Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

It wasn’t supposed to be funny. Frank, though, being very possibly over-medicated, was laughing while Matt stitched up his bullet-hole-ridden ass cheek and getting blood all over the couch. “Second fucking time I’ve been shot in the ass, at least this time it isn’t some teenager digging the lead out of me.” Frank sighed, and Matt wondered what the hell a teenager was doing digging a bullet out of his ass cheek, then what kind of meds Claire had given him. Granted, the day she’d pressed them into his palm, she had warned him that she was only doing so because he was so bruised and battered that at least it would help him sleep.

Frank wasn’t sleeping, though.

He was laughing so much that it was hard for Matt to keep his hands in place and not accidentally stitch up a piece of skin that was fully healthy instead of one of the holes.

“Y’know, somethin’s funny abou’ you stitchin’ up my ass. Like, usually you’d want the asshole open, right? But here I am, with so many of ‘em I’ve gotta have you close some of ‘em up!” Frank’s body shook again, and Matt lifted his hands in defeat.

“I’m going to knock you out if you won’t hold still for this, Castle. Hell of a thing to bleed out from a manufactured hemmoroid.”

He was glad his hands were up in the air, because Frank’s whole body shuddered as he rolled with laughter. “Manufactured– What the fuck, Red? Who the fuck comes up with your lines?”

Matt did his best not to cringe and decided that silence was the answer. Finally, an hour later, all of the bullet holes Frank had managed to get were closed and the larger form was sleeping peacefully on his couch. Now, Matt just had to patch himself up before he could go to bed.

He was tired, and sore, covered in bruises and gashes and a bullet had ripped through his bicep, but he was a lot better off than Frank.

Matt took a moment, sitting in his bathroom with the first aid kit laid out in front of him on the floor, to thank God for small miracles. At least he’d been able to get both of them out of there, and had managed to take down just as many gangsters as Frank had with his .357. He even took out a few more when Frank had been downed by the guys who had swam up to the barge to help their coworkers, boarded, and managed to escape Matt’s notice beneath the gun fire. He’d almost completely missed them, trying to protect Frank’s prone form, but two of them had made a noise during a break in the gun fire, and he’d felt the rest of them slowly crawling towards him. It was years of training and blind (hah) faith that they’d made it out alive.

In short, it’d been a shit show. But, they made it out alive. That was what mattered. Matt clung to that as he wheezed and let out some of his pain in gasps while he pulled fragmented pieces of a bullet out of his side. Frank had caught the worst of the bullet’s path, through the shoulder no less, but because the shooter had been up on top of some of the shipping crates, they’d gotten the perfect angle to catch them both. Fishing out the last fragment, Matt felt like his head was too heavy to hold up. Still, he forced himself to push through, shake out the exhaustion and blood loss and at least stitched up the major holes in his body before he allowed himself to curl up on the bloody towels that surrounded him and lose consciousness.

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Blinding light flooded behind Frank’s eyelids and jolted him awake. He sat up on the couch he’d been sprawled across and immediately regretted it. His ass had been turned into swiss cheese the night before, and though most of the fight was a hazy memory, the pain remained, which just wasn’t fair. Still, he stood and forced himself to go to get a glass of water, but when he looked around, he realized he wasn’t in one of his safe houses. He wasn’t even at Curt’s place, or in one of David’s underground lairs. No, he was in an unfamiliar apartment with bright fuck-off light streaming in from the sun and a giant fucking LED billboard. Whoever had decided to put up such a monstrosity next to an apartment with floor-to-ceiling windows deserved to be shot. His ass hurt, his shoulder hurt, it seemed like he’d been caught by a stray knife or bullet over his eyebrow, and he’d definitely broken at least two ribs in some of his hand-to-hand fights. He could wait a day or two to find the person responsible for that dick move.

He turned around and found the kitchen, managed to limp his way over to it and find a glass in the cupboard even as his senses were set to high alert. Who knew what had happened after he’d gone down the night before? Who in the hell would have taken him in and stitched him up after something like that? He wasn’t sure, but his mouth and throat felt like he’d been force-fed off one of the machines from Build-A-Bear, and no one seemed to be there to try and do him any harm, yet, so priorities had to be placed in a certain order. It took three glasses of water before Frank felt like he could breathe normally again.

The problem came a few moments later when he realized he needed to piss, and there was no visible door outside of the one that led to the hallway, and one that led to a bedroom. Maybe his captor/savior would still be asleep? As quietly as he could, Frank made his way into the bedroom, turned to the only door in the room, and found a shirtless Red passed out on the bathroom floor on bloody towels. Frank groaned, mostly because Red was laid out in front of the toilet, and there was no way he was going to try and hang a piss over Red’s head. It was the principle of the thing. For a moment, he considered stepping out onto the fire escape, but he didn’t exactly want to catch a ticket for public urination, and it was still definitely daylight out there.

Agonizingly slowly, he bent to pick up one of the feet that had curled in towards the body of his sometimes-companion, but when he tried to pull on it to slide Red out on the towel bed he’d bled all over, the smaller man came awake like the snap of a rubber band and kicked out at Frank’s chest. Frank staggered back in a weak dodge and felt some of the stitches in his ass pull. In the blink of an eye, Red was up on his feet and in a fighting stance, but as soon as he realized who stood before him, he slouched into himself and rose back into a mostly-normal position. “Oh, hey Frank.”

“Yeah, hey to you too ya freak. Gonna let me go use the bathroom? Or do you need to go back to sleep in front of the john?”

“I’m good. I’ll, uh, go make coffee.” Red pulled on his cowl a little bit, (it couldn’t be comfortable to wear something like that for so long, right?) and stepped around Frank and towards the kitchen, even if he was still hunched in on himself a bit. Frank gratefully used the bathroom, and looked over his visage in the mirror for a moment. He was right about the wound above his eyebrow, though it wasn’t even deep enough for whoever had patched him up to put a bandage on it. When he turned around and pulled down his underwear a bit, five sets of gauze pads that covered slightly leaking stitches appeared. His skin was swollen and red but they were done impeccably well for how many there were.

He appraised himself until he heard the sounds of coffee dripping into a pot and smelled a much better roast than the cheap shit he got for himself coming from the kitchen. Red, still mostly in his get-up, leaned against the counter and was carefully pulling up the edge of a bandage. Frank leaned in the doorway, watched the man uncover a set of stitches, and finally sighed. Red jumped like he’d been tazed.

“Jesus, you always this jumpy in the morning?” Frank asked as he finally managed to move himself out of the doorway and into the main living space. Red looked up at him and sighed, dropping his shirt’s hem as he did so. It smacked back to his skin in a way that sounded painful, but Red didn’t even flinch.

“Only when I’m being watched by your ugly mug, Castle.” Ooh, he had his claws out this morning. Frank wondered when he should make his exit, felt like it should have been some time before then, but the coffee smelled so damned good… He sighed, shook his head, and finally fell into a lean against the kitchen island.

“I’ll have you know I’m a fuckin’ Disney princess, Red.” Frank sighed as some of the tension began to leak out of the smaller man’s shoulders.

“The way I hear it, you’re more like Belle’s beast.” Red shot back.

“Not gonna make your own opinion of it, huh?” Frank cajoled. They watched the final few drops of coffee fall into the pot together before Red pulled the carafe out and poured a generous dose into two mugs he’d left waiting on the counter.

“You take milk or sugar?” Red asked, instead of answering.

“Nah, none of that where I usually get my fix, anyways.”

Red nodded and handed him the cup of liquid gold the color of mud. They took the first sip in unison, and Frank groaned as the taste rolled over his tongue and down his throat. He was going to savor the next cup, but the first cup was going down quick, fast, and in a hurry.

Thirty seconds later, he was pretty sure his mouth would steam if he breathed out of it, but he went back to where Red had replaced the carafe and poured himself another cup. The smaller man held out his own mug, and Frank topped it off without a word. They both leaned against the counter tops, drinking their coffee in silence for a few minutes while they waited for the caffeine to kick in. With the sunshine and the big fuckin’ windows casting the golden light around the room, it almost felt like a scene from one of the rom-coms Maria had enjoyed. The moment was entirely too domestic, despite the fact that both of them had some pretty good licks taken out of them the night before.

“I should get on home, make sure Max is okay, see if there’s anything I need to change. I bet you have something to do with your day too.” Frank finally said, once he’d drained his second mug. Red was turned so his back was to him, refilling his mug once more, but he suddenly tensed up, then relaxed. Frank watched it happen. “Forget somethin’ important?” He asked, though he wasn’t really expecting an answer.

“Maybe, I uh, gotta make a call…” Red’s voice sounded distracted, which wasn’t like him, but he continued, “Make yourself a thermos before you go. Top right of the cupboard above the coffee maker. Return it whenever.”

He disappeared into the bedroom and shut the door, then the shower turned on. Frank shrugged, then went to pull down a thermos. Because he wasn’t an asshole, he started another half-pot before he left; to replace what he’d taken.

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Chapter Text

It’d been a few months since Frank had wound up on his sofa, covering it in blood and gore that didn’t seem to want to come out. He’d stayed the night a few times since then, but more because they had both been exhausted after a fight, and making the trek back to a safe house would have been more of a risk than just going to Matt’s apartment. To be fair, they’d started using Frank’s safe houses in much the same fashion. If one of them was too hurt to make it home just yet, they went to the closest safe place.

Still, it had been a while since one of them had been bleeding out on a sofa. Matt had bought one of those sofa covers that was supposed to be water proof. Apparently, waterproof and blood proof were two different things. The only difference was, it was Matt that was laid out and bleeding, and Castle above him, muttering about his dumbass leaping into the line of fire to save his sorry ass from one more piece of lead. Matt wouldn’t have changed a thing that he’d done if he had the chance to go back to that moment, though. Frank was whole, and safe, barring a couple of wounds from a not-quite-deflected knife wielded by an angry Russian assassin.

“Fuckin’ stupid’s what you are, Altar Boy. Always gettin’ into shit you can’t get out of without takin’ a chunk outta yourself…”

“Way I see it– Ah! —’m doin’ the world a – Ow! – A – a favor. Keeping you from getting lead poisoning and going completely – Ah! – Crazy, asshole!” Matt was doing his best to string together sentences. Frank was doing his best to flay him with a tiny pair of tweezers digging under his skin.

In truth, he was doing his best not to think about it, but they had learned a couple of things that night.

The bad news was: The mobs were getting stronger and stealthier.

The good news was: Both Dare Devil and The Punisher were still up and kicking. Well, Matt wasn’t going to be kicking anything for at least a couple of days, but at least they were both still alive. Matt eventually tuned out the litany of derogatory remarks his kind-of partner was making in favor of listening to the man’s heart beat. It was a steady metronome, something that should have been impossible after the fight they’d just barely won. But, no, the man was calm to his bones. His brain and mouth were the things that seemed to have an issue with Matt saving him from taking a shot to the arm. Unfortunately, it had meant him taking the shot instead, but it had just scraped his shoulder as Matt dove in front of Frank’s turned back. A good chunk of the muscle had been ripped out, but it was nothing compared to some of the scrapes he’d gotten himself into over the years. He’d be fine.

“Stupid fucking altar boy, always gotta take all the bullets for yourself. What if I wanted a new scar, huh? Ever think about that Red? You’re takin’ all these damned shots for yourself and leavin’ my ass in the wind.” Frank was joking, by this point, and it brought Matt back to the moment.

“I, believe it or not, was only allowed to be an altar boy for a short while.” Matt remarked as the final stitch was pulled through his skin. Frank huffed as he looped the thread a couple of times to make a knot.

“No shit. What’d you do?” Frank’s voice was, at least, full of humor.

“I kept dropping my bible during the procession.” Matt snickered, letting himself relax into the calm of his quiet apartment. The city outside was quiet, like it was taking a breath after the firefight that had gone down only an hour before.

“You fuckin’ what?” Frank’s question was obviously rhetorical, but Matt just sighed and gave the larger man a shit-eating grin.

“Wore the binding thin from reading it so many times.” He waited for the joke to land, but Frank just sighed.

“Fuckin’ altar boy.” For some reason, they both burst into laughter. They may have both been bruised and bloody, but they had made it through the night, taken out the criminals that had been circulating fentanyl-laced drugs on their streets, and were both safely ensconced in the comfort of Matt’s apartment. “Whoever put that fuckin’ billboard up must have been a real prick.”

“Yeah, you get used to it.” Matt replied softly. He still hadn’t told Frank he was blind, let alone who he was. They’d just gotten to the point where they could work together as a unit and not want to kill each other by the end of the night. A bombshell like his identity would probably blow all of that to smithereens. So, he remained in his bubble of mystery to the other man. Given the fact that Frank hadn’t looked up the name on the lease of the apartment, either, he figured the ex-marine and expert tactician didn’t really want to know, either. If he had, he would have looked into it. “I can take the couch since the bedroom has the curtains, if you want.”

“Nah, Red. I’ll just go home. You’re the one who took the fuckin’ bullet.”

Frank stood from the couch and stretched. Matt heard his back pop, and when he shook out his leg, his hip popped too.

“I don’t mind. Couch is pretty comfy.”

Frank turned to him with a sigh.

“I’ve slept on that couch, Red. No, it’s not.” He turned away, gathered the leather duster he’d worn that night, and Matt almost reached out to grab him, but kept himself still.

“Maybe not for a giant like yourself, but I fit on it pretty well.” The joke at least garnered a chuckle. He wasn’t sure why he wanted Frank to stay the night. It would mean waking up in only a few hours, sleeping in the cowl again, having to usher him out the door in the morning, potentially. Still, he didn’t want to send Frank back out there.

“You gonna share the bed with me, Red? ‘Cause I ain’t sleepin’ on the couch and neither are you.”

Matt smelled defeat in the air, and though he tried to fight it, the same smile he got in court when he knew his case was won fell into place.

“Don’t see why not.” He finally replied. “You want to cuddle, Frank?”

Frank ran a hand over his face, Matt heard the stubble scratch along his hand, and he wondered for a second what that felt like when it wasn’t on his own face. “Fine, you want me to stay so bad? Protect you if someone comes in and you’ve still got that bullet wound? I’ll stay.”

Matt felt his smile grow. “Good.” He stood and stretched, regretted it a little as the stitches on his shoulder bunched up, but he was satisfied with his win.

He led the way back to the bedroom, and heard Frank turn on the light switch. It turned on the lamp that sat in the corner of the room. Foggy had insisted he get it for his one-night-stands once upon a time, and the lamp had stayed with him. Now, he was glad of it. Frank would definitely think it was weird if he didn’t have any lights in his bedroom. Matt found a pair of fluffy pajama pants that would probably fit Frank’s frame, they’d been Foggy’s “comfy, oversized fluffy goodness” at one point, and had been left at Matt’s place after the week Foggy had spent trying to find an apartment once he’d moved out of his parents’ home. Foggy had told him, once upon a time, that they were bright pink with tiny frog-princes all over them. He almost laughed at the thought of Frank wearing them, but as he held them out, Frank didn’t flinch away.

“Ex-girlfriend’s? Maria used to like this pink fluffy shit too. Always bought it a few sizes up so she could snuggle into ‘em.” Matt let out a snort at the idea of Foggy being his girlfriend, but decided that if Frank was sharing, he could too.

“My best friend loves fuzzy pants like that. He left these for me when he moved out.”

They were quiet until Matt disappeared into the bathroom to change, and he heard Frank get into the bed as he was finishing up with brushing his teeth.

“Need the bathroom?” Matt asked, mostly to be polite. He was pretty sure Castle would do whatever he damned-well pleased, whether Matt wanted him to or not.

“Just go to sleep, Red. Long night, and we’ve got a whole new day tomorrow.”

Matt turned out the light, then slipped under the covers. He could feel the weight of Frank beside him in the bed, even if there was a solid foot of no-man’s land between them. Finally, after trying and failing a dozen times to ignore that he was still wearing his cowl, Matt made sure that Frank was asleep, then quietly crept out of the bed and went to the dresser, where his old mask laid in one of the drawers. Almost-soundlessly, he pulled out the mask and swapped his cowl for it. The sheep-skin covering over his eyes was much more comfortable, and when he finally got back into bed, he felt like he could finally rest for a while. A few seconds later, though, Frank rolled over and threw his arm over Matt’s middle and pulled him in close, which surprised a little noise out of his throat that was definitely not a squeak.

“Go to sleep.” Frank mumbled into the back of his neck. It sent goose-pimples down his neck, and Matt shivered, but found that the weight and warmth from Frank’s body seemed to lull his own into the kind of quiet he could usually only dream of.

One minute, Matt was working on the box breathing he’d been taught, and the next he was blissfully unaware of anything else in the world.

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Frank awoke to the sound of thunder and rain, and groaned as he moved to sit up. The thing was, he couldn’t. A weight held his arm down, and he would have panicked if not for the fact that the form sleeping next to him was breathing calmly. Frank may have just been having a heart-pounding nightmare, but the form next to him wasn’t. It woke only long enough to tell him, “Go back to sleep, it’s too early,” before going back to sleep. When Frank took a moment to pull himself back to where he was from where he’d been, he realized why the scene he’d found himself in didn’t look quite right.

Red wasn’t wearing the cowl.

Instead, he wore what looked like a beanie on his head. It covered his eyes, and a bit of sheep-skin fluff peeked out from under it. A shock of auburn-red hair escaped from beneath the mask, and Frank found himself entranced by that for a moment. All of this time fighting side-by-side with Dare Devil, he’d never known the guy was a red-head.

“I can hear you’re still awake. We can make coffee later. Sleep now.” Red grumbled beneath him. Frank wasn’t sure what that meant, that Red could hear that he was still awake, but maybe it was that he’d rustled the sheets in small movements? He wasn’t sure, but settling back down and pulling the smaller form into himself again took almost no effort. A little more sleep might do him some good.

He awoke again some time later. The rain still drizzled outside, but the majority of the storm seemed to have passed, at least. He was still snuggled under the blankets in the bed, and while it was possible he just hadn’t slept long enough to dream, or didn’t remember what he’d been dreaming about, Frank felt like he’d just turned his brain completely off for a while. It took a moment for his mind to reboot, then for his senses to kick back in and realize that he was in the bed, alone. He could hear someone puttering around out in the kitchen, and the scents of coffee, eggs, and bacon mingled together to form a clearer picture. Red was in the kitchen, making breakfast. A glance at his burner phone told Frank that it was three-forty in the afternoon. He hadn’t slept that much in… well, he was pretty sure he hadn’t slept like that since he was a teenager. Before the military, before Maria.

The cowl was back in place, Frank found, when he finally emerged from the bedroom. The apartment was cold, which was unsurprising given the windows that took up the entirety of one wall. It looked odd, seeing Red in his cowl without the suit beneath it. Instead, he’d dressed in an oversized hoodie and a pair of sweatpants that he’d cuffed a few times. His hands and feet were bare despite the chill. “Hungry?” He asked over his shoulder. Frank grunted and made his way to the coffee pot that stood just to the man’s left. “Ah, yes, always coffee first.”

Frank grunted in response, pulled a mug from the cupboard above the coffee maker, and poured himself a cup before he reached over and poured more for the chef.

They were quiet while Frank finished his first cup, but as Red began plating their food, Frank laughed at the way one of the omelets hung off the edge of the plate.

“Not much for presentation, huh?” Frank finally chuckled as he took both of the plates and scooted everything back towards the middle.

“Who am I presenting to?” Red asked as he grabbed his mug of coffee and downed what remained in a gulp. “Be glad I made you breakfast.”

“Not gonna complain about a hot meal, Red.” They moved to the couch, where Frank finally noticed something. “Hey, someone rob you?”

“...No?” Matt asked, more of a question as his head whipped around. Frank swore he could hear a sniff come from the man, like he was a goddamned blood hound sniffing the air.

“What happened to your TV?” Frank’s question seemed to startle the masked man beside him, but he just waited patiently to hear the answer.

“Oh, I um… you know, I don’t like them. I don’t have one.”

Frank stared hard at the man in front of him, then transferred his plate to his lap before he waved his hand in front of the smaller man’s face. “Why are you waving your hand in front of my face?” Okay, so probably not blind, then. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to double check.

“How many fingers am I holding up?” Frank held up three fingers on the hand still outstretched in front of the cowl.

“Uh, three?” It sounded like a guess. Frank put his pinkie up as well, then retracted his pointer and ring fingers.

“And now?” He asked.

“Uh… two?”

“Are you fuckin’ blind?” Frank asked, He almost spilled his breakfast in his lap, one of the pieces of bacon on his plate fell in between his legs, and he placed it back on his plate before setting the whole breakfast on the coffee table in front of them.

“No?” Again, it was a question. Frank sighed, scrubbed a hand over his face, then glared at his partner.

“No fuckin’ way, you’re blind, aren’t you? What the fuck? How the fuck? Gonna explain at some point, Red?” There was no answer, and Frank did his best to calm himself before he spoke again. “I’ve seen you do some crazy shit, Red. I’m not sayin’ you’ve got to give me your whole life story or nothin’, but I’m pretty damned curious about your ability to fight like you do when you can’t even see your opponent.”

“You’re going to want to pack a thermos.” Red’s reply came out soft, and Frank wouldn’t have heard it if they’d had a TV on in the background. As it was, the drizzle on the roof made it hard enough to hear.

“What do you mean?” Frank asked, ready to burst out of his skin. The curiosity, and the implications of Red’s reactions to his questions told him that he was either going to find out and realize that it’d been stupid to be asking in the first place, or he would want to leave immediately. Given that Red knew him and his temper pretty well, the latter might have been the safer bet. Frank refused to move, though.

“No one likes the answer to your question, or the questions that come from that answer, and you may as well get some coffee out of this if you’re not going to eat.” A small tendril of fear reached out to touch Frank’s heart, but he kept himself still and calmed his heartbeat back to normal.

“And if I decide that I don’t care what the answer is, I just want to know?”

Red laughed, and as familiar as it was, Frank started going back through his memory to see if it matched anyone else’s that he knew. His mind was coming to a conclusion, blind, someone he probably knew well enough that seeing him without the mask would reveal a lot about the guy, red hair… Yeah. Frank was a total idiot.

“You’re going to hate the answers.”

“What if I just want to hear them from your own mouth?” Red looked taken aback, his mouth dropped open.

“Then you’re at least eating the damned omelet, and hearing me out. I may be stupid, sometimes, and I’m realizing that you’ve probably just put all of the puzzle pieces together, but if you’re going to insist I confirm or deny whatever you’ve put together, then you’re going to hear me out.” Red turned to him, and waited for Frank to pick up the plate and start eating some bacon before he moved.

The smaller man sat back in the couch, took a deep breath, then reached up with his good arm and ripped the cowl off of his head.

Sure enough, Frank watched Matt Murdock’s eyes blink once, then fall to his lap. He’d only seen the guy when he was in trouble, usually for something Dare Devil had put him into, and had only seen his eyes a few times. Where they once may have been a soft, emerald green, they had faded into a milky sea-foam and gone glassy. “When I was a kid, a whole bunch of chemicals spilled into my eyes off the back of a truck. When I woke up, I couldn’t see, but I could hear, smell, taste, and feel everything. For a while, I couldn’t bear it. I just remember a lot of pain, and screaming, and… My dad… he helped. For a while, he’d read to me, tell me to just focus on his voice so I could fall asleep. He’d take me to the gym with ear protection from one of the construction guys who’d spar with him, and for a while it was okay, even if I couldn’t even stand the taste of bread. He’d make me eat, and make me sleep, and kept up with me. Did his best, at least.”

Frank shook his head. He couldn’t quite make his mind accept the information it was being given. Trust Red to be so fucked up that even Frank needed a minute to process. “Then, Dad… uh, well… Dad died. I was given to Saint Agnes. They couldn’t help the way he could, and it was all stone. I could barely think with the way the sounds bounced off the walls, the smells of so many people all in one little space, the scratchy sheets, so they found someone. Stick. He uh, he trained me. Made me stronger, helped me cope and learn to control my abilities so that I wouldn’t feel like I was living in Hell all of the time. I’m pretty sure some of the nuns still think that I was possessed and Stick was the one to exorcise me.” Matt chuckled, and Frank just sat in stunned silence.

He wasn’t quite sure how to feel about all of this. First, the prick had had plenty of chances to tell Frank about all of this. In hind-sight, he’d known the majority of it. Matt had had training, had grown up in an orphanage. His dad had died. He just hadn’t known that the guy was blind, and apparently had powers outside of the normal human realm.

“So, this is how you always got the drop on me, huh?” Frank asked, once his brain had had a moment to catch up.

“Uh… yes…” Matt’s voice had gone quiet. “Do you… have any other questions?” He asked after a moment of silence. The world may have just turned on its axis for Frank, but he really only had one.

“Why did you tell me now? Why not years ago, or wait for even more time to pass?” Frank’s words hung in the air like cobwebs, gathering dust. He managed to eat the rest of his breakfast while he waited, at least. Murdock may have been blind, but he was a damned good cook.

The rain had pattered to a stop by the time their silence was broken again.

“I don’t know what this is, Frank. But whatever it is, I want us to be able to be honest with each other.” The words didn’t make a whole lot of sense, in context. Frank allowed the words to settle.

“What… Do you mean us partnering up together? Working jobs together?” Frank asked, still confused.

“Oh, uh, yeah. Yes. One day I’d need to take off the cowl anyway, if I get a head injury, or if you’re going to start spending the night and all. Better you know now instead of leaving me bleeding in an alley because you’re pissed at me.” The statement was followed with a self-deprecating chuckle that Frank didn’t like.

Frank decided it would be better not to point out that Murdock had asked him to stay the night. Had almost insisted. Instead, he shook his head, and Matt’s body slumped back into the couch once more.

“Okay, uh, yeah. One more question.” The words almost stumbled over themselves, and as Murdock turned sightless eyes back to him, he lost the tail end of that thought.

“What is it?” Matt finally asked.

“Do your friends know? Karen and Nelson, I mean?”

His face fell. Frank hadn’t seen his mouth slide down like that before. “They don’t like it, but they’re not out there stopping me, either.”

Frank couldn’t do much more than nod at that. There was a reason his only real friends were Curt and David, and even there, he’d have left David to go and enjoy his family if the man didn’t insist on checking in and meeting up every so often. His line of work wasn’t exactly conducive to the “white picket fence” lifestyle.

Murdock finally finished his breakfast, though it had to have gone cold ages ago. Frank left soon after that, apparently Nelson had been on his way up to check on Matt, since he hadn’t checked in that morning. Frank left via the roof access, which was just too damn convenient for someone like Red. Still, he avoided having to see Nelson, and explain what he’d been doing in Murdock’s apartment. Small wins.

As he walked down the street and disappeared into the crowd, he wondered why the thought of seeing Nelson made him so nervous. Instead of thinking too much about it, he made his way home and called Curt. He needed to talk, even if he wasn’t sure what he needed to talk about.
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Chapter Text

It was a week before Matt saw Castle again. He’d been lining up a shot, and Matt considered, just for a second, whether or not to drop in and ruin the guy’s night. In the end, he’d strutted up and just tapped the man on the shoulder. Frank had flinched, just the whisper of a muscle jumping beneath Matt’s fingertips, but his sight remained trained on whatever target he’d been locked in on. “Was wondering when you’d crawl out of the woodwork again.” Castle’s voice was low and crackled with disuse.

Matt laughed humorlessly. “I could say the same to you. Having trouble finding trouble?”

