I went from "I'm not going to continue this" to "hey, I might continue this but in a few days." Apparently by "a few days" I really meant "around 2-3 hours." Christ, I have an actual paper I need to write, what am I doing here.
Companion/follow-up to How Love Still Unroots You (above).
Unseen, Unsayable
Unbidden and unwanted, their simulacrum of violence gives way to softer things.
Not everything gives way between them. There is still morality and there is still the mission and those are still, for the most part, mutually exclusive linchpins of their identities.
And it is not all the time. They punch and claw and bite more than they don’t, pummeling against the indomitable shores of the other. But, sometimes, increasingly, there is no pain, there is no taking. They just kiss gently, touch reverently, and give away to the other what little they hoarded or collected of themselves over the previous days and weeks.
Softer things. Once, when Matt stopped to think about it, he wondered if the soft touches and the way Frank might occasionally hold him close somehow grounded Matt for a few days afterwards. Like the soft touches of the night blended the sharp edges of Matt back into his surroundings so, for a short time afterward, Matt didn’t feel like he walked apart from the world as an exposed and raw nerve.
But Matt doesn’t think too closely and tries, generally, not to stop and think about much. Hesitation leads to fear. He wouldn’t be Daredevil if he made a habit of hesitating.
A week and a half after they—a week and a half after they stayed in Matt’s apartment during the night of sleet, Frank finds Matt on his way home from a quick patrol of the docks. He only has two guns on him and three knives. He’s carrying a bottle of whiskey and doesn’t seem inclined to offer an explanation (it occurs to Matt, later, that Frank might not’ve even known what to say then). Matt lets him follow.
Inside, after Matt’s changed, he finds Frank on the couch with the whiskey open, two glasses out, and a gun disassembled and neatly compartmentalized. Matt has no fucking clue if he reads the situation correctly—Frank hasn’t even punched him yet, there’s no paradigm to follow. But he doesn’t hesitate. He throws himself on the couch with the same grim rush that makes him jump from rooftops, careful to connect hip-to-hip, knee-to-knee, shoulder-to-shoulder. It’s uncomfortably close and Frank has to adjust so he’s using his left hand predominantly to clean the gun. But he doesn’t say anything.
They drink a lot. Matt’s never done that before. He doesn’t really drink much on his own because alcohol messes with his senses (“hey, do you get the spins?”), he’s more of a sociable drinker and, really, that started because Foggy—
Drinking for the purpose of getting drunk is new. The world starts to tilt soon enough, and there’s a point when taste becomes too acute and he thinks his palate can pick up on dirt from hands, mildew from the casks, even copper from the still. Nausea creeps up, but then his taste sort of spins out with the rest of the room, slumps together with smell until its too confused and he can ignore it again.
The alcohol is one last barrier, a contrived excuse for this—whatever this is. Because fists and bullets are their constituent parts, they’re more animals than men, meant to die bloody and live bloodier. They have singular, existential purpose. Soft don’t fit, impairs the primary and secondary and tertiary function of their being. Sacrifice upon sacrifice rides on the back of the names they made themselves into and to do anything besides their mission is a betrayal, a weakness, and makes them wonder what is the point of them?
So they sip on whiskey excuses until Frank has to guide Matt to bed. Matt has to hold Frank up. They lose their shirts and wrap up in each other, locking ankles together, making themselves too heavy to be swept away. Matt’s fingers dance across Frank’s skin, trying to decipher a pattern. Frank holds on tight enough to bruise.
They get in each other’s way and they fight but it’s less and less like it was before—desire and dominance, teeth and claw.
They drink a lot.
They don’t talk.
Outside, Frank takes down a drug cartel edging in from Chicago. Matt’s able to save most of them, especially Frank. Vindictively, he sends his billy club into the temple of the guy who’s about to stab Frank in the back of the neck. Frank doesn’t turn to Matt, doesn’t say thank you.
