frank castle who makes you get off your phone when he wants to go to bed
i know i literally just said i was working on asks and things that weren’t frank castle but i guess i lied. it’s my birthday so i can do whatever i want:)
Truth be told, you’re tired. Your eyes are achey and sick of looking at your bright phone screen and it really would feel great to just close them and not open them back up but you just don’t feel like it yet. Whatever’s on your phone isn’t all that interesting, but your phone time was cut into earlier long enough to aggravate you and allow you to extend it well into bedtime. You really, really, should go to bed with how early Frank wakes up and how often he accidentally wakes you too. He’s quiet, but you’ve always been a very light sleeper.
You don’t know how he does it, stays up so late reading a book and then wakes back up at the ass crack of dawn. Well, you do, actually, it’s the nightmares. Really, what you mean is you aren’t sure how he’s as much of a functioning person as he is — any less that eight hours a night and you aren’t very nice.
Frank knows that. He knows at the time it is now, you’ll be getting seven and you’ll wake up with a grimace and grumble and toss around and shove your face back into the pillow. You’ll stomp around all day, give yourself a headache from being angry, then get back on your phone and do it all over again.
That’s why he closes his book and snatches your phone from your hands.
“Alright,” He huffs, pulling it from your grip and shutting it off. “Bedtime.”
Surprised, you look over to him and stutter out his name.
“I was watching that!” You shift up onto your elbows, the fabric of your shirt pulling up and pressing your tummy against the sheets. He doesn’t bother responding with anything other than a grunt while plugging your phone into his charger on his bedside table. He charges his own phone every other day and it could probably go longer than that, he hates the thing. Doesn’t use it for anything besides having your number and a couple others. Plus, if he gave it back to you to put on your charger he knows you’d be a brat about it — you’d spin around to face away from his and get right back on it, staying up even later than you would’ve in the first place just to prove him.
“C’mon,” He shifts down onto his back again, one arm propped up over his head on the pillow and the other patting your bum. “Up.”
Frank also knows you can’t sleep without going to the bathroom first. His attentiveness has never been more annoying and also maybe a little attractive, but that just makes you even more annoyed. You stare at him in disbelief for a moment, like he doesn’t do this a minimum of three times a week, and he stares right back at you with his eyebrows raised expectantly.
You groan when he tilts his head towards the door, but clamber out of the bed with the roll of your eyes anyways.
“Thinks he’s the boss of me…” Frank catches you muttering to yourself as you stomp off down the short hallway and smiles fondly, shaking his head. You’re stumbling back into the room soon, rubbing your tired eyes and climbing under the covers with a yawn.
“I want it back, Frank.” You attempt, knowing it will get you absolutely nowhere.
“Yeah,” He sighs, pulling you into his side. “Tough luck, sweetheart, time for bed.”
You grumble about it a little more, but situate yourself to be more comfortable against his warm, barren chest. It’s not long after your eyes close and his big hand starts petting over the side of your head and dragging back and forth over your arm that you fall asleep.
Frankie stares down at you with a small, tender smile as you fall into a deep sleep. He’ll whisper something sweet like, sweet dreams, baby, and kiss your forehead all gentle. Sometimes he’ll fall asleep right after you, but most of the time it takes him a few more hours. He doesn’t mind it; in fact, with your slumbering form tucked right up into his side, it’s the only time he can enjoy the quiet without his own thoughts taking it over.
summary: Frank likes to work alone — you don't let him. Frank doesn't like when you try to heal him — you don't care...even if it's at your own expense.
pairing: frank castle x fem!mutant!reader
word count: 11.7k
warning(s): slight enemies to whatever the hell this is, angst, mentions of violence, slightly dark themes, mentions and depictions of wounds, knives, bombs, and gun violence (all things frank loves) — possibly a very screwed up timeline that makes absolutely no sense (sue me, marvel is too complicated for me—I intended for this to take place POST spiderman: brand new day, so please, here's a spoiler warning)
a/n: hello there my darlings!!! This is definitely my first frank fic so I'm hoping it's not too bad...I also was really tired when reading through this again while editing so I do heavily apologize for an errors or mistakes throughout. As always, feedback, comments, and reblogs are always appreciated <3
slight spoilers for spider-man: brand new day (this takes place after the events of the movie)...read at your own risk!
“Jesus Christ Frank…”
You find Frank Castle bleeding in an alley off 48th Street at two in the morning, which is honestly pretty typical for a Thursday at this point in your life.
"You look like shit," you say, dropping down from the fire escape with barely a sound. Your boots splash in something you're choosing not to identify. It doesn’t smell good, that’s all you need to know.
Frank's leaning against a brick wall, one hand pressed to his side where blood seeps through his tactical vest while the other holds up his body weight. His face is a mask of controlled pain, jaw tight, eyes hard. "Go away." He spits gruffly. If he had the strength, he’d fire a warning bullet at your feet to send a real message. He doesn’t want you here—he never does. You don’t care much for his attitude.
"That's cute.” You tutt. “You think you get a vote." Inching closer, you assess the damage with practiced efficiency. Gunshot wound, left side, probably missed anything vital but he's losing blood fast. "Let me see it."
"I said—"
"I heard what you said. I'm ignoring it." You reach for his vest and he catches your wrist. His grip is strong despite the blood loss, which is frankly annoying. "Castle, I swear to God, if you bleed out in this alley because you're too stubborn to accept help, I'm going to resurrect you just to kill you again."
"Kinetic energy manipulation doesn't include resurrection." He balks at the idea, and while he’s fairly certain raising people from the dead is far outside your scope, he’s honestly not too sure you couldn’t accomplish it.
"I'll learn." You yank your wrist free and plant your hands on your hips. "You want me to call an ambulance? Because I will. I'll tell them exactly where the Punisher is, bleeding out like an idiot who thinks he's too tough for basic medical attention."
His dark eyes narrow. "You wouldn't."
"Try me." You would, and Frank knows it. You did it to Matt Murdock two months ago to prove a point, before he finally let you sneak him off into the night to heal him with your powers.
Stubborn ass grown men, you think to yourself. You don’t even know why you try.
You stare at each other for a long moment. Somewhere in the distance, a siren wails. Frank's breathing is getting shallower, and there's a fine sheen of sweat on his forehead that has nothing to do with the humid summer night.
"Fine," he finally growls. "But not here."
You send him a cheeky, lopsided grin that says, I win. Like always. "Your place or mine?"
"Mine's closer."
"Of course it is. You probably have six safe houses within a three-block radius." You duck under his arm, taking most of his considerable weight. He's heavy, all muscle and Kevlar and weaponry, but you've absorbed enough kinetic energy from the city tonight that you could probably carry a truck. "Try not to bleed on me. This jacket is new."
"It's black." Frank frowns.
"Blood stains, Castle. Trust me, I know." He huffs at that, but doesn't say anything further.
Even though you've been to a couple of them before, this warehouse is exactly what you'd expect: industrial, sparse, and equipped with enough weapons to stage a small coup. The medical station in the corner is better stocked than some ERs you've seen, which says something deeply concerning about Frank's lifestyle choices.
You dump him onto the metal chair with less grace than strictly necessary. He grunts but doesn't complain, which means he's hurt worse than he's letting on.
"Vest off," you order, already pulling on latex gloves from his supply kit.
"I can do it myself."
"And I can watch you fumble around for twenty minutes while you bleed out, or you can shut up and let me help. Choose quickly,” you tap your foot with mock impatience, “I have a Netflix queue to get back to."
He stays silent and still for a moment before relenting to your request.
"What are you watching?" He asks.
The question surprises you enough that you pause. "Are you seriously making small talk right now?"
He grunts. "You brought it up." Besides, he thinks, anything to distract from the pain.
You smile. "Okay, if you must know, but you gotta promise not to make fun of me…I have a reputation to uphold.”
“Uh huh, sure kid.”
“The Great British Bake Off,” you respond. “It’s very soothing. No one gets shot." You start unfastening his vest with efficient movements. "Unlike some people I know who apparently think they're bulletproof."
Frank huffs out a breath. "Tonight wasn't supposed to go down like that."
"It never is." You peel back the vest and his shirt, revealing the wound. It's ugly but clean—through and through, like you thought. "You're lucky. Missed everything important."
