She stared into the lightly fogged mirror, listening to the rush of the shower behind her. The tears welling in her eyes had made her makeup smear. She took a washcloth from the rack and ran water on it to clean her face.
"Veronica?"
Kovacs was peeking around the edge of the shower curtain, dark red curls plastered down on his forehead. He pushed his hair back and stared at her curiously.
"Yeah, Red?" she answered, desperate to control the quaver in her voice. She smiled at him in the mirror.
He watched her silently for a long moment. The showerhead sprayed its jet against the tiled wall. His flesh was stained red from the boiling-hot water. At last he stuck out his dripping arm to draw her into the showertub with him. Nikki shook her head, grinning.
"No way! You look like a boiled lobster in there!"
Kovacs snorted and disappeared behind the curtain again. Nikki turned back to the sink to scrub her face. When all trace of makeup was gone, she examined the damage to her body, tilting this way and that in the light.
"Sometimes," she sang softly as she counted bruises, "I feel like a motherless child, a long, long way from home."
"Sing it again," he called above the sheeting noise of the water.
Nikki did, louder this time. The acoustics in the hotel bathroom were not bad. He was silent for a long time after she finished. Then he spoke again: "Now talk to me, Veronica."
"What? Want me to talk dirty while you're getting clean?" she teased, probing her shoulder gingerly. She had lied to Angel about icing it down, but she was not entirely sure that she had not strained it somehow. Or, god forbid, torn something. Rotator cuff injuries were a bad business.
"No. Tell me what's wrong."
Nikki widened her eyes innocently, although he was still behind the shower curtain and could not see her. "I'm just hoping I didn't screw up my shoulder."
There was a pause.
"Are you thinking about Pantoliano's offer?"
She closed her eyes and gritted her teeth. "No. I can't think about that right now. It's been a long night. There's just...too much..." She waved a hand in the air as if it could complete her thought for her.
"Crying because you're tired, then?"
Crap. Didn't think he saw. "It's like how I barf when I'm pregnant," she joked.
Kovacs shut off the water, pulled the curtain open, and, dripping, stepped out onto the mat. He grabbed Nikki, pulling her to him. She clucked her tongue but laced herself eagerly around his wet frame. She wriggled against him lasciviously.
"Stop," he whispered. "Stop."
His arms locked around her like iron, and she subsided, burying her face under his jaw. Drops of water fell from his tangled hair onto her back. She squeezed against him desperately.
"Tell me. Is it Pantoliano?"
"No, it's not Pantoliano," Nikki answered miserably. She made a face against his neck and laughed bitterly. "Why you bein' such a girl, huh? We gotta talk about everything?"
Kovacs released her in surprise. She backed toward the bedroom door, flashing a seductive smile at him. "Come on, Red. I thought you had plans for me."
He gave her that hard blank stare which she had come to associate with Rorschach, mask or no mask. "You want to fuck." His monotone, emotionless voice made it more a statement than a question.
Nikki's mouth dropped open at his crass vocabulary. She forced herself to laugh. "What else would I want?" she challenged, bumping up against the edge of the bed.
He pursed his lips, stalking her. She exposed her teeth in a feral grin and crawled onto the sheets. She did not take her eyes off of him. "Damn, you look good wet," she cooed as he approached. She glanced down at his member; it dangled, still soft, in the dark red thatch of his pubic hair. Her stung pride suddenly abandoned her.
"Tell me what you want, Veronica."
"I want you, handsome," she said, trying to paste a smile on her face. She knelt forward and reached for him. He stared down at her implacably as she stroked him into something that might pass as an erection. "I want you," she repeated, with less confidence, and fumbled for a condom packet. She avoided his merciless brown eyes while she drew the rubber down over his length. "I want you."
"This body, you mean. You want this body."
Startled, Nikki looked up and was pinned by his gaze. "Of course I want your body, Red. You're gorgeous."
He stared at a spot on the wall for a moment, then nodded. Lightning-fast, he grabbed her in a supplex and flipped her face-down on the bed, his wet muscles pinning her. Nikki struggled, but somehow her wriggling just managed to part her legs and trap her arms.
"Red-" she gasped.
