Chapter Text
The first time Matt picks up on the presence of his visitor is in the early hours of the morning.
He’s laid back on his couch, keeping a swollen fist elevated while waiting for the ibuprofen to work its way into his system. He’s dozing off when he picks up on it; a tiny, pattering heartbeat somewhere near the rooftop exit. His immediate instinct is to mentally place the noise behind the door and think nothing more of it, and this is what he does until the tiny shape gets up and pads down the stairs, then crosses right in front of him.
“Oh,” He says sleepily, tracking the heartbeat and hushed footfalls as they cross the room and hop onto the windowsill. “Hello.”
The visitor doesn’t respond, only settles into its spot while Matt just sort of sits there, baffled. The doorway upstairs is shut, as is the front door. It’s not even a particularly cold night.
Matt sits up, ignoring the complaints of his body as he tries to figure out what to do next. The thing is, he’s not entirely sure the animal is a cat. He knows it’s furry, and that it’s cat-sized, so he’s got a good idea of what it could be. But it only really smells like dumpster-animal, and from this vantage point it could just as well be a raccoon or an opossum, or, knowing New York, just that messed-up of a rat. Considering this, he’s not too confident on crossing the room and scooping the intruder up in his arms to see them out.
He would text Foggy or Karen if it wasn’t pushing four AM. It’s certainly a less embarrassing idea than calling animal control and hoping that, if it is just a cat, they leave the apartment before they start laughing at him.
Matt’s making his way into the kitchen when it hits him that he doesn’t necessarily have to pick up the mystery animal to lead it out. Rifling through his fridge, he comes up with the tastiest thing he can smell, a mostly intact grilled chicken sub. He pulls a few strips of meat off the bread and returns to the corner where his guest is sitting, giving the creature a couple of feet of distance before he falls into a crouch.
“Hey there,” He says, tearing the chicken into smaller bites and then tossing them in the direction of the animal. “You hungry?”
He picks up on accelerating sniffs from the corner, and then the sound of some hasty chewing. At the sound of licked whiskers and more curious sniffing he inches backwards, tossing another bite a few inches away. The mystery creature hesitates, but after some silent inner turmoil it hops down from the window and cleans up the next bit of meat.
“There we go,” Matt says, moving backwards another foot. He’s hopeful he won’t have to cross the entire apartment in foot-long increments, but if that’s what it takes.
Matt’s never been much of an animal guy, human connections take up enough of his time as is, and his upbringing hadn’t really helped. At the orphanage, cats were to be treated the same as any other animal a kid could come across. If they were forbidden from picking up squirrels or pigeons for fear of disease, the same thought extended to whatever kitten managed to cross one of the kids’ paths.
(Thinking about it now, Matt wonders how much of that was just to keep orphans from flooding the church with stray kittens that inevitably sprung up every spring. God, telling orphans no to rescuing kittens. And they say he’s the one with superhuman abilities.)
Later in life, the only animal that anyone ever cared about him getting was a dog, eventually to a degree of insistence that ended up spoiling the concept for him all together. Matt’s got nothing against dogs, nothing against the animal kingdom in general, it’s just not his area. So it’ll be the best for all of them once the critter is outside where it belongs.
Matt’s just torn another piece of chicken apart when the creature finishes its bite. But rather than sit there and wait, this time continues moving forward, right up until Matt can feel curious puffs of air brushing against his fingertips. He sits, frozen and unsure, until the creature gives a curious, “Mrr?”
And Matt’s no animal expert, but he’s heard enough in this world to know the sound of a meow. Relaxing, Matt drops the last few shreds of meat to the floor and the cat wastes no time making them disappear. Matt takes the opportunity to extend his hand (the non-chicken-scented one,) for the cat to sniff. It’d have to be one hell of an opossum to have a snout shaped like the one that bumps against his fingers, and he’s fairly sure raccoons don’t rub their cheeks across offered hands for pets.
Matt smiles, mystery solved, and heads back to the kitchen for more bait. This time the cat is at his heels, hovering around his feet as he pulls off another handful.