“Don’t have to go lookin’, Red. Trouble finds me.” Castle was still for a beat, then turned his head and grinned up at Matt. “Case in point.”

They chuckled together for a moment, but fell silent. “You planning on using that tonight?”

The question fell into the air and Castle let it sit for a moment. He must have been distracted by something he saw in his scope. “Nah, recon.” The answer finally came. “Marking this guy’s movements.”

“Who are we taking down next?” Matt sat cross-legged on the gravel next to Castle, then picked up the other man’s thermos. It belonged in Matt’s kitchen, but he wasn’t going to say anything.

“We? I don’t think you want any part of this, Red. Besides, are you so disconnected that you need me to suss out your targets, now? Gonna just follow me like a puppy and stop my kills?” Frank sounded angry, but his heart was as slow and steady a metronome as ever.

“No, but if you’re not out there, actively getting the guy, it must be something serious. Going after the Russian mob again?” Matt took a swig from the thermos, despite the chemical smell and bitter notes rising from it, and almost spit it out. “How do you drink that?”

Frank turned again to look at him, and something about Matt’s screwed-up facial features must have been amusing, because it garnered a twitch of Frank’s muscles and a chuff of laughter before he turned back to look through his sight once more.

A soft rain started as they waited for the target Frank was pursuing to show his face. Or, maybe he already had. Maybe Frank was just watching his movements inside a building.

“How is it that no matter where I am, the blind guy can find me?” They’d been quiet for a while, and Matt was shivering a little under his suit, wishing he’d brought a sweatshirt or something. He was glad for the distraction.

“I can hear your heart beat.” The answer came with no fanfare, but Frank turned around like he’d been shot.

“What?” Matt allowed his face to twist into a smile.

“I can hear just about everything, down to individual heart beats. There’s a hospital a few blocks over that just welcomed a set of twins into the world. A woman downstairs has her TV turned up to the max volume and she’s still missing half of the jokes on ‘The Andy Griffith Show’. Two girls are walking home from the bar down the street, and one of them just broke her heel.” Matt explained after a moment of listening to the world around him.

Frank shifted his weight, his boots crunching in the gravel, and seemed to watch as the girls approached their hidden spot and tottered on, drunk and happy.

“Holy shit, Red.” Frank sat back on his heels, but didn’t go back to his scope. Instead, he stood and started digging through his pack. “How the fuck can you hear a heart beat? Not to mention all of the ones surrounding you? How far does that stretch?” Frank finally found what he was looking for, and something that sounded like very thin foil was snapped out into the night. One second, Matt was shivering in the rain, and the next, he’d been wrapped up in a foil blanket, horns and all. The warmth was almost instant, from the gesture if not from the blanket.

“Part of my training. It helps me keep track of people, whether I’m fighting them or just walking around.” Matt shrugged. The foil crinkled uncomfortably loud around his ear, dampeners in his cowl or not, so he decided to stay still once he’d dropped his shoulder.

They waited in silence for a while longer, Matt under the foil wrap and Frank watching for his target from behind his scope.

_________________________

The sun began to rise, even if it could only be seen in the slightly lighter tint to the oppressive clouds that had covered the city for a week. Frank wondered idly, as he packed up his gear, whether Thor had something to do with it. Ever since he’d moved to New York, the sky would clear up or darken depending on what was going on with the Avengers, and good money was that they were on the outs again.

Frank had heard about an altercation between Captain America and Iron Man not too long before that, and he knew what that kind of dissension could do to a team. Especially one as tenuous as the Avengers.

He didn’t want something like that to happen between him and Matt. They had been in a similar situation, working together mostly because it was slim pickin’s out there for people on their skill level, and despite the grudge that Altar Boy had against him killing, they’d managed a sort of peace together. They fought like a unit, when they had a game plan, and it was so seamless that sometimes Frank had found himself thinking he was half-way across the world, working with buddies who had long ago been put in the ground. That kind of comfort wasn’t for him anymore, though.

So, he’d had that talk with Curt a week ago. He’d hashed out every reason why he should just keep on keepin’ on, and every reason he could change things in a way that would maybe even make his life better. Of course, he didn’t give him Daredevil’s name, but he’d told him that the guy was a civvie, had a secret identity like Clark Kent.

Curt had told him that making life a little more worth-while wasn’t a bad thing, considering he’d hit rock bottom and was still swimming around down there. The problem was, anything better than rock bottom never lasted long for Frank. Curt had argued about that. Gave him all these reasons that he should just see where his friendship with Daredevil could go. Frank had argued back that losing anything that was more than what he had at the moment might just put him right there in the ground next to his buddies. Curt had responded with a very clear “Over my dead body”.

Still, that fear would haunt him, if he let himself get too close to someone like Matt Murdock. The guy may have been able to hold his own in a fight, but he still threw himself in front of every goddamn stray bullet he could find, still fought through his own pain and would until his body turned to goo on the floor from some alien tech or something. Frank couldn’t blame him, he was the same way, but there was a difference between fighting next to another soldier (even if they didn’t have the same training), and fighting next to a friend, brother, maybe even a…

He wouldn’t go there. No use in it. Wasn’t going to happen.

As he sat on the rooftop with a lawyer in a Halloween costume next to him, he mulled over his options.

Obviously, Red wasn’t going to leave him alone unless he out-right told him to fuck off, and even then it was fifty-fifty. Castle had already determined that, as much as he didn’t want to care so much about the guy, he did. So, he was stuck with him either way.

He’d decided with Curt that, no matter what, he was going to keep fighting alongside Daredevil when the need arose, and he’d help patch the guy up just as often as Red patched him up, but he wouldn’t be staying the night again. Wouldn’t be grabbing food with the guy unless they ate on a roof top during a stakeout.

These clear boundaries rang in his head even as he waited for Rachmanoff to show his stupid face. The guy must have been crawling around on the floor, for all Frank had seen him that night. With a sigh and a shrug, Frank watched the sun’s light peek over the horizon and decided to call it.

As his final piece of equipment went into the bag, Frank turned to Murdock, who had stood and folded up his blanket as neatly as he could. The guy was pretty fastidious, actually. All of the corners were neat where the thin foil didn’t crumple. He took the proffered blanket and stashed it in his coat pocket, then began making his way down the building by walking carefully down the fire escape.

“I’ve got some left over chinese back at my place.” Red’s voice piped up as he followed Frank down the iron steps. With a practiced shove, Frank sent the ladder clattering down towards the pavement and climbed down. Red was hot on his heels.

It was outside the boundaries he’d set, even if he hadn’t discussed them with Murdock, yet. There had most definitely been the kind of cuddling Frank had long ago resigned himself never to have again, last time. He wasn’t going to get that close to anyone else again, ever, but Red seemed determined to knock down his walls. Chances were, if Frank let him, all of those walls would crumble in a week. Well, it was a good thing he worked in construction all those years ago.

“I think I’m gonna head home, actually. Sleep in my own bed.” Frank shrugged. Red didn’t answer, just nodded once, then disappeared into the shadows.

Frank hadn’t let himself think over the implications of Murdock’s confession in the moment, but as he made his way back to the safe house, he realized that nothing had truly changed. Red had always been able to hear his heart beat, find him in a room full of strangers and be sure not to attack him, or even just find him on a roof top. Really, it had probably come in clutch a lot more than he realized, given that Red always knew how many perps were in a specific building. He could always tell where they were, what they were up to. Frank had just thought he had some kind of Stark Tech in his cowl. Instead, it was that Red was exceptional. He may have been given something that would have been agony for anyone else, but he’d taken it and honed it into a finely-tuned weapon.

Frank knew a thing or two about that.

After the open air of the rooftop, the cramped and dingy safe house was not a welcome sight. Still, he used the bathroom, cleaned himself up in the shower he really needed to wipe down, then fell onto the cot in the corner and tried his best to get some shut-eye.

If he could only drift off while thinking about Matt coming in and snuggling up with him, then that was no one’s business but his own.
___________________________

Chapter Text

For all Frank had been doing his best to avoid the man in red, he was going after the Russians. Much to his chagrin, Curt was insistent that he call up Daredevil and have some back up, because they had both seen how a well-oiled plan could go to shit in a heart beat. Despite his mind saying it was a bad idea, Frank had pulled up Murdock’s number in his burner phone, listed under “Red”, and hit the dial button.

Given that it was about ten in the morning, Frank was only a little surprised that the call went to voicemail, but he managed to leave a message that was short and direct. It was after six that night when he finally got a response, but instead of it coming from his phone, it came in the form of footsteps that were a little too loud on the roof of his hole-in-the-wall, top floor safe house. Frank had been on high alert, gun loaded and cocked in his hands, until an upside-down pair of horns appeared in his window and a baton tapped on the glass. It was like the guy was gloating about his abilities or something. Frank had never even mentioned this safe house to Red.

Frank opened the window, despite the petty urge to just let the guy’s ass hang in the wind for a while. Payback for scaring the crap out of him.

Red slithered into the room a little less than gracefully, but was soon standing in front of Frank and staring him down. Well, as well as he could for being blind.

“I thought you were in trouble, Castle.” His voice was a lot colder than it had been, recently.

“Well, I’ve been told I will be unless I take some kind of backup. Figured you may have some interest in helpin’ out.” Frank did his best to maintain his calm. He leaned against the wall as he took in Red’s appearance. The guy didn’t seem to feel any of the injuries he’d sustained in the last month; stood straight and proud and didn’t flinch when Frank moved off the wall. “Going after the Russians that are bringing in those teens. You know the ones.” Red nodded, but stayed oddly silent. “They’ll be at the docks for their latest shipment tomorrow night. They’re using the Petersons’ private dock, since we’ve had surveillance on the major ports for a while now. I’m gonna go in, take out as many of those sons of bitches as I can, but I don’t need some scared kid running out into the cross fire.”

“So, I’m basically crowd control for the scared kids, is that it?” Red’s voice had taken on a hard edge, but Castle ignored it.

“You’re makin’ sure none of ‘em accidentally find their way into the path of my bullets, and that no one tries to kill ‘em before they can talk to someone who can help them. I’ll be on the ground, too, but these guys aren’t exactly the ones you want to dance with. You want ‘em down for the count before you start takin’ shit from their pockets.”

“And I’m just supposed to let you kill all of them, is that it?” Red asked, voice still quiet and cold like a Kabar.

”They’re kidnapping kids to be sex slaves, Red. Not exactly the kind of people you want walking around.”

“And if, after ten years of being incarcerated, they realize how hard it is to live with themselves? What if they decide to change? Make a better life for themselves?” The question is almost absurd, but Frank is used to this dance. It was why he didn’t often relent to Red’s particular brand of help unless the guy was already on scene and busy. Until a few months ago, at least. But they had gotten too close. Frank had stepped back, but Red seemed to have run all the way back to the start of the board.

“Not easy to come back from being so cold you can listen to kids screaming while they’re torn up and still sleep like a baby, Red. Not sayin’ it can’t be done, I know you’ve got your whole savior complex, maybe even a god complex, who knows? But these guys? They’re bad to the marrow and they ain’t gonna stop just because they got a slap on the wrist in exchange for the name of their boss.” Frank’s breathing a little deeper, trying to keep himself calm now that he knows Red’s listening to his heart beat. He’s certain that his path is the right one. Red just can’t accept that some people don’t deserve to keep breathing.

“I do not have a God complex, Castle.” Red spits out through gritted teeth. Frank’s used that one before, and it never fails to raise Red’s hackles. He had meant it, though.

“So, what do you call your need to save everyone, Red? Really, it seems like no matter what they do, you’re so ready to throw yourself in front of them, save them from themselves. They’ll kill you one day!” Frank took a breath. His heart had squeezed painfully with his own words, and he wondered if Red had noticed through the rage that was turning his face as red as his suit.

“I call it the right thing to do. We don’t get to decide who deserves to live and die, Punisher. At least, I don’t. I know you don’t, but you’re going to anyway. Just because you can. Because you’re a killing machine and you’ve just happened to point your skills in a direction that points parallel to mine. Doesn’t mean you’re better than I am. Doesn’t mean you have any right to do what you do. I just fight with you because I see the heart under all that armor you wear, you dick.” Red had said these things before, but it seemed like there was more beneath the surface this time. It wasn’t just the guilt that seemed to plague the man like a bad case of leprosy that just hadn’t spread to his limbs yet. It was something else, but Frank couldn’t parse out what that was. Maybe he didn’t want to know.

Silence hung between them. Red’s mouth was turned down the same way it had been a few weeks before, when Frank had turned down a hot meal and left him in front of that fire escape. For some reason, Frank’s heart was beating heavier in his chest, and he was breathing a little too deeply. Damn Red and his stupid admissions. A few months ago, Frank would never have paid so much attention to his own reactions. His face may have been made of stone, and he may have had enough training to keep his heart rate mostly in check, but the fact that Red was listening to it had made him so much more aware of what was happening in his chest and it was fucking annoying.

“So, Red. Gonna help me? Set aside your pretty morals to save some kids? Or are we back to where we were when we first met?” It felt like that, the way this argument was playing out. Like it was years ago and Frank was fresh on the scene. Even as his mind protested it, his body was gearing up for a fight then and there out of muscle memory.

“I don’t know, Frank. Are we back to that? Because you sure have been acting like it.” Red’s reply might as well have slapped him in the face for all it surprised him. He’d stopped hanging out so much, sure. Stopped inviting Red to his jobs. But that was because he’d seen it going in the kind of direction Frank had learned to avoid like the plague. So, when he’d seen them falling into that rabbit hole, one with words like ‘friends’, he’d clawed his way out. Sure, he hadn’t reached out in a while (ever), but he hadn’t meant to send them careening back to the dark ages of their history.

“Does it have to be? Can’t we just… team up? Like we used to? We got a lot done, working together.”

Red breathed heavily for a moment, like he was struggling to regulate himself. “Then why haven’t you been teaming up with me, huh? Why haven’t you called me for your jobs, your stakeouts, hell, just to patch you up when I know you got the shit beaten out of you? It’s been weeks, Frank.”

Frank froze. It wasn’t something he did often, but it happened. Usually, only Curt could make him feel like a scolded child. Red sounded… like he’d been worried about Frank. As much as Frank was staunchly against caring about anyone unless they needed his help, it seemed that the Altar Boy cared about him. It was a gut punch he hadn’t been expecting, but he should have been.

“You don’t need to get involved in my shit, Red. Not like that. No one needs to be involved in my shit like that.” Frank turned and went to the small fridge in the kitchenette, grabbed two bottles of water, and turned back around to find the sneaky fucker right there in his face.

“What if I want to be there in it, Frank? Why is that so bad?” The tone was so cold, but Red’s posture looked like he was holding himself back from something.

“Why the hell would you want to, Murdock? You’ve got that fancy lawyer life and a nice apartment, friends you care about. They’re all in danger just from what you do, but at least you keep it a secret. I’m not a secret, Red. I’ve seen it myself. You’ve helped me get out of quite a few scrapes even when I didn’t know it was you. Why’re you mixing yourself up in all of this when you could go out, have a real life?” Frank found himself almost begging for an answer. He genuinely wanted to know. Surely, Red had better options for himself than this for the rest of his life.

Their old, bitter friend, Silence, reigned once more. It would have been funny, the two of them standing there and breathing at each other. Red hadn’t even taken off the mask, so Frank was just staring down at two plastic-covered eye holes.

“Fine, Frank. We’ll do it your way. But I’m not killing anyone.” Finally, the silence was broken, but Frank had been focussing for too long on the nose in front of him. It’d been broken probably just as many times as Frank’s had, given the remodelling he could see underneath the skin there. The jaw that had grit itself determinedly in his face moved away, and finally, Frank took a full, deep breath.

They moved out of the kitchenette, and Frank set the bottles of water on the floor as he sat down in the cot. He hadn’t written down any of his plans, but Murdock wouldn’t have been able to see them, anyway. Like a newly-wound clock, they got to work.

__________________________

Matt was not going to admit that it had felt like he’d been walking around with half of himself missing for the past few weeks. Foggy had pestered him about it, how he was actually showing up to work and court and still going out as Daredevil at night. Karen had asked him if he’d been dating someone and they’d found out or something. Like his dirty little secret was the only obvious reason that someone would break up with him. That made him feel better and worse all at once.

In truth, he’d come to rely on Castle’s company. It kept him talking in the slow nights, kept him from going off on his own and doing things that he knew were stupid. Before their tenuous partnership, he hadn’t really had anyone to call. For a while, he’d had Frank. He didn’t like what the man did, but he’d saved Matt’s life more times than he cared to count, so he’d been willing to go along with it. See where their rapport led them.

Stupidly, oh, so stupidly, he’d been vulnerable and took off his mask. It had been a split-second decision that he’d waffled about for a while, by that point. He’d felt bad, never being able to talk to Frank about cases the way he wanted to, because Frank didn’t know that Matt had been only a building or two away every time Frank got his ass arrested. With as much as Frank had done for him, Matt had figured that he owed the guy, but he’d also wanted to not have to worry about it later on down the line. He wanted to be open and honest with Frank. Had the late-night cuddle-session helped that? Absolutely. Matt had slept so well that he wasn’t able to sleep for the following couple of nights. But then, Frank hadn’t called. He hadn’t texted. He’d been in the wind.

Once upon a time, that hadn’t been unusual. Then, they’d become friendly, talked about ongoing cases or jobs that were coming up in texts and phone calls with code words, like they were SHIELD spies. Of course, he’d revealed his true identity, and Frank had gone away. Not a word.

It may have taken him a week to find Frank after that, but once he’d been turned down for Chinese take out (one of Frank’s favorites), he’d gotten the message. Frank didn’t want to be like that with him. It wasn’t Daredevil, it was Matt. That was the only thing that had really changed. Even Foggy and Karen hadn’t decided to completely cut him out of their lives, and they hadn’t really seen what he was capable of! Frank had. And something had been growing there. Just a tiny seed, but it had been growing into something, and with one move, it had been flooded. There really wasn’t much to indicate Matt should hold out hope that it would come back. Still, he’d been raised to believe that hope was the only constant a person could rely on.

So, he may have been wafting around like a ghost for a few weeks, as Foggy had put it, but it was pretty hard not to when… well, when you were rejected so thoroughly. Still that hope that, maybe, Frank would reach out held its roots in his chest and squeezed his heart a little tighter with each passing day where Frank didn’t respond to his texts.

When the call came to his phone, Matt had been in small claims court, going over the contract’s specific paragraphs about its compliance with rent control, as well as the papers from Mrs. Alejo’s landlord. They included details about raising rent, then deportation when she’d refused to pay more than she owed. The injustice of that alone had raised Matt’s hackles, but he’d been a sharper knife than he needed after seeing someone he’d known in college opposing him. Victor Snell, who had raped three girls in college and regularly told his “bros” about it. He’d been acquitted because he was on the swim team. The whole thing had never sat right with Matt, and seeing that he had not only graduated, but was working for a firm that represented assholes like Mrs. Alejo’s landlord? It had been too easy to take him down several pegs, then hug Mrs. Alejo when she was given three months rent in compensation for the rates she shouldn’t have had to pay in the first place.

It was the first time Matt had felt like a person in two weeks, and he was going to take it.

Then, he’d stepped out onto the steps to the court house and found the voicemail from Frank. Still riding a little higher on the wave of his victory, he’d decided to wait until his work day was done, then go over and see what he wanted from Matt. Not just on the job, but in general. Matt may have kept his identity a secret from Frank, but he didn’t deserve whatever it was that was making Frank stay out of his life, only to barge back in with a request to meet and talk over another job.

Still, on the roof top, he’d made some noise so that Frank would know he was there. When he’d heard the gun cock and the ex-marine’s heart kicked up its pace, he realized that calling first may have been a slightly better option. He’d still made his way over the edge of the roof and peeked into the window of the safe house. Knocked on the window with his baton. Thankfully, Frank hadn’t shot him just for being a dick.

Then, as he’d stood there, talking to what seemed to be a brick wall with single-minded determination, Matt had snapped. Castle had called him in as, in essence, a babysitter. Not to help with the fight, not to help take out some of the people who had been horrifically brutal to kids, but to watch the kids and make sure they were safe. Like he was useless for anything else. He’d almost asked a few times if it was because he was blind, almost offered to kick Frank’s ass up and down the block so he would get it through his head that Matt was skilled, and could do a lot worse than what he normally would have if Frank decided to continue being an ass.

Then, standing there with the cool air coming out of the refrigerator, he’d lost his train of thought. Frank was close to him, and his pulse had quickened just slightly, seemingly from anger, at first, but the chemicals that rolled off of him spoke of fear, sadness, and a hint of something Matt was determined not to think about. He’d been angry until, suddenly, the anger had drained from him. He wasn’t going to get anything from Castle if the guy was backed into a corner. Fine. He’d play the game and see where it took them. But he wasn’t going to be treated any differently than Frank would have before.

As they sat on the cot in the corner of the tiny living room/bedroom, Matt heard out the plan and found that, okay, Frank had had a bit more planned than he’d originally said. Matt was going to take one side of the building, Frank would take the other, and they’d meet in the middle once the kids were safe. Thankfully, part of Frank’s plans were that they would stay as far away from the actual boat that was bringing in the kids as possible, after last time.

With plans in place, a time to meet up before the drop the next night, and a slightly more stable understanding of where they wanted to be in their relationship to each other, they bid each other good night and Matt slipped out the window.

_______________________________

Chapter Text

They met on the roof of an office building that was just close enough to the Petersons’ Dock that Matt would be able to keep an ear on their targets, but far enough away so as not to be spotted.

Matt fuckin’ Murdock, dressed up in his little red suit, stood waiting for him by the time Castle managed to haul himself up onto the roof from the fire escape. He dusted the rust flakes from his hands, then approached the smaller man.

“Ready?” He asked, though he really didn’t need to. He’d seen Red in action enough times to know that the guy was always ready for a fight.

“Are you?” The tone was a little teasing, Red’s lips flickered up into a twitch of a smirk. It was a ghost of what their banter would have once looked like, but Frank wasn’t going to let that get to him, right then.

“ETA?” The question was ignored for a moment, and Red’s lips turned down into a frown once more as he listened.

“They’re saying the ship’s pulling into the harbor, now. Twenty minutes ‘till docking, likely another thirty after that to unload. There are ten people waiting on the dock, supposed to be another five guards on the ship.”

The pair sat in silence for a few minutes, or at least, all Frank could hear was the wind that whipped around them and the occasional quiet noise of an ambulance in the distance. Red, he was sure, was listening to every fucking thing those dirt-bags said and did.

Frank wanted to say something, stir up some kind of conversation between them. He adamantly refused to admit to himself that he had missed just being in close quarters with the guy, but being back in his presence was slowly undoing some of the knots in his neck and shoulders. They were on a job, though. No time for chit chat or distractions.

“Something’s wrong.” Red’s voice came out terse, and Frank snapped to immediately, hands falling to the pistols he’d strapped to his chest and waist. “We’ve gotta go.” And with that, the bastard took a flying leap off the building and shot out his little Indiana Jones baton to catch the railing of a balcony across the street. Once he was on the ground, Red took off running.

Frank made his way quickly to the fire escape and began hopping down flights one at a time.

No way was the bastard going to throw his plan out the window like that without Frank hot on his trail.

Frank was only a few feet from the entrance to the dock’s parking lot when he heard it. The awful sound of crunching metal and stone wrenched through the air, and he watched Red hunch down and into himself with his hands over his ears. Of course, he was already across the parking lot. Frank’s feet moved before he’d even realized what he was doing. The screeching continued as he ran, but his eyes were on Red, who’d stood up but still had his hands over his ears.

“Red? Red, you okay?” Frank asked as he finally got close enough so he wouldn’t have to shout. His hands fell to Red’s shoulders, feeling up and under the cowl for any signs of injury. Red pushed his hand away, and Frank grimaced at the feeling of blood on his fingers. “I’m fine” Red insisted. But Frank wasn’t going anywhere until he checked to see if his partner had been hit with something.

“I’m fine, Frank. Really. Just a loud noise.” Red’s own hand came up and snapped next to first one ear, then the other. “Totally fine.” He didn’t sound like it. It sounded like he’d been shaken around in a mason jar and was still recovering. Frank just nodded. He didn’t trust that something wasn’t wrong, but he knew that Red could fight like a demon with his hands tied behind his back and one leg up in the air. “The kids, Frank. I think their container tipped over in the crash. We’ve got to help them!” Red took off again, and Frank matched him step for step as they ran across the pavement.

When they finally made it around the warehouse, Frank saw the crashed ship. A sinking horror started in his heart and waded its way down to his toes. The ship was on its side, all of the cargo crates were still strapped in, but the ship was taking on water, fast, and those crates wouldn’t be accessible for long. People armed to the teeth were running around trying to get crane gear in order, and Castle opened fire before he even thought about bringing out his guns. He took out one, two, three, four, five of them before fire turned on him. Red had slipped off, likely to go for the kids, by the time Frank came back to himself. He ducked behind cover, not really sure if he’d been hit but not caring. He could still move, could still fight. Even if he could feel blood running out of his thigh.

He peeked around the corner when the shots stopped ringing out, took out two more with his pistol. When he ducked back to reload, more shots hit the metal container he’d ducked behind, but the people firing were getting closer. Within a breath, Frank had a grenade in his hand, and he pulled the pin before tossing it back at them. Two seconds later, the container forced him to the ground, but at least it hadn’t landed on him. When he looked around the corner, the rest of his assailants were dead.

He took off running towards the ship, which was sinking deeper and deeper into the harbor. Sure, the water around the dock was only about thirty feet deep, but that was a lot of water to swim through to try and save twenty kids, and that was only if they could find them.

Frank may not have had a baton with a zip line, but he did have a grappling hook. He took aim and fired at one of the top-most containers, then used it to bring himself up and onto the barge. Red, he found, was a few containers down from him, standing on one of the sideways containers and grappling with two of the guards. Frank dropped himself down to the next container, felt it in his leg, but stood up to run again before he realized that they both had broken arms, one had a broken leg, and Red was still standing.

“They’re in one of these, on this level. Water’s getting into their container. I don’t know where the other guards are.” Frank took in the information and moved to the end of their container, then dropped down to the next one. The container that had just started taking on water was about four-deep in the stack, so he moved down another two and over while Red climbed down the fronts of the containers. They made it to the row at the same time, the container had half-submerged by the time they made it, though. Frank could hear the screams rising from somewhere in front of them, but the water around them distorted the sound.

“Get back!” Frank yelled as he swam a short distance away, then shot the lock on the container. He brought himself back to the metal and stood on one of the locking beams while he lifted the other door above his head. It was just wooden crates. No kids. “Fuck!” He yelled, even as he swam among the crates that had been thankfully strapped in. Red followed him, allowing the door to close behind them. “Red! We’re stuck in here, now!” He yelled even as he was searching his pockets for another grenade. His hands came upon it, and he yelled for everyone to get under the water for ten seconds.

The grenade hit the back wall just as he went under, and some of the crates came loose with the explosion. When they came back up, there was only about a foot and a half of air space left. They were running out of time. The next compartment, thankfully, held the kids, though. Most of them were gasping, crying, screaming out. One or two looked like they’d been injured a bit in the blast, but when Frank clicked on his flashlight, he found that none of them were unconscious. Red moved to the back of the container as Frank shouted for them to follow him, beckoned with his hand before he made his way through the hole in the container, then came up for breath. There were only a few inches of air left. “Deep breath!” he called out, and heard the gasps just before the water closed over top of them. With no options left, Frank flung a final grenade at the doors of the container, which blasted off of their hinges.

