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He couldn’t place the change from one moment to the next. There was a strange jolt, muted but palpable, then an eerie quiet. He attempted to change his focus, a shift of his head to the left, an attempt to hone in on sound. On his connection to the world through his skin. Another shift of his head. To the right. More silence and suddenly loss. It felt heavy against his chest. Rushes of blood. Heartbeats in torrents.
Then the slow, pronounced loss of them. Breaths like snow falling on a mountain.
He stumbled, hand dropping to his desk for purchase as the rush and loss slammed into him. Thousands of beats, of breaths. The bleeding of Karen’s voice with Foggy’s, slow, unsteady and muddled, terrified, fading.
“Matt?”
Breaths like snow falling, a strange wind, and then silence. No heartbeats. No presence. Just the wails from everywhere, the fear and confusion. The horrified, panicked voices. What is happening?
“Karen,” he started, something distant and choked in his voice. His knuckles whitened as he held the edge of his desk in an attempt to stay upright. He called upon everything he knew to focus himself in this room, away from the noise slamming in from everywhere. “Foggy,” he continued, desperation thick in his throat and weighing his best friend’s name down onto his shoulders. The heft of it brought him to his knees.
They were gone, joining the thousands of disappearing heartbeats.
The shift and change in the world caused him to blink as if something so big, so strange could return his sight. Maybe if he could see, it wouldn’t matter that every other sense was building him to conclusions his own heart wasn’t remotely prepared to accept. He stumbled back up, his stylish leather shoes skidding across the wood. His hand slapped once against his desk and he searched. There’d been no thud. No falling bodies. No sound outside of the rush and silence of heartbeats quickening then fading. He’d heard death before with slowing, stuttered breaths. He’d smelt it, pungent and messy with piss and feces. Felt it, the cold settling bones of it. It didn’t smell or feel or sound like this, and he tried to parse together what was happening in his office with the perception of what was happening outside.
They were’t here. They weren’t anywhere. There was no trace of them save for their places on his skin and in his chest.
He stumbled forward, then found his footing. He swiped his folded cane from his desk and shook it open. He refocused and found some semblance of strength, as if he was pulling the cowl over his eyes and channeling the Devil. He chased his own fear and wonder at what was happening and he walked to the door. He pulled it open, invited the outside into himself. All of their horror and awe, all of the eerie death.
Outside, it was as if a pause button had been pressed. The streets were crowded but not nearly like usual. He could hear the myriad whispers asking what was happening, how people were disappearing on the wind in strange shifting clouds of dust. People everywhere with no rhyme or reason. The whispers built to cries, to frenzied shrieks. The shock slipped to running, to phones blaring to life, to wonder and manic pleas for calls to be answered, for voices to assure that they were still here. There.
Every sound pounded itself into Matt’s head. Heels on the pavement, screech of tires, scream of horns, the crashing and crying. Sirens pulled up the rear and pushed themselves into the forefront and for a moment, Matt’s own mouth opened and the pain of it shot from the top of his head to the base of his spine. He dropped his cane and the clang against the pavement was magnified. He brought his hands to his ears, covered them and cried out for it to stop. He couldn’t block it, couldn’t reach into any bit of the training he’d done to center himself and hear what direction he should take.
The break came with the quick heartbeat of a child, no older than he’d been when he lost his sight. A hand on his jacket stole his attention. His head keened towards it and there was a brief focus on just the breathing. The scrape of his cane and the cold metal of the handle on his hand.
“My mommy,” the boy said and the only thing Matt could hear was the frightened edge. It centered him and he offered the boy his hand.
He wanted to tell the boy he’d help him find her, but in the midst of the chaos, he knew that’d be a lie. “I’ll help you,” he said instead, unconvinced but determined.
The effort it took to keep hold of the boy’s hand kept the noise at bay. It was there, sizzling on his periphery, but he had a focal point in the heat of the boy’s hand and the fear in his chest. He didn’t let go despite the many pleas for help and the city around them made some attempt to come together. He knew this was what New York did, how when the chips were down, it held itself together like glue. He had to take some heart in that if he was going to hold himself together and figure out what the hell was happening in his city.
His first instinct was the 15th Precinct. His mind immediately landed on Brett, still one he knew he could trust and one he knew he’d turn to in the midst of this. It hadn’t occurred to him that Brett could be one of them, among the departed, and he felt his first slide of relief when he found the detective there, scrambling and leading the charge of first responders. He brought the boy, he left the boy, and understood Brett’s words when he said they could use the Devil right about then.
He understood that Matt Murdock could offer so little in those initial hours and the little slice of his heart not crumbling into a similar dust moved his feet to St. Agnes. The church was filling with the prayers of the frightened, the laments of the loss, and the cries of the injured. The doors were open to all and Matt filtered through the crowds of people hearing everyone but listening for one. He pulled nuns aside and with his unfocused eyes begged for their time. He asked for Sister Maggie, the slip of desperation in his voice when he inquired about this mother. If he could see their faces, he’d have gotten some confirmation of the grief in their voices, but he denied the sound and moved through the church, to the rectory, and below. He went through the orphanage and listened to the terrified voices of the children still left.
It piled upon him and filled his body to some kind of sensory overload but none of it touched his grief. It was the grief that led him home, that opened the doors, and revealed the chest. His hands slipped over the silk of his father’s robe. His better angels needed to believe they were in the same place. His father, his mother, Karen, and Foggy. If this was death and not something else, he needed to think they were together. God had to give him that despite calling on the Devil in this darkness.
Matt blinked into his own, slipped the cowl from the chest, and shut the lid.
It took days - weeks - to clean up the initial mess. The news came in from across the globe that an enormous part of the world’s population had simply disappeared - floated away in dust clouds, erased from existence, but not from memory. Shrines went up, candles lit and burned for days. The city struggled to keep up but the people got themselves up and went to work, made things run as best as they could. The questions kept coming without answers and their larger than life heroes had no response. Mourning took more days and more weeks, but it was just hours and loss of sunlight that brought out the worst in the city.
Matt went to work each night the second the sun went down. He covered as much ground as his legs would allow and dropped thugs and murderers at the foot of the police station’s steps. Most mornings he hit his bed with his chest pulled tight and his hope drained. It was hard to know what he fought for, everything familiar, everything that tied him to the planet, fizzled. It was hard to trust that what moved through the city in the daylight was worth saving.
*
It happened close to dusk. He entered his apartment through the roof, pulling his damp mask from his head and stopping only once his focus was pulled in the direction of the couch. The raise in his hackles was short lived when a familiar heartbeat pulsed in his ears. It was no relief but something he knew and some strange bit of gratitude slipped up into his own chest.
“Frank,” he said, voice steady and with some edge of questioning.
“Hello, Red,” he said, the all-too-familiar disdain missing from the Punisher’s voice. “You’re slipping.”
