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It’s not supposed to be this way. They’re not supposed to be this way.
They’re the boarded-up windows in a bad neighbourhood: they’re patched together shards of glass and still broken underneath it all. Nothing more than an outward sign of festering rot.
But like this, right now, Frank can breathe.
They’re in what amounts to a safehouse. It’s a rundown apartment in a condemned building: the only power comes from a generator he’s rigged up, and running water is an absent friend. It’s a long way from the luxury that they could have had if they’d retreated to Matt’s place instead; they could have done this on silk sheets by candlelight, something soft, something special, but Frank gets it. He knows that’s not them. He’d leave stains with his presence - he’d infect the careful sanitised walls of Matt’s life just by breathing there.
Nah, instead they have this: they have a bed that rattles every time they move, and they have a mattress with old springs that are poised to stab their way through the fabric at any moment. They have a clean-but-old sheet twisted underneath them, and they have Matt’s wrists still lashed to the metal bars of the old headboard with old, itchy rope.
Sweat’s drying on their skin. Matt’s dirtied his own stomach with himself, and even as Frank catches his breath and looks down at the mess they’ve made he’s fighting with the urge to lean down and clean him up with his tongue alone.
Stupid impulse. Phantom urge.
The heat has faded now, burned out between them with grabbing hands and mindless need.
This is the end. This is the after.
Frank straightens up and kneels back, looking down at the sight before him now that he’s clear-headed enough to enjoy it. Matt’s legs are still parted loosely around Frank’s thighs; he’s spent now, they both are, but hell if that isn’t an image to commit to memory. Those thick thighs and their sprinkling of hair; his flat stomach; his scarred chest.
His arms are still stretched above his head, and his wrists are crossed neatly one over the other. The rope that lashes them to the headboard was snatched in a hurry from one of Frank’s go-bags; in between messy kisses and frustrated grunts, he’d needed a way just to contain the devil beneath him, needed some way to reassure them both that he had him for the night, fire in his palms, flames dancing beneath his hands. The smirk on Matt’s face had only been encouragement.
“Frank,” Matt murmurs. His breath is returning to normal, even while Frank’s face is still flushed and his limbs are still cooking up that pleasant ache of exertion. Beneath him, Matt adjusts his position and wriggles his shoulders like he’s working out an ache. “You gonna untie me? Or are you just going to stare?”
That blank gaze settles just to the side of Frank’s face, but Frank knows when he’s been stared down. And on his back and tied up, Matt still knows how to make demands and issue orders: any hold Frank might have on him vanishes when they’re done with whatever this is.
A pattern. Repeated. Frank can grasp the fire only while it’s burning; at the end of the night, he’ll be left with the echo of burn-scars on his palms. Nothing more.
He takes his time running his hand over Matt’s trapped arm - he starts at the shoulder and travels up his bicep, past the elbow, letting his fingertips trace the veins in his forearm. Beneath him, Matt remains motionless. Open. His lips are parted, but there’s a faint curve hidden in the corner. A smirk. A smile. Something half-way between the two.
When Frank’s fingertips reach Matt’s wrists, it’s to brush against the pink skin where the rope has rubbed against them during their distracted activities. He can remember Matt straining against the bindings only moments ago, tugging at the ropes holding him in place - not to get free, no, but to prove that he couldn’t. Despite all his sharp bluster, Matt is someone who likes being trapped, being caught.
Slowly, Frank’s fingers brush against the inside of Matt’s wrists, tracing those marks he’ll leave behind. He’s gentle, like he hasn’t been before; he’s gentle in the way that he can’t usually be when they’re together, when the fire is running red-hot in his veins and when there’s something animal beneath their skin, something demanding.
Beneath him, now, Matt tilts his head up. He’s open in a way that he only ever is when Frank can get him like this: the brittle defense of the lawyer is gone, the empty smirk of the devil is banished, and Frank is left with someone that feels flayed open instead, beautifully shattered just for tonight.
“Starting to feel like you’re not going to let me go,” Matt murmurs.
It’s a joke. Frank doesn’t need Matt’s senses to know that he isn’t really worried about it.
It makes him slow down anyway. He slips a single finger under the dip of the rope and starts to follow the quiet thud of Matt’s pulse in his wrist. “Thinking about it,” he pretends. “Just keeping you here. Out of my way.”