The cat’s an insistent little guy (a girl, actually,) punctuating the air with little mrrp and reows as she follows Matt up the stairs and into the rooftop doorway. She seemingly suspects nothing, even when Matt deposits the meat a foot from the door and begins backing away.
“Well, have a nice night.” Matt says, giving the cat a quick scritch between the ears before he goes. “If you need any more help, feel free to contact my firm during office hours.”
The cat doesn’t respond, and Matt closes the door behind him. By the time Matt’s in bed, he’s become so distracted with an upcoming deposition that the event has almost entirely vanished from his mind.
The cat returns the following evening.
Maybe that’s partially his fault, Matt thinks, making his way down the stairs of the rooftop entrance. His first action upon meeting the thing had been to provide her with a meal, after all. And tonight it’s at least raining, a slow off-and-on drizzle that he imagines is a pain to stray cats and masked vigilantes alike. The rain’s supposed to let up by morning, so he decides to let her stay for as long, given she stays as quiet and unobtrusive as she’s been so far.
Matt collapses on his couch after he’s peeled off his armor, mood soured by the dampness of his armor. A dark shirt and cowl doesn’t do much for armoring, but at least he can drop it off in the laundry room downstairs to dry. He’ll be feeling dampness in the joints and creases of the material for days, and his nose will tell him the second mildew starts to appear in the dampest spaces. Great.
His new temporary roommate has also not made it out of the rain unscathed, as Matt can smell. The cat’s New York alley scent, garbage and cigarette butts, coffee dregs and oil, is matted down by something that he can only describe as ‘damp’ in a way that he’s not fond of. The cat remains unmoving for a while, wary of the man who has had the gall to sit on his own couch.
But when Matt doesn’t move further, just keeps his senses curiously attuned to the creature beside him, he can feel it start to slowly relax. He hears how its heartbeat spikes and then evens, and not long after then a shift as it adjusts itself. Then, finally, the sound of a rough tongue scraping against soft fur. The soft, repetitive noise soothes his nerves, gives him something to focus on while his adrenaline’s still up from the night’s activities.
By the time he motivates himself to grab a shower before bed, the shape beside him has tightened in form, curling into a neat ball and breathing evenly. It occurs to him to try petting it, because that’s what you do, right, with animals? At least, it seems like it. But he’s got no way of knowing if it’s tame, or if it’s diseased– and it doesn’t matter anyway, because he’s getting rid of it tomorrow.
“Congrats on the new cat.” Is what Foggy says the following morning, as Matt recounts his troubles to him and Karen over coffee. “Do you have a name picked out?”
“I don’t have a cat.” Matt sighs, unimpressed. “I have an intruder.”
The cat had still been there when he’d awoken, laid out in the warmth of an early morning sunbeam and snoozing contentedly. It had stirred once Matt began his morning routine, padding curiously after him once his omelet started frying.
He’d tried to keep it off the counters while he poured himself a cup of coffee and reached for a plate, but the little scavenger had been dedicated and quick. Once the omelet had been plated she’d watched on, waiting for Matt to focus on responding to one of Foggy’s texts before she’d darted in to grab a mouthful. Matt might have been more impressed if those hadn’t been his last two eggs.
“Aw, come on.” Karen chides him. “What’s wrong with having a pet? Nothing wrong with a little buddy to keep you company at the end of the day.”
“Do you want her?” Matt asks. He’d shuffled the cat out of his rooftop exit again before he’d left, along with the rest of his eggs. Still, he doesn’t doubt it’ll be too long before it makes another appearance.
“Oh, my building doesn’t allow pets. And my life’s busy enough already.” Karen responds, and Matt can hear the teasing lilt in her voice. “I can’t be responsible for another living being.”
“And I can?” Matt asks. He’d be perfectly capable of growing plants in his apartment too if he wanted, probably appreciate the photosynthesis process more than most people, but there’s a reason he doesn’t. “I’ve got the entirety of Hell’s Kitchen on my back already.”
“So what’s one more?” Foggy asks, and Matt sighs. Two against one. His own best friends taking the side of an animal they’d never met. “Maybe it could help you with all the rats you hear in your walls.”
“And what do we send in to get the cat out of the walls?” Matt responds. “A parakeet?”
