little lover

Standing in the kitchenette makes him feel.. some vicious breed of awkward. There isn’t a strong reason to be. He’s alone, nobody bugging him and nobody watching. But even having his socks on the same tile, the specifics come back to him and he feels god awful all over again. He was never great at forgetting. Especially nothing pertaining to you.

That thought brings fresh disgust to the surface of his skin, and Frank shoves it back down with a rough drag of his hand down his face. Not the image of you, per se, though your expression hangs perpetually over him like a rosary over a cot. The question of why he couldn’t just leave you in peace.

He guesses that he’ll never come to an answer if he keeps ignoring it like he is. He only has a vague interest in the colors moving across his TV screen, as he shifts for the first time in about half an hour to look down from his ceiling. It’s beat up, some garage sale junk made in 2013. Cable wasn’t great. But he had no idea how to get anything else on there, and Curt could never figure it out either.

So, Frank Castle, ex-marine, Kandahar-vet, partly-retired-vigilante, is reduced to watching the food network on a Friday night. And he hates to admit that it’s pretty entertaining.

He’s deep in a feature about ratatouille when the shoddy intercom by the door buzzes. And in an instant, Frank is transformed— from a man truly showing his age, considering whether the recipe on TV is worth scratching down on a notepad he keeps on the coffee table— to a man who has earned his paranoia from a laundry list of shameful deeds.

Before he knows he is doing it, he’s checking off security measures. Windows, locked. The door is locked too, twice over. Alarms are set. Or did he forget? Maybe he should’ve checked another time, before his particularly rough shift at the job site caught up to him like it now had. Frank isn’t a jittery man; the only clear difference in his gait as he traipses to the buzzer is the new hardness of his shoulders, and the movement of his eyes landing on the kitchen cabinet he designated for his SIG Sauer.

He presses the calloused tip of an index onto the button. Doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t have to; a woman’s voice bursts over the intercom system, static-fuzzed. “—llo? Helloo! You up there? Frrr-aaa-nnnk.”

Frank’s shoulders fall, a weighted breath collapsing from his nostrils. Christ. It sounded like you had been talking to the intercom box long before the static emanated from the speaker, like he had caught onto the tail end of your ramble. “Yeah.” He says, too quickly. “Yeah, I’m here. What’d’you need? You okay?”

He hates the relief that floods his system. Even worse is the readiness he speaks with; as though he had been waiting for you to ask anything of him. But, he doesn’t think of this instantly. At the moment, he is just a man in pajama pants, relieved that his neighbor is willing to speak to him at all, brushing his knuckles across his bearded jaw. Your reply dampens the relief. “I think I forgot my keys, can you, like, let me up? I reeeeally would really appreciate it, y’know. It’s cold. Pretty cold for spring.”

You don’t sound distressed, per se. More talkative than normal if that was possible, a certain drag hanging the syllables of your words. Drunk. Very, drunk. “M’ comin’ down. Stay put.”

He can’t let himself just buzz you in, let you hike up all those stairs to your floor. The decision doesn’t take much thinking. Any thinking, really. “Oh, thaaankk you, Frank! So, so much!”

He throws on the first shirt he can find (which happens to be a navy graphic-token from boot camp, more than well-worn) and is at the ground level within minutes. Frank finds you, leaning against the brick wall beside the outdoor intercom, looking out across the street as cars pass. Your face is turned away, but you’re easy for him to make out. It’s well past 11 PM, the night saturated with lamplight, red brake lights and neon signs suffusing color into the breeze. It’s only as he opens the lobby door that your attention turns to him, and he truly sees you.

The fluorescent light shining down from the concrete awning washes over your features in a way that would be unflattering for any other woman. But you aren’t any other woman, he knows. What might’ve been shimmer on your eyelids a few hours ago is now smudged around your eyes. Your hair looked a bit like it had been in an updo, and ripped free at a whim. He doesn’t smile, but some kind of lightness fills his chest.