He pulled kid after kid out of the container and sent them to the surface, hoping that they’d help each other while he waited for Red to get his ass out of the damned container and give him the all clear. Finally, he had to go back to the surface, but his heart was racing in his chest. Matt hadn’t come out. He dove back down once he’d made sure that the kids were all keeping their heads above water. The police and coast guard were closing in on them. He could hear the choppers even as he dove back down. His guns would be useless for a while, until they dried, at least, and Frank’s lungs protested the lack of air, but his shoulder light still worked. As he searched the now open container, he found Red’s body floating near the top of the container, blood rushed into the water, though.

Without a second to think, Frank propelled himself forward, grabbed his partner, and got them the hell out of there as quickly as he could. He rose to the surface and forced Matt’s head above water, even as a search light passed over them from one of the choppers above. Frank forced his body to move, even though it felt like lead. “C’mon, Red. You can’t do this to me. Not like this, man. Not like this.”

What felt like hours later, Frank finally reached an untouched piece of the harbor and dragged Matt up onto the rocks. His shoulder seemed to be dislocated, probably because of the way Frank had used that arm to drag his limp body through the water, but when Frank pressed his ear to Matt’s chest, he swore he heard a heart beat.

He started CPR immediately, unsure how long Matt’s lungs had been filled with water but sure that the man was drowning, even though he was on dry land. When he turned Matt onto his side, water came out, but not enough for what Frank knew was in there. So, he kept going. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been at it when, finally, Matt rolled over on his own and forced out a stream of water. He choked up more and more of it, and Frank wasn’t sure when it was going to end, but finally the water turned into vomit before the deluge stopped.

Matt lay panting on the rock, and Frank finally allowed himself to release the breath he’d been holding. Frank pressed his fingers to the pulse point on Matt’s neck, and reassured himself as it went from thready to strong over the course of a few agonizing minutes.

“What the hell, Red? I thought you were dead for a second, there.” Frank finally said over the noise of the waves chopping up to the shore.

“Box, hit my head.” Matt croaked from beside him. “Dizzy.”

“You good if I move you?” Frank asked, even though he was pretty sure he shouldn’t. “I’ve got a guy, but we’ve gotta get there ourselves.”

There was no response. Frank was out of time. He picked Red up in his arms and carried him up over the rocks, almost slipped a couple of times, but he made it eventually to the top of the slope they’d been on. It took ages to get across the abandoned lot they'd washed up near, partially because Frank kept stopping to take Matt’s pulse, but eventually they made it.

It took even longer to get back to the van, but Frank made it. His muscles protested each move he made, but he got Matt laid out in the back on his side, propped between two duffel bags and with that foil blanket over him, then sped off for Curt’s place.

________________________

Matt awoke on a table, not sure where he was, exactly, but comforted by the fact that he could hear Castle speaking somewhere off to his right. A wet tongue lapped over his fingers and Matt identified the smell of dog in the air.

“Max, hey!” Frank’s voice came in from off to his right, clear and a little too loud, but Matt was okay with that. The last thing he remembered was being under water and feeling the sea salt burn his lungs.

“‘E’s fin.” Matt couldn’t put the words together properly to get them out of his mouth, but maybe that was okay too. He was so tired…

“Hey, hey buddy. It’s okay, take it easy.” Frank’s voice was so close to him, but it was lower, softer. “You scared me half to death, Red.” The words were murmured so low that Matt knew he was the only one meant to hear them. A hand ran across his cheek and down to his neck, where two fingers pressed into his pulse point.

Matt tried to move, mostly he just wanted to sit up, but everything ached and a hand came up to his chest to move him gently back down. He went willingly, despite the way his chest ached at any movement at all.

His eyes closed once more, and sleep overtook him.

Chapter Text

Matt awoke to the sounds of thousands of beeps in different tones, an overwhelming scent of antiseptic underlaid with a particularly familiar scent of old sweat, and the notion that he was going to throw up. Everything was too loud, too much, and it almost felt like the first time he’d ever been in a hospital. Despite his attempt to control himself, he levered up automatically and retched over the side of whatever bed he was on. His hands had moved to the side and found purchase on a railing on the side of the bed, so at least he didn’t completely fall out. Still, hanging upside down and feeling too weak to sit back up after leaving a puddle of bile on the floor was never fun.

“Oh shit-Matt!” An expectedly familiar voice shouted as two steel-toed boots hit the linoleum. In a small eternity of hanging upside-down and feeling woozy, a large, firm hand pressed to his chest while the other supported his back to lift him back up and onto the bed. The world seemed to be spinning around Matt as a central axis, or maybe he was the one spinning, but he was determined not to lose anything else that had been in his body. “I need a nurse in here!” The voice was too loud, but just its presence was enough to let Matt relax just a little bit.

“Hey, Pete.” Matt croaked as he heard footsteps approaching the room.

“Oh, my!” A squeaky voice exclaimed, then ran back out into the hallway calling for a nurse. Matt could hear a cart with squeaky wheels making its way towards them.

“Would you stop scaring the crap outta me? Fuckin’ menace is what you are…” Frank growled, still holding his chest so that Matt was upright, but the hand slowly lowered him back to the bed.

“Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve cleaned your ass up.” Matt said, just as a new nurse rushed in.

“Mr. Murdock, good to see you with your eyes open.” The nurse sounded tired, but still friendly. “Your friend here hasn’t let us be since you came in.”

“How… how long was I out?” Matt asked, a little afraid of the answer.

“Oh my god, Foggy! He’s awake!” Karen’s voice shouted from the hallway, and a running gait he knew too well came barrelling towards the room.

“Matt, what the Hell is wrong with you? I’m so glad you’re okay but you scared the crap out of us!” Karen’s voice came from his right, and Matt turned an apologetic smile to her.

“Hey, don’t blame the blind guy for not knowing there wasn’t a set of stairs off the balcony, alright?” Frank’s voice to his left, accompanied by the hand on his chest, made his heart stutter a little faster. The room went very quiet for a moment.

“Matt! Oh thank God man, I thought you were dead!” Foggy burst into the room, and soon Matt’s arms were full of his best friend’s torso. Matt hugged him back, despite the pain in his chest, and was grateful to note that Frank’s hand on his back remained a steady presence.

Frank’s hand began making small circles on his back and Matt felt his cheeks flush a little. Under normal circumstances, he would have had more control, but he was so tired, and it felt good to know that his friends were all there for him.

“If we’re all quite done with thanking God?” The nurse interrupted. The room quieted immediately. Matt thought she would have done numbers as a nun at Saint Agnes. “You’ve been in a medically-induced coma for three days. You had a hematoma in your brain that Dr. Sarroyan was able to remove and cauterize, and we’ve been monitoring you for any other signs of bleeding. You took quite the fall, Mr. Murdock.”

Matt sat on that for a moment, processing all of the information. “I’m okay now, though? I can go home?”

“No, not just yet.” The nurse’s voice had gone down a half-step and she seemed to be attempting to calm him down before he’d even gotten excited. “We’ll need to monitor you for at least tonight, then you can leave tomorrow if you’d like. You will need to have someone stay with you for a few days after that, to be sure you don’t have any underlying issues or exacerbate any of your other injuries. You’ll also need to set up out-patient appointments for wound-care for your head injury. We’ll send someone in a bit to discuss this further with you, but for now you may want to rest. Your body has been through quite the ordeal.”

“Okay.” Matt nodded, despite the fact that he felt something shift on his head when he did. It felt like a bandage.

The nurse left, finally, and Matt felt himself being pushed back to rest on the pillows once more. He’d been mostly upright when he’d awoken, it seemed, because no one had moved the bed but he still felt like he was just leaning back in an uncomfortable chair.

Karen and Foggy stuck around for a while, told him about some of the cases he’d missed in court, the way Foggy had won them all, what research Karen had been doing on some of his other cases, but eventually they left too.

Frank, stubbornly, remained at his side. Even when another nurse came in to run a series of memory exercises and cognitive tests on him.

“You can go home. I may not be able to see you, but I can smell that you haven’t showered in at least a few days.” Matt finally remarked when they had been left alone once more.

“Nah, Red, you’d miss me too much.” Frank’s voice was quiet. “You were out for a week, man. I thought you were going to die. Curt told me to take you to the hospital, so we dressed you up in a freakin’ suit and rubbed some of your blood on it. Even had to drench it in pool water to make it convincing enough for our cover story, but you were freakin’ out.” Matt could hear a small tremor in Frank’s voice, and his heart rate escalated again for a moment. He prayed Frank wouldn’t be able to hear the difference. “I didn’t want to bring you in, but I couldn’t bear to think of you dyin’ like that. I should have been the one in the back of that crate, there. Not you.”

“Hey, Frank, it’s okay.” Matt said. His hand reached out automatically and found that Frank had draped his own over the railing on the left side of the bed. “You were the one who could see whether there were any kids left in the container. I take it they all made it?”

Frank was quiet for a moment, then a chuckle left his lips. “I tell you you were in a coma for a week and you’re still just worried about the kids… Fuckin’ altar boy.”

“Aww, were you worried about me?” Matt teased. It felt like the things they used to do, before Frank took a giant step back and out of his life. He heard Frank’s heart stop for a second, then restart. Matt felt a little guilty. “So, did you ever find out what happened with the shipping container? I was too focused on the kids to hear their explanation for running aground like that.”

“Oh, shit, that’s right, you don’t know.” Frank sounded like he was about to start laughing. “Fuckin’ Deadpool got aboard the ship. Swam out there himself and found his way in somehow. He killed most of the people on the ship, and had just been makin’ his way up to the deck where the kids and guns were when it hit the dock. They found him picking up pieces of himself from where the idiot got dismembered on impact, and fuckin’ Spider-Man showed up, webbed him into a bundle and swung off with him, right there in front of the cops! We didn’t find out until the morning news, but what a way to come out as partners…”

Matt nodded, but a thought nagged at him. “Did… no one else know that they were dating?”

Frank sat up a little straighter. “They what? You knew?” Matt let the other man’s words hang in the air for a moment. “Oh Christ, of course you knew. You’ve got that freaking super-hearing. Bet you’ve heard them making out on every street corner.”

Matt cleared his throat, but declined to respond. He could feel a bit of heat rising in his cheeks, though.

“I don’t need to know, Red.”

__________________________

Frank rubbed a hand over his eyes. They hadn’t spoken in a while. Matt had fallen back asleep, but he couldn’t bring himself to get up and leave. He hadn’t since they’d brought the guy in and Frank had had to watch him disappear through those double doors. The nurses, doctors, and even a social worker had come to question him about it, but Frank had stuck to his story. Given he was using an alias that David had made him with no priors, alongside a distinct lack of evidence that Frank had laid a hand on him, he’d been allowed to stay in the room as Matt slept. He was grateful for that. The thought of leaving Matt there, in that bed that made his frame look so small, just made him itch.

Curt had visited a couple of times. Once Karen and Foggy had found out, they’d taken to visiting after their work day was done and would stay late into the night, just in case he woke up. It’d been luck that they’d been there on their lunch break that day.

Even though Matt had finally come back, Frank couldn’t be sure that he would again. So, he would sit and wait.

Around three that morning, one of the nurses had come in for a check on Matt’s vitals. She’d immediately turned back around and left the room, though. When she returned, she was wielding a sponge and a bed pan full of soapy water. Nurse Ratchet’s threats of a restrained and sedated sponge bath were enough for him to acquiesce and be forced into the bathroom that adjoined the room for a quick shower. When he stepped out from behind the curtain, a pair of scrubs, deodorant, and a toothbrush with a tiny toothpaste sat on the closed toilet lid. After a quick peek out at the still-sleeping Murdock, he completed the basic hygiene regimen that had been all-but written out for him. Immediately, he took his spot in the chair again.

He must have fallen asleep at some point, because when he opened his eyes again the room was filled with light, and a hand was tracing its way through the locks of hair that had grown out over the past month.

“I bet your hair looks weird, growing out from that buzz-cut you were so proud of.” Matt’s words are light, his tone teasing, and his voice is strong. It’s the best damned thing Frank’s heard that week.

“Not as weird as yours. They shaved half your head, you know.” Frank sat up slowly and leaned back, out of reach of searching fingers so he could stretch his back. Sleeping slumped over in a chair didn’t do any favors for his back.

“I always wanted to try a mohawk, I just wasn’t brave enough.” Matt laughed, and Frank carefully tucked away the thought that he’d missed that laugh.

“You don’t get to scare me like that again.” He said, quietly. Silence, their old friend, rang in his ears as Matt tucked his arms into himself a bit.

“You know that I’m going to, though. Right? Shit happens, Pete.” Matt tossed his head towards the open door. “But, you’ve got to trust that I’ll be okay. I trust that you will, even with the crazy things you do.”

Frank took a while to digest that. They stayed silent while Matt was brought a small breakfast of toast and unseasoned eggs, which he forced Frank to eat half of despite the fact that he hadn’t had any appetite in days. The nurse, who walked in on Frank grudgingly chewing on his half of the piece of toast, had just rolled his eyes and walked away, only to bring in a sandwich a few minutes later. He chastised Frank for eating part of the breakfast that had been specially formulated for Matt’s health and recovery, despite his protests about Matt’s insistence, but he seemed to lose his fight against smiling for a second before he left the room.

A few minutes later, another nurse came in to take Matt’s vitals again and check the bandages that covered the minor scrapes and one very deep wound from a knife that hadn’t quite healed yet. The woman nodded once she finished, turned to walk out the door, then spun back around at the doorway. “I wouldn’t leave my husband alone, either. Don’t let Doreen get to you.” Frank was left to sputter while Murdock laughed at his reddening face and accelerated heart beat.

“Seriously, Frank, did you act like my guard dog the whole time? They think we’re married!” Murdock, the smug bastard, had a shit-eating grin on his face all the way out the door for his final MRI ten minutes later.

Frank realized he could have taken the chance to leave, then. Just disappeared out the doors to hopefully never see any of the people he’d come to recognize over the prior three days, but he couldn’t force his feet to move.

When Matt came back, he was still smiling. Frank determinedly kept his heart at a steady pace, despite the weird-looking hair and Joker grin on the smaller man’s face. It did nothing to him. He was stone.

He just didn’t want Red to die because he’d been unable to complete a job on his own. Absolutely. There was nothing else to him staying in that damned uncomfortable chair for those days, or the sheer amount of pacing he’d done in the days before Matt had been brought to the hospital. He’d have done it for any of his brothers in arms.

It was almost a convincing argument.

__________________________

Chapter Text

One month after Matt left the hospital, and he couldn’t help but think about how his life had once again shifted. Frank had taken him home to play nurse to his combative patient. Forced him to his doctors appointments (once, literally, at gun-point), and finally Matt was given the all-clear. He’d been warned that he should stay away from anything too strenuous for the following week, which, to Frank, apparently meant anything outside of work, court, eating, and sleeping.

When Castle finally went back to one of his safe houses, Matt had sighed in relief. He’d enjoyed some aspects of it, sure. His apartment hadn’t been lonely, and he’d found out that Frank was one hell of a cook, but he’d been mother-henned half to death and he was sick of the words, “How’s your head?”

It took an hour for him to miss Frank. The smell of gun oil and leather and smoke from the cigarettes that he’d take up to the roof to burn was starting to fade. Just a little, but it wasn’t the strong, cloying scent he’d come to expect. The small corners of the apartment that used to fill with his laughter when Matt did something stupid, or while they just sat and played twenty-questions, were silent. The duffel bags full of weapons, once stashed in his closet, were gone. As were the guns strapped beneath the coffee table, under the couch, under the kitchen sink, in the cabinet by the coffee maker, and even the knife that had been hidden in the bathroom, taped behind the toilet. Frank had removed all feasible traces of himself from the apartment. He missed him.

Still, he’d made sure to wake up on time the next day and bundle himself into his warmest clothes. Winter had taken over New York, and no one was safe from the icy winds. Karen was already there by the time he made it up the stairs, nose and ears burning with the cold, and she’d greeted him cheerfully. “You know, we’re going to get used to you being here when we open.” Her words struck a cord in him, and Matt did his best to smile back.

“I do my best.” He ignored the fact that, up until this injury, he’d been late most days because of Daredevil. When he wasn’t, he was exhausted, usually bruised, occasionally sporting a bandage or twelve, and neither of them would greet him like they used to.

He hadn’t been out on the streets in weeks. Somehow, Frank had not only found Spider-Man, but he’d convinced him that he and his boyfriend needed to start pitching in in Hell’s Kitchen since Deadpool had caused the accident that led to Matt being out of commission. Spider-Man was regularly seen swinging through the streets, Matt had even heard him go into Stark Tower a couple of times, when he’d been curious about his trajectory, but that place was so air-tight even his hearing wasn’t able to penetrate its walls.

So, that morning, he made his way back to his tiny office and pulled the case files he needed for court that day out onto the desk. There was no ache from new and old injuries, no pull of stitches, not even a bruise from hitting his leg on the coffee table because Frank had accidentally moved it. He poured over the files quickly, just to refresh his memory, and listened to Foggy walk in the door approximately five minutes after he had. Foggy, too, greeted him brightly and Matt had done his best to return the sentiment, but his heart felt weighted.

It hadn’t escaped his notice that they were both happier now that he wasn’t going out at night. Of course, there was the cursory argument about him working with The Punisher, the things Frank was willing to do. Foggy hated every piece of it, but had accepted that Frank, for all of his faults, was the reason Matt had actually gone to his doctor’s appointments. Karen, at least, had been a bit kinder about it, but she had insisted that getting too caught up in Frank’s business was liable to get him killed, one day. Still, once a truce had been made between them, his friends had begun acting like they used to. They’d opened back up to him, spent more time talking to him, and it drove him a little crazy that they couldn’t just do that while he was out trying to save their city, too.

He made his way down to the court house that day with an invisible rain cloud over his head and missed Frank’s form being at his side, radiating warmth.

_____________________________

Matt had told Frank to go home, but he couldn’t sit still. His guns and knives were immaculate. Not a speck of dirt or stray gun powder on them. He’d loaded special rounds from some materials David had given him on his last birthday, just to do something with his hands. He still hadn’t slept.

It wasn’t unusual, his inability to fall asleep, but at least while he’d been living in Matt’s apartment he’d been able to lay in bed next to his blind companion, listen to his even breaths, check for any issues with his pupils, feel his pulse beat its steady drum, until finally his mind would quiet enough to sleep. Here, alone in his shitty safe house, he had nothing to do. Nowhere to be. No good distractions. He’d tried building up his next case against the Russians, but that had just led down a rabbit hole of shame and regret over the fact that Red wouldn’t be joining him. Really, Frank wouldn’t let him. He’d almost lost the guy once. There wasn’t a snowball’s chance in Hell he’d be letting that happen again.

Finally, he’d just gone out that night. Suited up and armed to the teeth, he was determined to let out some of his aggression on some of the scum that still rotted in Hell’s Kitchen. It felt right, being out in the night air again, letting himself breathe in the frigid air of New York in the winter. He waited on the roof top until he heard gun shots a few blocks away. Taking off, his muscles burned from a lack of use, but he just pushed himself harder, guns already drawn as he ran, until he came upon a bodega and an unexpected duo.

Spider-Man and Deadpool had either webbed up or knee-capped three armed people in ski masks, and were walking away from the broken glass of the store front. Spider-Man held a cell phone up to his ear, and was reporting the robbery. Frank stopped, lungs burning in a way he didn’t want to acknowledge was due to his lack of cardio, lately. For a moment, he felt like they were stuck in a tableau. Then, Spider-Man hung up and threw the cell phone on the ground, and Frank turned around to walk away.

“Punisher! Heya buddy! Haven’t seen you in an age but ooh! Damn! Look at them pecs!” Deadpool called after him. “Don’t let anyone sell you short, superstar, those things could crush a watermelon! Hey! Wait up!” Frank had picked up his pace, mostly because he didn’t want to shoot someone in front of their boyfriend. It didn’t matter that Deadpool would heal, it just wasn’t a pleasant thing to watch.

“Hey, Punisher, please!” Spider-Man called after him as well. “We just want to talk!” Frank didn’t slow down, but suddenly he was wheeling through the air. Spider-Man, the prick, had shot a web at his lower back and flipped him off of his feet. Frank rose with a spin to face them, dropped easily into a fighting stance with one hand on the pistol at his waist, but both of the men in red were holding up their hands. “We just want to talk, man, that’s it.”

“What’s there to talk about, huh?” Frank asked. “You’re doing me and Red a favor after you’re the reason that whole job went to shit. We’re square.”

“Red and I.” Deadpool muttered, just loud enough for Frank to hear, and he resisted the urge to shoot the undead fucker in the face.

“I wasn’t technically part of that, I just helped Deadpool when he called and said he’d lost a few pieces of himself. But still. I know you and Daredevil are close. I wanted to check in. He’s been good to me. Helped me out of more than a few scrapes. Is he okay?” Spider-Man’s concern bled clearly through his voice, and Frank sighed. He’d never been able to justify it, but he’d always seen Spider-Man as a kid. Maybe a little over twenty, but not by much if he was. And he was a good guy, always helped out where he was needed before he’d fuck off into the city again.

“He’s alive, but he’s out of commission for the moment.” Frank finally responded.

“So, alive like in a coma? Or alive like walking and talking just like a real boy?” Deadpool’s flippant attitude had always grated on Frank’s nerves.

“DP, you’re not helping.” Spider-Man said gently. He rested a hand on the arm of his boyfriend before he turned back to Frank. “Is he, though? Up and walking and talking and everything?”

Frank scrubbed a hand over his eyes, but nodded. “He’s back to his day job.”

“Oh! I knew it!” Deadpool shouted, suddenly jumping up and down and clapping his hands like a little kid. “I told you, Spidey! They’re totally-”

“Deadpool!” Peter hissed, interrupting that train of thought. Frank was pretty sure he knew where it was going, anyways, and he didn’t like it in the slightest.

“We’re not like that. He’s just a good partner, is all. He can hold his own, or he could before that shit show.” Frank’s words did nothing to quell the excitement of the immortal man who looked like he should have been holding a lollipop and wearing a tutu for all he was acting like a little girl.

“Baby, please, not now. We can talk all about it later, I promise.” Spider-Man reached up a hand to direct Deadpool’s face to his, and Frank took that as his cue to leave. As he turned, though, Spider-Man called out to him. “Hey! Wait!” Partially against his will, Frank didn’t stop, and he refused to turn around. “Wanna grab tacos?”

A series of bad options and worse choices led to Frank, Deadpool, and Spider-Man standing at the counter of a hole-in-the-wall Mexican food joint while Deadpool ordered enough food to feed an army. Frank had tried to step in and at least pay for his own portion, but Deadpool had slapped a small stack of cash to the counter and told the elderly woman behind it to “keep the change, cuteness.”

They all sat down at one of the tables in the back, with Frank facing the door while Deadpool and Spider-Man faced him.

“So-o-o… gonna tell us why you’re eating an extra dose of angry-flakes lately?” Deadpool asked. Frank nearly ripped the table out of the floor. His senses were on a hair-trigger, but after Spider-Man had threatened to leave him hanging from a lamp post unless he at least allowed them to buy him dinner, he’d been on his best behavior. “‘Cause, I bet I know, but y’know, Spidey-Babe says it’s good to let people draw their own conclusions.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Frank asked. He sat back and crossed his arms. The last time he’d been this tense, Curt had been yelling at him that he needed to take Red to the hospital and he’d been determined that Red wouldn’t want that. The fact that he’d been this stressed twice in two months, and hadn’t been tied to a chair for either situation, was a bit concerning.

“We know you care about… Red. A lot. It just seems like you don’t really have anyone to talk to about that.” Spider-Man jumped in. Frank watched Deadpool’s hand disappear beneath the table and made it a point to fix his eyes on the exit.

“Don’t need to.”

They sat in silence until the food came. Despite the mountain of food that was piled onto the table, it didn’t take long for the super-beings to demolish most of it. Frank was left three burritos, but he was only half-way through the last one by the time the table was covered in wrappers. Honestly, it was disgusting to watch people eat that quickly, but soon the masks of the two vigilantes were back down over their chins once more.

“You ever need to talk, Castle, you let us know.” Spider-Man unclipped a pen from his belt and wrote out a phone number on one of the discarded wrappers. Frank did not pick it up.

“Catch ya later, Rook!” Deadpool called over his shoulder as the pair left the restaurant. Frank picked up the trash, and after a long minute of debate with himself, put the wrapper with the phone number on it in his pocket. The rest of the arm-full of crinkling paper was thrown into the trash, and he took a moment to even wipe down the table with a couple of napkins. He’d lived with Red for a month and apparently the guy had trained manners into him.

Frank walked back out into the chill of a gust of wind to find that the vigilantes were gone, and the streets were mostly silent. As he walked home, snow flurries began to drift in the wind, and he allowed himself a moment to think over the night before his thoughts inevitably turned to Red. He wondered how he was doing, whether he was still awake, or if he’d fallen asleep already. Frank was half-way to Red’s apartment before he turned around and made his way to Curt’s. He had missed Max, who Curt was taking care of while Frank was taking care of Red, and seeing the pair of them may just help loosen the knot in his chest.

________________________

Chapter Text

Surprisingly, it took two days for Matt to finally don the suit after Frank had moved out. He’d given up on his excuses that Foggy and Karen would be upset, that Frank would possibly try to fight him and end up feeling worse than he had when Matt had first been hurt. He’d even tried to see if going out to a bar to pick someone up would help him relieve the itch that had grown into a monster beneath his skin. (It didn’t, and he found himself walking home alone). He needed to be out there, protecting his city, and if anyone had a problem with that, then he would deal with it.

His first leap from the roof of his building to the next brought a rush of excitement into his system. He hadn’t felt so free in so long, he was almost sure he’d have forgotten the sensation. Matt laughed to himself at the feeling of air rushing past him, the way his muscles burned from disuse wasn’t enough to phase him, and he was finally free again.

The streets were quiet that night. No one seemed to want to cause trouble when the temperatures were in the negatives. He’d slowly felt himself freezing, but he wasn’t ready to go back to his apartment just yet. The sound of a web being attached to the building he stood on stopped his movements, though. Matt could hear the fibers of Spider-Man’s suit as they detached and reattached to the bricks, and could hear Deadpool’s heart beating alongside the kid’s. Oddly, though, they were silent.

“Heya Devil! Fancy seeing you out and about!” Deadpool called, once they had crested the building.

“I take it you two are the reason I’m not finding anything to do out here?” Matt called back, but his tone was warm. It was nice to see anyone, really. There was no snow, but the wind was freezing, and he was starting to think about getting back to his apartment as he stood still for once. The heat of movement had blocked out the worst of the cold.

“Yep! Favor to your boy-toy from Detroit.” Deadpool replied as they stepped closer.

“Doing alright, Daredevil? I’m glad to see you back in action.” Spider-Man’s voice raised over the wind.

“I’d love to just sit and chat, but do you mind if we get off this roof? I’m losing my nuts to frost-bite over here.” Deadpool complained, and Matt couldn’t help but grin. The guy, for all he was a menace, certainly lived up to his moniker: Merc With A Mouth.

“I’ve been wanting to try that Thai place that’s just down the street?” Spider-Man offered, and Matt shrugged. Some food and warmth weren’t the worst idea.

