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Someone knocks at the door, and I ignore it as long as I can. It has to be a dream. I roll over and try to go back to sleep.
They knock again. Louder, this time, and more insistent. I groan and throw back the covers and head for the front door.
“I’m coming,” I call. The knocking gets louder, only serving to frustrate me further. “I said I’m coming! Keep your pants on!”
I look through the peephole and gasp loudly before flinging the door open to greet a bloodied and bruised Frank Castle.
“Hey,” he says, his voice little more than a growl. He shuffles through the door and gingerly sits on one of the mismatched chairs sat around the table in my kitchen.
“You’re looking awful spritely for a guy who’s supposed to be dead,” I comment, slowly walking over to him and crossing my arms over my chest.
“What can I say?” He grimaces and clutches his hand to his side. “Just can’t keep me down.”
I shake my head. “What the hell have you gotten yourself into this time?” I ask, crouching down and prying his hands away from his side, slowly peeling his bloodied shirt away from his stomach and hitching it up around his abdomen.
“I don’t think you actually wanna know.” He winces as I place a hand to his uninjured side.
“This sure is a lot of blood.” I stand up to grab my first aid kit. The number of times that Frank has shown up on my doorstep as necessitated that it be the size of a large toolbox. “If it’s all yours, I don’t think I can be the one to help you. I don’t keep your blood type on hand.”
He laughs hoarsely. “It’s not mine,”
“That’s gross, Frank,” I call back, rummaging through the closet, shoving aside various old holiday boxes before finally finding the first aid chest. I drop the chest on the kitchen table and grab a bottle of scotch and press it into Frank’s hand before grabbing the large bottle of vodka I keep on hand for situations just like this.
“I didn’t realize you were such a heavy drinker, (Y/N),” Frank says, a smirk cracking some of the blood that’s caked onto his face.
“I don’t drink, and you know that.” I shake my head and open up my medical supplies, sifting through to find gloves, gauze, bandages and a needle and thread. “I buy the scotch for you, and vodka is easier to keep on hand in large quantities without my landlord asking questions than peroxide is.”
“Peroxide?” He begins to ask, only to clench his teeth and hiss loudly when I pour the clear alcohol over the wound in his side. “I see,” He grits out.
“Sure you do,” I grab the towel that’s hanging off the oven handle and wet it with the vodka before gently cleaning the blood away from the wound. “If you really saw any sense, you’d know that you’re barely putting a dent in the asshole population going at it like this.”
“(Y/N), I-”
I hold up the bloodied towel and shush him. “Shut up,” He raises his eyebrows at me. “You show up at my door with a hole in your side and covered in someone else’s blood, you’re going to sit through my unsolicited opinion.”
“Okay,”
“Good,” I hand him the towel. “Clean up or numb yourself, I don’t care, just don’t talk while I patch you up.”
He grunts once and unscrews the cap on the bottle of whiskey in his hand and takes a large swig. He reaches back into the chest of medical treasures for the small mirror he knows I keep in there. I watch him silently as he starts to wipe at the blood on his face and neck before moving back into the kitchen to grab a bowl, another towel, and the needle driver I left in the drawer the last time he showed up.
From what I can tell, he was struck in the side by a bullet, missing anything important. The bullet passed straight through him, making it a little easier to patch him up without serious medical attention. Grabbing a stool, I sit myself down in front of him and pull on the pair of gloves. I sterilize the needle, using the bowl to catch the vodka and set it to the side. Leaning forward, I brace one hand against his bare abdomen, a silent warning to him to keep still and try to be as gentle as possible as I start to sew him up.
Frank lets out the occasional hiss of pain when the thread gets pulled at an odd angle, and I mutter an apology before moving on. When I’ve finished with the five stitches, I clean up the area around the wound again as best I can before covering it with a square bandage.
“Alright, get up and turn around so I can get your back.”
Frank grunts, but does as he’s told. He gets up and straddles the chair, resting his arms on the back. I clean up the exit wound before starting on the stitches, trying my hardest to be a little more gentle this time.
The back stitches go a little faster, and soon I place another bandage over the stitches to protect them. When I’m done, I can’t keep my eyes from flitting over his back, taking in all of the scars marking his skin.
