatingly mundane, since everything else ha can think of is fraught with danger. "How's the coffee?" he asks.
"Hrnh." Rorschach looks down at the mug as if he'd only just noticed it, picks it up and swirls the contents. "Cold."
"Want a fresh cup?"
There's a noise like fingernails on chalkboard as Rorschach pushes the chair back. "No thanks. I should be going. Could do with some sleep." He elbows Dan aside to empty the mug into the sink, watching the dark liquid drain into the plughole, coffee grounds residue pooling on the stainless steel.
"Stay," Dan says, not sure if it's a request or a demand, but definitely pure impulse. "I can take the couch."
The blots on his partner's face shift in mercurial patterns, and Dan finds he doesn't have to read anything into them. Rorschach's mouth is pressed into an unsteady line, face twitching.
"Don't look at me that way." Something in Rorschach's voice cracks, jagged syllables that are meant for nothing but danger, nothing but a threat, rendered helpless. "Daniel."
He expects a struggle, a violent recoil and likely blood. Rorschach's gloved hands fisting painfully in his hair seems right, though not the sour breath against his mouth—but then he's being kissed, Rorschach is kissing him; a tentative, almost chaste press of his lips that breaks Dan's heart when he realizes the man has only the vaguest idea of what he's doing.
He finds the lapels of Rorschach's trench, gently tugs him closer, spreading warmth as he parts his lips and tastes stale, over-sweet coffee. Rorschach chokes against Dan's mouth, shaking hands untangling from Dan's hair and coming to rest on his shoulders, clinging desperately then trying to pull away, keen edge of panic in his movements.
Dan holds him, pressed cheek to cheek as Rorschach gasps like a drowning man, surfacing for the last time.