“Alright. Meet you there.” Matt moved away, towards the other side of the roof, as Spider-Man picked up Deadpool and swung them down to the street. Matt, having to take the fire escape, arrived just as they were finishing up their order.

“We got one of everything, just in case. Don’t worry, DP loves leftovers. We just never have any.” Spider-Man greeted him, and Matt just nodded. He hadn’t thought to bring his wallet with him, never usually stopped for take-out while he was in the suit, but he heard Deadpool slap down a stack of cash that probably covered the bill twice over. He decided he wouldn’t feel bad about it. He would just find another way to repay them.

They sat at one of the tables in the back, Spider-Man and Deadpool facing the door while Matt faced them.

“Huh, déjà vu.” Deadpool remarked as they got comfortable. Matt, for all he was worth, ignored the fact that Deadpool’s hand had slid up Spider-Man’s thigh and was likely resting somewhere over his dick.

“What?” Matt asked, once his brain caught up with the phrase Deadpool had used.

“We took your boyfriend out for Mexican a couple days ago. He was all depresso and aggro about you bein’ laid up. I’m not sure we really cheered him up, though.” Deadpool’s response took a moment to sink in.

“He let you two buy him dinner?” Matt asked, incredulous.

“Well, let is a strong word for it.” Spider-Man seemed a little sheepish, but Deadpool chimed in.

“Coersion is a strong word too, but it’s the right one.”

Food began coming out of the kitchen, and Matt took the one that smelled like chicken and peanut sauce while the pair across from him just grabbed two containers and went to town. It was obvious that they were used to eating large quantities of food very quickly, but Matt did his best to tune them out while he ate his meal.

A creaking tower of styrofoam containers remained on the counter, but a few had been saved in plastic bags, “as a midnight snack”.

“Do you have your burner on you?” Spider-Man asked after a moment of silence between them.

“Uh… yes?” Matt wasn’t sure where it was going, but he already had Spider-Man’s number in there.

“Can you add Deadpool to our chat, then? He’s been asking about it for a while, and it might have helped to prevent that whole…” Spider-Man seemed to be searching for the words.

“Fiasco?” Matt tried.

“That’s as good as any word for it.” Deadpool sounded pleased. “Super glad you’re okay, though, bee-tee-dubs. Sorry about the whole “crashing the ship” thing. I was trying to steer the ship but I’ve not been in a Russian tanker in a while and my brain kept translating from Russian to Spanish to Chinese and it just wouldn’t get back to English while I was fighting off the guards.” Deadpool laughed, a little self-deprecatingly.

“It’s really okay, I’d just prefer it not happen again. I’m fine, and Castle’s fine. It all came out well in the end.” Matt waved a hand, but he sensed a shift in the mood.

“Then can you please text Deadpool? I just sent you his number.” Spider-Man broke their silence after a moment, and Matt pulled out the phone. He scowled, pretended he saw something on it despite the fact that he had no idea what it said.

“Yeah, just a minute, I’ll be back.” He made his way to the bathroom, locked the door behind him, then plugged in his earbuds so he could listen to his messages. There was one from Frank, seeing if he wanted him to bring over a pizza sometime, and the one from Spider-Man. Matt made sure to add the number into his phone as “Deadpool”, then made a group chat for all three of them and texted it a “Hello” before he put everything away.

Back at the table, he sat down and tried to smile at the pair that sat before him. “Thanks for dinner, guys. And thank you for taking care of the city while I was out.” He tried not to let that bother him too much. He knew he would do the same for the two of them if something happened to them, but the likelihood of something that bad befalling either of them was nearly non-existent. It would grate at him, he knew.

“Not a problem, Devil-Babe! We gotchu!” Deadpool was always enthusiastic, and the sound of it made Matt feel a bit better.

“Catch you guys around. I’m going to go see if I can rustle anything up before I head home.” Matt knew he wouldn’t. No one except the truly desperate were out that night, and even then, he hoped that they would be under blankets instead of roaming the streets.

“Bye, Daredevil!” Spider-Man called after him as he made his way to the front door.

He made his way to the fire escape and up to the roof of the building before jumping to the next. Matt may not have done everything he wanted to that evening, but a warmth sat in his chest from the idea that he had acquaintances, maybe even friends, who were looking out for the city.

_______________________

Frank had texted Matt in a moment of weakness. He’d been surprised when Matt replied that he could drop by later that night. The picture of the sky line he received a few minutes later was even more surprising. Instead of texting, Frank decided he would just go and see Red. Hashing things out over text had never worked well for him.

Two pizzas wrapped up in his coat, Frank made his way to Matt’s door with a heavy heart. He’d missed being around the blind lawyer, despite their stupid arguments and his struggle to get the guy to go to his doctor appointments, he’d become used to seeing him. Hanging out, making sure he’d eaten, playing music while he’d cooked for Matt, hearing the smaller man singing along to some of the songs on his playlists… it all added up to a month of something Castle was still adamantly refusing to call “home”.

As he made his way up the familiar steps, though, he felt some of the tension that had plagued him the past two days melt out of his shoulders and upper back. He cracked his neck before knocking on the door.

Matt, dressed in the pair of sweat pants Frank had given him to get home from the hospital in and a tee-shirt, answered. There was a flush to his cheeks, and his hair was wet like he’d just been in the shower. Frank entered as Matt stepped out of the doorway.

“So, going patrolling again, huh, Red?” Frank thought the question was simple enough, but the man’s face screwed up into a grimace, like he was bracing himself for something horrible.

“I’m fine, Frank.” The words sounded like an age-old argument that Matt didn’t want to have anymore. Frank felt his heart sink into his toes. He closed the door behind himself, then walked to the kitchen and set the pizzas on the stove, just to give himself something to do.

Matt followed him, but took a seat on one of the chairs at the breakfast bar.

“You tired?” Frank couldn’t have stopped the words coming out of his mouth if he wanted to.

“Of your nagging? Yes.” Matt’s snark, at least, gave Frank a bit of a boost. The guy hadn’t exhausted himself pulling stupid stunts and running across roof tops.

Frank took the time to pull out plates and serve up slices of pizza before he took the remaining seat.

For once, those stupid red glasses were gone, leaving unseeing eyes to turn to Frank as he took up one of his slices.

“Are you going to try and tell me to stop? That this was my sign to retire the suit? Stop helping people I know I can save?” Red’s question hung in the air while Frank chewed and swallowed.

“I want you to.” Frank felt his shoulders slump. He didn’t like it, but he knew what kind of fight was roiling under Red’s skin. He could feel the tension radiating off of the form beside him before he looked up. “Gonna eat your pizza?”

“Not hungry.” Matt pushed the plate away. Frank did his best not to smile at the petulant move. Frank ate his pizza, mostly to give himself something to do.

“I still don’t know how you can eat all that green crap on your pizza.” Red didn’t respond, so Frank just sighed and stood. He hadn’t eaten that day, and two slices of pizza wasn’t going to curb the gnawing hunger that had flooded him at the first bite.

“So, you want me to stop, but you and I both know I won’t. What now?” Matt asked as Frank opened the pizza box.

“What options do you see, Red?” Frank asked, then took a bite.

“I don’t know what you want, Frank! Tell me what you want!” The shouted words startled Frank, his heart skipped a beat as an image of something he’d never admit to wanting shot through his brain.

“I want you alive, Red.” He set down the slice of pizza, suddenly feeling a little cold. “I want you alive and well and doing what makes you happy. But what I want isn’t what matters, here. You are what matters here, Red. You ain’t gonna stop? Fine. Are you going to push me away, now that you know that I worry about you? Fuck!” He wanted to hit something, his fist slammed on the counter to punctuate his point, but it wasn’t enough. He felt like he was shaking, but he wasn’t sure if he really was or not.

Murdock stood, stepped out into the empty space between the breakfast bar and the couch, and sunk into a fighting stance. “Come on, then, Frank.”

“What?” Frank asked. He knew exactly what was happening, but he couldn’t believe that Red was asking for it.

“Doesn’t have to be all-out, but don’t hold back on me, either. Thanks to you, I’m out of practice. Get me back up to speed.” Matt shook his head to the side, like he was clearing something out of his ear, and Frank sighed.

“I’m not going to fight you over this, Red.”

“I’m not asking you to kill me, just show me what I’ve been missing.” Red smirked, and it had been so long since Frank had seen that particular quirk to his lips that it was almost unfamiliar. “C’mon, scratch the itch.”

Frank was certain he was shaking, now. He was so angry, and a little afraid, and Red, true to form, was over there taunting him.

“Not the face, gotta keep it pretty for the judge tomorrow.” Red’s smirk grew wider as Frank stepped around the counter, finally accepting that yeah, maybe it would feel good to let out some of the tension in his body.

Frank came in hot with a quick jab towards Matt’s ribs, but the smaller man dodged to the side.

“Gotta be quicker than that!” Matt called, then danced back in.

Frank shot out a leg to sweep him down to the floor, but Matt grabbed it and forced it up while he ducked, causing Frank to spin around and hit the hardwood on his hands and knees. Anger surged in his veins as he stood and faced the little shit, who was still grinning at him like Frank was an easy take-down.

Frank faked a jab only to come in from the other side. Red dodged the fake and forced himself directly into the second hit, came up gasping, but he was still standing, and he used their close proximity to grab Frank’s shirt and head-butt him. There wasn’t enough force to break his nose, but blood gushed down over that auburn hair in less than a second. Red’s leg slipped around his while Frank was still processing the pain in the bridge of his nose, and before he knew it, he was on his back with Red pinning him to the floor.

They grappled for a few seconds too long, both still waking up their instincts after being off the streets for so long, but eventually, Frank had Red pinned down. He’d caught the smaller man with an elbow to the cheek, and red blood covered his teeth while he grinned and panted.

“Good shot.”

Frank had a few new bruises of his own, but they couldn’t stop the warmth growing in his chest at the sight of the smaller man below him looking so happy.

“Go again?” Matt’s question prompted Frank to release him, and they stood.

Three rounds later, both of them were laying on the floor, panting. Neither looked like they had when Frank had walked in the door. One of the plates of pizza had been shoved into Matt’s bloodied face, and Matt had shoved the whole box of green-covered pizza over Frank’s head. Frank had turned the sprayer from the kitchen sink on Matt at one point to disorient him, and Matt had taken a tumble over the couch and into the coffee table after attempting a flying kick. Of course, Frank had gone right over with him, tried to pin him to the ground, but Red had kneed him in the side and sent him rolling over the broken pieces of the table, so he had a couple of wood-splinters in his cheek. He was pretty sure his shirt had been soaked in both of their blood. The apartment may have been a disaster, but a small chuckle emanated from somewhere off to his right. “That was fun. You owe me a new coffee table, Castle.”

“I’m not the one who thought it’d be a good idea to try a flying kick into my face in the middle of a furnished apartment, Red.” Frank laughed back. “Head okay?” He couldn’t help the worry in his tone. Matt just sighed at him, like he’d sucked all of the fun out of the room.

“Ask me that again and I’ll re-break your nose.”

“Promises, promises…” Frank mumbled. He felt warm, and good, and all of the tension and worry of the past month and a half had faded to something small enough to fit into a box in the back of his mind.

“So, you gonna let me pull out those splinters?” Matt asked after a while.

“You gonna let Karen do your makeup tomorrow?”

“Yeah?” Matt sounded pleased.

“Yeah.”

__________________________

Chapter Text

He hadn’t wanted to call Castle, but his options were limited. Matt had managed to take out the gang that had been threatening a city-block’s worth of apartments, but there were a lot more of them than he expected. The gang had been telling the tenants to pay up for extra security or face the consequences. Well, Matt was pretty sure none of them would be doling out any “consequences” any time soon. Most of them had had enough guns and drugs on them to be put away for years, not to mention they sported broken arms and legs and ribs.

Unfortunately, Matt had ended up in about the same shape. The good news was, he was pretty sure his left leg wasn’t actually broken, just maybe fractured. His left arm had been caught by a few too many pipes and bars for him to hold out the same hope for it. His right shoulder had been dislocated, and his body felt like it had been used as target practice for someone with a bean bag gun at close range. In short, he felt like shit.

Still, he’d been able to get far enough away from the site of the skirmish that the cops probably wouldn’t find him, and was barely able to pull out his phone by the time he sat down in the dingy alley. Adrenaline could do a lot, but once it left it was hard to find the same strength.

Foggy would have probably still been at the bar with Karen, celebrating a major victory he’d had in the courtroom that morning. Matt had stopped by before donning his suit that night, but had only stayed for a shot and a beer. He needed to be sober to do what he did, and sure enough, he was by the time he’d dressed and jumped off of his roof top. Chances were, Spider-Man and Deadpool were out on their own patrols, but they’d be across the bridge over in Queens. So, feeling a little like he was going to just pass out there behind the dumpster, he’d called Frank.

There was no argument, surprisingly. All Matt had to do was say that he was hurt and Frank was up and donning his gear with Matt on speaker phone. Matt relayed where he was, and was about to hang up, but Frank insisted he stay on the phone and keep talking. So, Matt talked about a podcast that Karen had been playing softly on her speakers in the office. It was about people playing a variation of Dungeons and Dragons, but with fake crimes, and Matt relayed the funny parts until it started to hurt to talk.

Thankfully, Frank didn’t take long to find him. He’d parked, bundled him up in a shock blanket, and despite Matt’s protests, had picked him up bridal-style to put him in the front seat of the van. He even took the moment to buckle Matt in, which helped him stay upright, but hurt like nothing else when the strap pressed into his dislocated shoulder.

Still, they rode back to Frank’s closest safe house, and Frank insisted that Matt keep talking about the stupid podcast just to make sure he stayed awake.

Finally, Matt was deposited on a grimy couch, turned to allow him to lean back, and Frank disappeared for a moment.

When he returned, Matt could hear the rattle of a few pills in a bottle, and he grunted. “No, don’t need it. Jus’ need the major things patched up.” Despite his insistence, Frank cracked open a water bottle, shook out two pills, and forced Matt’s mouth open so that the pills, then the water bottle could be forced between his lips. Matt had just gotten his tongue onto the lip of the water bottle to try and push it out when Frank pinched his broken nose closed and tilted Matt’s head back.

“Payback’s a bitch, Red. ‘Sides, you’re not gonna wanna remember this shit.”

Red swallowed the pills, water, and blood running down the back of his throat, and when he could finally breathe again, was tempted to try and get up to kick Frank’s ass. Despite his efforts, he couldn’t even turn himself to try and get off of the couch.

“I’m gonna eat something, give those a moment to kick in, then we’re gonna get you patched up. In the morning, you’re gonna tell me why you didn’t call me before you went in to get your ass beaten to Hell and back.” Frank disappeared into the kitchen, and Matt leaned back once more with a groan.

“I’m not a kid, Frank.”

“No, you’re not, Red.” The quiet reply was the last thing Matt heard before he slipped gratefully into unconsciousness.

_________________________

Frank was having a hell of a time, but it was mostly because he was pretty sure he’d given the smaller man a little too much of the pain meds Curt had given him. The guy was out. He didn’t even stir when Frank popped his shoulder back in, wrapped up his fractured leg with splints, or adjusted the bones in Matt’s busted arm before splinting them as well. Comparatively, these were all easier with him limp. Getting his ribs wrapped up had been a bitch and a half with him flopping around like one of those car-dealership noodles.

He’d damn-near had a heart attack when Red had called and said he needed to be picked up. The guy had been ten minutes from the safe house Frank had brought him to, and that was if you walked slowly. Now, Red was laid out on his couch and safe. There was a certain kind of relief that flooded him at the sight of the sleeping form, but Frank shoved that as far back in his mind as it could possibly go.

Frank had had to cut away most of the suit Red wore just to get to everything, which normally meant that he might not have been safe when his partner woke up. He would have worried had Red not been pretty thoroughly out of commission.

Once the guy had had a blanket thrown over him, Frank went to the bedroom and closed the door before he called up Curt.

“What’s up, Frank?” Curt asked through a yawn. A glance at the clock told him that it was too early, even for an ex-marine.

“Red got beat to shit again.”

“Hospital, again?” The voice on the other end of the line was much more alert, now, and Frank chuckled.

“He should, but nah. Won’t let me. ‘Sides, pretty sure they’d put him on a suicide watch if I took him for every broken bone.” Frank sighed, sat on his bed, and scrubbed at his aching eyes. The air was still around him. He probably imagined that he heard a small snore from the guy passed out on his couch.

“So, you’re calling me at ass o’clock in the morning to give me a status update?” Curt asked, finally.

“I was callin’ to see if you’d stop by later. Maybe tell me what the hell kinda pills you gave me ‘cause Red’s out like a light.” Frank huffed a mirthless laugh into the phone.

“Shit… only you, Frank. Which one did you pick this time?”

Frank spelled out the address for Curt, who wrote it down, then bid his friend good-night.

Falling asleep was never an easy ask, for Frank. He’d tossed and turned until it became obvious that he was going nowhere, fast. So, he took the couple of pillows from the bed, as well as the thread-bare quilt he’d bought from Good-Will, and marched his grumpy ass to the floor beside the couch Red slept on. He matched his breathing to that of his partner's, and soon found himself out like a light.

______________________

Chapter Text

Frank had wanted to surprise Red. So, hands full of grocery bags, he’d made his way up the fire escape and slid open the window to Red’s kitchen, dropped down on the counter, and got his groceries inside before stepping down to the floor. Immediately, an unholy wail started up beneath his boot, and Frank looked down as he released his foot. A cat shot out from beneath it and ran to the bedroom.

Nonplussed, Frank set down the groceries and went to go and check on the damned cat.

He found it under the bed, and it staunchly refused to come out. Frank felt bad, saw how its ribs stood out starkly under its fur, but there was nothing to do that wouldn’t traumatize it further. So, he left it, for the time being, once he’d made sure there was no blood puddle or obvious wounds on it. He turned on his playlist that he’d played while he lived with Matt. Nothing too jarring, but some mix of easy listening and a little bit of rock and blue grass. He found himself humming to it while he made dinner, one of his Nonna’s favorite recipes.

Eventually, Matt returned to the apartment via the normal way, and the damned cat shot out of the bedroom to greet him. “Hey, Oscar. Yeah, I missed you too, buddy.” Red’s voice was soft, a little tired, and Frank cleared his throat. “So, you met Oscar?”

“He met my boot when I came in. ‘Bout gave me a heart attack.” Frank nodded to the window. “Hell of a security system you’ve got.”

Red set Oscar down, and the cat sauntered over to a tiny food bowl and water dish. Sat with his paws carefully tucked into his bony body, tail wrapped around himself like it would protect him. Red moved around him in the kitchen, produced a can of wet food and cracked it open while Oscar waited patiently by his dish.

“It smells good.” Red said as he bent over to tap the contents of the can into the dish.

“Never was a fan of cat food, but I guess there’s no accounting for taste.” Frank teased. He turned around to watch Red’s reaction.

Red stood up, about to speak, but just ended up shaking his head. “Thank you for making dinner. We could have ordered something.”

“Yeah, but take-out will only get you so far.” Frank shrugged as he went back to stirring. It was the steam from the roiling pot of noodles that made his face feel hot.

“I remember.” Matt said. Frank had made that argument more than a few times during his stay in Matt’s apartment. The smaller man made sure Oscar had started eating, then stepped in beside Frank, reached for the spoon in the pot of sauce that was slowly simmering while Frank waited for the noodles to boil. He took a taste, and let out a little moan that was definitely not doing anything to Frank. Maybe a little pride in his cooking, but definitely had no other effect on him.

They sat in silence for the few minutes it took for the noodles to boil, but Matt didn’t move. Just stood close and observed Frank while he stirred the sauce and tested the noodles for the perfect al dente. When the oven timer dinged, he pushed playfully at Matt’s shoulder to get him to move so he could take the chicken out.

It took moments to plate everything, turn off the stove, and usher Matt to the couch to eat.

Matt groaned a bit at each new bite, and Frank was going to go getting a big head over it, but in tasting it himself, had to admit that he’d done well. Eventually, the plates were clean, and Matt rose before holding out his hand. Frank stood instead of handing it over. “No, you cooked. I’ll clean up.” Matt insisted, hand already on the plate Frank gripped with both hands.

“You wash, I’ll dry.” Frank tried, with a genuine smile. He kept having those more and more, as he spent more time with Red. It was odd, considering he’d never thought he’d have a reason to, again. Still, Red smiled back at him, and Frank’s plate was released so they could walk to the sink.

The domesticity of it brought back memories of when he’d been home on leave and feeling well enough to cook, and Maria would insist on doing the dishes, but he’d win by taking on the task of drying them, at least, despite her protests. Matt didn’t flick water at him, or blow bubbles in his face, just calmly washed the dishes and handed them off to Frank so that they could be dried and put away. The playlist he’d never turned off was playing CCR’s ‘Have You Ever Seen the Rain’, and something about the quiet peace of the night was enough to lull Frank into something like being tired. The sun had barely set, Matt would be getting ready for patrol soon. Frank had packed his gear in the van that waited in the alley by Matt’s building for the same thing. Still, something in him wanted to just… stay in. Like they had when Frank had taken up semi-permanent residence here and Matt had been out of commission.

“I was thinking about staying in, tonight.” Red broke the silence. Not for the first time, Frank wondered if the guy was psychic and just refused to give up the secret.

“Yeah?”

“I’m pretty beat, and I haven’t heard anything going on while we sat here and ate dinner.” Matt replied, sounding soft and warm and like everything that should have made Frank want to turn tail and run.

“Alright, what would you like to do?” Frank asked, setting aside the dish he’d been drying.

“Just like that, huh?” Matt asked, a funny smile on his face.

“I can go, if you want.” It wasn’t really a question, because Frank had always known Red to speak up for what he wanted Frank to do. At least, when it was just the two of them.

“No.” The simple denial hung between them. “Frank, I-” He stopped. Frank watched him closely. “Foggy’s coming up the stairs.”

_____________________________

Of all the days for Frank to surprise him, it had to be the one where he’d lost a case. In his defense, with what Fisk was doing with the police force, not to mention his diminishing pull in the court system, it should not have been as shocking as it was to lose his case. Hearing an innocent man be put in handcuffs, though, saying goodbye to his loved ones? It had taken the kind of toll Matt wasn’t used to bearing as just plain old Matt Murdock.

Coming home to find Frank in his kitchen, Oscar avoiding the behemoth like the plague, and dinner simmering on the stove had at least helped to raise his heart a little. Out of his shoes and into his lower legs, at least. Then, Frank had plated their food, and Matt had died a little at how good each bite tasted, even as he forced himself to eat more than he originally would have. He’d been on the precipice of asking Frank to stay, maybe for longer than just one night, to tip over an edge they’d been dancing on for years, when he’d heard Foggy’s gait on the stairwell. It sounded like he was carrying something heavy, given the way he stomped with effort, but it startled him to realize that he probably wouldn’t have heard the sound, otherwise.

They were too close together, Frank right in his space, but he stepped away when Matt announced Foggy’s presence. Matt found himself wanting to reach out and catch that muscled forearm in his hand, stop him from moving away, but he didn’t need the lecture from Foggy, much less while Frank was in the room. So, he moved to the door and opened it after the first knock.

“Good. You’re still here. I’m not going to let you- Oh…” Foggy’s voice told him that he noticed Frank in his kitchen putting dishes away. “Did I-”

“Interrupt? A little.” Frank was not helping. Foggy’s head turned towards Matt, and he shook his head. They were not going to talk about this right then.

“Well, I came to get drunk and commiserate. Just because there’s a mass-murderer in your apartment doesn’t mean I’m not seeing that through.” Foggy marched past Matt, through the apartment, and set a pizza box as well as what sounded like a case of beer and a large liquor bottle on the new-ish coffee table. (“Ish” because he’d bought it second-hand a few months prior). Really, his best friend’s actions may have been surprising, but they were an improvement on Foggy’s previous interactions with The Punisher, so Matt was going to take it.

Frank finished putting away the dishes while Matt grabbed three mis-matched shot glasses from the cupboard to his left. “Need me to go, Red?” Frank asked under his breath. Matt shook his head, shot him a small smile, then made his way back to Foggy on the couch. Frank, of course, took the floor on the opposite side of the coffee table.

“Is that The Eagles?” Foggy asked. They’d forgotten that Frank’s phone on the kitchen counter was still playing music in the rapidly-changing evening.

“Uh… yeah…” Frank sounded as though he wished the floor could swallow him up. As they sat in silence for a moment, the song changed from ‘Witchy Woman’ to ‘Bad Moon Rising’.

Foggy snorted into the quiet. He reached over the table and picked up the bottle, cracked it open, and the scent of decent whiskey flooded the apartment. “Dude. How old are you?” The question hung for a moment. Then, Frank chuckled. Shots were poured, beers were opened, and everyone settled in for the night. Part of Matt was still wishing that he’d been left alone with Frank, but having Foggy there for him made his heart warm.

They drank long into the night, finished the bottle and beers between them. The world spun around Matt, and everything was a bit wobbly when he tried to stand. Foggy had fallen asleep early, so Frank and Matt had continued drinking and listening to the music and talking a little bit about the case and the state of the city.

Finally, Frank stood and seemed to only sway slightly. “Alright, Red. I think it’s bed time for the light weights.” Frank laughed a little as Matt attempted to stand as well, sounding light.

“No way you’re not feelin’ this too.” Matt did his best not to slur his words together, despite how heavy his tongue felt in his mouth.

“Maybe, maybe not. Chances are, you won’t remember in the morning.” Frank’s voice was warm, and grew closer to him as he stepped into Matt’s space. Matt reached out and felt along Frank’s biceps, up to his shoulders, and Frank’s hands went to his hips to steady him as Matt began to sway to the music. It was something soft, sounded like one of his grandmother’s records that his dad used to play while Matt patched him up.

“Wanna dance, Frank?” He was just tipsy enough not to feel like it was an awkward question. Frank stilled for a second, his heart beat jumped, and Matt laughed at him. Always so skittish, just like Oscar, who had curled up on the foot of the bed where Matt had left a warm blanket for him.

“I don’t dance, Red.” Frank lied, his hips swaying a bit in time with Matt’s movements.

“We used to dance all the time, Castle. Just had different moves.” Matt wasn’t even entirely sure what he meant by that, but as he snuggled into the warmth of Frank’s chest, arms wrapping around his waist, Frank didn’t push him away. Maybe that would be enough.

It could have been a small eternity that they swayed to the music together, neither of them sober enough to do half of the moves required for actual dancing. Still, as the playlist went back to soft rock, Matt felt Frank’s head lean down to rest against his shoulder. Warm breath tickled his ear as Frank settled into his hunched-over position.

“You can stay, if you’d like. Plenty of room in the bed.” Matt offered, noting with a nod of his head that Foggy still lay passed out on the couch.

“Yeah? Gonna keep me warm tonight, Red?” The growl in his ear sent a shiver down Matt’s spine, and he sighed into it.

“Or maybe you’ll keep me warm.” Matt murmurred. Frank stepped back, and Matt almost pouted at the loss of the warmth that surrounded him, but then he was being lifted, legs in the air. He was tossed on the bed, and Frank began stripping out of his jeans and tee shirt until he was left in just his boxers. He seemed not to care that Matt was in the room, and why would he? Matt, though, felt self-conscious enough to leave his under-shirt on and pulled on a pair of sweat pants almost as soon as he’d removed his suit pants.