“What? Be real.” Foggy scoffs. “A parakeet would be way too weak to pull a cat out of there.”
Matt changes the subject after that, half out of obligation to his job and half to chase the last thoughts of the little intruder out of his mind. It comes up teasingly in passing over the rest of the day, and by the end of it they’ve half-convinced him that he’s overreacting to the whole thing anyway.
His options boil down to trying to find a home for her, (he’s got enough irons in the fire already,) find a no-kill shelter to take her in, (Matt and every other good samaritan in the city), or he could just kick the thing out repeatedly and hope for the best for the both of them. (This is his current plan, it's already too emotionally taxing, and also it's not working.)
By the time he makes it home after work he’s arriving on a mission, along with a small carry-out dish of plain chicken separate from his own thai curry noodles. The cat’s already there when he walks in, perched up at the top of the stairwell where she can survey the whole of the area. When Matt starts unpacking food though, she gets right to her feet.
She’s washed up a little in the time since Matt’s last crossed her path, carrying less of a New York gutter stink with her and more of her own neutral, animal scent. She makes a soft trilling sound as the container is opened to the air, followed by the rapid pitter-patter of her tiny footsteps.
And it is a little charming, hearing the way her sniffs pick up speed as she gets closer, moving with single-minded determination down the stairs and up the furniture. Part of him wants to appreciate her form; smooth, calculated jumps and easy landings. She knows her stuff.
The cat pauses at the back panel of the couch, neck craning towards the food but hesitant to jump. Matt puts aside his own container and opens the second smaller one, pulling out a thin slice of plain chicken, still warm. The cat’s sniffs increase rapidly, and Matt holds it there at a stalemate for a long moment before he finally drops it to the floor.
The cat’s on it in an instant, little teeth gnashing as the food rapidly disappears. When that piece is gone Matt drops another to replace it, and this time crouches down as he does so.
The cat is ambivalent to this. All of her focus stays on the food, which turns out to be a good thing because she does jump a little, the first time Matt’s fingertips graze her fur. But as soon as it registers that this is a friendly touch, or at least an attempt at one, her nervousness fades out. She quickly finishes up her next bite while Matt curiously trails his fingers down from the nape of her neck to the base of her tail. As he pulls back his hand, the cat lifts her rump in an attempt to follow the touch.
He pets her again, slightly more confident with a bit of fingernail pressure this time. She’s a soft thing, fur startlingly plush considering her less-than-easy living style. She’s also skinny, bones sharp beneath her skin, with not enough muscle or fat in between. Every so often his fingers will brush up against something that is neither fur nor skin, a fat flea skittering away from the sudden pressure or some of the waste it's left behind.
So, most likely a stray. He tells himself that he’s unmoved by this, but he’s still sitting there, crouched near the floor, switching between dropping her bits of chicken and fumbling his way through learning to pet her. The cat is content to sit there through all of this, happy to eat until about half of the chicken is gone and Matt stops dropping pieces. (This is an olive branch, and he doesn’t want to be cleaning it off of the carpet in ten minutes after she’s eaten herself sick.)
The petting continues though. Without the food as a distraction the cat’s more than willing to lean further into the attention, brushing her cheek up against his fingers and melting as he finds just the right place to scritch. That’s when the purring starts.
A soft rumble from the center of her chest that radiates throughout her body, illuminating the creature in Matt’s mind’s eye clearer than she’s ever been. It puts into focus how small she is, even slighter under the fur. It makes her less of a pest and more of a vulnerable little creature, something small and helpless on her own, and for the first time Matt feels a real tug on his heartstrings.
He sighs.
He’s not a fan of hairballs. He’s also not big into the idea of fleas crawling around in his rugs, or clawed-up furniture legs, or always having to guard his food from a quick, tiny opportunist.
But at the same time, he’s not opposed to company. It’s not like she’s necessarily getting in the way of anything, she’s not actively making his life worse .
“I’m going to regret this,” Matt says, straightening up and grabbing his own food container. “But I think it’s possible for us to find some middle ground here.”
