Devil's Advocate by Unusual_Raccoon
Fandom: Daredevil (TV), The Punisher (TV 2017)
Rating: Explicit
Relationships: Frank Castle/Matt Murdock
Characters: Frank Castle, Matt Murdock, Father Lantom (Marvel), Margaret Murdock, Karen Page
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Omega Verse, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Season/Series 03, Post-Episode: s01e08 The Defenders, Post-Episode: s01e13 Memento Mori, Alpha Frank Castle, Omega Matt Murdock, Catholic Guilt, Twisted and Fluffy Feelings, Rough Sex, Explicit Sexual Content, Anal Sex, Knotting, Biting, Enemies to Lovers, Reunions, First Kiss, Reunion Sex, Matt Murdock Needs a Hug, Angst with a Happy Ending
Word Count: 8k
Summary: *Sequel to Underdog* The Devil of Hell's Kitchen is no more, at least that's what Frank hears on the streets and radio talk shows. He hears it and hears it, but he doesn't feel it - the loss of a bondmate. He's not so numb to loss that he's forgotten what grief feels like. It isn't grief that has him clinging to the scent of lavender and linen in a confessional booth like a junkie chasing a high, it felt like something else. Something more.
Link
It had been months, months of radio silence. Months since that building collapsed in midland circle.
Months and not so much as a peep from the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen. So, when Karen glimpses the ripple of a shadow in the darkness of her apartment, she feels a flicker of hope burn stubbornly in her chest.
One last death-defying stunt from their man without fear. But the flash of lights and sirens illuminates the silhouette in a glow of blue and red. She knows the shape, but it’s not the one she’s looking for. Still, the familiarity urges her to take her hand off of the gun in her purse.
After the dashed hopes, she feels flattery, eyeing the old flower pot sitting on the window sill.
“Where is he?” The gruff question leaves Frank’s mouth, all rough around the edges, and scrapes away the fresh flush of flattery with it. It stings like a slap to the cheek, the surprise, the reality.
“It’s good to see you too, Frank. Who are you looking for this time?” She’s playing coy, on the off chance Frank doesn’t know Daredevil’s secret identity. Considering how long Matt had withheld the secret from her, it wouldn’t surprise her that Daredevil’s part-time rival might not know his identity either; then again, she didn’t know what to believe between the secrets, the flat out lies, and the colorful rumors that floated conspicuously around the vigilantes.
Frank sighs, jittery as he springs into an antsy pace in her living room, his broad body blotting out the light coming in through the windows.
“Oh, c’mon, don’t do that,” He growls, ���Don’t pretend you don’t know who we’re talkin’ about.”
She’s popping the top off of a beer with a hiss, the bottle still wearing condensation from her fridge, it’s probably the only thing she’s got in her fridge; she spends more time these days stocking Matt’s.
“Just tell me where he is, Karen,” He sounds on the verge of pleading, in his own snarling savage kind of way, which unsettles her more than it should. She watches the way his index finger begins to tremble, like he’s pulling a trigger.
She lets out a breath, one that she’s been holding for months, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
“I wish I could tell you Frank, but…” Her throat feels uncomfortably tight, trying to wash away the lump forming there with a swig of beer, “I’ve got nothing.”
“No one’s seen him since midland circle…and in a weird way, it’s like I almost want something to happen, something for him to protect us from-”
She cuts herself off, cheeks damp, her breath catching on the lump in her throat as she spots the hollow expression on Frank’s face in the dark. The shine of patrol car lights hitting his eyes in a glaze of red. A shiver works through her, and a selfish part of her, the part that’s in denial, wants to beg him to stay; Karen wonders how long she can keep begging before someone actually listens.
She knows better. Frank doesn’t stay, he keeps his hood up as he breezes out of her apartment like a gale force wind. The kind of wind that makes her eyes water.
--
He stirs in silk sheets, they’re too soft on his skin, gliding over old scars and fresh wounds. There’s a purpling mark in the shape of his mate’s teeth on his shoulder, and Frank runs his fingers over it with a smile.
The mattress dips beneath the weight of another body and Frank revels in the closeness, welcoming the tangle of sheets and supple skin. Letting his weathered palms skate over broad shoulders, fingers spanning the roadmap of a bondmark, the raised flesh of scar tissue.
His mate gives a delighted shiver and a low hum, soft lips pulled into a lazy smile, and Frank’s too grateful for the sight of him to complain when his word inverts itself. The tangle of silk sheets turn to steel chains, tying him down.
His Devil stands over him, appearing angelic even with his horned mask obscuring most of his face. Somehow holy while holding a gun.
“Stop now, Red Frank,” The words are jumbled, they don’t belong in the Devil’s mouth, but he says ‘em anyway.
“Stop?” Frank echoes, his voice petering out into the music of the city.
“Stop digging.” Matt says finally, the cold barrel digs into Frank’s temple. He sees a smile on the Devil’s face as he pulls the trigger, the crack of a round being fired rings through the air. His world goes dark, unseeing as the sound of cement and steel shattering swallows him up in a tidal wave of destruction.
Frank jerks into consciousness with a gasp, sweat shimmering on his forehead as he presses his face into the dinky twin mattress in his shoebox of an apartment. He runs a hand through his hair, the nightmares were gettin’ worse.