Frank was already in the bed before Matt could finish tying up the strings to ensure those pants stayed on, his fingers fumbling stupidly. He may have sobered up a bit while dancing, but the fact that Frank Castle was laying in his bed, disturbing Oscar, and getting comfortable left Matt feeling a bit unsteady. When he finally made his way into the bed, despite Oscar’s departure in protest of all of the movement, he slid under the covers and closer to the wall of muscle that dipped the typically unused part of the bed down a bit.

As he shifted to get comfortable, Oscar jumped back up onto the bed and curled himself into Matt’s stomach, but the room was starting to spin again. Matt sat up, careful to cradle Oscar to his chest, and sat like that until the world seemed to stand still once more. Everything was muffled, thankfully, as he laid himself carefully back down and turned onto his side. Within seconds, he was asleep.

___________________________

Chapter Text

Matt awoke to an empty bed, a pounding head, and the sounds of Foggy quietly humming to himself while he made breakfast. The shower to the right of Matt’s form was running behind a closed door, so something ice cold to jump-start himself for the day was out of the question. The scent of coffee had permeated the apartment, so the secondary choice was not a bad one by any stretch.

Matt stood and scratched at his chest, then padded his way out to the kitchen where Foggy shifted from foot to foot.

“It should be illegal for you to be so upbeat after last night.” Matt groaned as he made his way to the carafe of life-giving coffee.

“My secret is that I don’t over indulge. Unlike some people…” He stirred the eggs he was scrambling in the pan. “You owe me another bottle, by the way.” Foggy’s words were, as always, good-natured. He leaned an elbow out to catch Matt in the side as Matt raised up onto his toes to reach his coffee mugs.

“‘Mornin’.” Frank’s baritone came from the doorway that led to Matt’s bedroom, and Matt froze at the feeling of eyes on his back. Stretched up for a mug. The moment was over in an instant, and Matt sank back to his heels as he picked up the carafe by the handle.

“So…” Foggy sounded like he was about to reveal a big secret. That was never a good sign. “How long have you two been dating?” At least he’d kept his voice down to a register it was likely only Matt could hear.

Matt spluttered, having just raised the hot coffee to his lips as Foggy’s question filled the relative silence. Matt set his coffee down, wished the pounding in his head away, (which, of course, did nothing), and leaned into his best friend. “We are not dating, Foggy.” Matt whispered urgently into his friend’s ear.

“Ri-i-i-ight…” Foggy whispered back. He playfully knocked his shoulder into Matt’s. It was confusing, his friend being so… okay with that thought. “I’m blind too, obviously, and can’t see the way you two are with each other. Totally didn’t wake up to you two dancing together last night, either. Must have dreamed it.”

Foggy sounded too smug, and Matt slapped his arm playfully even as he listened intently to Frank getting dressed in the next room, the door still open, for any sign that he was hearing their conversation. That steady heart in his chest ‘lub-dubbed’ in its normal pattern, however.

“We’re not dating, Foggy.” His friend was smart. Certainly, he’d be able to understand the context of his words.

Foggy nodded. “Got it.” He hummed as Frank stepped out of the bedroom. His friend turned around and gasped loudly. “Oh my God, he stole your clothes.” The whisper seemed to be low enough that Frank didn’t hear it, or at least, it didn’t do anything to him if it did. His heart beat continued its march, and Frank didn’t miss a step as he moved in beside Matt.

“Didn’t make me a cup?” He grunted out, and yeah, he must have been feeling the hangover, too, for his voice to sound that rough without any major injuries.

“Didn’t know if you were staying.” Matt said pointedly, did his best not to look at Foggy as he did so.

“Food, coffee, ibuprofen. Then I’ll leave.” Frank’s words were matter-of-fact, but there was a smile in them that made something warm swell up in Matt’s chest.

Matt opened the cabinet door and reached for another mug, but Frank reached as well, his hand fell to Matt’s hip to steady himself as their hands touched over two different mugs.

“Oh, um, I’ll-” Matt retracted his hand like he’d been burned, and Foggy let out a strangled noise that earned him a glare from Matt as he sank back to his feet.

Foggy, meanwhile, had opened another cabinet door and seemed to be searching for plates. “Top left.” Frank said, and Matt heard the “swoosh” of air as the man made a gesture behind his shoulders.

There definitely wasn’t a flush to Matt’s cheeks. He was still a bit drunk, obviously. Hangovers could still happen while you were a little intoxicated, right?

Frank poured himself a coffee, still so close that Matt could feel the space where their hips almost touched like electricity was bouncing between them.

With breakfast on plates, simple scrambled eggs and toast, and coffee in hand, they all made their way to the couch.

Breakfast was a quiet affair, once Matt had thanked Foggy for cooking, and soon enough both lawyers were being ushered out the door by the time. They would be late, but Karen probably wouldn’t mind.

His best friend waited about thirty seconds before he started in on Matt. Their feet hit the stairwell in thumps that hurt his head, the ibuprofen hadn’t kicked in yet, but Foggy was all geared up.

“What the fuck did I just witness, Matthew Murdock?” The full name. He was in trouble.

“A wonderful breakfast shared amongst friends.” He was laying on the flattery a little thickly, but it didn’t work.

“No, I witnessed a couple of idiots making moon-eyes at each other all night, only to wake up and act like I was the unknowing third-wheel!” Foggy shouted as they moved onto the street.

“I thought you didn’t like Frank. What he does, at least.” Matt asked lightly, doing his best to block out the city noise.

“I don’t. You don’t. But that doesn’t change the fact that you two were dancing to Patsy Cline last night. Like teenagers. I swear to God, I thought I was having the weirdest dream until I looked at the clock.” Foggy was waving his hands in the air, shouting, and attracting the notice of a few passers-by. Matt felt his face heat at the attention.

“If you wouldn’t mind keeping this conversation to ourselves- Wait. What does the clock have to do with it?” Matt asked, a subtle deflection, one he hoped would work.

No such luck.

“Everyone knows clocks look weird in dreams. You’re not supposed to look at them, like liminal spaces. Not the point. The point is that you two slept in the same bed after getting drunk together and dancing like you were at the prom. Then, you try to tell me that you two aren’t dating?” Foggy’s words stabbed through him uncomfortably.

“We aren’t. He’s just… we’re just…” They were standing at a light, a crowd of people crushing in on them. Thankfully, none of them were paying more attention than a quick glance.

“Just what, Matty?” Foggy’s voice had softened. A thread of understanding that Matt did not want to hear wove its way into the words.

Matt sighed, felt the weight of the prior months and all that had happened settle on his shoulders. “We’re not dating, but we’re not… nothing. Not to me, at least. We can talk about it later, though.”

Foggy, for once, acquiesced to his request. They finished the walk to the office in silence. He didn’t even bring it up at lunch, bless him. Just split a sandwich with him in the break room while Karen went over new potential cases in between bites of her pasta.

Towards the end of the day, Matt began preparing himself to go home to an empty apartment. He was sure Frank would have left a little after they did, having no reason to stay. Matt wasn’t injured or recovering. So, he wasn’t expecting him to be there making dinner, or reading on the couch, or quietly cleaning while dinner baked in the oven.

__________________________

Frank stood alone in Red’s apartment, taking in the morning in hind-sight. It hadn’t been awkward for any particular reason, but rather quiet. He hadn’t liked it. Still, the simple breakfast had stopped some of the riotous pounding in his head, at least.

For a moment, he wasn’t sure what to do. The door had closed behind Red and Foggy as they left for the office, Foggy in his wrinkled suit and Matt in a pressed one. Nothing had seemed entirely out of the ordinary from the time when he’d been living with Red, making sure he took care of himself and his brain. Could that have been it? That he’d settled back into that after so much time spent living in his own space again?

He meandered, idly wondering whether he should just leave but not wanting to, just yet. He’d lived here, after all. Read Matt novels on that couch instead of watching movies at night. Strummed his guitar while Matt had been out at the bodega or off working in the office. The space still felt like it was home.

So, even though he was unsure why he was doing it, he loitered.

Drank more coffee, picked up the last novel he’d been reading to Matt on their last slow night for a while, but made sure to leave the receipt for it in the page they’d left off on. He would have kicked a rock around the space if he had had one.

When noon rolled around, Frank found himself fresh out of excuses to stay in the apartment. He’d cleaned up the dishes from breakfast and put them away, de-scaled the coffee pot, even made the bed. Unless he was going to scrub the toilet, there was no reason to stay.

At three, having sat on the couch after picking up the book once more for a while, he realized that Matt would be returning soon. Red was going to come home, find him in his apartment, and… what?

What would happen?

Would Matt tell him to leave? Gather his things for a patrol? Step in close to him and…? What? What would he need to step in close, for, anyways? Why did just the thought of them, being close, make Frank’s heart jump in his chest?

What did it matter, anyways? It wasn’t like they hadn’t been through the exact same scenario while Matt was recovering, right? Back then, he’d come home to Frank reading on the couch and just start dinner, or stir the pot or check the oven if Frank was cooking something. Or join him on the couch with the take out that had been left in the corridor. Listen to Frank’s music while they ate in comfortable silence.

Frank shoved the thought of how much he had missed those days into the recesses of his mind. Tried and failed to pick up where he’d left off in the book. It took him too long to realize he’d been reading the same paragraph over and over again.

Frustrated, he’d been getting back into his clothes from the night prior, having shucked off the ones he’d borrowed from Matt that morning, when the door opened. Red stepped in, and his head turned right towards Frank.

“You’re still here.” The words left his mouth with something like awe, even if Frank disregarded that as impossible.

“Yeah, I uh, was just about to head out.” Frank finished pulling on his jeans, and watched Matt’s brow furrow.

“You know, you can stay.” The words were so matter-of-fact, it froze Frank in his half-bent position, reaching for the wrinkled tee-shirt he’d left on the ground.

“Well, uh, I didn’t want to impose or-”

“You’re not.” Frank wasn’t sure what to do with his hands. Matt’s were twisting in front of himself, something Frank had never seen from the smaller man. “We could… order some thai? I’ve been wondering how that book ends…”

They stood in a silence that, for all intents and purposes, should not have been as awkward as it was.

Finally, Frank found his voice. “Yeah, I could uh, I could stay for that.”

Matt smiled, looking relieved, and Frank’s heart kicked in his chest. “Would you like to patrol? After, I mean?”

“Sure, yeah. We could do that.”

Routine came back like it’d never been interrupted. They both found the rhythm they once knew so well easily, once the initial moment was over. Settled on the couch, Matt’s feet on his lap because the guy was a fuckin’ princess and wanted his feet up, Frank read from their original bookmark until the Thai was delivered. They ate to the sounds of Stevie Nicks, The Stones, and CCR. They chatted between bites about Matt’s day as a fully-functioning citizen.

Later, they patrolled for a few hours, but found nothing more than petty criminals that Frank made sure were still breathing by the time the cops were called on them.

When they returned in the small hours of the morning, Frank stole new clothes from Matt and left the other man to get changed, but when he emerged, he found the guy in the sweats and shirt Frank had been stretching out all day. They hung a bit looser than they should have, but Matt didn’t say anything about it, and Frank, for all he was worth, wasn’t about to either. They simply crawled into bed, like they’d done plenty of times before. Matt had moved to the furthest edge he could find from Frank, which only sat with him for about two minutes before Frank was pulling that form into his chest.

There was no protest, no reasons why they shouldn’t, just the quiet dark and whispered, “good night”’s.

Chapter Text

Really, it was stupid. Stupid that Matt, who had been alone for most of his life, who had lived alone for years, had panicked when he woke up to someone knocking on the door and his bed empty. Thoughts that were hazy in his sleep-addled brain snapped into focus as he recognized the smell of pancakes cooking in the kitchen, the knocking that was becoming more insistent at the door, and, finally, the shuffle of feet slowly moving across his living room floor. Matt was up like a shot, not caring that he felt some of the stitches in his side threaten to open up. He could worry about the stupid knife wound he’d caught when Frank had gone down the night before later. Frank was up, obviously moving slowly through his living room, and Matt was still in bed like an asshole.

“Just a minute!” Matt called as he barrelled into the living room, wondering who the hell was knocking so insistently at the door. He heard a heart beat that was just a little too fast to be healthy, but didn’t recognize it. “What are you doing?” He hissed at Frank as he bent and took some of the taller man’s weight onto his frame.

“Answering the door, Red, shit. Gonna mother-hen me to death, the way you act like I’m injured or something.” There was a bit of humor in the statement, but the reality that Frank very well could have died the night before weighed on Matt’s mind more than the weight on his shoulders.

“You’re going back to bed. I’m answering the door and finishing breakfast.” Matt grunted as they made slow progress across the living room and back to the bed. The knocking got louder and more insistent. Matt heard his neighbor, Mrs. Pinciotti, open her own door. Both men could hear her yelling at the stranger to “Cut the racket!”. Matt heard a soft apology come from an unfamiliar voice, a woman’s voice, and an explanation that she needed to speak with Matt Murdock urgently.

Only the knowledge that anyone looking to kill Matt wouldn’t have bothered knocking kept him calm.

“Go. Go, I got it, Red.” Frank shifted to take his own weight once more when they were only a couple of steps from the bed. “Go see what the crazy person wants.”

Matt waited with his arms crossed until he heard Frank fall to the bed with a groan, then pulled his own sore and battered body to the door. The heart beat was still too fast, and it increased for a few beats before settling back down again when the woman caught a glimpse of him as the door opened. “Matthew Murdock?” The woman asked, sounding like she had numerous other questions but didn’t want to ask them.

“How can I help you?” He asked, his smooth, lawyer voice coming to him in an instant.

“You know my nephew, and I can’t find him.” Matt knew quite a few people, and none of them had gone missing, as far as he knew.

“Why don’t you come in? I’ve got some coffee, and we can talk.”

The woman immediately began walking towards him, and Matt stepped out of her way as she made her way to the couch. He heard her mutter, “Oh, God, it’s worse than Wade’s…” and things began to make sense. The door closed with a soft *snick*.

“So, your nephew?” He asked as he made his way to the kitchen, doing his best not to aggravate the bruised hamstring from the night before as he walked. He worked on getting three mugs down from the cupboard and hissed as the stitches in his side pulled again. They hadn’t been pretty, he’d been shaking as he did them, and he did not want to do them again.

“Yes. Pe- uh, Spider-Man, as you know him. He’s been gone for three days. No calls, no texts, not even an email. No ransom, either, which could be good news or bad news.” He heard her hands sliding together, like she was trying to warm them.

“So, he could be anywhere?” At the scent of burning sugar, Matt reached over, turned off the stove top, and took the pan where a just-burnt pancake had been slowly cooking to a cold burner. “Sugar? Milk?” He asked over his shoulder, but the woman shook her head before realizing that he was blind.

“No, thank you. And yes, he could be anywhere.” Matt gathered the coffees, then made his way to the bedroom.

“Coffee?” He asked the still form of Frank’s body. For all Matt could feel the pain of their activities the night before, Frank had been much worse off. Four broken ribs, what could have been a sprained or broken wrist, three bullets to the back, two in his butt, and one in his shoulder. He’d come damned close to bleeding out on Matt’s sofa last night. Still, he was awake and alert enough to take the mug of coffee Matt offered him, so that was something.

Matt searched for his phone while keeping the two mugs tilted so as not to spill. He didn’t need a burn on his hand on top of everything else. Finally, Frank handed it to him, and Matt smiled his gratitude before moving back into the living room and setting the mugs of coffee on the table. “Please, I don’t know exactly why Spider-Man told me to get in contact with you if he ever went missing, but he did. Said Deadpool would probably be with him. I’m hoping you can do something, or know someone, I just-” Her voice cracked, and Matt felt the pain of losing someone dear resonate in his chest.

“I’ll do my absolute best to bring him home safe and in one piece.” Matt said as he opened up his phone and dictated a text to Deadpool. “Where’s your boyfriend - Question mark.” Matt hit send after the message was read back to him, then turned to the woman. “Do you know where he was last? What part of the city, at least?”

The woman shook her head, and Matt could taste the salt of tears on the air. “No. He texted that he was going out on his usual patrol, and then, *poof*. Usually he’ll text me so when I wake up I know he’s okay, but there was nothing. And I’ve tried Wade’s phone too, neither of them are answering. I’ve called every hospital in the city, even tried a few vet clinics, which got me hung up on quite a few times…” She barked a quick laugh, but the sob behind it was noticeable even without Matt’s hearing. “I always knew this could happen, but it’s been so long since he’s had any… what do they call themselves again? Arch-enemies? I thought he was toning it down a bit, that he was being more careful, and now…” The woman sobbed and fabric rustled. Matt could sense she’d curled into herself a bit, and he reached out a hand to place on her mid-back, comfortingly.

“Okay. It’s going to be okay.” Matt did his best not to let any kind of worry spark in his voice. Spider-Man had been a good friend for a long time, but the fact that he’d told his aunt, who could very-well reveal his identity, to come to him… it made him feel like maybe they had something more than just friendship, something more like family, and the thought made his heart ache for a moment.

Rustling from the bedroom and groans coming from Frank told Matt that his partner was up and about, despite the fact that he shouldn’t be, but Matt didn’t move as the man made his way to the doorway of the bedroom and seemed to lean on it. “Did I hear that Spider-Man’s missing?” Frank’s voice was gruff, but not menacing.

“Oh! I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you had company.” The woman, who had looked up at Frank’s voice, uncoiled a bit and Matt removed his hand from her back.

“It’s okay. He’s a friend.” Matt stated, hoping she would sit back down and at least drink some of her coffee.

“I didn’t mean to intrude. I’ve told you all that I know, and I’ll keep looking for him on my own, but I hope that you’ll be able to help somehow.” The woman stood straight and began to walk to the door.

“Please, ma’am, would you at least stay and drink your coffee?” Matt tried as she walked to the door.

“No, I’m sorry to waste the cup, but I have to get to work, now.” She sighed as Matt heard her hand fall to the door handle. “Just, please, bring him home safe to me.”

She left, despite Matt’s protest that they didn’t have a means of reaching her should they find anything, or have any more questions. Matt’s heart felt like lead in his chest, ached for Spider-Man’s aunt. She acted like she was his mother, and perhaps she was.

“I’ll get David on it. See if he can dig anything up.” Frank said as Matt stood from his seat on the couch.

“I texted Deadpool, too, see if he knows what’s up.” A stone sank into Matt’s stomach, and he wasn’t sure whether it was just the worry, or if it was a premonition of what was to come.

__________________________________

Frank silently made the rest of the pancakes, then cooked up a couple of eggs for them while they waited to hear back from their respective friends. Nothing had come by the second cup of coffee, nor by the time they had finished their breakfast and Matt needed to get dressed for work. Matt got undressed with a little help from Frank, and dressed slowly, careful not to pull any of the stitches in his side. Frank requested help getting his shirt off to change his bandages before Red left.

Once Matt left for work, Frank was left alone with his thoughts. He called David, asked whether preliminary searches had brought up anything. His friend firmly stated that searching every camera in the city was going to take time, that Queens alone hadn’t brought anything up, and if Frank was going to be an asshole about this then David would only call Matt on an encrypted line when he did find something.

Unfortunately, this left Frank’s worried mind with far too much free-time to think. At first, he’d tried to distract himself with yet another book. He was pretty sure Matt was going out and buying more every so often, worn spines he hadn’t seen before had begun appearing on the shelf underneath the coffee table’s top about a month prior. Come to think of it, that was around the time Foggy had interrupted their night in with booze and somehow it had turned into the pair of them dancing in the living room while Matt’s friend was passed out on the couch. Unbidden, Frank’s brain turned to thoughts of how close they’d had to get to undress each other, for Matt to remove his shirt and for Frank to do the same for him. He thought about the way Matt’s breath had ghosted over his face: coffee and maple syrup mingling to create something sweet. With a shake of his head, the thoughts turned to wisps of fog in his mind, lingering but no longer quite as potent.

Sure, he’d been a little more comfortable with Daredevil lately, had been crashing in his bed, making him meals, acting the way they had when Matt was recovering from his brain injury. It shouldn’t have meant anything, though. It didn’t, he told himself, as he scrubbed the kitchen spotless in an attempt to get himself moving again. It helped that everything hurt, and every time he moved, a stitch pulled, making him adjust his stance, not reach so far, and generally make his mind quiet down for a moment while he focused on not opening up his wounds.

Still, by the time noon rolled around, and he still hadn’t heard anything from David, it was getting to be a herculean task to keep his mind off of either Spider-Man and Deadpool being missing, Matt and the way being around him made him feel happier, and the implications of his basically having moved into Matt’s apartment without a word from either of them on the subject. He couldn’t take it anymore. Every surface in the kitchen was spotless, the floors were swept, the dishes were put away, and Frank had the feeling a book just wasn’t going to cut it.

He should have felt worse about his purchase, as well as the delivery fee he incurred to not have to get up and move around too much, but he knew that pulled stitches would be the last thing Matt wanted to deal with when he got home. So, content that within a couple of hours he would have something better to do with his time, Frank went to lay down in the bed.

Frank awoke to knocking on the door, and pulled himself carefully upright before going to answer it. A couple of hours of shut-eye had done him some good, and he at least managed to move like he’d maybe pulled a muscle or something, instead of the reality of being turned into swiss cheese the night before. The movers brought in the giant TV, got it set up on the coffee table Frank helped to move back towards the wall opposite the couch, and left with a twenty-dollar tip each thanks to the cash Frank kept stashed for emergencies. He was pretty sure this counted.

Twenty minutes of frustration later, Frank had to call the landlord for the wifi password. When the guy answered, he asked why the hell Murdock had sub-let his apartment, then immediately erupted in rage. Frank had interrupted about half-way through the speech about civil-suits and “stupid New Yorkers” to let the man know that he was a friend of Matt’s and was just setting up the television to surprise his friend. The man didn’t even apologize, just grudgingly stated the stupidly complex wifi password and hung up before Frank could confirm he’d gotten it written down. Frustrated, but victorious, Frank was able to get the TV to work and managed to pull up a few of the streaming services he’d purchased under fake identities. David had said that everyone needed a way to unwind, or mask the sounds of patching themselves up, as Frank usually did. He had, admittedly, been glad to get something other than the local channels at his usual safe house. Now, Matt had it in his own home, as well.

Surfing through the options and coming up with nothing better, Frank settled on an old show that reminded him a bit too much of Matt for comfort, but it was nice to lie back and let the screen play while his thoughts drifted off into dreams.

At six o’clock, Red came home, and the sound of the door opening had Frank’s eyes opening slowly.

“Why do I hear a TV?” Matt’s question overpowered the soft voice of Matlock as he explained something to the court room. “And why is it on a legal drama?”

“Needed somethin’ to distract me.” Frank said, unapologetic. “‘Sides, you’ve been usin’ that record player for so long it’s a wonder you haven’t worn your vinyl down to nothing. Time to upgrade you to the twenty-first century, Red.” Frank sat up slowly, let himself feel the aches and roll through them, cataloguing which bandages needed to be checked first.

Matt shuffled inside and Frank felt his body loosen up in a way it hadn’t all day. Something about knowing that the other man was safe allowed him to relax. He should have been worried about it, but he couldn’t bring himself to worry too much as Matt picked up his feet and sat down before laying them down on his lap. It made the stitches in his ass sting to be shifted on the couch like that, but as Matt rubbed a hand absently over the sweatpants on Frank’s leg, he found he didn’t care.

“No word?” They both knew what Frank meant.

“Not from David either, huh?” Matt asked, sounding suddenly more tired than he had a second ago. His face, one that had been plastered on a billboard years ago, looked so much older than it usually did as the man sat in silence. Oscar, who had come running at the sound of Matt entering the apartment, left his usual place by the food dish to rub up against Matt’s calf, then jump on the couch. The hand not petting Frank moved to the cat’s head, and Matt was petting both of them while the TV played softly in the background.

“I want to go out and find them, but I’m not sure where they were when they were captured, let alone where they are now.” Matt, for all he was cool and collected, sounded like the worry was beginning to get to him.

“I know. We can call David in the morning, see if his search turned up anything. In the meantime, why don’t we order something in and see if anyone else has any ideas?” Frank asked, using his bruised and battered abs to pull himself up. He grunted, despite doing his best not to show his injuries, and Matt sighed.

“Neither of us is in any shape to be going out and getting into trouble, but someone has to find them. Even half-dead Deadpool would have texted me if he had his phone by now. Especially when it comes to Spider-Man. He’s either on his way to him, or he was captured with him, and if anyone’s got enough power to hold them for this long, that means more than just our usual gangs and mobs.” Matt’s shoulders hitched, and for a moment, Frank wondered whether Matt was going to cry. Obviously he wasn’t, the man didn’t even cry when his body was broken, but the thought crossed his mind as he took in the hunched form of his partner in crime.

“Hey, we’ll fix it, yeah?” Frank said, just as his phone buzzed. Hopeful, he pulled it out of the sweatpants pocket, only to find a text from David.

-No news yet. Caught the last frame of his whereabouts, but nothing on anyone taking him, just SM DP swinging. A set of coordinates followed, and Frank sent them to Matt before swinging his legs off the man’s thighs.

Frank sighed and slid the phone back into his pocket as he stood, stretched just enough for the blood to start flowing to his extremities again. “David’s got last-known, but nothing on where he would have gone, and nothing about where he’s been taken. Or if he was taken. I just sent you their last-known position.” Matt stood with a sigh and pulled out his phone.

The coordinates were read off in a metallic voice, and Matt froze. He searched on his phone, interrupting the voice more than once when it tried to read things off for him, and finally stopped to listen for the address. “Frank, that’s Stark Tower.”

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Chapter Text

It wasn’t like it hadn’t happened before. Frank, for all the years he’d told himself that romance was impossible, that people close to him would get hurt, and that he would never be vulnerable to the pain of losing someone again, was a cuddler. He could still remember pulling Maria close to him at night, letting his kids use his arms as pillows when he was home from duty and they watched movies on the couch, the way he used to light up at the touch of Maria’s hand to his own while they were doing mundane things. Physical touch had just always appealed to him, and no amount of training and restraint could keep his unconscious body from seeking out that closeness, apparently. Now, though, Frank was stuck with his chest plastered over Matt’s back, arms wrapped firmly around his torso, and an erection so hard it was damned-near painful.

The smooth flesh of Matt’s back, where his shirt had rucked up from his squirming the night before, (and possibly Frank’s arms coming around him to hold the smaller man to him), was pressed in just the right spot for Frank’s cock to ride the indent of the dip of Matt’s spine, though. For a brief moment, the desire to rut into that crevasse flared white-hot in him. Surely, with Matt passed out the way he was, he would never know, right? But, with a shake of his head, Frank regained control of his thoughts.

“Go back to sleep.” Matt grumbled. He must have felt Frank squirming behind him. Frank pulled his arms away, though, and stood despite Matt’s protests.

“Gotta pee. I’ll be right back.”

Frank was going to ignore the mumbled assent that sounded a little too knowing to make him feel comfortable going into the bathroom and jacking off.

Still, after using the toilet and staring at himself in the mirror for a moment, battered, bruised, not even remotely close to healing from their fight with the police two nights prior while the bastards had attempted to kill one of their own. (The stupid guy wasn’t on Fisk’s payroll and was making trouble). Then, Spider-Man’s disappearance was announced by a sobbing woman on Matt’s couch. So, really, he was in no shape to be even thinking about sex.

