Work Text:
The Hell’s Kitchen heat has a personality today. Mean, clingy, the kind of thing that presses itself against you and refuses to let go.
The whole building radiates with it; even the stairwell feels alive, humming with the slow-baked misery only a New York heatwave can manage. By the time Matt reaches the third-floor landing, his shirt is plastered to him like it’s trying to fuse with his spine.
He’s here to check on a client’s complaint about a broken lock — the kind of errand he usually enjoys, because it’s simple and human and doesn’t involve dodging bullets.
But then another presence rolls into focus—solid weight on the warped floorboards, steady heartbeat, the faint metallic scent of sweat and tools he carries around like accessories.
Of course.
“Red?”
Matt exhales, wiping a slow line of sweat from his jaw. “Frank.”
Frank steps into the hallway, and the temperature somehow climbs a few degrees. Matt tells himself it’s coincidence, not the way Frank fills space—warm, steady, a little overwhelming even before he opens his mouth.
“What’re you doin’ here?” Frank asks, toolbox in hand, shirt clinging in tired waves across his shoulders.
“Tenant issue,” Matt says. “Broken lock, neglected repairs.” His tone comes out softer than he prefers, probably because the heat has already stripped everything down one layer too far.
Frank shifts his weight, and Matt catches the small tell in his pulse—surprise, then something quieter. “Yeah,” Frank says. “Lady upstairs called me too.”
Before either of them can say anything else, the building groans. A deep, sinking click echoes down the hallway, then everything goes dark—lights, fans, humming AC units. Even the old fridge two doors down gives up with a mournful sigh.
Frank tries the stairwell door. It clunks shut and stays that way.
After a long, too-quiet beat, Matt clears his throat. “So we’re stuck.”
“Yup.”
“In a blackout.” He gestures vaguely at the oppressive air pressing down on them. “In this heat.”
“Sure are.” Frank leans a shoulder against the wall, like the situation is mildly entertaining if he squints at it.
“Fantastic,” Matt mutters—because naturally, out of eight million people in this city, he ends up trapped with the one man guaranteed to make the next few hours unbearable.
They don’t fight like they used to, not really. These days they can manage to work together without shouting. Occasionally, they even have a civil conversation, which is its own kind of minor miracle. But Matt wouldn’t exactly call it liking each other. More like mutually agreed-upon tolerance.
Matt loosens his collar, and the fabric peels away slowly enough that Frank’s heartbeat gives a small, unguarded jump. Matt decides not to think about why. He files the observation away in the same mental drawer as every other puzzling thing about Frank, the one he promises himself he’ll open someday and absolutely never does.
“C’mon,” Frank says, nodding toward apartment 3B. “Window opens a little. Might be survivable.”
The apartment is only slightly cooler, but the heat shifts around just enough to pretend it’s giving them a break. Matt slips off his jacket, drops it on the nearest chair, and feels the smallest sigh of relief at the brush of air across damp skin.
Frank lingers near the doorway for a second too long before lowering himself beside Matt under the window. He sits like he’s avoiding some invisible tripwire between them—shoulders not quite touching, the gap deliberate, shaped by that quiet, uneasy awareness that’s been threading between them for weeks.
“Jesus, you’re cookin’,” Frank says—light, needling, with that subtle shift Matt always feels when Frank’s sizing him up.
Matt tilts his head toward him, amused despite himself. “It’s ninety-eight degrees.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Frank rubs the back of his neck, eyes still on him. “Excuses.”
Matt settles back against the wall, breath already tighter than he’d like, each inhale shallow in the thick, unmoving room. A slow line of sweat slips down his spine. Frank sits close enough that Matt can feel the warmth radiating off him, the distinct shape of his body in the suffocating room, his heartbeat thrumming steady and impossibly distracting.
“You okay?” Frank asks after a moment, the question gruff but carrying a thin note of worry Matt isn’t used to hearing from him. “Don’t need you passin’ out on me.”
“I will be,” Matt murmurs, “Once the sun stops trying to kill us all.”
Frank lets out a short, unguarded sound—more exhale than laugh, but close enough.
It’s a good sound, better than this moment deserves, and he’s not sure what to do with that.
Matt tips his head back against the wall—hot, old-plaster hot—and feels the apartment breathe around him like a dog panting. The whole place is sweating, alive in that faintly miserable New York way he’s always been perversely fond of. The kind of heat that strips every thought down to its bare skin.
Frank shifts, and the air follows him — a slow roll of warmth that brushes Matt’s skin like a hand. Then cotton drags against skin, that sticky rasp of fabric peeling away, and Matt doesn’t need sight to know what’s happening.