Matt sighed and tossed the cowl aside, taking the rest of the stairs and leaning against the railing. There didn’t seem to be much point to worrying about his face. Everything he had to protect was gone and maybe Frank had been right once upon a time about wearing a mask. “How’d you figure out where to find me?” he still asked.
“Simple recon,” Frank answered. “I wasn’t sure at first. The red suit bein’ gone and all. But you still don’t kill anyone and there’s still bodies piling up on the steps of the precinct.”
Matt turned his eyes in the direction of Frank’s voice and had some sad desire just to hear more of it. “You weren’t one of them,” he said, finding it almost ironic that of all people not taken that day, he and Frank were still standing. “I mean, who disappeared.”
Frank grunted as if that irony wasn’t lost on him. The Punisher rose to his feet and the slow, heavy step of his boots told Matt of Frank’s growing proximity. There was no malice in the way Frank moved, nothing that would indicate any of the animosity that had informed their relationship in the past despite some final empathy and perhaps, understanding.
“Where’s Karen?” Frank finally asked and Matt’s chest pulled. Something in Frank’s voice indicated that he already knew but Matt just shook his head.
“She’s gone,” Matt murmured, all of the strength of the Devil gone. It sat outside these walls, out where he’d been channeling it through his fists on the element refusing to see the light, to take the weeks of grief and learn from them. Honor them in some way even he didn’t understand himself. He breathed out a quick, pained sigh and tilted his face just slightly in Frank’s direction. “She and Foggy, that day, just,” he stopped when he heard Frank’s breath hitch.
“You see it?” Frank asked and Matt had to actually pause a second, brow raised because was that a joke?
“Frank, I’m blind,” he said, his voiced laced with some bit of irritation.
Frank’s head almost snapped before he shook it. Matt could hear the shift of bone and tendons as he did and knew Frank was in a similar state. “I meant, were you there?” he amended with a similar touch of annoyance.
Matt nodded, the hurt still raw on his skin. “They just… they were there and then they weren’t. But they felt something. I could,” he stopped talking but gestured to his ears and then grabbed at the part of his shirt covering his heart. As if he could reach it by doing that. “I could hear it in their voices. Feel it. They knew something was happening to them.”
“Shit, Red,” Frank huffed out, devoid of the rage Matt expected to hear and feel from him.
It surprised him in a way he didn’t fully understand. If there was anything Matt knew about Frank Castle, it was how fiercely he held onto connection despite his intense need to avoid it. It was how he protected himself. It was how he protected those connections at his own risk. Matt had heard about the Liebermans. He knew what Frank had done.
Matt’s surprise rendered him unprepared for the way Frank moved then. It was just a step forward and a hand reaching towards him. Matt caught the movement at the last second and felt the sharp press of Franks fingers at the back of his neck. His own hand moved quickly to head it off, to take hold of Frank’s wrist in defense.
It wasn’t defense that he needed and Frank was murmuring, “Hey, hey, c’mon,” almost tenderly. It was alien and disarming because it was comfort. Frank meant to comfort and Matt found that it actually hurt.
He tried to refocus, to listen and feel whatever it was coming off Frank and after a minute, he realized it was more than comfort. It was commiseration in grief. His head dropped for just a moment as he sighed and kept his fingers curled around the other man’s wrist. He accepted whatever strange comfort it was before he forced the break in contact and moved away from the steady heat coming off Frank.
Matt could hear the shift of bone as Frank straightened his back and composed himself. “Have you heard anything? What happened, what this is?” Frank asked.
Matt shook his head, voice low, “No, nothing really clear. Talk about government cover ups and the Avengers, but no one seems to have a straight line on it. You hear anything?”
“Naw, no one’s talkin’,” he said, the frustration over that evident. “Don’t think any place I’m lookin’ would say much anyway.”
“No, probably not.” Matt could feel Frank’s eyes at his back but didn’t stop his trek to his bedroom. “I’m going to change. There’s food in the fridge if you want,” he said, a little confused by his own need to maybe keep Frank and the familiar sound of him here.
“You hungry?” Frank asked and finally moved so he could head to the kitchen.
Matt didn’t bother closing the door behind him and shed the black in favor of a softer t-shirt and pair of sweats. “I could eat,” he called out, without really thinking about sharing a meal with the Punisher. He washed the grime of the city from his hands and face and rejoined Frank who had found eggs and vegetables and was turning them into a delicious smelling omelet. He lifted his glasses from the side shelf and slid them on as he moved into the kitchen to get himself a glass of water.
“I didn’t know you cooked,” he mused, gathering plates and cutlery for their meal.
“There’s a lot of things you don’t know about me, Red,” he said and slid the large omelet onto the plate. He cut the filled egg and slid half onto another plate. He popped toast and smeared it with butter before he slid the plate towards Matt. “Bon appetite,” he said and lifted his own plate and carried it off.
Matt took his plate and grabbed a napkin before he sat. He heard the scrape of the fork against the stoneware as Frank ate and it was a peculiar comfort. Matt angled his face towards the sound as if he could watch the act of Frank eating. After a minute or two of that Frank grunted then rumbled, “Eat. We got work to do.”
Matt had a full fork halfway to his mouth when Frank’s words stopped him. “Work to do? We?”
“You think I was lookin’ for you for a free meal?” Frank asked, biting into his toast and crunching it between his teeth before swallowing it. “The shit is going down and I figure we’re small potatoes compared to the big guys working on this dust thing, but the city’s burning down, Red, and what you do? It ain’t enough. I figure, we’re either gonna meet on the wrong side of it and one of us ends up dead or we work together.”
Matt coughed then laughed at the absurdity of it. Frank had been off the grid since he helped bring down the conspiracy that killed his family. Matt didn’t know all of the details of it, but he had enough ears and friends in places that let him knew Castle was alive. Not to mention, Karen, with her clear and present affection for the man, kept him in some kind of loop.
Matt could tell that Frank didn’t find any bit of what he said amusing and he could feel the other man’s eyes on him. There was heat in the gaze and Matt found himself swallowing against how incredulous the thought of them working together sounded. Instead of overtly stating that, Matt just said, “You’ve been quiet for a while.” He should have asked where Frank had been, what exactly he’d been doing, but some part of him didn’t want to know.
“You complaining?” he asked with a short laugh. That did seem to amuse him and Matt welcomed the tiny sliver of mirth that crept into his space. Frank added, “I stayed outta your hair, right?”
Matt heaved a dramatic sigh and pushed a forkful of egg into his mouth. It was good and if he was honest with himself, he hadn’t exactly been eating well since he lost his family and friends. “How do you propose we do this together?” he finally asked after he chased the food with some water. “Our methods don’t exactly jive and we’ve got ethical differences out the ass.”
Matt heard Frank put his fork down on the plate and set the plate on the table. He’d finished his meal and that brought an air of satisfaction to his breathing. There was a sigh of acknowledgment but it wasn’t it wasn’t discouraging, either. “It’s important enough, yeah?” Frank asked with the same confidence he’d shown years ago. “It’s important enough, we find middle ground.”