Sure, there’d been about a year where he’d gone out and filled some of his loneliness with a warm body here and there, but since the bartender he’d gotten shot, (he didn’t dare think her name, easier to forget that way), he’d told himself that it just wasn’t a possibility for him anymore. So, one-night-stands, mostly without names, had been his go-to until he couldn’t stomach that either.

Now, with some more years behind him, the thought of sex wasn’t as unappealing as it once had been. Still, with everything going on, and the multitude of ways it would fuck up what he had going with the man, he wasn’t about to go out there and ask Murdock for a hand. It was his fist or a cold shower. Given that Matt was probably in a light enough sleep to hear him, Frank sprung for the cold shower first.

Ice ran down his spine in the form of water from the tap, and it felt like fire on his healing wounds, so eventually he softened. It still took a lot longer than he’d have liked it to. Grumpy from the way his morning had started, Frank left the bathroom in a towel with his clothes bundled up in one arm. Matt was already awake, it seemed, though he hadn’t left the bed just yet. His phone was reading something out to him, and after a few words, Frank realized it was information about the layout of a building. “Good, you’re out.” Matt paused the voice that was reading out something about the number of steps between two hallways and swung his legs out of bed. “Anything I need to re-stitch?” They hadn’t gotten around to wound care the night before, and while Frank hadn’t checked visually, none of his wounds had felt hot or especially irritated.

“I’m good. What’cha listenin’ to, Red?” Frank asked, finally stepping towards the closet where a few of his shirts had been hung up alongside a few pairs of jeans and some sweatpants. The frog-prince covered pajama pants hung beside those, saved for occasions when they wouldn’t rip stitches in Frank’s ass or legs.

“Schematics for Stark Tower. I don’t think these are everything they have, though. I know SHIELD has been using the building, recently, and something tells me they wouldn’t have their schematics on record with the courthouse.”

“You’re still thinking SHIELD or Stark had something to do with their disappearance?” Frank asked. He knew that Matt was probably right, but he also knew that that meant they were extremely out-numbered and out-gunned. Fisk was strong, but they were taking his men down one faction at a time. SHIELD was government. Attacking them meant Frank would be watched for with much harsher scrutiny, that his life, and potentially Matt’s, would be over the moment they stepped inside the Tower.

“I think it’s the best lead we’ve got so far, and you know Tony’s basically bank-rolling SHIELD’s tech by now. So, this won’t be easy.” Matt closed the bathroom door behind himself and Frank shook his head. He could sense another storm on the horizon, which really sucked considering the others he was doing his best to weather. Between Fisk and his inability to stay away from Matt, he’d felt like he was in a tailspin for so long it had become routine. Brush his teeth, think about Red, wonder if the next patrol would be the one one of them dies for, think about Red smiling at him over a cup of coffee, debate whether he’d like to be the one to die or if it should be Matt, to really pound in the point that he’d been cursed to lose any one he’d ever… And so on. Now, of all things, this crazy asshole wanted to infiltrate a government agency on the hunch that they’d kidnapped Spider-Man and Deadpool.

As Frank made the coffee and let his mind spin out for a few minutes, he felt something in his chest pull at the idea that their end could come sooner than either of them had bargained for. The insane thought that he should tell Matt how he felt, just in case, looped around his mind a few times before he squashed it. It was very possible that that alone would seal the deal on them, and Frank wasn’t about to do that. He liked what they had, even if neither of them had brought up the elephant in the room. Technically, Frank had his own place. Places, all around the city, under pseudonyms and fake ID’s and even cash deposits under the table for a couple of shit holes. There was no reason for him to be living in Matt’s apartment, eating his food, taking up space in his closet, buying him a TV, and yet… He wanted to. Matt didn’t seem to want him to leave, either. The few times Frank had brought up going back to his place, Matt had looked like a kicked puppy until Frank had relented and said he’d just be going for some supplies.

Matt stepped out of the bathroom as Frank was finishing his second cup of coffee. Even bruised and battered, he still looked like the kind of guy that could put you on your ass if you tried to cross him. Possibly even more so with the fresh stitches on soon-to-be scars. “I’ll make breakfast in a minute.” Matt called as he dropped the towel, probably not fully aware that Frank was staring at his naked ass. That sight, while marvelous, finally convinced him to turn his head and look out the window. Oscar, who was slowly gaining weight, curled between his legs and let out a curious “mrrp” that Frank translated to “Breakfast time, human. Feed me before I add some scars to your leg.” He quickly fetched the can of wet food and walked to the dish, Oscar staying far out of the reach of his falling feet. He’d learned the first time, and usually gave Frank a wide berth unless he wanted food.

As Frank stood up, he heard Matt turn on the stove and slice into the butter on the counter. Maybe, if he was quiet, he could just have the morning. They could be peaceful, laugh over whether or not eggs should be made over-medium or scrambled (an argument neither one could agree to disagree on).

“So, if neither of us have heard anything more from David by this evening, I’m going to start doing some recon on Stark Tower.” Matt interrupted that bubble of piece with the sharpest needle he could find. Because of course he did.

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“Red, you can’t be serious right now.” Frank walked towards him, and the heavy, familiar footsteps didn’t feel quite so comforting in the moment.

“They’re missing, Frank. Gone. You know what kind of force it takes to hold Deadpool. Let alone Spider-Man.” Frank stepped in next to him and must have swiped up a coffee mug, because Matt heard him take a long sip.

“You know it’s suicide, Red. One way or another. Either they capture you, figure out your identity, and kill you on the spot, or you miraculously get away but they still have your body-shape, your fighting style, your voice on record and they’ll find you in two seconds at your day job. The least they’ll do is take away your license to practice, leave you without a job and with nothing to fall back on, then they’ll take you out just for having the balls to try and take something they want.” Frank sounded like it hurt him to speak. Matt fought the urge to lean into him and try to comfort him. The man may not like it, but Matt was determined to get the duo back. “Besides, chances are, they already know Spider-Man’s identity now, and if he ain’t dead, they’re running experiments or sending him on covert missions with one of those high-powered shock collars in case he disobeys. Gonna follow him to Serbia?”

“They’d do it for us, Frank.” Matt’s voice cracked, and he felt like he just wanted to curl up and hide from the way Frank’s logic was too accurate.

“Yeah, but one of them’s immortal, Red. He’s been through this shit so many times it’d be a wonder if we didn’t find him playing it like a video game.” Frank sounded angry, and hurt, and Matt was flipping eggs while his heart felt like it was going to beat out of his chest. Frank’s heart, at least, had the decency to be honest. Frank was panicking, it was racing behind that ribcage that had been broken too many times, and that was a small comfort for the line Matt knew he needed to draw.

“You don’t have to come with me, Frank. No one said you had to. But you can’t stop me from going, either.” Matt flipped the eggs out of the pan neatly and onto a plate. He moved to the toaster and pulled four slices of bread from the box before pushing down on the lever. It gave his hands something to do, which was a small comfort.

“Yeah, ‘cause I’m lettin’ you walk into Hell all alone, Red.” Frank shook his head, muttered about Matt being an asshole, and dug two forks out of the drawer. He passed one to Matt, the gesture so familiar that Matt felt his heart kick in his chest. He wondered how many more of these moments they had.

They ate standing up, hips propped against the kitchen counter while Oscar lapped at his wet food.

“You think about the cat, Red? What happens to Oscar if we’re both gone, huh?” Frank asked, and Matt fought the instinct to flinch.

“Foggy knows that if I don’t show up for work, he needs to come and take Oscar until I get back. Or keep him. Honestly, Foggy would spoil this cat like it’s a kid.” A laugh reverberated through him and formed around his words as he spoke.

“Got it all figured out, huh, Red? Got it all perfectly tied up with a bow?” Frank took another bite and they sat in the uncomfortable silence for a moment. Softly, Frank asked, “What about me, Red? What happens when you die and I’m left to pick up the pieces again?” The words threaten to split Matt in half. It’s moments like these where he thinks he’s not crazy. That Frank loves him too, in his way, and that they could be doing so much more than just cohabitating and fighting crime together. He pulls back into himself as he stands a bit straighter.

“Not gonna happen, Frank. I hate to say this, but I’m out-living you by at least thirty years with the way you fight.” Matt let himself relax into an easier stance, let his shoulders creep down from where they’d been bunched up to his ears in the midst of their fight. He wasn’t going to argue, but he knew that Frank was bringing up a very real possibility. There was also the possibility of the opposite happening. Matt might have to go on without Frank. It seemed impossible. The man had become something so much more than just a friend to Matt over time, and he would be devastated without him. Even if he left wet towels on the bathroom floor, moved the coffee table they’d bought together (to replace the one the TV took over) whenever he cleaned his weapons, or occasionally drank the last of the coffee just as Matt needed a cup.

“Wanna bet on it?” Frank asked, the teasing tone matching Matt’s.

“Sure. A Klondike bar.” Matt smiled as he took a sip of his coffee, then popped the last bite of his eggs into his mouth.

Frank’s phone rang in his pocket as they laughed, stilling them both.

He answered, and his face went from happy to concerned. “Hey, David.” Matt could hear David’s voice on the other end of the line.

“I found them. I’m pretty sure. Jet went down in the Rockies, local police chatter is that it’s two mutants that were being transported, but they found them. It’s confirmed that they’re being taken back into SHIELD. I’m not hacking SHIELD’s database for you, but it sounds like they were only kind-of prisoners.”

“Kind of? What the Hell does that mean?” Frank demanded, and Matt moved closer to the phone.

“I’m just guessing, because they haven’t put either of them in cuffs or anything. Not that it’d do them any good, but both Spider-Man and Deadpool have been confirmed to be at the ranger station up there, waiting for SHIELD to pick them up. So it sounds more like they were on a mission, but I know family doesn’t just disappear on one another without good reason.” David’s voice was even, calm. Matt felt anything but. The kid who’d grown up being Spider-Man was okay, Deadpool was okay, they were alive and, seemingly, relatively unharmed. They were still with SHIELD, though, and neither of them had bothered to tell anyone that they were even going to be missing for a few days.

“Okay, okay good.” Matt could feel Frank’s eyes on him, but he stood his ground. Sure, Matt might have panicked a bit, but doing research and creating a plan based on the facts they had wasn’t a bad thing. Knowing in his bones that he would have gone into SHIELD like the hand of God for the pair of vigilantes was another thing, but he was going to ignore that conversation for as long as possible.

“Bye, Frank.”

“Thanks, David. I owe you one.” Frank replied.

“Yeah, more like ten. Shots. On you. For making me think I was going to have to get into another government conspiracy with you.” David sounded cheery as he made his threat, and Matt had to smile at the tone.

“Sure, man. Pick a time and place.” Frank sounded like the weight of the world had been lifted off of his shoulders.

“Bye, Frank.” The call disconnected, and Frank shifted his weight to lean against the counter.

“So, what was that about storming SHIELD?” Frank asked, that smug grin on his face.

“We still need to find Spider-Man’s aunt, let her know he’s okay.” Matt reminded him, just to take that satisfaction in Frank’s tone down a peg. As he spoke, though, Matt’s phone let out an electronic, “Deadpool”. Chagrined, Matt went to the bedroom and found the burner phone. He opened the text and let it read aloud while Frank stood in the kitchen.

“We’re okay. Got kidnapped, flew to Colorado, (the weed here is so good I swear I’m getting a contact-high), and we’re on our way back. Spidey says hi!” Matt waited to see if another text would come through, but it didn’t. As he walked back to the kitchen, he waited for Frank to say something.

Matt dictated to his phone: “How do I contact Spider-Man’s aunt to let her know he’s okay - Question mark.”

“So, you gonna jump to the worst possible plan next time something like this happens?” Frank asked. He poured some more coffee into both of their mugs, which sat side-by-side on the counter.

“Honestly? Probably. But, in my defense, I was still going to give some time for more information before I went all-in.” Matt waited tensely for the response to his casual admission.

“Should never expect less from you, Murdock.” Frank sipped at his coffee, and Matt picked up his own once more. The silence that fell around them was comfortable once again, and Matt tried to tuck away the worry that, had they pushed just a bit further at the conversation about what would happen if one of them died, they might have stumbled onto a truth that he knew Frank wasn’t ready to say aloud.

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Chapter Text

The sigh of relief that left Frank was becoming a familiar one. They’d been going out on patrol more, lately, and Frank was certain that the feeling of holding his breath until their fights against the scum on New York’s streets were over was going to be a constant companion. As he watched Murdock dust himself off, then look up with a smirk, Frank thought that it was worth it. They made their way out of the alley and up to the roof of a building the next block over before Matt called the cops, gave a succinct address, and hung up. The woman the two guys had been trying to rob had already run, that was probably for the best.

As they sat on the rooftop for a moment to catch their breath, Matt pulled out his phone again and Frank looked up at the screen’s glow in his peripheral. “Message from: S-M. Hey. Pool and I are at the diner on 25th street. Want some dinner? It’s a thank you for helping my aunt last week.” The monotone voice of Matt’s phone reader broke their silence, and Frank felt his shoulders tense. Matt pressed another button, and the phone continued. “Message from: D-P. We’re treating you to ayce ff!!” Matt turned to Frank, and his face looked just as puzzled as Frank assumed his own was.

“Is that some kind of code word? Ace?” Frank asked, not sure whether he should have packed more gear.

“No…” Matt trailed off, and Frank sighed.

They stood as one, and Frank rolled his shoulders back. He checked his burner phone, which told him it was “01:45”. “It’s not too late to grab takeout, go home, make sure you can wake up in the morning without twenty alarms.”

“I still want the story on the kidnapping debacle. You can go home if you want, but the implication was that you were invited.” Matt began making his way to the very same fire escape they’d just climbed to get up there.

“Yeah, Red, ‘cause I’m lettin’ you run all over the city without me.” Frank replied, gathering up every ounce of patience he could find in himself. He’d need it.

At the diner, Frank sat thigh-to-thigh with Murdock, and contemplated all of the choices he’d made that led him to this moment. Across from them, Deadpool and Spider-Man took turns interrupting each other to give a mostly-complete account of the attempted-kidnapping-turned-mountain-rescue. “So, yeah, they totes tried to take my Spidey-Boo away from me for some sort of secret mission, but I was all, ‘Nuh-uh, where that sweet ass goes, I go-’ –”

“‘Pool, Babe, I told you I had it handled-” Spider-Man interrupted, but Deadpool only paused to let him speak for a moment before jumping back in.

“Yeah, and seeing you standing there, all serious with all of those guards knocked out around you? The. Hottest. Thing. Ever. Def spank bank material. But, there was still the point that SHIELD had tried to kidnap you and all, and I wasn’t about to let that slide for anything, so I just hacked the security feed-”

“Pretty sure there’s a difference between computer hacking and hacking with your katanas.” Spider-Man snarked, but it sounded like he was smiling at the mercenary.

“Sure, babes, but I needed to hack with my katanas so I could set up that bug on their feed and trace it back to their HQ. Y’know, like a super-sexy badass. So, anyway, that’s when the room started filling up with gas, and when we woke up, we were snakes on a plane.” Deadpool finished.

“You didn’t need to crash the plane, you know. Could have just flown us to Hawai’i like you promised.” Spider-Man sounded like he was still smiling, despite the pouting words.

“Not enough fuel, Babe. As it was, the stupid pilot wasted a shit ton of it trying to make us go weightless for a minute, climbing up and then diving like that. Then there was the idiot who shot me and it went right through the floor and into the fuel tank.” Deadpool’s voice may have been energetic, but the waitress who approached with their food didn’t seem to be enjoying their conversation as much. She looked a bit green as she set down the two massive plates of french fries that they’d ordered to start, and Frank pulled a twenty out of his pocket before she could walk away. He passed it to her behind the booth as she walked away, and she gratefully accepted it.

“Hey! We said we were buying!” Spider-Man accused Frank as he moved his arm to drape across the back of the booth. If his fingers lightly brushed the shoulder pad of Matt’s suit, that was no one’s business but his own.

“Yeah. And last time you said you’d let me get my own. Here we are.” Frank snarked. “Though, with the heart attack you two gave us, as well as your poor aunt,” Frank pointed at Spider-Man with a scowl, “I suppose you do kind of owe us.”

“No, they don’t. We didn’t actually do anything, Castle.” Matt’s voice chimed in, the timbre down where it usually was when he donned the mask. Given they had spent more time patrolling of late, Frank should have been used to it, but he still found himself missing the lawyer’s regular voice. Both masked men pulled their masks up to their noses, then dug into the plate of fries they’d been presented with before anyone continued.

“You helped my aunt feel like something was being done about both of us suddenly leaving the city without calling. I can’t tell you how much that means to me.” Spider-Man was suddenly serious, and Frank saw the genuine concern in the tilt of his mouth.

“We have each others’ backs.” Matt waved away the sentiment with the french fry he picked up, then placed it on his tongue. Frank, reluctantly, picked one up as well.

Deadpool waited until the plate of fries was cleaned of every speck of salt before running his mouth again. “So, you two are looking mighty cozy, any news you’d like to share with the class?”

“Deadpool!” Spider-Man admonished, then looked between Frank and Matt with an apologetic tilt to his frown.

“But Babe, it’s so-” Matt had tensed beneath Frank’s arm where it had slid to rest lightly across his shoulders, and Frank retracted the limb. It didn’t seem to make Matt any less tense, but at least he wasn’t adding fuel to Deadpool’s fire.

“I don’t care.” Spider-Man had cut in while Frank adjusted himself to a more formal distance between him and Matt. “We’re going to be nice to our friends, right? Not make them uncomfortable and respect their boundaries?” It sounded like a conversation they’d had more than a few times, but Deadpool’s mouth turned down in dejection. The silence that fell over the table until the waitress came back with arms laden with plates was uncomfortable. They ate in relative silence, until, finally, the plates had been cleared and Deadpool was finishing his third strawberry milkshake.

“So, you guys are going to let us know if either of you gets kidnapped, right?” Matt asked. “If not the one being kidnapped, then the one who hasn’t been?” He was all business, and Frank wondered whether Matt ever fell into his lawyer persona in non-business-related scenarios. He wondered if there were any funny stories related to that in the brief pause that followed the questions.

“To the best of our ability, yes.” Spider-Man replied, and Deadpool nodded his head seriously.

“Super sorry we worried you, Double-D. Seriously. We’d panic if you two went MIA too, and I totes forgot everything when Spidey didn’t show up for date night and went on a minor rampage.” Deadpool’s words were serious, and they sparked something in Spider-Man.

“You stormed a SHIELD facility you’d rigged to explode and demanded to know where I was. That’s a no-no, Deadpool, you know they’d hack you to pieces and keep them all separate if you ever do anything like that again.” Frank felt the surprise hit him at the same time Matt tensed back up beside him. They’d known Deadpool was crazy, but suicidal? Could someone who couldn’t die be suicidal?

“Baby Boy, you know good and well I’d do whatever it took to get you back.” Deadpool’s voice was low and soft enough Frank was pretty sure neither of them were supposed to hear it under the soft music coming through the diner’s speakers, but they clearly had. “Besides! Maybe that’d make a whole bunch of Deadpools! Like that multi-verse movie, but better! Because the Mouse couldn’t come after us for nudity!” His excited shout drew the attention of the waitress, who quickly looked away. “You remember that ‘fic, right?”

“‘Pool, please, think of our poor waitress.” Spider-Man’s voice was lowered to a whisper, and he turned his head to where the waitress was staring pointedly at her POS’s screen. Frank felt a smile threaten at his lips and quashed it. If Deadpool knew that Frank occasionally enjoyed his antics, the guy would never stop trying to get his approval.

“Fine. We’ll take this back to our place. Boys, always great to see you!” Deadpool saluted them as he slid from the booth, and Spider-Man followed quickly behind him. Deadpool strode to the counter, slid a stack of cash to the waitress, and walked out the door with Spider-Man’s hand grasped firmly in his own.

“So, they’re okay, then. No major scrapes or broken bones.” Matt remarked, sounding relieved. He’d even dropped Dare Devil’s signature growl.

Frank sat back in his seat and found his arm draping around Murdock’s shoulders once more. “Looks like.” He remarked. Matt, he noticed, did not stiffen up at the feeling of Frank being so comfortable with him again.

“Ready to head home? It’s almost four in the morning.” Frank wasn’t sure how Matt could have possibly known that unless he’d had an internal clock ticking away the minutes. Still, when he checked his phone, Frank saw that the time read, “03:38”.

“Sure. You’ve got an early one tomorrow, don’t you?” Frank waited for Matt to slide out of the bench seat, then slid out behind him.

Matt shrugged his shoulders. “No rest for the wicked.” It was punctuated by that smirk the Devil usually wore when he was satisfied with his work, and Frank felt his heart stutter over itself. Just once, but still. He’d been wondering how Matt’s lips would feel on his for longer than he probably even knew himself, and that smirk was one he’d have loved to kiss off that stupidly handsome face. Instead of doing that, though, and fucking up everything they had, Frank just walked behind Matt out the doors of the diner and back into the late-winter chill.

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Matt led the way out into the chilled air of New York’s early winter morning and sighed. The air from his lungs crystalized in the damp cold and made it a little too obvious, but he hoped Frank hadn’t noticed as he began to lead the way back to his apartment. This early in the morning, it was only the committed joggers and the unhoused who would be out to see them, but he knew that once they were a few blocks away from the apartment, they’d need to start either running across rooftops or taking shadowed alleys. It was later than he would have liked to stay out, but he had wanted to lay eyes on Spider-Man and Deadpool himself, make sure they were really okay, not the vigilante brand of “okay” that meant multiple broken bones, bleeding wounds, and a concussion.

They walked in silence, and Matt let himself finally mull over the things Deadpool had brought up while they were in the diner. It was true, Frank had been more than just friendly for months, but they’d never done anything that would cross the line from friends to more, and the desire to do so was building to a pitch Matt couldn’t ignore for much longer. It was bad enough that Foggy was regularly asking him how his “friend” was doing, air-quotes included. Deadpool hinted at it every time he saw Dare Devil, and this night had been no exception. Except, when it was pointed out, Frank had removed his arm. It was confusing, and more than a little frustrating. The man had no trouble holding him close while they slept in the same bed, or touching his hip while they moved around the kitchen in what had become a well-worn routine, or even just pulling him in to sit closer while they sat on the couch and Frank watched a movie, narrating it to Matt with a concise tone that did its best not to interrupt the movie and almost never interrupted the dialogue. Now, out in public, even, he seemed to want to pull Matt in, just like he did while they were in his apartment, but pulled away when it was pointed out.

Of course, his mind had gone through all of the ‘what-ifs’ it could come up with. Frank was an ex-marine. Those guys may have instituted “don’t ask, don’t tell,” but he knew that plenty of people in the military had grown up homophobic and had brought those beliefs with them into their careers. He knew that Frank had lost his family in the most horrible way. They’d never had a chance. Frank had out-right told him he’d never have something like that again, wouldn’t allow himself to. Then, he’d pulled Matt closer to him on the couch and Matt had leaned his head on that strong shoulder, and it had felt like the closest thing Matt had had to a relationship in a very long time.

To be fair, part of his frustration was that he hadn’t had anything close to sex in more than a year. Sure, he usually didn’t unless he was in a relationship, but this was different. He’d turned down nights at the bar with Foggy and Karen to “find him a girl” long before Foggy knew that Frank regularly stayed at, then moved into, Matt’s apartment. He hadn’t wanted to go looking for anyone, firstly, and secondly, the added stress that Frank might have just let himself in and would catch him with someone else had turned his stomach sour. Frank was the first person Matt had actually told about his secret identity. Elektra had already known, Foggy and Karen had all-but known by the time he came clean to them, so it was just Frank. True, Frank had had his suspicions before Matt said anything, but the decision to not just kick him out, not see him for a few months until the questions died down, had been his. It had been his decision to remove the cowl, to talk out the how and why conversation he would have to trot out with anyone else who found out, but it had felt different with Frank.

These thoughts clouded his mind and made him miss the initial alley they could have turned down to start shaking any tails they may have picked up. Though, Matt was pretty sure Frank would have let him know if he saw or heard anything while Matt was so distracted. The taller man, frustratingly, had been just as silent on their walk as Matt had been. It wasn’t out of the ordinary for them to walk silently through the streets in the early morning, but Matt was tired of his thoughts long before they got a little too close to the apartment.

He turned down the next available alley and groped for a moment for the fire escape’s ladder that would take them up to the roof. Frank found it for him, brought it down to his grip, and Matt grunted with the slight effort of bringing the ladder down for himself. Thankfully, it was mostly silent until it clattered to the pavement. They climbed up it until they got to the stairs, then up and up and up until, finally, the wind coming in off the bay blew across his face, bringing the scents of ocean and fish and oil from the cargo ships to him in a familiar caress. “It’s almost first-light, Red, we’d better hurry.” Frank finally spoke behind him, but the words were so far from what his mind had clung to for their walk that it took him a second too long to respond.

“Frank?” Matt turned around and let himself face his companion.

“What’s wrong, Red?” Castle, always ready for battle, allowed his fingers to tap against the piece in his shoulder harness.

“Not that, just-” The words stopped in his throat. They had a good thing, didn’t they? Sleeping in the same bed, making each other breakfast, Frank reading to him at night when movies didn’t sound good, patrolling together, being companions just on that edge of more… He couldn’t lose that. And Frank wasn’t going to make the first move until he was good and ready.

“C’mon, Red. We’ve gotta get back, and somethin’ tells me you’re more tired ‘n I am.” Frank sounded like he was yawning. He hadn’t done that, once upon a time, but Matt supposed living with someone gave you an intimate enough feel for them that showing the weakness of being tired didn’t seem so bad.

“Okay.” Matt was a coward. Well and truly yellow of belly. Chickenshit, really. He wanted so badly to say something, anything, but the words to express himself failed him. It was a pattern with him, but he had never hated it more than in that moment. He began to run towards the next building, and Frank took up his slightly slower pace. They made it over three buildings before Frank called out.

“Red!” Matt stopped, waited for Frank to catch up. Frank finally fell in beside him, where Matt’s body told him the larger man belonged. “You okay? It’s like you’re tryin’a run away from me or somethin’.” His heart had kicked up a little, was beating faster than normal. The teasing words, of course, came to the tip of his tongue and spilled out without effort.

“Getting soft on me, Castle?” Matt stood his ground as Frank grunted at him.

“What’s going on, Red?” Matt heard the leather of Frank’s jacket creak as he folded his arms.

Matt began walking away again, called over his shoulder: “Trying to get home before the sun rises, Frank.”

They made it back to the apartment in no time, and Matt let out a sigh of relief as he was allowed to start prepping the coffee pot for the morning while Frank went to go and change. When the larger man stepped in behind him and placed a hand on his hip, Matt couldn’t hold back the shiver. He was supposed to be waking up in a few hours, bright-eyed and ready for a day in court. He had decided, in his time with his thoughts, that he would drop it. He would allow things to continue as they had been, wouldn’t say anything that could ruin this beautiful thing they had, because as much as he wanted more, he knew that the devastation of losing it, after all this time, would be the worse option by far.

It was fine. He could keep himself from wondering how Frank’s stubble would feel against his own, how those lips that gave him everything from shit to jokes to soft words would feel against his, what sounds Frank would make if Matt used his teeth, or his tongue… Yep. He was fine. Absolutely fine. Definitely not wondering about any of that. That would be stupid. Because he wasn’t going to say anything.