He’d been a wreck since paying Karen a visit a few nights back, looking for answers. He thought he could put sleepless nights behind him, once he’d dealt with his own demons. Those cold mornings, clutching sheets and a frantically pounding heart, searching for something that wasn’t there anymore. Yet, there he was losing sleep over the Devil.
Frank wasn’t sure if it was his guilty conscience that had him replaying that night on the rooftop, religiously each and every night. But every night, the roles were reversed, every night he was chained to that rooftop, a gun in his mate’s hand, and every night his Devil squeezed the trigger with a smile on his face.
You still go to Mass?
Frank supposed, he wound up in the church off Clinton, like any good Catholic, plagued by guilt. He’s half convinced he’ll go up in flames when he steps through the door, but he doesn’t.
He stays there, sitting in one of the empty pews, staring at the elaborately stained glass, the sun spilling shapes like gemstones through the colored panes, across the walls. It’s serene, until the priest takes one look at him, and asks him if he’d like to take confession.
Sittin’ in a confessional booth, so cramped it might as well be a coffin. Frank hates it, breathes deep and feels his chest tighten at the curl of lavender and linen blooming across his palate. It’s faint, too faint, not what he wants it to be. He sucks in another greedy breath before realizing the priest’s fabric softener has him sportin’ a semi. The guilt chases away any pig-headed arousal that crops up at smelling something that reminds him of his Angel.
So he sits, and he hates, mostly himself.
“Take your time, son,” The priest says gently, patiently. It sounds too paternal, too forgiving for a man who didn’t know what Frank had done.
“I, uh, sorry Father, it’s been a long time since I done somethin’ like this,” Frank admits, dragging damp, calloused palms over the thighs of his jeans.
“That’s alright,” He hums through the grated window separating them. Frank can still smell the soft notes of lavender and linen, he clings to them as fiercely as he can.
“I made a promise to someone,” Frank starts, “He wasn’t a friend, didn’t get along often, ‘cept when I was inside ‘im - shit, sorry - point is, we weren’t close, but he was still important to me.”
The priest makes a soft, contemplative noise, doesn’t correct Frank’s slip-ups, just listens.
“He was goddamn stubborn, sorry again,” Frank huffs, chest warm and head buzzing, picturing that smile, that face, “But, he really was somethin’ else. One of a kind. Didn’t know when to stay down, didn’t know when to quit,” His voice turns more wistful than he intends, but it feels too good to savor the memory.
“I had business to take care of, personal shit, and he knew it. Told ‘em I’d come back when my business was squared away and I meant to, I did…”
Frank’s voice hitches in his throat, thinking of every night he had spent holed up in a shitty apartment, hands split open with sores and blisters from tearing down concrete walls for hours on end, bubbling with rage. Reliving the worst day of his life in his sleep, again and again. Maria, the kids. Every night. And when the sun would come up, he’d think of the things he’d done in the dark. He thought of that old Dogs of Hell den, that pool table, that Devil…
“And,” The priest says knowingly.
“And, I spent too much time away, too much time in my own head…” Frank says, voice trailing, dragging behind the reality that he refuses to admit, “Then he died.”
The words weigh heavy on him, but not for the reasons that he knows they should. They don’t weigh heavy like the truth sinking in, the weight heavy like a lie, like a false-truth, like a dishonesty.
“He died.” He says it again to be sure, it doesn’t feel any less foreign in Frank’s mouth.
Frank waits, waits for damnation, for something, but the old man just sighs on the other side of the booth.
“And in your grief, you believe, had you been in his life at the time of his passing, you could have changed things, is that correct?” The question is straight forward, no flowery talk about god.
“I don’t believe it, Father, I know it.” Frank says without hesitation, and he means it.
“This acquaintance of yours, was he ill?”
“In the head, sure. But there was nothing natural about how he went, if that’s what you’re asking,” Frank says dumbly, without considering the implications. Sure, his mate was too stubborn for his own good, and dressed up in a Devil suit to kick the shit out of scumbags, but he wasn’t crazy, not entirely anyway.
“Perhaps he felt it was his time.”
Frank bristles in the narrow booth, his whole body tense with indignation, “Ain’t up to him,” He snaps, too venomously, too possessively.
He thinks back to the rooftop, back to that night, to the screech and cry of metal chains.
Only way you get out of here, only way you walk free, is if I want you to. Know that.
A part of his brain is still wired to biological impulse, to stark ownership. That was his goddamn Omega. Matt’s life wasn’t his own to take, uh-uh, it stopped bein’ his the minute Frank got his teeth into ‘em.
He breathes in deep, eyes watering and pulse pounding at the faint notes of lavender and linen.
“You don’t sound like you're asking for forgiveness for breaking a promise to be there for someone you cared for,” The priest says sagely, and Frank shakes his head despite knowing the man can’t see him.
“I’m not,” He says, voice thick, a hair's width from a growl.
“Then what are you searching for?”
“Punishment,” Frank says without reservation.
--
It’s late when Paul gets a chance to return to the Orphanage. Late enough that he knows most all of their residents should be in bed. Most.
He finds Maggie tirelessly toiling in the laundry room, it's warm and noisy in the confined space. The dim lighting catching on the featherlight creases along her skin, the soft, feminine signs of age. How long had it been since he was the one fathering her, nurturing her back into her faith, giving her guidance when she felt lost.