Matt set his fork down and shook his head, “No killing.” It was the steadiest his voice had sounded since it happened. Maybe since his showdown with Fisk.
“For Chrissakes, Red, the world’s on fire and you’re still harping on this no killing bullshit?” Frank stood and his boots fell heavy as he paced.
Matt was steadfast despite his inability to hold down the patterns in Frank’s gait. “No killing, Frank. Don’t you think enough people have died?”
“Good people died!” he rumbled and it bordered on a roar. The outer rim of Frank’s rage was there, grazing the words and his voice, growing. “Good people died and we don’t know what took’em. There’s still people dyin’ but we know who’s doin’ it and they shouldn’t get to live. Not when, not when,”
Everything coming off Frank was white hot. It wasn’t like before when he’d chained Matt to the roof. The vengeance wasn’t the same. The anger was still laced with pain, but Matt could taste the unselfish misery in the air he breathed. It brought him to his own feet, his direction towards where Frank’s boots fell. He didn’t reach out but he said, “Frank,” gently.
“They’re all gone. Karen,” Frank grated, teeth gnashed together as if they could stop him from saying it out loud. “Sarah, David, Leo, Zach,” he said their names and there was moisture in the spaces where they hung. “Whole families. Whole fuckin’ families and for what?”
“We don’t have the answers but we don’t get to take others because they’re gone. There’s no logic in it, Frank, and it should open our eyes to the living, even if they’re bad. If this teaches us anything, if it gives us anything, it’s an even greater need for redemption.”
Frank scoffed, the heat coming off him rising. Matt was on the verge of sweating with it, but he didn’t move away.
“Redemption is naive bullshit,” Frank said. “I was quiet. I was good. They’re all gone and I got the call again. Your prisons? Your law? They can’t fit’em all. There’s less justice now than before. There’s no halfway right now.”
They’d had this conversation and it got them nowhere. He’d learned so much of what of what drove the man, but Matt’s own need to, well, save him, hadn’t changed. “So what? What is the plan here? Why do you need me? I set them up and you knock them down?” Matt asked rubbing a hand over his head. He was tired. He was so fucking tired.
“That’s not a bad idea,” Frank said with a short laugh on an exhale, his tension momentarily broken. It was followed by a sigh and break in the anger. “Halfway, Red. You’ve got those pals of yours in parts of the city, yeah? You take care of the Kitchen. Back-up. It never hurt anyone and it’s getting worse. Not enough of the law you love so much.”
He wasn’t wrong. That day took a good chunk of the police force and not enough criminals. The lawlessness grew with the paranoia and fear. With the notion that they could get away with it. It wasn’t end of the world rioting and hysteria, but it wasn’t run of the mill New York City. Or anywhere for that matter. Militaries were pulled in every direction on every home front and Earth’s mightiest heroes were off fighting some war none of them could understand.
“So what’s halfway?” he finally asked, the exhaustion creeping into his voice with the possibility of some kind of acquiescence.
Frank seemed to regard him and Matt thought he could hear something spinning in the other man. There was a slow pull of breath before the punisher said, “kill out of necessity.”
“Frank-“ Matt started but the other man wasn’t giving him a chance to talk.
“No, hear me out. We do it your way until our backs hit the wall. When there’s no other alternative. I won’t be tradin’ my life or yours for any of theirs. That’s the deal.”
Matt opened and closed his mouth like a fish. Something in Frank’s voice was unsettling to him if only because he couldn’t quite place it. If only because he couldn’t quite believe what it felt like. It made Matt consider that he hadn’t actually been alone in his gratitude to find each other alive.
Still, he was stubborn. He’d been doing this too long and understood the possibility of his own death every time he put on the mask. This wasn’t something anyone did without coming to terms with his own mortality. It wasn’t something anyone did without giving up the fear of it.
He believed in his way, though. Time and again, he felt himself buried, hell almost did die, but something always pulled him from the muck, put him back on the path. He broke bones, took blood, but the heart never stopped beating. He left life up to God and fate to the law.
In his thought, Matt could hear Frank waiting. He had nothing else to say, no other offers, and the cut and dry nature of Frank Castle’s answer to this drew out Matt’s. “Last resort only,” he said, surprised of it, but also fully believing it wouldn’t come to that.
Frank couldn’t understand the way Matt felt them. Since that day, it had been a clusterfuck of voices and pain and need. It came to him in tsunami type waves, heavy and drowning and every night he’d gone out there, he was pulled in a thousand directions and every hour was spent spreading himself over them. It wasn’t always danger and for some an appearance from the Devil brought peace of mind, some semblance of safety in a world going to shit. Frank didn’t go with him for those but met him in the hours after. He didn’t ask questions and Matt returned the favor after every fight and every drop at the 15th.
They didn’t necessarily need each other and some nights they split for efficiency. Frank’s capabilities were always a revelation to Matt and he took some comfort being on the right side of it. There were so few times they had to rely on each other, but the presence became something bigger. Frank’s rumble slipped through all of the noise and offered him focus and in return he offered the other man a connection back to the world. He knew it was some bit of his naivety and if Frank ever knew he thought it, he’d never hear the end of it.
Still they went out, they took care of business, and some nights returned to Matt’s place before dusk to patch each other up and purposefully not talk about what they were doing. Frank always left before the sun rose and Matt often wondered where it was he went. It wasn’t enough to pursue, not when the arrangement they seemed to have assumed worked so well, and well, Matt still went out in the day to make a living.
No one died, they both walked away, and for some precious moments, the world quieted.
It was an unexpected gift and his gratitude for it was what motivated him to offer Frank breakfast one morning. He changed out of the black and offered Frank an opportunity to clean up. Frank did the basics with his hands and face and Matt figured that was due to a sense of duty or propriety dictated once upon a time. Matt did the cooking himself and produced coffee with it, which Frank gratefully took first. A plate of over easy eggs, bacon, and toast followed.
“A perfect egg,” Frank mused when he pulled the plate in front of him. “See now I am impressed,” he pushed out a small laugh. “This one of those things you do by listening to the membranes or some shit?”
The little laugh elicited something similar from Matt and as he slid eggs onto his own plate, he turned off the heat and joined Frank. “I time it,” he said, the laughter muting into a cheeky kind of grin.
“Smartass,” Frank mumbled but the good natured slide of his voice was apparent. It allowed Matt to easily slide into eating with the comfort of company. It made him miss Karen and Foggy and how their climb back to some normalcy reconnected him to the city. How their faith in him and who he was allowed him to stay here.
“Tell me about them,” Matt said, swallowing coffee down with his toast. “David and Sarah, Leo and what was his name?”
Frank tightened a pinch. A more tense breath released itself through his nose. “Zach,” he said. “Zach, Leo, and Sarah were Lieberman’s family. He, uh, he helped me solve it. Finish it for my family. Doing it, what he did, put’em in danger, almost got’em all killed.”
