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Perspective can sure work some wonders.
Frank wasn’t an idiot, nor was he completely clueless. It was damn near impossible to ignore Karen Page and the very real effects she had on him.
He never meant for that to happen, never thought he would feel something like this again. He sure wasn’t looking for it. Especially when they met like that, with him shooting at her direction.
He wasn’t crazy, but his head wasn’t the same. With the memories of his family fading in and out all the time, plus that rage, that fire that threatened to consume his every waking moment, how was he supposed to brace himself for his lawyers’ assistant?
She waved that photograph in front of his face and he lost track after that. She was just some woman helping him remember his family and, suddenly, she was like his life line.
How the hell had this happened?
He tried to deny it, lied to himself every single day, attempted to ignore the pull, the way she looked at him, the way he knew he looked at her, the way he noticed how everyone else looked at her, the heads that would turn when she walked down the street. Frank decided he would not act on the impulses he got sometimes. Let her be.
Until, of course, she got herself stabbed and he had taken care of her. Red had found out, showed up while she was still in bed and Frank thought she’d prefer him - her friend, ex boyfriend, former boss -, but she had thanked him, assured him she was fine, smiled politely and asked Frank to stay. So he did, of course he did. Red had been pissed, demanding explanations after, but he didn’t care. He should care, should insist Karen accepted Red’s help, should have let him be the one to look after her, should have put some distance between himself and her, but he didn’t.
Instead, he kept coming back every night, fueling the instincts and desires developing inside him, telling her and himself he was just looking out for her. And he was, but it was more than that.
Still, even if he watched and indulged himself, Frank kept her at arm’s length. Maybe, like that, he could still come to his senses and just leave her alone one day, once she was healed, maybe.
And yet.
All that reasoning was good for his conscience, because he knew he was a dangerous man to be around, but, in reality, it was a different story.
In reality, Frank is tired. He gets up every morning and he’s the Punisher, he goes about his business doing his best to put the scum down, but he’s exhausted. His brain won’t shut up, he won’t stop seeing them, the family he lost, his little girl, the little boy that was a miniature version of him, the woman that he loved so hard for so long. All that love wouldn’t leave, it wouldn’t budge, so the pain wouldn’t, either, their faces were clear, so clear, they didn’t fade away anymore, because Karen had helped him, she always helped him, she talked and asked and listened when he needed to talk about them, she even remembered all the dates, all of them.
At the very least, when Frank dreamed of them, they would be smiling, now. The gore, that horrible day, the blood, it all still came back, some nights. But on the good nights, Lisa ran and twirled around, her dinosaurs in hand, and she read to him, sitting on his lap, big book on her legs. Frank Jr. would play soldier, he’d hide and make Frank seek (and he always found him, now), he’d spread foam on his little face and run a bladeless razor on his jaw while Frank shaved, standing on a stool so he could see himself in the mirror, copying daddy’s movements. On the good nights, his kids were happy, bright and warm, like always.
And Maria would look at him like she always did when she knew something she wasn’t supposed to know. She would talk and run a hand on his face and offer that smile that made everything ok.
“We’re ok, honey”, she’d say, hand running up and down his back. “I promise we’re ok.”
And that could mean a lot of things. ‘We’ could be her and the kids, or it could be him and her.
She would cook and walk around, sometimes she’d be pregnant, sometimes she’d be working, sometimes she’d be driving him to the airport or picking him up.
Mostly, though, she’d say they were ok.
And, once, while he hugged her to him with all his strength and her clothes were stained with blood,
“You didn’t die when we died.”
He woke up sweating, glued to his bed, eyes on the ceiling. But he wasn’t breathing hard, like he did before, and his finger didn’t twitch to pull the trigger on his gun, the barrel pressed against his own temple or the roof of his mouth.
While Maria’s face and voice faded, reality taking her away from him again, another smile would come into focus, would take it’s place on the very center of his conscience.
Karen Page sneaked her way inside his mind very effectively.
And those words, Maria’s words, you didn’t die , they stuck. Every time he thought of her they would repeat inside his head and he would feel the tip of Karen’s fingers running around his hand, that little habit she acquired when she was on bed rest. Whenever he sat by her, Karen would pick up his hand and feel the ridges of his palm, the calluses of his fingers, the swell and dip of his knuckles.
