Summary: Rorschach and Laurie face off over the Frosted Flakes.
Type: Request for generalized fluff.
Rating/Warnings: K+.
Characters/Pairings: Dan/Rorschach, Laurie.
spoons
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It'd be unfair to call it morning; it's pushing one in the afternoon but vigilantism keeps its own schedules and even the metabolically challenged wake up craving Frosted Flakes from time to time. Rorschach's sitting hunched over a bowl at the kitchen table, half-masked, crunching the flakes dry and sucking each one carefully for its sugar, when all at once there's someone else in the kitchen.
The someone isn't Daniel. That takes a moment to actually sink in – he's halfway to a grumbled, incoherent greeting before his brain throws an interrupt – and another second or two for the foraging, sleep-clumsy figure in too-big pajama bottoms and one of Daniel's old sweatshirts to resolve itself into-
The spoon falls from his mouth to the table with a clatter.
Juspeczyk turns toward the noise, all fight instincts kicking to life, buried under a deep bleariness.
"Oh," she mutters, rubbing her eyes, going back to rummaging through the cabinets like she has right to them, like she lives here. Like she– "S'only you. Scared the shit out of me."
"What are you doing here," he growls, because going by the clothes she's clearly here by invitation and this is his home – not sure when he started thinking of it that way, home, not residence, but it's irrelevant at the moment. Point is, she doesn't belong here.
"Currently? Ugh. Looking for coffee. Any idea where he keeps it? I feel like a fucking zombie."
"Not funny."
"Not intended to be." She squints against the afternoon light, sallow and exhausted, and one of her eyes is blackened.
Must have gotten in a lucky shot, he catches himself thinking, but then immediately dashes the thought away. Punctuates each word with a steadily rising growl. "Why. Are you. Here."
"I don't know," she says, grinning teasingly through the fatigue. "Why am I here? You're the detective."
The growl pitches lower, more dangerous.
"Oh, cut the horror movie bullshit and eat your cereal," she says, finally finding the coffee canister and peeling the lid back with fingers that are bandaged in more than a few places. "You know that shit doesn't scare me."
"Should."
"Doesn't. Christ, you've never even eaten anybody, what the hell kind of street cred is that? Great undead terror of the underworld, eating cereal with a cartoon tiger on the box. Gonna have to work a little harder to–"
The spoon pings across the room with deadly accuracy. She ducks, just in time, and it continues on to narrowly miss Daniel as he steps in from the living room, lodging in the doorframe. The look on Daniel's face – part confusion, part horror, part disappointment – is enough to send Juspeczyk into a fit of sleep-deprived laughter, and even Rorschach can't quite suppress a fractional smile, just the tiniest twitch of muscle, there and gone again in the space of a blink.
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(c) ricebol 2009