Archive of Our Own

There’s no such thing as a quiet night in Hell’s Kitchen.

To Matt’s ears, the streets roar even in the darkness: babies crying, couples fighting, television sets murmuring to the insomniacs. It’s a jungle of sound that he learned how to filter and use a long time ago.

He knows the signs he’s listening for now: how to pick out ill intent from that roaring tapestry. Growled conversations and heavy footfall and the soft click of the safety catch on a gun. Signs that scream out in the darkness if someone knows what to listen for.

Sometimes, it’s easier than that.

Sometimes, trouble finds him.

Matt is crouched on a rooftop, head tilted, just listening, when the crackle of a police radio filters through to him. He focuses in on it, finds the radio in the front of a cop car in the waiting hands of a bored young officer. Hard to tell at this distance if he’s one of the men in Fisk’s pocket or not.

“Be advised: large explosion reported at the old canning plant near the docks. Multiple casualties confirmed. Fire and rescue are on-site, ” the crackling voice calls from the radio. “Available units, respond to Metro-General for hospital security detail... ”

The cops in the car grumble while Matt tunes in for further details. “Baby-sitting, more like,” the officer complains. “Everyone knows that place is rotten, what’s the point?”

“Suspect identified as the vigilante known as ‘The Punisher’ has been extracted from the scene with serious injuries and transported to Metro-General.”

Matt moves almost before the radio has finished crackling its instructions. He can hear the energy changing in that police car, a wave of excitement rippling through the young officers, even as the knowledge of Frank, injured and in custody, starts to sink in for him.

“The Mayor has issued a direct order: do not allow the subject to leave without proper authorisation. Repeat: subject is to remain under armed guard until further notice.”

The Mayor. Fisk. His hands are still on every pulse in the city, squeezing down on any pressure point he can find. Matt knows that Fisk and Frank have a history of their own, but this feels personal - Fisk has to know that Matt won’t allow this to slip by without intervening. Matt knows a trap while he’s walking towards one.

But he owes Frank. He owes him a lot, actually, more than either of them would admit to aloud - from Frank’s help escaping from Fisk’s Task Force in his apartment to Frank’s support keeping Karen safe over the years. He knows, in his core, that a man like Frank belongs behind bars: dangerous, too dangerous, to be out in the public world. A menace and a challenge to the iron-clad moral code that Matt needs to live by to justify every time he’s worn the suit. But…

Yeah. ‘But.’

In Fisk’s New York, there’s no way Matt can leave someone like Frank to be thrown to the broken system, not when he can already hear half of the city’s cops rushing to the hospital just to catch a glimpse of their so-called hero. Charging over roof-tops, he won’t allow himself to think about the other words from the police dispatch. 

‘Serious injuries’. Frank has taken gun-shots and lost blood and broken bones and allowed himself to be torn apart in front of Matt. They both bear the scars from those fights. Through it all, blood and sweat and pain, Frank has seemed untouchable. An unstoppable force. Nothing has ever hit him hard enough to slow him down for more than a couple of hours, not even Matt.

For now, Matt only slows down when he gets close to the hospital again. It’s a location that’s layered with memories of its own: old fights, past wars, spilled blood. For now, he knows it’s where Frank will be getting whatever medical care they dare to give him.

Still in the suit, the tarnished red Frank likes to make fun of, he can’t easily walk through the front door, but there isn’t time to change into something less eye-catching. The cops are closing in, along with whatever enemy Frank charged at tonight - no doubt that whoever tried to kill the unkillable will be eager to finish the job too.

He listens, through the din in the ER and the crying of broken families at bedsides and the active operating rooms and the expected affairs in the staff rooms, all of it a ceaseless, irrelevant roar. Closing his eyes, he focuses: there’s something there. There’s always something there.

It’s almost too much, frustration crackling through his fists, before he finds it: the hook he needs.

“Frank Castle… no visitors. Full lockdown…” A woman’s voice. A doctor, maybe a nurse. It makes Matt long for Claire and the absence she left in her wake, always too good to be dragged into his madness. “Room 4.15. No one goes in there alone…. No one approaches the bed.”

He remembers that from last time. Tape on the floor, a warning not to get too close, like Frank was a feral dog ready to strike. It hadn’t worked back then. He doesn’t think it’ll work now either - but if Frank is injured, drugged and recovering, that makes him vulnerable. That makes him Matt’s problem for once, no matter how much Frank might argue otherwise.

Room 4.15. He can work with that.

He knows the routes through this hospital better than he’d want to admit at this point: his own blood has stained its floors. Finding the maintenance stairway, void of CCTV, and cracking open the lock is far easier than it should be. He hurries up the stairs, listening to the beacon of that doctor’s voice until he can get close enough to focus in on something more recognisable - a deep, steady heart-beat. Even layered under painkillers and sedation, Frank’s heart sticks out in a crowd.

Matt locks onto the sound as he reaches the fourth floor in the stairwell. The beat is a distraction from the rest of the hospital, the scents of medication and bodily fluids - and the memories that haunt these hallways are far more suffocating than the smell.

Fourth floor. Police guards are positioned liberally, guarding the doors. There are minimal medical staff around, likely for their own safety; Matt can’t help but wonder how viciously Frank fought against being brought here, no matter how injured he might’ve been.

Guards on the doors, but not the windows. The fourth-story isn’t an easy entry point for most people.

Matt isn’t most people.

He slides open the window in the stairwell and tilts his head to evaluate the distance: it’s tricky, but he’s done worse. There’s enough of a ledge to the windowsill that he thinks he can make it work.

He hauls himself up and throws the baton - the wire whistles in the air, and he flinches at the clank as the baton hits against the drainpipe and wraps around it.

And with the ghost of Foggy’s voice forever in his ears, calling him a reckless idiot from whatever place in his heart Foggy lives on in now, Matt launches himself out of the stairway window, relying on skill, blind luck, and swinging momentum to get him to where he needs.

He lands hard outside the window of Room 4.15. His bones jolt from the impact but his balance holds true. No time to process it anyway - there are no guards positioned inside the room, but he can hear two of them talking right outside the door.

Carefully, quietly, he eases the window up in its frame. The creaking and grinding sounds like thunder in his ears, but Frank’s guards aren’t so delicate. Like a burglar, he’s suddenly able to step into the hospital room.

His senses flood with context: police guards on the door talking gleefully about watching over the Frank Castle; fluorescent lights humming overhead; the steady beeping of a heart monitor and the quiet flow of painkillers through an IV along with the persistent drip of saline.

Frank’s heart rate. Steady. Resting. Pained.

“That you, Red?” The sentence is mumbled and lost under the layers of medication they’re pumping into him. Matt would put down good money on the odds that a lesser man would be out for the count - but not Frank Castle, force of nature. Human hurricane. “Shouldn’t be here.”

“Couldn’t let you have all the fun,” Matt says as he steps closer to the bed.

He can feel Frank’s injuries screaming at him through the air. The fresh cuts and neat stitches, the bloody wound wrapped in bandages around his knee, the smashed bone in his right arm still frantically clotting inside the temporary splint they’ve strapped on him.

The curdling scent of burned skin, tacky in the air. 

The smell of singed hair clings to Matt’s nose. There’s some kind of ointment that’s covered by bandages over Frank’s arms, something that hits Matt with the tang of strong medicine and antibacterial hope.

“How’m I looking, doc?” Frank slurs.

Matt doesn’t bother rolling his eyes. “Handsome as ever,” he suggests, and hears Frank snort around the oxygen tubing up his nose.

Matt comes close enough to his bedside to focus on the cuffs pinning Frank there, but they’re not going to be much of an issue. The problem, the real problem, is that he’d come here to rescue Frank - and now, he’s faced with something that’s far past a few stitches in a grimy safehouse. He’s not sure about the next move.

Try telling Frank that, though.

Frank rattles his wrist, the metal cuff chiming against the bedframe it’s attached to. “Hurry up, choir boy. We gotta go. ‘ssuming this isn’t a social call.”

Matt tilts his head, contenting himself in the knowledge that the cops haven’t so much as glanced through the window set into the door yet. They still have time. “You’re hurt, Frank. You’re really hurt.”

“Been hurt before.” The rattle of the cuff is more insistent this time - and Matt is sure Frank should be screaming, moving his broken arm like that. “You leave me here, be more than hurt.”

Frank needs real medical care: he needs medicine and doctors and industrial-strength painkillers.

He also needs to get the hell away from Fisk’s Task Force, and from whatever gangsters he’s probably pissed off enough to want to come and finish the job.

Frank starts trying to push himself upright in the hospital bed, and Matt can hear the straining of his stitches, all the doctors’ work just to try to hold this dumbass together in one piece. “C’mon, Red,” Frank whines. Actually whines. “Lemme come out and play.” There’s a breath of laughter, too rough and raw to be a giggle but as close as the damn Punisher can get to one.

