Panic! At The Kitchen Sink
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Summary: You go to a bar Frank’s told you hundreds of times not to, and you find out what makes the place so dangerous. When you get home, Frank grills you about your decision—and suddenly you can’t breathe.
Warnings: this is heavy imo. Hurt, unresolved comfort, violence, yelling, panic attack/panic, mentions of drugs, prostitution, neo-nazis. both are in the wrong, mentions of reader’s vague past abuse, attempt of SA on reader (foul language, no graphic details, it doesn’t happen, NOT FRANK). Protective!Frank = unintentionally loud, angry, scared Frank. MDNI, reader is always 18+.
Frank doesn’t ask you for much. When he does, it’s in your best interest. Boundaries to keep you safe.
So you aren’t why, tonight, you cross him. It isn’t intentional… you really don’t see the harm in it, walking into this bar with your friends. It’s just a bar. You’ve not heard anything of it other than your come and go friends—Tabitha and Johnny’s—incessant nagging to try out this hole in the wall. There’s thousands of them. Little bars, quirky dives.
Frank’s just… overprotective. That’s what you tell yourself, reasoning the bad decision against his unproven logic.
It didn’t start out this way. Your friends wanted to hit a few bars on the usual strip, so you did. It was fun. Laughs, drinks flowing, familiar camaraderie. But after those few places… you ended up… here. Exactly where Frank doesn’t want you. Where you promised you’d never go. And you find out why Frank made you swear this place off limits.
But maybe it’s the bartender with inked black eyes, surgically implanted horns on his head, and the repulsive black sun tattoo sprawling his neck handing you your drink with the snarl of a creature, not a man.
Or red light bleeding from the curtained room beyond the bathroom. The crowd of half-dressed prostitutes working a street siren’s magic to paying customers. Or the pimp that the tears open the curtain to bitch slap one of them for no reason other than lack of cashflow.
Two guys in the corner shake hands and blatantly exchange baggies of coke, cut with…?
Oh, god. No wonder Frank told you to never, ever come here.
Bar stuffed to the brim with New York’s unfinest, the filth tacks onto your skin. You feel… dirty, just being here. Dirty, because you don’t belong. You’re not a vagabond or a prostitute or a pimp or someone that agrees with the iconology of a black sun…
You clutch your drink so hard the sweat squeaks on the glass. Death metal assaults the speakers in bloody shrieks. Red strobes batter your retinas to the point of a dull, gnawing headache. Your friends—Tabitha and Johnny—nudge you, laughing about the characters here, how insane is this?, how anything goes, and the cheap drinks and a guaranteed show when a game of pool goes awry.
You can’t hear over the music (if it can be called that). You can’t see through the haze of smoke, pot, cigarettes, the flashing lights. It smells rancid and you wonder if your goodness is eroding with it just by being here. Your friends being your ride, your begging to leave was shrugged off. Your discomfort, your nerves all disregarded for the sake of… fun? This isn’t fun. It’s sick and scary and not you.
Somewhere right after your first sip of your drink and the vulgarity of watching a suited man shove a prostitute’s face in a pile of coke and laugh about it, you excuse yourself from the bar, from your ‘friends’, leaving the drink behind. You need air, to see a world beyond this depravity.
Weaving through the crowd of leather vests and ill intentions, you pull your phone out as you head out the back door. The light flares blue over your face, a shaking thumb typing a text to the one person who’d never do this to you. Never leave you in a place like this, never shrug off your discomfort. The person that told you to never, ever go here. Frank.
You: Can you please come get me? Please don’t be mad. I’ll explain everything later.
You pocket your phone and push outside. The cool breeze drags the scent of lit cigarettes and phlegmy laughter.
You don’t see the ten missed calls from Frank. Or the barrage of texts telling you to lock yourself in a bathroom stall ‘til he gets there.
The last one? The most important one.
Frankie: Whatever you do, princess, don’t fuckin go outside, you hear me? Bathroom. Pepper spray in your purse. And wait.
You bound down the two steps, music muffled by the steel door closing behind you. Closing one door opens another. You hear it just as you take your first breath.
One that could be your last.
A low wolf-whistle from the shadows.