He blinks and she’s muttering about the damn kids and missing socks in the wash, his mind is so hopelessly tangled on itself that he only catches the tail end of her complaining.
“What?” He hums, and catches the knowing glint in eyes as her annoyance gives way to curiosity.
“Oh, out with it,” She says while hauling a bag of sorted clothes to their ancient washing machine.
He doesn’t bother disguising his current strife, not from her. She’s like a bloodhound that one, always could sniff out trouble.
Paul dances around it, “How is he doing?” They both know who he’s referring to, last he had checked, Matthew was ornery as he’d been as a boy. He sees some of the sheets Maggie is stuffing into the wash, colored with dried blood.
“Same as he always was, Paul.” Maggie says with a sad smile that tells more than words ever could, “He’s bitter and hurt, and angry…and alone.”
Alone.
Perhaps that’s the reality that stings more than it should. They had all seen the scarred over bondmark on his neck, when tending his wounds. In his delirium, broken and barely conscious, Matthew had nearly dislocated a nun’s shoulder when her palm had skated over the scar. Maggie had cautioned all of the girls dressing his wounds to avoid the area, for their safety and his.
All the time he had listened to the boy, listened to his foolhardy ventures, to his talk of the Devil, he had never once shared a breath of being bonded…
“He also hasn’t changed much since you saw him this morning, so would you like to really tell me what this is about?” Maggie asks astutely, in her witty way.
He inhales a deep breath, smells the scent of detergent in the air, the lingering scent of passersby, the affronting heat of gunpowder and blood.
“Today, I took confession from a man…an interesting man, who was struggling with the loss of someone…important.”
He thinks back to the shadow had seen spilled into one of the pews, the broad shape of a man dressed in a dark coat, with dark eyes, lost eyes. He’d watched enough of the news to know the man’s face, to know he knew it for wrong reasons instead of the right ones, to know that reality inspired an insidious curl of fear in his stomach.
“Plenty of people lose people they care for, Paul.” Maggie points out and he’d love more than anything to sweep the possibility under the rug. She’d always said he was the cynic.
“Has he said anything about his bondmate?” Paul asks, it nearly feels taboo to mention it aloud.
Maggie merely shakes her head, “Not to me.”
She thinks a moment longer before giving him a quizzical look that creases the skin on her forehead.
“You don’t think-”
“Maggie, I don’t know what I think. All I know is, a very dangerous man came into my church today, looking for penance for losing someone he cared for; someone that fits the description of a man the whole city thinks is dead.”
“He’s hardly eating, he struggles to sleep, he’s in agony in the hours he’s awake…” Maggie’s voice trails off, but he knows where she’s going with it, always the Devil’s advocate. Matthew is suffering, and they have an opportunity to alleviate that suffering, but at what cost? How much healing could a man like Frank Castle, like the Punisher, truly provide?
“I don’t like the idea, Maggie,”
“Neither do I, but this isn’t about what we like, it’s about what he needs.”
Paul inhales deeply, feeling unusually out of breath. It feels nearly like fate, like finding Matthew, dying and dressed as the Devil. The city, for all of its flaws, needs the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen. They dressed his wounds and gave him clothes, food, and a warm bed, but beyond that, they had never questioned what he needed.
He stares down at Maggie, a small, sad smile on her face. He knows she is right, she usually is, that doesn’t make the decision any easier.
But who was he to step in the way of god’s will?
“Fine. I’ll see what I can arrange, until then, see what we can do about moving Matthew somewhere with more…privacy.”
They both cast a cursory look around the laundry room, before sharing a long sigh.
--
Frank didn’t think goin’ to church was gonna fix him, so he wasn’t too disappointed when it didn’t.
He considers the festering hurt in his chest, the self-loathing that chews away at him. He thinks back to the last time he’d seen his mate, the last time he’d been with ‘em.
Frank is waiting in the darkness of Matt’s apartment, and slips in through the rooftop entrance that isn’t locked. He isn’t hearing much these days about the Devil no more; things had gone quiet since he’d left. Since he took out Schoonover and disappeared.
And maybe it was the distance that sent ‘em back, the time away gnawing at him. He doesn’t think too hard about the why, just settles for the now.
There’s a beer on the table, half-drunk, sweating onto a dissolving napkin.
He hears the door click and hears Red walk in, casual and calm, white cane folded up and put aside.
There’s an ad playing on the billboard, spilling vibrant light into the space as his mate steps into the open living area. He’s wearing casual clothes, jeans that hug him right and a button-up with a few buttons undone.
He doesn’t smell like scent blockers and Frank revels in the exposure. Matt’s got a beer in his hand, the head of the bottle clutched between scarred knuckles. He doesn’t say nothin’, just takes a pull from the bottle, and Frank watches, mesmerized by the motion of his throat working.
He stares at the couch, thinks back to the time he’d been sittin’ on it, with the kid kneeling between Frank’s spread thighs. He thinks back to how pretty his Devil looked then, with Frank’s cock down his throat.
“You planning on standing there all night?” Matt asks, his tone is dry and his mouth curled into a smirk.
Frank ignores the remark, is stuck on the calm way Matt is standing, relaxed, not whimpering or whining, just a cold sort of indifference. He hates it.
“You had company,” Frank says, eyes narrowing between the beer Matt’s holding and the one on the coffee table.
