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Frank has never once described a job as quiet. After a job, there was always a blanket of silence, a sweet moment of gunpowder hanging in the air and no jackass yelling in his ear about how he’s going to beat your ass into next Christmas. Those times are always silent, if only for the few moments before the sounds of the city creep back in. But the house, now, is quiet. His trigger finger is still itching, his jaw still tight at the idea of everything the bastards had done, but the house is quiet.
The Silver Triangles were supposed to be here. They were here, if the man stuck to the kitchen counter was any indication. But it was all silent, bar the soft groans and moans in the dark. For a second, Frank wonders if he had found the wrong bastards. Had he just wandered into some prostitution ring?
The house here was large, sure, but it wouldn’t scream brothel to anyone with half a brain. It had countertops that hadn’t been updated since the eighties, and a living room with carpet that probably hadn’t been cleaned since then either. The house felt more like the set of a shitty movie about the mafia than it did a whorehouse. Besides, the decoration on the walls was a real mood-killer.
The muffled bloody-murder screams of the man on the wall wouldn’t turn Frank on, at least. He’s stuck there, pinned to the wall by something he can’t fully see. Still, he can feel the man’s gaze on him, and knows that any kind of hard-on anyone would have gotten here would have required half a bottle of Viagra.
His eyebrows furrow as he turns over to the man, expression unchanged as he notices the gag over his mouth. In the dim light, Frank can see a bruise blossoming over the man’s left eye. He takes one step, two steps closer, and places a gun over the man’s chin. The man closes his eyes and shakes his head back and forth, even as the gun stays planted. As he moves, Frank notices that the gag over his mouth isn’t a gag at all.
There’s a spider’s web over the man’s mouth. Upon further inspection, the man is also stuck to the wall by the webs as well.
Fuck, he’s going to have to deal with one of those costume freaks, isn’t he? Just his luck. At this rate, Red might even show up to help one of his super-buddies.
He pulls out his knife, only for the guy to scream bloody murder again. He places his hand up and spreads his three fingers wide, leaving his pointer finger and thumb to handle the knife. The gesture was meant to be taken as a non-threatening gesture, but to an outsider, it would have been taken as him brandishing the weapon. Whether the man takes it as a threat or a mercy doesn’t matter, because he finally stops screaming.
“I’m going to cut a little whole in the gag so you can talk. If you scream for your buddies,” he clicks the safety off, letting the gun finish his sentence for him, and the man whimpers through the web-gag. Frank takes that as a green light to cut through the gag, freeing up just enough space for the man’s lips.
He wastes no time in getting to the questions. “What happened here?”
“He just-“ the man takes a deep breath in, one shaky exhale out. “I thought we could handle one spider-freak in spandex.” The man sounds shaken, eyes blown wide as he turns his head towards a staircase. The door is open, a faint amount of blood smeared across the dimly lit hardwood. The light fully disappears past the second step down, leaving only a pit of darkness. He can’t tell where the blood ends or where it begins, only that it’s dark and thick and new.
He’s seen Spider-Man’s work, he knows that he doesn’t leave anyone that bloody. Judging by the state of the others in the room — some unconscious, some tied up in webbing, all with their guns webbed to the ceiling — his modus operandi hasn’t changed. Unless Spider-Man started shoving a knife into his spandex for emergencies, Frank is fairly sure the vigilante fights fully unarmed. Suddenly, the silence becomes more unsettling than suspicious.
He keeps his eyes pinned to the basement when he asks, “and where is he now?” He doesn’t turn his head as he looks back at the man, eyes the only part of him to shift to catch how the man goes pale.
A scream pierces the air, followed by some garbled up speech he can’t discern. The gun presses further into the man’s jaw, but he doesn’t whimper this time.
“You already know, don’t you?” The man says, voice steadier than it has been since Frank walked into the house.
“Quit tryin’ t’ be funny, jackass,” he growls out, “but if you insist, let’s focus on what I don’t know. How did he get all the way to Prospect Heights?”
“We brought him here,” the man says. Another mix of garbled words comes up from the basement.
“ We ?”
The noise of the city hangs in the air. The man makes no noise to correct him. That’s all he needs.
“One batch,” Frank says, before the wall paper turns red.
He elects to ignore the others upstairs for now, feet carrying him down into the dark pit beyond the stairs. He keeps his steps light, a feat oddly easy despite the stairs’ hardwood. Even the heavy sole of his boots is stifled by the floor — the basement must be insulated concrete, then, just gussied up with hardwood for entertaining whichever traffickers decide to pay the house a visit that week.
He hesitates before he puts his foot down on the final step. He leans his head down slightly to watch the scene before him, straining his neck to peer underneath the half-wall separating the stairs from the rest of the basement.
“Like I said-“ a voice says, alarms screaming young ringing in his head. The voice cracks on the final word, more due to hoarseness than hormones. Frank (who is not going soft, Red ) stops breathing for a second, before refocusing on the conversation.