Frank pulls his shirt over his head in one rough motion. Matt can’t decide if it’s practicality or sheer bullheadedness posing as problem-solving.
Matt doesn’t bother hiding the sigh that escapes him. “You know, most people buy me a drink before taking their clothes off.”
Frank laughs — a short, breath-hitched thing that sounds like it surprised even him — and wipes a line of sweat from his jaw with the back of his wrist.
“If buyin’ you a drink gets you outta that shirt,” he says, amused, “just say the word.”
The heat spikes — real or imagined, Matt can’t tell. Great. Fantastic. Exactly what he needs: Frank Castle flirting with him in a room that feels like the inside of an oven.
Matt lifts an eyebrow, masking the hit before it shows.“Yeah, keep dreaming. You couldn’t handle me drunk.”
Frank bumps their knees, casual as breathing. “Pretty sure I’m handlin’ you just fine sober.”
Matt opens his mouth, then shuts it. Frank’s pulse does this stupid pleased little jump he’s absolutely pretending isn’t happening. Matt mutters, dry and steady, “Unbelievable.”
Frank snorts again — softer this time, directed right at him — and Matt suddenly becomes very aware of the sweat sliding down his chest, the heat crawling over him like a second layer of skin, and that old, unwelcome heat for Frank kicking up again.
It’s ridiculous, all of it. He gives up the fight in a single, overheated breath. Fuck it.
“Well,” Matt says, fingers moving to the top button of his dress shirt — precise, restrained, the way he deals with every bad idea he’s ever had — “far be it from me to be outdone.”
Frank’s breath stutters — the kind of tiny hitch Matt wasn’t supposed to hear — and he shifts, sitting up a little straighter, like he’s trying not to make a big deal out of it.
Matt works the next button loose, slow out of necessity, the fabric sticking to his skin before it gives. He doesn’t react. Doesn’t acknowledge the way Frank’s heart ticks up a notch.
More buttons, more spikes in Frank’s pulse. Matt keeps his expression flat, bored even, while Frank’s gaze drags over him in a way that’s anything but subtle.
When the last button gives, Matt shrugs the shirt off, and the air ghosts over his skin—barely cooler, but enough to pull a small sound out of him he hopes Frank didn’t catch. Frank does. His pulse jumps like it hit a pothole.
Silence stretches, dense with heat. Their breaths sync without meaning to. Frank’s stare lingers—too exhausted, too hot to hide it—and Matt feels every inch of it along his skin.
“You ever think about hell?” Frank asks suddenly.
Matt lets out a tired laugh. “Thought we were already there.”
“Nah,” Frank says. “Hell’s cooler.” He shifts, and their knees brush. It should feel like too much in this heat. It doesn’t.
Matt grins despite himself. It sits strangely soft in all the misery. “Well. Catholic version says fire, suffering, eternal regret.”
“Sounds familiar.”
Matt finds himself moving closer—gravity, heat, stupidity, who knows—and almost regrets how good it feels. “Temporary,” he says. “This’ll break eventually.”
Frank doesn’t say anything, just stays there—solid, steady, too close. And Matt feels the moment linger in a way nothing temporary ever does.
And there it is — that slow, molten awareness he keeps sidestepping. It drifts up between them like heat off asphalt, catching the light, impossible to ignore. It’s hard to pretend he doesn’t feel it humming under his skin like a second heartbeat.
Then something tilts—his thoughts, the air, the whole damn room—and the next thing Matt registers is the floor under his back: cool in patches, rough in others. He doesn’t remember moving. Just the blank slide of awareness dropping out and snapping back in.
A hand lands on his shoulder. “Red.”
Frank’s voice, low and close, like it’s not the first time he’s said it.
Matt blinks, breath catching up with him. “Yeah. I—sorry. Zoned out.”
Frank’s fingers tighten briefly on his shoulder, the squeeze sharp but controlled. Then he lets go, but only because he’s shifting, sliding down to lie beside Matt in one quick, decisive motion.
“Thought you checked out there,” Frank mutters, gruff. He says it like a complaint, sharp-edged and tossed off, but there’s something quieter underneath it that catches on Matt’s nerves.
“I’m fine,” Matt murmurs, voice low. “Just got…distracted.”
Frank answers with a grunt that’s meant to be dismissive but isn’t. He shifts again, and this time Matt feels the solid line of Frank’s shoulder press against his—warm, steady, unmistakable.
Matt waits for the old instinct to pull back — the twitch of distance, the tension that used to flare whenever Frank got too close.
It doesn’t come. Hasn’t in a while, he realizes.
Somewhere along the line, the sharp edges between them dulled. The space that used to push them apart doesn’t push at all now. Frank’s presence hits differently these days — steadier, less like a threat and more like something he’s grown used to carrying around. Like muscle memory.
