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It’s hard for Karen to relax these days—but then again, has that ever been easy? Like, ever? Of course she isn’t used to her murderer bestie (and this is most definitely ironic, but Karen also doesn’t know what else to call Frank, how else to describe her relationship with him) being exposed as still alive on TV, and neither is she used to said murderer bestie coming to save her from a terrorist, taking several bullets for her in the process and leaving her trembling and crying in an elevator, as if all sense of purpose left with him.
She’s being dramatic, of course, and she curses under her breath as she kicks her heels off, sighing as her pantyhosed feet touch the cold of her wooden living room floor. Still, their encounter and especially that moment in the elevator made her realize one thing very clearly: she actually feels safe when she is with Frank, safest that she has in years. Which is ridiculous considering the circumstances of their last meeting, of almost all their meetings, but still.
Karen can’t get him out of her head, not even if she tried, and she blames her worry—the worry about that Micro guy he had wanted her to find out about, that problem of his that she has no clue about, the worry that she’ll turn on the news one day and see Frank Castle’s dead body. The worry that she’ll have to listen to half of New York and a whole lot of Hell’s Kitchen celebrating it.
She throws her purse onto her couch table. There’s a thickness in her throat that is ever present when she’s thinking about him. That is ever present when she’s actually seeing him, too, though she has to admit it’s never really under normal circumstances, so what would she know what normal feels like for them?
“Karen.”
And she flinches, flinches so hard the entire world flips and spins, because she’d know that voice in a sea of thousands, she hears it in her dreams every night. Frank Castle is standing in the door frame to her kitchen, skulking in the shadows like a serial killer (and it’s probably a sign of how much is actually wrong with her when Karen almost laughs at the thought that, well, he is), and she has no idea how he got in here. As usual.
“Should invest in some better locks.”
A part of her wants to yell at him, cuss him out for leaving her worried, for daring to nag her about her locks when he was the one who broke in in the first place. The lights are still off, and she can’t make out his face or his expression in the dark. His silhouette is as huge as it always is, tall, wide, strong. He held a gun to her head not too long ago. The Punisher is in her home.
He should intimidate her, scare her even, Karen knows that all too well. It should make her want to draw her gun, should make her want to tug it out of her purse, should make her want to point it at him as she’s done a lifetime ago, should make her want to run away, should make her want to call the police and slam the door shut on the way out to leave at least a small barrier between the two of them. Should, should, should, doesn’t.
Frank Castle is perhaps the most wanted man in all of Hell’s Kitchen, and he’s standing in her apartment as if it was the most normal thing in the world (and he’s been here twice already), and Karen finds that she can’t bring herself to be angry about that.
There’s a lot going on in her head. A lot she’d like to throw at him, words left unsaid, always, always unsaid, and she looks at him, steadies herself, feels that safety flood her chest that seems to accompany him always.
“You okay?” is the only thing that manages to make it out of her burning throat. Even now, even like this, her worry has the most priority. His safety. His well-being.
Frank makes a sound that could be a scoff or a laugh or both, walks into the living room, and flicks on the light. She tries not to ask herself how he knows where the switch is, and that’s not too hard, because the sudden flood of white almost makes her flinch, but the sight of him does the job even better.
(Karen doesn’t miss his grimace as she does. It unravels something inside of her that she haphazardly shoves back into her rib cage, deep, deep inside where it always sits. Spinning around, slowly, sticky, like molasses in a blender.)
He looks… well, it’s not like she knows him any different than beaten and bloody most of the time, though it looks like his wounds have already been taken care of. His face is still different shades of purple and blue and yellow and green and sometimes she thinks she’d like to paint that, these splotches of his bruises. It would make a nice picture. She could put it up in her living room to look at when he isn’t there. Karen swallows the feeling down.
“You look like shit,” she mumbles, and this time, the sound he makes is most definitely a laugh. Neither of them is moving. She crosses her arms. “What are you doing here?”
The look of sincerity in Frank’s eyes makes something inside of her lurch. He’s always been looking at her like this—pleading, almost, a silent question in his gaze, a question he’s probably never going to actually ask, so Karen would really prefer if he could quit looking at her like that so she doesn’t have to lie awake at night, staring at the ceiling, thinking about him, him, him.
He sighs, then, rubs his eyes, shifts where he’s standing, and there’s always a certain almost nervous edge to him when he’s around her. What does any of it mean? Does she want to know? Is she prepared for what that would entail? Is he?