"Lucky. Right."
"Relatively speaking." You grab gauze and antiseptic, your movements automatic. You've done this too many times, for too many people. Frank's just the most frequent patient. "This is going to hurt."
"It already hurts." He says with a grimace.
Your eyes bore into his with a deadpan expression. "It's going to hurt more."
You clean the wound with quick, practiced efficiency. Frank doesn't flinch, doesn't make a sound, which is somehow more unsettling than if he'd screamed. You've seen him take damage that would drop most men, and he just keeps going like some kind of terminator. It’s alarming really.
"You know," you say, because the silence is getting heavy, "most people would say thank you."
"Most people don't break into my safe house whenever they please and threaten to call ambulances."
You scoff. "I’ve never broken in. The door’s been unlocked."
He rebukes that. "The door is never unlocked."
"Then you're losing your touch, old man." You finish cleaning and sit back, studying the wound. It needs stitches, proper medical attention, and antibiotics. Or... "I could heal it, ya know."
"No."
The response is immediate and sharp. You raise an eyebrow. "That's a lot of conviction for someone who's bleeding all over his nice metal chair."
"I don't need—"
"Your powers.” You mock his tone with the best Frank Castle impression you can muster. “Yeah, yeah, I know. You've made that very clear." You strip off the gloves and toss them aside. "Fine. Enjoy your stitches and your recovery time and your inevitable infection because you're too stubborn to accept help."
You turn to leave, and his voice stops you. "Wait."
You look back. Frank's watching you with those dark, unreadable eyes, and for a moment something flickers across his face. Something that might be concern, or curiosity, or just exhaustion.
"Why do you keep doing this?" he asks.
"Doing what?"
He gives you a look that says c'mon kid, don't play dumb with me. But you're not buying what he's selling; if he wants a real answer out of you, he's going to have to give you a real question to answer.
He elaborates. "Showing up. Patching me up. You don't owe me anything."
You lean against the workbench, crossing your arms. "Maybe I like the company."
"I'm terrible company." He replies, jaw clenching at the idea of anyone willingly choosing to spend their time with him.
"True. But you're also the only person I know who can keep up with me, and who doesn’t flinch when I accidently blow stuff up.”
His mouth twitches. It's not quite a smile, but it's close. "That was one time." Kinetic energy can get pretty messy.
"It was three times." You admit.
"The third one doesn't count. That mailbox was asking for it."
You laugh despite yourself. "See? Terrible company, but occasionally amusing." You push off the bench. "Let me heal it, Castle. You'll be back to your murder spree by morning."
"It's not a murder spree.” He grumbles. “It's the job."
"Whatever makes you feel better man.” You move closer, and this time he doesn't stop you. "This is going to feel weird."
"Everything about you feels weird."
You grin toothily. "Flatterer."
You place your hands over the wound, and the familiar tingle of power flows through your palms. Kinetic energy is everywhere—in the vibration of the building, the movement of air, the beating of hearts. You pull it in, redirect it, reshape it into something that can knit flesh and seal wounds.
The bullet hole begins to close, tissue regenerating at an accelerated rate. Frank watches with a frown, like he's trying to figure out a puzzle he doesn't have all the pieces to.
What he doesn't see is the way your jaw tightens. The way your breathing goes shallow. The way every nerve in your side suddenly screams with phantom pain as his injury transfers to you, the price of healing written in agony across your own body.
You're good at hiding it. Years of practice have taught you how to mask the pain, how to smile through it, how to act like taking on someone else's suffering is no big deal.
"There," you say, pulling back. Your hands are steady. Your voice is light. "Good as new." It hurts like hell, but you’d never admit it.
Frank looks down at his side, at the smooth, unmarred skin where a bullet hole was moments ago. Every time you do this for him he's just as surprised. "How—"
You put a finger to your lips and let out a light shushing sound. "Trade secret." You turn away before he can see the way you're holding yourself too carefully, the slight tremor in your legs. "Try not to get shot again for at least a week. I have a very busy schedule of eating takeout and judging people's fondant work."
"Kinetic." He calls you by your mutant name. He knows your real one, just like you know his—but he hardly ever uses it.
You pause at the door. "Yeah?"
"Thank you."
You glance back, surprised. Frank's still sitting in the chair, watching you with an expression you can't quite read. The harsh warehouse lights cast shadows across his face, making him look older, more tired. But still handsome.
"Don't mention it," you say. And when he goes to say something else, you put a hand up to stop him. "Seriously. Don't. Like I said, I have a reputation to maintain."
You leave before he can respond, before he can ask questions you don't want to answer. The pain in your side is a living thing now, sharp and hot and demanding attention. You make it three blocks before you have to stop, leaning against a wall and breathing through the worst of it.
Worth it, you tell yourself. It's always worth it.
Even if Frank Castle will never know the price you pay.
Three days later, you're on a rooftop in Hell's Kitchen, eating a truly mediocre bodega sandwich and watching the city breathe. New York at night is a living thing, all light and sound and movement. Kinetic energy in its purest form, just as you like it.
"You're in my spot." Well there goes your peace and quiet.
You don't turn around. "Your spot? I don't see your name on it."
Frank moves to stand beside you, close enough that you can feel the heat radiating off him. He's wearing his usual black on black on black, because apparently the man owns no other colors.
"How's the side?" you ask.
"Fine."
"No pain? No stiffness?"
"Nothing." He's quiet for a moment. "It's like it never happened."
"That's kind of the point of healing." You take another bite of your sandwich, making a face. "God, this is terrible. Why do I keep going to that bodega?"
Frank’s lip curves in what dares to be a smile. "Because it's the only one open at 2 AM."
"Fair point." You offer him half. "Want some?"
He grimaces, brow quirked in mild disgust at the sight of it. "I'm good."
"Your loss. This mediocre sandwich could have been our mediocre sandwich."
He almost smiles again. You're getting better at making that happen. "What are you doing up here?" He asks.
"Same thing you are. Watching. Waiting. Pretending we have our lives together."
"I don't pretend." He nearly scoffs.
"No, you just brood dramatically while wearing enough weapons to invade a small country." You crumple up the sandwich wrapper. "Sure, there's a difference, but it's subtle."
Frank leans against the ledge, his shoulder almost touching yours. "You hear about the shipment coming through the docks?"
"The one with enough illegal weapons to make your collection look like a toy store? Yeah, I heard."
His voice is gruff when he responds: "I'm going to hit it tomorrow night."
"Of course you are." You glance at him. "You want backup?"
"I work alone."
"And yet you're telling me about it."
His jaw tightens. "I'm not asking for help."
"Good, because I wasn't offering. I was just going to show up and steal your thunder." You stretch, feeling the residual ache in your side from healing him. It's faded to a dull throb, manageable, but still pestering and annoying. "What time?"
"Midnight." He replies.
You tease, "I'll bring snacks."
Frank frowns, wondering if everything has to be a joke with you. "This isn't a social event."
"Everything's a social event if you have the right attitude." You turn to face him fully. "Besides, someone needs to make sure you don't get shot again. I'm starting to think you do it on purpose just to see me."
"That's not—" He stops, and something flickers across his face. "I don't get shot on purpose."
"Could've fooled me. You have a real talent for finding bullets with your body."
"It's not a talent." He grunts. “I don’t enjoy getting shot.”
"Then maybe you should consider a career change. I hear accounting is nice. Very low bullet risk."
He turns to you with a glint in his eye, gruffly mumbling, "See for that, I'd rather get shot."
You laugh, and the sound echoes across the rooftop. "This is why we're friends."
"We're not friends." Is his response.
"Partners?"
"No." He says.
"Colleagues?"
"Definitely not."
You contemplate your reply, tapping your index finger to your bottom lip in pensive thought. "How about: Two people who keep ending up in the same place at the same time and occasionally prevent each other from dying?"
Frank considers this. "I’d say that's slightly more accurate."
"Catchy. We should get t-shirts." You hop up onto the ledge, balancing easily. The kinetic energy of the city hums through your bones, ready to catch you if you fall. "You know what your problem is, Castle?"
"I'm sure you're going to tell me."
He right, you are. "You take everything too seriously. Life, death, justice, vengeance. You need to learn to relax."
