Frank Castle x Reader ~ Driverâs License
A/N ~ So, here it is, the almost 5k fic I mentioned earlier this week!
Iâve had this idea sitting in my drafts for over a year and Iâve finally managed to finish it. Itâs inspired by drivers license by Olivia Rodrigo and is my first time writing something quite like this.
I really hope you enjoy it!
Will this turn into another mini-series? Iâm not sure. The way this ended definitely wasnât what I originally had planned.
Summary ~ You loved Frank but when you see him with a certain blonde girl things begin to feel a little different.
To the lovely people who had wished to read this fic - I hope you donât mind that I tagged you @naranarasstuff @madprincessinabox @star-yawnznn @voldyslostnose05 @athenabarnes
You and Frank had been together for six months.
Six months of learning each otherâs habits. The little things you had never thought you would notice about another person. The way he took his coffee, the way he left a cupboard door half-open, the way his footsteps sounded different depending on his mood. Six months of learning his silences, too. Learning when they meant he was tired, when they meant he was thinking and when they meant he simply needed you close without having to say it.
Six months of slowly building something neither of you had dared to name at first.
Something that, somewhere along the way, had started to feel permanent.
You had moved into Frankâs place not long after you started dating. There hadnât been a conversation about it. No grand decision. You had just left a few things behind one evening, then a few more the next day, until one morning you realised your clothes were hanging beside his and there was a toothbrush sitting next to his in the bathroom. Your sneakers had found a permanent place beside his battered boots by the front door. Your life had quietly become tangled up with his. Frank had let it happen but he was still The Punisher.
That part of him hadnât disappeared just because he had you now. There were nights when he would leave without much explanation, the weight of the white skull disappearing beneath his jacket and that familiar look settling behind his eyes. Sometimes he was gone for a night. Sometimes a few days.Â
You hated those nights. Hated lying awake in the darkness, staring at the ceiling and listening for the sound of the key turning in the lock. But he always came back. Always.Â
Sometimes it was just before dawn, his footsteps heavy in the hallway. Sometimes it was days later, exhaustion etched into his face and bruises dark beneath his skin. Every time, no matter how long he had  been gone, he had come home to you. That had become its own kind of promise. He might disappear into the darkness but he always found his way back. Back to you. In knowing that, despite everything Frank was and everything he did, there was still a place in this world he considered home.
You had started letting yourself believe in it. In him. In the possibility that maybe this small apartment, his boots beside your shoes, his hand finding yours in the middle of the night, could be enough. For the first time in a long time, life had felt good. Not perfect. You didnât need perfect. Just good and safe.
Until he introduced you to her.
Youâre always with that blonde girlâŚthe one who made me doubt.
You remembered the first time you had met her at the local bar. Your first thought had been that she was beautiful. Tall. Blonde. Long-legged. The kind of woman who seemed to command attention without ever having to ask for it. She carried herself with a confidence that made people look twice, as though she belonged wherever she happened to be standing. Then, there was you.
You became aware of everything you never usually thought about. The way your hair was around your shoulders. The way your skin looked in the dim bar light. You knew you were pretty. At least, most of the time, you did. But standing beside Karen had made something inside you shrink. You couldnât compare. You couldnât.
You sat at a table on the opposite side of the bar, your fingers loosely curled around your drink as you watched Frank wait at the counter for the two of you. Then, Karen appeared beside him.
She slipped into the space next to him with an ease that made your stomach tighten.Â
Frank angled his body slightly away from her.Â
At first, you thought that was a good sign. He was creating space between them. You let out a quiet breath, your shoulders relaxing slightly as you took another sip of your drink.
See? There was nothing to worry about. But then you kept watching.
You noticed the small smile that pulled at the corner of Frankâs mouth. It was different. Not dramatically different. Not enough that anyone else would probably notice but you did. You knew Frankâs smiles.
The rare, reluctant ones that appeared when you teased him. The ones he tried to hide when you said something ridiculous. The tiny upward twitch of his mouth when he was pretending not to be amused by you. You had learned them all.
You had learned him. Because they were yours. Or at least, you had thought they were.
Karen laughed at something he said.
Frank looked away for a moment, his eyes dropping towards the bar before returning to her.