“Awh, Frank.” You say, and he sighs through his nostrils, dips his chin imperceptibly. “You’re a lifesaver.”

“Don’t know about that.” He holds the door open as you walk— only stumbling once— into the lobby. It takes discipline not to watch you walk, not to look at the dress you wear; backless, black, short. He keeps his eyes up.

Elevators finally fixed, and so he bumps a knuckle into the button and watches the way you lean against the metal door jamb like your legs are decoration. “.. Had a good night?” Frank brings himself to ask.

The doors slide open, and he decides that a strong hand on your shoulder is a good fall-deterrent. “Oh, yeah. So fun. So, so.. uh, no. Actually. Not that fun.” Your line of reasoning crumbles before it was laid down. “Really cheap liquor. And I, like, couldn’t find any of my friends towards the end, so I just left, y’know?”

“Left?” The elevator hauls upward.

“It’s like, four blocks away.”

Something in Frank’s stomach churns, like a hard sock to the gut. He’s fairly good at concealing the feeling through a rough grunt, “You walked here?”

“Yeah!” The lightness of your reply elicits a half-groan, half-sigh. His roughened fingers come up to pinch the bridge of his nose, then to drag down his face, to his beard.

He wants to be angry with you; he can’t be. “Christ.” When he opens his eyes, you’re watching him with this sweet little furrow to your brow. Shaking his head and averting his look to the upward tick of floor levels, he grumbles, “Don’t do that again. You need t’get home, y’call me. From anywhere.”

The elevator dings, and the doors peel open. You nod slowly, eyes squinting as if you were thinking hard. “.. Thanks, Frank,” you murmur after a moment. He shrugs. It’s nothing. When will you get that it’s nothing, not since it’s you?

The quiet hangs as you step into the hall, one that’s comfortable considering the smell of alcohol lingering on you and the duty of caretaking wafting off Frank. You go the wrong way, first, he uses a guiding hand on your back to turn you. You laugh. He shakes his head.

Upon reaching his door, Frank watches you rifle through a purse that couldn’t possibly fit more than your phone and theoretically, keys. But, what did he know. He lets you dig around for a bit, amused, until you make a frustrated sound.

He interjects, “You lost your keys.” Saying it himself makes him nervous all over again. The kind of nervous that Frank tends to encounter often; not effectively worried, or paralyzed, but the kind that shakes him into running down a bullet pointed list. He guesses that it’s the marines that turned him into a man that converts threat into fuel. Already, he knows that he’ll have to check that club for your keys, change your locks, get you a new one. He grabs his own keys from a pocket. “.. This isn’t your door, anyway.”

“Oh, right. Fuck.” A smile crosses his features at your expression, he shakes his head. As if you had a thing to worry about.

With a jut of Frank’s chin— “C’mon.”

—

By the time he’s done setting the extra locks back into place, you’ve kicked off your heels haphazardly. Looking over his shoulder, he watches you stumble-to and slump-down-on the couch less like you were attempting to sit and more like your feet gave out.

Springing into action, Frank finds it easier to focus on the tangible task at hand than the prospect of you, drunk on his couch. He grabs a bottle of cold water, not without checking your state over his shoulder.

You aren’t black out drunk. He shouldn’t be so focused on propping you up. He shouldn’t think he’s propping you up, in any capacity. You’re not his to take care of.

The reminder is a whip to beat back the part of him that relishes in your smile, when he hands you the bottle and says with the intention of a command but the tone of a too-gentle murmur, “Drink.”

A mild sip delves into a chug. Haphazardly, you lean over to the coffee table and set down what two or three ounces is left of the bottle. Frank raises his brows at you. Okay? You nod back. Okay.

He watches you lay back and sort of sprawl over the couch, arms wayward. Your legs leave just enough room for Frank to sit on the edge of the couch. Absent-mindedly, he tugs down the bottom hem of your dress for your own sake.