Frank doesn’t understand you. "Relaxing gets people killed."
"So does stress. Heart disease is a real thing, ya know?" You walk along the ledge like it's a tightrope, arms out for balance even though you don't need it. "When's the last time you did something fun?"
He frowns. "I have fun."
"Shooting people doesn't count."
"Then never."
You stop, looking down at him. He's watching you with that intense focus he applies to everything, like you're a problem he's trying to solve. "That's sad, Frank. Genuinely sad."
"I'm not here to have fun. I'm here to do a job."
"And when the job's done?"
"There's always another job."
You jump down, landing in front of him, your boots thumping on the concrete of the roof. You're close now, close enough to see the scars on his face, the permanent tension in his shoulders, the weight he carries in his eyes.
"That's no way to live," you say quietly.
He considers lying to you, or doing what you do and deflecting with humour, but he doesn’t, "It's the only way I know." He says.
For a moment, neither of you moves. The city sounds fade into background noise—sirens, traffic, the distant thump of music from a club. It's just you and Frank and the space between you that feels charged with something you're not ready to name.
Then your phone buzzes, shattering the moment.
You step back, checking the message. "Spider-boy needs help in Queens. Something about lizard people."
Frank actually chuckles. "It's always something with him."
"He's young. He'll learn. And at least he asks me for help." Frank knows that was a direct shot at him. You pocket your phone. "Midnight tomorrow. Don't start without me."
Frank grunts a reply. "I'm not waiting for you."
"Yes, you are." You head for the fire escape, then pause. "Hey, Castle?"
"What?"
"Try not to get shot between now and then. I'm running low on patience for your self-destructive bullshit."
He sighs. "I'll take it under advisement."
You flip him off cheerfully and drop over the edge, using absorbed kinetic energy to slow your fall. Behind you, you hear something that might be a laugh, but when you look back, Frank's already gone.
The dock job goes sideways in the way these things always do.
You're crouched behind a shipping container, breathing hard, while bullets ping off the metal around you. Frank's somewhere to your left, returning fire with the kind of calm precision that would be attractive if it wasn't so deeply concerning.
"This is going great!" you shout over the gunfire. "Really well planned!"
"Shut up and stay down!"
"I am down! I'm very down! I'm practically horizontal!" You gather kinetic energy from the impacts around you, feeling it build in your palms like static electricity. "How many are there?"
"Too many." He's clearly annoyed. He'd miscalculated and now he's paying for it.
"That's not a number, Castle!"
A bullet whizzes past your head, close enough that you feel the displacement of air. You pop up, release the stored energy in a concentrated blast, and watch three guys go flying backward like they've been hit by an invisible truck.
"Okay, that felt good," you mutter.
"On your six!"
You spin, but you're not fast enough. The guy's already there, gun raised, finger on the trigger. Time seems to slow. You're gathering energy but you won't make it, you won't—
The gunshot is deafening.
The guy drops, a red bloom spreading across his chest. Frank's there suddenly, his gun still raised, his face grim.
"You okay?" he asks.
"Yeah. Thanks." Your heart is hammering. "That was close."
"Too close. You're getting sloppy kid."
Your eyes widen at him incredulously. "I'm getting sloppy? You're the one who said there'd be a dozen guys!"
"I said approximately a dozen."
"There are at least twenty!"
"That's still approximately—" He doesn't want to admit he was wrong...especially not to you.
"Oh my God,” You can’t believe him…you truly can’t believe him. Clearly this guy doesn’t care an ounce about either of your safety, “are you seriously arguing math right now?"
More gunfire erupts, cutting off whatever Frank was going to say. You both move in sync, a dance you've done enough times that it's almost choreographed. Frank provides cover fire while you flank, using kinetic blasts to disarm and disable. It's brutal and efficient and over in minutes.
The silence after is almost jarring.
"Everyone down?" you ask, checking the perimeter.
"Everyone down."
"Dead or unconscious?"
He balks at that. "Does it matter?"
"To the police report, yes." You spot Frank's limp. "You're hurt."
"I'm fine."
You shake your head in disappointment. "You're clearly limping."
"It's nothing."
You cross to him, and he tries to wave you off, but you're already seeing it—blood seeping through his pants leg, a knife wound by the look of it.
"Sit," you order.
"I can walk it off."
"Sit, or I'll use kinetic energy to make you sit, and that'll be embarrassing for both of us." It'd be way more embarrassing for him, you think, but you've got to appease to his ego some way or another.
He sits, mostly because arguing takes energy he doesn't have. A small part of him though, enjoys when you order him around, not that Frank would ever say that aloud. You kneel beside him, examining the wound. It's deep but clean, the kind of cut that'll hurt like hell but won't kill him.
"This is becoming a habit," you say.
"You don't have to—"
"I know I don't have to. I'm going to anyway." You place your hands over the wound. "Brace yourself."
The healing energy flows, and with it comes the pain. It's sharp and immediate, a hot knife dragging through your own thigh. You breathe through it, keeping your expression neutral, focusing on knitting Frank's flesh back together.
"There," you say when it's done, pulling back. Your leg throbs in sympathy. "Good as new."
Frank looks down at his leg, then up at you. "How do you do that?"
"Very carefully." You stand, testing your weight on the leg that isn't really injured. "We should go before the cops show up."
"Wait." Frank catches your wrist. "Your hands are shaking."
"Adrenaline." You tell him.
"You don’t look so good."
"It's nighttime. And we just got shot at by about two dozen men—who looks good after that?"
"Kinetic—"
"We need to go, Castle. Now."
You pull free and start walking, ignoring the way your leg wants to give out. Behind you, Frank follows, and you can feel his eyes on you, questioning, suspicious.
You're three blocks away when a familiar figure drops from above, landing in a crouch that's far too graceful for someone who's been through what he has.
"Hey, guys!" Peter Parker says brightly, straightening up. His Spider-Man suit is torn in places, and there's what looks like green slime on his shoulder. "Fancy meeting you here!"
"Spider-Man," Frank says flatly. "What do you want?"
"Just checking in on my favourite dysfunctional crime-fighting couple!" Peter swings closer, and even through the mask you can tell he's grinning. "How was date night? Lots of gunfire and property damage, I'm guessing?"
"It wasn't a date," you say.
"We're not a couple," Frank adds.
"Sure, sure. And I'm not currently covered in sewer lizard goo." Peter looks between you. "You know, for two people who claim to hate each other, you sure spend a lot of time together."
"We don't hate each other," you say.
"And we're not together," Frank insists.
"Right. You're just two emotionally constipated vigilantes who keep saving each other's lives and definitely don't have any feelings whatsoever." Peter shoots a web at a nearby building. "Totally normal. Very believable." If he wasn’t wearing a mask, you could have sworn you’d seen him wink.
"Don't you have actual Spider-Man things to do?" you ask. "Crimes to stop? Lizards to fight?"
"Already done! Dr. Connors is back in custody, the sewers are slightly less dangerous, and I have the rest of the night free to bother you two." He swings in a lazy circle around you. "So, what's the deal? Are you guys partners? Friends with benefits? Enemies with benefits?"
"We're leaving," Frank says.
"Ooh, together? To whose place?"
"Parker—"
"I'm just saying, if you're going to do the whole 'will they won't they' thing, maybe speed it up? Some of us have been watching this dance for months and it's getting old."
You can't help but laugh. "Months?"
"Oh yeah. You should hear what the other heroes say.” You know he means Yelena Belova, she’s just about the only other hero Peter keeps up with, except for maybe Daredevil, but you’re not quite sure they’ve been introduced yet. “There's a betting pool and everything."
Frank's expression could curdle milk. "A betting pool."
"Daredevil thinks you'll get together by Christmas. Yelena says never. I'm optimistic—I've got money on next month." There he goes proving you wrong—he does know more people than you thought. You're going to have to have a little chat with Matt Murdock about respecting people's privacy.
Peter lands on a fire escape, hanging upside down. "No pressure though!"
"I'm going to shoot him," Frank says.
"You're not going to shoot him. The last time you did that, you almost killed him, and you were sick about it for weeks.”
Frank's expression drops just a smidge. He remembers everything that happened with Jean Grey, not fondly, at all. "I'm seriously considering it." He settles on. But you and he both know he would never.