“I did,” Matt says, still calm as ever, almost smug. He takes another pull from the bottle, warm lips wrapped around the end, liquid spilling into his pretty mouth.
Frank grunts out a sound that makes Matt snort out an amused laugh, sort of condescending.
“Smells like shit in here,” Frank adds, and it does, buried beneath Matt’s scent are the conflicting notes of other Alphas, male, female. One more concentrated on the couch, others faded like bread crumbs leading up to the bedroom. It feels like a slap in the face, but the kid isn’t cowed by it, doesn’t look particularly upset for having pissed off his Alpha.
Matt snorts another laugh, practically done with his beer, his other hand poised on his hip. Frank is livid, all soft-hearted yearning seems distant as he looks at his mate, so foolishly unafraid.
He thinks back to the Alpha he had bested on the very roof above their heads, thinks back to the way he’d claimed what was his, what he owned in that very bed…
He thinks of every Alpha Matt has ever dragged into that space in his absence. His blood is boiling. There’s a vein in his neck that’s jumping animatedly beneath his skin in time with his erratically pounding heart.
The kid’s smirk deepens knowingly.
“So, did you come here just to insult my apartment?” Matt asks with that dry wit that stirs heat in Frank’s stomach.
His empty beer bottle dangling between his fingers, a challenging, unafraid smirk on his lips.
“Saw the opportunity,” Frank grits between his teeth, now that he’d noticed them, he can’t escape the clashing scents in the air.
Matt nods along and Frank can’t tear his gaze from the few undone buttons of his mate’s shirt, jaw tense as he tries to figure out who had plucked them open. Nausea and hate sweeps through him. His every molecule is screaming with the biological compulsion to rip into what’s his, to make that used little hole remember who he fuckin’ belonged to.
There’s a growl lingering in his throat, not fully realized, but threatening to be.
“What do you want, Frank?” Matt asks with feigned tenderness, at least Frank thinks it’s feigned. It can’t be real, none of it, maybe it never was. He wants to say a thousand things, wants to say congratulations on winning that pro-bono case, wants to string the ugliest snarl of curses for having the audacity to bring other Alphas into his bed, wants to say the thing he realized on the drive over: I missed you.
Instead, he says, “You know what I want, Red.”
He can smell honey and salt joining the pine and sap in the air, it feels antagonistic, spiteful. Matt reaches up and plucks off his glasses in a smooth motion, soft hazel eyes creased at the corners with a sly smile that Frank craves more than oxygen. He delicately folds his glasses with practiced fingers, effortlessly setting them on the coffee table behind him.
He blinks back at Frank, not truly looking at him, more like through him.
“Then what are you waiting for?”
It’s an invitation, one that Frank accepts without hesitation. He practically tears across the apartment, an unforgiving hand in Matt’s hair, dragging him to the bed he took other Alphas in.
The kid doesn’t fight, but it feels more like he’s leading than Frank would like. They pause at the side of the bed, Frank’s gaze catching the unopened knotting condoms he sees sitting on the nightstand.
It’s briefly sobering, not enough to allow Frank to see beyond his haze of rage. The kid doesn’t ask him to wear one, so he doesn’t offer. His hindbrain floods with vibrant, destructive pheromones, he thinks maybe he ought to knock the kid up - like maybe a pup hangin’ off each tit would be a lesson enough of who he belonged to.
The room smells like Matt, like honey and salt, and notes of other Alphas. Frank strips him of his clothes with savage intensity, urging his Omega back onto the bed with mounting frustration.
His own clothes follow suit, pouncing on the bed, eclipsing his mate. It’s dysfunction at its finest.
Frank stares at Matt’s bare body, at the strain of his cock, flushed pink and leaking between lily white thighs. He digs two fingers between Matt’s asscheeks, a growl rolling in his throat at the cling of slick, stringy and wet coating his fingers.
“Whore,” Frank spits venomously, withdrawing his fingers to replace it with his cock. It’s flushed hot and hard, pulsing, dribbling musk and pre-come onto the ridges of Matt’s flat stomach. He rubs the thick, velvety head through the slick dripping from his mate’s hole.
The kid doesn’t argue, doesn’t make any noise save for the occasional grunt at Frank’s brutish behavior. Doesn’t moan or whine, or fuckin’ beg like Frank wishes he would.
His mind goes blank at the first hot clamp of that greedy hole around the bloated head of Frank’s cock. He doesn’t give any time for either of them to adjust, that feels too tender, too loving.
He wants to fuck the sense outta his Omega, wants to put him in his place. He pulls and pushes the kid like he’s made out of clay, when he crumbles, Frank molds him anew with massive hands.
Frank spits slurred words and cruelty with his teeth bared, watching his mate’s untouched, pink cock bounce between his thighs with every thrust. His hair is wild, matted at the temples with tears, chest flushed the same shade of pink as his cock, hole blown open and stretched around Frank’s member.
He gropes and presses on Matt’s bondmark; it's nearly bruised, rubbed raw from every coarse reminder Frank instills.
The kid might hate ‘em, but there’s no denying he’d been dying for his Alpha’s cock. Mouth hanging open every time he comes apart, clenching and spasming around him.
The sheets are sticky, wet with spend and slick and sweat. He wets them with blood when he finally pops his knot, temper flaring, digging his teeth with renewed vigor into the scarred over flesh of Matt’s bondmark. The skin splits and Matt sobs, scrabbling at the silk sheets like he’s trying to get away, but Frank’s bloated knot doesn’t let him go far.