“They’ve got you on the good stuff,” Matt observes. He turns his attention to the wires and IVs snaking into Frank’s body, trying to make sense of them.

Frank gives a heavy sigh. “Tried to bite someone,” he says, like that explains everything.

Honestly, it kind of does.

“If I untie you, are you going to bite me next?” Matt asks with a twist of a smirk on his face.

It’s nothing compared to the doped-out grin on Frank’s face in response. Matt can hear it in every word. “Only if you ask real nice, sweetheart,” he leers.

Fuck. Frank is out of it.

He’s drugged out of his mind, trapped in a hospital of hostiles, and the one thing standing between him and freedom is Matt. Fuck it, Matt thinks. He’ll figure something out. Find someone who can help. Anything is better than leaving Frank in a hospital bed while he’s so medicated he’s laughing to himself and making dumbass comments. They’ll make this work.

“Take it easy,” he warns Frank as he works on the restraints - police-issue handcuffs rather than soft medical restraints. The cops might worship Frank these days, but after his escape from their fucked-up cages they’re not complete morons either. Unluckily for the Task Force, the cuffs are easy to pick, Matt’s head tilting to the side as he slips a tool into the lock and fiddles with it.

“Dickheads took my guns,” Frank mumbles. “Vest too.”

Matt can’t be sure, but he thinks this is the Frank Castle version of whining. He should possibly be recording it for posterity. Instead he turns the metal in his hand until he feels the satisfying click as Frank’s cuff unlocks. His wrist slips free; there are little scabs around his wrist where he’d fought too hard against the metal. It’s lost in the jungle of burns and wounds but Matt’s heart pangs when his fingers graze against the marks. He wishes he’d got here sooner.

The second cuff is just as easy. The logistics of getting Frank out of here? That’s something else.

Matt had imagined Frank would be a little more mobile than he is. Now, getting them both out of here is going to hurt. As he thinks it over, he finds the buttons on the heart monitor and quietly turns them off, ceases the endless beeping, silencing the alarm. He mumbles an apology and starts to unhook the oxygen cannula from Frank’s nose and remove the lines running into Frank’s arm. It’s like unwiring a machine. The whole time, Matt’s mind keeps running through the next steps.

There’s the door. Cops on guard right outside, even more In the hallway. More guns, more innocent by-standers. If he had been by himself, Matt might have attempted it. With Frank, it feels risky.

Then there’s the other option. The open window. It would have been tricky with Frank at full health and it’s trickier still with him like this, but Matt thinks their odds might be better off that way than fighting their way out through an army of cops.

“Red,” Frank mumbles, trying ineffectively to get himself out of bed now that he’s uncuffed. His injured leg doesn’t want to respond. “You’re gonna throw me out the window, aren’t you?” Every word’s a slurred mess.

Matt gives a half-shrug. “Thinking about it,” he confesses. “I’ll be gentle.”

Frank snorts again. “You get that little look on your face when you’re thinkin’ ‘bout doing somethin’ stupid,” he mumbles. “You got it now.” Luckily for Frank, Matt is more or less immune to insults from him by now. He doesn’t respond to it, just grabs Frank’s arm as gently as he can in the circumstances and weaves it over his shoulders. He’s immune to insults, sure. He’s still not quite prepared for what comes next. “’s cute,” Frank mumbles into his ear as they heave him off of the bed.

Matt has super-hearing. He’s still going to claim he didn’t hear a word.

“We’ve done this before. My apartment, remember? This’ll be easy.”

“Different,” Frank mutters. “Bones weren’t broken.”

He’s got a point, but it would be more helpful if he wouldn’t make it right at the moment Matt is trying to convince himself that he can make this work. With his injured leg, it’s very quickly clear Frank won’t be able to put any weight on it, never mind walking - so Matt holds Frank firmly around the waist, Frank’s arm draped over his shoulder, and together they half-drag him towards the open window. The angle is messy and it’s going to hurt, but they can make it work. With increasing footsteps and activity outside, their time might be running out.

“Do you trust me?” he asks Frank.

The answer is a huff of air through Frank’s nose. “That’s complicated,” he breathes like it’s the punchline of a joke.

It’s as close as they’re getting. As Matt hears the heavy sound of authoritative footsteps coming down the stairs and the bark of commands asking why nobody has eyes on Frank Castle, he knows they’re out of time.

His arm clenches around Frank and he grabs for the batons strapped to his thigh, offering up a prayer that the wire within will hold, that this plan isn’t as suicidal as it seems, that he might in some way get Frank out of here.

“Let’s go, pretty boy,” Frank mumbles - and Matt makes the leap.

*

It’s 5am by the time they make it back to his apartment.

It’s a temporary place, his old one blown to ash. Frank had been there to witness that destruction too: Matt desperately hopes that that’s not an omen.

There’s sweat on Frank’s brow, his temperature raised worryingly high, and his snarky mumbles have descended into incoherent muttering by the time Matt lays him down against the silk sheets of his bed. Matt’s muscles are aching. He can’t imagine the pain Frank must be in through the haze.

He sits on the side of the bed once Frank is down, and takes a breath: it’s a second to take stock. Frank is out of immediate danger, Fisk’s Task Force and his enemies no longer breathing down his neck, but there’s worse to come if Matt doesn’t find a way to tend to these wounds and keep him safe from what’s already been done to him.

Matt can stitch and clean a wound but this is all far, far beyond that. It needs more than Frank’s ‘duct tape it together, it’ll be like it’s brand new’ philosophy as well.

Matt nods to himself as he comes to the conclusion: he’ll need help.

The metaphorical black book of his contacts is dwindling these days, but he knows in his core the one person he could call. He’d swore off of this long before he hung up the mask for the first time, back when she’d told him she wasn’t facilitating his madness any more. But this isn’t his madness any more, is it? He’s just not sure if Claire will make that distinction, not for Frank Castle of all people.

He stands up from the bed - and Frank grabs him, not as out of it as he seems. “No Karen,” he wheezes. His hand is big where it wraps around Matt’s wrist, but the grip behind it is weak. Barely holding it together. “Worried her ‘nough already.”

Matt understands that all too well. “You and me both, buddy,” he assures him, a pat on the back of Frank’s hand that seems to be enough to encourage him to let go.

Frank’s hand falls slack against the bed and he takes a second, catching his heavy breaths. “I got a friend,” he breathes.

“Seems unlikely.”

“Asshole,” Frank answers, a weary smirk on his face. Matt holds back his own in response: he can’t truly smile, not when he’s tuned into the thick, pained beats of Frank’s heart. “He’ll help. You find him, he’ll help. Curt. Curtis Hoyle.”

It’s strange to think of ‘The Punisher’ having friends. Having a life outside the rage he brings to their every encounter. Something in Matt’s heart finds it soothing to know that for all the fire Frank carries with him, maybe he isn’t as alone as he seems.

“Get some rest, Frank,” Matt murmurs. “I’ll find him.”

When he says it, it sounds like a vow.

*

Tracking Curtis down in the middle of the night isn’t all that difficult, as it turns out.

Persuading him to trust the vigilante that turns up on his doorstep demanding his help? That’s the harder part. Matt’s surprised he made it out of the encounter without testing just how bulletproof the suit is, again.

He can see why the two of them are friends.

There’s something unsettlingly vulnerable about bringing Curtis back to his apartment - lines of his identity crossing, bleeding into one ugly mess, but Curtis has been all-business since Matt managed to explain that Frank needed help. He doesn’t look as though he’s really even registering the apartment they’re in, has barely even asked for many details, just charging over to Frank with his med kit in hand and then swearing (repeatedly, graphically) under his breath at this sight of him.

“I’m not getting paid enough for this,” Curtis mutters as he settles down at Frank’s bedside.

“Not gettin’ paid at all,” Frank wheezes.

“You should be sleeping,” Curtis scolds him, checking his vitals with all the efficiency of a field medic. Matt lingers in the doorway, half-way out of the room, and wonders if he ought to leave them to it entirely - just let Curtis take over and do his best to repair the wreck that Matt dragged out of the hospital. “No. You should be unconscious. Or screaming.”

“Red found you?” Frank mumbles like he doesn’t hear Curtis at all. “Knew he would. He’s good.” He pauses, then scrambles to catch Curtis’s wrist where he’s starting to try to get a better look at the burns on Frank’s arms. “He’s good,” he repeats like it’s a prayer, and it's the clearest thing Matt has heard from him in all the recent rambling mutters and mumbles.

“I know, Frank,” Curtis says quietly, easing Frank’s hand back down. “I know.”