“Your apartment is so bare,” your eyes are moving, tracing the walls. He shrugs. He never expected this place to be permanent. Or, atleast, to last long enough under his name (Pete’s name, he amends) to justify buying more furniture than was necessary. You smile, a little more open, a little more honest than your sober face would break open to reveal. “You need like, a painting.”

“I’m not a painting guy.” Frank squints, averts his eye. He hates how awkward he feels, seeing you again. Some vulnerability settles twixt his third and fourth rib. Some kind of fear, fear of mishandling something delicate that he’d already dropped once, and he didn’t at all expect to be handed glue to mend it. You seem none the wiser.

“There’s too many paintings for you not to like atleast one. Like, atleast a hundred thousand.”

“Yeah?”

“Because, think of it, like, people have been painting since, what, the year 500. So imagine how many there are.”

“You’re right.”

That satisfies you. Atleast, you smile and settle more into the couch cushions. “I’ll get you one for your birthday,” you chirp.

He huffs through the nostrils, lip twisting with humor. “You’re not gettin’ me anything, sweetheart.” He wishes he regretted the pet name. “If I really want a painting I can buy a painting.”

“So you really don’t want a painting?”

“Enough with the damn painting.” Frank grunts. You laugh. Loud, unabashed. Not forced to last longer to make someone feel better about a lame joke. He doesn’t think he’s a funny man, hasn’t been for a few years. He thinks he could be, if he tried.

Maybe he wants to start trying. Or maybe he’s already started, months ago.

You’re smiling at him. And he doesn’t have a clue why, can’t explain the mild upward curl to his own lips. Then you’re reaching out. To him.

“What?” Frank mutters, hating the sweetness to his tone. You’re just smiling. A little lopsidedly, and though the overhead light is off, the dim floor lamp beside the couch illuminates your features in warm yellow. Just enough that he can see the faint smudge of your eyeshadow. And, against his better judgement, he leans to you. Gives up, just in that one foot of space bridged.

It’s close enough for you to curl your fingers into his beard, not tugging, but feeling. The backs of your fingers brushing his jaw. He feels sick. “Did you trim?”

“..What?” Frank repeats. Idiocy keeps his eyes glued to yours, squinted, his voice just above a whisper, and his brow faintly drawn. He can smell your perfume, under the liquor. From here, a little mark that might’ve once been a scabbed scar from youth is visible on your chin.

“You trimmed your beard.” You say it so casually. He trimmed his beard. It’s purely observation. If anything, it’s funny to you. This isn’t difficult for you. The firm gentleness of your fingers is nauseating. Frank closes his eyes.

“Yeah.” A lame response. He barely took half an inch off, just enough to distance himself from a fictional hobo.

Where’s his resolve? He rips his eyes open, and through pure discipline, moves away. Your expression is unchanged as you drop your hand. He can’t explain the craving for distance and closeness, culminating in the same breath, in the same man, and he almost wishes he didn’t let you in, didn’t let you crash onto his couch, didn’t let you remind him.

It was hardly your fault, he reminds himself. You were drunk; he was taking you too serious. You break the silence, as if you are oblivious to the weight pressing on all sides into Frank. “Has anyone told you that you could be a good Hagrid?”

He doesn’t have to think about the chuckle that comes out from his chest. It’s something like relief from the unintentional torture you don’t realize you’re inflicting. “Christ, no. I, uh, haven’t gotten that one yet.” It feels good to smile with teeth bared, as he is now. Unplaceably good. “That’s, what, Lord of the Rings?”

“What? What’s wrong with you?” You laugh, again, features breaking into mirth. It’s easy for you, he knows. “It’s Harry Potter.”

Frank bows his head, grinning still like a boy. “Uh. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know.” His eyes flick up to you, through his lashes. “Y’know, my boy loved those movies.”