"You consider it every time you see him. You never follow through." You look up at Peter. "What are you really doing here, Spider-boy?"
Peter's tone shifts, becoming more serious. "Making sure you're both okay. That dock situation was messy. I was in the area and heard the gunfire."
"We're fine," you say.
"You sure? Because you're favouring your left leg and Frank looks like he wants to murder me more than usual, which means something's up."
You exchange a glance with Frank. Peter's observant—too observant sometimes. It's easy to forget that under the quips and the jokes, he's a genuinely skilled hero.
"We're fine," Frank repeats. "Go home, Parker."
"Fine, fine. I can take a hint." Peter shoots another web, preparing to swing away. "But seriously, you two should talk. About feelings and stuff. It's healthy."
"I'm definitely shooting him," Frank mutters.
"No you're not!" Peter calls back, already swinging away. "Love you too, Dad!"
The silence after he leaves is heavy.
"Did he just—" you start.
"Don't," Frank says warningly.
You quip. "That’s so cute! He called you Dad."
"I said don't."
You're grinning now, you can't help it. "That's amazing. You're Spider-Dad."
Frank fights the urge to roll his eyes. "I'm not anyone's dad."
"You kind of are though. You do the whole protective disapproving thing really well."
He looks at you unimpressed. "I disapprove of everyone equally."
"Especially me?"
Frank looks at you, and something in his expression softens. "No. Not especially you."
The moment stretches, charged with something unspoken. Your leg is still throbbing, a phantom pain that isn't really yours, and you're suddenly very aware of how close Frank is standing.
"We should go," you say finally. "Before any more heroes show up to psychoanalyze our relationship."
"We don't have a relationship."
"Right. We're just two people who keep saving each other and definitely don't have any feelings whatsoever."
Frank's mouth twitches. "You're never going to let that go, are you?"
"Not even a little bit." You start walking, and this time when your leg wobbles, Frank's there, his hand on your elbow, steadying you.
"You okay?" he asks quietly.
"Yeah. Just tired."
He doesn't let go immediately, and you don't pull away. You walk like that for half a block, his hand on your arm, your shoulders almost touching, before the moment breaks and you separate.
But something's shifted. Something's changed.
And you're pretty sure Frank felt it too.
It's been a week since the dock job, and you've patched Frank up twice more. Once for a broken rib (courtesy of a particularly aggressive mob enforcer), and once for a concussion (courtesy of Frank's own reckless disregard for personal safety).
Each time, you've taken the pain. Each time, you've hidden it.
But Frank's starting to notice things.
You don't know this yet. You're too busy trying to convince him that yes, he does need to rest after being thrown through a window, and no, "walking it off" is not a valid medical strategy.
"You're being ridiculous," Frank says. He's sitting on his warehouse couch—which you're pretty sure he's never actually slept on—while you hover nearby with an ice pack.
"I'm being responsible. There's a difference." You press the ice pack to the bruise blooming on his temple. "You could have a serious concussion."
"I've had worse."
"That's not the reassurance you think it is."
"I'm fine." He tries again in a way that only he could make sound so not convincing.
"Frank,” you place your hands firmly on your hips. “You threw up twice."
"That's just nausea."
"From the concussion!"
Frank catches your wrist, stopping your fussing. His grip is gentle but firm, and when you meet his eyes, there's something searching in his gaze.
He's going back to old habits, curiosity getting the better of him, and so as he always does, he asks you: "Why do you do this?"
"Do what? Try to keep you from dying of your own stupidity?"
"Care. About what happens to me."
The question catches you off guard, even though it's not like it something he's never asked you before in seventeen different ways. You try to pull away, but he doesn't let go. He’s already done this to you several times before, and each time you deflect.
"Someone has to," you say lightly. "You're certainly not going to do it."
"That's not an answer." He responds.
"It's the only answer you're getting." You tug your wrist free. "Now hold this ice pack and try not to do anything stupid for the next twenty-four hours."
Frank’s brow furrows, like he’s not sure that’s something he’s capable of doing. "That's a long time." He says.
"I have faith in you. Minimal faith, but still."
You turn to leave, and that's when it happens. Your leg—the one that took his knife wound last week—gives out. Just for a second, just a slight buckle, but it's enough.
Frank's on his feet instantly, concussion forgotten. "What was that?"
"Nothing. Slipped."
"You didn't slip. Your leg gave out." Worry laces his cadence.
You puff out a breath. "I'm tired. It's been a long night."
But Frank's not buying it. You can see the wheels turning in his head, pieces clicking into place. He's looking at you differently now, really looking, and you don't like what he might be seeing.
"How long has your leg been bothering you?" he asks.
"It hasn't." You protest.
"Don't lie to me."
"I'm not—"
He doesn’t believe you in the slightest…you’re a terrible liar, he thinks. "You've been favouring it since the docks. Since you healed my knife wound." His eyes narrow. "Show me."
"Frank—"
"Show me."
There's no arguing with that tone. Reluctantly, you roll up your pant leg, revealing the faint scar on your thigh. It's in the exact same place Frank's wound was, a mirror image of damage that was never really yours.
Frank stares at it. Then at you. Then back at the scar.
"That's where I was cut," he says slowly.
"Coincidence?" You squeak, shrugging your shoulders in surrender.
"Bullshit." He moves closer, and you resist the urge to back away. "What did you do?"
"I healed you. You know this."
"How? How does your healing work?"
You're quiet for a long moment. Then, quietly: "It transfers."
"Transfers what?" He’s never been more serious about a question in his life.
You relent, lying to him seeming less and less worth it as the minutes go by. "The damage. The pain. When I heal someone, I take on their injuries. Not the physical wound, but the pain of it. The body's memory of trauma." You meet his eyes. "It fades faster than a real injury would, but it's there. For a while."
Frank's face goes through several expressions—confusion, realization, and then something that might be horror.
"Every time you've healed me," he says slowly, "you've taken on my pain."
You shrug. "It's not a big deal."
"Not a big—" He stops, running a hand over his face. "The gunshot. The broken rib. The concussion. You've been walking around with all of that?"
"It fades. I'm fine."
"You're not fine. You're—" He looks at you like he's seeing you for the first time. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because you wouldn't have let me help if you knew."
"You're damn right I wouldn't have!"
"Exactly. And you needed help, Frank. You need help." You pull your pant leg down. "So I helped. That's what people do."
He looks betrayed, dark eyes wide with regret. "Not like this. Not by hurting themselves."
You scoff at him. "You hurt yourself every single night. How is this different?"
"It's different because—" He stops, jaw working. "It just is." He can’t come up with anything better.
"That’s a compelling argument, Frank."
"Don't." His voice is rough. "Don't make jokes about this."
You've never seen Frank like this—angry, yes, but not at you. Never at you. There's something raw in his expression, something vulnerable that he usually keeps locked away.
"I'm sorry," you say quietly. "I should have told you."
"Yeah. You should have." He sits back down, heavily, like his legs won't hold him anymore. "No more healing."
"Frank—"
"I mean it. No more. I won't have you hurting yourself for me."
"That's not your choice to make."
Now it’s his turn to scoff. "Like hell it isn't."
You move to sit beside him, close enough that your shoulders touch. "You don't get to decide what I do with my powers. Or who I use them on."
His eyes narrow. "Even if it's killing you?"
"It's not killing me.” You reply with a deep sigh. You’re used to it, it’s all you’ve ever known. “It's just pain Castle. I can handle pain."
"You shouldn't have to."
"Neither should you. But here we are." You lean your head on his shoulder, a gesture that surprises both of you. "We're both idiots, Frank. We're both self-destructive and stubborn and terrible at accepting help. The only difference is I'm slightly better at hiding it."
He's quiet for a long moment. Then: "How long does it last? The pain?"
"Depends on the injury. Small stuff, a few hours. Bigger things, a few days. The gunshot took almost a week to fully fade."
"A week." He sounds sick. "You were in pain for a week and I didn't even notice."
"I didn't want you to notice. That was kind of the point."
"Why?" He turns to look at you, and you're struck by how close his face is. "Why would you do that?"
Because I care about you, you think. Because seeing you hurt is worse than any pain I could take on. Because somewhere along the way, this stopped being about helping a fellow vigilante and started being about something else entirely.