“Got me out of there. Could’ve let me rot,” Frank continues feverishly, breathless, whispering the words to the darkness rather than any true listeners. “He’s such a goddamn asshole.”

“Sounds like someone I know,” Curtis answers impassively as he pulls something out of his kit.

“Nah. You don’t get it.” Frank’s words are dying off now, quieter and quieter. “He’s something else, Curt.”

Matt really does leave them after that, as something gnaws at the centre of his chest over those words - like a confession he was never supposed to hear. Words not meant for his ears. He can handle Frank’s barbs and insults and the endless rants and bickering like it’s an Olympic sport, but there’s something in that soft confession that feels like so much more than that.

He heads into the kitchen and finds himself at a loss in his own home. Through in the bedroom he can hear the sound of Curtis working, Frank still trying to talk, but he softens his focus as much as he can, drawing on old training and mental resolve. It’s like a door gently closing in his face, or the soft hush of a sunset outside the city.

It takes a long while, but eventually Curtis leaves the bedroom and joins Matt in the kitchen. He washes his bloody hands in the sink and Matt can feel the tension lingering in his shoulders like an elastic band pulled tight.

“You got him out fast, but he should be in hospital,” Curtis sighs eventually. He leans against the kitchen counter and Matt feels Curtis’s gaze on him: calm, analytical, skeptical. Matt’s taken off the Devil mask but the rest of the suit is still on. No hiding who he is or how Frank knows him. For some reason, Curtis doesn’t even ask about it. With Frank’s friendship, maybe he’s already seen far worse. “I’ve done what I can. It’s gonna have to be enough. Give me some time tomorrow, I can get some medication for him - antibiotics, ointment for the burns. Max strength painkillers. He’s gonna need it.”

“Thank you.” It’s really not enough, but it’s all that Matt can offer. “We’ll take whatever you can get.”

“The main thing he needs now is rest. He’s got a broken arm, some nasty shrapnel they cut out of his leg, and enough burns on his arms that he should be screaming.”

“And he’s still going to try and leave the second he wakes up tomorrow,” Matt sighs, arriving at the exact same conclusion as Curtis.

Curtis’s gaze doesn’t move from Matt’s face. “Frank doesn’t trust a lot of people. For some reason, he trusts you, or he wouldn’t have let you bring me here.” As soon as Curtis says it, Matt feels the weight of that responsibility settling heavy on his shoulders - for the first time, he wonders if he’s found himself in that short list of people Frank considers a ‘friend’. “So if he tries to leave, I’m trusting you too: I’m trusting you to keep his ass in that bed until he’s well enough to walk without crashing into a wall.”

It’s enough to make Matt smirk. “I’ll do what I can,” he promises.

He can already tell it’s going to be one hell of a task.

*

Matt sleeps fitfully on the couch throughout the morning sunrise - and wakes to the sound of Frank and Curtis arguing.

He pushes himself upright and is in the bedroom doorway just in time to find Curtis trying to push Frank back into the bed at the same time as Frank is trying to push Curtis away from it. It’s a messy, juvenile shoving match, and the fact that Frank is losing is probably testament to just how much recovery still awaits him.

“Don’t make me fight you, Curt,” Frank rasps. “You really think I’m gonna sit on my ass all day?”

“Do I think the guy who just survived an explosion is going to spend more than four hours in bed recovering? Yeah, Frank. Yeah, I do.”

They’re bristling at each other, about to resort to another shoving match, when Matt quietly clears his throat. He leans in the doorway and crosses his arm over his chest - and he’s not saying anything about it in so many words, but he hopes his presence gets it across: if Frank wants to fight his way out of here, he’s not just fighting Curtis. He’s fighting Matt too.

Matt feels it, the way Frank looks at him. Anger and frustration and something else all at once.

“Here to gloat?” Frank ends up snapping. “Alright, well done, you did the hero shtick again and got me out of there. I owe you one. Happy now?”

“Not really.” Matt can’t stare Frank down, not exactly, but he can stand there entirely unaffected by the death glare that Frank is throwing his way. “I’ll be happier when you take your meds and get back into bed. Properly.”

“Really?” Frank says in burning disbelief. “You too. You think I should just hole up in your bullshit little apartment and hide ‘til this all goes away?”

Matt pushes himself away from the doorframe, hands returning to his hips. “Exactly,” Matt says, ignoring every drop of sarcasm Frank injected into his words. “You stay here. Recover somewhere that isn’t your bunker, covered in germs. Curtis can check in on you. And I’ll handle the last of the loose ends from your failed explosion.”

“My explosion? Failed? Don’t start your shit, Red, I ain’t got time for it today,” Frank complains. He’s shoving at Curtis to get him out of the way - shoving with only his left arm, Matt notes. At least he isn’t trying to move the broken one with its splint held together by hope alone. “This is nothing. I got the pain meds, I can move, it’s fine.”

At this point, Matt is already tired of the debate. He takes a couple of steps over to the bed, dodges easily past a swinging fist, and then reaches out - not taking a shot of his own, but just letting a couple of fingertips drag gently over the top of a couple of the bandages on Frank’s arm.

The effect is immediate.

A roar of pain, Frank crashing out onto the mattress again, face screwed up as he pants for air. There’s a split second where Matt thinks he feels guilty, but with Frank all the arguing in the world isn’t going to work; showing how anyone could put him down in a couple of seconds, maybe that’s going to sink in better.

“You made your point,” Frank snaps when he stops groaning, his voice as sharp as a wounded, snarling dog. He stays panting on the bed, sweat on his brow. Bandaged to hell and back, his right arm still in a splint with a messy break lurking beneath his skin. “A couple of days. That’s all I’m staying.”

Matt nods and backs off a couple of steps. Satisfied. “Great. I’ll stock up on chicken soup,” he says as he heads back for the door again, as if he hadn’t just popped through here in the same soft t-shirt and sweatpants he slept in to briefly torture Frank and then go make coffee.

As he leaves, he hears a snort from Curtis. “I can see why you like him so much.”

“I’m going to kill you both,” Frank growls. Knowing Frank, it might not be an empty threat.

*

Matt doesn’t hover more than he has to - he knows Frank well enough to know he wouldn’t appreciate it, so he buries his worries down deep and focuses on the practicalities.

The gang Frank had been investigating. The explosion.

Frank had been onto something big, that much is clear. Matt takes his time as he starts looking into it, piecing together clues from the edges of a crime scene where he isn’t supposed to linger. Surviving threads. There’s a hint that Frank was never the target of this at all - that the explosion had been aiming to take out one entire crime syndicate all in one place, and they just hadn’t accounted for the added confusion of The Punisher deciding to add himself to the mix.

Taking out a crime family. No wonder Fisk had been so interested.

He starts following the threads backwards - it’s not difficult. There’s a lot of worried people out there, panicking for their lives after they messed up this operation so bad. That means a lot of whispered conversations, a lot of back-room deals, and a lot of people willing to squeal with just the right amount of added pressure.

Daredevil is making progress.

By the time he makes it back to his apartment and out of the suit, his knuckles are scraped raw despite the protective gloves. His shoulders ache, but he knows he’s getting close. Touching down on the roof, inside he can hear the faint sound of Curtis snoring on his couch, a whistling sound from his nose. Curtis is sprawled on his front, hand hanging down to drag on the ground. His med kit is open in front of him, along with what looks like the contents of an entire pharmacy. It seems as though Curtis managed to get the prescription hook-up he needed.

Matt passes him by and checks on the bedroom: the steady sound of Frank’s breathing, the faint hiss of pain when he moves, the calm, heavy beating of his heart. Matt can smell the medicated ointment in the air, but no infection, and no fresh blood. Curtis is one hell of a medic. He tilts his head to pick up more details, seeking an unspoken confirmation that Frank really is fine - and then he hears a sigh that’s half-way to a chuckle.

“I know you’re blind and all, Red, but it really feels like you’re watching me sleep,” Frank rumbles. His voice sounds a little sharper than it had this time yesterday, like he’s losing some of the fuzzy edges. “You okay?”

The man with scorched skin and a broken arm is asking him if he’s okay. Figures. Matt flexes his fingers and wills the stubborn ache away. “Yeah. Nothing dramatic. How about you?”

“Nothing dramatic,” Frank agrees, before he barks with laughter because even he can’t get away with a lie that big. “Curt says the burns aren’t that bad. Barely even second-degree. Superficial. But the break’s a bitch. Gonna be shooting with my left hand for a while.”

“Something tells me that won’t slow you down.” Matt comes into the bedroom, closing the door behind him so that they can speak without waking Curtis. It’s his own bedroom, but he feels like a guest. An invader. He hovers near the end of the bed, wishing there was something he could do with his hands. “But maybe it should.”

