KastleNetwork

But first it was his lips and then she was in his lap and then he had her laid out on the couch laying kisses on each lonely inch-by-inch of skin that she hadn't let anyone touch for so long, that maybe she'd been saving for him, and his shirt was on the floor in a pile with her dress and then, and then, and then--

He wept in her arms that night in her bed while her fingers moved in slow, consoling circles over the scar on his shoulder too neat and to linear to be a gun shot. In the morning she sat up under the covers while he slept and watched the sun come up.

"If we're going to do this," she told him when he sat up beside her, "we should really do it."

He nodded for a while before his mouth seemed able to say "yeah."

He stayed for breakfast.

He made her lunch.

They went out together for dinner. Spaghetti. An off-menu special of a hole in the wall pizza parlor. Family style.

"Should we do like Lady and the Tramp?" She said.

"Nah," he answered. "That's a mess."

But he smiled imagining it.

***

It took her some time to realize that he was never going to kiss her in public, not because he didn't want to be seen, but for the same reason he couldn't have his back to the door in a restaurant, or sleep out of reach of his pistol.

She remembered daydreaming about a handsome soldier when she was young-- Maybe a marine. Someone with an iron will and a contained, controlled way of living his life that could rub off on her fucked up world and make everything sit right. But Frank was chaos. Frank was insomnia and nightmares and pacing in the living room clutching at his own scalp like maybe he could crack his skull open and take his bullet-pierced brain out and beat it into some kind of submission. He could never sit still, whether it was the twitch in his trigger finger or the movement of his eyes in his head that took everything with it, little twitches of his nose and jerks of his chin. He tapped his foot while he sat in chairs if he didn't ebb in them, a little foreward, a little back, like the tide approaching and then re-thinking the shore. In his sleep he ground his teeth so hard his jaw locked and muffled the sounds of the nightmares.

It took her some time before she had to accept it was getting worse.

***

When Frank got more volatile, Karen told him to call Curtis. He said, "he's not the one. "

"What does that mean, Frank? The one to what?"

"Keeping me down."

"I keep you down?"

"To Earth, yeah. To something, to something real. I can't--"

She wrapped her arms around him but she said it again:

"Talk to Curtis."

Frank stopped going to group.

***

Around the time he started living like he was still in boot camp, up at four in the morning to run until dawn, sweating rivers into her living room thanks to a pull up bar mounted in place of the bedroom door, he got the tattoo. It was a relief, in a way.

It suggested he was holding on to something more than just her.

***

She'd never met "Micro" but she had her suspicions when he knocked on her door. It was the shifty-eyed way he said "uhh, is he here?" Like Frank was still a secret not to be caught talking about and not a pardoned man. Like how a person would talk about buying or selling a weapon.

"What do you want?" She asked past the door chain.

"I found something. I think it might give some closure."

"Found what?"

"A list of buyers. He, uh, seems like he almost got them all."

"Almost?"

"There's a family, a powerful family, that might have trafficked some of Blacksmith's product...can we not talk about this in the hallway?"

Karen said:

"I don't think we should talk about this at all."

Karen said:

"It's done."

Two weeks later Frank was out the door by 3 am, ready to run. His ribs had started to show.

Karen called David Lieberman.

***

The night Frank turned his pistol on himself--just for an instant--was the night she told him. She said:

"Frank, don't do this. You're not done."

"I think I gotta be--"

"I can't let you be done."

He needed something to hold onto that was stronger than her.

***

One morning she woke up and he wasn't there, as usual, but there was a box in bed beside her with a ring inside it, sitting atop a velvet insert that seemed to be swelling out of its container. Underneath was the note, the money: be safe, it said, and a phone number.

The first Gnocci died the next day.

Karen put the ring on a chain.

When he can come back, she told herself. When he can be done. Then I'll put it on.