He should probably question that. Frank Castle’s not a man you end up close to without consequence. But then again, neither is Matt.
The night is too hot, the air too thick, and everything about Frank — his steadiness, his closeness, the way he slid to the floor without hesitation — feels too familiar to second-guess. The heat just lifts the mask off all of it—quietly, like it was never meant to stay on.
They lie there a while—long enough that Matt forgets the shape of time, long enough that the only thing grounding him is the steady presence pressed against his shoulder. The heat rolls off both of them in slow waves.
Matt shifts a fraction closer, hardly anything at all, but it’s enough. Frank goes still beside him. Not tense, just aware, tuned to him in a way Matt usually pretends not to understand.
A bead of sweat slides from his jaw and down the line of his throat. Slow. Uncomfortably deliberate. It cuts over his chest, follows the curve of his stomach, and trails lower, catching briefly at the waistband of his pants before slipping past.
He’s too aware of every inch of it. Too aware of the way Frank’s focus has settled on him and nowhere else.
Frank is watching. Matt feels it, the weight of Frank’s attention tracing the same path as the sweat, warm and unblinking. Frank’s breath falters once, barely, but the shift rings out clearly in the thick air.
Matt drags a hand over his face, breath fogged by the thick air. Frank shifts closer—closer than is strictly necessary—bracing himself on one arm so he can lean over Matt, his shadow brushing across Matt’s bare chest.
“You’re drifting again,” Frank mutters, voice low, not quite a scold. “Stay with me.”
Matt hums, a small sound that could mean anything. “Trying.”
Frank doesn’t buy that. A warm hand lands on Matt’s stomach—steady, practical, anything but casual.
“Hold still.” Matt does.
There’s no reason to argue. Not with Frank’s hand moving lower, finding his belt, the waistband of his pants, fingers slipping beneath the fabric. The heat has glued everything to Matt’s skin; the motion is slow, deliberate, almost tender in the way it forces Frank to trace each inch.
Frank frees the first sticky fold of fabric, then another, knuckles brushing Matt’s hip, his thigh, the sensitive edge between. Not meaning to. Meaning to. The heat makes intent a slippery thing.
Matt lifts his hips without thinking. Frank swears under his breath—soft, frustrated, undone for a heartbeat—and works the pants down. Matt feels every drag of Frank’s fingers, every breath Frank exhales too close to his ribs. The pants slide past his hips, his thighs, his knees. Then they’re gone, discarded in a heap somewhere he doesn’t care to identify.
Matt exhales a shaky breath he pretends is relief. Frank doesn’t move away.
Instead he stays leaned over him, braced on one arm, heat rolling off him in a steady pulse that sinks into Matt’s skin. Matt can feel the closeness in the air—the bowstring tension of it, the gravity.
“Better?” Frank asks, voice thick with heat and something heavier beneath it.
Matt hums. It’s the closest he can get to a yes without saying something stupid.
Frank’s chest is right there—broad, warm, moving with each rough inhale. Matt doesn’t think. He just lets his hand slide up, fingertips brushing the center of Frank’s sternum, the faint flex of muscle under sweat-slick skin.
Frank goes stone-still. But he doesn’t pull back.
Matt’s touch drags lower on its own, mapping the warm line of Frank’s abdomen, the soft, exhausted rise and fall of breath. Frank lets him—lets him trace down to the edge of his jeans, lets him pause there, lets the moment hover.
“You’re overheating too,” Matt mutters, the words half a tease, half an excuse for touching him at all.
Frank’s breath shakes—quiet, barely there—but Matt feels it. Feels the way Frank leans even closer, how the air between them tightens.
“Yeah,” Frank says, voice slipping into something rougher, something he probably doesn’t hear in himself. “Guess I am.”
Matt’s fingers slip beneath the warm leather of Frank’s belt. The buckle gives with a soft metallic click that seems too loud in the room.
Frank huffs a breath, halfway to a laugh he can’t quite commit to. “You sure about—”
“Shut up,” Matt says lightly, almost fond, and Frank does. Funny how Frank listens the second he’s got Matt half-naked.
Matt keeps going—thumb brushing the line of Frank’s hip as he works the belt loose. Frank’s breathing goes shallow, and the heat coming off him spikes in a way that has nothing to do with the lack of air conditioning.
The zipper slides down with a low rasp. Frank’s inhale catches, sharp and quiet.
Matt pushes the jeans down slowly—because they’re stuck from the heat, because Frank is too close, because Matt doesn’t want the moment to break. Frank lifts his hips without being asked. Matt swears he feels him smile, just slightly, like he’s enjoying this more than Frank thinks he should.