He doesn’t mean it, but hell if he doesn’t like the way Matt’s smirk deepens in response. Hell if he doesn’t love the way that Matt’s hips adjust and his thighs shift, like he’s already thinking about a second round that neither of them is ready for.
“Really?” Matt prompts.
“Really,” Frank promises. He licks his lips. “Thinking I could keep you right here on your back - keep you out of trouble for the night, maybe for good. And I could head out, finish my business, knowing you’d be right here waiting for me when I’m done...”
The way that blood is rushing to Matt’s cheeks gives him away without saying anything. Frank might not have Matt’s senses, but he knows interest when he sees it.
“Just waiting for you?”
Matt’s trying so hard to sound uninterested. Disbelieving. That smirk on his face is leaving him practically breathless, and he’s almost squirming underneath Frank just from the thought of it - but the brat still wants to pretend he doesn’t give a damn. Frank snorts air through his nose and lets his fingertips brush against the ropes a little longer.
“Just waiting, Red. Tied down and desperate for me to come back,” he confirms, hoping to god he’s got this right. Pressing and prodding at Matt, he never knows where the lines are; he never knows when he’s going to cross something invisible in the air and find himself thrown out into the cold. Not like they'd talk about that in advance. It's not like either of them know how to talk about limits. “Thighs spread just like this. Waiting for me to come home and fuck you again, ain’t that right?”
He’s got him. He can tell from the way Matt’s tongue flashes over his lips and he swallows eagerly. The breathy laugh is even more of a give-away. “Fuck you, Frank,” Matt groans.
“Yeah,” Frank promises, “You could leave the whole city to me. I’ll do all your do-gooding for you, and all you have to do is let me. All you have to do is lie back and be good.”
Matt might think that he manages to catch the groan in the back of his throat, but Frank hears it anyway. He covers Matt’s bound wrists with one hand, pinning him even more firmly against the rickety old bed frame as he leans down. He’s covering Matt, his bulk pinning him to the thin mattress, and his other hand shifts to Matt’s thigh, tugging it higher so Matt’s thighs can hug his hips, a silly mockery of their motions just a short while ago.
Frank leans in and hides his smile against the sweaty curve of Matt’s neck. He brushes his lips against his skin, then the whisper of his teeth, and closes his eyes. “Is that what you want, Red? You want to stay tied up here for me, ready to be used? Bet you’d be real good at it, princess. Real sense of purpose for you. You want that?”
And it’s stupid, empty dirty-talk when they’re both too spent to really do anything about it - but Frank can’t deny the itch that it scratches. It’s not just the tickle down his spine at the thought of having Matt, at the thought of actually getting to lay claim to this man in a way that goes far beyond physical: but it’s the promise of that purpose for him, for both of them.
It’s the promise of Matt having something to serve that would actually appreciate him, not this black hole of a city that chews on his soul piece-by-piece and doesn’t care about the ragged mess it leaves behind.
It’s the promise of Frank having someone to take care of, and someone to look after, something that would patch together the empty space that’s been festering the centre of his chest for over a decade now, the chasm where his heart should be.
They’re talking, they’re playing, but if he clenches his hand over those ropes too tight then it all feels a little too real.
“Frank,” Matt pants, cutting through his thoughts before they drag him down too deep. “I do. You know I do.
He’s usually a mouthy little shit, but now he's agreeing to something when he’d usually fight Frank tooth-and-nail for even the slightest affirmation that he even wants to be here; in that breathless tone, in that hopeful twist of his voice, Frank wonders if this is what pity sounds like when it comes from the devil, if this might be mercy after all.
He lifts his head from Matt’s neck and looks down at that sharp face of his and the way Matt turns towards the light for him; the shitty lamp on an upturned crate by the bedside is still enough to highlight that face like a work-of-art. It’s enough to pinpoint his marks and bruises too. Frank wonders what a few days tied up in his bed might do for Matt; he wonders about forced rest and caretaking-as-torture and his heart aches in a way he doesn’t think he knows how to handle.
“Yeah. Think I’ll keep you, choir-boy,” he murmurs. Around him, Matt’s thighs clench like a promise.
There’s no room for words when Frank leans down to kiss him - just the brutal crush of his mouth against Matt’s, just the way that he gives Matt no choice but to go along with him on this and let him lead. There’s a moan that’s lost in the slick heat of their mouths, something that might be from either of them, both of them, Frank can’t tell the difference any more.