You startle, hands sinking deeper into your pockets. An instinctual step back, yet you bump into something solid.
A tongue clicks behind you, grimey breath on your ear. “D’awww, lookie here. This one’s puuuurdy.”
You jolt forward with a gasp, spinning to face him. A head skinned hairless, the nose of a pig, tattoos etched everywhere but his eyeballs.
“I’m- I’m leaving,” you state, a sharp bite to your tone. And you stamp forward, but— boof. Another solid body.
“Leaving so fast?” A second voice chides with a tut. Your eyes flash up to him. This second man—horrifying. Skin gnarled like someone’s dumped acid on him, leathery mouth stretched to show crack-black teeth. “No, no, noooo,” he sings. “Stay. Hang around me and my guys awhile… We’ll show you one hell of a time, baby. You like coke, huh? You got some coke. Get you nice and coked up and have a little fun with us, little fox.”
“NO!” You shout. “I’m leaving! Get- get your fucking hands off me!”
But they laugh at you. Push you around into each other, passing you like the piece of meat they see you as.
“Hey, boys!” The pig squeals over his shoulder. “Come look at the pretty pussy we got over here!”
Two more depart from the shadows, as though darkness breeds them. The third saunters with a bum leg, chain-link belt rattling pestilence with every step closer.
“Who gets to go first?” The fourth calls out. Through the bodies cramming you, you see him. Face full of meth craters, a greasy slick of hair over his head. His eyes, though… it’s looking at the devil himself. It’s sin. It’s evil because it understands innocence, right versus wrong, and chooses temptation.
“Don’t gotta go just one at a time,” the one with scarred skin hums with hunger.
You shove. Kick. Punch. Scratch. You fight against the cage of four men. And the fight is futile.
You cry—scream—for help. What you get is Frank.
An engine thunders through distance alleyways; the sound of pure reckoning.
You press back against the wall, brick biting your palms as you spit indignation. “You better- you better back the fuck off! My boyfriend’s coming—and he’s gonna be pissed!”
They laugh in your face. Spittle on your cheeks. Their breath hot and stale with beer. They laugh.
Tires screech rage over the streets. It’s a screaming symphony of: he’s coming, and blood will follow.
Their hands prod, crossing boundaries where your yells of no, stop, leave me alone! mean nothing. Your stomach. A brush at your thigh. The fine line down your neck. Your gut flips—their touch, the suffocation of retribution like iron in the air. You tremble. You wait. You taste imminent death in the air. Copper on your tongue. Bile in your throat. You jerk your head out of their hands. You’re prey. You’re their victim. How many victims before you? How many lived? And you should’ve listened to Frank.
One of them grabs the bottom hems of your shirt. Rips. One bottom button flies off, clattering down the sewage drain. One piece of innocence defiled with a promise of more to come.
You swing, battery ram your fists. But there’s too many. They’re bigger. Stronger. Drunker. And you? You should’ve listened to Frank.
As the pungency of the dumpster mingles with their breath on your skin; putrefying gases tell you time is running out.
The shriek of tires comes down this alley, a rubber skid charred on the asphalt.
The bike’s fucking mean as it barrels down the narrow road. Black plague tonnage; a beast of heavy chrome exhaust pipes flaring out from the sides.
And over that headlight? The first glimpse at destiny, the promise of what’s to come…? Something they all know. And fear.
Its rider’s name is Death.
And Hell follows with him.
The kick stand cuts a scrape over the ground. A shrill grate of metal as Frank stomps it down, walking off the motorcycle as it growls in idle.
His boots move the ground, an earthquake from the soles. Each step closer, each step unraveling his thin leash.
It razes up your spine, seeing this version of Frank.
Disgust solidifies Frank’s face as he storms forward, upper lip raised in a snarl, preserving his face as the personification of righteous fury. “Think you gotta right to fuckin’ touch her, huh?!” he sneers, voice lurching to a boom, the savagery of his physique backlit by the beam from the headlight.
The hands breaching your body snap off in startled curses. The men congregate together, forming a swaying wall to barricade their treat: you.
“It’s- it’s The Punisher—” Pig stutters.
“Oh, fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck, go!” The gimp cries.