“If you burned me, so help me God, you won’t leave this room until you’re talking to the Almighty.” The man standing — salt-and-pepper hair, wearing hundred dollar slacks, a four dollar wife beater, and the rasp of two packs of Marlboros a day for three decades — leans down further, blocking Frank’s view of whoever’s hair is currently balled in the man’s fist. His next words are harder to make out, lower in a way that accentuates the gravel in his voice: “tell me how a moron like you intercepted the shipment.”
“How could I,” a cough, low and strained, “have burned you,” another cough, “if I’m such a moron .”
There’s the sound of a splash and a clink of metal. Frank doesn’t need to see to know what’s going on here. The man is swearing, words melding together into background noise as he yells about money and morals and Spider-Man. It all becomes unimportant, really, as Frank sets his feet down on the concrete with a dull thud . The axis of the room shifts, balance tilting towards Frank as it all goes quiet. The two other men in the corners of the room turn their heads.
“Two batch,” he says, each syllable accompanied by a bang.
The asshole turns his head, eyes cemented on the skull emblazoned on his chest. Frank watches as his eyes — which Frank knows looked at drugs, guns, people being shipped from place to place and saw nothing but dollar signs — go wide, free hand reaching for his own gun, still not letting go of the too-small person in his other hand.
“Penny and dime.” The gun goes off. The asshole falls forward, his head face against the floor in front of the toilet.
The world still isn’t quiet.
The figure that was once in the asshole’s hands shifts to lean his head on the tile wall next to the bathtub, his side still fully supported by the porcelain edge of the tub. The dim light of the basement landing doesn’t fully extend to the back of the dingy bathroom. He finds a chain hanging from the ceiling, pulling it until the light at the basement landing grows brighter. He can see more than just a silhouette now, making out a faint twitch at the change in conditions.
Frank takes one step, two steps closer. He locks eyes with the figure slumped over the bathtub.
He’s young. The kid’s undoubtedly not old enough to vote, let alone be knee-deep in the Triangle’s bullshit. The hair around his ears curls in any direction, but the hair at the top of his head is matted down by the water. The hair at the crown of his head is pulled up, the outline of the asshole’s grip still imprinted on it. There’s water dripping onto the floor from his wet head, but everything from the chest down seems relatively dry.
His eyes are blown wide, tracking Frank as he takes another slow step in. Frank lowers the gun but doesn’t holster it, clicking the safety on. He doesn’t try to go for soft reassurances. He hasn’t used his baby voice since… in a long time. Instead, he moves to assess the situation further, making a point to not get lost in how simultaneously alert and out of it those doe eyes are, how it speaks to someone clinging to vigilance when they know they can’t keep it up for forever.
He has to make sure the kid doesn’t keel over. Frank’s eyes peel themselves away from the kid’s face, shifting to his neck and his shoulders.
Frank finds an injury there. He notices how the kid’s shoulder isn’t quite sitting how it should, how there’s a black and blue ring around his neck. He notices all of it.
None of it matters compared to the black spider emblazoned on the kid’s chest. The web pattern runs down the kid’s whole front, interrupted by the mask being squeezed like a stress ball in the kid’s bound hands.
Not just the kid’s hand. That’s Spider-Man’s hand.
Spider-Man is a fucking kid.
Too many things click into place at once. The kid intercepts a Triangles shipment, gets himself kidnapped for the trouble, and ends up getting the shit kicked out of him in a basement for it. Judging by how full the water in the tub is, Frank is assuming he knows how.
“Double-D told me about you.” The kid says, and Frank wishes he would have just shot Red on that rooftop. Red got a kid into this, Red is the reason this kid who can’t even drink yet is currently tied up in a basement with a fucked-up shoulder. “I won’t,” the kid coughs, hard, and pitches forward as the fit continues. Based on how his face is still screwed up as he pulls himself back up to leaning on the wall, it irritated some other injury. “I won’t let you hurt anyone else here.”
And Frank shouldn’t laugh at that. It’s not funny, not in any way, that any part of his situation is happening. He shouldn’t be talking to Spider-Man, Spider-Man shouldn’t be in a basement, Spider- Man shouldn’t be Spider- Boy, and Spider-Boy shouldn’t be quoting Red like a Bible verse. But a laugh bubbles out of him anyway, humorless and angry and murderous. There is no smile on his face.
———
The Punisher is holding up a gun. The Punisher is pointing the gun at Peter, and all his mind can come up with is get away get away get away, his senses screaming at him to leave. He pulls at the coil wrapped around his wrists, feet scrambling for purchase against the tile.
Double-D had warned him about this, had warned him to stay away from the Punisher’s territory. Peter had seen news stories about what the man has done, heard tales of a prison block fully wiped out because someone had given Frank Castle a shiv. A fully armed Punisher? Standing against Peter, who can barely keep sitting up?
The safety clicks off, and Peter screws his eyes shut. He pulls at the wire around his wrists (which are made of iron , because the Triangles had known he was coming, because he was dumb enough to fall into a trap that led him all the way to the end of the Punisher’s gun), trying to get it to snap.