But you don't say any of that. Instead, you say: "Because someone has to look out for you. And I'm apparently volunteering."
Frank's hand comes up, cupping your face with a gentleness that seems impossible from someone so violent. His thumb brushes your cheekbone, and you can feel the calluses, the evidence of a life lived in combat.
"You're an idiot," he says softly.
"Takes one to know one."
"I'm serious. You can't keep doing this."
"Watch me."
"(Y/n)—" He calls you by your real name this time…and it feels foreign on his tongue just as it sounds out of place for you. But something about it has your heart beating a little quicker than before.
"Frank." You cover his hand with yours. "I know what I'm doing. I know the cost. And I'm choosing to pay it. You don't get to take that choice away from me."
He looks like he wants to argue, but something in your expression stops him. Instead, he just sits there, his hand on your face, your hand on his, while the warehouse settles around you.
"I don't want you to hurt for me," he says finally.
"Too late. I already do."
You mean it as a joke, but it comes out too honest, too raw. Frank's eyes search yours, and you wonder what he sees there. What you're accidentally revealing.
"You should go," he says, but he doesn't move his hand.
"Probably."
"Get some rest. Let yourself heal."
"You too."
"I will."
You raise a brow at him. "Liar."
His mouth twitches. "Yeah."
You stand, and immediately your leg protests, a sharp reminder of the knife wound that isn't really there. Frank notices—of course he notices, now that he knows what to look for.
"Let me—" he starts.
"I'm fine. It's a few blocks."
"You can barely walk."
"I can walk fine. I'm just doing it slowly. Very deliberately slowly."
"That's not a thing."
"It is now." You head for the door, then pause. "Frank?"
"Yeah?"
"Thank you. For caring. Even if you're being annoying about it."
You leave before he can respond, but you feel his eyes on you all the way out.
You don't see Frank for three days after that, which is unusual. Normally he's getting into trouble every other night, requiring your intervention and/or healing services.
The absence is noticeable. Concerning, even.
You tell yourself you're not worried. Frank Castle can take care of himself. He's been doing it for years. He doesn't need you hovering.
But on the fourth night, you find yourself on his rooftop anyway, eating Chinese takeout and pretending you're not waiting for him.
"You're in my spot again."
You don't jump, because you heard him coming. "It's a good spot. You have excellent taste in brood locations."
Frank moves to stand beside you, and you notice he's moving normally. No limp, no stiffness. Either he hasn't been in any fights, or he has and he's hiding it.
"You've been quiet," you say.
"Been busy."
"Busy avoiding me?"
He shakes his head in protest. "Busy working."
"Uh-huh." You offer him a container of lo mein. "Hungry?"
"I'm good."
"You're never good. You're just varying degrees of not-good." You shake the container. "Eat. You look like you haven't had a real meal in days." As if what you’re eating could be classified as a real meal…but hey, beggars can’t be choosers.
He takes the container, which is progress. You eat in silence for a while, watching the city lights.
"I've been thinking," Frank says finally.
"That’s dangerous."
He tilts his head slightly to the left, eyes narrowing at you. You relent and let him talk. "About what you said. About taking on pain."
You tense. "Frank—"
"I did some research. Talked to some people who know about mutant powers." Dr. Banner, you assume. Via Peter Parker, you guess.
"You talked to people about me?"
"I didn't use your name. But yeah." He sets down the container. "Apparently, what you're doing—taking on that much pain, that frequently—it's not sustainable."
"I'm fine."
"You're not. The pain might fade, but it leaves traces. Phantom damage. Your body remembers, even if the wounds aren't real." He turns to face you. "Keep doing it, and eventually your body won't know the difference between phantom pain and real pain. You'll break down."
You're quiet, because you know he's right. You've felt it—the way the pain lingers longer each time, the way your body is starting to protest. But admitting it means stopping, and stopping means watching Frank get hurt without being able to help.
"I'll be careful," you say.
"That's not good enough."
"It's going to have to be."
"No. It's not." Frank's voice is hard. "I won't let you destroy yourself for me."
You push back. He's not the only one you help...but he's becoming the most important. "You don't get a say in this."
He doesn’t like that answer…it feels like a cop out. "Like hell I don't."
You stand, anger flaring. "What do you want from me, Frank? You want me to just watch you bleed out? Watch you take damage that I could prevent? I can't do that."
"Why not?"
"Because—" You stop, the words catching in your throat.
"Because what?"
Because I care about you. Because the thought of you dying makes me feel like I'm the one bleeding out. Because somewhere in all this violence and pain and stubbornness, I fell for you, and I don't know how to stop.
But you can't say that. So instead you say: "Because it's what I do. I help people. It's my thing."
Frank still can’t understand you. After months of knowing you the way he has, he still can't get it. "This isn't helping. This is self-destruction with extra steps."
"Oh, that's rich coming from you. The king of self-destruction."
"That's different."
You scoff. "How? How is it different?"
"Because I'm not worth it!" The words explode out of him, raw and angry. "I'm not worth you hurting yourself. I'm not worth saving."
The silence after is deafening.
Frank's breathing hard, his hands clenched into fists. You've never seen him like this—not angry, but something deeper. Something that looks like pain.
"You don't get to decide that," you say quietly.
"It's my life."
"And it's my choice. My power. My decision." You step closer. "You don't get to tell me you're not worth saving, Frank. You don't get to make that call."
"You don't understand—"
"I understand perfectly." Your eyes try to meet his, but he avoids your gaze. "You think you're beyond redemption. You think you deserve every bullet, every knife, every broken bone. You think pain is penance." You're right in front of him now, close enough to see the scars on his face, the weight in his eyes. "But you're wrong."
His face falls, "You don't know what I've done."
"I know enough.” you say. “I know you're trying to make the world safer. I know you protect people who can't protect themselves. I know you're a good man doing bad things for the right reasons." You reach up, cupping his face the way he did yours. "And I know you're worth saving. Even if you don't believe it."
Frank's eyes close, and for a moment he just stands there, leaning into your touch like a man starved for gentleness.
"I can't ask you to keep doing this," he says.
"You're not asking. I'm offering."
"It's going to hurt you."
"I know." You respond. You've always known that.
"It might break you."
"I know that too."
He opens his eyes, and there's something in them you've never seen before. Something vulnerable and terrified and hopeful all at once.
"Why?" he asks again. "Why would you do that?"
You could lie. You could deflect, make a joke, change the subject. But you're tired of hiding, tired of pretending this is just about helping a fellow vigilante.
"Because I care about you, you idiot," you say. "Because seeing you hurt is worse than any pain I could take on. Because I—"
You stop, but it's too late. The words are already out there, hanging in the air between you.
Frank stares at you. "You what?"
"Nothing. Forget it."
"No. Say it." It almost feels like he's begging you to say something...and that's so unlike him.
"Frank—"
"Say it."
You take a breath. "Because I love you. Okay? I love you, and I know that's stupid and complicated and probably a terrible idea, but there it is. I love you, and I'm going to keep healing you, and you're just going to have to deal with it."
The silence stretches. Frank's expression is unreadable, and you're starting to think you've made a terrible mistake when he moves.
His hands come up to frame your face, and then he's kissing you.
It's not gentle. It's desperate and fierce and tastes like lo mein and poor life choices. You make a surprised sound against his mouth, but then you're kissing him back, your hands fisting in his shirt, pulling him closer.
When you finally break apart, you're both breathing hard.
"That was—" you start.
"Yeah."
"Does this mean—"
"Yeah."
"You're very articulate right now."
"Shut up." But he's smiling, really smiling, and it transforms his whole face. "You're an idiot."
"You already said that."
"It bears repeating." He kisses you again, softer this time. "You can't keep taking on my pain."
"We'll figure something out."
Frank eyes you up and down. "I'm serious." He says.
"So am I. We'll be careful. We'll find a balance." You rest your forehead against his. "But I'm not stopping, Frank. I'm not walking away."
"Even though I'm a disaster?"
"Especially because you're a disaster. Someone needs to keep you alive."
"And that someone is you?"
You smile. "Apparently."
He laughs, and the sound is rusty but genuine. "We're both idiots."
"Yeah. But at least we're idiots together."