Sitting there on the chair in front of the desk he kept the police radio and his gun cleaning material, Frank looked at Max, sitting on the floor in front of him, staring.
“What do you think?” he asked the pitbull, who made to move from his spot, moved his head and let out a tiny whine.
Frank frowned and sustained the dog’s eye contact for a few seconds, until Max let out a bark, swinging his tail happily when Frank tossed him a treat right before walking out the door, locking it behind him.
.:.
One little move of his finger and the trigger would send a bullet right between those unfocused eyes. The wide, scared eyes of this piece of shit that Karen was trying to defend, even after he had tried to-
“Frank, come on”, she was saying, one hand on the arm he had stretched out, his gun dead set on his target, the other on his chest. He could feel her breath on his neck, she was so close, too close. “He’s high, please. He’s just a kid”, she said. “Please, stop.”
Her voice was low and controlled, but he heard the edge, the fear - not for herself, for him, Frank, for what this would mean.
“He would have-” he started, low, just for her, the three of them standing there on the empty parking lot.
“I know”, she said, the hand on his chest lifting a bit, reaching for his face, trying to guide his eyes away from the intoxicated college student that had cornered her against her car, advancing even after the clear “no” he had heard from her. “And I’ll call the cops, press charges, the whole deal”. He resisted when she tried to make him look at her, both hands on his face,now. “You don’t have to do this, Frank, please. Please, look at me.”
The plea was too much for him to refuse. His eyes met hers and the blue seemed to shock him with an electrical current.
“For me, please. Let’s go.”
After one, two, three seconds, he lowered his gun and she breathed out, hands sliding down to his chest, relaxing.
Frank pushed her out of his way gently and she was already protesting when his fist connected again with the frat boy’s pretty face. When Frank felt he had loosened a tooth or two, he stopped.
“Next time”, he said, his anger threatening to come to a boil again when he thought about the blond man’s form pinning Karen against her car, a hand inside her coat. “I will kill you. I promise. Do you understand me?”
He really was high, grunted and spat some blood and Frank slapped him to make him pay attention.
“Y-yes”, he finally said when Frank repeated his question.
Frank drove away when he saw Karen getting into the police car after they arrested the bastard that jumped her. He waited until she got into Brett’s car to turn the engine on and drive off. They were both thankful that Mahoney made a point to personally handle it. Frank felt better knowing that, because the detective was friends with Karen, the little shit would not be out so easily.
He was pacing her apartment when she opened the door, the caffeine from too many cups of coffee running through his veins, plus the adrenaline and the horrible notion that she could have been harmed making him shake.
The door was barely closed behind her when he was there, hands on her face, too many words to be said and too many questions to be asked, so he was silent, his eyes translating to her the general notion.
“I’m fine”, she said, not for a moment trying to push him away. On the contrary. She let her purse slide down her arm to the floor and raised her hands to close around his wrists, staring right back at him. “I promise, I’m fine, I’m ok.”
Frank breathed and ran his thumbs on her cheeks, trying to calm himself down.
“Did he touch you?”
With a gentle sigh, Karen offered him a small smile.
“Well, he did grab me.”
His hands tightened on her and his expression must have betrayed the rage that thought sparked inside him, because she raised her brows and shook her head.
“But he didn’t! Hey, he didn’t. I managed to avoid it, and you got there right after.”
Trying all he had to keep himself under control, he touched his forehead to hers, the hands she took to his neck burning, branding his skin.
“Frank, I’m fine”, she whispered. “You got there in time, I’m ok.”
He closed his eyes and tried to let that notion sink in. She was safe, here with him.
Hesitant, as if she was stretching to touch a lion, Karen leaned forward and took that last, tiny step, touching her nose to his and, in that moment, she succeeded. When she angled her face, shyly touching her lips to his, he was too relieved and yet still too on edge to back away. That small, timid kiss caused some sort of short circuit in his brain. Coherent thought left him and he lifted his hand to cradle her face against his, opening up, letting go for a moment, feeling, just feeling.