The sound of the gunshot is deafening, too close to Peter’s enhanced ears. The world goes white. The tension in the cord and Peter’s muscles snap, leaving him a crumpled mess on the bathroom floor. A strangled noise tried to make its way up from his throat, but it’s choked, all sound swallowed up by the blinding pain around his ribs.
He forces the muscles in his abdomen to draw himself up, the line of his shoulders tensing after they initially spasm.
“Easy, Spider-Boy, I’m not going to hurt you,” Punisher says, his voice sounding as if his throat had been raked across hot coals. His words are barely boiling, but still hot to the touch. The gun has not yet been holstered. His cuffed hands are desperate to slip the mask back on, but his arms are uncooperative. At least with the mask, he’d still be Spider-Man , not some weird cross between the friendly neighborhood vigilante and a half-drowned Peter Parker. Without his web-shooters, he feels the pendulum swinging towards the latter rather than the former.
Vaguely, he notes that the coil connecting his still-bound wrists to the floor is gone, with a still-smoking bullet casing lying next to them in the remains. He feels his brows furrow at the sight, confusion roiling in his gut.
Still, his eyes are drawn to the growing amount of red in the room. He knows it isn’t his own, knows it isn’t the Punisher’s either. It must be the man that was holding him, a man with a bullet in the back of his brain —
He couldn’t bring himself to feel bad, when that shot rang out. He had only felt relief, only felt the lack of a hand in his hair, only relished in the extra few seconds he had to breathe. Now it gnaws on him, pecking away at what little good feeling remained in his chest. He shouldn’t have felt grateful, shouldn’t have heard that thunderclap of a gunshot as an eye in a hurricane.
“Tell that to him,” Peter says, faux-sarcasm lined in a voice almost incapable of doing so. He sounds absolutely wrecked, voice breaking in the middle as if he’s going to start sobbing at the drop of a hat.
“The bravado isn’t helping your case here, kid.”
“Are you sure? I think I’m charming.” He flashes a toothy smile, eyes closing before a tingle runs along the back of his brain. He opens his eye, assuming that the Punisher will raise his gun again.
He opens them to Frank Castle shaking his head, gun held loosely in his hand. The ringing in his ears grows louder, the tingle spreading over his entire body. Something is wrong.
Peter follows the itch at the side of his brain and turns his head. He half expects Double-D, or for the Punisher to be reaching for a second gun for him to look down the barrel of.
He’s half-right, really; he does end up looking down the barrel of a gun. Only, it’s not the Punisher’s.
Shit.
———
The fact that the kid can even try to stand is a feat in and of itself. His body shakes all over, but his face tells the tale of a man possessed, his jaw tight as he tries to force some semblance of a cocky smile.
Frank doesn’t make any move to block him, doesn’t even shift to the side to dodge. There’s nothing that the kid could do anyway, right?
Wrong. Frank topples down with a curse, back hitting the ground with a hard thud. He’s already gearing up to punch the kid before a bullet rips through the air. His ears ring from the sound of the impact, drywall and tile ripping off of the wall.
His finger is pulling on the trigger before his hand even has a chance to shake. A bullet rips through a man’s calf, but he moves to lean up against the wall, finger still poised on the trigger.
Within seconds, the kid has sprung off of Frank, stuck his fingers to the top of the doorframe, and donkey-kicked the man square in the chest. The man goes flying, back hitting the ground just as Frank moves to his feet. There’s a power to each and every movement, each muscle fiber in tune with the next. It almost looks like he’s dancing as he leaps from the wall to the man, body moving fast enough that Frank has a hard time keeping track. Who is this kid?
The man’s gun is knocked out of his hands by the impact, but he still manages to kip-up off of the ground and punch the kid square in the jaw. Spider-Boy doesn’t have much hope for blocking it with his hands still bound together. The acid in his chest grows corrosive again, eating away at what little restraint he has left.
As Frank rushes forward, the man throws his elbows out, the two combatants moving in a flurry Frank’s eyes almost have trouble tracking.
It all slows down when the kid screams loud enough to wake the neighbors. Frank doesn’t know which impact did it, but he knows that Spider-Boy is crumpling with his good arm wrapped around his middle. Frank sees this as the millionth red flag of the day.
It doesn’t take any effort on his part to catch the kid by his one good shoulder. The kid’s knees give out from underneath him almost immediately, each and every ounce of tension in his muscles snapping like a frayed rope. The kid still shakes where he stands, limbs uncooperative on all fronts.
He knows that feeling — all jelly legs and fogged-up mind, hazy from blood loss or exhaustion or oxygen deprivation. It’s a shit feeling, one he’d only wish upon a select few members of the scum of the planet.
Still supporting Spider-Boy with his left side, Frank kicks the man square in the chest with his right leg, sending him sprawled out onto the concrete floor.