He doesn’t fight long after that, Frank is pleased, gathering Matt’s overworked body into his arms. He fucked Matt a little while longer while they were tied just drilling into him, until the kid passes out.
The sheets smell like them, Matt’s bondmark is bleeding anew, freshly reapplied. He looks thoroughly owned, used, limp in Frank’s arms.
The whole apartment stinks of pine and sap, blood and gunpowder.
His rage dims when morning rolls around, looking at the state of his mate, ruined, hurt. Instead of triumph he just feels regret, a pounding pain that builds between his eyes until he untangles himself from the twist of sheets and limbs.
Matt sleeps like dead after what Frank had put him through, he doesn’t stir as Frank gathers up his cocktail of medications: scent blockers, pain killers, and a plain little morning-after pill.
He doesn’t like the idea of the kid taking them on an empty stomach, so he summons up every domestic memory of fatherhood and toils over cutting an apple. He spreads the wedges across a chipped ceramic plate while he puts on a fresh pot of coffee, burns it because he takes too long thinkin’ about what he had done, about what he was going to do.
He arranges it all on the nightstand, eyeing the knotting condoms staring back at him. He sweeps the packets into a drawer, out of sight, where he can’t acknowledge them and all that they imply.
Frank doesn’t linger after that, tidies up the kitchen and sets the beer bottles aside for recycling before leaving the apartment; before leaving Matt.
It’s not a goodbye, not forever, just for the moment. It’s not the kind of tender embrace that warrants a teary voicemail, so Frank doesn’t leave one.
The only thing he leaves behind are bruises and blood.
Frank blinks back the memory, hindbrain throbbing with shame, with the primal impulse to protect that most every Alpha was wired with.
He thinks, maybe things wouldn’t have hurt so bad if he really hadn’t seen the kid after knotting him the first time, if they held onto their treasured maybe. But they hadn’t. It had been weeks since he’d seen his Devil, weeks since he fucked him into submission. Their goodbye was a silent one, smelling of blood and ruin.
Their last moments together hadn’t been kind ones, they’d been cold and cruel. He thinks of the indignant look in his Omega’s unseeing hazel eyes when he claimed him again and again, the look that said: you can have this, but you can’t have me.
He knows it won’t fix him, he’s not sure anything will. Murdering the man who orchestrated the death of his family and disfiguring his former best friend hadn’t given him any peace. Still, he slides into the confessional booth with a breath, index finger twitching.
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” Frank grunts, “It’s been, uh, two days since my last confession. Been thinkin’ about that one of a kind friend I told you about…”
--
It doesn’t happen all at once, though it certainly does feel like it. The thing that makes them walk a little faster at night, clutch at their belongings and to their lives, starts becoming smaller. Shrinking, dying, like cancerous cells being blasted with radiation.
Crime isn’t nonexistent, but now in the Devil’s absence, there’s something else snapping at it’s heels.
Some diseases are hard to kill though, like whatever insanity is plaguing that fool headed boy of hers.
Maggie won’t admit how much Matthew worries her, wearing the crucifix she had given him like a noose. But he does, god, he worries her.
What worries her more is the other part of him, the part he won’t talk about, not the Devil - no, the other part of him - his bondmate. Maggie grimaces every time she sees the bondmark; the freshly healed scars, still shiny and pink, overlapping, the dull, silvery shape of another’s teeth pressed into his skin.
The pieces begin to fall together, Paul loathes the idea of bringing the man he suspects as being Matthew’s Alpha to the orphanage. Maggie isn’t fond of it either, so she looks at Matthew, truly looks at him to remind herself who they were risking this all for.
She busies herself doing her job, looking after the children at St. Agnes, including Matthew.
She thinks another secret is one too many on her conscience, so she brings it up one night while fixing him a hot toddy. The way she figures it, open sinuses wouldn’t hurt for what they have planned.
“Who was he?” Maggie asks as she adds a squeeze of honey into the steaming mixture.
“Who was who?” Matthew asks, he still sounds congested, his knuckles hesitantly bumping her elbow as she tenderly hands off the drink.
“The winner that gave you that,” She says, tugging gently enough on the collar of his shirt to indicate the sensitive area she wouldn’t deign to touch. He winces, tilting away from her, hot toddy still cupped between his palms, some liquid spilling over his knuckles.
He tests the temperature with his upper lip before taking a sip, brows drawn together behind the dark glasses they had found for him.
“He is - was…Complicated.” He answers flatly, “Broken,” He adds.
It’s not promising to hear, but Maggie thinks it makes more sense then it should. The kinds of people fate snares together.
“The first time we met, he told me,” He snorts like he’s laughing, but it sounds more agonized than amused, “He told me that I was one bad day away from becoming him, from being a killer.”
She stares at him, at the way his mouth still remains curved into a lazy, sad smile. He sips at his drink, trying to breathe in through his nose to no avail.
“You proved him wrong so far.”
“Kinda my whole shtick, sister.” Matthew murmurs with a laugh, raising his hot toddy like he’s making a toast.
“Sounds like a real charmer,” She says and his smile deepens, she can see the way it reaches his eyes for the first time since he’d been brought to St. Agnes.