You couldnât hear what they were saying over the music and the low murmur of conversation around you. Maybe, it was nothing.Of course, it was nothing.
But watching them together, you couldnât stop the thought from forming. They looked good together. The thought landed somewhere deep inside you, heavier than it should have. You immediately tried to push it away.
You had heard about Karen before tonight. Frank had mentioned her a few times. He had saved her life more than once. You knew that much. You just hadnât thought much of it. Not until now. Not until you saw them standing together. Not until you saw the way Karen looked at you when Frank introduced you.
There had been something in her expression. Something you couldnât quite name. Something that lingered for only a second before she smiled and looked away. You had told yourself you were imagining it until she looked across the table at Frank and quickly looked away again.
Your fingers tightened around your glass. There it was. That uncomfortable twist in your stomach. Maybe, you were being ridiculous. Maybe, this was what happened when you loved someone enough to become afraid of losing them. You didnât know. Everything just felt slightly off. A little too off. The worst part was that you couldnât explain why.
Yeah, today I drove through the suburbs.
âCause how could I ever love someone else?
Your phone lit up beside your drink. A message from your friend about dinner plans that weekend. You ignored it. Instead, your eyes caught on the screen saver. A picture of you and Frank. For a moment, the noise of the bar seemed to fade. You remembered that day perfectly.
You had gone shopping without him that morning because you thought he needed the rest. Frank had disagreed, of course. He had insisted he should have been there to carry the bags, his brows drawing together in that permanently serious expression he wore whenever he was annoyed.
You had laughed at him. Then, you had pulled out your phone.
You were almost a whole head shorter than him, your head coming just at the centre of his chest. You had smiled brightly at the camera while Frank had stared into it with the most serious expression you could coax out of him. You had taken the picture anyway.
You remembered laughing afterwards. You remembered how he had rolled his eyes. You remembered how he had looked at you when you werenât looking. It had made you smile every time you looked at it. Now, it only made your chest ache.
Your thumb brushed absently over the screen.Â
For a second, you wondered if you were holding onto a version of your relationship that had already started slipping away. The thought scared you enough that you immediately pushed it down.
Frank loved you. He came home to you. He chose you.
You looked up again. Frank and Karen were still at the bar. Except the space between them seemed smaller now. Your eyebrows pulled together. Maybe it was just your perspective and your eyes were playing tricks on you. You stared a little longer. They werenât.
When the bartender finally placed your drinks on the counter, Frank reached for them. He had to move away from Karen to do it. Then, you realised how close she had been standing beside him. Close enough that you hadnât noticed the distance disappear.
Your stomach dropped. You looked down at your phone again.
At the picture of you and Frank. At the smile you had once been so certain belonged to you. For the first time that night, a small, unwelcome fear began to settle in your chest.
And I know we werenât perfect but Iâve never felt this way for no one.
You and Frank had met through the Libermans. You and Sarah had known each other since you were kids and over the years you had babysat Leo and Zach a few times. One of those evenings, Frank had walked through the back door, assuming David was home.Â
You hadnât been expecting anyone.
The sight of a large, unfamiliar man suddenly appearing in the kitchen had terrified the life out of you. You had reacted on instinct, swinging the broomstick straight at him. It had barely left a mark.
Once Frank had explained who he was and you had called Sarah to make absolutely certain he wasnât some psycho killer or kidnapper, you had apologised profusely and made him coffee. Somehow, from that slightly disastrous first meeting, the rest became history.
Frank started showing up everywhere. At your work. Outside your home. At your favourite coffee place. It was as though every coincidence had already been carefully planned. Eventually, he asked you out.
Until, eventually, you stopped saying no.
Soon, the two of you were sharing the same space, even if Frank still disappeared for days at a time because of his life as The Punisher. But he always came back. When he did, he rarely came empty handed.
Sometimes it was flowers or chocolates. Sometimes a book you had mentioned wanting or a piece of jewellery he had caught you looking at through a shop window. Small things. But things that told you he had been thinking about you while he was gone. Once Frank was in your life, everything seemed to fall into place and getâŚfixed.Â
The broken faucet? Fixed. The loose cupboard door? Fixed.