“Matt…” Frank’s voice startled him enough that his hand jumped as he was pouring the grounds into the filter that he’d laid in the top of the coffee maker. “You got somethin’ to say?” Frank’s voice was gruff with the lack of sleep and the late hour. It sent a shiver down Matt’s spine that he dutifully passed off as being nothing but a chill.

“Do you?” His best innocent, lawyer voice came out, and Matt cursed himself. He never used that with Frank. It was his Dare Devil voice, his normal voice, or nothing at all between them. Because he wasn’t a lawyer with Frank. Sure, he talked about work with him. Frank occasionally talked about the construction jobs he picked up around the city. But he was never a lawyer with Frank. He was Matt. He was Dare Devil. He was everything he wanted to be.

“Cut the shit, Red. Somethin’ bit your ass tonight and it hasn’t let go yet. What is it?” The sound of Frank’s feet slipping across the floor a bit and the counter top creaking told Matt Frank had leaned back on the island.

“It’s nothing, Frank. We’re both tired, let’s just go to bed.” Matt did his best to push the coffee maker back on the counter a bit, then step around the form that took up far too much space inside and out of his head. But, Frank stepped in front of him.

“If I’ve learned anything, Red, it’s not to let a friend go to bed angry. You mad at me for somethin’?” Frank asked, and Matt leaned his forehead against the chest that was blocking his path.

“I’m just tired, Frank. Please, let’s just go to bed.” Matt didn’t beg. Not for anyone else, at least. The silence that filled the air around them was thick enough to need a knife to cut it.

“Hey, um…” Frank trailed off, and Matt wondered if they could finally put the night behind them. If Frank would understand the significance of this moment and let it pass as he always did. “I’m gonna do somethin’, and if we’re not on the same page, you’re gonna tell me so right away and we’re gonna forget it ever happened, deal?” The words took a second too long to process in Matt’s head. While his brain caught up, Frank’s arms came around him to hold him in place. Matt was pretty sure he knew, from the way Frank’s heart kicked up a bit in his chest, what this was about, but he could be wrong. He just wasn’t sure and it was maddening.

Matt tilted his head up and waited. Frank took a breath, and within the span of his exhale, a pair of lips fell to Matt’s own. Immediately, a sense of relief swept through him so quickly it nearly knocked him off of his feet. As soon as they had pressed to his, those lips retracted, but it was too late. He had a whole new catalogue of sensations to process. The lips were chapped, probably from the wind and Frank’s refusal to use something as “girly” as chapstick until his lips eventually split from the abuse. They were soft in the way they’d pressed to Matt’s, though, hesitant, and Matt hadn’t even gotten to the stubble or anything else about the moment yet. The scent of coffee was still strong from where the bag sat open on the counter. Matt was still in his suit, Frank was likely in shorts and a tee shirt, with no socks despite the chill.

“Gonna say something to that?” Frank asked, and he sounded… oh. Shit. Matt hadn’t said anything. Had probably just been standing there with his face tilted up and his lips still half-pursed like he’d been part of a tableau.

He didn’t think, he just reached up a hand to find Frank’s neck and bring his face back to his own. It took a moment, was very clumsy and not at all the small peck that Frank had presented to him, but eventually they found their way back to each other’s mouths and this one… this one lasted much longer than the first had. Frank’s lips pressed into his, both of their mouths closed, until Frank’s tongue peeked out to lick at Matt’s lower lip like he just wanted a taste. Vaguely, Matt was aware that he was at a disadvantage, Frank had obviously brushed his teeth, and Matt’s mouth still tasted like old grease and salt from the diner food, but he couldn’t bring himself to care as he opened his lips to take in more of the taste of toothpaste and Frank.

He couldn’t have said how long they stayed there, locked together, but when they finally parted, neither of them was able to catch their breath for a moment. When Matt finally got himself back under control, tore himself away from the idea of letting those two kisses turn into two-hundred, of letting himself while the morning away finally doing all of the things he’d thought about with Frank, he stepped back and out of the larger man’s space. “Did I answer your question?” Thankfully, his voice was not as shaky as his hands were.

“Holy fuck, Red.” Frank pulled him in again and let their lips press together once more. He released Matt again after a moment, stepped back like he needed the physical reminder of space between them to keep himself from doing that again. “Okay.”

“Okay.” Matt said, though he wasn’t sure, exactly, what he was saying okay to.

“I don’t want us to change.” Frank said, and a stone sank in Matt’s stomach. He forced his head to fall forward, to not show the expression he was sure had fallen over his features. They would be okay. They’d kissed, Frank didn’t like it as much as Matt had, that was fine. Totally fine. “Hey, hey, what’s wrong?” Frank’s fingers fell just under Matt’s chin, and he resisted the urge to swat them away, just kept his head firmly in place.

“Nothing. You didn’t like it, that’s fine. We’ll just go on like none of this-”

“What?” Frank asked, sounding genuinely confused.

“You don’t want anything to change with us, that’s fine-” Matt tried again.

“No! Shit… damnit I’m tired. Matt, Red. Not like that. Jesus. You think I’m that big of an asshole? Kiss you and tell you I didn’t like you like that in the next breath?” Matt’s head snapped up. “I meant what we have, Red. The cohabitating, the jokes, the calling each other on our shit, the lunches, making sure Oscar’s litter box is clean, all of it.” Frank took a deep breath. “I’m not good at this shit, Matt. A little help?”

Matt was just having a hard time convincing himself he’d heard correctly. Still, he needed to respond. “Even if we break up, you mean?” He needed to be sure. Needed every base covered.

“I don’t know about you, Red, but that’s not exactly in my plans. Sure, though. I don’t want to lose you. Haven’t wanted to lose you for a good, long while. Not plannin’ on losin’ you ever.” Frank’s words struck something deep in Matt’s core, and he let himself ride out the wave of emotion before speaking again.

“I’d like that.”

It took a few more minutes for them to get themselves together, but finally, they made it back to the bedroom and Matt was able to strip himself out of the suit without interruption. They settled into the bed together, Frank pulling Matt in and curling around him as usual, but Frank placed a kiss on Matt’s bare shoulder, and he sighed into the warmth and security of the moment.

__________________________

Chapter Text

Christmas had been Frank’s favorite holiday, several lifetimes ago. His mom used to insist on a real tree, and cinnamon-scented pine cones she’d make by hand. They’d sit for hours stringing popcorn and cranberries on red thread, something his mom insisted on for good luck. His dad had never been much for celebrating. He’d reprimand Frank for being too loud, too spoiled to be receiving presents that year, and by the age of eight, the magic was mostly lost to him. By then, his parents had begun fighting more, spending less time together, and over time the winter holidays lost their shine. Sure, they’d have family gatherings, and Frank would make the expected appearance, but he would usually tuck himself up with ‘A Christmas Carol’ in his room, or in a corner of the couch, or out on the back porch, wrapped in several blankets to ward off the chill of the night air.

When Maria came into the picture, with Junior on the way, Christmas magic came back, just a bit. Before Thanksgiving, even, Maria had the halls thoroughly decked, played all of her favorite carols and hummed them when the radio was turned off. She’d baked everything she could possibly think of, and their meal that year was one of the best he’d ever had, even if the turkey had been dry and burnt, the potatoes had been more cream than potato, and the corn had looked more like it had been creamed than steamed. They’d laughed over her lack of skills in the kitchen, sat around their third-hand wooden dining set, and he’d eaten every bite. They’d woken up the next morning and unwrapped their presents together, scarce though they were, then sat and watched Maria’s favorite Christmas movies and drank hot chocolate until they’d fallen asleep on the sofa together.

When he was on tour, they were lucky if they got a break, let alone a chance to be home for the holidays, so when he got back, the kids got a second Christmas, just for him. He may not have always been in the mood for it, but it wouldn’t take long for the kids and Maria to pull him out of whatever memories were haunting him. They’d eat a big meal, Frank would help wash up, then they would all sit in the living room of the tiny apartment and watch Christmas movies, no matter what time of year it actually was.

After Maria? Frank had flipped the largest middle finger he could to anything remotely happy. He hadn’t been put on this earth for good things, they only brought him heart break when they were ripped away from him in the blink of an eye. Matt hadn’t seemed to be all that into Christmas, either. He’d talked about Christmas at the orphanage, sure. They usually got a new bible, or new clothes, or whatever else people deigned to donate to churches around the holiday season. He hadn’t talked about his holiday memories with his dad, yet, and Frank wasn’t going to pry either. Still, he’d never actually been around Matt on the day unless one or both of them were seriously injured. Last Christmas had consisted of Frank checking his pupil dilation and ensuring he wasn’t hiding any symptoms of serious issues after his surgery.

So, to say that he was surprised when he awoke Christmas morning to an empty bed and the sounds of voices coming from the living room was an understatement. Usually Matt let him know if someone would be stopping by, so Frank could at least put on a pair of pants, but he didn’t remember his partner waking him up. “Frank’s up.” He heard Matt’s voice from the living room, and then the other, now-recognizeable voice called out.

“Get up, lazy bones! It’s Christmas!” Foggy Nelson. Of course. The man seemed to have no end of cheer when his life and the lives of his friends weren’t in danger. He should have been expecting something like this.

“There’s fresh coffee, too!”

Karen? Karen was there too? Frank rubbed the sleep from his eyes and rolled himself off of the mattress, planting his feet on the floor.

“People are supposed to sleep in on this holiday, Foggy. At least, when they don’t have someone on a sugar high excited about presents.” Matt’s warm chuckle brought Frank to the closet, where he pulled out the pair of pink fuzzy pants with frogs on them. The apartment felt ice-cold, and he wasn’t about to be ashamed of wearing comfortable clothes in front of these people. They were Matt’s friends, and, supposedly, his friends too, kind of. Besides, the pants had belonged to one of them at one point.

Apparently, he’d been taking too long, because Matt appeared in the doorway as he was shrugging on a Henley. “Good morning.” His voice was lowered, likely to discourage eaves-dropping. Frank didn’t care.

“Your friends have a bad habit of showing up unannounced.” He grumbled, walking to the bathroom. Matt disappeared as he used the toilet, brushed his teeth, put his hair into some kind of shape that didn’t look like they’d been fucking all night. (Which, they hadn’t… at least, not all night).

Matt reappeared just as he was stepping out of the bathroom, holding a mug of coffee with a small smile on his face. “I’m not sure anything could have kept Foggy away this year. His family’s doing Christmas tomorrow.” Matt whispered into his ear, then kissed him briefly. With a smile, Frank shrugged, took the mug gratefully, and allowed that smooth caffeine to burn his throat all the way down. That’s the good stuff.

He followed Matt back out into the living room, where Foggy was by the tree, hanging ornaments on it like a madman, and Karen sat on the couch, curled up against the arm of it with her coffee still steaming in her hand. “Oh my- Oh my god!” Foggy suddenly stopped at Karen’s words, looked at Frank, then looked to Matt.

“What?” Matt asked, head tilting in that confused way that he would swear he never did, but was adorable all the same.

”He’s wearing the pants!” Foggy barely got the sentence out before he bent in half and wheezed in laughter. Frank took another sip from his coffee mug, but shot him an evil eye. It wasn’t his fault that this was the most comfortable pair of pants in Matt’s closet.

“Frank… What are you wearing?” Karen asked in between her own giggles. Matt’s head had straightened up, and he had turned to face Frank.

“You wore the frog pants, didn’t you?” Matt asked as his friends tried to compose themselves behind him.

“Your apartment’s freezing, Red.” Frank’s reply brought a smile to Matt’s lips, and Frank wanted to kiss him, but wasn’t quite sure where they stood on PDA. As it was, they mainly stayed in the apartment, or if they went out shopping, kept a respectable distance between themselves.

While Karen and Foggy finally got themselves under control, Oscar came out from wherever he’d hidden from the loud noises and began to rub against Frank’s ankles as he always did when the pants were worn. Something about them just seemed to draw the cat in, no matter his reservations about the man wearing them.

“Oh, my god, Foggy!” Karen slapped Foggy as her giggles returned. ”Get a picture!

The sound of a camera shutter confirmed that somewhere, there was now photographic evidence of The Punisher wearing pink pajama pants with frog princes on them, while a cat wove itself in between his ankles. He was about to ask nicely (without a death threat) that Foggy delete it, but seeing the smile on Matt’s face kept him quiet.

With the first mug of coffee gone, Frank carefully walked around Oscar and into the kitchen, where he poured himself another cup.

“Merry Christmas, Frank.” Matt had followed him, leaving his friends to decorate the tree and continue whatever conversation they’d been having before Frank appeared.

“Merry Christmas, Red.” Matt stepped into his side, and Frank set down the mug of coffee.

“Can I kiss you under the mistletoe? Foggy said he hung it up here.” Frank looked up to find that, yes, a sprig of mistletoe had been hung above the cabinets.

“You sure you’re alright with that?” Frank asked, glancing to where Karen and Foggy were still laughing about something.

“Only if you are.” Matt had pushed into his space, and Frank had turned to face him, locked his arms around Matt’s middle.

They kissed, and warmth sparked in his chest. Sparklers lit in Frank’s stomach as their kisses went from polite to a little more sinful, and he slid his tongue out to trace over Matt’s bottom lip. It sucked into his mouth easily, and while Frank did his best to tamp down on any noises that wanted to come out of his mouth, Matt didn’t seem to have the same reservations. Someone cleared their throat just as Matt’s leg was hitching to wrap around Frank’s hip. For some reason, Matt liked to be lifted up, carried, moved around in general. They hadn’t talked about it, but Frank wasn’t complaining. Especially not since the night Matt had proved he could carry Frank out of a burning building like a rag-doll. The memory brought a little more heat to his gaze, even as Matt’s face turned away from him, a slight flush over his cheeks.

“If you two start fucking, we’re pulling out every camera we have.” Karen’s threat of making any kind of sexual act between them as awkward as possible had Matt pulling away, but Frank allowed his hand to stay at the small of Matt’s back.

“Didn’t know you were into that, Karen.” Frank grinned at her, intent on making her as uncomfortable as well.

Foggy burst into laughter again, then took a sip of his coffee. Still, Matt poured himself a bit more coffee, Frank grabbed his own mug, and they went to sit beside Karen on the couch while Foggy strung lights around the tree. Carefully, neither of them placed their hands anywhere that would be considered inappropriate.

“It looks great, Fogs.” Karen said as he plugged in the lights with a flourish.

The seventy-five percent of them who could see it admired the tree, and Matt tucked his feet up on the couch, leaning a bit more into Frank’s space. “Oh! Crap! I forgot the best part!” Foggy exclaimed, standing from where he’d sat down on the floor. He raced to his coat by the front door, and Frank tracked him with his eyes as he slid something wrapped in a paper bag out of the pocket, then walked quickly back towards the collective. He stopped behind where Frank sat on the couch, then held out the parcel.

Confused, Frank untangled the bag from around the object and found a metal star, painted yellow with little holes poked in it. “It’s your turn, new guy.” Foggy’s words wormed their way into Frank’s heart. It beat painfully in his chest for a second, but the feeling passed as he forced himself to look up and away from the yellow-painted metal. Even Matt’s face was turned towards him, neck craned awkwardly from where he’d half-huddled into Frank’s side. He couldn’t help the memories of Maria, handing him the star and telling him he was the tallest, so he’d have to put it up. Him holding up a tiny Frankie, who had put it on lop-sided while they all sweat in the June heat. The echoing laughter of a family he would never see again. His shattered heart was going too fast, but at least it wasn’t twisting itself into a pretzel in his chest as he stared down at Matt.

“Foggy…” Matt whispered, and Foggy reached for the star like he was going to take it back. Frank acted before he could think about it, held the star far out of anyone’s reach.

His voice sounded like he’d swallowed bundles of sandpaper, but he managed to get out the words. “I got it.” He felt Matt’s arms retract and missed their warmth, even as he forced himself up off the couch and over to the tree. Maria had had ornaments she’d bought at the dollar store, hung up with paperclips or thread. There had been two clay ones with a footprint from the kids each when they were babies. This one was decorated similarly, with the cheap orbs covered in flaking glitter, but there was also tinsel, and the lights were a soft white as opposed to the rainbow ones Maria had preferred. He set the star on top of the tree, followed the lights at the top to their plug, and attached the two cords to make it glow.

Oscar wound around his feet as he stood there, mostly because he couldn’t force his feet to move just yet, but he hoped it looked like he was just trying to figure out if it needed to be straightened. Absently, he reached down and picked up the cat, needing something to distract him. The feeling of claws sinking into his chest helped to ground him, even as Oscar tried to wiggle free. He turned around, finally, and faced the trio.

“It looks great, Frank.” Karen said, her voice a bit cautious but still warm.

Matt stood, like he was going to come and hug Frank or something, but Frank was finally able to move his feet. He got himself back over to the couch, where Oscar finally wriggled free and jumped to land on top of the cushions, then launched himself to the floor and into the bedroom. “I think that’s the longest he’s ever let you hold him.” Matt smiled at him, genuine and warm, and Frank resisted the urge to pull him in for a kiss. Trust Matty to know that he didn’t want to talk about something right then and let it slide.

Instead, he picked up his coffee mug and Matt’s then made his way to the kitchen as Foggy sat back down by the tree. When he returned, his coffee containing a couple of shots of whiskey from the cabinet he’d been designated by Matt, presents had been scattered into small piles around them. “Didn’t know we were doin’ gifts.” Frank grunted, once again uncomfortable. In his defense, Matt hadn’t warned him they were doing anything for Christmas. He took a pull from the mug, let the whiskey burn down his throat.

“We’re never supposed to do gifts. But, every year, Foggy brings something, and his parents send a few things, too.” Karen supplied as Frank handed the non-alcoholic coffee to Matt. “Don’t worry, you gave us a pretty good gift this year, Frank.” Her smile is warm, and Frank wondered just how much she’d had to drink that morning as he took another sip of coffee.

“What’s that?” He asked, then sat on the couch while Karen looked at Matt pointedly.

“You’re a smart guy, Castle, you’ll figure it out.” Foggy pipes up from his place on the floor. He’s beaming up at Frank, and Frank feels a bit uncomfortable until he looks down and sees Matt scowling at Karen. He almost asks what Matt’s upset about, but chooses to let it slide.

They all tore into the gifts laid out before them. Matt got a watch that’s got the numbers and the dial raised, so that he can read it with his fingers, from Foggy, as well as a gift card from Foggy’s parents for his favorite audiobook website. Karen got a new set of earbuds that are damned-near invisible in her ears, as well as a knitted sweater from Foggy’s mom. Foggy had received a new leather care set from Karen, and a bluetooth keyboard from Matt, who claimed he knew Foggy liked to take notes in court and now, maybe his carpal tunnel wouldn’t be so awful in a few years. Frank had received a new pair of leather gloves from Foggy, complete with guards on the knuckles, and a pair of knitted socks from Foggy’s mom. His chest felt tight and it was hard to breathe as he looked at the gifts in his lap. How did Foggy’s mom even know about him?

“I told Mom Matt got a boyfriend, and she insisted I bring those for you.” Foggy said with a gesture towards the socks.

“Please tell her thank you, for me.” Frank asked. He wasn’t sure why his voice came out so quiet, but something was twisting up in his heart. Sure, David had insisted he come over for Christmas every year, and he’d always made sure to bring presents and spoil the kids a little, but they’d done their Christmas a week ago because David was deep into a project and knew he wouldn’t be able to spare the time his family deserved this week. He hadn’t expected anything of the day, even though he’d gotten Matt something. His heart felt like it had swollen up and was trying to climb up his throat as he stared at the long, black socks made out of some of the softest material he’d ever felt.

“She’s a mother hen, through and through, she’ll appreciate that you like them so much. Fair warning, you’re going to have to come and meet her tomorrow afternoon. We’re doing a late Christmas because my brother has to work tonight.” Foggy grinned at him when Frank finally met his eyes, but Frank felt a bolt of panic crash through him.

“I’m uh, not exactly-”

“Nope. No buts. She’s insisting she meet the person who’s been keeping her son safe for the last year.” Foggy was still smiling, and Frank looked to Matt, who was frowning a little. Had Matt not told Frank that he’d been half-adopted into Foggy’s family, Frank might have been confused, but the churning in his gut had more to do with the idea of spending time with such a large family and answering their questions.

“Foggy, he doesn’t have to do anything he’s not comfortable with.” Matt tried on his behalf, and Frank, so used to fighting his own battles, almost sagged back into the couch in relief at having someone on his side.

“Matt, the man hardly ever leaves your side. He’s coming to Christmas tomorrow.” Foggy stared pointedly at the man at Frank’s side, who sighed. Foggy stood and began cleaning up the paper that littered the floor, the matter closed.

“I can pretend you were kidnapped or something, if you really don’t want to go, but it’s always fun.” Matt’s whisper in his ear sent a small shiver down Frank’s spine. Frank shrugged, then leaned over to kiss Matt on the top of his head.

“Awww!” Karen’s exclamation may have ruined the moment a little, but Frank couldn’t have stopped the smile on his face if he wanted to.

“Alright, time for Christmas movies since Frank, here, finally got Matt to get a TV!” Foggy whooped as he pushed the ball of paper into the recycling bin.

___________________________

Cuddled into the couch, Matt was pretty sure he could count this as his best Christmas ever. Frank, at his side, had pulled him in close with an arm wrapped around his shoulders, so that Matt was all-but laying on him, one ear tuned in to Frank’s steady heart beat while the other heard the sounds of A Christmas Story on the TV, Frank’s descriptions rumbling through the chest he lay on. Karen was on the floor with Foggy, the pair of them swaddled in blankets and resting against the couch cushions he and Frank weren’t using, occasionally throwing popcorn at each other, based on the sounds of hushed laughter and popped kernels hitting the floor. If he’d been told a year ago that this was how his Christmas would be, he’d have laughed and called it crazy. Now, though, he wanted every Christmas to be like this. He felt warm and safe, and no one outside seemed to be in trouble.

Frank sipped his hot chocolate, jostling Matt a little, but he didn’t want to move. He pulled the blanket from the couch over himself, scooching down to rest his head on Frank’s thigh instead, and felt his eyes close. A hand ruffled his hair, but those strong fingers stayed and played with the curling ends, and Matt snuggled in a bit more. He wasn’t sure he’d ever felt so comfortable in his life. Without realizing, he fell into a soft slumber.

The sound of Frank saying goodbye roused him, and Matt pushed his torso up with his hands as he heard the door closing. “Karen and Foggy just left. They said to tell you good night, and thanks for the party.” Frank’s voice rumbled, and Matt swung his legs down to sit properly on the couch. He wished they would have woken him up to say goodbye, but knew he would see them the next day.

“What time is it?” He asked, rubbing some of the fine grit out of his eyes. He could hear the hum of electricity, a little louder than when it was off, so it was drawing power, but no other sounds came from it.

“Almost ten.” Frank replied, then pulled Matt’s body into his lap. “Did you sleep well?”

“I did.” Matt smiled, still a little groggy, and felt the cushion rise as Frank stood.

A hand came out to take Matt’s, and he was pulled from the couch up into Frank’s arms. They stayed like that for a moment, tangled up in each other. Matt, for all he’d told himself to stop wondering when the shoe would drop, couldn’t help but wonder if even after a few months they were still in the honeymoon phase. He wondered if his need to be close to Frank would ever fade. As Frank leaned down and kissed the top of his head, he hoped it never would.

Frank moved lower, moved Matt back a fraction to reach his lips, and kissed him once, twice, three times. Those large, powerful hands fell to his ass and hoisted him up, Matt’s legs folded around Castle’s hips and held him tightly to the taller man’s body as those hands supported him. “Is it time to go to bed, Red?” Frank asked, and Matt could hear the smile in his voice.

“I just got more sleep than I used to in a week, Frank, I’m not tired.” Matt let his mouth quirk up in a grin, and Frank nuzzled into his neck, biting the juncture of his neck and shoulder harshly, but only for a split second.

“Who said anything about sleeping?” Frank asked against his throat, and Matt moaned as he pressed himself closer, angled his mouth towards Frank’s neck and snuck his tongue out to taste the skin there. A little bit of sweat, the scent of gun oil, a little cologne, a lot of caffeine that had sweated out of his system, topped off with the bit of whiskey Frank had drunk that morning. Frank bit him again, a little higher on his neck, and Matt gasped. Those strong legs carried them to the bedroom, Frank able to navigate the apartment backwards and blindfolded coming in handy as they kissed again and again and again.

As Frank threw him on the bed, Matt laughed. The sound was met with Frank’s own laugh as they began to undress themselves, and Matt was pretty sure he’d never find anything so perfect again.

______________________________

Chapter Text

The morning didn’t dawn so much as it beeped into existence. Frank hadn’t exactly slept well, but it was a much better night than his normal, by his standards. He hadn’t had clearly-defined nightmares so much as a general feeling of dread that stuck like cobwebs in his mind as he registered that Matt hadn’t turned off his alarm. He pulled the man beside him a bit closer, ignoring the sound of protest he got for his trouble.

“Your alarm’s goin’ off, Red.” Frank could hear the gravel in his voice, and felt it a bit in his throat. He hoped he wasn’t getting a cold, patrolling was always horrible when he felt like his head was going to split in two. The smaller man didn’t even fully wake, just began softly snoring again. “C’mon, man, Foggy’s gonna come runnin’ if you don’t make it to work this morning.” That, at least, seemed to somewhat rouse his… whatever they were. Boyfriend didn’t quite cut it, but they weren’t engaged or anything. Frank had been looking at rings, but he hadn’t found the one he’d pictured just yet. It was possible that a trip to the jeweller was in order.

“Let ‘im.” Matt mumbled after a few seconds of silence. “Too warm.”

Frank chuckled, looking down at the mop of red hair that would undoubtedly stick up when the man finally peeled himself out of bed. “What if I can promise a warm shower? And coffee?” Frank asked, noting that Matt had pushed himself firmly into Frank’s body and was making himself comfortable.

“Will you come with that shower?” Matt asked, still sounding like he’d not fully woken. Frank had to take a moment to not only appreciate the feeling of the smaller form that wiggled beside him, but the rush of lust that momentarily clouded his judgement.

“Maybe not this morning, since you’re already running late, but…” Frank let his words trail off as his hand roved over the bare thigh pressed to his own. The body, loose and languid with sleep, stiffened a bit.

“Shit. Yeah. And um, good.” Matt was up like a shot and into the bathroom, closing the door a little too firmly in his haste. Wondering if he’d done something, then deciding he hadn't, Frank shook away his confusion and went to go start the coffee. He’d need it, but Matt would need it more.

“Damn lawyers, gettin’ up before the fuckin' sun.” Frank squinted at the light of the bright, fuck-off billboard as the coffee pot gurgled, then rummaged through the cabinet to pull out a can of Oscar’s food and place it in his dish. The cat, who still was a bit leery of Frank despite the fact that it curled up on Frank’s feet every night as he fell asleep, crept out of the bedroom at the sound of the can opening. He waited by the sofa for Frank to return to the coffee pot and watch the slow drip of the steeping grounds as they fell into the pot. When Frank turned once more to the cat dish, Oscar was crouched in front of it and lapping up the food, flicking his slightly crooked tail in contentment.

Matt emerged from the bedroom as Frank was pouring the second cup of coffee, dressed in an unbuttoned dress-shirt and slacks. A tie hung undone around his neck, and his hair dripped into the blue fabric as he moved into the kitchen. Matt took the mug that waited in its normal place and drank gratefully. “For the record, you may have been right about this morning, but my shower would have been much more enjoyable with you in it.” Matt’s voice was smooth, a little cocky, and Frank allowed himself to smile at the smaller man.