“Oh yeah,” He drawls, his mouth curls up like he wants to say something else, but he won’t, and she doesn’t ask.
They settle in silence, as silent as the rattling old washing machines and whistly floorboards let it be.
“Was he with you, fighting alongside you when that building came down?” Maggie asks, she isn’t sure if she’s looking for altruism where there isn’t any, or simply a connection. Matthew only snorts, shaking his head.
“No, no, he wasn’t - he has his own wars to fight.” The words hinge on something else, something he won’t talk about, some hurt that isn’t his own to share.
“I see.”
“Complicated, remember.” Matthew adds with a tilt of his head and a smile that seems closer to the boy she remembered instead of the half-dead man they’d brought into the orphanage.
“Well, what would you do if he was here?” She asks, the question feels too close to the truth, but she asks it anyway.
“Here? As in, here in the city, or here in the orphanage?” His mouth is still curled in that acerbic smile, too much wit for his own good.
She shrugs, before adding, “Here, as in with you.”
He sits on the idea, expression somewhat thoughtful as she lifts the bottom of his mug to encourage him to finish his hot toddy.
“There’s not much I can do these days, sister,” he must’ve figured she’s got no stomach for his self-deprecation, because he considers the question and his response more seriously, slumping down in his seat to appear as tired as she has no doubt he is.
“If he was here…” He echoes thoughtfully, his nostrils flare before he says, “I-” He pauses before committing to whatever is hanging on his tongue, “I wouldn’t fight, I’d let him do whatever he wanted.”
Perhaps it's the defeated tone of his voice or his flat, unapologetic wording, or his dejected demeanor that seems to scream out in craving for whatever unspeakable actions are hinted in the air - or perhaps it’s all of it that makes her worry more.
“F-fight?” Maggie echoes, and even as swollen as everything is, he must still be able to hear the surprise in her voice, the horror.
“The shtick, sister,” He reminds her with a tilt of his cup.
“Of course,” She answers, tidying up before sending him off to bed for the night. He hobbles around with his clunky cane, finding the bed before sliding into it with much effort. His scent is easy to mask beneath the odor and perfumes of detergents and fabric softeners, but she knows it, picks it out between the chemical markers in the air. It’s pristine and soft and something she wants to protect with every fiber of her being.
Her hands shake as she climbs the step, fingers cold and bloodless as she kneads at her shoulder, at an old, well-healed scar, feeling sensation eventually drift back into her and a sigh escapes her. Hoping, praying, that the man they were going to welcome into their doors wasn’t the monster she feared he was.
--
Matt stumbles to the sink, everything aches, though his shoulder throbs damningly most of all. The wounds had healed physically, of course there was no telling these days what’s bleeding and what isn’t. His whole world is muted. The fire was put out.
He hears something clatter in the sink, dips his hand into the sink in search of it, and maps out the shape with his fingers. It takes a few feels around to recognize it’s a neti pot.
He gropes for the sink’s handle, turning on the water, allowing the stream to fill the opening in the top of the small porcelain pot.
Leaning over the sink, head swimming, Matt presses the fluted end to one of his blocked up nostrils. Suddenly pressure is lifted from his head as he spits a clotted mouthful of blood and mucus into the sink. The relief is dizzying, sensation spills into the empty space that had previously been clogged up.
He feels, god, he feels.
He maps the terrain with new vision, an image, blurred, composite of vibration, sounds and smells. It's more than he’s had in weeks and it’s a sliver of hope that he can’t help but cling to.
He pushes himself, maybe harder than he should, but the pain motivates him. It’s a drug.
He doesn’t realize how long it’s been until he hears soft footsteps descend the stairs in the laundry room. He marvels at the familiar notes of linen and rosewater that color her scent before she enters the room.
There’s something else, something warm, hearty and savory. Maggie enters carrying a grease-stained paper bag as he pauses in between his training, back slick and shirt clinging to the sweat between his shoulder blades.
“Beef ravioli from Nonna’s, nice.”
It isn’t until she’s chiding him for showing off that he feels his equilibrium shift once more, as another scent cuts through the aroma of the meal she’d gotten him. It’s hard, punching through his fragile senses like a stone thrown through a spider’s web.
The sweetness of copper, fresh blood, and the tang of sulfur and charcoal, gunpowder. It follows each plodding footstep against the stairs like a gunshot. It nearly doesn’t feel real, he gropes for the arm of the statue he knows is behind him, presses against the cool stone. His skin suddenly feels too hot, lavender and linen weep into the air, he can’t remember the last time he took a scent blocker.
It mingles with Frank’s scent in the air and for the first time in a while his palate nearly weeps at the taste of something that isn’t blood and ash.
A growl pulls taut in his Alpha’s throat. The sound melts his hindbrain to pure impulse. His bondmark is alight beneath the cotton-blend of his shirt. His whole world is on fire again, it’s a tonal sea of reds, rage and lust, and heartbreak all painting the visage of the man before him.
“Matthew, this is-” Sister Maggie begins, suddenly all of her prodding the other night becomes unbearably clear.
“I know who this is,” He snaps instantly, jaw tense, hands curling into fists at his sides. His hindbrain and rational mind are at war, it makes his head ache. He recalls their last night together, the way Frank had treated him, the way he used and abused him and ultimately left him. See, the first two things he could tolerate, it was the last offense that stung more than anything. The hurt the memory inspires doesn't dull the wave of want that sweeps through him.