Spider-Boy skitters away from him to lean against a support beam of the basement wall, movements frenetic and jerky, like he’s being controlled by an amateur puppeteer. Frank moves to stand over the man, gun already pointed right between his eyes. The kid opens his mouth to say something before he starts coughing again, arm wrapping around his middle as he does so. He’s still soaked, still so small — and he’s not going soft, he knows he isn’t, but he just, he looks —
Frank silences the thought by pulling the trigger. The world still isn’t quiet.
He turns to face Spider-Boy, who is now thoroughly attempting to sink into the walls, chest rising and falling far too fast to be comfortable for someone with messed up ribs.
“That was quite the move you pulled back there,” Frank says, taking one step, two steps closer.
“You’re Frank Castle,” the kid says, and Frank can’t help but think no shit . “You’re the Punisher.” His voice cracks again, high and sharp and a testament to the fact that the kid shouldn’t be talking right now.
“And you’re Spider-Man.” And you just got tortured by one of the biggest human trafficking rings in Manhattan, he holds back. The kid’s shivering, now, the cold air of a late night finally getting to him. Vaguely, he wishes he hadn’t killed the asshole that was waterboarding a kid so quickly. He wishes it would have hurt more.
“You just killed all of them.”
Then, he wishes the kid would just shut the hell up already.
The kid’s terrified, sure, but does he have to sound like a carbon copy of Red? Hell, if Red weren’t such an altar boy, he’d assume that Spider-Boy is his long lost son. He lacks the same pulse-pounding anger Red has — the one thing he can agree with the man on — but he also lacks the same high-horse Red has. For that, Frank supposed, he can cut the kid some slack. The kid objects to his preferred method of justice, sure, but he hasn’t given any heavy-handed lectures on morality.
Red was taught to be good, Frank knows. Red was made a factory for anger and grief and vengeance and the world handed him a Bible and told him to make himself good, and he did. This kid might have just been born without any lessons needed. He might have been born without that hard line in his shoulders.
He’s learning it now. His whole body is shaking, but his shoulders are squared, jaw set, chin up. He looks miserable doing it, but the stance speaks to an admirable thing in Spider-Boy’s guts.
He puts his boot on the dead man’s abdomen, lets a fraction of his weight sink into it. That hard line of the kid’s shoulders falters before he immediately props it back up. “You’re telling me you want to see him get back up?”
The kid’s face falls, horror-grief-guilt-shame wrapped up in one twitch of his face (another difference between him and Red — the kid’s easier to read. Frank doesn’t know whether that’s a help or a hindrance) before it settles back into his default mix of ow-ow-ow. That is a reaction he wasn’t expecting. What does friendly neighborhood Spider-Man have to be ashamed of?
“It’s not my job to play executioner. No one should have that right.”
Frank takes a step closer to the kid, fast and not at all telegraphed, and he immediately goes from moral bastion to scared dog.
He realizes it, then and there. The kid’s words have him hearing Red, but everything else about him screams Max . Just some big dog who was told what to be. Who, he wonders, is on the other end of Spider-Boy’s collar?
He puts his gun away, hands moving slowly. The kid should know that he only kills assholes by now. Frank wouldn’t dream of killing a kid , let alone a kid who actively helps people evade muggers and walks drunk girls home at night. Let alone a kid whose hands are still tied up.
Frank may have shot clean through the coil that connected him to the floor (that kept him in place to be hurt, over and over, the fucking bastards—), but his wrists are still bound together. He pulls out his knife and watches the kid go stock still.
“If you’re saying that, then your whole brain’s gotta be waterlogged.” It’s a poor attempt to break the tension, really, especially when Frank is still trying to get the kid to stop trying to push his morals onto him.
“I’m not letting you take me.”
Frank can’t help it — a scoff escapes him, and he just leaves it at that. He flips the knife over to point towards the kid in one smooth motion, looking to cut the coil wrapped around the kid's wrists.
In hindsight, he could have handled that better. He could have been gentler, softer, forced himself into old habits of peek-a-boo and stories before bedtime to make himself less threatening. In hindsight, he should have known that less threatening wasn’t his forte on a good day.
In the moment, he wasn’t expecting the kid to try and kick him.
Frank makes no move to dodge as the kid scrambles, hands held up for a rudimentary block. The kid’s trying his patience, at this point — he still hasn’t gotten to everyone upstairs yet.
This is going to be a long night.
———
The kick was a blind thing, born of nothing more than instinct and a lack of options. He desperately wishes for the safety net of a panic button, for the mechanical voice of Karen to flow into his ears and give him a way out of this. Even his web-shooters are still upstairs, held hostage by the Triangles.
There’s too little here to protect him. All he’s got are limbs that won’t work and muscles that are about to give out. Even as he kicks at the Punisher, his abdomen is screaming at him to stop, what little air his tired chest scraped together leaving his lungs. He’s saying something, now, words falling out of his mouth faster than he can stop them.