Outside, when Matt’s reconnaissance of Midland Circle Financial turns into a hasty retreat from a small army of armed thugs and two members of the Hand, Frank appears at his back, keeps the thugs off of him while Matt deals with the Hand. Matt loses his billy clubs but Frank tosses him a knife in the same motion he uses to kick an assailant in the chest. Matt catches it, throws it into the gut of the oncoming ninja, rolls, and comes up hard under the jaw of the thug aiming at Frank.
Inside, the flow of alcohol tapers minutely, and sometimes Frank ends up lying on the couch, sometimes with his head on Matt’s lap, fingers rolling the dial of a hand radio on the floor while Matt listens to case files or an audiobook and rests his hand on Frank’s chest. Matt skims finger pads on the inside of Frank’s bicep and Frank usually responds by refilling Matt’s empty glass. Frank sometimes catches Matt’s hand in his own and Matt will bend down in response and align their lips.
Inside, the morning after they fall asleep on the couch or entangled in silk sheets and each other, Frank usually stays. Sometimes he’ll sleep until noon, make the bed, fold their clothes, clean the glasses, and leave while Matt’s gone. Sometimes he gets up and cooks breakfast. Matt will walk in, skin warm and damp from a shower, and Frank will hold out his hand from his place over the stove. Matt will hand him the milk or the paprika or the salsa.
They go entire encounters, hours and hours, without speaking.
Softer things. Eventually, they talk more, but they don’t actually say much, and they mean what they say even less.
“Shitty timing, Red,” Frank grumbles as Matt’s billy club bruises his wrist and wastes his last bullet. The pimp turns to run and Frank, irritated, throws his gun at the guy’s head and misses.
A billy club takes the runner down, ricochets off the wall, and wobbles back to Matt’s hand. “Even shittier aim, Castle.”
“Brought Thai,” Matt says when he walks in his apartment another night and Frank is already there. It’s the first time—eating together will be new, if Frank stays.
Matt senses Frank stiffen and then force himself to relax. “Not that place on the corner?”
“Of course that place on the corner.”
“That place is shit, Red. The one on 43rd and 10th is better.”
“If you like overpaying for beef-that’s-not-beef saturated in MSG, sure.”
“At least it tastes like something authentic.”
“…Frank, I don’t want to alarm you, but I think you might be a psychopath.”
Now, three weeks later, Matt cooks (though it’s 3 a.m.) as Frank sits on his counter, sewing kevlar into his jacket.
“Night court is the armpit of humanity,” Matt decides out loud over the fish he’s frying.
“Night court?” Frank asks incredulously, words slurred around the needle and thread in his mouth.
“Well, night shift at the courthouse, anyway—I’m working as an A.D.A right now. Lost a witness on a big case, got booted to night shift because the D.A. is an actual bag of dicks.”
“Mm,” Frank responds because he’s usually unimpressed by hyperbole.
“A literal armpit,” Matt continues, because Frank is also unimpressed with the ironic use of the word ‘literal’. On cue, Frank breathes sharply through his nose, annoyed.
“You talkin’ ‘bout the lawyers or the cases?” He ties off the thread, shifts the jacket around, straightens to stretch his back, and hands Matt the serving plate when he holds his arm out for it.
“…The lawyers,” Matt concludes after a serious internal debate, turning to serve the food. He eats while he stands and Frank doesn’t move his work off his lap but reaches down to shovel a mouthful without lifting the plate, half of the food falling from the fork back to the plate or all over Matt’s counter. With Frank on the counter and Matt standing they’re almost too close to each other to manage eating and sewing, but they do. “Because the hazing is getting old. They were excited, maybe, to have me on board at first. But then I had to leave abruptly a few nights ago and had to shove my case load on the next shift and I guess I sort of…” he shrugs.
“Lost your appeal?”
Matt’s own undignified snort surprises him, as does the chuckle that jabs out of him. He smashes his face against Frank’s arm, muffling how helpless he is to stop the laughter once it starts. He suddenly remembers that it’s been a long, long time since he laughed.