“Red,” Frank cautions, but it only serves to make Matt more irate. Those weeks alone in his apartment missing that stupid pet name, waking up bloody and raw in his own sheets, aching for more pain if it meant more Frank. It wasn’t the pain or the punishment or the sex that bordered on abuse that bothered him, it was the lonlieness, it was the morning after.
He thinks back to that night on the rooftop, wrapped in chains and at his mercy.
We don’t get to pick the things that fix us, Red. Make us whole.
Matt drags a frustrated hand through his hair, lets out a breath that felt like it would burst his lungs if he held it in a moment longer. The next inhale fills him with the heavy scent of Frank, and it’s soothing.
“What is he doing here?” Matt asks, sure to avoid Frank as much as he can, head tilted in Maggie’s direction.
“He wanted to apologize,” She explains diplomatically, “isn’t that right, Francis?”
Matt guffaws an ugly sound so loud, he thinks he bursts an eardrum. He doesn’t think he has enough years left in his life to unpack everything wrong with that sentence.
“Apologize?” He echoes, it’s cutting and mean, but he thinks it should be, “For which part, Francis?”
He feels the vibration of another growl, it resonates through him. He doesn’t wait for an answer before continuing.
“Which part are we apologizing for? Hmm? Maybe the part where you bonded with me against me will? Is it that part? Or, no, let me guess, is it when you tanked my legal career for trying to save your life? Not that either, no, how about when you tried to kill my ex-girlfriend? Or was it when you left after all the shit you put me through, you left, was that it? Can’t be that, because it wasn’t even the first time you pulled a disappearing act.”
He’s breathless and there’s so much hurt, so much burning beneath his skin, he feels like he’s on fire.
“Christ, Red, I get it, I know what-”
“I’m not finished,” Matt barks, he expects Frank to fight him on it, hell he even sort of wants him to.
Frank lets out a sigh, jaw tense, Matt can hear the way his teeth are grinding together, he can hear the tooth he’s missing that wasn’t missing before.
“So finish.” Frank grunts simply.
“You left Frank, you left. And I was alone and I was trying to fill that space you left behind, because you didn’t just claim Matt Murdock, you took the Devil from me too. What the hell was I supposed to do?”
His cheeks feel hot and chin is close to trembling.
“You were supposedta wait,” Frank cut in, frustration oozing into his scent.
“For what?” Matt asks in exasperation.
“For me, goddamn it! You were supposed to wait for me.” He says finally, like it was obvious. Like there had been any rules to what had transpired between them, like Matt was supposed to know.
Matt lets out a breath, he can hear sister Maggie skirting towards the stairs, but he’s too lost on Frank.
“Wait for you to do what? You’re a soldier, Frank. Was I just supposed to wait at home for you to die?”
“Well, you went and beat me to the punchline on that one, didn’t ya,” Matt doesn’t want to laugh at the blunt way the words leave Frank’s lips. Matt’s mouth burns traitorously, tongue dragging on the swell of his lower lip.
Frank doesn’t laugh either, just takes a step closer. Matt’s back is pressed against the stone of the figure behind him. It’s starkly cool in comparison to the blanket of heat he can feel radiating off of his Alpha.
He wants that heat, that fire; wants to drown in it.
“Hell, Red, I’m sorry,” Frank hisses and something in Matt’s body begins to turn limp, muscles going lax, and he clings to the statue behind him to stay upright.
“I’m an asshole and an animal most’a the time, but I never meant to hurt you…not like that.” Matt knows what he means, he remembers the pain he was in on the days following Frank’s visit, the rage he incited in his Alpha. In truth the guest he’d been hosting was nothing more than a friend, a conveniently timed distraction. Matt had known what he wanted, he’d wanted Frank angry and he’d gotten what he wanted. It hadn’t been enough to make him stay, in retrospect, that part kind of checked out.
His hindbrain is flush, spilling dizzying pheromones into his rational mind.
Frank takes another step forward and Matt can feel the cling of his underwear dampened with fresh slick.
“I’m sorry,” Frank says again, they feel too close suddenly, chest to chest, the warmth of his breath is too near to Matt’s mouth. He feels possessed, gripped so potently to kiss him, to finally kiss him.
“So, you can say it.” Frank says heavily, like he’s trying to be encouraging but he’s asking too much of himself. The nearness hits like a narcotic, drinking in the scent of him, the warmth of him. Matt is sure he’s weeping through the back of his sweats.
“It?” Matt slurs, one hand connecting, palm open against Frank’s chest.
“The truth, Angel.”
“Oh- The truth?”
“That you-”
“Want-”
“Hate me.”
The words collide, screeching and impacting like a car crash. It’s sudden and jolts Matt from his stupor, he’s still wetter than the ocean, but all he can do is laugh, it’s a delirious sort of beginning that turns to the kind of side-splitting laugh.
“You think I hate you?” Matt echoes incredulously.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if you did, I haven’t exactly given you reasons not to,” Frank admits, and it’s unwaveringly honest, unflinchingly so. It’s so Frank.
“Frank,” He sighs, “I don’t hate you.” Matt says aloud, admitting it to himself and to his Alpha, and he means it. He knows he has a right to, to hate a man that had taken so much from him…but he can’t.