He moves for the couch and the cat follows, quick on his heels. As he settles in the cat takes the spot beside him, head swiveling as Matt moves his fork from the container to his mouth and back.
“But the second, the second you pee on my clothes,” He points the fork in the cat’s direction and she leans over to sniff at it, “This is over.”
The cat is unmoved by this, deciding instead to start washing up now that the food’s no longer forthcoming. Matt can only shake his head, telling himself that the warning really was for her, and not something he’s already trying to convince himself.
The next day, Matt invites Karen and Foggy over for dinner and drinks after work. When Foggy asks him what’s the occasion Matt turns away, like this will somehow stop him from hearing the smug delight in his reaction.
“Well," Matt says, "I figured it’s time somebody tells me what my cat looks like.”
She’s a ginger tabby, Karen is delighted to tell him, and a cute one at that. Body a vibrant orange with a network of darker stripes that weave down her tail and up her spine, meeting in the middle of her forehead to form a shape that almost looks like an M. The cat’s got four white paws, ”Like she walked through a big bowl of milk,” alongside a splash of white on her chin that washes down her chest and belly. Her eyes are a wide, vibrant green that apparently go yellow in the lamplight.
“Oh she’s little,” Karen coos after the cat makes an entrance from beneath the couch, coaxed out by the promise of more chicken. Once she figures out Karen’s no threat, she allows herself to be gently scooped into her arms. “And a real sweetheart. I don’t think this is her first home, she’s pretty tame.”
“Do you think that means someone could be out there looking for her?” Foggy asks. Fogs has always been more of a dog guy, but most of the cats Matt’s met in his life have been at or above his family's deli. “We had a cat named Bongo who go out when I was a kid. Never came home, broke my heart.”
“Aw,” Karen and Matt sympathize.
Karen continues on, “But I doubt it. She hasn’t had a decent meal and a dry place to sleep for a while. Someone could have moved out and left her behind, or they could have just not wanted to deal with the kittens.”
Both Matt and Foggy pause. Matt cocks his head. “Kittens?”
“Oh yeah, she’s definitely been a mama-cat.” Karen says. She takes Matt’s hand and directs it to her fluffy soft belly, the skin there loose and distended.
“Feel that? You can see it when she walks, the way it hangs down low. I saw a ton of it back home every spring, strays all around town looking just like that. I don’t think it was recent, but this little lady has had quite the life so far.”
“So if she had kittens, where are they?” Matt asks. He’s familiar with all kinds of animal grunts and squeaks in the immediate vicinity, and he likes to think the sudden appearance of high-pitched kitten wails would catch his attention.
Karen shrugs. “Well, if we’re being optimistic, maybe they already grew up and left the nest. Hopefully.”
“Matt,” Foggy sighs dramatically, “If you don’t adopt this cat and cut her a break–”
“She’s still here, isn’t she?” Matt retorts. He won’t lie though, Foggy’s got a point.
“Do you have any names in mind?” Karen asks, changing the subject. She’s got one arm underneath the cat to support her while the other hand scratches softly between her ears. The cat’s chest is rumbling like thunder, pure contentment radiating off of her.
“Not sure.” Matt answers truthfully. He’s been keeping an open mind, looking for ideas that resonate, but nothing has stuck. “I’m waiting for it to find me.”
“Garfield?” Foggy suggests. “He’s orange too.”
“The reference doesn’t really resonate, if you can believe it.”
“Yeah, fair. So I guess Heathcliff is probably out of the running too.”
They don’t find a name that night, but they do come up with a bit of a game plan. With this being Matt’s First Pet and all, both are eager to help ease him into the rhythm of cat ownership. Foggy’s folks buy their cat food in bulk, so he picks up some on the way to work the next day, as well as a couple of dishes for the cat to eat out of. (As far as Matt could tell the cat had been perfectly content drinking out of her mug next to the sink, but the food dishes are a nice quality, and easier to clean.)
There’s a vet not too far from Karen’s place where she gets some (foul smelling, at least for the first few hours,) flea and tick medicine, as well as a pair of nail clippers for cats, a task which she undertakes bravely and does not make it out unscathed. They make it up together though, Karen and the cat, by cuddling on the couch and distracting each other while Matt tries to have a conversation.