“Checkin’ on you,” he says, quietly, deeply, his voice a rasp that cuts straight through her bones, always has. “Makin’ sure you’re okay after… well, y’know.”
Karen laughs, and it’s almost devastating how easily she slips into this again. How easy it is to stand here when all she wants is to bury herself in his rib cage, hug him again, look at him like she’d done in that goddamn elevator, where she’d thought about kissing him for whatever reason. Where she’d thought he’d kiss her for whatever reason. But he didn’t, did he?
“You’re a few days too late for that.”
There’s the small tug on the side of his mouth that she’s been waiting for without even really noticing it, and Karen holds her breath, leans against the back of the couch to keep her balance. If Frank notices he doesn’t show it, instead he grumbles under his breath before looking at her again.
(She’s spent way too many hours agonizing over why he always looks so guilty. In the end, though, she knows already, knows it deep in her bones, knows it like she knows the inside of her own mouth with her tongue, because she feels the same.)
“Yeah, I,” another pause. Frank clears his throat. “Busy.”
Karen just hums in response. Busy. Busy, busy, busy. She’s being unfair, she knows that, he has enough bullshit of his own to deal with, not to mention that he probably went out of his way to go and protect her, because she highly doubts that it had anything to do with… well, whatever it is he’s doing.
Still, what is she supposed to say to that? What is she supposed to say to any of this? What is she supposed to do that isn’t jump in his arms and hug him even longer than she did last time?
“And?”
It’s not meant to be cruel, and she doesn’t think Frank takes it as that either, but he’s still fiddling with something on his hoodie, still just standing there, and with a sigh, Karen jumps over the back of her couch and onto it, patting the cloth. Frank clears his throat, walks over, settles down next to her, with as much distance as the small couch allows between them.
(She’d be insulted, but something about his posture, about the way he eyes her from the side tells her it’s not because he doesn’t want to be close to her. Karen swallows at the lump in her throat. Perhaps she’s insulted, nonetheless.)
“I—” he starts again, staring at something on the ground as intensely as always. “I’m done. Y’know? Finished it. Got a new passport ‘n all that.”
Karen grins at that, both because the relief that floods her and because the way he says it is funny, somehow. Always so little words. Still, she understands most of it, doesn’t she? She understands him even when he says nothing at all, most of the time, for some reason. Still, she pushes everything down, pushes the feeling of hoping, of asking, of wanting, far, far down. Frank deserves peace and quiet, and she’s not going to impose herself on him, as much as she wants to do exactly that.
“Under what name?” she asks instead, leaning back into her couch, staring at the ceiling. She should probably ask him if he wants something to drink, but she doesn’t know if she could handle rejection right now, after the elevator, so she doesn’t. It’s stupid. “Do I have to get used to calling you something different?”
Frank hums, and she catches from the corner of her eyes how he rubs the lower half of his face. Clean shaven, just like when he came to save her, but there’s already the hint of stubble that she knows so well. She wonders how often he has to shave. “Pete,” he says, talkative as ever. “But I don’t want you to call me that.”
Her mouth opens to ask him why not, but then she closes it again, swallows the question like she does with so many others. I don’t want you to call me that, spins in her head, around and around and around, like the barrel of her washing machine. I don’t want you to call me that. I don’t want you to call me that. I don’t want you to call me that.
Is it stupid to assume this means she’s going to see him again? Is it stupid that she’s afraid she might not? Is it stupid that she’d like to see him every day of her life? Probably. Frank Castle, wanted criminal, murderer, and the Punisher. The man with whom she feels the safest she ever has.
(“When am I going to see you?”
“You want to?”
Today, she doesn’t feel brave enough to ask. Today, she doesn’t feel brave at all. Today, she wonders what he’d say if he knew just how often she thinks about him. What he’d say if he knew… if he knew.)
“I’m glad,” Frank starts again, his gaze flicking over to her before returning to the ground. He looks ready to crumble, today, and it finally settles in Karen’s bones that he has no idea what comes next. I’m done, he said, finished it, and whatever that means, he probably doesn’t know either. Her mouth is dry. “I’m glad you’re, uh, okay.”
Karen hums again, reaches out to touch his shoulder—just a gentle tap, almost as if to make sure he’s really here, that he’s constant, that he’s alive. She doesn’t look at his face: she doesn’t think she could handle any emotion that might have been present on it, so she stares at the table as she leans back into her couch.
“Thanks for coming for me,” she says, and her voice is a little thicker than usual. He’s seen her crying so many times. He always manages to catch her at her worst. “For saving me.”