He thinks maybe his answer comes as a surprise, because Frank goes quiet, his heart rate flutters a bit. A nervous bark of laughter splits through Matt’s senses, it’s giddy and boyish and utterly disarming.
Frank’s big, battered nose presses to Matt’s temple, he can feel the warmth of his breath ruffling his hair. The curve of his smile against the coarse stubble on Matt’s cheek.
Matt’s unraveling in the feeling, nearly losing his balance when Frank sinks down to his knees, head tilted upwards in reverence. His hands are braced on Matt’s hips, holding him steady. It feels like worship, unfettered where his Alpha is kneeling before him.
“I wanna try again,” Frank mutters, softly, pleading, Matt can taste the salt of unshed tears. Hopeful tears.
“It felt like you were trying the first time,” Matt says, lips lifting at the rumble of Frank’s laughter buzzing through him.
“Shit, y’know what I mean. I wanna do better, be better, to ya.” He feels Frank press his forehead deep against Matt’s stomach, and Matt knows it’s not perfect, knows that there are some things that he and Frank would never agree about. But this wasn’t one of them. His hand curls around his Alpha’s nape, rasping over the velvety hairs there.
His body trembles, top to bottom, at the grateful sound Frank groans into him, through the fabric of Matt’s shirt.
They stay like that a while longer, Matt isn’t sure how long ago Maggie disappeared, but he’s suddenly glad she did when he hears a particular brand of growl curl in Frank’s throat.
“Can smell how bad you want me, Angel.” Frank says thickly, pine and sap sitting heavy in Matt’s lungs.
“Then what are you waiting for?” Matt asks, a whine clinging to his throat as Frank rises to his full height.
Warm breathing tingling over Matt’s lips.
“This,” Frank answers simply, leaning in close, pressing his lips to Matt’s. They feel exactly the way Matt imagines in his head, rough and warm and full. His hindbrain is glowing, as he whines for the warmth of Frank’s tongue in his mouth and is happily rewarded. His nails dig into Frank’s shoulders, feeling the statue jut against his back.
Matt thinks he can die like this, die kissing Frank, die in that simple bliss.
Frank may not have been the Alpha Matt had asked for, but he is the one Matt has - the one he wants.
They stumble back to his narrow twin bed with singular intention, pawing at one another. Frank pauses, heavy fingers thick with calluses, trace the smooth shape of his crucifix. Matt arches off of the bed, at the hot glide of Frank’s tongue skating down the hard, lean expanse of his belly. A hand fisting in Frank’s thick hair at the swirl of his molten tongue over a nipple.
A pair of fingers gently circling the scarred flesh around his bonding gland, the nerves, old and new glow beneath his touch. Warm, wet mouth fluttering down his body and close-cropped stubble that stings like sandpaper on his skin.
It’s a heavenly ache.
Frank enters him, slowly, patiently, he’s too wet for it to hurt even if Frank wanted it to. His body blooms around Frank’s cock like it was born to - the thought practically undoes him on the spot.
Praise drips sticky sweet from Frank’s lips, the old headboard creaks beneath Frank’s grip, like he’d rather break that than Matt.
Heat’s burning in his belly, it feels like it has never really gone away, like it was simmering there since a few weeks prior, since Matt had woken up alone.
“Stay,” Matt pleads suddenly, it turns into a moan, voice hitching in his throat, hips following the motion of Frank’s. Sweat clinging to their skin, the sheets are abrasive. His hands grope to cling onto his Alpha, digging his blunt nails into the hard flesh until the fresh tang of blood prickles across his palate.
“Stay,” Matt says again, more earnestly, and Frank fucks him harder - not meaner, just harder.
Matt fights his orgasm, tries to stave off that rush of release. Tries to fight against the tide of drowsiness that follows, knowing that the dream will end the minute he falls asleep - it always does.
But he comes, Frank makes sure of it, and makes a mess of him with smug satisfaction. No one made him feel the way his Alpha does. He comes a second time, feeling the bloated stretch of Frank’s swollen knot slipping comfortably into him, tying them.
He drifts off in euphoria and agony, waiting for the carpet to be pulled out from under him.
He thinks he’ll wake to silence, emptiness, pills by his bedside and a snack.
“How is he?” Matt thinks it sounds like Maggie’s voice, but he’s drifting in that world between consciousness and unconsciousness, his limbs are too heavy and his body too tired.
“Sleeping,” Frank grunts.
“Well, then I should thank you for that alone.”
“Ain’t nothin’ to thank me for, ma’am.”
“Grateful, things turned out the way they did -”
“You and me both.”
Matt loses the rest of the conversation as he is sucked deeper into sleep.
When he wakes, it's not to the loneliness he was used to. He hears the sound of Frank shuffling around the laundry room, barefoot, belt undone and clinking around his waist.
“Morning, sunshine,” Frank greets knowingly, joining Matt on the bed, flimsy plastic flatware in hand along with the beef ravioli Maggie had brought earlier. They share the fork and the cold ravioli and it’s so stupidly mundane that Matt could cry.
“I don’t want to give up Daredevil,” Matt admits, passing the fork back to Frank as he swallows a mouthful of ravioli.
Frank just snorts, “Shit,” He huffs, ravioli tucked into his cheek, “Me neither.”
And Matt thinks that's all he’s ever wanted to hear.
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