“Everything alright back there?” He asks, startling me out of my daze. “You’re awful quiet.”
I shake my head. “Yeah, everything’s fine. I’m done. I’ll go grab you a spare shirt.”
I scramble up from my seat on the stool after setting aside the bowl filled with vodka and quickly retreat to my room, stripping off the blood-covered latex gloves and shoving them into the trash as soon as I get there. I keep a drawer filled with spare clothes for Frank. I had meant to throw everything out after the news of his death had come out, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it, thinking that if I got rid of this drawer, he would actually be dead.
I sift through the drawer until I find the one shirt he had left with me that he had said was his favorite. It’s a simple heathered gray t-shirt. There’s nothing special about it aside from the stain where the shirt would sit over your heart if you had it on. I’ve tried several times to get it out, but nothing seems to even touch it.
Bringing up the shirt to my nose, I inhale deeply and sigh when I realize it doesn’t smell like him anymore. Probably not a bad thing though. Frank has a bad habit of smelling like sweat and blood a lot of the time, but there are times when his clothes smell like the man he was before he was the Punisher. Or there were. I’m not so sure about what to make of the scene in my front room at the moment.
I shove the drawer closed and head back out into the kitchen.
“Is that my favorite shirt?” Frank asks.
“Yeah,” I answer, throwing the t-shirt at his head. “Figured you’d appreciate something familiar.”
Frank catches the shirt before it can hit him in the face. he carefully pulls it over his head, wincing when his movement pulls at the stitches. “I do appreciate it, (Y/N), thank you.”
I shoot him a tight-lipped smile. “No problem,” I say, quickly busying myself with cleaning up the kitchen.
I start running the water into the sink, trying to get it as hot as possible to clean the blood off of everything. The room is silent, save for the water running into the sink until a chair scrapes across the linoleum. Frank suddenly appears at my side, and I press my hand against my chest to keep myself from freaking out.g
“Is everything alright, (Y/N)?” He asks, his rough voice soft for a change.
“What? Yeah, everything’s fine,” I answer, scrubbing at the bowl in the sink that was filled with bloody vodka just moments ago. “Aside from the fact that just about every time I see you, you’re half-dead and covered in someone else’s blood. Or that you seem to die every couple years or so.”
“(Y/N)-”
“Or maybe the fact that you never seem to care about what it does to the people who care about you to have to wonder if you’re actually dead this time because heaven forbid you actually take care of yourself for once.”
Frank’s hands settle over mine, halting their movements. He carefully moves me away from the sink and turns me around in his arms. I try to push him away, but he won’t let go.
“Where is all this coming from?” He asks. His voice is so gentle that my heart aches. “Why are you so upset with me?”
“I’m not upset with you, I’m scared for you,” I say softly. “You keep throwing yourself into the line of fire and then disappearing… I don’t know whether you’re alive or dead most of the time. You know Karen’s called me like fifteen times, demanding to know whether or not you’re holed up here. I told her no every single time, and she still doesn’t believe me. Even took to showing up randomly when she knew I wasn’t home. I caught her peeking through windows and trying to pick the lock more times than I have fingers to count on.”
“I’m sorry, (Y/N), I didn’t know.”
“I know you didn’t know, Frank. That’s not the point though. The point is that I don’t know how much more of this I can take. I keep seeing you bruised, battered, bloodied, and half dead, and you keep showing up on tv and in newspapers and every single time I think “Maybe this is it. This is the time he’s not gonna come back to me.” What’s worse is I can’t blame you for doing what you’re doing. Hell, if I could, I’d be helping you!” I cover his heart with one hand. “God, I love you, Frank. So much. But sometimes it is so fucking hard.”
Frank’s grip on my arms tightens momentarily before he pulls me into a tight hug. He pushes his nose into my hair and rubs a hand up and down my back.
“I love you too,” he whispers. “And I don’t want you to have my blood on your hands. It’s not fair to you. None of this is.”
“Frank, no, that’s not what I- I just don’t want to lose you. This isn’t me saying I don’t want you in my life!”
“I know,” He pulls away and presses a kiss to my forehead. “All of this will be over soon. I promise. And I promise I’ll come back to you.”