#castlcd

There had to be an adjustment period - there always was, when shit hit the fan to a spectacular degree, and the next thing you knew the thing you hunted was the thing you became. The money had been good, yeah; getting out of the desert but staying in the chase, the adrenaline, the ability to put those skills drilled in by Uncle Sam to good use - all the better. Going after assholes that preyed on the average Joe had appealed to Frank’s straightforward morality, and there was nobody Billy trusted to have his back more than Castle. They were good. They were really fucking good.

Didn’t make ‘em invincible, though. They’d had their share of gunshots, knives, blunt force trauma. But the small, deep gash on his side was the first injury Billy ever hid. He hadn’t been sloppy; he had just been too slow - too human.  

It was viral, more or less, at least best as anyone could figure; didn’t always take, especially if you did all the right things. Flush out the wound, inject yourself with antidotes, spend the next four days puking your guts out and pretending you just had the fuckin’ flu as you hoped against the odds that you’d luck out.

Nobody had ever called Billy lucky. 

And there was only so long he could deflect Frank’s texts when they hadn’t even spent two days apart since basic, much less six. By that point it was clear the world had kicked him in the balls yet again, the hunger gnawing at Billy no matter how much he ate; his senses overwrought, like he was living with a constant hangover. The gash that should have still been scabbed over and red was completely gone.

Frank was going to kill him. 

And not just figuratively. 

Judging by the number of missed calls, it was only a matter of time before Frank showed up anyway, and who the hell knew what state he’d be in by then. He couldn’t just disappear; Frank would track him down, just like he’d do in reverse. So Billy finally sent a text, because there was nothing for it; nearly cracked the screen because he’d been getting stronger, and he still hadn’t adjusted to the new reflexes, but it was only going to get worse when he finally did what those things all eventually had to. They. Him. Fuck.

|| text prompts [accepting].

‘shit i say to my dog’ sentence starters.

Billy snorted a laugh, shallow and quiet. They lay side-by-side on the rooftop, rifle scopes angled slightly apart for maximum overwatch. The sun was starting to set and the lighting was shit; on the up side, the earlier threat of a dust storm had skirted by without blowing grit in their faces, and someone intrepid had managed to barter a few boxes of rehydration tabs for a goat, so the unit could even look forward to a decent dinner. The sun was hot, his balls were sweaty, but life could be way worse.

“You know, Frank, I’m almost starting to think you like me.”

He rocked his thigh against Frank’s without looking away.

Nobody’s willing to fill in the blanks.

The world is going to shit - aliens are a thing, apparently, and as far as he can tell that’s news to everyone and not just his broken brain - but apparently withholding how he got this way is still a priority.

He knows some of it. He knows his name is Billy Russo. He knows he’s a Marine - was a Marine - and his memory for everything up to and including his last deployment couldn’t be better. He remembers water ice on the boardwalk, sniper nests in Iraq, Frank Castle’s laugh, wind velocity calculations, every ugly moment of his childhood.

But he doesn’t remember looking like this, and he sure as fuck doesn’t remember what happened to make him not remember anything since. There’s something ugly there - ugly as him; there must be, or else everyone around him would stop skirting the issue, get fed up of his incessant questions, and connect the dots he can’t link up.

The world is going to shit, and they start talking about building giant robots to help fight the Chitauri, and apparently the Avengers are involved, and it’s enough to make Billy question the extent of his grip on reality except it’s clearly a matter of mass psychosis, because everyone seems to agree none of that shit is a hallucination.

They need people who can fight, and he’s that; it’s not hard to tell they need people who are expendable, and he’s definitely that, too. 

Thing is, Billy knows he can sit and rot in a hospital room, or he can get himself back into fighting shape and do what he’s been trained to do. 

When they finally ask, he doesn’t hesitate.

Compatibility doesn’t seem like too much of a big deal; Billy has always been a chameleon, and he picks up on movement patterns, fighting styles, tics, preferences. 

But the neural handshake? It’s a bottomless pit, and he’s completely unmoored. There’s nothing for Billy to connect with: his own memory is a severed limb, jagged around the edges, and try as he might, he can’t resist the pull of the other pilots’ memories, like they’re somehow going to have the answers he needs.

Like they’re somehow going to be the ones to answer what it is he did to deserve ending up like this.

“This isn’t working,” Billy overhears one of his minders say, when they think he’s still in the shower. “They’re going to need to go with Plan B.”

“Plan B is asking for a one-man massacre.”

protective prompts -  sender takes a bullet/punch/attack meant for the receiver.

It happens fast, because isn’t that always the way this shit goes? 

Billy’s standing there, hands up, pistol loosely hanging by the trigger guard from one thumb. Frank has a combat shotgun raised, the red sight hovering steadily, almost like it’s following the movement of his Adam’s apple when he swallows.