"I'm giving you what you want, Veronica," he grunted harshly. "Isn't this what you want?" His hand crawled inexorably between her thighs. The damp heat of his body was dangerous and wonderful.
"I want you," she whispered.
"You what?" Kovacs demanded.
"I want you!"
In response, he angled himself into her passage, crushing and filling her. He rocked his hips against her in short strokes that rubbed every sensitive inch of her buttocks and center. Then his fingers found her swollen nub, and she moaned helplessly. She could not seem to catch her breath. His shaft massaged the tight muscles of her entrance, first one way, then the other. His breath was ragged in her ear. She fought to spread her thighs and allow him in deeper. His weight pinned her.
"I need you, Red," she groaned.
"You've got me."
"No," she wailed, crazy with pleasure and despair. "I need you!"
"You've got me," he insisted. "You've got me, Veronica. You've got me."
He murmured the words again and again, whole syllables disappearing into jagged gasps. She writhed shamelessly against him, and the ecstasy gripped her with such force that she faded into blackness for a drawn-out, liquid moment. When she came to herself again, his slick hips were grinding against her frantically. She murmured senseless encouragement and squeezed her exhausted muscles around his length. Then she heard a sobbing noise, and he froze. She sighed. At last he levered himself off of her. The sudden cold absence of his body panicked her momentarily; she felt as exposed and vulnerable as a newborn. The words tumbled out of her in a rush:
"I was crying because I'm totally crazy about you, and I want to keep this with you this this this intimacy, but I didn't want to be a total woman about it, I wanted to play it cool, like it's just sex, but it's killing me, 'cause I don't just want you, I do need you, and I don't just mean your body, I mean you: Walter, Rorschach, Red, whoever the hell you are, you're what I need. And you're gonna leave in the morning, and that's fine, you need to do what you need to do, but-"
"Veronica."
"Yeah?" she breathed.
Kovacs scooted over to rest on his forearms next to her. He tucked his face into the crook of her shoulder. "Ms. Washington," he murmured, his breath tickling her neck.
She could not restrain a giggle. "What?"
"Nikki."
Her stomach did a two-and-a-half twist in the pike position.
"Sure, I'm leaving tomorrow. But with you. Okay?" He sighed, exasperated. "Hell, if you can take a punch, you can take this."
"If I can take a dick, I can take this, you mean." She began to laugh. It was the kind of panicky laughter that bubbled up from her diaphragm and threatened to evolve into tears. She tilted her head back, breathing deeply, and teasingly bumped his hip with her own. "I'm done with crying," she declared. "I'm done, got it?"
"Wild horses, Veronica."
"Huh?"
"Wild horses couldn't drag me away."
Nikki flipped over onto her back and caressed his freckled face. He grinned at her crookedly.
"Yeah?" she asked.
"Yeah."
"Graceless lady," she sang softly, "you know who I am. You know I can't let you slide through my hands. Wild horses couldn't..." She trailed off as he covered her mouth with a kiss.
***
Nikki sat up in bed, unsure how long the knocking had been going on. Kovacs lay still on the pillow, but his eyes were wide open, watching her.
"It's us, baby!"
Christ.
"It's my parents," she muttered to Kovacs. She staggered to her feet, every inch of her body either sore or oversensitive. Or both. Snagging a towel from the bathroom, she wrapped it around herself on the way to the door, which she cracked.
"Hey, honey. How are you feeling? Want to get some breakfast with us?"
Nikki poked her head out and gazed at her chirping mother blearily. "Uhm, it was kind of a late night, so I might pass, okay?"
The two older Washingtons exchanged a glance. Nikki was uncertain what information they were communicating to each other. She scratched her calf with her toe. Then her father grinned in a way that she knew meant trouble.
"Walter is welcome to come too." Marcus raised his voice toward the cracked door. "Walter! Want breakfast?"
"Sounds great, Marcus," a voice yelled back.
Nikki knocked her head back against the doorframe.
"See you downstairs in about fifteen?" Sandra suggested.
"Make it twenty," her daughter grumbled.
****
A/N: There are lyrics from two songs contained in this chapter. "Sometime I Feel" is an old spiritual. "Wild Horses" was written and originally recorded by the Rolling Stones (although Bush does a pretty good cover).