He feels it in the air when Frank rolls his eyes at him. That low-down chest-deep scoff, and Matt hears it triggering a creak in fractured ribs. Frank doesn’t even flinch. “You break me out of hospital just to tell me I should be locked up? Figures,” Frank says. “Guess I’m overdue for my annual lecture on morality from the guy who beats up ‘bad guys’ for fun.”

“I was going to suggest you stay here for a few more days,” Matt cuts in before Frank can really build up steam. “Long enough to get through the worst of it. You know it doesn’t matter if anyone comes looking for you here. Even Petrov and his men. I can handle it.”

Frank groans and pushes his head back against the pillow. “Fucking Petrov,” he mutters. “You really are digging into it.”

“I’m good at what I do, Frank,” Matt states. It’s not boasting. He doesn’t even think it’s over-confidence. He’s been behind the mask for a long time; he’s broken up an endless string of small-time crime rings in this city, like a recurring infection that doesn’t know how to quit. Whatever Frank’s mixed up in now, Matt can handle it. “So let me do this.”

“You want me to lie around in bed while you’re out there doing a half-ass job like usual, that it?” Frank seems determined to find something to be angry about, and Matt can see him scrambling in real time. “Put my feet up so you can hover at the end of the bed and play nurse-maid?”

Matt tilts his head to the side. “You did say I was ‘cute’ last night. Maybe nurse-maid isn’t too far off,” he says, biting back his smirk of satisfaction when Frank groans in frustration again. He leaves the end of the bed and steps closer until he can sit down beside Frank, the mattress dipping gently under his weight. “It’s an offer, Frank. A real one. I’m not trying to trick you, or trap you here, or whatever you’re thinking right now.” 

He frowns as he tries to think it through: what is he trying to do? Why is he trying to persuade Frank to stay here?

In the end, he offers the only explanation he can, though it’s halting. Uncertain. “I don’t like the thought of you going out there again,” he admits. “Not until you’re really able to defend yourself. I know you don’t need my protection. I’m not offering that. I’m offering…” He gestures around at a room that still doesn’t feel like home, at an apartment that feels hollow. “A space. Safety, or as much as men like us can expect. You don’t have to take it. But I hope you do.”

He feels it as Frank wets his lips in response, and he’s expecting return fire: maybe one of Frank’s trademark rants, digging into his morality and hypocrisy and calling him out for every single decision he ever made. What he gets is a shrug that drags against the clean sheets. “Yeah,” Frank grumbles. “Guess I’m not in a hurry to get anywhere else.”

The relief hits him in the chest like a gunshot, old scars itching, as Matt smiles unwillingly and nods. Something in him unlocks as he realises that Frank is actually going to stay here, is actually going to let himself be cared for - he might even heal before he tries to throw himself into the next fire.

Frank grunts at the sight of Matt’s relief. “Quit it,” he rasps, “Or I’ll change my mind.”

Matt doesn’t think he’s exaggerating, but it’s not worth the argument. “Fine,” he agrees. “Is there anything else you need? Curtis managed to get his hands on the meds you needed?”

“Yeah, he’s giving me pills,” Frank complains, “Watching me take them too.”

“He knows you.”

“He’s a pain in my ass,” Frank insists - and there’s something in his tone, the warmth under his grumbling, that makes Matt’s face start to heat. He’s sure he’s heard Frank use that tone about him too. “You need some decent coffee in this place. And something to read that isn’t just braille, what the hell, Red?”

“Why would I have books I can’t read in my apartment?”

“For when you’ve got a bored-ass guest held captive here? What am I supposed to do all day, stare at the ceiling and just hope you get home soon? Wistfully sigh at the damn window?”

Matt’s smiling now. He doesn’t want to be, doesn’t mean to be, but he’s smiling. “Fine,” he promises, “I’ll get you some books. Any specific requests?”

“Something good,” Frank says. He seems like he’s done, before he adds, “...I like the classics. Something weighty, you know.”

“Something you can throw at my head and leave a dent?”

“If I want to leave a mark, I’ve got enough here to do it,” Frank says - and it’s supposed to be a threat, but for a moment it sounds like a promise.

Sitting at Frank’s bedside, inches between them, Matt soaks in the heat that he can feel coming off of him; the steady weight of Frank’s presence in his bed, bandaged and broken but somehow still awake enough to snark at him like it’s his job. Twenty-four hours ago, Frank’s stuttering heart-beat had been telling a different story.

Matt reaches out before he thinks about it - he finds Frank’s hand, the one spot that isn’t bandaged or burned or injured. The one part of him that’s still safe.

Matt closes his hand over Frank’s and lets it stay there for a moment. Feels the heat of Frank beneath him, the worn calluses of his palm, the way Frank’s thumb traces back-and-forth against Matt’s fingers like it’s an instinctive response to a gentle touch. He can feel Frank’s questioning gaze on him, but he doesn’t have an answer for him. He really doesn’t.

“I’m glad you’re okay, Frank,” he admits, a broken rasp in his voice that he tries to remove as he clears his throat. “Things would be a lot duller without you around.”

He lets Frank go and backs towards the closed door as if he really has tasks to get on with at three in the morning. 

“I’ll see what I can do about those books,” he promises, with only a grunt from Frank in return.

It feels like a retreat as he leaves the room and it very possibly is one - but he doesn’t stop thinking about the heat of Frank’s palm for the rest of the night.

*

The next morning, Curtis says that he has to leave - something about a group he runs, something about checking in again that evening. He leaves Matt with a long list of instructions, most of which seem to boil down to “if Frank’s being an asshole, call me”.

In his bedroom, Matt can hear Frank sleeping. Tossing and turning. It’s still early morning, but Matt would put down money that this counts as a lie-in for someone like Frank. He doesn’t seem like someone who can stay underneath the sheets for hours at a time, luxuriating in it - unluckily for Frank, this isn’t luxury. It’s pain and recovery. The fire of an explosion and the break of the debris. Knitting his skin back together under Matt’s watch.

But first Frank had some requests. If Matt’s quick he can get this settled before Frank even wakes up.

It takes less than an hour before he’s back, ‘good’ coffee brewing in the kitchen. A stack of second-hand books on the counter. The smell of the books takes him back to long days in the Law Library at Columbia, some of the texts in that place already older than him, the pages brittle underneath his fingers as he flicked through pages he couldn’t read, before Foggy’s voice would read out the passages he needed - a workaround for the slow services tracking down the versions he could actually use. For once, hearing the echo of Foggy’s voice doesn’t hurt.

The coffee is half-way brewed when he starts to hear shuffling from the bedroom. Bare feet on the wooden floors. Hissing and swearing as Frank tries to lever himself up from the bed.

“You’d better not be trying to come through here,” Matt calls. He abandons the empty mugs on the counter to make his way over to the bedroom door. When he opens it, he can sense Frank sitting on the edge of the bed, trying to catch his breath just from the effort of sitting up. Curtis has left him with a sling to hold his right arm steady against his chest, but the rest of him is clearly still aching. “What happened to ‘bed rest’? Doctor’s orders?”

“Curt ain’t a doctor,” Frank grumbles.

Matt steps into the room a little more, just a couple of steps. “What do you need, Frank? I’ll get it for you.”

“I need to get out of this goddamn bed. Don’t need you fetching stuff for me all day.”

Matt knows that Frank expects him to argue with him - so he shrugs and walks out instead, enjoying the confused grunt of silence that he gets in response. Truthfully, he doesn’t go far, just grabbing the weightiest book from the top of the pile in the kitchen.

When he returns to the bedroom and throws it onto Frank’s bed, it lands with a satisfying thud . “Entertainment,” Matt says. “I’m making coffee. Then I’ll bring you breakfast. Read your book, Castle.”

There’s a weighted moment, something heavy, as Frank frowns down at the book sitting beside him. “You got this for me?”

“Got a couple of others too. Just in case you’ve read that one already.” There’s a whole pile, actually, but admitting that suddenly feels like it might be too much.

“Nah, it’s fine. I can read it again.” Frank’s picking up the book, cradling it in his left hand while the right arm is still carefully captured in its sling. He rests the book on his knees and flicks through the faded pages, the scents of old paper and long-gone readers finding their way to Matt’s nose. “Didn’t need to go to all this effort.”

“Shut up and get into bed,” Matt says, warm despite the words. “You know, you have a real problem with people taking care of you?”

It makes Frank snort air. “Says the man who once fought his way out of his apartment with a bullet in his shoulder.”

Matt shrugs. “Nothing wrong with a little hypocrisy,” he claims, then nods definitively. “Get into bed. I’ll bring you some coffee - and the other books. You can find one you haven’t read yet.”