Matt’s head shifted in the direction of Frank’s voice and the hitches that lined it as he spoke. Matt could hear the mix of affection and sorrow interwoven there, not unlike how it’d been in the cemetery those year ago. The humanizing of Frank Castle was - and probably always would be a jarring experience for him, but then, when so much was gone, Matt clung to it. “You didn’t let that happen.”
“Hell no, I didn’t,” he said gruffly. “I killed them - all.” There was a hitch on the last word, something inside Frank’s chest that told Matt that wasn't necessarily true. “The ones who killed my family. The ones who tried to kill Lieberman’s.”
It hurt Matt to hear it, even if he could feel the necessity of the death in Frank. He didn’t know if the death or resolution brought Frank peace, but even after that day when everyone left them, there was something settled about him. “Where’d you go? After. Karen said you disappeared.”
Frank seemed to flinch at Karen’s name but he covered it with a shrug. “Went to see America. Left Frank Castle in New York. Thought maybe the new start they’d given me could mean somethin’. You know, take the second chance seriously.”
His breath slid slowly from him and Matt dropped his eyes despite their lack of direction. There was guilt in Frank’s voice and it surprised Matt that it hadn’t actually manifested itself into the rage that had brought the Punisher into his crosshairs in the first place. “You weren’t there,” Matt said knowing.
“When the shit hit the fan and everyone was goin’ - disappearing - I came back. Went lookin’ for’em, but they were all gone. House was empty, mess. No sign of anything. I just knew they were gone. Came back here. Tried to get a hold of Karen. Found you instead. Some real backwards fucked up shit, Red. You n’ me still here.”
That was never going to be lost on him but the calm way with which Frank spoke made Matt say, “It throws me when you’re this - this calm.”
Frank shook his head with another short laugh. “Throws me too. When it was hunting the animals that killed my family it was easy. I had something concrete to go after, a place to put it. This thing? Don’t know what any of it is, what it means. I ain’t got nowhere to direct this except when we’re out there. I figure you get that and that’s,” Frank’s head turned in Matt’s direction. “That’s why I came’n found you.”
It explained a lot. All of the strange sizzling calm that radiated off of Frank. The tenderness of that first night. Frank’s restraint with his guns. It took Matt’s wonder to the next step and he asked, “what do you do when we’re done? In the morning.”
“Sharpen my knives, clean my guns,” Frank said and Matt could hear the smile on his lips. For a moment he truly wondered what it looked like. What Frank looked like. Frank stole that wonder when he continued, though. “Just fucking with you. I sleep a couple hours and go to work. Still gotta make a living. Just like you. I go out and I fix shit. I’m quick and cheap so no one really pays me mind.”
“Yeah,” Matt almost drawled. “I’m sure you got all the ladies lining up for your services.”
Frank laughed heartier with that. “Get the hell out of here with that.” The laugh slipped, faded into slower breathing and a heart that dragged with the hurt of it. “That ship has sailed.”
“But you’re still here,” Matt said almost dumbly, not sure why it actually mattered to him. He understood the parts of him that died with Elektra. That were held by Karen in muted moments between them when just feeling her look at him made him ache.
“Nah, c’mon, Red. I ain’t here, not the parts that count. Just the bones and righteousness. That ain’t livin’, just dyin’ slowly.”
“Why do you call me that?” Matt asked, hurt for Frank. He’d been moved in the cemetery. He’d been moved on the boat and that single moment on the roof when Elektra was killed. It was whirls of confusion when it came to Frank because Matt’s own righteousness was challenged and he wasn’t sure what the true answers were.
“What should I call ya? You prefer Sunshine?” he teased and Matt felt himself actually flush with the tone in Frank’s voice. Like the dead man was flirting with him, which contradicted every word he’d just said.
Matt struggled with some semblance of steadiness. “My name is Matthew. It’s Matt.”
“Ahhh,” Frank said and drew out the sound. “Saint Matthew, called to follow Jesus. Is that where all this comes from? The no killing, the faith. Saving the faithless. Naw, Red. It doesn’t suit you. Not with the Devil in you.”
Matt wanted to retort but something in Frank’s voice unsettled him enough to silence him. He’d always been prepared to lose everything if it meant not stopping. There had never been any explaining and the irony was that it wasn’t the Devil who took everything he loved. Maybe it actually had been God.
*
Breakfast became a regular thing and Frank began stashing a change of clothes in the closet. He used the shower, came out smelling like Matt’s soap and he teased the shit of him for his lavish taste in product. There was no use explaining what the cheaper stuff did to his skin so he took the ribbing and sat back while Frank made it up to him by taking his turn prepping their meal.
They talked less about that day. They talked more about their wars. Matt wasn’t sure if there was catharsis in it, but Frank’s voice continued to keep the noise outside and the peace of that drew Matt closer to him. Sometimes, it wasn’t breakfast. Sometimes Frank brought sandwiches to Matt’s office. Sometimes it was sitting in the park feeding bread to the pigeons as the city slowly worked its way back to some semblance of order. Sometimes they met at the diner for dinner before they went out to beat on the Kitchen’s thugs. For the most part, that’s what they dealt with and the lack of some bigger bad was as staggering as Matt’s continued draw to Frank.
It begged to reason that despite the growing connection between he and Frank, the kiss came out of nowhere. One minute they were stumbling in from a particularly adrenaline filled fight and the next, Matt was pressing Frank to the edge of his countertop and kissing him. In the aftermath of it, Matt couldn’t decide what was worse: the slackening of Frank’s mouth in initial mutual desire or the hand against his chest that put distance between them and the Punisher’s retreat away from him.
“Do not do some weird voodoo shit where you listen to my heartbeat or try ’n interpret my breathing patterns,” Frank said sternly. There was no anger, no rage and blocking out what he could hear or feel from Frank just wasn’t possible.
Matt’s breathing came quick and he knew it was one of those sensory overloads that usually took some deep meditation to get through. He could have said he was sorry, could have said it was just something that happened, and while the latter might be true, it happened because he’d wanted to get close to Frank that way. He’d wanted to feel something more than all of this. Or at the very least give in to the fact that he was feeling something more.
He keened his head in Frank’s direction and said nothing like a child waiting to be reprimanded. His lips burned with the feel of Frank and it really was everything he cold do not to run his tongue across them just for the last sliver of taste.
“You can’t save me, Red,” Frank said after a few beats. A few calming beats. “I came to you because you are as fucked as I am. As likely to take a bullet, have your throat cut, or just disappear like the rest of them. It’s just waiting for it.”
Matt swallowed hard and curled his hands into fists at his side. “So what the hell is all this for? Why’d you bother?”
“I don’t know. I don’t,” Frank shrugged with his own inner struggle. “I don’t know, maybe it was about saving you.”