Frank taps his foot, bouncing his leg, before stopping the movement again. Her gaze gets stuck on his knee anyway.
“‘S fine,” he grumbles, and she watches how his hand by his side tightens and relaxes a few times, wonders what that means. “I came because I wanted to. No need to thank me.”
She doesn’t tell him that she wants to, anyway. Doesn’t tell him that she wants to thank him for everything, doesn’t tell him that she doesn’t recognize her life without him anymore, doesn’t tell him that she’d like him to stay, even when he’d done the same a lifetime ago, bound to that hospital bed, his face similarly bruised as it is now. Stay. Please. Please, stay. Stay, please.
(It’s a good look on him, as much as it makes her heart ache. Karen wants to card her hands through his hair, wants to see every bruise and wound and scar that he has to offer.)
“So,” what comes now? Can you stay? Where do you go when you’re lonely? Do you ever think of me? Do you know the sound my heart makes when you say my name? “You have a place to stay?”
She tries her hardest not to sound hopeful, not to feel hopeful, not to feel disappointment raining down on her scaldingly when he nods.
“For now,” Frank says, and she doesn’t ask what that means. She doesn’t ask what any of this means, even though she wants to, wants to demand answers—but she’s still so tired, and he’s so tired, too, so small on her couch despite his size. “You got work tomorrow, right?”
It’s a quiet question, a small should I leave, and Karen tries her best not to read into the hopeful tone she thinks she detects in his voice.
She nods, similar as he had done, and there’s something in his eyes. She doesn’t say anything else, watches his lips part, and before he can ask the question out loud, before he can put it in words, she swallows, cuts in.
“I don’t sleep so good.”
Frank laughs, an almost surprised sound that softens the hard edges of his face, even despite all his bruises. His eyes have always been warm, however, since that very first moment—really, they were probably the biggest reason why she’d wanted to dig deeper, wanted to find out more, wanted to prove to herself and the world that he’s a good man.
“Yeah,” he mutters, turns his body towards her, and she tries to mask the way she sucks in a sharp breath. “Me neither.”
Another moment of silence, a question dancing between both of their lips, and Karen feels ready to faint, feels as if every hair on her body is standing. The only thing she can do is stare, part her lips and press them together again, dig her teeth into the bottom one, close her eyes, open them again, look at him, look at him, look at him. Frank holds her gaze.
“You want me to stay?” Karen almost sobs, but she manages to hold it together. He continues, almost sheepishly, “On the couch, I mean. To, uh…” And then he trails off, bites his lip as if he’s trying not to presume anything, and really, that just makes her laugh again, with teary eyes and an unsteady voice, but it’s a laugh nonetheless.
Frank just looks at her, open, honest, waiting for her, his brows furrowed up, something… something in his gaze.
“To make me feel safe?” she finishes for him, an almost teasing tone in her voice, and he doesn’t nod but she knows he means to. “I always feel safest when I am with you,” she adds, then, because his face tells her he doesn’t know, which is frankly ridiculous. How can he not know? After all this, how come he doesn’t know?
Now, Frank does nod. “Right.” Karen swallows the relief in his voice, greedily, leaning into his space, but never too close. He doesn’t lean back.
“Right,” she echoes and smiles. The edge of Frank’s mouth twitches upwards in return, and he breathes, his breath hitting her face, and she breathes it in, breathes all of it in, him and his relief again present. “For the night.”
He hums. “For the night,” he repeats, too, and usually it would make her feel stupid, how ridiculous this situation is, how ridiculous they’re both being, but with him, it’s alright, somehow. There’s still something sitting in her throat, constricting her way to breathe, but by now, it’s not like she knows any other way to exist.
They don’t talk much, after that. Karen ends up asking him if he wants something to drink, ends up handing him one of her beers and taking one for herself, ends up with her laptop on her thighs, typing away at an article (well, not really, it’s not like she’s getting anything done), trying not to smile at the way he’s staring at her from the side.
She says goodnight when it’s midnight, and he looks up at her from where he’s still sitting on her couch, looking over to where she’s standing in the doorway of her bedroom, and hums and nods, before saying it back. The bed’s hers, and he stays on the couch. She sleeps better than she has in ages.
(The next morning he’s gone already, a note on the couch table that reads, didn’t want to wake you, and, it was good to see you, and later, just when she already has to leave for work, she finds two small, crumpled pieces of paper in her trash bin, with writing on them that has been crossed out and drawn over with black boxes so much that it’s unreadable. She puts all three pieces of paper into her purse, into her notebook, and leaves her apartment.)