“Get your goddamn guns!” Greasy orders, fumbling for his shoved down the back of his pants. “He’s in our territory now.”
They scramble together in a frenzy, but Frank’s voice seizes them. That’s the power of Frank Castle.
“I asked you a fuckin’ question. When I ask somethin’, I want a goddamn answer. You fuckin’ deaf?” Frank roars, tearing a lead pipe one-handed from the wall without breaking stride.
Two feet of lead. Five pounds of blunt force. And Frank stops three feet short. Flips the pipe once. Tests the weight. Cements his fist to the end. The musculature of his shoulders knots. Nostrils flare, nose quivering undeterred ire. Becoming man in his truest form…
Four disgusting men standing between you two.
“You alright, sweetheart?” Franks grits while dark eyes clock his targets. Doesn’t wait for an answer—you gotta be. No choice right now. “Need you t’do somethin’ brave right now, hm?”
You peel yourself from the wall with gelatinous legs, safety disguised in his mere presence though you’re far out of reach yet. You nod little bursts, mouth dried shut.
“Walk ‘round,” Frank instructs, head canting to signal where. “Wait on the bike. C’mon, sweetheart. Now. Ain’t no one gonna move while you walk outta this.”
Silence in agreement. Silence in waiting.
Eyes darting between the men, Frank, your escape route of the motorcycle behind him, you dash a wide berth on your tiptoes. As you get within his reach, Frank extends the pipe around you. Uses it like a lead revolving door to guide you out.
Reaching the safety of the motorcycle, you throw a leg over it. Straddle the rumbling leather, fingers digging into the warm seat to placate the tremble wracking your spine. Over the dormant hostility of the bike, you can’t hear carnage coming to a crescendo.
“How many times she say no, huh?” Frank asks, dragging the head of the pipe in jarring rakes over the asphalt beside him. “Do I wanna know?…Yeah. Yeah, think I do. ‘Cause how many times she said no’s how many I’ll take t’break your goddamn head open.”
“You’re- you’re just one man!” Greasy spits out, his gun rattling in the terror-lock of his hand. “There’s four of us, man, you’re fucking s-stupid for trying us like this!”
Frank wears solemnity. A vacancy in his expression known as acceptance. Acceptance in the mission, the nature of the beast, the necessity to make sure this won’t happen again.
“Yeah,” Frank says, raising the pipe. “One man they mistake for a goddamn army.”
Skulls got a specific sound when they break. Yeah. Not like other bones.
Other bones splinter. Crack.
Skulls’re different. It’s a wet kinda crunch.
So when the lead pipe lashes down into Pig’s head—bone ‘n brain squelch. Yeah. Wet. Crumples the swiney fucker in a gushing heap.
Gimp charges Frank with a belligerent wail, leg dragging. S’fine. No problem. WHOOMP.
Frank slams the shaft of the pipe into his gut. Chain belt jingles. Gut blows got a dense, meaty sound, the choked punch of breath knocked out of ‘em as the guy stumbles back, clutchin’ his insides. Jams the jagged end through his chest like a fuckin’ kabob. Frank hauls the belt off. Winds the metal links around his neck. Takes the end of that chain… and hoists it over bar the sign. Pipe speared through his chest oozes blood. Chains seizure ‘til he stops movin’. Public hanging for all of ‘em to see.
From behind—raisin skin slings a heavy fist at Frank’s head.
Turning, Frank slips the punch. No thought, pure instinct. Instinct like this can’t be learned. It’s innate.
Frank snatches Raisin’s wrist. One sharp snap down. Crrallllck. Screams “NOOO, AHHH, NO NO NO—!” Bone raptures up from his skin. Sprays a fan of blood over Frank’s face.
“No?” Frank mocks. “Ain’t a word we know, ‘member?” Yanks him by the broken wrist… and grinds the bone down the brick wall ‘til it’s a bleeding nub. Makes for damn sure these hands won’t touch another woman again. Then? Then he uses his face like a goddamn sponge. Grates his skin over the prickled brick, peeling off tattered ribbons of flesh ‘til he can’t make another sound.
Greasy guy’s got the most sense. Runs. Frank’s never lost sight. Raisin’s body dropping at his feet, Frank goes for the holster on his hip.