Matt wasn’t expecting that for an answer and he shifted himself in Frank’s direction again. He took just a handful of small steps, but stopped when he heard the other man’s backwards walk. “You don’t even know, do you?” he asked instead. “You don’t get that you are.”
Matt wasn’t in the habit of grand confessions. Hell it had taken too long for him to reveal his true self to Karen and even that had been one of the hardest moments of his life.
“That’s not what I mean. Out there,” Frank stopped, holding a gesture Matt felt towards the city around them.
Matt sighed sadly. Frank didn’t understand and couldn’t. Still, without movement, he said, “You make everything quiet. Nothing’s been quiet since that day and with you, I don’t hear it all. I don’t feel it all. In here? There’s just you. And you know what, I get it. You don’t, I mean, me or guys or… or…”
“It’s not about guys or you. It’s it. That part of me is gone. Dead. I told you that.”
“It felt very much alive just now,” Matt murmured. It wasn’t an indictment but rather what he’d felt from Frank.
Frank breathed out an almost bitter laugh. “I don’t want it alive.”
“Why?”
Frank’s resignation was palpable in that moment. “You know why. That voodoo you do, you know why. I don’t wanna go back there. We both know what it takes.”
“But that day,” Matt said. Everyone close to Frank. Everyone that kept him attached to this life. The people he loved because he couldn’t help himself.
“I went looking. I tried beating it out of anyone who might know what happened. I barely hung on with the rage and I challenged God to come down and have it out with me if He was the one who did it. Nothing happened, nothing came. The Devil was the only thing that made sense. Finding you? I don’t… know.”
The fact that Frank could be both steady and frenzied was a wonder to him. “You were calm,” Matt said. “When you came here, you were calm.”
“I found you. You weren’t one of them who went. And you were out there doing that thing you do, still not killin’ anyone and I don’t know, Red.”
“That’s called hope, Frank. That calm and whatever it was that made you start this with me. It’s hope and you still have it. Which means,” Matt breathed out something he couldn’t place - hope for himself, relief, encouragement. He had no idea but he went to Frank, saying, “Don’t walk away,” as he did.
Frank didn’t move that time, but the stiffness was pronounced. “I don’t want it,” he said without budging.
“Then why’d you stay, huh?”
“It was useful,” Frank said purposefully keeping the emotion at bay.
Matt just nodded with that and despite the closeness didn’t reach out. As much as he needed that calm, he wasn’t going to overstep. “So now what?”
“Nothing changes,” Frank said. “We forget it happened.”
Matt pursed his lips together but couldn’t really do nothing but nod his agreement.
He thought he felt relief from Frank then. It hung itself on the air between them before Frank nodded himself. “See ya later, Red.”
Frank was true to his word and did not change. They went out that night and the night after and it was as if nothing had happened. Frank fought with the same ferocity. They argued over how much was enough and over the continued drop off of repeat offenders. Matt followed his lead in as much as he could when the mask was on and when the sun started to rise, Frank left him without coming in.
It went like that until it didn’t and it was a particularly nasty standoff with some new players in the Kitchen that brought it about. The weaponry was military grade, something that pulled a particularly meaner Frank to the forefront. With the military weaponry came military precision when it came to using it and the two of them ended up back at Matt’s place with a hole in Matt’s hip where a bullet shot clean through. That only added to Frank’s ire and it burned hot when he ordered Matt to get his shirt off.
“God dammit I told you to go left,” he was seething, probing the exit at his back. “And why the fuck aren’t you wearing Kevlar? Haven’t we had this discussion? If you’re done with the suit, you need more than that flimsy shit you’re wearing.”
“We did talk about it,” Matt grated through grit teeth because fuck, it’d been a while since he’d been wounded to this extent and Frank wasn’t exactly gentle. “I told you I can’t move the way I need to with the Kevlar. It weighs me down.”
“So you don’t play fucking ballerina, at least you’re not shot.” He threw open the vanity to retrieve the medical kit. “It’s a clean exit but I don’t know if it hit anything. You should probably - “
“Just stop. I’ll do it myself. I’m not going to a hospital and you know it. Christ.” Matt said and when Frank’s hands returned to him, made some attempt to shoo them away. He moved to stand but Frank put his big hands on Matt’s shoulders and sat him down again.
“Would you just sit down. I know no hospitals but you’re being an idiot. I don’t know the damage here.”
Matt forced himself to settle. He closed his eyes and called upon his focus. He’d had worse. With almost every injury outside of Midland Circle, he could always say he’d had worse. He took several deep breaths in and out then said, “It went clean through. Nothing vital hit. Just clean it and stitch it.”
Frank stopped everything he was doing just for a moment and mumbled, “God damned voodoo.” He set to work on the cleaning and Matt smarted with every bit of contact from the antiseptic liquid to the curve of the needle when Frank stitched him up.
Even once he was done, Frank didn’t make a move away. Matt could feel the other man’s eyes on him and in seconds, it was Frank’s fingers tracking along the thin scars that marred both sides of Matt’s chest and along his ribs. “Jesus Christ,” he murmured, then withdrew. “You know you’re not very good at this.”
That did elicit a laugh but the pain cut it short. “You do it enough, you’re going to take your hits. You know this better than anyone.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he said and the sounds were laced with some humor. Frank dug into the medicine chest and pulled a bottle off the shelf. Matt heard the shake of two pills into Frank’s hand before they were pushed to his own. “Take’em. I’ll clean this up.”
Matt sighed and blinked slowly before he swallowed the pills. They weren’t straight aspirin so he knew he’d sleep. He pushed himself off the toilet where he’d been sitting for Frank to patch him and made his way to his bed. He heard Frank shuffling around in the bathroom right until his eyes closed in sleep.
*
Matt was fully aware that he wasn’t alone when he woke. He didn’t actually expect Frank to stay, but he expected Frank to be sleeping in the small chair that sat in the corner of his bedroom even less. Guilt pooled in his belly when consciousness hit him fully. He shifted to get up but felt the pull of the wound much more than he had just hours ago. He moved more slowly to accommodate it and put his feet on the floor. Frank stirred with the noise, but Matt still went to him.
“Frank,” he said quietly with a hand to other man’s arm. “C’mon. You can’t sleep here. Take the bed.”
Frank mumbled something that only a tough guy like himself would mumble and Matt tried very hard not to find it stupidly endearing. He lifted Frank’s arm up over his shoulder and nudged him up. “C’mon, Frank, Christ. You have to help me out here.”
They stumbled together and Matt put him on the bed and drew a blanket up over him. Frank woke and held hard to Matt’s wrist as his heart rate increased. It all loosened and Matt figured recognition put him back at ease. When Frank released him, Matt stole the quickest of moments to brush his fingers over Frank’s beard. He wanted so much to know more - to see more but he respected the other man’s wishes for distance. He gingerly took his leave of the room and closed the door. He checked the time and got some water. He made the decision to work from home but ended up on the couch resting and nursing his own wounds.