Matt tries to convince himself that the cat can continue to disappear into the ether every time she has to empty her bowels, but eventually he relents, and puts in a litter box up near the door to the roof. The elevated nature of it keeps the smell just that much further away, after the third day, the reek of ammonia has already assimilated into the rest of the New York oeuvre. That feels like the final hurdle, the hardest line to cross. Once he’s put aside two extra minutes in his morning for litter sifting, that’s it. He’s a cat owner.
And then, life. Matt and cat.
One of Matt’s first priorities is figuring out exactly where the cat is coming and going from. Part of him doesn’t mind her venturing out on her own accord, but if a time should come where he actually needs her inside, he doesn’t want to be at a loss.
So at the tail-end of a meditation session one day (made all the more difficult by the way the cat had circled around him, crawling into his lap and falling asleep there), Matt pulls his focus in, in, in. Into the apartment building, then just his floor, then just this space. It’s almost suffocating, trying to block out and process so much all at once, but the exercise is not for nothing.
Matt releases his focus and the rest of the world comes crashing back in like a wave, and he takes an extra few moments to reorient himself with the city and the space immediately around him. When he’s back to feeling stable he moves to stand, ignoring the displeased humph from the cat as she’s disturbed. She follows him as he crosses the apartment, heading up the stairs that lead to the rooftop exit, then to the furthest edge of the wall there.
It’s nothing he would have noticed otherwise, a vent with a grate that had probably been rusting for years, and only needed one decent push to give out, at least enough for a cat to slip through.
Even as Matt pokes around with his fingers the cat is close behind, hopping up from the bannister to a low-hanging rafter, pausing there and watching curiously as Matt fumbles his way through trying to shove the grate back into position.
He gives up eventually on a job half-done, deciding that if it’s that important, he’ll figure it out then. In the meantime he’ll just have to be careful, and discourage– ow!
Matt seizes up at a sudden burst of pressure on his left shoulder, the sharp weight of eighteen hook-shaped claws sinking into his shoulder as the cat uses him as a midway point on the way down. It’s a twofold attack for Matt; getting snuck up on while his defenses were down, as well as his heightened senses taking the brunt of each tiny individual stabbing.
Matt hunches over and grabs his shoulder, letting out a pained grunt and stumbling his way forward. The surprise and discomfort will fade quickly, but that doesn’t make it any better to feel in the moment.
And all the while the cat stays nearby, entirely unaware that she’s even what’s caused him pain. It’s extra hard to keep a grudge when the perpetrator has already forgotten what she’s done, and instead has gone to check again if there are any forks or spoons she can lick in the sink.
That’s a lot of what pet ownership is, Matt comes to find. Recognizing the little idiosyncrasies in what had once been an unremarkable animal, learning about their personalities, the way they solve problems and the ways they cause them as well.
The cat, Matt comes to learn for example, is clingy. Foggy says she’s siphoning body heat, but even on nights where the radiator’s running and she could be resting there, the cat instead will make her way into Matt’s lap– or contort herself into whatever position she can, inching closer and closer to his person until he eventually gives in and lets her get comfortable.
She’s the worst about this at night. It only takes Matt one time of leaving his door slid open for her to find the bedroom, and from there on Matt finds himself with an unwavering nap buddy. She’d started out carefully, curled up at the foot of the bed and entirely out of reach. But over time she’s gradually inched north, curling up against the warm skin behind his knees, then against his back. And now he regularly wakes up with her curled up tight against his chest, usually tucked beneath an arm.
She’s also clever, always capable of finding a tiny space or a small corner to cram herself in when she doesn’t want company. She doesn’t take up hunting the rats in the building, as Foggy had suggested, but Instead she becomes an expert hunter of Matt’s discarded socks, dutifully bringing them back to him at all hours of the early morning, trilling like she’s returned triumphant from the hunt. Matt changes her water every morning and night, but she still prefers to drink straight from the tap.