The shelf you had been meaning to sort out for months? Somehow, suddenly, fixed.
He noticed things. He remembered things.Â
Without ever making a big deal of it, Frank had made you feel as though the broken parts of you could be fixed too.
He had made you feel safe. Loved. Chosen.
That was why the thought of losing him felt almost impossible to breathe through.
And I just canât imagine how you could be so okay now that Iâm gone.
The argument had come from nowhere. At least, thatâs what you kept telling yourself. You hadnât meant to see the messages. You had been tidying the bedroom while Frank showered when you noticed his phone glowing softly on the nightstand.
The name on the screen made your stomach twist.
You ignored it. You trusted Frank. You did. Then, the phone pinged again.
You kept folding his clothes.Â
You straightened the duvet.
Eventually, you couldnât pretend you werenât listening anymore. The shower was still running when you reached for the phone.
Your eyes moved to the next.
I thought we could have been good together.
It should have been me instead of her.
Frank, I should have told you this sooner.
I really thought we could have been something.
You dropped the phone onto the bed as though it had burned you. Your fingers trembled. Suddenly, you were back at the bar. Karen standing beside him. The way she had looked at you. The small smile Frank had given her. The way you had sat across the room, quietly convincing yourself you were imagining things.
The thought came again, sharper this time. You picked up the phone and searched through the conversation. Frankâs messages were there. Brief. Almost professional.
The last one was from two weeks ago, when he had told Karen where the two of you were meeting at the bar. You scrolled further. There was nothing else there.Â
You checked his calls. Nothing. No missed calls. No voicemails. Nothing that suggested there had been anything between them. But that didnât answer the question that mattered.
Had Karen been carrying these feelings for Frank all this time?
Did Frank feel something too?
You didnât know which possibility frightened you more.
âSweetheart, everything alright?â
Frank stood in the doorway, his hair damp from the shower, a towel secured around his waist. His brows were drawn together as his eyes moved over your face.
Then his gaze dropped to the phone in your hands. You watched as his brows pinched together.Â
You couldnât explain it. Couldnât even find the words. You simply handed him the phone and walked out.
âWhatâs goinâ on? You alright?â
In the kitchen, you filled a glass with cold water and drank it too quickly, hoping the coldness might settle the storm inside your chest.
Frank appeared moments later, dressed in his usual black henley and navy jeans.
âWere you going through my phone?â
The lie came too quickly. Frank stared at you.
You put the glass in the sink. You needed space. Just enough time to think. Because your mind wanted to accuse him, while your heart fought desperately against it.
Frank wouldnât do that to you. He was your Frank. The man who brought you flowers when he came home. The man who fixed everything. The man who had somehow become so important that imagining a life without him felt like imagining one without air.
You turned towards the door.
âBaby? Where are you going?â
Frank caught up before you reached it, his hand closing gently around your forearm.
âStop. Running away from me, would ya?â
You turned. For a moment, neither of you spoke. His hand was warm against your skin. Under any other circumstances, it would have calmed you. Instead, it made everything hurt more.
âKaren messaged you.â
Frank frowned. His eyes dropped to the phone. You watched as his eyes read over the messages. You searched his face for guilt. For regret. For anything that would confirm the fear already twisting inside you. Instead, disbelief crossed his features.
âSo, what?â he asked. âWhat does that have to do with anything?â
âWell, I dunno.â You swallowed. âYou seemed to be all over her at the bar.â
Frank stared at you. âWhat?â
âWhat are you talking about? I was there with you.â
âItâs not what I saw.â
His jaw tightened. âI donât want Karen.â
âCould have fooled me.â
The words came out quieter than you intended. You saw the hurt flash across his face. For one terrible second, you almost reached for him. Almost apologised. Almost let him pull you into his arms and tell you everything was fine.
You couldnât let yourself fall back into his arms when you still didnât know what was true. You pulled your arm from his grasp, grabbed your jacket, opened the door and walked out. You didnât look back because you knew if you did, you might see something in his eyes that would make you stop.Â
Two months passed. Nothing came from Frank.