For once, Frank doesn’t actually argue with him. As Matt walks back to the kitchen, he can hear Frank groaning in barely-restrained pain as he heaves himself back into bed, leaving the sheets splayed in disarray around him. Matt keeps an absent-minded tab on him as he finishes up making their coffee, so he’s painfully aware of the way that Frank holds the book against his bandaged chest, letting it rest there as his breathing settles.

He brings Frank his coffee in a large mug, fixed up the way he remembers Frank likes it, and deposits a reasonable pile of reading material on the bedside table beside it. “Let me know if you need something different,” he offers. “There’s a used book store not far from here. I can drop by.”

Frank answers with a grunt. Matt can feel the unease radiating from him, and decides that this isn’t the moment to push him. He’s planning on leaving, retreating back to the kitchen, when Frank’s left hand reaches out for him. It wraps around his wrist, Frank’s thumb resting gently over his pulse.

“You didn’t have to do all this,” Frank says. Matt can feel Frank’s gaze on his face, looking hungrily at him, so he keeps his head tilted right where Frank can see him - he gives him what he wants, no expectations, no promises. “It’s more than I need.”

“Just a couple of books. Just coffee.” Even as he says it, Matt knows that it’s a whole lot more.

Frank’s hand is still around his wrist, astoundingly gentle. His gaze is still searching for meaning in Matt’s expression.

“You want me to read through here too?” Matt offers, impossibly. He’s got leads to follow up and work to do, but when Frank grunts like it doesn’t matter while his grip on Matt’s wrist tightens a fraction, Matt knows there’s no other option.

He settles in for the day.

*

It turns out that ‘reading with Frank’ mostly means Frank slipping in and out of sleep, sometimes losing his place in the pages, sometimes dropping the book altogether as he starts to slip. Matt doesn’t comment on it, even on the occasions that he hears Frank’s breathing level out and the pages sliding between his slack grasp.

Matt makes himself comfortable in a chair to the side of the room, genuinely reading at first, but then fetching his laptop so that he can look into the case in more detail while Frank rests. From the headphones in Matt’s ears, his screenreader lists off details from recent news articles about the Russian mob in New York City - new players in town eager to make their mark. Petrov and his brothers, apparently. Reading between the lines, they’re new imports landing with a splash and immediately upsetting the delicate balance that Fisk has established with the major crime players in the city.

Matt leans back, the screenreader still talking away, and he tries to balance that against what he already knows from hitting the streets.

Frank had been tracking down Petrov and his crew, delivering his own brand of justice (something Matt won’t think about, can’t think about, or he’ll start to question who the man softly snoring in his bed with his open book actually is all over again).

There had been an explosion strong enough that it should have taken out a handful of people in one room of the building. Thanks to Frank getting there first, everyone had converged on his location, every single person strong enough to throw a fist or hold or a gun rushing towards him. Frank had been a wild-card nobody had expected, a factor that changed everything too late.

The explosion hadn’t been intended for Frank. It had been meant for the crime family themselves, a warning shot that had turned into something far more deadly.

Somewhere, disconnected through a dozen backroom deals, Matt would bet Fisk is the one pulling the strings - but someone more immediately touchable is the one behind the explosion itself. And if he can find out who that was, which family, he can bring them to justice.

He’s snapped out of the train of thought by Frank clicking his fingers on his left hand. “Space boy,” he demands. “You dreaming?”

Matt removes the headphones from his ears and shakes his head, claiming to have been miles away - because, yes, he knows he could run this past Frank. He could lay out his theories, maybe get some insights from the research that Frank has done already. Frank’s brutal, but he knows what he’s doing; if he had crashed that meeting a couple of nights ago, Matt knows it’s because he’s already done all the necessary research.

He also knows that, if he brings it up, Frank will want to be involved. He’ll heave his broken, burned, aching body out of that bed, hold himself together with rage and duct tape and sheer power of will, and insist that he can mow them down single-handedly.

Like hell Matt’s letting that happen.

He smiles instead, burying down every thought he’s had about it as he puts his laptop aside. “Ready for lunch?” he asks.

*

The rest of the day passes much the same way. Research. Taking care of Frank, at least as much as Frank will allow. Following Curtis’s instructions around changing bandages and keeping Frank on his regimen of antibiotics and painkillers.

Matt cooks for them both, with Frank calling through to him hoarse-voiced from the bedroom with a mixture of complaints and cooking advice. It could have been annoying - but Matt’s realised that this is just how Frank communicates now. Complaining to show that he can. Picking fights to hear Matt fight back.

The worst part is that it’s fun. There’s a smile on his face as he’s chopping vegetables and listening to Frank telling him the oil in his pan is already too hot.

What’s going on? he thinks, but it only lasts a second before it’s lost in the sound of Frank’s next pointer.

When Curtis makes it back to check in on Frank later that evening, finding cleared plates and a stack of books and Frank with clean bandages and clear eyes, there’s a smirk in his voice when he says, “This is cosy.”

Matt’s pretending not to overheard any implications in that particular tone.

He leaves them to it, letting Frank and Curtis catch up, hearing the sound of Curtis’s firm questions and examination. He tries to give them privacy - the same focus as when he’s in hospital, carefully restricting his focus to what he’s currently doing. Washing dishes. Water in the sink. Soap on his hands. Drip from the tap.

“ ... So. Matt,” drifts through to him anyway.

He tries to pin it down even more. He can’t hear this. He can’t.

“Don’t start your shit, Curt.”

“I’m not saying anything.”

“You’re not saying a lot.”

“I’m saying you better be grateful. Get that man a damn fruit basket the size of a planet.”

“Yeah, yeah. He’s a saint.”

“Sounds like you mean that. I mean it too: whatever’s going on here, don’t push him away because you wanna be an asshole.”

“I’m not. He’s just… He’s different, alright. He’s not like me. Leave it at that.”

Matt slams the tap as hard as he can so that the sound of rushing water gives him something new to help drown out that quiet conversation. By the time Curtis has finished examining Frank, Matt has set the whole kitchen back to order and is trying to find something else to do to keep his mind and ears busy.

“He’s doing good,” Curtis observes when he’s getting ready to leave for the night. “Actually resting. Don’t want to say you’re a miracle worker but it might be something like that.”

Matt struggles to laugh it off. The air feels too close in here, too warm. “Must be the painkillers you got him,” he says. “Something tells me it’s the strong stuff.”

“Yeah,” Curtis responds thoughtfully. Matt can feel the prickling weight of his gaze on his face: examining, interpreting. “Must be that.”

Curtis picks up his gear and mutters something about going home to sleep in his own damn bed. Matt can’t exactly blame him for that - after a couple of nights on the couch, he’s feeling the strain too.

“Frank’s going to want to start wandering around soon, I know that asshole,” Curtis says. “You think you can stop him?”

“I think I can try,” Matt suggests.

“Yeah. That’ll do it,” Curtis agrees with all the easy faith in the world.

There’s that feeling again: too warm, too strong, too much. Matt breathes through it, and lets Curtis leave.

It’s just him and Frank again.

He’s not sure when that started feeling dangerous.

*

He hits the streets again that night, red suit back on, face hidden firmly behind the mask, and he’s never been so glad for a chance to use his fists.

It’s easy. Simple in a way he thinks he should be ashamed of. Heart pumping. Blood up. Feeling the smirk on his lips as he wrings confessions out of the very people that had tried to get Frank killed.

There’s a simple, silver thread that he follows: instructions, suppliers, rumours. His fists are aching before a couple of hours have passed, but soon enough he has a name and a location. Rasuga. Italian. A hideout buried in a near-abandoned slum. Apparently he’s keeping his head down until the heat fades. He probably didn’t count on The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen picking up the investigation after his too-strong explosive took out an entire factory, half of Petrov’s men, and caught the Punisher in the blast.

Matt can pick up the panic in his heart-beat from the second he enters the building. Rasuga is a man built for hiding behind his toys: his weapons, his bombs, his inventions. Matt enters the broken-down room he’s hiding in and hears a whimper as Rasuga first catches sight of him looking like a demon here for payback.

What follows barely even counts as a fight.

It’s a scramble, one messy punch clocking Matt in the jaw because he’s too distracted to block it - he picks Rasuga up by the front of his shirt and pushes him back, letting their combined momentum carry them until the wannabe-mobster’s body slams into the wall.

Matt feels it. The Devil in his blood. The darkness that reminds him of Frank still healing back in his apartment, burned and broken and once nearly killed by this asshole’s mistakes. He feels it screaming at him as he pulls Rasuga away from the wall and slams him back again. Hears the creak in his bones. The thump of his head against concrete.

“The explosion,” he rasps. “That was you.”