“HEY!” Frank yells, the baritone of his voice an augury of the night. Raises his Beretta in a final send off.
Greasy trips a step. Doesn’t fall. Twists back to look as he runs for his goddamn life down the blackened alley. His last mistake.
“Ain’t no runnin’ from me.”
Blood glugs from the hole between his eyes.
Wind slices through the visor of your helmet as Frank tears down the streets of New York with you latched on his back. It cools your skin, but not the guilt turning over and over under your skin. Your arms wind around the tense width of his midsection, jittery fists bunched in the front of his shirt.
Streetlights blur much like the night.
Frank doesn’t reciprocate anything. A stoic wall in front of you radiating raw, humming anger.
You bury your helmeted face into his back, trying desperately to break the ice, to get his affection back, but there’s no give. No forgiveness. All you can do is sit here, behind him, and wait.
In the apartment, you try to slink off for the bathroom. One sallow light tinks above the sink, as if it’s petrified to bring light to what you’ve brought home.
Try. You get two steps in, then—
“Where the hell you think you’re goin’?”
The smallest flicker of a wince in your shoulders. You stop right then and there. Fingers lace together, cold and clammy under rightful scrutiny. “…I wanna take my makeup off,” you say, so mousy it’s sour on your tongue. “Can I please go take my makeup off?”
“Ain’t goin’ anywhere ‘til we talk,” Frank says in a low, grave tone. He posts up at the center island of the kitchen, palms flat and shoulders wide. The posturing of an animal asserting indisputable dominance.
You inch a half turn until you partially angle towards him. Your arms bunch around yourself, scared if you let go, your insides might spill out. You glance over at Frank and your stomach drops. Dried blood under his nails. Red-hot anger in the razor-sharp slant of his jaw. His eyes—dark and domineering—welded to you.
“Wanna tell me how the fuck you ended up there?” Frank asks, so low it’s venomous. “Ain’t where you said you were goin’. You forget I told you t’stay the fuck away from there, hm?”
“Then what?” he snips, words dragging harsher with each one. “Didn’t meant to, but you’re the one that walked in those fuckin’ doors, yeah?”
“No! Yes! I mean, yes! No, I did— I did, Frank, and I’m sorry. I’m so, so, so sorry, that’s not what the evening was supposed to be!”
“You’re smarter th’n that! C’mon. Get real. Jesus fuckin’ Christ, coulda found you dead ‘n the alley after those sick fucks did whatever the fuck they wanted. What I tell you ‘bout goin’ t’that bar, huh? What’d I tell you?” It’s a literal question, a demand for answers. “Fuck. Anything I ask ‘a you’s f’your own damn good.”
Coming down from the alcohol, heart working overtime, your feet inch together. Your shoulders curl in, forging a weak shield around yourself. “I just- I was with friends, I thought it’d be fine if I was with my friends. The plan wasn’t to go there, Tabitha and Johnny walked us there and I didn’t realize what it was until we got there! They- they were my ride, I couldn’t just—”
“You could. You call. I answer. Every fuckin’ time. See how that works? How fuckin’ easy that woulda been? Some fuckin’ friends lettin’ you go alone in a place like that.”
His justified anger, his disappointment—it’s palpable. Eats at you until your insides are mush, your worth ruptured in a few sentences. If only you would’ve listened. Why didn’t you listen? You had one simple task and it was to listen to Frank and you still didn’t do it.
Frank throws a hand up, frustrated with the lack of sense. Drags that hand down his face, then presses just his fingertips into the countertop. A repetitive jab of them on the granite—a demand—his brows hiked up to burn the severity of the look into you. “Your friends offer up an idea s’ dumb s’that? Shit. You sure you wanna be friends with ‘em? People hangin’ out there, huh, wanna be ‘round all that? They say somethin’ as stupid s’that, that’s when you say no. S’when you don’t go, you hear me? Don’t give a shit ‘f it’s someone’s dyin’ wish—you don’t go. Need some new goddamn friends.”
He’s- He’s mad. He’s mad at you. You did this. Your actions did this. If you just would’ve opened your mouth, said no, heeded his warnings, listened—your night could’ve looked grossly different.