You stay like that for a long moment, wrapped up in each other, the city sprawling below you. It's not perfect. It's messy and complicated and probably going to end badly.
But right now, with Frank's arms around you and his heart beating against yours, it feels right.
Two weeks later, everything goes to hell.
You're in an abandoned factory in Brooklyn, because of course you are. Frank got a tip about a major weapons deal going down, and despite your protests, he insisted on checking it out.
"This is a bad idea," you say for the third time.
"Noted."
"I'm serious, Frank. This feels wrong."
"It always feels wrong. That's how you know it's worth doing."
You can’t even argue with him at this point…it doesn’t make any sense. "That's the worst logic I've ever heard."
Frank checks his gun, his movements efficient and practiced. "You don't have to be here."
"Yes, I do. Someone needs to patch you up when this inevitably goes sideways."
He mumbles into his vest, voice low. "Your confidence is inspiring."
"I'm a realist." You peer around the corner, scanning the factory floor. There are too many guys, too many guns, too many ways this can go wrong. "We should call for backup."
"Like who? Spider-Man?"
"He'd come if we asked."
"I'm not asking a kid for help."
"He's not a kid anymore, Frank. He's been through hell and back."
"Exactly. Which is why I'm not dragging him into this."
You want to argue, but there's no time. The deal is going down now, and Frank's already moving, silent as a shadow.
You follow, because what else are you going to do? Let him face this alone?
The first few minutes go smoothly. Frank takes out three guys before anyone realizes they're under attack. You provide support, using kinetic blasts to disarm and disable. It's a dance you've done before, violent and efficient.
Then someone hits the alarm.
Suddenly the factory is flooded with light and sound and way too many armed men. You and Frank are separated in the chaos, and you lose sight of him in the crowd.
"Frank!" you shout, but your voice is lost in the gunfire.
You fight your way through, taking down anyone who gets in your way. Your powers are singing, kinetic energy flowing through you like electricity. You're absorbing impacts, redirecting force, turning the enemy's own momentum against them.
But there are too many. For every one you drop, two more appear.
You finally spot Frank across the factory floor. He's surrounded, fighting with the kind of brutal efficiency that would be beautiful if it wasn't so terrifying. But even he can't fight off this many.
You see the knife before he does.
Time seems to slow as one of the guys gets behind Frank, blade raised. You're too far away, you won't make it, you—
You release every bit of kinetic energy you've been storing, a massive blast that sends everyone flying. The recoil hits you like a truck, and you go down hard, your head cracking against concrete.
The world goes fuzzy. You can hear shouting, gunfire, and the sound of fighting. You try to get up, but your body won't cooperate.
Then Frank's there, his face above yours, his hands on your shoulders.
"Stay down," he orders.
"You're okay," you manage. Your voice sounds distant, strange.
"I'm fine. You're not." He's checking you over, his movements urgent. "You're bleeding."
"'S not that bad."
Frank disagrees. "You have a head wound. That's always bad."
More gunfire. Frank returns it without looking, his aim perfect even while he's focused on you. Bodies drop.
"We need to move," he says.
"Can't. Dizzy."
"Then I'm carrying you."
He scoops you up like you weigh nothing, and you want to protest, but the world is spinning and you can't quite form words. You're vaguely aware of Frank moving, of more gunfire, of the factory falling away behind you.
Then you're outside, the cool night air hitting your face. Frank sets you down carefully, and you can see now that he's hurt too—blood on his shoulder, a cut on his face, moving with the stiffness that means broken ribs.
"You're injured," you say.
"I'm fine."
"No, you're not." You reach for him, trying to summon your healing power, but nothing happens. You're too drained, too hurt. "I can't—"
"Don't. Don't even try." Frank's hands are gentle as he examines your head wound. "You need a hospital."
"No hospitals."
"You have a concussion. Maybe worse."
"So do you."
"Like I said kid,” he takes a few steps forward. “I've had worse."
"That's not—" You stop, because the world is tilting again. "Frank."
"I'm here. I've got you."
You want to heal him. You need to heal him. But your power won't come, and you're so tired, and everything hurts.
"I'm sorry," you whisper.
"For what?"
"Can't help you."
"You already did. You saved my life back there." His voice is rough. "That blast—you could have killed yourself."
"But I didn't."
"You could have." He argues.
Your words begin to slur themselves into each other. "Would’ve been worth it."
"No. It's not." He's holding you now, cradling you against his chest. "You're not allowed to die for me. That's not how this works."
"You'd do it for me."
"That's not the same kid."
"How?"
"Because I—" He stops, and when he speaks again, his voice is barely a whisper. "Because I love you too. And I can't lose you."
You smile, even though it hurts. "Took you long enough to say it."
He nearly laughs, despite the gravity of the situation. "You know I'm not good at this."
"I know. 'S okay."
Sirens wail in the distance. Frank tenses, but you put a hand on his chest.
"Stay," you say. "Just for a minute."
He stays.
You drift in and out, aware of Frank's voice, of him talking to someone—Spider-Man, you think, from the sound of the responses. Then you're moving again, being carried, and everything fades to black.
You wake up in Frank's warehouse, which is not where you expected to be.
"You're awake." Peter's face swims into view, the mask pushed up to reveal his concerned expression. "How do you feel?"
You contemplate your answer before you say, "Like I got hit by a truck."
"More like you released enough kinetic energy to level a building. Which, by the way, was incredibly stupid and also kind of awesome."
You try to sit up, and immediately regret it. "Where's Frank?"
"Right here." Frank appears on your other side, and you can see he's been patched up—bandages on his shoulder, his ribs wrapped. "How's your head?"
"Hurts. How's your everything?"
"I've had worse." That seems to be his favourite phrase.
"You need to find a new line buddy."
Peter looks between you, grinning. "You know, for two people who I heard confessed their love for each other, you're both remarkably bad at the whole tender moment thing."
"We're working on it," you say.
"Clearly." Peter stands, stretching. "Well, I'll leave you two to your emotionally constipated bonding. Try not to do anything stupid while I'm gone."
"No promises," Frank says.
"I know. That's what worries me." Peter pulls his mask down. "Oh, and for the record? I won the betting pool. You're welcome."
He's gone before either of you can respond, swinging out through the skylight.
"There really was a betting pool?" you ask.
"Apparently."
"How much did he win?"
"Does it matter?"
"I want to know how much our relationship is worth in vigilante currency."
Frank's mouth twitches, you swear he's smiling at you softly. "Our relationship."
"Yeah. That's what this is, right?" You reach for his hand. "Unless you want to take back that whole 'I love you' thing."
"Not taking it back." He sits on the edge of the bed—and it is a bed, you realize, not the couch. He must have moved you. "But we need to talk."
"That's never a good start to a conversation."
"I'm serious. What you did back there—"
"Saved your life?"
"Nearly killed yourself." His grip on your hand tightens. "You can't do that again."
"Frank—"
"I mean it. You released too much energy at once. Peter said your heart stopped for almost a minute."
That stops you. "What?"
"You died. Technically. He had to do CPR while I cleared the rest of the factory." Frank's voice is rough. "Do you understand what that was like? Knowing you were dying and I couldn't do anything about it?" You’ve watched Frank nearly die a hundred times before…but the difference is, you always knew you could save him.
You're quiet, processing his query. You don't remember dying. You just remember the blast, the recoil, and then waking up here.
"I'm sorry," you say finally.
"Don't be sorry. Just don't do it again."
"I can't promise that."
He’s more than serious when he responds with: "Yes, you can."
"No, I can't." You squeeze his hand. "If it comes down to your life or mine, I'm choosing yours. Every time."
"That's not—"
"Fair? No, it's not. But it's the truth." You meet his eyes. "You'd do the same for me."
"That's different." He really needs to find a new line. Or at least add another few to the rotation.
"It's really not."
Frank looks like he wants to argue, but instead he just sighs, running his free hand over his face. "We're both self-sacrificing and too stupid."
"Yeah. But we've established that already." You tug him closer. "Come here."
"You need to rest."
"I need you to stop hovering and sit with me."
He does, carefully arranging himself on the bed beside you. You curl into him, ignoring the protests from your battered body.
"This is nice," you say.
"You have a concussion."
"I'm aware. Still nice."
Frank's arm comes around you, holding you carefully like you might break. "I don't know how to do this."