The words he gets in response are nonsense, a mix of cusses and threats and pain. He punches Rasuga then, feels the righteous ache in his knuckles as he drags him back into place. There’s blood on the air.

Matt’s explaining it for him now. “It was supposed to be a warning shot. Something to tell Petrov to stay in line. No new players welcome, right?” It’s technically a question, but when Rasuga starts to answer it’s all Matt can do not to growl. “But it got out of hand. Or maybe you got a little overexcited at the chance to use the stash you’d been building.”

“It was the timing, man. I swear, I didn’t mean it. I didn’t think it would be that bad, I didn’t think there’d be so many of them,” Rasuga whines, flinching at air as soon as Matt tilts his head. “It was a mistake. A stupid mistake.”

“Your mistake got people killed.” And Frank, his thoughts surge and swell as the rage wants so desperately to take over, You hurt Frank. “You’re going to hand yourself in. Confess everything.”

A shattered laugh bubbles out of Rasuga’s chest, a bubble of blood drooling from his mouth. “You’re insane,” he says. “You don’t get it, man, you’re insane.”

“You’re going to hand yourself in,” Matt repeats like it’s nothing more than an inevitability, leaning in close enough that the stale stench from this man’s clothing is almost suffocating - but he can force him to look into the dead, red eyes of the Devil’s mask. He can feel the rapid-fire gun shots of Rasuga’s heart beat. “Because if you don’t, I’ll come for you. And next time?” 

He thinks of Frank recovered, bloody in vengeance, he knows that whatever pain he’s inflicted is nothing compared to Frank on the warpath. The Devil smiles.

“Next time I won’t be alone.”

*

He’s aching by the time he makes it back to his apartment - he sheds the suit like a snake-skin and stashes it in storage on the roof, then makes his way back into the apartment, nursing a bruise on his jaw and an annoying split lip. It doesn’t feel like enough penance for the rage he’s let slip all night, his hand barely clinging to the leash.

As he makes his way inside, he hears the sound of grunting and swearing from the bedroom - just enough to make him pick up the pace, and get there in time to find Frank standing unsteady on his feet, propping himself up with one hand on the wall to steady himself.

“Easy, easy, Frank.” Matt rushes over to his side without asking, bracing Frank against his own body. Frank hasn’t moved around much beyond awkward trips to the bathroom since the moment they made it back here. Figures he’d try it while Matt had been out of the apartment. Maybe it’s a wonder Matt didn’t return to an empty bed. “Take it easy.”

“I’m fine,” Frank insists, even if leans against the support Matt offers. “Just wanted to check my leg’s still working.”

“And?”

“Yeah. Hurts like a bitch, but it’s working.” Frank even has the gall to sound proud of himself, the asshole.

“Good. That mean I can take you back to bed?” Matt’s moving before he even gets the ‘okay’ from Frank, helping him retreat those shuffling steps back the way he came.

When he lowers Frank down and helps him swing his injured leg back onto the mattress, he ends up sitting down on the edge as well. Frank sits, propped up by soft pillows and surrounded by silk sheets, the kind of gentle luxury that Matt knows he would normally scorn - but all Matt can feel now is relief.

It’s followed by Frank’s fingertips against his jaw, just a whisper of touch followed by a questioning grunt. “Looks like it hurts,” Frank murmurs, and Matt realises that he’s talking about the bruise Rasuga left behind.

He turns his head with the gentle prompting of Frank’s fingers as they curl beneath his chin, somewhere between a request and a directive. Lit by the bedside lamp, Matt wonders what he looks like under Frank’s stern stare: a beaten mess or something wilder than that. His gut clenches under that heavy observation.

“It’s nothing,” Matt insists, but he can’t keep his voice above a whisper. “Barely hurts.”

“You get that for me?” Frank asks, and his hand is still there - fingers still curled under Matt’s chin, thumb starting to map the edge of that blossoming bruise. Matt isn’t sure if he remembers how to breathe. “Is that what that is, Red? You went out hunting down the shit-stains that did this?”

Matt’s left a streak of violence through the city - he’s added new weight to his conscience, new sins to confess. The wrath that he barely keeps at bay is like a white-hot fire through every nerve and vein, and yet he doesn’t put that into words: he nods. Just once. Small and ashamed.

“Shit. You did that for me,” and that’s not a question, not any more. There’s something more like disbelief in Frank’s voice - maybe wonder. “You went to war for me.”

“They could’ve killed you,” Matt says as he finds his voice - but he still doesn’t have words for the gulf that opens up within him. “I heard it on the police radio - when they’d taken you to hospital. And it won’t leave my head, Frank. If you’d been slightly further into that room, if you’d been slightly closer to the explosives… It wouldn’t have been a hospital. It would’ve been the morgue.”

His throat is closing now, taking the words from him even as Frank hushes the worries from his mouth like they don’t need to be aired. Frank’s hand slips from beneath his chin but it doesn’t leave his skin, gliding along his jaw and coming to rest on the side of his neck instead.

They’re sitting there together. Breathing, just breathing. Frank’s hand resting heavy and easy on his neck like it belongs there.

“C’mon, Red,” Frank breathes. “It’ll take more than some idiot with some shitty C4 to kill me, you know tha-”

Matt cuts him off before he has to hear any more of Frank’s over-confident claims of immortality.

He cuts him off with his lips pressed to Frank’s mouth.

Careful. Inexact. Frank’s hand against his neck, Frank’s lips under his own, Frank’s stubble burning against his face. He feels Frank’s words die in their shared breath and he feels the rumble in Frank’s chest as he slowly, carefully kisses him back. His lips part against Matt’s and there’s a sound, low and rumbled, that feels designed to invite him in.

Cautious, slow, and gentle, just the faintest sting from his split-lip - it’s nothing like Matt would have expected, but there’s an overwhelming sense of ease when he finally lets it break, and rests their foreheads together. 

“You could have died,” he whispers, because he needs to say that aloud. He needs to hear the words.

Frank doesn’t argue it away this time. He brushes his fingers through Matt’s hair instead, taking his time, before he just agrees: “Yeah. Yeah, I could’ve.” It’s the closest someone like Frank might have to saying: you’re right.

Matt knows that what they do is dangerous. He knows that there’s a price they risk paying every time they take to the streets in the name of the people that need protecting. He’s thought about that for himself every time he’s put on the suit for years, but he’s never thought about it for someone like Frank, who’s always felt so looming and durable that death had been in an entirely different realm.

Now he has Frank here. Alive. Safe. Soft.

He doesn’t want to break the contact between them. Not for anything.

“You want to sleep through here tonight? That shitty couch’s got to be killing your back,” Frank says, like he’s doing Matt a favour. He hasn’t moved his head back, forehead-to-forehead, and hasn’t taken his fingers out of Matt’s hair.

Matt huffs a laugh anyway. “You’re supposed to be on bed rest,” he points out.

“Keep it in your pants, soldier,” Frank answers, smirk on his face. “I said sleep. I meant sleep.”

Matt’s answering smirk is softening to nothing more than a smile, as he lets the moment sink in and then steals a second kiss from Frank’s lips, careful and clean. Frank lets him , and the buzz from that isn’t going to fade any time soon, tingling on his skin. 

“I don’t want to go anywhere,” he admits afterwards - throwing the confession out into the air, and for once trusting Frank not to crush it.

*

They fall asleep, side-by-side. Frank’s warm weight is like a static anchor beside Matt. Their knuckles brush from time to time and once or twice Matt catches Frank watching him, the faintest curve of a smile on his face. Other than that, they keep their separation. Too much pain. Too many bandages. Too much risk of Curtis scolding them for upsetting a perfect wound dressing.

When they wake up the next morning, it’s the first time that Matt has felt truly rested in days - and he sets about the expected routine, making breakfast for them both, bringing Frank his coffee, until it all feels so carefully domestic that he can almost ignore the throbbing pain in his jaw and the lingering marks still clinging onto his knuckles.

Later that day, at a very slow pace and with a whole lot of Matt’s support, they move Frank to the couch just to give him a change of scenery. It’s around one minute before he starts complaining about the springs digging into his back and asking Matt how the hell he managed to sleep on this thing - and Matt could argue back, could tell Frank that he’s being insufferable, but instead he discovers that he can lean in and snatch the words from Frank’s mouth with a teasing kiss, and that when he does that it leads to Frank’s left hand on his waist, clutching gently like he doesn’t know what else to do with himself.

And that is a lot better than arguing, as it turns out.

By the afternoon, he’s let Frank loose with his laptop and is occupying himself elsewhere when Frank calls him over.

“This your handiwork?” Frank asks - not quite accusatory, but not unheated either.

He’s pointing at something on the screen, and Matt just sighs. “You know I can’t read that,” he says, but it isn’t long before Frank starts reading it for him outloud.