Air clogs in your throat. Your pulse beats manic emergency, heart raging against your ribs. Breath tighter. Breath shorter. Oh my god, you can’t fucking breathe. Something’s wrong. Something’s very wrong. Your throat jumps a frantic test. Air won’t move. Words freeze up on the back of your tongue.
“What ‘f I didn’t get t’you in time, hm? You think ‘bout that? Got all those brains, where was they t’night? You forget ‘em at home? Christ. Tryna understand this. Tryna understand where the hell your head was at.”
The floor sways under you. The room tilts. Lightheaded, heart pounding too fast, choking on your own pulse.
“Goddamn it, say somethin’!” The demand in his tone. The raise of his voice. “Use your words! Stand here all goddamn night ‘f I got to.”
Oh, it triggers the old, wounded parts of you… The parts you can’t heal. Parts you didn’t ask for when someone else—long ago—decided yelling meant you’d understand. You were just a kid. Yelling didn’t make you understand. It made you scared.
The back of your throat clicks a dry suck—no room for air. Your heart ramps to the point of danger. If you don’t calm it— oh my god, what if you don’t calm it? If it goes any faster, you might induce a heart attack. Oh my god… what if it’s already a heart attack? Your knees knock together in the wobble. Tears burn down your face, but you don’t feel them. No, you only feel the life-threatening pain twisting shards in your chest, your lungs scorching for air you can’t collect. When your crooked fingers claw at your throat, your bulging eyes red-rimmed as your vision swims, Frank stills.
A falter in his reprimand. A one second pause to calculate.
“Frank— can’t- can’t—” a wheezy rasp sears down your throat; a noose of someone else’s making still strangling you.
Frank moves. He’s on your side in an instant, one big hand splayed and pressed over your chest, the other right on the other side of you, on your back. Squeezes you, compressions to breathe for you.
“Hey, hey, hey—” Frank rasps, all ire parched from his body. “C’mon, sweetheart, c’mon—“ His eyes bolt over your face, tracking the blanched terror as your breath drops to hyperventilations. “No, no, no. C’mon. Easy, sweetheart, easy. Control it, hm? In f’four. Ready? C’mon. Do it with me, baby girl. C’mon.”
With his hands packing you together, holding the shaking pieces, Frank demonstrates a loud, deep inhalation through his nose. For four seconds.
You jolt in place with the count of each second; a systemic failure wringing your body to catastrophe.
Three—because you didn’t say no.
Four—and there’s no room for a full breath, your chest stuffed with panic.
“Hold it f’four, sweetheart, c’mon. Hold.”
Four seconds have never felt so long. Or stupid. You go catatonic, face stuck in a gasp, fingers contorted around your throat.
When the corrective breathing doesn’t ease anything, Frank binds an arm around you to drag you along.
You ain’t got legs? He’ll be your legs.
Arms won’t work? He’s got two.
You’re making all kinds of noises that scare the shit out of him. Heaves, wheezes, hummed cries as you gasp for help. Frank rips open five drawers. Rummages the contents, shit clattering to the floor.
“Gum, sweetheart. Gum. Where’s th- the gum, huh? Mint. Get you that mint gum, hm?” Vocal panic of his own, dark eyes wet as he digs for one of your antidotes. Mint gum.
Finally—finally—Frank finds it. Big fingers fumble the pack open, tearing three sticks from the wrapper. Shoves them all in your mouth. More means it’ll work better, right?
“Chew, baby. Chew. C’mon, pretty girl. Yeah. Yeah, there she is. Atta girl.” Hand on your back, he uses the other to guide your chin. Help you chew.
The tang of spearmint explodes in your mouth. Forces salvia back into it. You chew, chew, chew. Masticate the wad, breaking out the potency of the flavor, swallowing it down to hose out the uncontrollable fire in your chest.
“Atta girl. Keep doin’ that, hm? You keep chewin’ f’me, alright? Lemme know you hear me, baby. Nod f’me.”
You do. It’s stiff and mechanical, his voice distanced by the nauseating pump of your heartbeat in your own ears.