Frank was always trying to come up with excuses, with reasons why he shouldn’t. She touched him and he would feel it for days, be it a small touch of her fingers on his arm or the warmth of her when he had to keep her body close to his, for whatever reason.
This time, though, he forgot all of that for a second.
Karen opened her mouth over his, coaxing him to her and he felt her chest pressed against his, and he felt warm, good, he felt good all over.
It wasn’t until he realized he was tasting mint on her tongue and it reminded him of Maria’s obsession with mouth wash that his brain snapped awake again and he held her face so he could back away from her, breathing heavy. It hurt, to stop kissing her, he felt himself being pulled back to her like a magnet, but that memory was too vivid.
It was too much.
Frank could feel her eyes on him. Not exactly mad, but not happy either. Her hand closed around his wrist again and she took a deep breath.When he opened his eyes, her face was turned away from his and she was tucking a section of her hair behind her ear.
She didn’t say anything, but he knew: she was getting tired. Didn’t want to pressure him, but all that… Nothing that was really something - something big, something solid, important - was starting to get heavy. It needed to become something or it needed to die for good.
“You lock the door behind me”, he said, unable to move away, frozen there on the spot, torn between his reason and his gut.
Nodding, Karen took a step back, sighed and looked at his face, smiling.
“I need a shower”. Stepping away from him, she took her coat off and dropped it, along with her purse, on the couch. “Thank you, Frank, for being there. Again”. She smiled and shrugged, trying to bring them back to the familiar ground they had been settled for a while now. But it felt wrong.
Still, he nodded.
“Don’t mention it, ma’am.”
With one last short, meaningful look, she looked away from him and entered her bathroom, closing the door and Frank closed his eyes, looking up, summoning strength, guidance, anything. Nothing came, just the normal street noises from the open window.
Frank walked and closed it, making sure the curtains were shut, and walked to the door. Opening it, he took one step out of her apartment when,
“We’re ok, honey. You didn’t die when we died.”
Closing his eyes, he felt his fingers tightening against the door.
He stood there for the longest time, thinking, wondering, weighing, pondering, holding onto the door, half in and half out of the apartment.
It was only when the motion detection light of the hallway came on, indicating someone climbing the stairs that Frank took a step back in and closed the door, looking through the peephole, alert, already assessing a threat.
It was just one of her neighbors, dragging his feet towards his own apartment, looking tired.
Right when the man disappeared from his line of sight, he stopped hearing the water, which meant she was done with her shower. Closing his eyes one more time, Frank let himself be guided by his own instinct. His fingers turned the key on the door and rose to chain it.
He was in, and that was it.
Next, he took slow steps until he was standing in front of the bathroom door. He stopped moving right when she opened it, a gasp when she saw him there.
Her hair was wet, but already finger combed. Her skin was red from the hot water and there was only a towel around her body. The sight stirred something inside him, a sense of greed and possessiveness and familiarity, as if this wasn’t the first time he was seeing her like this, a calm and an euphoria that contrasted, but grew, together, inside his chest.
Karen looked at him, her chest rising and falling with her breathing, big blue eyes on him.
“You have to be careful”, he whispered, reaching for her face and she let out a breath, so close to him already, but he wanted her closer.
“I wasn’t doing anything wrong, this time”, she whispered, standing her ground when he closed that gap, turning her head, running her nose on his cheek and he let a hand slide down her arm, to her waist. “Just grocery shopping.”
He closed his eyes when her nose came to touch his again, holding the towel around herself.
“That reminds me”, she continued, tilting her head until her lips touched the very corner of his. “I got the coffee you like.”
He smiled briefly, the hand on her waist tightening as the one still on her face guided her mouth to his.
The close call had made all the alarms in his head blast. What did it matter, if he kept her at arm’s length, “for her own safety”, if shit like that could happen? Why should he keep torturing himself with thoughts of betraying his family, with suffering over not dying with them, of fear he could bring harm her way?
He was here, alive, in spite of all the odds, breathing, and his path was so intricately intertwined with hers, now, from all sides, it would be impossible to walk away, even if he wanted to.
And he didn’t want to. He couldn’t. Not anymore.
With what sounded like a small, contented sigh, Karen opened her mouth to his and lifted her hand to his face. That sound, plus the feeling of her cold hand on his jaw and her body so close to his, woke his skin and Frank suddenly found himself craving every little piece of her.