It’s a news website. A piece buried so far down below beneath the headlines that he knows Frank must have gone digging for it.

A new development in the canning plant explosion mystery. A suspected criminal with a mile-long rap sheet turning himself over to the FBI, claiming to have been behind the blast - and claiming to have knowledge about the others who were involved in the alleged conspiracy.

Matt listens, and feels that old rage in his chest squirm and settle. Rasuga made good on his promise, then.

Whatever he sees on Matt’s face, it’s enough to make Frank groan in frustration and take the laptop back. “He should be six feet under,” Frank complains. “Not holed up in some cosy cell. He’ll probably walk in a couple of months.”

“He’ll pay for what he did,” Matt points out, “and he might take some of the others down with him.”

Judging from the grumbling under his breath, Matt doesn’t think he’s going to get any gratitude from Frank any time in the near future - but he’ll take anything he can get. He settles down on the supposedly uncomfortable couch with Frank, legs curled up beside himself, and after a second or two he feels Frank reach for him. It’s one heavy arm around his shoulders, bandages and healing burns still bristling under the sleeve of Frank’s borrowed shirt.

Frank gives him a small tug and Matt comes to rest against his torso. It hurts, it has to hurt Frank, but Frank doesn’t show it on the surface - just a long, pleasant sigh. “You know, Curtis says you’re a saint, Murdock,” Frank says.

That’s not how Matt remembers that overheard conversation, but he rests his head carefully on Frank’s shoulder all the same. “And what do you say?” he asks.

From where he’s resting, he can feel the cavernous rumble of Frank’s amusement, one breath below a laugh. “I say you’re a pain in my ass.”

Yeah.

That sounds like Frank.

*

It’ll be a long while before Frank is fully back to normal, but he gets on his feet faster than most.

At first it’s just a case of needing less help day-to-day, and then it’s a case of starting to get under Matt’s feet in the apartment, bumping into one another in the too-small space. He doesn’t need help walking as much any more. Doesn’t wince every time he tries to stand. His arm is still in a sling, but the bandages have come off the burns now. The scent of singed hair is a distant memory.

It’s good. He’s healing.

And it makes Matt nervous. Every time he leaves the apartment and comes back to find that Frank is still there it feels like a minor miracle - because he knows it’s coming. And he knows it’s going to hurt, more and more, with every gentle, casual kiss and with every night they sleep side-by-side, sharing Matt’s bed. There’s an oncoming, crushing inevitability to the entire thing.

It means he’s not surprised when he comes back one evening after a week has passed to find Frank fully dressed, his arm still bound in its sling, but the rest of him tense. Prepared.

Slowly, Matt closes the front door. He rests his cane on the counter and starts to pull off his coat, taking his time, feeling the weight of the beckoning conversation like a train driving straight towards him. It’s tempting to ignore it entirely, as if he’s entirely unaware of the way that Frank is leaning against a counter in the kitchen and watching him like an unusual animal documentary, but Matt doesn’t think he’d get away with that for long.

“You heading out?” Matt asks, light and casual. Like it doesn’t mean a thing.

“Felt like time.” Frank isn’t pretending to keep it light. His words fall heavy and final. “I’m doing better. Walking around just fine. Curt says I’m healing up okay.”

Matt’s nodding. He’s trying to find something to do in the apartment, something to keep himself busy, but the whole place is spotless already - and he just needs something to do with his hands. Somewhere to put his attention. Something that isn’t Frank standing in his kitchen talking about how it’s time for this bizarre vacation from reality to end.

“Curtis knows what he's talking about,” Matt agrees, forcing himself to give into that logic. “If he says you’re fine, I trust him.”

Frank tilts his head, watching him, Matt’s skin prickling with it. Frank is smirking when he says, “You gonna cry?”

“Thinking about throwing something at you, actually.”

“I’m in recovery. Thought you hero-types were supposed to be gentle.” Frank’s closing in on him as he speaks – slow, easy steps. There’s no pained shuffle to it this time around, but there’s a lingering heavy limp. “I’ve got to get out of here. This was always coming.”

“I know.” Matt won’t let himself back off, not even as Frank winds up right in front of him.

Not even as Frank’s left hand comes to rest on Matt’s hip like he’s trying to hold him in place before he bolts. “You gonna miss me?” Frank asks - smug like he already knows the answer.

“Not for a second,” Matt says anyway, like he isn’t already tilting his head towards Frank by instinct.

“Goddamn liar,” Frank murmurs, before he closes the distance between them and kisses Matt like they aren’t talking about him leaving. He kisses Matt like he’s leaving a brand behind or making a point, something heavy and hot enough to melt the ground underneath them. When they part, Matt is already half-way gone. “C’mon.”

Frank’s hand leaves his hip and takes hold of his hand instead, and Matt suddenly has the disconcerting feeling of being led to his own bedroom - but after over a week of recovery this place feels like it might be Frank’s too. He follows after Frank and doesn’t even try to speak this time.

Frank’s sits down on the edge of the bed, pulling Matt neatly in closer and closer until Matt climbs into his lap. It’s not like the proximity is new, but there’s an intent behind it that hadn’t been there before - as if Frank has been thinking about this the entire time that Matt has been out today, and Matt’s the only one that hasn’t yet been let in on the plan. He feels like, whatever this is, he’s going to like it.

Between them, Frank’s right arm rests in its sling, like a lingering physical reminder of all that’s happened - everything that hasn’t quite been left in the past.

“I’m leaving,” Frank states bluntly, while his left hand trails down to rest at Matt’s waist, “Because I’m healing. Because I’m a big boy and I don’t need a live-in nurse.”

“I’m not-”

“Hey. Not finished,” Frank interrupts. He’s speaking as if his hand isn’t trailing lower, down from Matt’s waist to his hip, slow but purposeful. “I live in New York, you idiot. You know where I live. You can track my goddamn heart-beat with your super-sonic bat ears, whatever it is. I don’t know how this shit works. I don’t know how you work. Don’t want to know.” He frowns like he’s getting off-track. “Point being, you’ve got this sad kicked-puppy look on your dumbass face, and I know what’s going on in that head of yours. I’m leaving your apartment. I’m not leaving you.”

Matt’s stomach gives a swoop that’s so much more unpleasant than butterflies. He can feel Frank looking at him, and he can feel that mix of sincerity and amusement in every single word. It makes him want to either hide or deflect - but there’s honesty radiating off of Frank too. He’s taking a chance. 

Sitting here with Frank underneath him, maybe Matt can try and do the same thing, as he lets himself fiddle restlessly with the hem of Frank’s shirt. “... I thought you were saying goodbye,” he mutters.

Frank’s amusement comes with another huff of air - and letting his hand commit to its slow, downwards trajectory, shifting firmly onto Matt’s ass until it’s just fabric separating them now. “I know you did. You’re an over-dramatic little shit, huh,” Frank murmurs. He pushes gently on Matt’s ass until Matt slides in closer against him, no longer just in his lap but truly on him now, straddled over his hips. Frank’s smirk is dangerous as he leans in against Matt’s ear and drops that raspy voice of his down low. “Did you really think I would take off when we've finally got the chance to do this right?”

He punctuates the question with the scrape of his teeth against Matt’s earlobe, the wet flick of his tongue, and after that it’s as if the thinking part of Matt’s brain just shut down - because all he wants is Frank’s mouth, and his hand, and his words. His promises.

It’s a messy scramble of earnest kisses and fumbling hands and buttons going nowhere, like the two of them are finally on the same page with the same mission, moving with fierce purpose. They combine forces to get Frank out of his shirt, working around his healing arm and the sling. Matt takes over for most of the details for both of them, working his way around buttons and belts and zips, while Frank’s uninjured hand is a distracting presence the whole time, groping at bare skin each time something new slides into view for him, or tracing over bruises and scars alike.

It takes too long and no time at all before they’re both bare, skin on skin as Matt glides back into Frank’s lap like he belongs there now. His hands trail over Frank’s upper arms - and he can feel the new skin underneath his palms, freshly healed and probably still pink, ridged from the fire he survived. “It doesn’t hurt?” he checks.

Just a small shake of Frank’s head. “Healing up,” he promises.

Matt tilts his head. Listens for the telltale tremor of a heartbeat in pain or the flicker in Frank’s breath, but all he can hear is the surge of need that tells him Frank’s having a hard time holding himself back. “And your arm?” he checks.

“Fine as long as I don’t move it.” Frank’s hand is tracing down his spine even under Matt’s questioning.

“And your leg?”

“Like nothing ever happened,” Frank promises, more than half-way to a lie. He interrupts the next question by kissing Matt again - and Matt loses his train of thought at the feeling of it, all that skin-to-skin contact, with Frank’s palm pressing large and firm against the small of his back.