At first, you had been surprised. He could have found you. You knew that. A small, traitorous part of you had expected him to. You had  imagined him turning up at your door, angry and worried, demanding to know why you had left. You had  expected him to fight for you. When he didnât, you told yourself that was answer enough.
âI thought you and that new fella of yours was really somethinâ,â Rosie, the bartender, told you two weeks later.
You sat alone at the bar, waiting for your friends.Â
You didnât answer. You simply lifted your whiskey and swallowed it in one go. The burn caught at the back of your throat. Then, something familiar caught your eye.
Short sides. Fuller on top. That unmistakable Marine cut. Your heart stumbled.  You turned, already expecting to see him.
Frankâs dark brows. That crooked nose. That sharp jaw. But when the man finally turned, you felt almost foolish.
He looked nothing like your Frank.
You stared at your empty glass.
âThree shots,â you said quietly.
One after another, you drank them down. Until the warmth in your chest dulled everything you didnât want to feel.
Nights with the girls blurred into loud music, half-empty glasses and early mornings. You slept through most of the day until your back ached from lying in the same position for too long, then dragged yourself up and did it all over again.
Work was the only place you managed to hold yourself together. There, you could straighten your clothes, answer emails, smile at colleagues and pretend you were still the same person youâd been before everything had fallen apart. For a few hours, you could almost believe it.
Until one afternoon, you happened to walk past an internâs cubicle and caught sight of their computer screen. Your steps slowed.
His face filled the screen. You stopped dead.
Apparently, without you knowing, the Punisher had been caught in a blast at an apartment building. You barely registered the words surrounding the image before your hand was already reaching into your pocket for your phone.
Frankâs name was still there. You had never deleted it. Your thumb hovered over his contact for only a second before you pressed call.
You held your breath. The call ended.
You stared at the screen before calling again.
The tightness in your chest became unbearable.
You hurried towards your office, barely acknowledging anyone as you went and shut the door behind you. Your back pressed against it as you stood there, breathing hard, listening to the quiet on the other side.
Your hands were shaking. You opened your messages instead. The last one was from Frank.
You stared at the words until they blurred.
The word hurt more than it should have. Things hadnât felt like home in a long time. Not after the argument. Not after Karen. Not after you had walked away and waited for him to come after you.
Your thumb moved towards the message box.
You stared at the words. Then, deleted them. Your mind supplied the excuse before you could stop it.Â
He was probably with Karen.
Maybe he didnât need you anymore. If he did, he would have called. He would have found you. He knew where you were.
You looked at Frankâs name again.
You could call. You could send the message. You could tell him that despite everything, you were still worried. But you couldnât bring yourself to give him that. Two calls were enough. They had to be.
You locked your phone and slipped it back into your pocket, forcing yourself to return to work as though your hands werenât still trembling. As though your heart wasnât somewhere else entirely. Waiting for a call that never came.
After that, you made a point of avoiding anything related to the Punisher.
You looked away from newspapers on the train. Took the longer route through the grocery store to avoid the magazine aisle. If his face appeared on a television in the background of a cafĂŠ, you lowered your eyes. If someone started talking about him, you found a reason to leave. Anything to keep Frank away.
Out of sight. Out of mind.
At least, that was what you kept telling yourself.
Today I drove through the suburbs and pictured I was driving home to you.
Two months had passed and things had started to get better. Slowly, painfully but they were better.  The drunken nights had stopped. So had the weekends spent curled beneath your duvet, barely moving until Monday morning forced you out of bed. You were eating properly again. Sleeping through the night. Laughing at things without immediately wondering whether Frank would have laughed too. You had even stopped checking your phone every few minutes.
Today, you had decided, was the day you were finally going to return the last of his things. A cardboard box sat on the passenger seat, filled with everything you had left of him. Every time you glanced at it, your eyes threatened to sting.
Photographs. Souvenirs. Little magnets Frank had brought back whenever he had been away saving people in some city you had only ever seen on the news. He would simply appear through the door, tired and bruised and pull some little souvenir from his pocket with that almost shy look on his face, as though he hadnât been thinking about you the entire time he had been gone.
A crooked photo booth strip of the two of you stuck out from the top of the box. Beneath it was one of his old hoodies. Sitting on top of everything else was his black beanie. You stared at it for a moment before looking away.