Sweet as the cat can be though, she’s still a terror. Her little jumping habit from the rafters persists, though she mostly employs it in the kitchen now. If she knows there’s something of interest in the fridge, she’ll just as likely jump from the counter to his shoulder as she will try to sneak in from the floor. And Matt can no longer fry an egg or some rice without keeping his hearing attuned to the kitchen, having to be ready at all times in case she gets curious enough to pounce.
She jumps in the garbage can if Matt throws out food without wrapping it in something. She winds around his legs late at night when Matt’s drained, making him use athletic maneuvers he usually reserves for actual ninjas just so he doesn’t faceplant on the hardwood. If at any point during the day Matt wants to use the restroom, so too will the cat. And if Matt is ever so cruel as to deny her this, if he dares to shower alone in his own apartment, he can look forward to the impatient sounds of her wailing just outside, mixed with the scrabbling sounds of her trying to dig her way beneath the door.
Clients notice fur on Matt’s suits and they exchange cat stories. Foggy buys her treats and little catnip toys he finds at the bodega near his place, and Karen picks her up a soft leather collar (red, naturally). They chat about the cat less and less, as she becomes another staple, another comfortable fixture in their lives.
Before long Matt has sunk comfortably into cat ownership, the minutiae of it second-nature to him. There’s only one part of the experience that he’s neglected, and that’s only because it’s something he doesn’t want to get wrong. So naturally, the solution to this comes to him when he’s not thinking about it at all.
It hits him on a Sunday, towards the tail end of Mass. Matt is mostly tuned into the message, though it’s impossible for his mind not to wander a little bit, considering the racing pulse of the Kitchen around him. Half of him stays connected to the father’s words, but there will always be a part of him that’s tuned into the city, keeping a watchful eye, so to speak.
And so he is a little preoccupied with a slow-boiling argument across the street, a scuffle that could turn ugly just as fast as it could burn out. Not something that he’d see himself out of the building for, but something that caught his attention all the same.
And it’s as he’s listening to this that his attention gets caught in another way, the rustling of paper close by as Bible pages turn all around him. The voice of the man at the head of the room pulls Matt back into the moment.
“James 4:6 continues on,"But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”
Matt feels a smirk pulling at the edge of his lips. Outside, the argument dissipates into a few sour parting words. Up front, the Father speaks on. Matt finds himself suppressing an impatient jerk in his knee as the sermon continues, suddenly impatient to get back home.
“When’d you get a cat?”
Matt lifts his head as he rounds the couch, first-aid kit in one hand, a pair of beers held by the necks in the other. He sets the beers down on the coffee table but keeps hold of the kit, rifling through the contents as Frank uses the cap of Matt’s beer to open his own. According to the cat’s heartbeat, she’s in one of her usual spots by the radiator. Frank must have spotted her curled up there.
“Didn’t.” Matt replies, fingers easily landing on a spool of medical thread. He needs an extra moment to find the needle, but things aren’t dire. The stab wound just above Frank’s left shoulder blade is radiating heat and stinks like too-fresh meat, but at least the bleeding’s stopped. “She found her way in here one day and decided not to leave.”
“Mm,” Frank hums, mid-way through a drink. “Finally found someone as stubborn and annoying as yourself.”
Matt laughs. “You’re not wrong. Here.”
He hands the sewing needle to Frank, who’s quicker at threading it than Matt. He takes the opportunity then to open his own beer, savoring the clash of ice cold against his palate. By the time he’s done with the drink, Frank’s handing him back the needle. It all feels so… practiced. Familiar.
He rounds Frank’s side again, back to the heat of the wound, and traces the area around it with his fingertips. When he gets to the actual torn flesh he can feel Frank flinch– not consciously, and much less than the usual person would. But his body still instinctually pulls away from the pain. Matt keeps talking, if only to help take his mind off of it.
“Her name’s Gracie.” Matt says, lining up the needle. “Well, Grace.”
Frank exhales a sound that could be a laugh. “Sounds about right.”
Matt smirks, he’s only teasing, but it’s an interesting tone to take with the man currently holding a needle to his skin. He begins with the first stitch, ignoring the grind of Frank’s teeth in his ears.
