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Matt Murdock was fucking beautiful. Objectively, he was an attractive man. Frank was nowhere close to objective though. Not after winding up in bed with him for a third time this week. This time was different from the first two times. Softer. More tender. The differences of opinion had been fucked out or left for tomorrow.
There was only this: Frank sprawled naked on the bed beside Matt, too dopey and blissed out to do much more than hum sleepily and allow the lawyer to explore his body with tender touches and soft kisses. He didn't mind it, he decided, giving a blissful sigh as Matt's lips marked a path between his neck and his shoulder blade.
Here, Matt paused, mouthing a soft kiss over a patch of old scar tissue that scored the back of Frank's left shoulder. It wasn't the only scar he had. It wasn't even the worst one. And Matt had plenty of scars himself. Frank had noticed at least a dozen during the bouts of passionate, bordering on rough, sex this week.
"How'd you get this one?" Matt wondered, his fingers gently tracing the raised scar tissue.
"Oh, it was... an Australian… creature," Frank invented, not wanting to be laughed at if Matt discovered the truth. "Big motherfucker. You know they have twenty of the twenty five deadliest snakes in the world over there?"
"It doesn't feel like a snake bite," Matt observed, still tracing the outline of the scars.
"Oh, its not," Frank admitted, feeling his cheeks heat. "It was a, uh, bear."
"They have bears in Austral—" Matt paused and then snorted. "Oh my God! A koala bear? You are not serious."
Frank huffed and half sat up. "Have you seen the claws on them, Red?"
The lawyer smirked. "No."
He'd had that coming, Frank supposed, shaking his head in disbelief. Matt let the comment pass, however, resuming his exploration of Frank's shoulders and back, moving his fingers like he would across a Braille sheet, deciphering the code of marks that comprised Frank's skin, his history written in his flesh for Matt to read.
"Koalas are mean, you know," he muttered under his breath.
Matt laughed. "Frank, it's basically a fluffy teddy bear."
"That's what they want you to believe!" Frank insisted as Matt snorted and buried his face between his shoulder blades, mouthing kisses there and breathing him in.
"Sure, Frank," he mumbled, his tone doubtful, but then he paused. "Do you wanna tell me about it? No judgment, I promise."
"Yeah, right," Frank retorted, but then he gave in, Matt's closeness and tender touches winning him over. "I took the kids down to San Diego to hold a koala one year, to make up for missing their birthdays. They have the largest koala colony outside Australia, you know," he added, knowing from Matt's thoughtful hum that he was paying attention. "Anyway, I was holding it when it decided it'd had enough, and it dug its claws into me and— I mean, I flipped out, okay? Anyone would. I'd rather hold a python than that fluffy monster."
Matt gave a low chuckle, but he didn't say anything. He didn't interrupt; he just let Frank keep talking, sharing as much as he felt able to. Funny that he'd found him annoying before, like the know it all caterpillar in Lewis Carroll. Now he knew better, that Matt could listen well and with sensitivity when he chose to. He'd remember that later.
"Of course, Lisa wanted to adopt one on the spot," Frank continued, smiling at the memory, "and I had to give her something after that mess. I was still paying for the damn thing 'til she was eight, almost. All for a koala plushie."
"You sponsored a koala?" Matt asked with sudden interest.
"It was important to her. Don't get any ideas," he added warningly.
"What?" Matt replied, his tone one of faux innocence. "I don't have any."
"Liar," Frank retorted immediately.
Matt laughed then, sincerely, guiltily. Frank turned and pinned him, crushing him flat to the mattress just because he wanted to, because having Matt Murdock squirming beneath him, nearly breathless with laughter, made something inside him burn warm and bright that he thought had flickered out a long time ago.
"Australia has devils, you know," Matt informed him. "Thorny ones, and Tasmanian ones."
Frank groaned. "You want me to adopt a devil? Like sleeping with one isn't trouble enough."
"Right," Matt said sarcastically, and Frank supposed he had a point; this here wasn't trouble; it was easier than it had ever been with him, with anyone.
He sighed. "You want a Devil plushie, don't you?"
"Kind of," Matt admitted with a guilty smile. "Mostly just because."
"Dork," Frank declared, kissing him.
"That was a yes," Matt said oh-so-smugly.
"Yeah, it was," Frank reluctantly agreed.
He could have a thorny devil, he decided. That was Matt to a tee: prickly, an occasional thorn in his side, and a devil to boot. It was perfect. He smiled as Matt mouthed a line of kisses over his collarbone. It didn't take him more than about eight seconds to find another scar, this one from a quite obvious bullet wound.
"So how did you get this one?" Matt asked teasingly. "Rogue platypus?"
"Shut up," Frank grumbled and kissed him.
That actually was a very effective way to shut him up, he realized. But that wasn't why he did it. Kissing Matt Murdock felt right. Good. Amazing. Behind the lawyer's eyes, he knew was endless night, but he no longer felt that blackness in his soul. Kiss by kiss and touch by touch, Matt was giving it back, showing him what it felt like to live again, really live. Scars and all.