Chapter Text
It wasn’t supposed to be funny. Frank, though, being very possibly over-medicated, was laughing while Matt stitched up his bullet-hole-ridden ass cheek and getting blood all over the couch. “Second fucking time I’ve been shot in the ass, at least this time it isn’t some teenager digging the lead out of me.” Frank sighed, and Matt wondered what the hell a teenager was doing digging a bullet out of his ass cheek, then what kind of meds Claire had given him. Granted, the day she’d pressed them into his palm, she had warned him that she was only doing so because he was so bruised and battered that at least it would help him sleep.
Frank wasn’t sleeping, though.
He was laughing so much that it was hard for Matt to keep his hands in place and not accidentally stitch up a piece of skin that was fully healthy instead of one of the holes.
“Y’know, somethin’s funny abou’ you stitchin’ up my ass. Like, usually you’d want the asshole open, right? But here I am, with so many of ‘em I’ve gotta have you close some of ‘em up!” Frank’s body shook again, and Matt lifted his hands in defeat.
“I’m going to knock you out if you won’t hold still for this, Castle. Hell of a thing to bleed out from a manufactured hemmoroid.”
He was glad his hands were up in the air, because Frank’s whole body shuddered as he rolled with laughter. “Manufactured– What the fuck, Red? Who the fuck comes up with your lines?”
Matt did his best not to cringe and decided that silence was the answer. Finally, an hour later, all of the bullet holes Frank had managed to get were closed and the larger form was sleeping peacefully on his couch. Now, Matt just had to patch himself up before he could go to bed.
He was tired, and sore, covered in bruises and gashes and a bullet had ripped through his bicep, but he was a lot better off than Frank.
Matt took a moment, sitting in his bathroom with the first aid kit laid out in front of him on the floor, to thank God for small miracles. At least he’d been able to get both of them out of there, and had managed to take down just as many gangsters as Frank had with his .357. He even took out a few more when Frank had been downed by the guys who had swam up to the barge to help their coworkers, boarded, and managed to escape Matt’s notice beneath the gun fire. He’d almost completely missed them, trying to protect Frank’s prone form, but two of them had made a noise during a break in the gun fire, and he’d felt the rest of them slowly crawling towards him. It was years of training and blind (hah) faith that they’d made it out alive.
In short, it’d been a shit show. But, they made it out alive. That was what mattered. Matt clung to that as he wheezed and let out some of his pain in gasps while he pulled fragmented pieces of a bullet out of his side. Frank had caught the worst of the bullet’s path, through the shoulder no less, but because the shooter had been up on top of some of the shipping crates, they’d gotten the perfect angle to catch them both. Fishing out the last fragment, Matt felt like his head was too heavy to hold up. Still, he forced himself to push through, shake out the exhaustion and blood loss and at least stitched up the major holes in his body before he allowed himself to curl up on the bloody towels that surrounded him and lose consciousness.
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Blinding light flooded behind Frank’s eyelids and jolted him awake. He sat up on the couch he’d been sprawled across and immediately regretted it. His ass had been turned into swiss cheese the night before, and though most of the fight was a hazy memory, the pain remained, which just wasn’t fair. Still, he stood and forced himself to go to get a glass of water, but when he looked around, he realized he wasn’t in one of his safe houses. He wasn’t even at Curt’s place, or in one of David’s underground lairs. No, he was in an unfamiliar apartment with bright fuck-off light streaming in from the sun and a giant fucking LED billboard. Whoever had decided to put up such a monstrosity next to an apartment with floor-to-ceiling windows deserved to be shot. His ass hurt, his shoulder hurt, it seemed like he’d been caught by a stray knife or bullet over his eyebrow, and he’d definitely broken at least two ribs in some of his hand-to-hand fights. He could wait a day or two to find the person responsible for that dick move.
He turned around and found the kitchen, managed to limp his way over to it and find a glass in the cupboard even as his senses were set to high alert. Who knew what had happened after he’d gone down the night before? Who in the hell would have taken him in and stitched him up after something like that? He wasn’t sure, but his mouth and throat felt like he’d been force-fed off one of the machines from Build-A-Bear, and no one seemed to be there to try and do him any harm, yet, so priorities had to be placed in a certain order. It took three glasses of water before Frank felt like he could breathe normally again.