His hand, still clenching around the rope binding Matt’s wrists, only holds on tighter.
They kiss, ugly and messy and spent, until Matt’s needy movements beneath him become a little more frantic, a little too frenzied - Frank can tell when they’re reaching that tipping point where the overstimulation goes from just enough to way too much, so he eases off. Their lips shine in the lamp light, slick and easy.
“Steady.” They breathe together. Easy. Quiet. Slow. “Take your time.”
He releases his grip on Matt’s wrists and reaches for the end of the rope instead - for all his acting, and all his words, it only takes one pull for the entire knot to unravel. The bindings go slack and fall from the bedframe, coiling useless and inert instead. For a moment, Matt keeps his wrists right where they are anyway. Frank can see the red marks on them, skin rubbed raw. He’s got to be feeling all kinds of discomfort right now - but he’s lying there, pleased with himself, like he’s exactly where he wants to be.
Goddamn menace.
“We should get cleaned up,” Frank murmurs without moving. It’s hard to jolt himself into action when he has Matt stretched out and easy underneath him like this; he has to find a way to trick himself into being his old self again, into the version of himself that exists outside of this bed. “We can play prisoner some other time, sunshine. You’re a mess.”
He’s fucking beautiful, but like hell Frank is giving him that satisfaction when they’re not both thinking with their dicks.
Beneath him, Matt gives a laugh that’s all air and no sound. His smile is loose. Lazy. “You haven’t even got running water,” he points out.
Frank isn’t going to ask him how he knows that. He can probably hear it in the walls, or hear its absence - empty pipes and nothing more.
“You said we needed to go somewhere private,” Frank complains. “If you wanted the full works, you should’ve asked.”
Soft silk flutters through his mind again; expensive sheets and an expansive bed.
With a grunt, he finally rolls off of Matt. The ache already building in his limbs is something pleasant, a reminder to take with him now that he’s done - now that they’re done.
Matt’s getting up and reaching for his discarded clothes after wiping off his stomach, looking for all the world like he’s already knitted himself back together into something human-shaped. The version of him that pants and moans and pleads so nicely is hidden away, but Frank can still see the marks on his wrists, rubbed raw and painful. It’s the only sign that remains.
He lies on his back in his shitty-assed bed as Matt pieces himself back together bit-by-bit. Frank’s trying to make himself think of the practicalities: he’s trying to focus on what he’s going to feed himself tonight, and the repairs needed to his kit before he can head out again. He’s trying not to think too much about the rope sitting innocently near his pillow, a quiet reminder of what they’re deliberately not talking about.
He’s thinking of all that and he’s not thinking of even more - and that’s when his own t-shirt hits him in the face.
He grabs hold of it and is scowling before he even knows what’s going on.
Matt, fully dressed and even wearing that smirk he loves so much, is standing with his hands on his hips. Waiting. “Are you coming or not?” he asks.
Frank’s too old to have his stomach turn flips. He’s too jaded for this. “Coming where?”
“My place.” Like it’s easy. Like it’s them. “I need a shower. You do too. And then you’ve got some promises to follow through on.”
Frank knows his heart is racing; he knows Matt can hear it. There’s no way to play this nonchalantly, but the last time Frank was in Matt’s apartment the damn place was blown up around them. He’s only ever been there for emergencies and rescues - there’s not much need for social calls between them.
Or, at least, there hadn’t been before this mess started up.
His pants follow his t-shirt and are thrown into his face - apparently he’s taking too long to make a decision.
“Calm down, Red,” he says, rolling his eyes and starting to tug his clothes back on. It’s not a long journey to Matt’s apartment from here. They can make it; they can shower; he can spend the night. Like a betrayal of his own damn self, his nerves flutter. “Wait a damn minute.”
He starts getting dressed, taking his time simply to make Matt stew like he’s working up that impatience like a delicacy - having Matt’s single-minded attention on him, eager to abduct him back to his own place, makes Frank think that maybe they don’t need those ropes to keep each other in place. Maybe they’re trapped together already, accidentally, impossibly.
It’s not supposed to be this way. They’re not supposed to be this way.
But when he follows Matt into the night and allows himself to be taken home, the promise of ropes and games and prisoners still revolving in his mind - Frank can’t say he’d change a thing.