Frank buries his nose in Matt’s hair and laughs silently with him. Softer things.
They hadn’t fucked around—not really—since before the night they first ended up in Matt’s apartment. There’d been kisses, hot and deep. There’d been tongues and mouths on each other’s throats. Occasionally they’d rutted against each other, clothed, until they were sticky but warm and supple enough to chase sleep together. This was probably because they were too drunk to get it up, at first. And also because of things unseen and unsayable, equal parts dark corners and softness that neither could bear.
Tonight they bypass couch, whiskey, and clothes. Tonight Frank uses teeth again, but so lightly, so teasingly, Matt is a quaking mess, breaking out into a sweat and panting Frank’s name. Eventually, it winds to a soft, quiet close as Matt leans back against Frank’s chest and Frank pulls him in tighter, hand low on Matt’s belly. Frank angles in slow, though Matt’s already open and wet from fingers and tongue and fingers again. Matt shivers, hardening again as Frank moves in him.
“Jesus, Red,” Frank murmurs in disbelief and want, digging the heel of his hand in Matt’s lower belly, fingers reaching down to tease the length of him, mouth busy with the side of his neck. Matt presses his damp forehead into the sheets, moans, reaches back to pull Frank in closer still, mouth open but the words unsayable.
In the morning, Matt leisurely drifts into wakefulness. The smell of brewed coffee permeates the apartment and their clothes from last night are neatly folded on top of the dresser. He can feel the cold radiating from Frank’s feet from where he just settled back in from walking the cool floors. He can’t see Frank’s face, but knows Frank is looking at him, so he reaches out, runs his fingers lightly over sleepy features. Frank leans into the touch and Matt pulls him the rest of the way in, laughing when Frank’s cold feet touches his, and hiding a smile in Frank’s arm as the other valiantly struggles to tuck silk sheets back around them.
Frank falls back to sleep first, tucked against Matt, and Matt falls, too, giving way to softer things.
[FILL 2/2] Frank/Matt, Rooftop sex leads to unwanted feelings
Apparently by "a few days" I really meant "around 2-3 hours."
Christ, I have an actual paper I need to write, what am I doing here.Companion/follow-up to How Love Still Unroots You (above).
Unseen, Unsayable
Unbidden and unwanted, their simulacrum of violence gives way to softer things.
Not everything gives way between them. There is still morality and there is still the mission and those are still, for the most part, mutually exclusive linchpins of their identities.
And it is not all the time. They punch and claw and bite more than they don’t, pummeling against the indomitable shores of the other. But, sometimes, increasingly, there is no pain, there is no taking. They just kiss gently, touch reverently, and give away to the other what little they hoarded or collected of themselves over the previous days and weeks.
Softer things. Once, when Matt stopped to think about it, he wondered if the soft touches and the way Frank might occasionally hold him close somehow grounded Matt for a few days afterwards. Like the soft touches of the night blended the sharp edges of Matt back into his surroundings so, for a short time afterward, Matt didn’t feel like he walked apart from the world as an exposed and raw nerve.
But Matt doesn’t think too closely and tries, generally, not to stop and think about much. Hesitation leads to fear. He wouldn’t be Daredevil if he made a habit of hesitating.
A week and a half after they—a week and a half after they stayed in Matt’s apartment during the night of sleet, Frank finds Matt on his way home from a quick patrol of the docks. He only has two guns on him and three knives. He’s carrying a bottle of whiskey and doesn’t seem inclined to offer an explanation (it occurs to Matt, later, that Frank might not’ve even known what to say then). Matt lets him follow.
Inside, after Matt’s changed, he finds Frank on the couch with the whiskey open, two glasses out, and a gun disassembled and neatly compartmentalized. Matt has no fucking clue if he reads the situation correctly—Frank hasn’t even punched him yet, there’s no paradigm to follow. But he doesn’t hesitate. He throws himself on the couch with the same grim rush that makes him jump from rooftops, careful to connect hip-to-hip, knee-to-knee, shoulder-to-shoulder. It’s uncomfortably close and Frank has to adjust so he’s using his left hand predominantly to clean the gun. But he doesn’t say anything.