“Don’t doubt it, Red.” Frank allowed himself another sip of coffee before he emptied the remainder of the pot into the thermos he’d pulled down from the cabinet. This one, which had a few dents and was missing paint in a few spots, was the one he’d stolen from Matt’s kitchen and kept for a few months. He wasn’t sure why, but it was his favorite, and when he worked, he usually took it with him. That day, though, Frank didn’t have much to do, so he could sacrifice it for the greater good.

With practiced motions, Frank had another pot of coffee going, and noted that the bag was almost empty. Maybe it was time to go grocery shopping, then. That would give him something to do with his day off. “You gonna grab a bagel on the way to work?” Frank asked, watching Matt drain his mug, then get started on the buttons of his shirt. Frank got a little distracted watching his fingers nimbly move up the buttons.

“Not sure I even have time for that. I don’t have court, thank God, but I’ve got a meeting with a new client first thing.” Matt shrugged, once his shirt was fully buttoned and his tie had been knotted.

Frank leaned back on the counter, then reached for his own mug and passed it to the redhead. “Here.” He knew that Matt could probably sense the movement, but knew the man wouldn’t take it unless Frank made a point to offer it up. With a small smile, Matt took the mug and drained that as well, then rushed back to the bedroom for his suit jacket. Frank placed his mug back on the counter, Matt’s mug in the sink, and waited for him to return.

Trench coat in place, cane in hand, Matt was opening the door when Frank grabbed the thermos and strode towards him. “Coffee.” He pressed the thermos into Matt’s free hand, and with a smile, Matt pushed himself into Frank’s space and graced him with a kiss that fell half on his lips, half on his cheek. As endearing as that was, Frank wasn’t about to let that be the lasting impression for the day. He grabbed Matt’s arms as he made to pull away, and pulled him into a real kiss. It may have been a product of the lingering lust in his sleepless brain, or maybe it was just Matt, but it felt better than the ones the night before. There was more than just lust to this kiss, though they'd shared softer ones as well in the past. This kiss felt like want, or maybe need, and a promise for more to come.

When Frank finally found it in himself to pull away, Matt’s body swayed into his a second before he sunk down off of his toes. “Not fair, Castle.” Matt’s chiding words were ruined by the way Frank’s hand in his hair had mussed the back of it a bit. He debated leaving it like that for Nelson to see and comment on, but ultimately smoothed it down until the slightly-damp tresses were uniform again.

“See you tonight.” Frank said, instead of rising to the bait. “For the record, you’re the one that’s not fair, all buttoned up and pristine while I’m not able to mess it all up.”

Matt’s face flushed a vibrant shade of red, and he disappeared quicker than should have been possible, given the full hands. He’d even shut the door, probably by pulling it with his foot. Frank shook his head, let himself relive the past ten hours of joy he’d found with his partner. His brain, that always had excellent timing, wondered once again what in the fuck he was thinking, getting into something romantic, before he shook himself out of it. He needed something to do, and the fridge was calling his name for breakfast.

What he’d forgotten was that they’d been mostly eating take-out the past week, and as such, there was nothing in the fridge. Well, unless he wanted a breakfast of ketchup, mayonnaise, the lone pickle left in the jar at the back of the second shelf, and the lone egg in the carton. To be fair, there were a couple of containers of Chinese food that could have been heated up, but the sight of small, fuzzy spots on it told Frank they were probably not a good option. Breakfast on the go it was.

It took him longer to get showered, dressed, and set with his own thermos of coffee. He pulled on the jacket he usually wore for stakeouts, a black bomber jacket with fleece inside for extra insulation against the cold, early spring day, grabbed his keys and wallet from the low table by the doorway, and said goodbye to Oscar before heading down the stairs and out into the chilly March air.

As he stood in line for the food truck that had the best breakfast burritos ten minutes later, Frank debated bringing Matt some breakfast. On the one hand, Frank knew that Matt had a meeting that morning, and he'd never visited Matt at work before without needing legal help. But, it would be a chance to see him again, and Frank wanted to so badly it started up am ache in his chest. He wanted to push that aside, the emotions were too much, but Matt had been slowly breaking through every wall Frank could build with enough determination to stop a freight train. He could let himself want things, want Matt, and he wouldn't die.

Bringing breakfast would also mean a chance to see Karen, and hell, Nelson wasn’t so bad outside of the fact that he hated the way Frank went about his business. By the time he reached the front of the line, his mind was made up. He was already dressed in his civilian disguise, complete with a ball cap and a pair of aviators large enough to cover his most distinct features. Five minutes in the office wouldn’t kill anyone, right?

Frank ordered four burritos, paid the guy who was a little too cheerful for the time of day, and only had to wait a couple of minutes before his given pseudonym was called. The woman who handed him the foil-wrapped burritos smiled brightly as he thanked her, placed a tip in the jar, then took the burritos.

It only took a few minutes for him to reach Matt’s office from there, despite the way his knees protested the cold and the stairs. He had acknowledged that he wanted to see Red again so soon after saying goodbye to him. He would also absolutely argue that a kiss for the trouble of bringing breakfast was a fair trade, even if he might have to wait a while for Matt to fulfill his end. As he stopped in front of the door, the thought that Matt might not want Frank to just show up during business hours struck him again. It was far from normal for Frank to even go to this building, now that he knew who Dare Devil was and hadn’t been arrested in over a year and a half. Now, here he was, showing up at their door with burritos for breakfast.

Decision not quite made, Frank opened the door with the hand not clutching the precarious stack of burritos and let himself in. “Hello. We’ll be right with you.” Karen said from her desk without looking up. Frank took a second to observe his surroundings now that he wasn’t there under the threat of jail time with a bail bond under his belt. There was a doorway to a kitchen area to his left, two doors that were closed in front of him with each of the partners’ names on them, respectively, and Karen’s desk was a solid metal thing with a formica top, covered in papers surrounding the computer monitor. “Oh, my god, Pete? What are you doing here?” Karen asked, once she had looked away from her computer. She looked a little conflicted about seeing him there, then clocked the foil in his hands.

“Breakfast?” He asked, reaching for a burrito.

“Jesus, you have no sense of self-preservation, do you?” Karen hissed as she stood and made her way to where Frank stood.

“I’ve been told it’s one of my better qualities.” Frank snarked as she took the burrito he offered her. “Brought enough for everyone. We were out late last night, so he didn’t get much sleep, and didn’t get a chance to grab anything before he came in for his meeting. Figured I’d help support my favorite legal team.” The joke hung stale in the air as Karen gave a keen glare.

Eventually, she shrugged, took the burrito, and pointed to the door that read “Matthew Murdock”. “He’s still in his meeting, but you can have a seat if you want. I’ll take this to Foggy.” Karen plucked another burrito out of his hands and went to knock on Foggy’s door. Frank, with nothing better to do, sat on the couch and watched the clock. Karen was gone a little too long for her and Foggy not to be talking about something. Still, when she finally reappeared, it was with a smile a mile wide. She didn’t say anything as she sat back at her desk. Five more minutes ticked by without either of them speaking. Karen typed away on her keyboard, and Frank watched the clock.

______________________

Matt knew that Frank had arrived the second he’d entered the building, but he hadn’t shown anything outside of an attentive ear to his client. Mrs. Velasquez, who was having trouble with her son-in-law dropping by to ask for money, had continued to speak in rapid Spanish about all of the damage he’d done to her apartment, the boot prints from when he'd tried to kick in her door three weeks ago, and a few other instances that made Matt’s blood run a little hotter. The son-in-law, according to her, thought that just because she had offered to help him and her daughter when they first moved out, and had even saved up some money for them, that she owed it to them to keep paying for some of their expenses. Mrs. Velasquez would have helped her daughter, had her son-in-law ever let him see her. She wanted a restraining order against him, and the chance to see her daughter, ensure she was okay.

Nelson and Murdock could help with one of those, and Daredevil and the Punisher could help with the other. He smiled encouragement at her, offered her a tissue box when she started crying, and compiled a list of things they would need for the restraining order while she composed herself.

When Matt stood and offered her hope in Spanish, Mrs. Velasquez jumped to her feet and hugged him around his waist tightly. It may have jostled his ribs, which hurt, but the warmth the woman’s action infused into his bones was worth it. She walked out of the office noticeably lighter than when she’d come in, and he told her he would call when he had more news. Already, Matt was certain this would be one of his favorite pro-bono cases. “That sounded like more good food for our larders.” Foggy said, stepping out of his office, but Matt couldn’t bring himself to do much more than smile at his friend. They both knew that Mrs. Velasquez was the kind of person they had opened the practice for.

So, when Foggy shrugged and took a bite out of something, Matt turned to the man who had brought breakfast. “That was a long meeting to wait through. Care to step into my office?” He asked the form on the couch. Frank stood immediately and crowded in a little too close, holding something warm between them.

“It might have gone cold.” Frank said as Matt took the burrito. He didn’t answer, but he didn’t have to. The curse of being a busy person was that hot food was a rarity, and they both knew that well. Instead, Matt led him into his office and closed the door behind them. Frank was still standing very close to him; Matt could feel the heat radiating off his body.

“Thank you for breakfast.” Matt could feel the way his own heart was racing, but Frank’s had only ticked up a hair. It was reassuring, how calm the man before him could be, even when he was furious. Really, the only time his heart rate increased was around Matt, outside of the few instances when he thought one of them would die. Matt liked to think that even if they died, they would find each other somehow, but that was far too sappy a response to a breakfast burrito.

Frank shifted on his feet as Matt unwrapped the foil and bit into the burrito, letting the warm egg, cheese, and bacon fill his senses. “So, uh, busy day ahead?” Frank asked, and Matt wasn’t going to tease him anymore, but he wanted to feel Frank get a little frustrated.

“Yeah, you know, part of running a successful law firm and all.” Matt’s reply was taken with silence, and finally he set down the burrito and launched himself at the quiet man before him. As always, he was easily caught. Matt pressed a kiss to Frank’s face, and let the man turn so that their lips could meet.

They stayed locked together for a few minutes, neither wanting to let the other go, though Frank set him down when Matt eventually winced over the sharp pain in his ribs. In hindsight, climbing someone like a tree was probably not a good idea when ribs were cracked. They stayed in each other’s arms, however, as if nothing could force them apart. Frank leaned down to press a kiss to Matt’s head, which Matt was pretty sure he would never get tired of. In response, he snuggled in closer, ignoring the protests of his thoracic cavity. Pain didn’t mean much in the face of a few stolen moments with his boyfriend.

Frank groaned, suddenly, and Matt became aware that he was pretty much rubbing himself over the taller man’s lower half in an effort to get as close as possible. “Red… your ribs won’t let me, but you need to know that fucking you over that desk at some point is on my list.” Matt’s knees went a little weak at the growl as it rumbled into his ear and straight to his groin. That was an excellent idea.

“I have some time.” Matt’s cheeky reply brought another groan out of Frank and a slap to his ass that jolted another wince out of him. He thought back to that morning, the way Frank had groaned as the alarm had gone off, the way he’d been wrapped so surely in Frank’s arms…

The ring he’d bought was in his desk drawer. He may have chickened out earlier, but maybe he could find the courage to say something, or just rip it off like a bandaid. He just needed a kiss for confidence. Maybe two.

“I’m not going to right now, because I am not going to be nice about it. I don’t need you puncturing a lung just for a bit of fun, and I don’t really need the peanut gallery’s input about it later, either.” Frank sounded like he wished that wasn’t the case, and Matt was brought back to the moment. They had time. He didn’t need to rush into it. Especially if Frank was making lists. He only did that when he was serious, and he almost never failed to complete the tasks on his list.

Matt put on his best pout, and it worked. Frank kissed it away gently, with a roll of his hips into Matt’s stomach that revealed just how much restraint the larger man was using. “Fine.” Matt said. “I can wait.” He’d waited a long time for Frank Castle, and he was willing to continue to wait for the beautiful man before him. Matt was certain he wasn’t going to ever be able to change Frank’s moral compass, but he knew that he didn’t really have a say in that, either. Frank did the things that Matt couldn’t, and while he didn’t agree with all of them, Matt knew that it was the way of their world, and absolutely nothing could stop his heart from loving this man until the end of their days.

The thought of that used to make Matt panic, but it hadn’t in a long time. Sure, one of them could die at some point, but he knew that neither of them would take that lying down. They would fight together, and for each other, and nothing was going to stop them.

His heart hummed happily in his chest as Frank pressed another kiss to his curls. “I should let you eat. And work. I know you’ve got a full day.” That sounded a lot like Frank was leaving, which Matt didn’t want, but he knew it was what he was supposed to do. Dare Devil may fight for justice with his fists, but that didn’t mean Matt Murdock could stop fighting with ink, paper, and knowledge.

“I’ll see you tonight?” He asked, hoping that Frank could read in his voice how much he wanted to just go home, sit on the couch with Oscar, maybe go a couple of rounds in bed before ordering a pizza.

“If not sooner. Anything you want for dinner? I’m heading to the store.” Frank asked, sounding like he didn’t want to leave either.

“Just the usual things. I take it the fridge is empty?” Matt let himself settle a bit as they spoke about their domestic life.

“Well, I may have a new specimen for Spider-Man to study, but aside from that…” Frank trailed off, and Matt brought his hand up to trace the grin stretching his cheeks.

“I love you.” Matt said quietly, and Frank released a breath as his fingers traced over his lips and jaw, reaching out suddenly to catch his pointer between his teeth for a moment.

“I love you too.”

Frank left Matt to his definitely cold burrito eventually. He munched happily on it as he read braille transcripts for a case and let himself settle into the work day. He’d moved the ring to his pocket, sure he would find the right time eventually, but he felt like a bit of the pressure had been released. It was still terrifying, not knowing for sure whether Frank would even want to get married again, but he was certain that even if Frank said no, they wouldn’t be doing any of the stupid things like breaking up or fighting over it. There was so much between them that Matt wasn’t going to let anything keep them apart.

__________________________

Chapter Text

It’s never easy, dating a vigilante. From what Frank hears, he’s more of an anti-hero, but it’s all just different labels for the same shit. So, he tries to give his partner a little grace when they stumble home beat to shit, or the idiot takes a bullet that should have gotten him.

Tries is the operative word.

“Fuckin’ martyr, steppin’ in front of bullets like you want death on your doorstep every fuckin’ night. One of these days you’re gonna have to let my armor do its job.” Frank is, once again, sewing up skin that’s been torn to shit by a bullet. At least these goons weren’t using hollow points like the Russians.

“I forget, Frank, when exactly did you become immortal?”

At least this one was in the shoulder, not like Red needed any more scars there or anything, but it could have been worse.

“When you did.” Frank grunts as he pulls on a stitch, but he can still hear the slightly sharper inhale from the smaller form beneath him. Frank ties off his stitches, noticing with a sick fascination that they’ve gotten a hell of a lot better since he was in the military, learning how to fix battlefield wounds. Must be all the practice.

“It would have hit you in the neck, Frank. where you refuse to wear any kind of armor.” Matt noted, sounding pissed, but not as pissed as Frank.

“Can’t keep my head on the swivel with some cone around my neck. Can’t fuckin’ breath in that damn collar your friend made, either.” The shaking of Frank’s head brought the longer hair around his head swishing against his ears. He hated it, but Matt liked to run his fingers through it. Mostly, it reminded Frank of brushing off broken glass when he pushed the strands behind his ears.

“Well, I can breathe just fine with a chunk of my shoulder missing. Need my neck, though.” The words were curt, and Frank bristled a bit at that, but he knew what point Matt was driving at. Had the shoe been on the other foot, Frank would have done the same. Because keeping each other alive was the over-all objective, now.

They’d had the talk a few times, after bad nights. Drinking a fifth of whiskey between them and hashing out why they each needed the other alive. The first one had convinced Matt that Frank would go on a killing spree if he ever died, which was a pretty good incentive for the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen not to get gunned down if he could help it. The second talk, half a year later, had convinced Matt that Frank still didn’t want to kill anyone who didn’t deserve it, and that Frank didn’t truly believe he deserved to die. Even if he thought he needed to live for a lot of reasons, Matt was one of the good ones long before then. The third talk, and the fourth, had pretty much convinced them both that each would die in the other’s place, if they had to, but they’d try their damndest not to. Each knew that the other had honed the skill of not dying down to almost a science. The agreement had helped to lighten their relationship, working and otherwise, considerably. It didn’t mean Frank wouldn’t still be angry if Matt got shot saving his ass from another bullet scar. In fairness, Matt was never happy about having to stitch up Frank, either. At least Frank wasn’t the only one who had improved their first-aid skills.

“Am I showering alone?” Matt asked as he stood, already reaching back for the zipper on his suit. He’d tried other colors, but always went back to that red. Deadpool vocally approved at every team-up, accidental and otherwise, spouting shit about bad guys not seeing Dare Devil bleed. Frank would just scoff, usually, and hide his smile. Black had always served him well in that regard too, but what did he know?

Shaking his head a couple of times to clear his tired brain, Frank stood and followed his partner to the bathroom, shucking himself out of his armor and the black tee-shirt he’d had on underneath it as he walked, having to tug a little harder with the way it stuck to his body with sweat. Matt was turning on the water as Frank entered the bathroom. He turned back to Frank with a smile. Frank’s eyes found the shoulder wound again, and he closed his eyes for a moment, took a breath. Matt had scared him many times, getting so fucking injured he’d had to take time off work to heal at home, that brain injury years ago, the bleeding ear drums and lack of balance from too-intense sounds, every bullet and stab wound and even an almost garrotting, once. Red’s neck had been purple for weeks, and he’d joked about never trying to tune a piano again because he wasn’t good at it.

Frank knew, at the bottom of his brain where he locked everything that hurt him away, that he had done the same to Red more times than he could count. That they’d had to call in favors from people Matt had tried to let go of for their safety, just to save Frank’s ass. That Curt hadn’t always been available. He knew that he’d scared Matt half to death more times than he had fingers, over the years they’d been together.

Matt was okay. He was just hurt. His shoulder wouldn’t like reaching for coffee cups. Matt didn’t usually make coffee in the morning, anyways. Frank was the early riser, the one dependent on caffeine, the one who got the coffee mugs and thermoses down from the tall shelves. It was their pattern of behavior. Frank liked doing little shit like that for Matt. Liked cooking dinner for him. Liked being the one to keep an eye on his wounds, even if Matt was better at diagnosing issues whether the wounds were his own or not. That damned sense of smell was better than any bloodhound.

With another breath, Frank followed his partner into the shower. The water was boiling, and Matt’s skin was already flushed with it. It had taken a while, but eventually Frank got used to having his skin melt off in the shower. He ran his hands up those well-muscled sides, pulled Matt’s body closer, and breathed in the scent of the shampoo Matt used because it kept his hair soft and smelling like apples. The suds he’d been washing out tried to go up Frank’s nose and he snorted. Matt let out a chuckle. They were okay. Alive. Still together. Everything else was just shit on their shoes until they could get it cleaned up.

Breathing deeply, Frank released the smaller man and resorted to one of his favorite calming mechanisms. He lathered his hands in soap and scrubbed lightly with his nails over the smaller man’s body. Checking for injuries while he did this was second nature, and it always made him feel better when he didn’t find any that he didn’t already know about. Sure enough, Matt’s breaths were steady, his pulse normal as Frank ran his hands over his wrists and held them in place for a moment. Matt knew these movements. Knew the ways Frank would move over his body, scratching lightly at his skin to remove the dirt and grime while assessing his bones, skin, even the way he held himself. It was Frank’s way of making sure he really was okay. He’d protested it, the first time. They’d been in an argument, whether or not one of Frank’s marks that had gone down that night really deserved to die. Frank had continued the argument, even as he checked over Matt’s form, assuring himself that he wasn’t going to keel over right then and there, or worse, while Frank was asleep that night. Once Matt realized what was happening, it had never been a problem again.

Matt stepped in closer as Frank stood from inspecting his feet, which had a couple of still-forming bruises from some particularly brutal kicks, but nothing to write home about. He rubbed himself against Frank, and he could feel that his partner was half-aroused. The movement was a question words weren’t necessary for. With a sigh, Frank spun them around, careful to avoid knocking Matt’s shoulder into the wall, and washed himself as quickly as possible. It wasn’t helping that Matt kept reaching for his dick, hands slick with soap, sliding surely up and down with just the right pressure until Frank would push his hand away.

Even with the extra distractions, they were out of the shower in five minutes. Frank allowed for the courtesy of at least mostly drying off before he scooped the powerful man into a bridal carry, surprising a protest out of the smaller man even though he probably knew it was coming. Matt usually knew what Frank was going to do. It had saved his life too many times to count.

Frank threw his bundle onto the bed, causing a little laugh to spill from between red lips. Matt’s cock stood at attention, bumping against his stomach as he settled higher up on the bed. Frank crawled up after him, ignoring the protests coming from his knees as he knelt down between Matt’s thighs. He pushed up those powerfully-muscled legs, nipping at the right one’s inner thigh before diving down to give his love a little relief. His own cock ignored for the moment, Frank let himself get lost in the moans coming from above him, the little sighs as he suckled here, wrapped his tongue there, teased at the head a bit before sucking everything down to the back of his throat. He felt warm, safe, like nothing in the world could touch them in this little bubble of time. It was the feeling that kept him from toppling over the brink some nights. Now, it was just a reminder. A gentle friend saying hello and wrapping him in comfort. If Matt was still horny, still writhing beneath him, then he really was okay.

Eventually, he made his way down to Matt’s sensitive balls, licking and sucking and letting some of his saliva drip down. The groan that just one of his fingers at the pucker of Matt’s ass brought out was still heaven, even after all of the nights that had played out just like this. He pushed slowly, gently, careful not to rock the body above him too much as he added more spit, then went back to sucking on Matt’s cock, eyes open to watch the man begin to fall apart above him. He’d never have thought this would be one of his favorite places, once upon a time, but it had become addictive.

Fingers went in slowly, one at a time, until Matt was fisting his fingers into Frank’s hair, begging for more, begging for his cock, and Frank was an obliging man when he wanted to be.

The lube was on the night stand, where they always kept it. Warming it between his hands, he let himself groan at the sight of Matt’s fingers reaching to pull at his tight ring of muscle, while the other fisted at his cock. When Frank finally made it back between those thighs, Matt pulled his legs up by the calfs, stretching them up and over his head so that he was bent and on display, then reached to pull his cheeks apart. “You’re not the only one who can tease.” Matt’s words were full of mirth at Frank’s sharp inhale. It didn’t matter how many times he’d seen it, the sight was one to behold. So much strength and flexibility all neatly packaged into one human form, and it was at his beck and call, even if only for a little while.

“Gonna take me, Red? Gonna let me fill you up?” Frank rubbed the head of his cock over the loosened furl, letting the sensations roll through him. Without warning, he dipped just the tip of his cock into the waiting hole, causing Matt to gasp before he pulled out again. Matt groaned in disappointment, and no small amount of frustration. “Hmm, feels pretty tight, might need one more finger…” He drawled, using his lubed fingers to press into the hole, just enough to tease. Matt didn’t need another finger. Frank knew by then what the smaller man could take, and he was definitely ready, but Frank didn’t want to just have a quicky. It had been a long night, but it wasn’t over yet, and Frank wasn’t ready to end it.

Frank only got away with another minute of teasing at the sensitive nerves just inside Matt’s body before the man began to shudder. Frank pulled back, let the whine of frustration fuel his fire. He just waited, watched Matt’s breathing even out again, but his patience failed him. Before Matt could get more than a syllable out, Frank was right back there with his dick, pressing in and hearing the gasp from his partner. Matt did exercises, Frank was pretty sure, because he wasn’t exactly small, but no matter how much they fucked, his asshole stayed tight and gripped him fiercely on the first few thrusts.

Luxuriating in the feeling of once again being inside the man he loved, Frank let them sit still until Matt released his legs and used them to pull Frank’s body closer. “Tease.” He panted out, and Frank could only smile.

“I’m never going to be able to give you everything you want, Red.” Frank watched as Matt’s face pulled into a little grin of his own.

“You already do, Frank. Every day.” The confession wasn’t a new one, but it never failed to bring a sense of pride to his chest.

“I might just have to stay here, then,” Frank teased, “just enjoy doing exactly what you want me to do.”

Matt was laughing when he replied. “Just move asshole!” Frank waited another thirty seconds before he obliged, let Matt wriggle on him as much as he pleased because he could. Finally, though, he placed a hand on Matt’s sternum and pulled out, hissing as those walls clenched tight around him, and pushed back in.

Slowly, too slowly, he worked into a rhythm, and soon Matt was crying out with each brush against his prostate. When he began to moan like he was going to come, Frank shifted the angle a bit, let himself slow down again, and the way Matt clawed at his chest was more than a little satisfying. It wasn’t the first time they’d fucked away any traces of pain from one another. When Frank had broken his leg, Matt had ridden him, and they’d found ways to prop up Frank’s leg to get the leverage he needed.

He quickened his pace, sensing the frustration rolling off the man beneath him in waves and knowing that he wouldn’t get away with this for too much longer. Matt had flipped him more than a few times with just his legs, and Frank wouldn’t put it past him to do it again. So, he adjusted his grip, slammed as deep as he could go, and leaned in right next to Matt’s face as the whine slipped between those pretty lips. “Can’t handle the heat, huh, Red? It’s alright, I’ll give you what you need.” Before a response could come, Frank was pistoning in and out of that hole, pushing as deep as he could go before pulling out a few inches and slamming back home. Matt was crying out beneath him, face flushed and body rising to meet each thrust, trying to take an impossible amount of Frank into himself. It was gorgeous. Frank would never forget the sight of his face as he came. Screwed up until it almost looked painful, eyes with unshed tears in them from the frustration, hands gripping into the silk sheets so hard that his knuckles turned white.

The way Matt’s body tightened around him brought Frank tumbling over the edge a few strokes later, and he continued to fuck into the tight heat even as he came, causing the smaller man to shiver beneath him again and again until Frank finally stilled.

“Fuck.” Matt sounded like he was parched, possibly dying, but Frank knew from his own examination that he’d only sustained a couple of bruises and that bullet wound. He’d just been fucked that well.

“Worth the wait?” Frank asked after a few minutes, turning to his side and plopping down next to the smaller man. Like it was instinct, Matt curled up into his side, laying his head on Frank’s chest.

“It wasn’t bad.” Matt’s reply made Frank smile. They’d never really tried edging like that before, but Frank hadn’t wanted to end the night on a bad note, and he’d, admittedly, used it as a bit of a punishment for Matt making him sew up his shoulder. “Could have used a little warning you would be so sadistic tonight, though.”

Frank scoffed. “You stepped into the path of a bullet tonight, Red, and it wasn’t the first time. Trying to tell me you aren’t a masochist is like saying the sky ain’t blue.” Laughter bubbled up between them. This, at least, was an old argument. They’d probably have it again in the future. It was familiar, and weirdly comforting, even as they came down from the post-sex high.

“Fuck you, Frank.” Matt was still smiling.

“How about tomorrow? I’m pretty beat.” Frank settled down a little further into the pillow as Matt snorted.

“Sure.” Matt’s word was soft, and Frank let himself drift off to sleep as Matt’s breathing evened out.