They’re doing this. He bites into Frank’s kiss, the scrape of his teeth against Frank’s lower lip just to make sure this feels real: they’re doing this.

He leans over to the bedside cabinet without getting out of Frank’s lap, and grabs the lube that he needs. After that it’s all gentle hands and slick fingers inside him and trying to keep Frank’s mouth from distracting him as he does what he needs to, all until he’s ready and pressing Frank firmly back against the pillows. “Try not to move too much,” he warns Frank. “Just lie there. Bed rest, remember?”

He grins at the huff of amusement he gets from Frank, even now, and that’s all that he needs before he’s guiding Frank against his entrance and then slowly easing his way down - feeling that first push of tension as Frank first breaches him, and that gradual, steady opening as his body fights to adapt. His heart hammers as Frank’s free hand settles on his hip, clutching tight, and he keeps working down, slow, one deliberate inch at a time as he takes Frank inside of him.

His breath is heavy. Shivering. It’s a lot, it’s always a lot when he does this, his senses in overdrive, sensory input screaming at him - but this is more than he’s experienced before. This is Frank, everywhere, inside, until he feels like he’s breathing him in. Frank’s hand stroking his hip while Frank’s voice rumbles beneath him, telling him how good he’s being, how perfect he looks.

When he’s taken the whole goddamn thing he lets his eyes flutter closed and just sits there like he’s done, Frank fully seated inside him. He’s taking a breather. Taking it in.

“Red,” Frank breathes. His hand squeezes on Matt’s hip. “You doing okay? You with me?”

Matt nods his head, just a fraction of a movement. “I’m good,” he promises, split-open with Frank inside him and feeling so good and so full from it. “It’s just… a lot.” He doesn’t mean the size, though he can sense the pleased smirk threatening to come to Frank’s face - it’s everything. It’s days of worrying about Frank’s recovery. It’s the stomach-churning fear of Frank walking out and not looking back until the next time they need to ‘team-up’. It’s everything that’s led them to this right here, this moment, but he doesn’t know how to say any of that so he just lifts one shoulder. “Figured you needed the ego boost.”

Frank responds by rolling his hips up against him - barely enough to even count as movement and a long way from a real thrust, but Matt feels it deep inside and nearly collapses onto his chest. He holds himself upright through sheer force of will.

“Point made,” Matt agrees breathlessly - but just the moment of talking to him has been enough, because he starts moving. Slow at first, then steady; elegant, greedy grinds of hips as he takes Frank as deep as he can get him, grinding him against his prostate to leave his muscles twitching in anticipation. With his heightened senses, it’s too easy to get lost in the way this triggers sparks along every single nerve-ending.

Frank’s hand slips from his hip to his cock, palming it with easy confidence that nearly leaves Matt losing it right there. “Wish I had my other hand free,” Frank pants. “Want to touch all of you so bad, Matt.”

It’s his name, just his name, but he hears the real thing from Frank so rarely that it leaves Matt shuddering and riding him more eagerly, caught between Frank’s cock and the tight grip of his palm, taking every scrap of pleasure from both of them. He rests his hands on Frank’s broad chest to steady himself, feeling strong muscle and the thundering beat of Frank’s heart under his palms.

“Soon,” Matt promises. “Once your arm is healed up. You’ll hold me down and do what you want with me, right?”

He grins at the ruined groan he provokes from Frank - and the absolute, no-doubt certainty that the broken arm and injured knee is the only thing stopping Frank from flipping them over and doing exactly that. Matt’s still the one in charge of the pace but he speeds up anyway, and lets himself get lost in the easy promise of the future, whatever it is - soon, and once you’re healed, and the unspoken promise that Frank is still going to be there for whatever comes next.

It drags him over the edge all too soon, a blast of sensory need that leaves him coming in Frank’s hand, his body tightening in need. Frank groans underneath him, edging him onwards with the movement of his hand until it’s too much and Matt nudges it away, angles his hips differently, and rides him hard until he feels Frank start to lose it too.

Frank clutches hold of him, his hand back on Matt’s hip like it’s starting to belong there - his grip is so tight when he finally releases that Matt thinks he might be pressing bruises into Matt’s skin, and he desperately hopes that that’s the case.

He feels it as Frank finishes inside him, both of them ragged and spent as they come down from the high. His heart is still racing from it as he eases himself off of Frank, feeling the sudden ache of absence and telling himself to ignore the way Frank’s starting to spill out of him even now.

He rolls over and collapses at Frank’s side - face flushed, body aching, fully wrecked.

Beside him, Frank is staring up at the ceiling. They’re a sweaty, panting heap.

On the plus side, Frank seems to have forgotten his earlier plan to leave that night. Matt might want to consider this one a win.

Frank gives a thoughtful grunt as he looks down at himself. “Gonna have to ask Curt if he can swipe a new sling for me,” he comments. He’s smirking. “Got you all over this one.” It's true. It's stained.

Matt swipes his hand at him, biting back laughter, but Frank catches him with his left hand - too fast, even while in recovery. He pins Matt’s hand down against the mattress, but they’re both smirking, then laughing, and there’s only one thought left going through Matt’s mind now.

I really could get used to this.

*

It takes another week, but Frank eventually does leave.

When he goes, the apartment feels achingly quiet - just Matt rattling around in a place he doesn’t recognise. It’s not the loft in Hell’s Kitchen. It’s not even the shell of a home he’d shared with Heather, however briefly. It’s a temporary stop-gap that, for a while, had felt like it might’ve been something more.

Matt mopes for a while. He lets himself get used to the silence again and reminds himself that he used to prefer this.

Curtis checks in, a quick phone call to confirm that Frank really isn’t dead. “He’s not going to say thank you, so I’ll say it for him,” Curtis says. “You saved his life.”

“I owed him a favour,” Matt says - while thinking that Frank’s already said thank you in more ways than he can count. He holds the phone against his ear with his shoulder as he starts piling up the old books he’d acquired for Frank, feeding them onto his bookshelf one by one. A shelf of books he’s keeping just for Frank. “Now we’re even.”

“Uh-huh,” Curtis agrees. Matt knows that tone; it rings something deep for him, an echo of the way Foggy used to agree-but-not-agree when he thought something stupid was going down. His fingers hesitate for just a second against the spine of one of Frank’s books, then he shakes it off. Makes himself continue shelving the books as Curtis talks. “I probably won’t see Frank for a long while now, you know. Made a promise I was going to stay out of his wars.”

“That sounds smart,” Matt agrees.

“And what about you, Murdock?” Curtis asks, gently pressing the point like he’s testing the depth of a bruise. “Are you being smart?”

Matt thinks of Frank’s last casual words to him when he left, asking what he was thinking about for dinner; he thinks of the bruise mark in the shape of Frank’s hand on his hip; he thinks of the bloodied battles they’ve survived together and the adrenaline of fighting with Frank at his side, as long as he can keep his more lethal tendencies in check.

All he can do is hold back a smile. “No,” he says quietly, “I don’t think so.”

“Glad to hear it.” There’s a silence that falls between them, but it’s comfortable. Filled with the shared knowledge of the scars that come with caring for someone like Frank. “Take care of him, alright? He needs someone watching his back.”

“I know.”

“And don’t tell him I said that.”

“I won’t.”

Soon, the call ends and Matt stands in front of his neatened bookcase, letting the wreckage of Frank Castle’s visit disappear entirely from his apartment. Nothing left but lingering scents, and the bruises and aches he’s left behind.

Matt takes a breath. Centres himself.

And hears the chime of a message from his phone.

He pretends he isn’t scrambling for it as he sets his screenreader to recite it to him.

FRANK:

dinner at mine tonight?

He also pretends his heart isn’t racing like a schoolkid as he writes back:

MATT:

‘Your place’ is an underground bunker. It has bugs. Dinner at mine.

Then a few seconds later, he follows up with:

MATT:

Or out?

There’s a long, agonising gap. Matt imagines Frank tapping at his phone with his left hand, cursing at autocorrect, and he uses that to fight back the old nerves he hasn’t felt since the last time he was trying to date in college.

Eventually the next message comes through.

FRANK:

fine. pick you up at 7

And that’s it. It’s that easy.

Matt is fairly sure he just secured a date with Frank Castle. All it took was an explosion, a jailbreak from hospital, broken bones, and threatening some mobsters - but they got there. He sinks down onto the edge of his bed, phone clutched loosely in his hand.

Thinking back on the past few weeks, the break-out, the uneasy recovery, the eventual breaking of the tension between them, it rises up unexpectedly. A warm bubble of relief and something like happiness. Thinking about Frank, about where they are now, he gives in to the feeling.

And he smiles.