A Drink and a Good Time

“You can’t just…oh. Okay. You’re going to anyway.” Karen steps aside as Frank moves past her, boots heavy on her doorstep. It’s not even that late, ten, but he’s covered in blood and limping. She’s seen worse. She’s seen him worse. Long past are the days when she had to run retching to the bathroom. “Are you in for the night?” she asks as he settles himself at her kitchen table, boot going over knee.

It’s a long while before, “Should go out again.” Of course.

“How bad is your leg?”

He shrugs. “Had worse.”

In a different life, or different choices, this could be Matt here, all in red. He’d probably talk more, anyway. Well, at least Frank isn’t all uptight about who he is. She has coffee left over in the pot, pours a cup and hands it over.

She had a feeling he’d be over tonight, the cartels are acting up and Matt’s been coming to work with fresh bruises. Frank takes his coffee black; some things about him are so stereotypical. She’s dressed for bed, a long tee, and he’s eying up her legs. He won’t say anything, not yet. Depends on how tired he is.

They sit in silence for a few minutes. He could be slowly bleeding to death, she wouldn’t know. The body armor looks alright, but he only comes here when there’s something he can’t stitch up himself or leave to scar over.

His fingers tap thickly on his knee. There’s a scar over his ring finger, big enough that it must’ve almost come off. She likes his hands, likes the calluses on the pads of his fingers. When she looks back up at his face he’s smirking, almost. She bites her lip, flustered, getting up to fish for whiskey: him and that damn stare, she needs something to take away the chill.

“You’re gonna need that,” he says as she takes down the bottle, hooks her fingertips in a glass.

“Why, are you planning a party?” She pours her drink up to the brim, figuring she’ll need the liquid courage for whatever comes next. Frank puts his in his coffee; she watches as he swigs, the muscles in his throat moving.

“Not a party.” He shrugs his jacket off, showing broad shoulders, the scars there. There’s a throwing star embedded in his right shoulder, deep. Blood spills down, staining his white tank, drops of it on her chair. Karen’s really, really good at getting blood out of things by now. Only recently has she stopped having nightmares of it all over her hands. “S’it bad?” he asks; she can picture the shit-eating grin on his face. Frank’s got a weird sense of humor that comes through in flashes of who he used to be.

“Shut up, Frank.” She doesn’t bother asking him how he got hurt, the answer’s too obvious. It’s a ninja star, so he was fighting ninjas. There are a lot of ninjas in New York recently, tumbling over each other and beating up Matt. Karen thinks it’s weird. The gangbangers they faced under Fisk were a little more modern. “Can I take it out?” she wonders, putting one hand on his other shoulder, the skin warm and thick with scars.

She flicks at the star with a finger, knowing he won’t really feel it or, at least, won’t admit to pain. “Dunno. Guess we’ll find out.” Swallowing, she grips the star and tugs; it comes away with an awful squelching noise that makes her gag. Frank lets out a shuddering breath, white-knuckle gripping the table. Blood spills but doesn’t spurt, thank Christ. It didn’t hit anything important.

She pours what’s left of the whiskey right on the wound, waiting out the tremors of his body, the hairs rising on the back of his neck. “Are you okay?” she asks, knowing her voice is trembling. People like Claire Temple are a lot more suited for this kind of work.

“Fine,” he answers, and she lets the star drop into his sink with a clink. Honestly, it was a stupid question. She carefully bandages him up, is moved enough to kiss the side of his head when she’s done. He smells like smoke and blood; she wonders when that became comforting. He doesn’t jerk his head away, which is as much permission as she ever gets from him.

She checks the time. It’s only been an hour, Matt’s probably headed out right now. She’s been watching him and Foggy tiptoe around their healing relationship for the past few weeks, both of them so wrapped up in each other that they never notice the spots of blood Karen forgets to clean from her clothing. She’s doesn’t mind, rapidly beginning to understand how easy it is to have all your focus on one person.

“Do you want anything to eat?”

“I had Spam before going on patrol,” he says as she heads for the cabinets.

“Jeez, Frank. That’ll rot you from the inside.” There’s leftover quiche in the fridge, from a new client; Jacques, whose boyfriend got beat up by neo-Nazis who were then beaten up by Daredevil. Another happy ending at Nelson & Murdock. “Do you like quiche?”

He scratches at his beard, taking a long moment before answering, “Doesn’t everyone?” She takes a slice for herself, two slices for him. He eats fast and neat, not making conversation, always polite. Always with the ma’ams and the thank you’s. He could be crude, he can be crude, but usually he tucks it somewhere and blends in better than he should be able to.

She’s watched him charm the pants off total strangers, a crooked grin to match his crooked nose. He pulls it out of the same place his family was, she thinks.

Finished, she pushes her plate away, putting her chin on her folded hands. She’s starting to feel the earliest threads of exhaustion, letting her eyes flutter shut. She’s half-in half-out when she hears his soft, “Karen?”

“Hmph?” she grunts, sleepy and more than a little drunk. His answering huff is fond, followed by his fingers pushing the hair away from her face.

“I think you’re ready for bed.” His voice is low, reaching the rumbling pitch that makes something in her belly clench. She nods into her hands, knowing she’ll have to get into bed herself. He’s not the kind of man to carry her. Standing is a bit harder than it usually is, her legs wobbling. Frank reaches a hand out to steady her, the beginnings of a grin on his face. He handles his alcohol better than she does. “You alright?”

“Yeah, yeah.” She pushes off from the table and makes her slow way to her bed, the blankets lumped from last night. She slides in, pushing her socks off with her toes. She’s never been able to sleep with socks on.

Frank has followed her in, padding softly even with boots on. She’s pretty sure Matt has a similar pair. She’s halfway to sleep, drifting fuzzily in and out as she registers the sound of him brushing his teeth in the next room. Frank’s had a toothbrush here since March, when he showed up at her door with just a dufflebag and his dog, passed out on her couch for seventeen hours.

She knew then, and she knows now, that she should stay away from him. People like him don’t die in their beds, they go young and bloody. She can’t though, not when he leaves the bathroom and catches her eye, one corner of his mouth going up. He doesn’t smile much, only when he’s pretending to be who he used to be. She takes every real smile she can get.

He peels his shirt off, sitting at the edge of her bed to remove his boots. He tried sleeping in them once. Karen let her disagreement of that be known and he hasn’t done it since. Frank’s boots are filthy, covered in blood and bone shards and all sorts of other things she really doesn’t want on her sheets.

He cracks his back, outwardly oblivious to her eyes on him. The long muscles in his spine flex, muscles in his biceps bulging as he stretches his hands out. Her little sigh must go unnoticed, because he slides in next to her without a word, rolling to his side facing away. She doesn’t take offense; he always sleeps like that.

Karen fits herself to the curve of his body instead, making sure not to press too hard against the stitches. This close she can hear his slow heartbeat, the solid pulsing of blood through his veins. She presses a kiss to the side of his neck that she most likes biting. She sometimes wonders how this started, when she started having the Punisher in her bed more nights than not.

She’s tired enough that it isn’t worth thinking about, her eyes heavy and closing when Frank murmurs, “Thanks, Karen.” She hums a response into the back of his neck as sleep finally comes.