The problem came a few moments later when he realized he needed to piss, and there was no visible door outside of the one that led to the hallway, and one that led to a bedroom. Maybe his captor/savior would still be asleep? As quietly as he could, Frank made his way into the bedroom, turned to the only door in the room, and found a shirtless Red passed out on the bathroom floor on bloody towels. Frank groaned, mostly because Red was laid out in front of the toilet, and there was no way he was going to try and hang a piss over Red’s head. It was the principle of the thing. For a moment, he considered stepping out onto the fire escape, but he didn’t exactly want to catch a ticket for public urination, and it was still definitely daylight out there.
Agonizingly slowly, he bent to pick up one of the feet that had curled in towards the body of his sometimes-companion, but when he tried to pull on it to slide Red out on the towel bed he’d bled all over, the smaller man came awake like the snap of a rubber band and kicked out at Frank’s chest. Frank staggered back in a weak dodge and felt some of the stitches in his ass pull. In the blink of an eye, Red was up on his feet and in a fighting stance, but as soon as he realized who stood before him, he slouched into himself and rose back into a mostly-normal position. “Oh, hey Frank.”
“Yeah, hey to you too ya freak. Gonna let me go use the bathroom? Or do you need to go back to sleep in front of the john?”
“I’m good. I’ll, uh, go make coffee.” Red pulled on his cowl a little bit, (it couldn’t be comfortable to wear something like that for so long, right?) and stepped around Frank and towards the kitchen, even if he was still hunched in on himself a bit. Frank gratefully used the bathroom, and looked over his visage in the mirror for a moment. He was right about the wound above his eyebrow, though it wasn’t even deep enough for whoever had patched him up to put a bandage on it. When he turned around and pulled down his underwear a bit, five sets of gauze pads that covered slightly leaking stitches appeared. His skin was swollen and red but they were done impeccably well for how many there were.
He appraised himself until he heard the sounds of coffee dripping into a pot and smelled a much better roast than the cheap shit he got for himself coming from the kitchen. Red, still mostly in his get-up, leaned against the counter and was carefully pulling up the edge of a bandage. Frank leaned in the doorway, watched the man uncover a set of stitches, and finally sighed. Red jumped like he’d been tazed.
“Jesus, you always this jumpy in the morning?” Frank asked as he finally managed to move himself out of the doorway and into the main living space. Red looked up at him and sighed, dropping his shirt’s hem as he did so. It smacked back to his skin in a way that sounded painful, but Red didn’t even flinch.
“Only when I’m being watched by your ugly mug, Castle.” Ooh, he had his claws out this morning. Frank wondered when he should make his exit, felt like it should have been some time before then, but the coffee smelled so damned good… He sighed, shook his head, and finally fell into a lean against the kitchen island.
“I’ll have you know I’m a fuckin’ Disney princess, Red.” Frank sighed as some of the tension began to leak out of the smaller man’s shoulders.
“The way I hear it, you’re more like Belle’s beast.” Red shot back.
“Not gonna make your own opinion of it, huh?” Frank cajoled. They watched the final few drops of coffee fall into the pot together before Red pulled the carafe out and poured a generous dose into two mugs he’d left waiting on the counter.
“You take milk or sugar?” Red asked, instead of answering.
“Nah, none of that where I usually get my fix, anyways.”
Red nodded and handed him the cup of liquid gold the color of mud. They took the first sip in unison, and Frank groaned as the taste rolled over his tongue and down his throat. He was going to savor the next cup, but the first cup was going down quick, fast, and in a hurry.
Thirty seconds later, he was pretty sure his mouth would steam if he breathed out of it, but he went back to where Red had replaced the carafe and poured himself another cup. The smaller man held out his own mug, and Frank topped it off without a word. They both leaned against the counter tops, drinking their coffee in silence for a few minutes while they waited for the caffeine to kick in. With the sunshine and the big fuckin’ windows casting the golden light around the room, it almost felt like a scene from one of the rom-coms Maria had enjoyed. The moment was entirely too domestic, despite the fact that both of them had some pretty good licks taken out of them the night before.
“I should get on home, make sure Max is okay, see if there’s anything I need to change. I bet you have something to do with your day too.” Frank finally said, once he’d drained his second mug. Red was turned so his back was to him, refilling his mug once more, but he suddenly tensed up, then relaxed. Frank watched it happen. “Forget somethin’ important?” He asked, though he wasn’t really expecting an answer.
“Maybe, I uh, gotta make a call…” Red’s voice sounded distracted, which wasn’t like him, but he continued, “Make yourself a thermos before you go. Top right of the cupboard above the coffee maker. Return it whenever.”
He disappeared into the bedroom and shut the door, then the shower turned on. Frank shrugged, then went to pull down a thermos. Because he wasn’t an asshole, he started another half-pot before he left; to replace what he’d taken.
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