“Yeah?” You rub a knuckle into your eye, further smudging your makeup.

Frank screws his face up, lifting his shoulders and nodding in emphasis. “Oh yeah. Got him the box set one year for his birthday. Back when we had the DVD player.” He’s not sure when the words to describe his son came so easily to him. Maybe he just needs him to be known to you. Maybe he just needs to say the memory aloud, for his own sanity.

You don’t seem perturbed by it. He tries not to examine the smile playing on your features too closely. You mumble under your breath, brows raising, “Harry Potter.” Conclusive.

A quiet passes. He, with a grunt, rises to his feet. As if pulled by string you lift your head up, beginning to push yourself onto your shoulders. “Are you—“ you begin, but he waves his hand. The worry on your face is not too sweet for him to immediately want to shoo away.

“Not leavin’.” A soft sound of recognition leaves your lips. Frank can feel your eyes burn into him as he moves to the kitchenette. It wasn’t like he kept makeup remover around. Maybe he should start— just in case. He finds a chance to rebuild some resolve, in the simple routine; in wetting a clean wash rag from the kitchen cabinet, wringing out the warm water over the sink.

“I haven’t seen you in forever. Soo long.” He can hear rustling over his shoulder. A quick glance finds you kicking a old throw pillow at your feet onto the floor; stretching your legs out fully. Getting comfortable, he guesses. “Where’ve you been, Frank?”

He chuckles, a brief, easy sound. “Here.” He turns, bearing the wet rag in one hand. His shoulders raise to his ears, curling his lip with humor. “It’s been, what, a week?”

“A week?” You repeat. He watches you comb your tresses with painted fingernails, a faint grimace playing at your lips. An affirmative grunt from him, followed by his weight dipping the couch cushion beside your leg. You sit up, hands in your lap. “So, so weird.”

Frank doesn’t say anything, only since he doesn’t think he should. Doesn’t trust himself to say anything right. He offers the rag to you, with lips pressed and eyes squinting.

“What’s that for?” You sit up.

He waves the rag in a small circle, the movement more of a result from the shrug of his shoulder than anything. He grumbles, near awkward, “.. Y’know. Your makeup.”

Understanding washes over your face in nearly the same moment as giggles open it up. Frank doesn’t mean to stare. Truly, doesn’t. But does it count, when your own eyes screw shut with laughter for the sake of nothing but laughter? Can’t he steep his mind in the warm water of your presence a little, as long as you never notice, and never cast him away?

“Okay. Okay, alright.” Frank mutters, half to himself. He lets exasperation color his tone, but in truth he doesn’t mind. Doesn’t mind leaning forward, raising the rag to your face all too gently. Your cheek pulls up in a smile under his hand, sputters of giggles leaving you. “That hurt at all?”

You hum, “No.” Carefully, he brings the cloth up to the skin under your eye, lifting some smudged shadow. “Thank you. So much.”

Frank huffs through the nostrils, dabbing too gently at your eyelid to be at all efficient in removing the makeup. “It’s nothing.”

“It’s really not nothing.”

Onto the other eye, with the same care. Some part of him is anxious to break you. He tries, really does try, to find some good way to wave you off. “come on. Don’t be like that.” You peek open the clean eye at him. He huffs again, and can’t resist the upward tick of his lips. “You know I’m here.”

Here. Where was here, exactly?

He doesn’t finish the thought. Does what is right by you, and nothing more.

Frank’s focus is concentrated on the rag and the thin skin of your eyelid, and it isn’t until he’s satisfied with the lack of shadow that he moves away, tosses the rag over the back of the couch. Isn’t until then, either, that he realizes how much silence has passed, and that your expression has turned some kind of melancholy.

“I’m sorry we haven’t talked.”

So am I.

Frank stays silent. You go on.

“And i’m more sorry about the other night. Really.”

