Work Text:
It's 4:26 am, marked by the glowing display on Daniel's microwave oven. The house has long since settled for the night and everything is silent save for your breathing and the soft scuff of your boots on the kitchen tile. It is a startling contrast to the riot of violence that preceded; more so without Daniel's usual endorphin-muddled banter displacing the stillness.
The September rain still clings to you, a cold veil that is easily shed along with your trench coat. You leave it on the newel at the foot of the stairs instead of hanging it on the coat rack like Daniel has asked you to, many times. He can't help trying to domesticate you, and you can't help being contrary. Feeling irreverent, you crown it with your fedora.
Your shoes, you toe off and leave next to the bureau, neatly. He has never asked you to do that.
Daniel is a slumbering mount of blankets. He stirs as you tread through his room and into the en suite, clicking on the light over the mirror instead of the overhead. It casts the bathroom in a comfortable glow, and as you disrobe and turn on the shower, you imagine what your younger self would think of you, so often indulging in this luxury.
Decadent.
The water stings your raw knuckles, and you let the soap bite as you wash your hair. You become aware of new wounds as the water finds them and swirls blood against white porcelain.
Deviant, taken up with your partner. Soft.
Your mouth curls. You remember the first few times, how you framed them as punishment although Daniel could never be cruel enough for that. Even though you understood what it was, even then – a natural extension of your partnership, that last line swept away instead of stepped over.
After ten years, it did not seem much of a leap, not after he had held you back from killing dogs and men and men like dogs, held you while Rorschach screamed about the world's injustices and Walter wept for an innocent girl.
After twelve years, you know it was why he stood with you, shoulder-to-shoulder in the face of the Keene Act.
It was the ease with which it happened that scared you the most, made you lash out in ways you can't imagine doing now – but with age comes experience, and a security of self. You learned how to be held and how to let go, and he showed you a sliver of peace in something you once thought brought nothing but subjugation.
You step out of the tub and wrap a towel around your waist.
Sometimes it's still like a battle, sometimes like bleeding out. That's something that cannot be helped, something Daniel can't staunch no matter how hard he tries. Nothing soft about that.
Life is ever harder now that you are both outlaws. True softness would bring you to your knees so fast it would make your head spin.
You wipe a crescent in the steamed mirror, watch your reflection thumb the bruise on his jaw. This life doesn't make you any prettier, and the years see no point in being kind to one already so unlovely. The lines around your eyes and mouth deepen as you grimace, tongue probing for loose teeth.
There's a flicker of shadow in the clear arc of mirror, and Daniel moves behind you, slides his hands over your hips. You meter your breathing and handle the instinctive bone-deep shudder with absolute control.
Daniel kisses you behind your ear, warm and light, and this shudder is allowed.
"Missed you tonight." His voice is sleep-rumpled. You sniff at his sentimentality, because he expects it of you. Heat trickles through your chest.
"Trust you enjoyed your evening, regardless," you say.
He makes an indignant noise, because you expect it of him. He meets your eyes in the mirror and curls his hands, gently squeezing your hips.
"I was thinking about you all night," he says, soothing your pique, feigned as it is. There's a sweet scent on his breath, threaded with alcohol. His hands stroke upwards to join over your chest, and he's half-hard against your back when he leans in to whisper. "Remember last time, when you came with me?"
"Last time, when you dragged me there against my will."
He laughs softly; he knows if you're truly determined to not do something, you can't be persuaded.
You remember an interminably long evening of tuxedos and cleavage and tall champagne glasses, hosts of people who pretended to know you until they realized you were nobody important in ornithological circles. You remember Daniel speaking, groomed and shining under a spotlight, applauded for his words. You remember him tying you to the bed with your bow tie, a reward, and feel yourself swell.
You grunt, lean your head back onto his shoulder. He kisses your jaw; there is a smile on his lips.
"I've had a long night," he murmurs. "I kept remembering you in that suit, and thinking..." With a slow gesture, he untucks your towel and lets it drop to the floor. His broad hands are hot as they stroke your penis until you harden; he cups you so that you feel your own pulse against your stomach.
You twist in his arms, turn so you can knot your fingers in his hair and pull him down to you, drowning insidious, creeping aversion in the warmth of his kiss.
"I was thinking," he says again, breathily, warm against your skin. You twitch, and his arms wind around your waist.
"Daniel," you say. He can be infuriatingly evasive without realizing it, lost in his own sidetracked thoughts. "What."
He says nothing, and you suspect he may still be half-asleep and half-drunk. He guides you through to the bedroom, and you humor him for a moment longer when he sits you on the edge of the bed.
"All I could think about," he says, and runs his hands along your thighs. "Was how it would feel..."
He straddles your hips and you make a low noise when you realize what he is talking about. You lean back and your elbows sink into the comforter.
"...how you would feel." He leans over you, eyes as dark as Nite Owl's, tongue flicking over your lips, tantalizing. "How it would feel for you."
You're paralyzed, struck dumb by a sudden upswell of lust that batters against you and against the walls you've already begun to erect. Even after all this time, all these years, you still see this in terms of giving and taking. You choose to give, you could never abide taking. Could not conscience hurting him, or risk inflicting the kind of hurt you reveled in when you regarded this as penance.
"Please." He buries his mouth into your neck. "I want this."
"You're drunk," you say. It's a good reason to stop before things start sliding out of hand.
He snorts against your throat, true indignation this time. "I barely drank anything, and that was hours ago."
You say nothing to that, and let the silence grow. He rubs your shoulders and your back and palms the back of your neck, eroding. He knows too well how to weaken you, and when his teeth graze the soft skin in the crook of your arm, you know you have lost.