Frank emerged three hours later. “Time’s it?” he asked and Matt could hear the haze of sleep still lingering. He wondered what Frank looked like then. He wondered if any part of Frank was still soft from the quiet of slumber. He had to shake every bit of that away to focus more on how the other man drew closer and put himself onto the couch next to him.
“Around 2. You were pretty wiped,” Matt said and almost jumped when Frank went for his t-shirt.
“Lemme check it,” he said, his focus not on himself but Matt. He lifted the fabric away and gingerly pulled at the medical tape holding the gauze against the wound. “It’s oozing a little but not too bad. We’ll clean it again and change the dressing a little later. I’ll get more supplies when I go out tonight.”
Matt was pulling his shirt back down when Frank said that and he immediately stopped. “What do you mean when you go out? You’re not going alone.”
“You sure as hell aren’t going with me. Not with that and not with those fuckers out there.” Frank said clear and almost menacing. He pushed himself to his feet and moved in the direction of the kitchen.
“I’m going especially with those fuckers out there. You think I’m gonna let you go alone?” Matt asked immediately following.
“You’re in no condition to go out. You need to rest and let that shit start healing,” Frank said with a turn, facing Matt as if they could stare each other down.
“Frank, I’m fine. I’ll be fine. I’ve gone out with worse,” Matt argued without relenting.
The movement was quick and unexpected and before Matt could block it, Frank decked him squarely where the bullet had entered. Matt lost his breath and bent as the pain shot out in every direction like vines. “What the hell, Frank?
“I can’t use you,” Frank said steadily, sullenly. “Stay home.”
“You don’t get to - “
“Stay home,” he repeated himself, more authoritatively. “If you’re out there, you’re gonna be my priority and it’ll get us both killed. Do me the favor.”
Matt’s head tipped up slightly though it was a quick jerky movement. “It’s not your job to protect me.”
Matt expected Frank to have some rage-laden answer but he was surprised yet again when the other man’s blood seemed to slow. The heat dissipated but his jaw was set when Frank said, “No. You protect me by staying here.”
“You can’t do this. You can’t say that and-and expect,” Matt almost spat as he ran out of words. The turnaround of it - the way Frank knew that would fuck with him. “Goddammit, Frank.”
“You’d expect the same if it was me, yeah?”
Matt pushed a hand through his hair and stepped back from Frank again. It was hard not to think the worst anymore. That day and every day that had followed had been a mix of chaos and darkness that made it impossible not to think the worst. Matt had been relieved to find Frank in his living room. For as much as he struggled and fought with letting people in, the notion that they were there meant something to him. He always had a choice to take his head out of his ass and accept them. That day stole it from him and being that alone was part of how the chaos pushed inside of him. Frank came and he wasn’t alone.
“That’s an asshole move.”
“I’m an asshole, surprise,” Frank huffed out resignedly.
Matt was by no means acquiescing, but he still just shook his head and gave Frank that space. He could probably fight him. They could get physical and Frank would fight dirty and maybe with this hole in him, Matt wouldn’t win. Matt sunk down onto his couch and put his hand on the wound. It felt warm and wet and quieting himself, realized the copper taste in his mouth was his own blood. Frank had reopened the wound when he hit him and that pissed him off.
Just those few feet away, Frank remained unmoved. His eyes were on him and Matt could feel the heat of the stare at the back of his neck. It was several minutes of the two of them holding their particular ground until Frank caved and brought himself to sit at Matt’s side.
“We both got to have a war,” Frank said. “I always focused better when I had one, even before the Marines. Football, cutting the damned grass. I made everything a war, something to tackle. Getting out, killing for my family, for Lieberman, even Karen. Gave me purpose, a reason to do what I’m good at.” Frank’s posture caved a little beside him and Matt just tried to listen to the words and nothing else.
“Maybe it was hope,” Frank continued thickly. “Not for me. Don’t go putting those ideas in your head. You were fightin’, not killin’. This thing, that day, it hadn’t broken you even though it took shit from you. I knew Karen was gone, couldn’t think of anything else when I couldn’t get a hold of her or find her. Doin’ this with you, maybe helpin’ you not die makes her rest easier. Maybe bein’ near you was bein’ near her.”
“Frank,” Matt said, feeling strange and even a little light-headed. He didn’t want to hear about Frank’s feelings for Karen. Once they would have just concerned him, now they made him disturbingly jealous.
“No, no,” he said firmly, slicing a hand through the air in front of him because he was making a point. He wanted Matt to understand. “It was about focusing the fight, helpin’ you, holdin’ on to her,” he said it so pointedly, so strongly in his conviction. “Now it’s holdin’ on to you. Maybe I’m always lookin’ for something to keep me here, to give me a reason because I don’t wanna go yet. Even if I’m always headin’ right into it, I don’t wanna go yet.”
Matt struggled with words himself and very simply bent his arm out, palm up between he and Frank. It was an invitation but he could save face if Frank didn’t respond to the gesture. The relief though… he could taste it when Frank covered his hand. It was only a few seconds before fingers curled and the grip was firm. “The Kitchen isn’t going to burn down if you don’t go tonight. If neither of us do.”
“Is that what you really want? For neither of us out there doin’ something?”
“No,” Matt said with so little hesitation. “I’m just… this is my city and I need to be out there.”
“You will be. In a few days. I know there’s no other way.”
“Just. Do me a favor,” Matt started feeling himself cave a little. He never feared for Elektra when they fought together. Part of what he loved about her, what attracted him to her and bonded him to her, was her power, how he understood her, knew there was nothing she couldn’t handle. In so many ways he felt that about Frank, who understood him. The problem with continued loss, though, was the pessimism that that was all there was. “Don’t play hero. Do what you have to, but don’t do that thing you do when you don’t give a damn what happens to you. Because I give a damn and if something happens, I won’t know. It’s just a couple days, right?”
He could feel a tight, short laugh rumble in Frank’s chest. “Touche, Red,” he said and gave Matt’s hand a squeeze before he released it. “I’ll just… I’ll just go out for recon tonight. Gather info and bring it back, yeah? We’ll work it out, plan, and deal with it.”
“Look at you being all reasonable.” Matt could finally follow suit with a laugh of his own, though the act made his breath hitch with the way it pulled at his hip.
Frank caught that and moved to tap Matt’s hand where it covered the wound, the red now tinging his shirt. “‘m sorry about that,” he murmured, the guilt thick in his voice. “I’ll fix it before I go.”
Matt agreed and they ended up back in the bathroom where they’d been just hours ago. Matt didn’t know that he could trust what Frank was agreeing to but later, when the other man was suiting up, he said, “You’ll come back here when you’re done.”
“Yeah,” Frank promised. “I’ll be back here.”
