Intimacy and Fallacies
"God," Daniel breathes, and the word lives as fog in the rain a moment. "Rorschach." One is more reverent than the other.
Rorschach makes the mistake of reaching out.
-
"It's okay," Dan says, and his hand cups his ear through the mask. It's not okay, though, and he wishes he could ever believe just for a second that it is, but it's not, it's not, and when Daniel tries to kiss him he breaks away.
-
Dan's hand slides underneath his arm. When his hand lays over Rorschach's, the fingers lace.
-
Rorschach did not take off the mask, but the back of his neck is exposed (and the width of his shoulders, and the length of his spine, and maybe this is every piece of him open for Daniel).
Dan kisses the back of his skull and whispers in his ear things that must not be true, because Daniel doesn't know. It's not okay, because this is not Nite Owl and Rorschach; this is Daniel and a man he will never know.
(Whoreson, his mind whispers, and Daniel mistakes the whine in his throat for something else entirely.)
-
"Relax," Daniel breathes between his shoulder-blades, and it's not okay but Rorschach wants to trust his partner in whatever way he can. So he relaxes, and Dan eases in, and it's not okay and Rorschach can't remember why it matters so much. Why he expected -
Daniel's hand slides across the inside of his forearm. "It's okay," he says, but there is infinity for him to drown in and Rorschach does not take things in shallow gradients.
-
His fingers clench against Daniel's, dig and dig until Daniel makes a sound like a sob and comes, mouth open under his ear.
Rorschach bats his hand away before it can touch and tells him no in the calmest voice he can muster. Daniel watches him from the bed; lines of yellow light through his shades split his body in sections. The head of his penis is in the light, but his eyes are masked by darkness.
Rorschach turns away.
-
It takes Daniel just one night to understand that they will not refer to what they did in any way, at any time, for any reason. He is halfway through telling Rorschach that he didn't have to leave when Rorschach hits him for the first time.
It is also not the last.
-
"I'd rather you fight me than ignore me completely," Dan says, and he's panting, blood running over his lips. He licks it away but it pours over anyway and Rorschach wants to break his nose again, and again, and again. He's trapped by the need to not let any part of Daniel's body touch him, and it is important that he stay still against the wall. "Fuck, Rorschach." His arms no longer trap him to the building, but even as he turns away there is a lump in his throat that Rorschach can hear and wishes he could ignore.
"I told you," Rorschach says, even though he knows it was not with words. Words aren't necessary with Daniel, though, so Daniel must have known.
Daniel covers his nose and curses again.
You knew what you were getting into, Rorschach thinks, but he knows it's a lie. Daniel has no idea how deep the waters he is wading are.
-
"You're only going to break," he wants to tell Daniel. "You don't understand."
If only he had said as much at the start (instead of tilting inquisitively against Nite Owl's body in the rain, instead of letting his hand press).
-
Rorschach doesn't stop staring at Daniel's blood on his hands until the memory of the snap of cartilage takes precedence over gentle twining. He forces himself to remember the way Daniel cursed at him instead of the way he whispered against his ear.
Because it's not okay, and in the end, Rorschach would rather have a partner who wanted to forget than one who wanted to try to sew together the ashes of a heart.