"Do what?"
"This. Us. Caring about someone."
"You care about people. You care about Peter, even if you won't admit it."
"That's...He's—"
You smile against him. "A kid you've adopted whether you like it or not?"
"I haven't adopted anyone."
"You're literally Spider-Dad. Everyone knows it."
"I'm not—" He stops, and you feel him sigh. "Fine. Maybe I care about the kid. But this is different."
"Because it's romantic?" You tease him.
"Because I could lose you. And I don't know how to handle that."
You shift so you can see his face. "You could lose me anyway. I could get hit by a bus tomorrow. Or take on one injury too many. Or just decide I'm tired of your brooding and leave."
"You wouldn't."
"No, I wouldn't. But the point is, you can't protect me from everything. And you can't let fear stop you from living."
"I'm not afraid."
He's quiet for a moment. Then: "Maybe I’m a little afraid."
"That's okay.” You say. “I for one, am terrified."
"Of what?"
"Of this. Of us. Of how much I care about you." You trace the scar on his cheek. "Of losing you."
Frank catches your hand, pressing a kiss to your palm. "You're not going to lose me."
"Like I said to you, you can't promise that."
"No. But I can try." He pulls you closer. "We'll figure this out. Together."
"Together," you agree.
You stay like that for a long time, wrapped up in each other, the warehouse quiet around you. It's not perfect. You're both injured, both stubborn, both carrying more baggage than any two people should.
But it's real. And right now, that's enough.
Three weeks later, you're on a rooftop with Frank and Peter, eating pizza and arguing about the best way to take down a human trafficking ring.
"I'm just saying," Peter says around a mouthful of pepperoni, "maybe we don't need to go in guns blazing."
"I never go in guns blazing," Frank says.
"You literally always go in guns blazing."
You laugh, stealing a slice from Peter's box. "He's got you there, Frank."
"Don't encourage him."
"I'm always going to encourage him. He's our son."
Peter chokes on his pizza. "I'm your what?"
"Our son. Didn't you know? We adopted you."
"I'm not that much younger than you!" He points at you.
"Yeah, and emotionally, you're twelve."
Peter protests. "I'm a mature adult!"
"You have Spider-Man underoos."
"They were a gift!"
Frank is trying very hard not to smile. You can tell because his mouth is doing that thing where it twitches at the corners.
"Anyway," Peter says, recovering, "I think we should do reconnaissance first. Figure out how many guys there are, what kind of security they have."
"Already did that," Frank says.
"Of course you did." Peter looks at you. "Does he ever sleep?"
"Not that I've noticed."
Frank rolls his eyes. "I sleep."
"You close your eyes for twenty minutes and call it a nap."
"That's still sleep."
"That's a blink, Frank. A very long blink."
Peter's grinning now. "You two are so married. You bicker like an old couple."
You huff. "We've been together for three weeks Parker."
"And yet you already have the dynamic down. It's impressive, really."
Frank stands, brushing pizza crumbs off his pants. "If you two are done analyzing my relationship, we have work to do."
"Aw, Dad's grumpy," Peter says.
"I'm not your dad."
"You're totally my dad. You do the disappointed face and everything."
"I don't have a disappointed face."
"You're making it right now!"
You stand, stretching. Your body's mostly healed from the factory incident, though you still get headaches sometimes. Frank's been hovering, which is annoying and also kind of sweet.
"Alright, children," you say. "Let's go save some people."
The operation goes smoothly, which is suspicious. You're used to things going sideways, but tonight everything works exactly as planned. Frank takes out the guards, Peter webs up the traffickers, and you free the victims.
It's almost too easy.
"This feels wrong," you mutter to Frank as you're clearing the last room.
"I know."
"Like, really wrong."
"I know."
"So what do we—"
The explosion cuts you off.
You're thrown backward, your ears ringing. Through the smoke and debris, you can see Frank on the ground, not moving.
No.
You're moving before you think, crawling through the rubble. Your powers are screaming at you, warning of danger, but you don't care. You need to get to Frank.
"Frank!" Your hands find him, and he's breathing, thank God, but there's blood. So much blood. "Frank, stay with me."
His eyes open, unfocused. "Get out."
"Not without you."
He's struggling to breathe. "Building's coming down." His voice is weak.
"Then we'll go down together."
"Don't be stupid."
"Too late. I'm already stupid about you."
Peter appears through the smoke, his suit torn. "We need to move! Now!"
"Help me with him," you say.
Together, you and Peter get Frank up, supporting his weight between you. The building is groaning, supports failing. You can feel it in your bones, the kinetic energy of imminent collapse.
"Go!" Frank shouts. "Both of you, go!"
"Shut up," you and Peter say in unison.
You make it out with seconds to spare, the building collapsing behind you in a cloud of dust and debris. You're all coughing, covered in dirt and blood, but you're alive.
"Everyone okay?" Peter asks.
"Define okay," you say.
Frank's unconscious now, his breathing shallow. You can see the damage—shrapnel wounds, possible internal bleeding. It's bad.
"I need to heal him," you say.
"You can't," Peter says gently. "You're too weak. You'll kill yourself."
"I don't care."
"Yes, you do. And so does he." Peter puts a hand on your shoulder. "Let me call for help. Real help."
"There's no time."
"Then we make time."
You look down at Frank, at his pale face and the blood seeping through his clothes. You could heal him. You could take on his injuries, his pain. But Peter's right—you're too weak. The factory incident took more out of you than you've admitted. Another healing this big might actually kill you.
But letting Frank die isn't an option either.
"I have to try," you say.
"No." Frank's eyes are open now, barely, but there's steel in his voice. "Don't."
"Frank—"
"Promise me. Don't heal me. Not like this."
"I can't just let you—"
"Promise." His voice is firm.
You're crying now, you realize. Tears cutting tracks through the dirt on your face. "I can't lose you."
"You won't. I'm too stubborn to die." He manages a weak smile. "But I need you to trust me. Can you do that?"
You want to argue. You want to use your powers anyway, consequences be damned. But the look in Frank's eyes stops you.
"Okay," you whisper. "Okay."
Peter's already on the phone, calling for medical help. You hold Frank's hand, feeling his pulse flutter weakly under your fingers.
"You better not die," you say.
"Wasn't planning on it."
"Good. Because I have a lot of things I want to yell at you about, and I can't do that if you're dead."
"Looking forward to it."
The ambulance arrives, and they take Frank away. You try to follow, but Peter holds you back.
"Let them work," he says.
"I should be with him."
"You will be. But right now, you need to let the professionals handle it."
You watch the ambulance disappear, feeling helpless and useless and terrified.
"He's going to be okay," Peter says.
"You don't know that."
"No. But I believe it. And you should too."
You want to believe him. You really do. But all you can think about is Frank's blood on your hands, and the promise you made not to heal him. And if he dies because you hadn't done anything to save him...you're not sure you could live with yourself.
The hospital waiting room is purgatory.
You've been here for six hours, and there's still no word. Peter left an hour ago to check on the victims from the trafficking ring, promising to come back. You're alone with your thoughts, which is dangerous.
You keep replaying the explosion in your mind. Keep thinking about what you could have done differently. Keep feeling the phantom weight of Frank's hand in yours.
"Family of Frank Castle?"
You're on your feet before the doctor finishes speaking. "That's me."
The doctor looks skeptical—you're covered in dirt and blood and probably look like you've been through a war. Which, technically, you have.
"Are you actually family?" she asks.
"I'm his—" You pause. What are you? Girlfriend sounds too casual. Partner is too vague. "I'm his person. How is he?"
The doctor's expression softens. "He's stable. The surgery went well. He's lucky—the shrapnel missed all the major organs."
The relief is so intense you almost collapse. For once you're thanking whatever deity above, or below for making Frank Castle such a lucky bastard. "Can I see him?"
"He's in recovery. It'll be a few hours before he wakes up."
"I'll wait."
"Visiting hours—" The doctor tries to tell you but you’re not good at listening, especially when it comes to Frank.
"I'll wait," you repeat, and something in your voice must convince her, because she nods.
"Room 437. Fourth floor."
You take the stairs because you can't stand still long enough for the elevator. Frank's room is quiet, machines beeping steadily. He looks small in the hospital bed, which is wrong. Frank Castle should never look small.