They drink a lot. Matt’s never done that before. He doesn’t really drink much on his own because alcohol messes with his senses (“hey, do you get the spins?”), he’s more of a sociable drinker and, really, that started because Foggy—
Drinking for the purpose of getting drunk is new. The world starts to tilt soon enough, and there’s a point when taste becomes too acute and he thinks his palate can pick up on dirt from hands, mildew from the casks, even copper from the still. Nausea creeps up, but then his taste sort of spins out with the rest of the room, slumps together with smell until its too confused and he can ignore it again.
The alcohol is one last barrier, a contrived excuse for this—whatever this is. Because fists and bullets are their constituent parts, they’re more animals than men, meant to die bloody and live bloodier. They have singular, existential purpose. Soft don’t fit, impairs the primary and secondary and tertiary function of their being. Sacrifice upon sacrifice rides on the back of the names they made themselves into and to do anything besides their mission is a betrayal, a weakness, and makes them wonder what is the point of them?
So they sip on whiskey excuses until Frank has to guide Matt to bed. Matt has to hold Frank up. They lose their shirts and wrap up in each other, locking ankles together, making themselves too heavy to be swept away. Matt’s fingers dance across Frank’s skin, trying to decipher a pattern. Frank holds on tight enough to bruise.
They get in each other’s way and they fight but it’s less and less like it was before—desire and dominance, teeth and claw.
They drink a lot.
They don’t talk.
Outside, Frank takes down a drug cartel edging in from Chicago. Matt’s able to save most of them, especially Frank. Vindictively, he sends his billy club into the temple of the guy who’s about to stab Frank in the back of the neck. Frank doesn’t turn to Matt, doesn’t say thank you.
Outside, when Matt’s reconnaissance of Midland Circle Financial turns into a hasty retreat from a small army of armed thugs and two members of the Hand, Frank appears at his back, keeps the thugs off of him while Matt deals with the Hand. Matt loses his billy clubs but Frank tosses him a knife in the same motion he uses to kick an assailant in the chest. Matt catches it, throws it into the gut of the oncoming ninja, rolls, and comes up hard under the jaw of the thug aiming at Frank.
Inside, the flow of alcohol tapers minutely, and sometimes Frank ends up lying on the couch, sometimes with his head on Matt’s lap, fingers rolling the dial of a hand radio on the floor while Matt listens to case files or an audiobook and rests his hand on Frank’s chest. Matt skims finger pads on the inside of Frank’s bicep and Frank usually responds by refilling Matt’s empty glass. Frank sometimes catches Matt’s hand in his own and Matt will bend down in response and align their lips.
Inside, the morning after they fall asleep on the couch or entangled in silk sheets and each other, Frank usually stays. Sometimes he’ll sleep until noon, make the bed, fold their clothes, clean the glasses, and leave while Matt’s gone. Sometimes he gets up and cooks breakfast. Matt will walk in, skin warm and damp from a shower, and Frank will hold out his hand from his place over the stove. Matt will hand him the milk or the paprika or the salsa.
They go entire encounters, hours and hours, without speaking.
Softer things. Eventually, they talk more, but they don’t actually say much, and they mean what they say even less.
“Shitty timing, Red,” Frank grumbles as Matt’s billy club bruises his wrist and wastes his last bullet. The pimp turns to run and Frank, irritated, throws his gun at the guy’s head and misses.
A billy club takes the runner down, ricochets off the wall, and wobbles back to Matt’s hand. “Even shittier aim, Castle.”
“Brought Thai,” Matt says when he walks in his apartment another night and Frank is already there. It’s the first time—eating together will be new, if Frank stays.
Matt senses Frank stiffen and then force himself to relax. “Not that place on the corner?”