You groan, stilling him with a hand to his chest. "Yes," you breathe. "Okay."
His smile is beatific.
You lean over and open the nightstand drawer, find what you're seeking without having to look. Daniel takes the condom from you, drags the edge of the foil wrapper over your stomach and down, down.
Your breath hisses through your teeth, and Daniel chuckles. The sound vibrates right through you. You let your eyes fall shut, and arch your neck when he dips his head.
Daniel sucks hard, tongue pressing against the underside of your penis as he slides you into his mouth, and you make a high, surprised noise. He is usually more tentative about doing this, always wary of spooking you. The surrounding heat and pressure makes you imagine how it would be to sink inside of him, and when he hollows his cheeks and everything apertures down to that lone sensation, you know that it is exactly what he wants you to be thinking of.
He holds you there for a long minute, and then pulls away. You gasp and lace your fingers in his hair, tight to his scalp.
"Nuh uh," he says, and tears the foil with his teeth. "Not tonight, buddy."
You promise to do terrible things to him as he rolls the condom onto you. He seems to think it is funny, and cuts you off with a firm stroke, rubbing you through the latex. He's still grinning as he goes to lie back on the bed.
"No," you say. He frowns, but you shake your head and explain before this becomes an argument. You coax him back up. "Like before, like this. This way you can...can have more control."
You lose your grip on the last word, and it drops away to nothing. Daniel teases his fingers through your hair. It's soothing, and you know he's about to say something he's afraid will upset you, or anger you.
"Walter," he says. "Maybe I don't want that. For once."
A spike of panic takes you unawares, sets your heart thudding. It rides on a flush of shame, brought with the reminder that it's always Daniel who caters to your needs, and his kind attentiveness is rarely reciprocated. Not because you don't want to, but because you can't. You tell yourself you can't.
It must have shown on your face in the critical seconds before you slammed shut, locked it down and dropped it into the depths. Daniel hushes you, slides his hands from your hair to cup your jaw.
You close your eyes briefly, shake yourself free. "Just looking out for you," you say. "Don't want to hurt you."
"I know," he says. A pause, and then a smile that says he's lost the battle, but won the war. "Okay, let's do it your way." He settles astride you, leans forward and takes you in one hand.
Sometimes, you despair of him. "Wait," you say, and you can't even be dismayed at the higher pitch your voice has taken. You jerk your hips, unbalancing him before he can—so he doesn't just—
"Touch me," he urges.
You slide your hand beneath him and he tilts his hips accommodatingly. He's slick there, already relaxed and open when you circle him; you can slide a finger into him easily. The noise you make flounders somewhere between surprise and reverence.
His penis presses against your stomach as he leans forward to whisper in your ear and it jumps and twitches when you remove your finger. "I was waiting for you. I, uh, got three fin—"
You shut him up with your mouth on his, dissolving words until there's nothing but little gasps and groans and you're not even sure which noises belong to you and which ones are his. It's hopeless, this is hopeless.
"Oh yeah," he breathes, scrambling for the bottle of oil. "Rorschach. Walter."
You grab his waist with both hands as he shifts and adjusts and guides you, pressing you home with his fingertips and easing back a little at a time, twitching his hips and bearing down to take you slowly into that heat, until something yields and you are consumed. His face tightens and he makes a noise like huuh the same times as you release an explosive breath. Your fingers clench tightly around him to hold him still, to anchor yourself so you don't arch and thrust because—
Because you're—
"Inside you," you say. You don't know why you're so disbelieving.
He leans forward to bite your jaw, and the slide of his body makes your breath catch. He sounds strained when he speaks. "Your powers of observation," he says, "never cease to amaze me."
Any chance of a smart retort is lost when he sits back, braces his hands behind him with palms that curve over you knees. He rolls his hips forward and you can't help but rise to meet him; it makes him bite his lip and grimace at first, then makes him pant and murmur encouragements, endearments.
This is what you fear, how easily you are already lost in the rise and fall, the lifting away and bringing together and how you cannot tear your eyes from the supple contours of his body, the line of his neck and chest and thighs as he moves, as you (give, you're giving him this, and this is what he gives you, there's never any taking, this is not—) feel him clench and tighten around you. You fear you will not want anything but this.
"God," you breathe, and it's been a long time since you've felt the need to blaspheme. He's stunning like this. "Daniel."
"Yes." Low, like a purr. "This is so—"
His face is open and softened, rapturous in a way he never is when he is the one inside. You wonder if you ever looked so undone.
He gazes down at you, and thumbs your lower lip; you realize your mouth his hanging open and wonder no more.
The gesture has unbalanced him and he tumbles to the side, shoulder wedged against the mattress; he quickly turns it to his advantage, flips you with the strength in his legs so you're sprawled over him, still half-buried. His chest rises and falls with quickened breath, and you can feel the thunder of his heartbeat against your own.
He writhes. You quake.
"God, you feel so good." He stretches his arms above his head and wraps his hands around the bedpost, luxuriating. "So good. Why haven't we done this before?"
There's nothing you can say that doesn't leave you vulnerable and helpless, so instead you find your knees, cover his hands with your own and breathe against his neck.
"Okay?" he asks quietly.
You nod, and he pulls you in deeper with his heels; whispers c'mon and yeah and like that until you forget to be gentle, until you brace your hands on his chest and lose yourself in him, push further and further inside until he suddenly draws taut beneath you, fights for breath and spills over.
It doesn't take long after that, and this time it's like a mortal wound.
[#]
"Morning, beautiful."
You scowl into the pillow and flail a fist in his direction. He catches it, kisses your knuckles, and you know he's going to be insufferable today.
He leans over to nibble on your earlobe. You groan.
"I've been thinking," he says.