The Punisher says nothing, crouching down to reach Peter’s level. There’s too much blood rushing through his ears to hear whatever the man mutters. It’s all underwater now, negligible when compared to the fact that Peter is about to be stabbed or cut or maimed or hurt again, by someone he had thought (if only for one single, glorious, hideous second) was some kind of savior. He knows, now, that saviors don’t wear a skull on their chest like a trophy.
The knife glints in the light of the basement, dull in all places but its tip and its edge. Peter tries to pivot away from the support beam he’s leaning on — he doesn’t care which direction, as long as it’s away — but his limbs won’t cooperate, shoulders spasming as he tries to shift his weight to the side.
All that he can do is watch as the Punisher lifts the knife to Peter’s wrist and —
“There. Was that so scary?”
— and cuts the restraints off of Peter’s wrists.
The same bewilderment from before fills his throat, growing thick with something he can’t quite name. There’s too much going on in his brain; in his body, too, given the mostly-worn-off sedative and the cracked ribs and the waterlogged lungs and the bone-deep ache and the —
Well. Peter’s not having a good time already, and whatever Castle (not Castle, he can’t change the name, he’s looking at the Punisher — if he tilts his head, he’s looking at one of the many dead bodies left in the guy’s wake) has planned can’t be good.
The man is still crouched, scanning Peter up and down. Peter tries to set his shoulders straight, tries to sit tall and make himself look at least vaguely threatening. Spider-Man is a protector. He can’t fall short here, because falling short means New York loses a guardian.
“I’ll give you two options,” Ca- the Punisher says, as if he wishes he could give Peter zero. “They still give you multiple choice tests in school, right? A, you-“
“C,” Peter spits out, words no longer his to control. It should be snarky, should be full of that bravado the Punisher had mocked before. Instead, his throat violently disagrees with it being used. The words are coated in every emotion flitting through his chest, unconcealed even in the face of the croak of pain that underlays it all. It’s scratchy and Peter knows he should stop talking, but he can’t. Not when the world’s swimming, not when these might be the last brave words to fall out of his mouth for a long time. “None of the above.”
The Punisher frowns, huffing out of his nose. He mutters something about Red and dumbasses and a series of other things Peter doesn’t understand but knows he shouldn’t repeat.
“Either I call ‘Devil and bring you to a safehouse of mine, or I take you to a hospital.”
His neck hurts badly enough that he decides to just let his head drop, and oh sweet mercy that was so much better. Even if his head bobs as his chest rises and falls (rather unevenly, Peter notes — huh, that’s not good ), it’s still infinitely better. The rest of his muscles are about to give up the ghost as well, every aching cell in him yearning for a way to finally rest.
“No hospitals.” He says, and tacks on, “no ‘Devil,” for good measure. He doesn’t want Double-D seeing him like this, doesn’t want someone else to meddle in Spider-Man’s affairs enough to get themselves killed. Maybe, in some deeper part of his mind, he just doesn’t want Double-D to be disappointed in him — but he’d have to be on a whole other level of sleep deprivation to admit that.
“So just me?”
Shit. Shit shit shit shit. He overlooked that.
The panic makes him jolt, his muscles giving one last hurrah to force him to flinch at the thought of being alone with the Punisher at a secondary location. “That isn’t what—“ he’s interrupted by every muscle in his body giving out at once, abdomen spasming for the last time before he flops into the Punisher.
And he’s… warm. So much warmer than the basement, than the water, than the hand in his hair. The exhaustion and the cold and the need for something that isn’t trying to murder him this very second make him forget that he’s leaning against kevlar. Even if the Punisher is going to murder him later , the last sliver of Peter’s present mind supposes, he isn’t murdering him now. And Peter, he’s just —
“Hey, Spider-Boy.”
— he’s so damn tired.
———
As the kid shifts in his arms, Frank feels like he’s holding a rag doll rather than a person. Each and every bone in his body knows that he’s ill-equipped to handle this situation in the basement of a trafficker’s safe house.
Frank wishes he could just leave the kid in an alley somewhere in Hell’s Kitchen for Red to find. Let Red reap what he’s sown, let him see for himself where he’s led the kid.
But the kid asked for him not to involve Red, and Frank is a man of his word. He of all people should know the hundreds of reasons why someone might not want to involve Red in something.
He carries the kid on his back, one hand supporting the kid’s knees and the other firmly held around the gun. This job has taken longer than he would have preferred, between the fight and the tortured teenager in the basement, and he has no interest in making it longer. There’s only two other people remaining in the house — this operation was exclusive, and he knows it. No one here was some lackey for a big guy; each and every one of them is responsible for more than Frank will ever know.
The job is finished in the usual style: all crimson, all dark, no one left standing. The kid doesn’t even shift. If Frank couldn’t feel the kid’s heartbeat pounding through his jacket, he’d assume the kid was dead.
He makes sure to monitor the kid — a fear somehow made both easy and exceedingly difficult by the fact that the kid is on his back — all the way down the half a mile walk it takes to get to his safe house.