Standing there in her dark apartment, he let go, maybe for the first time since he woke up from his coma, of all that tension, the alertness, the hyper awareness of his surroundings.
With her lips over his, he focused his attention on her, on Karen, on how she felt against him.
And she felt incredible. The hand he still had on her face moved to slide down her back and he turned his head to better kiss her, while his other hand moved to pull her towel from her, delicately, urging, asking if she would allow him. Lifting her arm, Karen moved against him while he dropped the towel on the floor, hands running down her naked back, feeling her skin under his hands, not fighting the sensation, letting himself be swayed, enjoying the way her naked body pressed against his, the way her hands touched and her lips moved.
It was already good, to feel her against him, even with his clothes between them, but he needed more. And so did she. When his lips attached to her neck, she ran her fingers down his chest until she found the hem of his shirt, pulling it up and he had to lift his head from her neck to allow her to take it off him.
When his arms came back down, he got hold of her hair again, fingers closing around the strands on the nape of her neck, angling her face so he could taste the skin under her ear, his own raising in shivers as her hands mapped their way around him, to his back, fingers and palms burning a path oh him.
With his mouth back on hers, Frank felt his skin raise in shivers when she ran her tongue over his, harder, this time, with certainty, little whimpers leaving her when his hands ran and gripped her, pressing her to him, her breasts to his chest, skin to skin, he needed more, so much more.
He heard himself moaning when she dropped her lips to his neck, hands sliding over his shoulders, his arms, over his chest and stomach, finally dropping to the waist of his pants, where her fingers made careful, not too hasty work of his belt buckle and his fly.
When his pants dropped to the floor, he had her pressed against a wall, her arms around him, leg bending and rising to do the same, kissing life back into him. There was a rumble inside his chest when she moaned and pressed her fingers on his arms when he thrusted up to her hips, his underwear still between them.
Her hands touched his face again, her leg adjusting around his hip, she was breathing hard. “Frank, Frank”, she called.
“Hmm?”
“This would be better”, she interrupted herself to kiss him. “On the bed.”
Walking them to her bed proved to be a bit of a challenge, with his mouth still attached to hers and all the parts of her that were pressed to him proving to be very distracting.
When he got there, she let him feel her up for a while, let him run his mouth over neck, collar, breasts, hands never stopping, roaming everywhere. She moved with him, arching towards him, cradling him between her legs, sighing, moaning, reacting when he would tease.
When, finally, his underwear was off him, thrown on the floor, Karen pushed him off her, kissing him soundly, climbing on top of him when he had his back on the mattress and his head on her pillow.
“I had a dream last week”, she whispered on his ear while his hands gripped her hips, trying to guide her, but enjoying the anticipation. “And it’s all I can think about.”
She rolled her hips over his, teasing, building up, rubbing, giving and taking away.
“Tell me”, he asked, trying not to lose his mind, enjoying her hands on him and his on her.
“We weren’t here”, she started, voice soft, lips on his neck, hands on his chest, and Frank could really get used to this. Really. “I don’t really know where we were. I just know it was dark, and warm. And all I wanted to do was touch you”, his hands got tighter on her hips when she rose and sunk, over him, slowly, almost too slow, yes, her own breathing coming out a bit struggled.“And have you touching me” she guided his hands to her breasts when she started moving, slow, always slow. “So I climbed you like this”, she smiled down at him and he smirked up at her. “And it was so good”, she said, her hands supporting her weight on his chest while she moved on top of him and he moved under her. Frank thought, in that moment, that that’s where her hands were always supposed to be: on him.
“Good like this?” he asked, his own hands roaming, admiring, touching everywhere, as if to make sure she was really there, solid, with him.
With her eyes closed, her hair drying, wet strands swaying in front of her face, she shook her head.
“Here is better,” she breathed out, those hips moving, to and fro, never stopping, so good. “You’re better.”
Frank was really enjoying the view of her, but this has been a long time coming, he needed it to be faster, a bit harder. He needed to move more.
