#dispatched03

wayward vigilantes are an occupational hazard in new york.

gabriel hasn’t had a firsthand run-in with any of them before—daredevil haunts a ten block radius his parish is comfortably outside (though he keeps meaning to ask old father lantom about him over coffee sometime, whenever he makes it back home to the kitchen,) and most of the others similarly stay out of his neighborhood. it’s been luck more than anything, though, he knows that—knows he’s tempting fate with how often he stays into the night, lights on and doors unlocked in case anyone comes in looking for a place to warm up and a listening ear.

so there’s probably some divine irony in the fact that his lucky streak ends in the form of the punisher dragging himself and half an armory into one of his pews past midnight, his infamous vest splattered with blood and an ugly bruise forming on his rough face.

gabriel considers himself fairly well apprised on the vigilante situation in the city; he knows the kinds of people the punisher guns down and that he has absolutely no reason to count himself among them, and he doesn’t really have an option but to bank on that and approach the man—smaller in person than he looks on the news, really, thickly built but not much taller than he is—ready to deal with whatever bullshit he’s about to have dropped in his lap. whether that’s bravery or pure adrenaline, well—that can wait for the morning, or at least until he has frank castle out of his church one way or another.

“you’re a mess.” billy clicks his tongue, chastising, dark eyes roaming over frank’s body, one boot settling almost idly on his chest. he pretends it’s only winning that sends a stab of satisfaction clean through his gut. “shame it had to be like this, frank.”

maybe now, when he closes his eyes, this is what he’ll see—frank bloodied and beaten, his chest rising and falling beneath billy’s boot. billy remembers the last time he saw frank like this, at lieberman’s hideout, lying laughing on his back covered in blood—rawlins’ and his own. then billy would have made it quick and clean and easy, but now—now he wants to ruin frank like frank ruined him, and there’s no homeland to interrupt them. he removes his boot, dropping down to straddle frank’s waist instead. he can almost taste the blood in the air between them.  

his guys have drawn off enough to give him space—they know that much, at least, without having to be told.  

“i dreamed about you every night, you know.” billy tilts his head, curious, almost thoughtful. every night when he’d woken up, sweating, cuffed to his hospital bed, every time he caught a glimpse of his mangled reflection. he’d thought of nothing but frank, even facing a fucking tribunal for crimes that really had jackshit to do with him, and frank—frank had thought about them. he only remembers fragments of that night, the sound of his own screaming and starbursts of pain, everywhere pain, but he remembers that, frank’s lips inches from the shell of his ear. every day, i look for them, bill. billy’s lips pull back from his teeth.

“is that so?”  as content as he seems here, with their strangely domestic arrangement and no mission to drive him, frank always keeps himself busy. sometimes it’s tinkering with the water system, sometimes it’s taking apart his guns, and sometimes it’s combing through will’s bookshelf. other times they keep each other occupied. he recognizes that tone, the way frank’s muscles tense incrementally under his button-down shirt and the charge in the air between them. will grins, sly and mischievous, a suggestive light dancing in his heavy-lidded eyes.