All in all, the trip is made only five minutes longer by the presence of a literal superhero on his back. There weren’t any pit-stops needed, bar one curious little kid who he assured was only looking at a kid in a Spider-Man costume (not untrue, in Frank’s opinion) and not the real thing (admittedly less true), and moving to wrap his jacket around the kid after he started shivering enough to nearly slip off of Frank’s shoulders.
The brownstone is many things: dark, abandoned, cheap, and most importantly, warm. Even Frank had to admit that a March night in New York wasn’t kind without a jacket. He deposits the kid on the couch, jacket and all, as he goes to rifle through his drawers.
He opens the first drawer to find two guns and boxes of ammo. He opens the second drawer to find tactical knives and a deconstructed rifle. Third drawer, fourth drawer, fifth drawer, all the same.
In hindsight, he should probably stock his safe houses more thoughtfully next time. He had always thought safehouses like this — nestled in the most crime-ridden part of Brooklyn, complete with cheap rent and a landlord he’s never actually met — would be a place for him to go down guns blazing. One last stand between him and the world, one last chunk of flesh to take a bite out of.
He never thought he’d be using it to house a stray cat, let alone a whole child.
The last drawer in this dresser has exactly three shirts, two of which he knows would be too big. The last is a zip-up hoodie, built thick and insulated for colder winter days. He scoops it into his hands, strips the blanket off the top of the bed, and walks back to the couch to find the kid exactly where he left him.
Frank merely stands, wondering if he should just let the kid sleep. He’s been through a lot the past few… hours? Days? Frank doesn’t even know. He’ll have to talk to the kid to figure that out, which requires the kid to actually be conscious.
Max takes this moment of indecision as an opportunity to loop in between his legs. It’s been about half a day since he’s seen the dog last, and already the sound of Max’s nails on the hardwood fills the barren room as he runs from doing figure-eights around Frank to sniffing their new guest.
Max usually doesn’t react all too kindly to new visitors, a remnant of days spent fighting for anything he could get. It makes his causal demeanor around Spider-Boy all the more distinct; maybe Max sees the same thing Frank sees: some beat-up kid with a costume and a lack of self-preservation instincts. Frank wouldn’t put it past him. Max is a smart dog.
Max, being the smart dog that he is, rests his head just under Spider-Boy’s dropping hand, nudging him once, twice, three times before the boy wakes, still bone tired and bleary-eyed. It’s probably the only reason he hasn’t run to the opposite side of the room by now.
“You can go back to sleep in a few minutes kid, I just need to ask you some questions.” The kid becomes a bit more alert the second he mentions questions. Leaning into the corner of the old couch, knees already halfway drawn up to his chest as if he’s trying to hide behind his legs.
“You’re the Punisher,” the kid says, in a voice Frank knows he’s forcing to stay steady.
“Yeah. We’ve been through that.”
“And I’m… in your house?”
“A safehouse. One that I wasn’t planning on using after this week anyway.” That’s a bald-faced lie, but he doesn’t want the kid to be thinking he can come back here any time soon.
“Listen, sir, if you’re going to interrogate me, can we do it later?” Is… is the kid trying to be sarcastic? He’s actively shaking and he’s trying to be sarcastic right now.
“No, I’m not going to save this for later.” He takes a step forward, and the kid visibly stiffens. “Christ— I’m not into shooting kids in cosplay, alright?”
“Then why do you still have the gun at your hip?”
“Because you got the shit kicked out of you by the Silver Triangles after ticking them off. I’d prefer not to be waiting here with my pants down if they decide to pay a visit.” He pauses, waiting for the kid’s reaction, but he just returns to that swirl of horror-grief-guilt-shame from before. Now that the boy is fully sitting up, face unhidden by the walls or the Triangles or the darkness, he can see the expression in its full glory. He can also see how it only falls piece by piece, starting at the kid's jaw and working its way up until it only sits in his eyes. “They won’t be comin’ round here anytime soon. The rest of the Triangles should be heading back around the Brooklyn Bridge by now.”
The kid still eyes him warily, eyes still fixed to the giant skull on his chest. Wide eyes refuse to leave it, as if it’s a glowing billboard advertising nothing but his worst nightmare.
Frank sighs, undoing the Velcro and straps that mount the Kevlar vest to his chest. He makes a point to move slower than he normally would. He can feel Spider-Boy’s gaze boring a hole into his hands, watches as the kid’s posture shifts every time his hands get within half a foot of his holster. It’s not quite peek-a-boo and bedtime stories, but Spider-Boy isn’t a toddler — even if he is still a kid.
Spider-Boy looks mildly shocked as Frank tosses the Kevlar into a nearby armchair with little resistance. Frank is almost as surprised as he is, but as paranoid as he is about the Triangles showing up, he wants this kid out of his house as soon as possible. If that means that he has to take off the vest, then fine.
