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Matt Murdock could be a cold bastard sometimes. Remote, like a stone crusader lying on a tomb, and about as helpful. Oh he could spout religious bullshit like nobody Frank knew.
'What about their souls, Frank? What about your soul? What about mercy? The merciful will be shown mercy.'
'Look around you, Red. Ain't a single one of these assholes merciful. Got no souls anyway. Don't worry your pretty little head about it.'
They'd fight then. They always did. And they'd fuck. Fucking Red; the words had two meanings and Frank liked both.
Maybe they wouldn't this time though. The cuts were deep. Frank felt empty, like he'd given blood. Because he had.
He'd been taken when he tried to infiltrate a biker's club with four guns and no back up. Set up. Tortured. Interrogated. Cut. Tortured and interrogated again. Cut some more. Sadistic bastards.
Blood dripped from his veins, leaving a slick pool under his chair that he couldn't see, but that he could hear, and that he knew was collecting at his feet. It was bad. Maybe. He'd had worse.
That false kind of bravado wasn't going to help him. It was just spiteful. Frank had a lot of spite. It kept him going when things got bad.
The thing was, the other thing that kept him going was blood circulating in his body and he got the feeling he was kind of running out of that. Well, that and time. Same thing.
He glared at his torturers. Four of them. One hand free and he could take them. Maybe. He didn't have a hand free. That fucking sucked.
They were ugly, he decided, just to be spiteful. That was all he had left, right? Yeah, he thought, glaring at the nearest one, a big guy, who had left more than a few marks on Frank's face.
He could feel them, the way his swollen cheek was pushing up against his eye, impeding his vision. He was gonna die ugly like them. That was vain. Bitter. Fucking true.
But then he didn't. The lights went out, plunging the room into darkness. The exit sign glowed like a jack-o-lantern in the blackness, offering a false kind of hope.
Something was in the room with them. Frank felt it like everybody else did, the hairs on the back of his neck standing up as he waited with bated breath for something, someone, to reveal themselves: Red.
One minute he wasn't there and the next he was, slapping bottles off shelves, and breaking shit like glass, and noses, and bones, like a bear let loose in a camper. Just to be a petty bitch.
Frank gave a bloody grin that stretched his swollen cheek and felt damn good, watching that billy club smash into the face of one biker, then into the kneecap of another, making them scream, making them yell, and panic. It was fucking beautiful.
The third guy tried to fight him. Actually 'tried' was being generous. Red fucking humiliated him in about six seconds flat. Beating him mercilessly. So much for that whole mercy shtick. This was better anyway. Frank liked this better. Wonderful, bloody, violent chaos. Just Red and his billy club.
It never left his hand. It was like an extension of his arm, directed with precision and power to wherever Red wanted it to be. It was fucking hot.
When Red knelt in front of him and gently untied him, Frank thought he detected a faint tremor in those black-gloved hands. One still clutched the billy club and it fell with a clatter as the ferocity of Daredevil slipped away, replaced with the heaviness of a burdened Matt Murdock, who mumbled something incoherent as he knelt there with his head bowed.
"Don't waste your prayers on me," Frank said roughly, seizing his shoulder. "I'm not worth it."
Matt raised his head. "I'm not, and you are."
He was getting teary behind that mask, Frank realized. Once, he would've found that pathetic. Weak. Now it touched him, and he found himself leaning forward, wrapping hurting, bloody, scored arms around Matt and holding him for a moment, needing the firmness of his body under his palms to feel real relief.
One of the thuggish goons stirred and the billy club moved faster than Frank could blink, striking the thug squarely in the forehead with a hollow thunk that had the guy collapsing back against the floor.
He felt Matt smirk against his lips as he kissed him, unwilling to let the tender moment be ruined. Petty bitch. Frank's petty bitch, who he kind of hoped took him home to his apartment with its migraine inducing billboard lights, where he could have dreams full of hell, and still feel safe.