*
Matt struggled with both sleep and wakefulness throughout the night. Forced stillness allowed his body to actually register just how much of a toll all of the sleepless nights and fighting had taken on him. It wasn’t the wound - or wounds - not really, but time allowing him to really consider them and think about everything he’d been doing since that day. Since before. He tried to put it in perspective, to align his life with how his city and the world attempted to put themselves back together. It seemed too abstract a thought, however, and every time he thought there was some perspective, he thought of Frank. Frank here, out there, at constant war. He argued with himself about going out and every time decided against it if they were going to have some grounding in trust. The constant irony of that, of building trust with Frank Castle, was a staggering thing Matt had just stopped questioning.
It was a few hours before dusk when Frank did return, steady gait and calm. Matt remained where he was, reclined but restless despite Frank’s approach and eventual slide into a sitting position on the floor by Matt. His back hit the edge of the couch and he breathed out. Matt got the faint metallic taste of blood on his tongue and that heated his own. “You’re hurt.”
“Naw, superficial,” Frank grunted with a shake of his head. “Didn’t do anything you wouldn’t do,” he added with a cheeky grin.
“That makes me feel so much better,” Matt muttered and pulled himself up to a sitting position. He nudged Frank over with a knee and said, “Let me check.”
“Now you’re just lookin’ for a reason to grope me,” Frank teased with an uncharacteristic tinge of mirth in his voice.
“Get the hell out of here,” Matt actually kicked his side with a little more force. Rather than offer up a cheeky, or even physical response, Frank turned himself and got closer. He took Matt’s hand and lifted it to his head, right along the hairline where the blood had already started to dry and the wound had coagulated.
“Should probably get it cleaned at least,” he suggested, sliding his fingers along the wound from beginning to end. He really didn’t want to be moved by touching Frank this way because of injury, but the way Frank teased him and the contact made Matt’s skin warm and breath come just a little faster. “How’d it happen? Did you find anything?”
Frank didn’t move and made no indication that he wanted Matt’s hands off of him. He huffed out a bit of a frustrated breath and shook his head. “No. Think maybe we spooked’em so they’re layin’ low. I did some askin’ around but no one’s got anything. I’ll keep goin’ out and eventually they’ll resurface. This,” he tapped his head and almost growled. “Nutcase with a bottle I didn’t take seriously enough.”
“Did you kill him?” Matt asked only half joking, unwittingly stroking his fingers through Frank’s hair.
“Nope. But I left him in the alley pretty banged up. What happens to him from there ain’t my concern.”
That was oddly relieving to Matt as his fingers continued what could have been just a casual survey of Frank’s features. The intent of it wasn’t necessarily sexual, but curious. He fought side by side with Frank, learned the nuances of him with every sense but sight. He’d kissed him with little to no real image of him. Just the gruff voice, warm body, and incredible power behind every movement.
He couldn’t even say how long he was doing it before Frank, with what felt like a smile in his voice, said, “You’re breathin’ kinda heavy.”
It was silly but Matt felt like he’d just gotten caught with his hand in the cookie jar. His cheeks burned and he pushed out a heavy breath as he slid back and away from Frank. He didn’t get very far because Frank took hold of his hand and drew himself closer. He placed Matt’s hand back on his face, then reached for the other and did the same.
“How do you know?” Frank asked and Matt could hear the sincerity in his voice. “When you can’t see someone. I mean, I know looks aren’t everything but they mean something. Does feelin’ around someone’s face give you a picture of’em?”
Matt steadied his hands on Frank’s face and with that permission allowed his fingers to trace the curves and lines. “It’s not a picture like you have when you look at someone. It’s more abstract. Textures and angles. I guess I make a lot of it up in my head, but people for me, how they look is really how I hear them. How I feel them. Not with my hands, the other parts of me. You know, the voodoo.”
“I’m not a fan of the voodoo when it’s just you n’ me,” Frank said and the whisper of his breath warmed Matt’s fingers. “It’s not right you feel things I don’t want you to. Gives you an advantage.”
“I feel things but you get to see them,” Matt said, throat starting to feel a little dry.
“Not the same and you know it,” Frank replied almost sternly. “People got things that belong to them, that they want or need for themselves. You take that away.”
It was rare that Matt felt ashamed of the way he sensed things. Most of his life he felt like he was owed at least that when he couldn’t see like the majority of people. “I don’t take it. I don’t mean to. I don’t always want it. It’s just so loud sometimes. And you,” Matt shook his head and slipped his hands from Frank’s face. “You’re actually better at keeping it all to yourself than you think. I almost believe you when you say there’s nothing of you left, that you don’t want to - “
“I don’t,” Frank said cutting him off. “I don’t want any of it, not in my head where I know it’ll just fuck with everything I do and how I do it.”
It was a notion from which Frank didn’t see likely to budge but still Matt said just as strongly, “You want me.”
“It doesn’t work with the shit we do out there. I didn’t think it’d matter but then you got shot and I felt it all, was ready to go out half-cocked to put them all down. Can’t be like that, Red.”
Matt wanted to ask how they just went on with it. Not putting action to it didn’t erase it. It was there and in the open and Matt knew it. They couldn’t just go on with it like there was nothing.
That was when Frank stood and Matt could do nothing but rely on those senses. He struggled with them his entire life and oftentimes wished he could banish them. This was one of those times, especially as Frank leaned over and put his nose against Matt’s hair. It was brief because Frank was telling him he’d see him later and Matt hardly knew where to focus - on Frank’s breath or the quickening of his heart.
Then Frank was gone.
*
There was no sign of Frank once night fell and Matt couldn’t say he was surprised. He also couldn’t definitively say that the absence was what moved him to slip into his black and get the cowl back over eyes. He wasn’t okay by any means, but that wasn’t new to him and he wasn’t going to sit at home, either. One night was more than enough and he'd always felt like he missed too much when he was nursing his wounds.
The thing was, it was relatively quiet in the Kitchen, eerily quiet. Frank had reported the big bad laying low but even the small time thugs didn’t seem to be interested in doing their business. Save for a few punks rattling late night revelers’ cages, there wasn’t much to do. Matt kept himself perched, the world too quiet for the first time in longer than he could remember. He didn’t like the sound. It reminded him too much of that day, the moments before people just disappeared.
Matt sat up there until the City started to come alive with morning and he pulled off his mask to feel that change slide over his face. He tilted his head and set his unseeing eyes up. He willed the colors to create some kind of cloud into his vision, to see the darker tones lighten to blue, but for the millionth time since he was nine, nothing happened. Just the heaviness of the air and the eventual fall of Frank’s footsteps coming near.
“Figured you’d taken off,” Matt said glumly, pushing himself to feet and purposely avoiding putting a hand against his throbbing hip.
“So this is what you do? Go out when we agreed-“
“Just don’t,” Matt cut him off. “Just. Don’t. This is my life, this is what I do. Before you, after you, whatever’s happening in this city. And I don’t need you to tell me when or where or how to take care of myself.”