Only, it’s not just that. Spider-Boy takes this as an opportunity to look at him — just Frank Castle now, with no Punisher skull or knife at the ready in his hand — and, judging by how the horror-grief-guilt-shame look has been replaced by something entirely softer, is getting all sappy about it in his head. Frank nearly opens his mouth to comment on it; this isn’t some grand gesture of vulnerability, he’s just trying to get the kid to shut up and let him take care of his injuries before he stains the couch red.
“Satisfied?” Frank doesn’t wait for an answer, but he catches a curt nod. “Your back. You’re injured there, aren’t you?” A pause, and then another nod. The kid seems deep in thought, rather than spaced out, which is good news for the possibility of a concussion. “I’m fixing it. Right now.”
Frank throws the zip-up to the kid, movements slow and toss soft. He snatches it out of the air like a man possessed, reflexes moving faster than he would expect. It seems like the kid wasn’t expecting to move that fast either, based on the delayed reactions over what he just caught and wince as the motion pulls at his ribs.
Frank makes a point to turn around and walk over to the kitchen, busying himself with finding something for Spider-Boy to eat. He opens the cabinet to find —- is that another fucking gun? Wow, he has a poor choice in how to stock his safe houses.
Next to the gun, he finds exactly three mugs, a can of soup, a box of cereal, and a collection of protein bars. This, at least, is more edible than the gun. He pulls out a pot and starts making soup for himself and the kid, keeping the banging of metal on metal to a minimum so he can keep an ear out for the kid. He waits for the ignition on the stove to click three times before he turns the knob and looks at the kid.
Spider-Boy is still struggling with the zipper at the back of his suit, his one good shoulder not able to reach the bottom of the zipper. He’s still stubbornly trying to reach it, muscles pulling at every injury he’s managed to accrue.
“Kid,” he says, before tossing one of the chocolate protein bars in the kitchen directly in front of the kid’s face. He shifts to catch it with the same lightning fast reflexes as before, eyes pinned to the projectile. He’s so focused on the bar that he doesn’t notice Frank pull the zipper down for him as he crosses the room.
Spider-Boy looks at him funny again — alarmed, then confused, then alarmed at his own confusion — as Frank turns around to get the med kit.
“Um, you don’t need to grab any stitches, sir.”
The voice isn’t meek, but it still feels fragile and quiet. The button to call Red is looking real nice right now. It starts looking even nicer when the kid starts hacking, gasps of air following each series of coughs.
Frank lets out a few curse words he knows he probably shouldn’t be saying (but the kid’s been involved with gangs and traffickers and every other kind of not-so-family-friendly person, for fuck’s sake, he’s probably heard it all ten times over) as he goes back over to the kid. Frank has one hand keeping him upright and the other at the kid’s exposed back, watching as he finally stops sounding like he’s about to hack up a lung after what feels like hours.
“You okay now?” Frank asks with something that definitely isn’t genuine concern. He just doesn’t want to deal with the question of what to do with a dead vigilante, is all.
“ Peachy,” the kid says, because he obviously looks like the picture of perfect health. His face is fully pressed into the back of the couch, hands balls up around the hood of the jacket. Frank doesn’t know if the kid is refusing to meet his eyes out of emotion or because he can’t lift his head. He doesn’t feel like questioning it.
Instead, he diverts his attention to the open wound at Spider-Boy’s back. The wound is long, starting just to the right of his spine and ending just above the bone of the kid’s hip. Judging by the fact that the kid isn’t dead yet, Frank assumes that whatever knife was used didn’t hit any major organs. Still, it must hurt like a bitch.
Frank takes one hard look at the kid’s shoulder (which isn’t even slid into the hoodie, probably for good reason) and decides that that hurts more.
“Well, you’re going to feel even better in a second,” Frank says, stooping down to the kid’s level of sarcasm. He steps around the kid slowly, placing one hand by the kid’s collarbone and another around the kid’s forearm.
The kid has just enough time to turn his head before Frank pops his shoulder back into place.
Frank’s heard people scream over the sensation of it — himself included — but Frank’s confident that the lack of any noise whatsoever from the kid is worse. It’s clear that the kid tried to scream, but his voice broke in half at its center, leaving him silent with his fists balled into the hoodie.
“Sorry for not givin’ you a countdown,” Frank says, even though he isn’t sorry at all. He doesn’t even sound like he is, really. The kid doesn’t respond, so Frank moves to step away from the kid, only for him to latch onto his arm.
It’s a confusing shift, to say the least. Even when Frank tries to inch away again, the kid’s grip only tightens. It can’t feel good, considering how the kid is grabbing him with the arm Frank just wrenched back into its socket.
But after turning to look at the kid’s hood hand, he realizes it might feel better than the alternative. The kid’s nails are undoubtedly digging into the palm of his other hand, and judging by how tightly the kid is holding onto his arm (seriously, what even is this kid’s grip strength?), there are undoubtedly some kind of crescent moons being dug into his palm.
Frank’s head turns around the apartment, looking for literally any way to help him get out of the kid’s grip, to find Max laying by the front door. Frank whistles, sharp and clear, and Max’s head snaps up as he runs towards the couch. He sits obediently at the foot of the couch before Frank gestures for him to hop up on the couch.