Frank doesn’t mean to fail at holding your eye. He means, really, to take this conversation like a man. But his churning stomach betrays him, and his eye dart between the notepad on coffee table, the barren wall, you. You, frowning with guilt. Why should you be guilty? He moves to amend it, almost on instinct.

“Don’t say sorry.” He mutters, quieter than he means to. He pats a rough palm against your bare shin, the curve of your warm calf on his fingers. Despite his better judgement.

The rise of your protest is nearly tangible, alcohol having washed away any trace of a poker face. “Seriously, sweetheart.” There it is again. He squints briefly as if flinching from the craving thing inside of him.

“But I was wrong. So, so wrong.” Frank shakes his head at you. He leans over, grabbing the near empty water bottle, handing it to you with what he hopes is a firm, expectant expression.

“You gotta sober up.” He grunts. It’s an easy way out from under the wing of your pity. He can’t stand it— can’t stand the look on your face, like you owe him a fucking thing. Especially not some lame words for his sake. You take the water, delicately.

“I wish I didn’t.”

“.. Didn’t, what?”

“Didn’t leave, that night.”

He reminds himself to close his parted lips, to squeeze the hell out of his jaw, teeth-crushingly tight, in order to keep from saying anything from the chest. You frown at him, quiet, stone still until your head lolls to the side drowsily, ear finding the top of the couch back.

Frank turns his cheek with a weighty sigh through the nose. Hands splayed atop his thighs, and in a nervous tick, he curls his lip, looking to the far wall like it might give him a line. What else can he do? Warily, he glances at you in his peripheral. Sipping the water bottle until it's only hollow plastic. Like you’ve already forgotten this conversation, who last spoke, and said what.

There’s nothing to do. That’s the only right answer. Leave you be. Don’t search for meaning in words from a drunk woman. Even if that woman is you, and he wants to, worse than he’s wanted to find meaning in anything for fucking years.

“..S’my fault. I shouldn’t have assumed, y’know?” No response. He makes a lame, hesitating noise like his throat is a step ahead of his head, creating sound before his lips form words.

“Maybe you were right. I could’ve, uh, drunk too much.” A lie. He winces as the words pass his lips. “I don’t remember. I don’t know what man roundin’ on fifty gets, fuckin’— wine drunk.” Frank chuckles at himself, then, though it’s more of a grunt laced with weak humor.

Silence.

“..I just don’t you t’.. I don’t know. Think I’m some asshole.” He swipes his thumb against the crooked bridge of his nose, and can’t help the flit of his eyes from wall to wall. Another kind of humorless huff through the nostrils. “Maybe that ship has sailed. I just.. it’s good to have company. Y’know? I don’t want t’be the one that ruins that.”

He lets the quiet breathe a few seconds, until he gives himself the humility to look over his shoulder, see if he’s said something wrong. Instead, Frank hums a short, low note, in something close to amusement.

You’re all but knocked out cold. Maybe that’s for the better. He has a feeling your neck will hurt like hell tomorrow, craned like that. In his mind it’s hardly a decision; he’ll take the couch.

If you’re at all roused by Frank’s arms shifting under your knees and against your back to lift you, then you give him the kindness of not letting him know it.

He’s not a good man, he knows that; but if he’s anything, he’s dutiful. He doesn’t allow himself to appreciate your weight in his arms, as he moves to put his bedroom door open with his broad back; slow enough to not rock you. Neither does he give himself any credit, nor kindness to himself for pulling the comforter over you, closing the blinds so that you can sleep into the daylight.

Frank does, however, allowed himself to linger in the doorway. Callouses on the cool door handle, chest full and heavy with something familiar and suffocating. He does not try to name it. Does not try to recall the lifetime ago when this feeling was constant, surrounding him, woven into the fibers of his muscle and tendon.

He wants to be grateful to have been given another chance to feel it. But Frank is a man who puts a ravine between what is craving and what is deserved. And he does not deserve this.

He pulls the door closed against the jamb with a click.

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