“She came in from an air vent,” He goes on. “Bummed around for a few days, kept sneaking back in every time I’d kick her out. She had a hard life before this, we think she was abandoned by her old family, and at some point it just became easier to work with her than against her.”
Frank gives a low hum, amused. Meanwhile, the soft thumping of the cat’s heartbeat has begun to cross the room, out from the warm spot and headed towards the couch.
Gracie’s pretty selective about who she goes near. She’ll let Karen pick her up and hold her like a baby, or sit in her lap and purr like an engine. She’s a lot more aloof towards Foggy, only taking one or two good-natured pats before wandering off. Karen thinks it’s because Foggy’s the one Matt most usually smells of when he comes home after work– He’s monopolizing Matt’s attention, and this makes him the enemy.
But even with them, Gracie had been aloof for their first couple of visits, watching from the top of the stairs or beneath an armchair before her guard came down. Tonight she struts right up to the couch, hopping on and only slowing when she reaches Frank’s ruined, discarded shirt.
He feels Frank’s ripple of laughter before he hears it, a quick, pained sound, but an pleased one nonetheless.
“Ha, her face.” He says, voice warm with genuine amusement. “Came up to say hello and got a good whiff of somethin’ off me. She had to take a second to rethink that one.”
“Curiosity,” Matt says. “Famously good for cats.”
They go on like that with an ease and candidness that Matt’s still getting used to. Matt had been unsure when word on the wind was that The Punisher was back in New York, back in The Kitchen, but Frank’s been a boon just as many times as he’s been a pain in the ass. And on the rare enough occasion that their paths cross and it doesn’t turn into a brawl, or when it does but the night’s still young, they’ve begun retiring to one of their places to recoup, though Matt’s is always preferred.
Frank usually swings around for one of three reasons; he has intel, he has an injury, or, as of late, because he has an itch. That little extra bit of tension that he and Matt have come to enjoy burning off together at the end of the night.
That had been something that they’d been building up to for a while. Be it the two of them clearing out the underbelly of Hell’s Kitchen or cleaning each other’s clocks on a rooftop somewhere, the rush of heat and adrenaline that accompanied each clash with the man was intoxicating. Even more so were the pheromones that spiked the air in the aftermath, heavy and cloying in the back of Matt’s throat.
Frank didn’t have the senses to taste it, the way his and Matt’s barely-cloaked interest literally hung in the air between them. Matt’s suit also didn’t allow him the benefit of reading much from his expression, nor did the padding around the lower half allow him to notice less-subtle signs of interest. So in the end it had ended up in Matt’s hands-- making a rational, well thought-out decision regarding a potentially dangerous sexual partner. And, well.
So that leads them to now, another night after another bust, slightly sloppy as it had been. Things always get more intense when there are kids involved, especially when it had caught the two of them off-guard as it had. Frank’s bloodlust spikes in tandem with Matt’s hunger for justice– and maybe those could be flipped between them, chasing after justice or blood, and not much would change– and it can throw them off their rhythm, scramble their priorities long enough for a key party to get away.
That’s tonight. Kids safe in custody, their handler on the lam. This isn’t over, but things ended on a high enough note that neither of them should lose too much more sleep tonight. Between the ad hoc surgery and the unfinished feel of tonight’s mission, Matt’s fairly sure that things will end here once the stitches are tied off and the beers are empty. That’s fine with him, it’s to be expected.
What he doesn’t expect is the pause when Frank reaches for his ruined shirt at the end of the night, but finds Gracie napping on the corner instead. Matt’s heading to the bathroom as it happens, keeping half an ear on Frank’s heartbeat, his body unmoving for an extended pause.
Then, ever so gently, the sound of fingers brushing fur, a groggy squeak of displeasure fast to follow.
“Yeah, yeah. Sorry, sweetheart. I know.” Frank coos.
A moment later Gracie starts up another round of purrs, and that’s a mental image that Matt's not ready for: Frank’s massive, calloused, bear paws that he calls hands gently scratching Gracie’s favorite spot just underneath her chin. The thought of it, paired with the surprisingly soft timbre of Frank’s voice, sends more warmth to Matt’s gut than he’d like it to. He stays in the bathroom until Frank sees himself out.