The jeans slide past Frank’s thighs, his knees, his calves. Matt pulls them free, the fabric hitting the floor in a soft heap.
Now they’re even. Bare knees. Bare chests. Barely anything left between them.
“Happy now?” Frank murmurs, his voice warm and close enough to feel like it’s brushing the inside of Matt’s mouth.
Matt tilts his head toward him, breath ghosting across Frank’s jaw. “Getting there.”
He feels Frank’s answering exhale all the way down.
It moves through him like a current, low and warm, sliding under his skin in a way the heat alone can’t explain. Something loosens in him, in the air, in Frank. A tiny seam splitting open. A quiet permission Matt hadn’t realized they’d been circling all this time.
Matt can taste the heat of Frank’s breath, and the air between them moves in slow, shared waves. They hover there, suspended in the same narrow column of warmth, breathing each other in.
Time drifts. Sweat gathers. Everything pulls closer in a way Matt would laugh about if his throat weren’t so dry.
Frank’s hand slips higher on his thigh — accidental, probably, but it settles there like it has nowhere better to be. Matt’s fingers are still on Frank’s chest, rising and falling with each breath like he’s tracking the rhythm to keep himself steady.
The distance between their mouths shrinks without either of them deciding anything.
The kiss starts soft, almost uncertain, like they’re both testing the temperature of something dangerous. Matt feels the tremor in Frank’s fingers. Feels the moment it stops being careful. The moment Frank exhales against his mouth and something inside both of them lets go.
Matt’s hand fists in Frank’s hair—instinctive, anchoring. Frank groans into his mouth—low, surprised—and kisses him harder.
It’s slow, hungry, heat-drunk, all patience stripped away by the suffocating air. Their chests brush. Their stomachs slide together. Frank shifts his weight and sinks against him, and Matt feels every inch of him like a brand.
Frank’s mouth moves to Matt’s jaw, then back to his lips, like he can’t decide where to stay. Matt swallows a noise he’d regret making out loud. Frank’s breath stutters again — that low, rough caught-in-his-throat sound that feels like it was meant for Matt alone.
Somewhere in the hazy tangle of heat and breath, boxers turn into one more thing between them they can’t tolerate. Bare skin meets bare skin. The world strips itself down to breath and sweat and the slow slide of hands over heat-damp shoulders, hips, backs, whatever they can reach. The heat between them changes shape, goes from oppressive to something sharper, more deliberate.
The night settles cooler as it gets deeper, just enough for skin to start feeling like relief instead of punishment. They move together the way exhausted bodies do — clumsy, earnest, quiet. Just heat and gravity and Frank’s body pressed along his, steady and unhesitating, like this closeness was always waiting for an excuse.
Later, the air grows easier to breathe. Frank falls asleep half on top of him, arm warm across Matt’s stomach, face pressed against his shoulder. Matt stays awake a little longer, fingers tracing the line of Frank’s spine, not thinking too hard about why.
He falls asleep that way.
The power hums back to life just after dawn. The AC sputters, then exhales a cool breath into the room. Matt wakes to the faint shift in temperature and the heavier shift of Frank stirring beside him.
Matt feels him breathe in, like he’s weighing the exit, the denial, the distance they’ve always defaulted to.
But Frank doesn’t pull away. He settles closer, hand firm at Matt’s waist. His other hand comes up to Matt’s face, rough thumb brushing along his jaw.
Frank leans in, forehead brushing his for a beat before he tilts Matt’s chin up and kisses him. It’s sweet, gentle. His mouth moves like he’s memorizing the feel of it, like this is something he’s thought about more than once and never let himself touch.
Matt melts into it, the last of his resistance burned out of him hours ago. Frank’s thumb strokes his cheek—light, tender, too gentle for the man anyone else thinks he is—and Matt’s breath catches helplessly.
Frank feels it. Of course he does.
He kisses him again, slower this time, like he’s trying to tell Matt something without saying it.
And Matt—God help him—lets himself hear it.
Eventually they sit up, slow and stiff and reluctant. They get dressed even slower. Matt hooks Frank’s belt for him. Frank buttons Matt’s shirt back up, slow and careful, eyes on him the whole time. Knuckles against skin. Thumbs skimming a hip. Nothing either of them bothers to acknowledge.
Frank clears his throat, voice rough from sleep and maybe from everything else.
“Guess we could…get breakfast.”
It comes out quieter than Matt expects. Hopeful, almost.
Matt smiles—small, crooked—and lets his fingers brush Frank’s wrist. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, okay.”
They leave the apartment together, the morning finally cool around them, the night’s heat still lingering where their shoulders touch.