You werenât going to cry. Not today. You werenât hurt anymore. At least, thatâs what you told yourself.
You were angry now and somehow, anger felt easier. Anger had edges. It gave you something to hold onto. Who better to unleash it on than the Punisher himself?
When you parked outside his apartment block, you sat behind the wheel for a moment, both hands resting against it. You had prepared yourself for the possibility that Karen might answer the door. Maybe she would be there. Maybe she had been there all along. You forced the thought down, took a slow breath and reached for the box. The weight settled against your arms as you stepped out of the car and headed inside.Â
Everything looked exactly the same. The faded walls. The familiar corridors. The doors lined up along either side. As though the building had refused to acknowledge that anything had changed.
You remembered walking up those stairs with Frank, your hand tucked into his as you rambled about something that probably hadnât mattered nearly as much as you thought it did. You remembered the way his mouth would twitch when you made one of your terrible jokes, that reluctant laugh eventually escaping when you refused to let him pretend he hadnât found it funny. You remembered the grocery bags hanging from his hands while you talked through whatever you were planning for dinner.
Frank would listen, giving the occasional grunt or nod at the appropriate moments and somehow that had always been enough. Those memories felt like they belonged to somebody else now. Somebody who had no idea how quickly everything could disappear.
When you reached his door, you lowered the box beside your feet and knocked.
You knocked again. Still nothing.Â
You stared at the door, suddenly feeling foolish for having come at all.
âHe hasnât been here for a while.â
You turned and saw Mrs Agnes peeking through the doorway further down the corridor.
It was all you could manage. You nodded, then hesitated.
âHey, um⌠Mrs Agnes?â
âYou didnât, by chance, see a tall blonde lady come by, did you?â
Mrs Agnes frowned thoughtfully before shaking her head.
âNot that Iâve seen, darling. No.â
Something inside your chest loosened. Just for a second.
Maybe you had been wrong. Maybe all of it had been in your head.
Then, the doubt returned.
Karen not being here didnât mean Frank wasnât with her somewhere else.
You looked back at the box. You couldnât bring yourself to pick it up again.
You said goodbye to Mrs Agnes, wished her well and walked away, leaving the box outside Frankâs door. You didnât look back.
âCause you said forever, now I drive alone past your street.
The first tear slipped down your cheek somewhere between his apartment and home.
By the time you reached your street, you were crying so hard you had to blink repeatedly just to see the road ahead. It felt as though something inside you had finally broken open.
The way he had looked at you when he thought you werenât watching. Every memory you had spent months trying to bury came rushing back.
By the time you pulled up outside your apartment, your eyes were swollen and aching.
You wiped your face with your hands before getting out and barely registered the familiar hallway as you unlocked your door.  You tossed your keys inside and kicked off your shoes. You didnât even bother changing. You went straight to your bed and collapsed onto it, your body finally giving in to the exhaustion you hadnât realised you were carrying. You had spent months holding everything together, convincing yourself you were fine and now there was nothing left to hold it up. Sleep took you before you could even think about it.
You woke in the early hours, disoriented for a moment as you stared into the darkness.  Eventually, you dragged yourself out of bed and got ready for work on autopilot. Shower. Clothes. Coffee. Keys. You moved through each step without thinking.Â
You didnât think about the box outside Frankâs door. You didnât think about the tears on the drive home. You simply carried on.As though nothing had happened.
 As though nothing had changed.
Then, you opened your front door and something caught your eye. Something that hadnât been there yesterday.
A small object sat directly on the mat. Your stomach tightened. Slowly, you crouched down.You glanced along the hallway.
Cool metal pressed against your fingertips.
You turned it over slowly, your eyes tracing the intricate carving etched into the metal. Your breath caught.
You stared at it. Your heartbeat suddenly loud in your ears. Someone had left it there.  Someone had wanted you to find it.
You looked down the empty hallway again.
Nothing. No footsteps. No movement.
Your fingers tightened around the bullet.You didnât know who had left it. You didnât know what they wanted.
But somehow, you knew one thing.
This wasnât a coincidence.
A/N ~ Should this be a mini series? Let me know what you think â¨