“Never pegged you for a brat, Red,” Frank admonished with a click of his tongue.
It took pretty much everything Matt had not to punch Frank in his smug face right then despite knowing that his ire was mixed with some bit of petulance. He walked strongly in Frank’s direction but bumped past him, grumbling, “Fuck you, Frank.” He wasn’t going to engage. He wasn’t going to belabor this, either. What he wasn’t going to do was be patronized.
It happened quickly when he bumped Frank. The other man grabbed at his arm and Matt honed in on every sound and movement and blocked the attempt. Frank was mumbling, “hey, hey, c’mon,” in that voice, the one that had the power to calm Matt and had before. It made Matt even angrier and kept his focus on just walking away.
“C’mon,” Frank said again, calling it at Matt’s back. “So that’s it? We done here?”
He told himself he didn’t care, that yes, they were done here. He didn’t care that Frank’s blood was hot, that his heart was pounding in irritation and something that resembled fear. Matt had been the Devil before Frank and he’d continue to be him after. Let Frank find someone else to save, to fuck with. “Yeah, we’re done. Plenty of bad shit you can find elsewhere.”
Frank didn’t move just breathed in deeply and called again. “Matthew.”
Matt stopped for just a minute. His name on Frank’s lips cut into his chest and fucked further with him. But Matt shook his head, started walking again, and said, “Get out of my city.”
*
It wasn’t as if Matt believed Frank would leave. The days and nights went by without his presence but the bodies started to pile up in areas of the city Matt didn’t frequent. The docks got especially busy but every drop was ex military and had Frank’s stamp on it. Matt alternated between disappointment and anger and eventually went in search of Frank himself.
It seemed almost fitting that he’d end up in Frank’s small apartment waiting for him, not unlike that first night. He kept the mask on his face once Frank saw him and heard the heavy drop of the other’s man’s bag on the floor.
“Was wondering when you’d come around,” Frank said and moved around tossing his coat and seemingly paying little attention to Matt.
“You knew I’d follow the trail of bodies,” Matt said and Frank scoffed.
“Predictable.”
Matt kept his focus despite how difficult it actually was to hear Frank. To feel him and smell him and know he’d lost him.
“You got it figured out yet? What they’ve been doin’?”
For some reason Matt was surprised that was the direction Frank took the conversation but he answered him honestly. “No. You seem to be one step ahead of me.”
“You get distracted too easily,” Frank said and it was oddly fond. “You see a lost soul and you gotta save’em. I’m all about the endgame.”
“I can’t let you keep doing it,” Matt said calmly. It wasn’t exactly his intention to come here and threaten Frank. Or fight him, but maybe ultimately, this was where they were meant to be.
Frank laughed lowly and moved to sit with him. “You’re not even going to ask?”
Matt was stubborn enough to remain unmoved, even with every bit of Frank and his closeness flooding his senses. He needed it not to matter to him what was going on and focus just on the dead. “We had a deal.”
“Yeah, we did. Then you told me to get out of your city,” Frank reminded him. He sounded almost hurt when he said that, but chose to continue instead. “It’ll probably shock you to know that I’ve upheld my end. I’ve only killed’em when I had to. Before they got me. Except for the punk who shot you. I found him first and got that out of the way.”
Matt winced and turned his head just slightly in Frank’s direction. “I didn’t want that.”
“I didn’t do it for you,” Frank said steadily. “It was never more clear than when I had him in my crosshairs.”
“So who are they? What is it?” Matt asked, something unpleasant and palpable coiling itself through his chest.
“Not sure, but it’s weapons. Military grade and there’s been some distribution. Guys are trained, remind me a little of myself. I haven’t taken chances in groups.”
That did concern Matt since Frank didn’t hesitate when it came to anything. “So how are you going after them?”
“I’m in a foxhole most nights. Then go after them one at a time. Dropped a couple off at the 15th - can ask your pal Mahoney about that - but the others. Had to put’em down first. There’s too many for just you and just me.”
“You knew I’d come for you if people started dying,” Matt said as if the idea of it really started to hit him.
Frank was quiet then. His breathing slowed and right along with his heart rate. He was so suddenly calm that it unnerved Matt enough to say his name. “Frank?”
It was another minute and more deeper, calmer breathing before he answered. “I don’t want to do this alone.”
In a matter of seconds, this became another situation where Matt opened his mouth in response but found himself closing it again when the words were actually processed. He rose to his feet and put some distance between him and overwhelming heat that was Frank.
“You don’t need me,” he said steadily. “We’re both - “
"I know. We're both fine on our own and we can keep doin' what we're doin’ and things work out how they're supposed to. That ain't what I'm sayin’. I'm tellin' you I don't want to do this - all of it - alone. I did it, the lone wolf thing, but even then I had the war to keep me company. I had the mission whatever it was.”
“You still do," Matt said abruptly. “You have the mission. You have,” he stopped, thrown and still uncomfortable. “What are you doing, Frank?”
“You said something to me when you got shot. You remember?” he asked, steady and so sure. “You said if something happened to me, you wouldn’t know. It’s stuck in my head, especially lately, that it’s true. I could bleed out somewhere and you’d never know. Maybe because I’m an asshole, you wouldn’t care much. It hit me that I don’t want that because if something happened to you, I’d find out. The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen would make headlines now and I’d, I’d just lose it.”
“You think I wouldn’t care much?”
The question hung in the air between them when Frank didn’t answer right away. Matt couldn’t honestly remember the last time someone had hurt him like this. Sure he’d gone back and forth with Foggy and Karen, but that was different. This was Elektra level heartache and he felt strange in his desire for it. To know that he was still capable of it.
Then Frank stood and approached him. Matt didn’t flinch nor did he stop Frank when he lifted a hand to remove the mask.
“You could have come back,” Matt murmured then, feeling the quiet settle between them.
“You know that’s not true. Not for me and not for you, either.” Frank touched his fingers to Matt’s brow, tracing the intricate lines that spidered from the corners of his eyes. Matt felt small tremors at the softness of the touch.
“You want me,” Matt found his voice lowering still.
“I want you,” Frank said, the gruffness back. Matt could sense the color on Frank’s cheeks, feel the heat of him and the quickening of his heart again. Frank’s forehead touched his, fingers stilled against the side of his neck. Frank’s resolve was steady and heart strong.
No part of Matt wanted a fight and maybe it was too easy after he’d followed a trail of bodies to get here. He figured this was going to be harder than anything they had out there and when he opened his mouth, he just said, “It’s about damned time.”
Frank laughed with that a strange sweetness that mingled with the heat. “Well you know, we all don’t have that faith of yours. Especially after that day.”
“I don’t know any other way,” Matt murmured and brought his hand to Frank’s chest. The thump mirrored what pulsed in his ears and against his own ribs.
“Good,” Frank replied. “Now what do you say? Work to do?”
Matt nodded and the smile was true. “Work to do.”