“Kid, I think you might want to look at this,” Frank says, and Spider-Boy’s eyes immediately flash towards Max. Max, who’s laying patiently on the couch, tongue out, head tilted, looking expectantly up at the kid. Frank smiles ever so softly. Manipulative bastard.
The kid smiles, hand moving away from Frank’s arm to gently pet Max’s head. Frank runs a hand along Max’s back as a thank you as he stands up — he probably should have stocked this safe house with treats, now that he thinks about it.
His hands fiddle with the latches to open the med kit as he looks at the wound at the kid’s back. Only now does it occur to him that Spider-Boy had fully turned his exposed back on Frank this whole time. Judging by how the back of the couch is fully supporting the kid’s weight by now, it’s done more out of necessity than trust, but it still hits Frank harder than it should.
Fuck, he can’t kick this kid to curb, can he?
“I’m assuming you’ve got some magic power that makes you heal fast?” Frank only puts the needle and thread down once the kid nods. Judging by the fact that the protein bar is half-finished, Frank assumes his silence is a good thing.
“‘You born with ‘em?” It might be a bit of a personal question, sure, but Frank just popped the kid’s shoulder back into its socket. He thinks that they’re close enough at this point. Judging by how the kid almost immediately shakes his head (even considering how his face is still buried in the couch cushions), Frank was right.
The kid picks his head up, slowly, to meet Frank’s eyes. It’s the first time he’s been able to take a good, hard look at the kid’s face all night. In the yellow street-lamp light, Frank can see every tired line across his face, the red rims of his eyes, the way his jaw sets even as his eyes remain achingly soft. The kid flashes a smile, lips closed and eyes bright, and Frank — he doesn’t want to think it but he’s thinking it anyway — and he can’t be thinking that right now, but —
“Jus’ ‘got lucky, I guess.”
— it reminds him of Frank Jr. That kind, protective little menace of a kid was staring at him for a moment, with those same soft eyes, before Frank realized that they were the wrong color. Spider-Boy’s eyes were the wrong color, and Spider-Boy is bleeding on his couch, and Frank needs to help someone who isn’t already cold in the ground.
By the time Frank has the bandage secure, the kid’s fast asleep.
——-
Peter wakes up warm. There’s an odd weight over his calves, a sensation that tethers him to the earth through the pain radiating through his limbs. He turns his head slowly to find a dog at his legs, with its eyes firmly locked on Peter once he starts to move.
Peter’s first thought: sweet, there’s a dog in my apartment!
Peter’s second thought: how did a dog get into my apartment?
Peter’s third thought: shit, this isn’t my apartment.
His attempts to get up are thoroughly foiled by both the dog at his legs and every muscle in his abdomen deciding to abandon ship. They won’t cooperate with him whatsoever, each and every one seizing any time he tries to move.
“Look who decided to wake up,” says a voice that sounds suspiciously like Frank Castle, and oh shit, Peter — he — shit — he had a very wild night, to put it mildly. Judging by the fact that Castle is sitting in an armchair next to what is very clearly his own full-sized bed (a bed that Peter is currently lying in, with pillows propped up and everything), Castle may have had an even wilder one. One which included learning what Spider-Man looks like.
“What are you doing?” He asks, not knowing what he expects the answer to be.
“Monitoring for secondary drowning,” Castle says. Peter can safely say that that statement wasn’t in the list of words he would expect to come out of Frank Castle’s mouth. “Can you reach that?” Castle asks, jerking his chin over at the nightstand. On it, Peter finds a bottle of water, three red pills that Peter knows are extra-strength Tylenol, and a mug filled with cereal, spoon and all.
“Yeah,” Peter says, wondering if he woke up in some kind of alternate reality, “I can reach it.” He reaches over to the bottle of water just to prove it, taking a sip of the water without the pills. The movement makes him distinctly aware of the bandage at his back and the bag of frozen broccoli around his ribs, undoubtedly put there by Castle.
Castle pushes himself off of the armchair, joints cracking as he straightens up. “Don’t do anything stupid, Spider-Boy. You can leave whenever you want.”
And that — that can’t be true. Frank Castle, notorious serial killer/vigilante found Spider-Man alone and exposed in a basement and didn’t kidnap him? Patched him up and gave him Honey Nut Cheerios for breakfast? That can’t be real. Peter had avoided the Punishers territory for a reason, had heard stories of Double D being chained to a roof with a gun taped to his hand.
But here’s Frank Castle, with no gun on his hip and a bruise under his left eye that Peter knows he didn’t have when he fell asleep. Here’s Frank Castle petting a dog on the head as he stands in the doorframe.
“Mr. Castle,” Peter says, voice still jagged as he tries to project his voice. “My name’s Peter.”
Peter knows that he isn’t in an alternate universe when Frank Castle smirks. “Don’t do anything stupid, Peter.”