“This really how you want to take me out, Frankie?” He sucks the blood off his lower lip, tongue working the split, dark eyes locked on Frank’s. It’s hard to see the humanity in there, at least if you’re not used to looking past the opaque, thrumming malice to the churning emotions beneath. Frank’s a guy who always feels too much - maybe that’s a liability, maybe it’s the only thing that keeps him human. Maybe it means fuck all, when Billy knows the tightrope is narrowing by the second. 

“Messy. This range, we’re talking decapitation, the way you’re lined up, and sure, that’s an option, but the way the throat explodes, the way the air in the lungs sprays up all that blood?” He drags his lip through his teeth, upper lip curling into a brief snarl before returning to neutral. “Not precisely a clean death. That what you want for me?” Billy’s laugh is sharp; hollow. “Guess it is, huh? Guess I deserve it, too. Not like I got anyone to cry over my open casket.”

Billy takes a shallow breath; his skin is itching with the need to move, but he’s not going to make it easy. If Frank wants to end this, he needs to do it off his own steam.

“Russo!”

A bullet zips over his shoulder, and in the split second after Billy’s eyebrows draw together in confusion; wrong gauge, wrong velocity - and then someone is yelling his name again over a loudspeaker, and a helicopter spotlight lights him up like Time’s Square in miniature. Billy’s got the pistol righted and throws himself sideways, towards the black water at the edge of the pier, but Frank had him out in the open and it’s too far, too slow; the next round clips his arm, the burn sharp and sudden; sends asphalt debris flying, and then Billy’s hit by a truck - or the next closest thing - as Frank’s body barrels into his. He feels the double impact: Frank hits him just as the rifle round hits Frank, and then they’re both in the water, a flurry of bullets zipping past them. 

"I don't know," James said tightly, "I think it's going pretty good so far, all things considered."

Another sniper round whizzed past, clipping a piece off the already flimsy cinderblock wall he was doing his best to squeeze completely behind. On the other end of the roof, Castle was flat on his back, expression as pleased as would be expected, considering if he so much as inhaled too deeply he'd be a sitting duck.

"So, uh, on to Plan B? I throw a couple of smoke bombs, you roll on your stomach, grab that rifle, and try to cover me so I can close?" The angles were all wrong, but they didn't have much of a choice. Any longer like this, they were going to get flanked. "You owe me a beer for any bullet I catch."

At least that way there'd be something to look forward to. James glanced up at the clouds overhead, internally calculating the wind velocity, and tossed the first smoke bomb without waiting for Frank's reply.

The first words Billy Russo said to Frank Castle were: “Queens is a shithole.” 

The afternoon sun was already doing its best to melt the bleachers. Billy had his faded baseball cap pulled down low, which almost managed to obscure the black eye, but his bare forearms were slowly turning from pink to lobster red, as were the tips of his ears, which he wasn’t going to grow into for another year or two. He wasn’t allowed in the dugout since he wasn’t playing, though the one kid with a leg brace was down there, enjoying the tepid knockoff Gatorade from their cooler.

Maybe Billy was looking for a fight; maybe that was just how New Yorkers made friends. There was a ancient-looking baseball mitt clutched in his right hand, knuckles too tight to be casual. If Frank wanted to shoot something back, he was interrupted by his coach, who yelled for him to get his ass back on the field. Billy flashed a grin that was all teeth.

The next week, the weather had turned shittier; the rain came down in sheets, turning the field into a mud pit, but that wasn’t enough to cancel the friendly. Billy was still parked on the sidelines. The black eye had mostly cleared up. The baseball cap was gone. His hair was cropped short, an unkind buzzcut that’d left a few noticeable nicks and at least two deeper cuts in its wake.

There was something particularly sullen about his expression, like the rain was just there to provide a dramatic backdrop to his mood. His threadbare jeans were soaked through, scuffed knees visible where the fabric had disintegrated completely, a single huddled figure excluded from the equally miserable huddle on the field.

When Frank idled on first base and caught his eye, Billy blew water off the tip of his nose and flashed him a mocking salute.

By the third game, Billy was still sidelined. The sun was back with a vengeance, but the baseball cap wasn’t. Billy’s nose was sunburned. A ball went wide, landed high up in the bleachers, and Frank trotted out to get it - of course he did, nothing but pent up energy and the constant need to move, even if everyone else wanted to lie down in some scrap of shade; Billy took the stairs to the top two at a time, met him half-way, tossed the baseball the last few feet between them.

“You might wanna teach the rest of your team the objective is to actually hit the ball with the stick,” he said, head tilted. “Nice home run earlier, Queens. You’re not as hopeless as that haircut makes you look.”

“You’re what, two beers in and you’re tapping out on me? Weak, Frankie.”

Maybe it was closer to four beers and three shots, but the point was that it didn’t take a tremendous amount of alcohol to render Frank Castle pleasantly shitfaced. Nobody would have believed it until they saw it, either, but he was a friendly drunk - stupid, sure, and sort of handsy, but never with anyone he didn’t know would be down for it - which explained the arm slung over Billy’s shoulders.

“And it’s not like I’m asking you anything crazy. I just can’t believe, considering your skill set, you’ve never been shotgunned.”