“Of course that place on the corner.”
“That place is shit, Red. The one on 43rd and 10th is better.”
“If you like overpaying for beef-that’s-not-beef saturated in MSG, sure.”
“At least it tastes like something authentic.”
“…Frank, I don’t want to alarm you, but I think you might be a psychopath.”
Now, three weeks later, Matt cooks (though it’s 3 a.m.) as Frank sits on his counter, sewing kevlar into his jacket.
“Night court is the armpit of humanity,” Matt decides out loud over the fish he’s frying.
“Night court?” Frank asks incredulously, words slurred around the needle and thread in his mouth.
“Well, night shift at the courthouse, anyway—I’m working as an A.D.A right now. Lost a witness on a big case, got booted to night shift because the D.A. is an actual bag of dicks.”
“Mm,” Frank responds because he’s usually unimpressed by hyperbole.
“A literal armpit,” Matt continues, because Frank is also unimpressed with the ironic use of the word ‘literal’. On cue, Frank breathes sharply through his nose, annoyed.
“You talkin’ ‘bout the lawyers or the cases?” He ties off the thread, shifts the jacket around, straightens to stretch his back, and hands Matt the serving plate when he holds his arm out for it.
“…The lawyers,” Matt concludes after a serious internal debate, turning to serve the food. He eats while he stands and Frank doesn’t move his work off his lap but reaches down to shovel a mouthful without lifting the plate, half of the food falling from the fork back to the plate or all over Matt’s counter. With Frank on the counter and Matt standing they’re almost too close to each other to manage eating and sewing, but they do. “Because the hazing is getting old. They were excited, maybe, to have me on board at first. But then I had to leave abruptly a few nights ago and had to shove my case load on the next shift and I guess I sort of…” he shrugs.
“Lost your appeal?”
Matt’s own undignified snort surprises him, as does the chuckle that jabs out of him. He smashes his face against Frank’s arm, muffling how helpless he is to stop the laughter once it starts. He suddenly remembers that it’s been a long, long time since he laughed.
Frank buries his nose in Matt’s hair and laughs silently with him. Softer things.
They hadn’t fucked around—not really—since before the night they first ended up in Matt’s apartment. There’d been kisses, hot and deep. There’d been tongues and mouths on each other’s throats. Occasionally they’d rutted against each other, clothed, until they were sticky but warm and supple enough to chase sleep together. This was probably because they were too drunk to get it up, at first. And also because of things unseen and unsayable, equal parts dark corners and softness that neither could bear.
Tonight they bypass couch, whiskey, and clothes. Tonight Frank uses teeth again, but so lightly, so teasingly, Matt is a quaking mess, breaking out into a sweat and panting Frank’s name. Eventually, it winds to a soft, quiet close as Matt leans back against Frank’s chest and Frank pulls him in tighter, hand low on Matt’s belly. Frank angles in slow, though Matt’s already open and wet from fingers and tongue and fingers again. Matt shivers, hardening again as Frank moves in him.
“Jesus, Red,” Frank murmurs in disbelief and want, digging the heel of his hand in Matt’s lower belly, fingers reaching down to tease the length of him, mouth busy with the side of his neck. Matt presses his damp forehead into the sheets, moans, reaches back to pull Frank in closer still, mouth open but the words unsayable.
In the morning, Matt leisurely drifts into wakefulness. The smell of brewed coffee permeates the apartment and their clothes from last night are neatly folded on top of the dresser. He can feel the cold radiating from Frank’s feet from where he just settled back in from walking the cool floors. He can’t see Frank’s face, but knows Frank is looking at him, so he reaches out, runs his fingers lightly over sleepy features. Frank leans into the touch and Matt pulls him the rest of the way in, laughing when Frank’s cold feet touches his, and hiding a smile in Frank’s arm as the other valiantly struggles to tuck silk sheets back around them.
Frank falls back to sleep first, tucked against Matt, and Matt falls, too, giving way to softer things.
end.