His body is fine and his brain is anything but; the sharp edges are particularly spiky tonight, and turning up to bother the most gentle person he knows is as safe of a damage control mechanism as he has these days. He’s seen her within the past month which means he probably won't get yelled at, and-

Lights are on and he can’t see her. She’s so easy to worry about – only person he does worry about these days, if he’s honest with himself, and with all the baggage that entails – but nothing feels inherently off either, and-

"Should've called,” he says, loud enough her neighbors with the yappy purse dog probably hear him. “Figured you'd be around, but-”

No response. Her bedroom door is open though, and he’s curious and worried enough to see if she’s just in there with headphones on or something or-

Yeah. No.

She’s in there alright, but he averts his eyes as quickly as he processes what he’s walked into. It is… a visual, to put it politely. Her eyes are closed, he’s never seen all of her skin at once, he doesn't know much about vibrators but that looks like a nice one, she’s making soft noises and-

Her eyes snap open, and for a moment he’s pretty sure she’s going to kill him and he deserves it.

“I didn’t mean to-”

She rolls her eyes. “You can skip the apology, Frank.”

“Still-”

“And open your eyes. You have seen-”

He does. Still feels wrong to look anywhere delicate, but her eyes and the headboard behind her are safe enough, and she’s not frantically hiding under a blanket, that’s got to mean something, and-

“Bad time, then.”

"You're not bleeding anywhere I can’t see, are you?”

“No ma’am.”

“Bad night?”

He nods. He feels like shit right now but he can’t say that part. He’s probably ruined her night – he can’t imagine she’ll go back to what she was doing even if he does just end up on her couch, and-

“You want me to help finish that?”

“Do you want to?”

Even now she's so fragile. She looks away for a heartbeat, blinks like she’s about to cry, and what he wants to do right now is hold her until her body is still, use her as a distraction in the best way and-

“Yes.”

“Okay.”

This solves both of their problems, he decides as he tries to make a decision about what to do next. Losing himself in the softness of her will get his demons to shut up long enough he might even sleep afterwards, and she deserves that kind of attention, and-

“You wanna move your hips down a bit?”

She responds by throwing a decorative pillow at him. “Kneel on that. Don’t… don’t hurt yourself for me."

He can be cooperative. Getting to eye-level with her bits is certainly… not the experience he expected to have tonight, but not entirely unprecedented, he’s gotten quite used to kissing her and something was bound to escalate eventually and-

He wants to break. He wants to scream to whatever god has otherwise abandoned him that he does not deserve any good thing especially not like this. He wants to bury himself in the inevitable, suffocate here between her legs because that’s a better ending than anything else he might choose. He wants-

Slow. Cautious. She deserves that, he reminds himself. She deserves better than he could hope to give her, but he can make the best with what he is.

“Don't mean to scratch you,” he murmurs, not sure how much of his vice carries.

“I don't mind.”

Of course she doesn't. Of course she has nothing hostile to say about his unkempt beard on her thighs. Of course she doesn’t care as long as he’s got her clit between his lips, she sees like she’d like suction more than strokes and he can do that, he can learn her, he can be good at this, he can-

Somewhere in the process, her fingers get up in his hair and god she’s distracting. He’s not learning anything new about himself, exactly, but it’s her and she’s perfect and-

Time is irrelevant. He knows its passing from the way her thighs clench and the tiny breathless sounds he almost hears. She is as reserved in her pleasure as everything else, and he’s got some questions now, and-

One of her hands moves to his shoulder and he feels her sharp fingernails dig into skin. Guess she’s done.

“Get up here,” she says before he can even think about bolting.

They end up a mess of limbs on the bed. He’s still completely clothed, can’t even be bothered to kick off muddy boots, and she’s… vulnerable, he thinks is the polite way to put it, yet more at peace with herself, always that quiet strength of her and-

“You need anything?”

“Not sure things would work if I said yes.”

“That kind of night.”

“Somethin’ like that.”

He doesn’t need to talk. Here is enough. Here is this woman he might love someday resting her head on his shoulder and taking feather-kisses on his face. Here is he’s worried a nightmare will come, but if it does-