“Alright. Good. Doin’ so good, baby. Gonna be jus’ fine, got my word. Ain’t nothin’ you can’t handle. Strong girl, you know that? Won’t let it get you.”
Your shoes drag squeals over the floor as Frank lugs you to the kitchen sink. He slaps on the water, tugs it to the coldest setting with a grunt. “Alright, here we go. Gimme your hands, sweetheart, you do that f’me? C’mere,” gently—so fucking gentle you’d cry if you felt it—he unwinds your hands from your neck.
Bracketing your hands with his, Frank dunks them under the shocking freeze of the running tap. Holds your hands open and under the rush, his thumbs on the tendons of your wrists.
Under his thumbs, your pulse’s in a crisis. Rapid fire on his calluses, each frenzied knock accelerating the rot in his gut.
But the water, the mint, the full-weight press of Frank’s chest into your back… it’s a remedy.
The water a rapid reset for your nervous system.
The mint gum forcing you into mobility, the crisp flavor a distraction.
And Frank’s weight? Deep pressure, heaviness severing the emergency alarms in your body.
Minutes go by. How many, you aren’t sure, but Frank’s there the entire time. Undivided attention and gravelly praise, his thumbs pushing gentle strokes from the veins in your wrists to the heel of your hands.
“You with me?” he asks, eyes closed with a pinched brow, his stubbled chin against your temple. “Talk f’me, princess. Gotta hear you. Gotta know you’re okay.”
Clear rills of snot down your nose, tears wiping tracks of makeup from your face, your lashes flutter back from the separation in your mind. “I- I, yeah. Here,” you croak, vocal cords afflicted yet.
“Thank god,” Frank breathes, mashing his nose against your head when he sticks a rough, relieved kiss to your temple. “There she is. There’s m’girl.“
Water drenches your arms, his, splatters to the floor at your feet with his as your shadow.
Chest stuttering, lungs cooperative, you take one big, full breath. Your lungs belong to you again. Frank’s heartbeat on your back, yours slows to match it. You’ll follow him. Anywhere, even the mechanics of your heart knows that.
“Yeah, there,” Frank murmurs. “Easy. Slow.”
“Frank, I–” you shift in place, throat closing with a well of tears. “I’m sorry.”
“Sh-sh,” Frank hushes. Blinks his eyes open, but keeps them low on your shoulder. “Ain’t doin’ that right now. All’s that matters is I got you.”
An appreciative hum crackles in your ribs. You nod. Okay. Not right now.
“Alright f’me to turn this off?”
He does, hand lingering on the facet.
A weighted quiet now. Heavy with your mistake. Heavier with his regret.
The quiet plink… plink… plink of water dropping into the sink basin, remnants of the night; decisions water can’t make clean.
Side of his face pressed against yours, rough stubble to soft skin, Frank grabs the hand towel. Drapes it over your hands, squeezing them dry one by one.
“That happen ‘cause ‘a me?” he asks, thick with remorse.
“Not… you…” you whisper, licking salt from your upper lip as you watch his hands work on yours. “Just… your… tone. I don’t- I don’t like ye—”
“I know,” he softly interjects, eyes pinching shut for two seconds. “Yellin’. Got… too loud.” Thinks about saying he didn’t mean to, but that was the excuse he wouldn’t let you have earlier. “Shouldn’t’a got loud with you like that.”
“No. Don’t gotta do that shit. F’give like that when I fucked up.” Hands dried, Frank sets the towel aside with unnecessary precaution. Like now he doesn’t trust himself not to make more ruin.
“Can we… can we just go to bed? I think I wanna go to bed. Forget about all this ‘til the morning,” you say, voice scratchy, all of your weight leaned back on Frank. “We can have a more constructive talk… in the morning. I just… I just really want you to hold me and touch me and tell me everything’s all right for tonight. Can we, please?”
Big arms band around your waist. Frank buries his face in the sweat-slick curve of your neck, breathing you in, seeking penance. “Yeah, sweetheart. Yeah. Can do that.”
“It’s… on hold,” you say, “until tomorrow.”
“Yeah,” Frank sighs against your neck, fans warmth. Tightens his arms around you; an apology in its strength. “‘Til tomorrow.”
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