Sitting up, he held her against him for a moment or two, kissing and caressing, working up a rhythm, dropping his head on her shoulder when her hands reached behind his back, enjoying her touch. And then he lowered her to the bed again, settling on top of her, her legs around his hips, her head almost tumbling from the side of the mattress, hair strands pointing towards the floor.
And now, now he could move. Now he had leverage, now he could really go to town and lose himself in her, making her gasp and cry, nails on skin, watching as her teeth sank on her own bottom lip in an attempt to be silent, her thin walls not enough to block the world outside.
“Oh my G- Frank”, she struggled out, tightening her leg around him and he slowed down, watching, always watching.
“Like this?”
He smiled when her hips buckled under him, eyes closed, that neck exposed for his mouth and he dropped his lips to it, like he had imagined doing so many times before.
After a minute or two, he needed to move faster. Pulling Karen towards the center of the mattress a bit, so her head wasn’t tumbling to the floor and he could kiss her, Frank reached to the iron bars on the foot of the bed with one of his hands, the other securing her leg around his hip, his lips on hers, her hands on him.
She whimpered and moaned, moving with him and he sped up gradually - if he just let himself go at the pace he wanted, he risked hurting her, he didn’t know how she liked it yet, if she would-
“Harder, Frank”, she whispered against his mouth, arching, a hand on the back of his neck, the leg not around his hip rising, foot supporting it on the iron frame his hand was holding onto, to allow him better… torque. “Please.”
With teeth on her lower lip, he took a deep breath, his head spinning, he didn’t deserve this, those hands of his that killed, hurt and punished had no business touching this woman, holding her against him and enjoying the feel of her under his palms.
Still. He wasn’t about to let go.
The way her hands felt on him, he wouldn’t be surprised if she was actually branding his skin. With fingers tight on the nape of his neck and her right palm running up and down his back, nails greeting him here and there, he could be there all night.
And he was. Frank doesn’t know exactly how long he spent listening to her pleads of “like this”, “like that”, “don’t stop”, cries for God, his own name and a bunch of other things he did not understand, looking at her skin flush and redden, tasting her with his tongue, learning her highs and lows with his fingers, kissing her slow and deep and fast and urgent, his body sizzling because of her, but it was long enough that both of them fell asleep almost immediately after coming back to bed once they were done with the shower - they had worked up quite a sweat.
And Frank was actually quite proud of himself. This has been a long time coming, he had been suppressing all those Karen Page related urges for quite a while. The fact that he lasted so long - after so long - was a bit of an ego boost.
He was already drifting off to sleep while she combed her hair again (she had planned on not washing it a secondtime, but he kissed her under the shower, pulled her against him to rub soap on her body and the knot she had tied her hair into fell apart when he wove his fingers through it), tired, enjoying that post sex satisfaction he thought was permanently gone from his life.
When she was done, she climbed into bed, wearing an oversized t shirt and underwear, kissed him slowly and snuggled up to his side.
He slept with his arms full of Karen Page
.:.
When he woke up, his face was pressed into her pillow and he actually felt lost for a second or two.
Frank had slept, really slept for more than the bare minimum of hours, for the first time in God knows how long. The proof was that he didn’t feel or hear it when she untangled herself from him, got dressed, turned on the coffee maker and went out the door, downstairs, to get the groceries from her car.
“Do you like pancakes?” she asked, kissing his face, waking him up, hand on his hair, down his neck, massaging his muscles just by touching them.
With a groan, Frank turned to lie on his back, sighing, squinting up at her, sleep addled eyes adjusting to the light. She was sitting by him on the mattress, hair to the side, eyes bright blue, a tiny smile curving her lips.
“C’mere”, he said, his voice rasping out and she leaned into him for a kiss, still sitting, feet still on the floor, but he was having none of that.
Moving the covers to open up space for her, he pulled her by the arm, making her let out what sounded like a giggle (the first of many he would come to pull out of her), hugging her to him, feeling her breath on his neck when they settled on their side, her fingertips running up and down his back and that was threatening to become one of his favorite caresses.
“You’re not hungry?” she asked, lips brushing against the skin of his neck as she spoke. “I made breakfast.”
He was hungry, yes. And the smell of coffee was very alluring, but she was more. With a kiss on the top of her head, he tightened his arms around her.
“In a minute.”