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It wasn’t as if he had planned this.
He planned a lot. Calculated everything, and when he couldn’t, the bullets made the math for him. It worked. He got turned inside out, over and over, spat teeth and blood and saw through bloody eyes, limped his way down the path of death he swore to walk since the day he stepped back inside his family home and there was no family left, but it worked.
He got his vengeance. He put the ones that killed his babies and his love on the ground. Every last one of them. His plan worked. And when that plan was done, he worked on another. Got addicted to cleaning the filth, it became his mission and his obsession, his duty. It was expected of him. Hero and villain, all wrapped up in a not so neat package.
But he did not plan this. He did not plan for her. For the hurricane of blond hair, blue eyes, long legs, mighty aim and steady grip on her .380. How could he?
And he saw the danger of her. It did not start like that, but he saw it. First, it was the memories, and he smiled because he was remembering his family, she was smiling because she was picturing them and remembering her own childhood.
But then she went to visit him in prison. She had a way to get under his skin and he tried to be mad at her, brush her off, but she said it was important to her and there he was, taking a fucking stand on his own fucking trial - none of which were planned, he was supposed to be dead by now - because it was important to her.
He walked away, after he got her from Schoonover. He saved her, but then he walked away. For a year, he stayed far, but she was vocal, loud, with her printed words and then there he was again, sitting by her on a bench and she was feeding him information and he was listening and looking at her, asking about Murdock, trying to act casual when she brushed it aside and took a big sip from his coffee, not looking at him.
He did not plan on looking at her like that. He did not plan on caring. He did not plan on kissing her while he had blood on his hands, literal blood, that stained her dress and her bathroom tiles.
It got on her cheek as he gripped her jaw and on her hair when he tangled his fingers through it. She held him back without a hint of hesitation, her own fingers smelling of gunpowder.
He did not want that for her. But she hushed and kissed him into oblivion, and when one of her shoulders became bare, he placed his mouth over it, warm skin against his lips while his teeth dragged the strap of her bra out of his way.
Months and months later, God knows how many, Frank doesn’t count anymore, and she kept frustrating his plans. It should have been over a long time ago, she should have found something normal by now. But she always rolled her eyes, dismissed it and sat down to talk business before pulling him in bed with her, kissing him goodnight or licking his skin awake.
And this, sitting in her bathtub, his back resting against her chest, long legs around his hips, his skin and hers slick with scented bath oils, his head resting on her right shoulder as she traced her finger around a fresh set of stitches she had sewn into his skin not ten minutes ago, that was never in the plans.
She was supposed to be married to some nice, boring man, living in the suburbs, safe, sound and decorating a nursery for her first child, and he was supposed to be dead. Every day, Frank was supposed to die and she was supposed to cry for a week and then move on. Every day he didn’t. He survived and went back to her so he could also live, and he would wake up the next morning and plan it all over again, and she would wreck it.
“So”, she started, soft, running her fingers up his biceps, tracing bruises and cuts delicately, rubbing her essential oils on his skin. “I’m going to the Hamptons this Friday.”
“That this week?” he asked, his voice so lazy, he was a fucking lazy cat around her, adjusting his head on her shoulder, closing his eyes when she started running her right hand through his hair.
“Yes”, she replied, and her mouth was right there in his ear and she was nipping, whispering, tightening her legs around his waist, running her feet up his thighs underwater. “I want you to come with me.”
He chuckled.
“I don’t think your friend wants the Punisher house-sitting for her.”
“She doesn’t care.”
The hand that traced around his stitches lowered to his chest, soothing, caressing, doing something he didn’t know, but he knew, he never wanted her to stop, even if he knew she needed to.
“Plus. There’s two dogs.”
“Why you think you can bribe me with dogs, ma’am?”
It was not the first time she had tried.
“Because I know you like dogs. You can take Max, too, Trish said it was ok.”
He sighed, too tired and too relaxed to actually try and explain to her why it was a bad idea.
Plus, he was considering.
As much as he liked her apartment - and he liked it, that small, thin walled sanctuary of theirs - a house in a beach somewhere with limited neighbors did sound so good. No wake up calls, no time to get up in the morning, no articles to write and no low life to shoot for a whole week. And it was an actual safe house, security freak that was Trish Walker. Shit, it sounds so good.
“Come on, baby”, she whispered in his ear again, and that was so low, so low, because no one else was ever supposed to call him ‘baby’ again, but she did, and he liked it, he tried not to and she even asked him once if it was ok, Frank found himself nodding, smiling, leaning in to kiss her. “She’s lending me her beach house, she says I need to relax, and she knows about you.”
“Because you told her.”
“Come on. She’s a journalist, and my friend, she saw that little gift you left on the back of my neck that time” - he smiled in spite of himself - “and she gets it. You know Trish, you know she’s good. She has Jessica, she understands.”
“Weather I trust her or not is not the question here, ma’am.”
“Then just come away with me, please. I don’t want to go alone, there’s no point in that.”
And then she started moving, hands and feet and body sneaking from under him until she was straddling him inside the tub, water moving, splattering to the floor, her skin was glowing with scented oils, she was so naked on top of him, Frank moved to support his arms on the edges of the tub, looking up at her, enjoying the view and the case she was trying to make.
Why does she want him? Why does she care? He’s the last thing she needs, the last person she should be getting attached to, why does she pull him to her by his slippery shoulders and cradles his face in her hands, runs her fingers through his hair as if he’s precious, as precious as she is, like she loved the feel of him against her?
“Please?” she tries, just a word, before a kiss, before arms around his neck, before her hips are working on his, before his body is going against the plan again, responding to her, his mouth is opening, he’s tasting her tongue and he’s gripping the wet porcelain to keep from making it obvious she already won.
She’s a damn mystery, Karen Page. Why she forgives him, over and over, and helps him wash all the blood away, he’ll never know. She deserves so much better, and yet here she is, asking him to go away with her, if only just for a week, because she knows he needs to come back and resume his work, resume his mission, resume whatever it is that he does, and she needs to come back, too, to the filth and the horror, to this city that keeps trying to swallow her up, and she still tries to save, exposing and shedding light, one article at a time, working with or without him, trying to clean up the mud he swims in every day and every night.
Three days later, he’s carrying her suitcase down the stairs to the car, she’s walking ahead of him, holding onto Max’s leash, and he sees the gun inside her purse, it’s barrel glimmering as they walk under a light.
Maybe that’s why he can’t stick to his plans. She knows him whole, doesn’t expect him to change, adapts to the situation, keeps her gun loaded, her first aid kit stocked and her burner phone charged, just in case all that planning gets blown up.
Driving up to Trish’s beach house, he opens the door for her and she pulls him inside by his hand, and he spends a week covering her in lazy kisses and having lazy sex and being lazy while Max runs on the sand until he’s too tired to run anymore.
Karen sleeps naked against him every night they’re there, no clothes between them, no skulls on his chest, just his skin against hers, him, open and honest, just a man, getting warm against the flame that burned inside her and shone the path ahead of him. Ahead of them, as short as it is.