You pull a chair up beside him, taking his hand carefully. His knuckles are bruised, his face pale under the fluorescent lights.
"Hey," you say quietly. "You scared me back there."
He doesn't respond, obviously. But you keep talking anyway.
"Peter says the victims are all safe. The traffickers are in custody. So, you know, successful mission. Except for the part where you almost died." You squeeze his hand. "You're not allowed to do that again, by the way. I'm putting it in writing. No more almost dying."
The machines beep steadily.
"I wanted to heal you," you admit. "Back there, when you were bleeding out. I wanted to so badly. But you asked me not to, and I—" Your voice breaks. "I kept my promise. Even though it was the hardest thing I've ever done."
You sit there for a long time, just holding his hand and listening to him breathe. At some point, you fall asleep, your head on the edge of his bed.
You wake to someone touching your hair.
"Hey," Frank says. His voice is rough, but he's awake, and he's looking at you with those dark eyes.
"Hey yourself." You sit up, wincing at the crick in your neck. "How do you feel?"
"Like I got blown up."
"That's because you did get blown up."
"Fair point." He's still touching your hair, his fingers gentle. "You stayed."
"Of course I stayed. Where else would I be?"
"Getting rest. Taking care of yourself."
"I can do that here."
"That chair can't be comfortable."
"It's fine."
Frank's quiet for a moment, just looking at you. Then: "Thank you." He whispers.
"For what?" You quite literally hadn’t done anything for him to thank you for.
He pauses. "For keeping your promise. For not healing me."
"I hated it."
"I know. But you did it anyway." He pulls you closer, and you go carefully, mindful of his injuries. "That means everything."
"You're not allowed to almost die again," you say against his shoulder.
"I'll try."
“Frank,” you lament. "That's not good enough."
"It's the best I can do."
You pull back to look at him. "Then I guess I'll just have to stick around. Make sure you don't do anything stupid."
"That's a full-time job."
"Good thing I'm unemployed."
He laughs, then winces. "Don't make me laugh. Hurts."
The door opens, and Peter sticks his head in. "Oh good, you're awake! I brought coffee and—" He stops, taking in the scene. "Am I interrupting a moment?"
"Yes," Frank says.
"No," you say at the same time.
Peter grins. "I'll just leave these here." He sets down a carrier with three coffees. "Glad you're okay, Frank. Try not to get blown up again."
"Everyone keeps saying that."
"Because you keep getting blown up!"
"It's not intentional."
"Isn't it though?"
Frank throws a pillow at him. Peter catches it with one hand, laughing, his coffee in the other.
"I'll leave you two alone," he says. "But I'm coming back later with actual food, because hospital food is terrible."
He leaves, and you're alone with Frank again.
"He's a good kid," Frank says.
"He's practically your son."
"He's not—" Frank stops, sighs. "Fine. Maybe he's a little bit my son."
"Wow,” you smile, “That ladies and gentleman, is what we call character growth. I'm so proud."
"Shut up."
"Make me." He does, pulling you down for a kiss that's gentle and sweet and tastes like hospital and coffee and home.
When you pull apart, you're both smiling.
"So," you say. "What now?"
"Now you go home and get some actual rest."
"Not happening."
"You need—"
"I need to be here. With you." You settle back in the chair, taking his hand. "Deal with it, Castle."
He looks like he wants to argue, but instead he just squeezes your hand. "Stubborn."
"You love it."
"Yeah," he says quietly. "I do."
Two months later, you're on Frank's rooftop—your rooftop now, really—watching the sunrise.
Frank's beside you, his arm around your shoulders. He's mostly healed from the explosion, though he still moves carefully sometimes. You've been good about not healing him, letting his body recover naturally. It's been hard, but you're learning.
"What are you thinking about?" he asks.
"How weird this is."
"Weird how?"
"Weird good. Weird like, six months ago I was alone, and now I have you. And Peter. And this whole complicated vigilante family thing."
"Having regrets?"
"Not even a little bit." You lean into him. "You?"
"No." He presses a kiss to your temple. "This is good."
"Good? That's high praise coming from you."
"Don't push it."
You laugh, and the sound echoes across the rooftop. Below, the city is waking up—people heading to work, starting their days, living their lives. You and Frank exist in the shadows, protecting them from things they'll never know about.
It's not a normal life. But it's yours.
"Hey," Peter's voice calls from below. He swings onto the rooftop, landing with his usual grace. He's got a bag from the bodega, and you can smell coffee and bagels.
"Breakfast meeting?" he asks.
"Apparently," Frank says.
"Great! Because I have news." Peter pulls out his phone. "There's a new player in town. Calls himself the Vulture. He's been hitting tech companies, stealing experimental equipment."
"And you want our help," you say.
"I mean, I can handle it alone, but—"
"But you'd rather have backup," Frank finishes.
"Exactly." Peter grins. "So what do you say? Family team-up?"
You look at Frank. He looks at you. Something passes between you, an understanding that doesn't need words.
"Yeah," you say. "We're in."
"Excellent! This is going to be great. We should have a team name. Like the Defenders, but cooler."
"We're not having a team name," Frank says.
"The Punishers?"
Frank scoffs. "No."
"Ooh," Peter actually giggles, "How about: The Kinetic Crew?"
You frown at the idea. "Absolutely not."
"Spider-Family?" He tries.
Frank eyes him with contempt, mockingly. "I will shoot you."
"You won't shoot me. Mom won't let you." Your heart smiles, mom. Even though it's a joke, it feels nice to be needed by someone.
You laugh at Frank's expression. "He's got you there."
"I hate both of you," Frank mutters, but there's no heat in it.
"No you don't," you and Peter say together.
And he doesn't. You can see it in his eyes, in the way he's relaxed around you both, in the small smile he's trying to hide.
This is your family now. Broken, complicated, held together by violence and stubbornness and love. It's not perfect—but it's yours, and Franks. And that's certainly enough.
a/n: thank you to anyone who read this fic all the way through! I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did writing it (I would love to write more for frank in the future)...
you know helping the bleeding man in the alley next to your apartment is risky, yet something compels you to do just that. after that night, you don’t ever expect to see him again. but frank castle keeps surprising you.
warnings/tags: wound care, descriptions of blood and injuries, strangers to lovers, reader is a trauma nurse, some very minor angst, brief encounter with a creepy man, no use of y/n, pet names (angel), tension and mutual pining, use of alcohol, frank might be kinda ooc at times but idc i’m just having fun, may or may not have been heavily inspired by how matt and claire met in daredevil season one!
author’s note: i originally started this early last year. i’ve been on a bit of writing break this summer, but i wanted to try to finish this in celebration of frank being in spiderman brand new day! big smooches to @fru1t4fr0gs and @myrrh-dock for the encouragement with this <3
ִֶָ. ..𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ🪽་༘࿐
You’ve always gone back and forth on whether to believe that being a light sleeper is a blessing or a curse.
On one hand, you take comfort in knowing that you’re more likely to wake up quickly at the sound of potential threats. On the other hand, it can be exhausting to wake up at every little thing that goes bump in the night.
Hell's Kitchen isn’t exactly a quiet place. The average night is filled with sounds of police sirens and noisy neighbors. Shouting, stomping, fucking, fighting – you name it. Over the course of the year that you have lived here, you have grown accustomed to it – and with the help of melatonin and a white noise machine, you're able to drown most of it out. Usually.
Usually does not typically include the sound of gun shots in the alleyway below your apartment in the middle of a random Thursday night, however.
The initial shot causes you to jolt upright in your bed. Before you can process what you heard, another shot fires from somewhere outside your window, this time unmistakable.
Instinctively, you roll off of your mattress and onto the floor, using the bed as a barricade in case any bullets come flying through your window. Your heart feels as if it’s going to beat right out of your chest, and you try your hardest to regain control of your breathing while not moving a muscle.
Thirty seconds pass, then a minute, and then two while you wait for the sound of another gunshot that never comes. You’re unsure of how long you lie on your floor before finally sitting up and reaching into the drawer of the bedside table directly above your head. You pull out the Glock 42 that you purchased prior to moving to this part of town, though you haven’t truly worried about needing to use it until right now.
As quietly as you can, you crawl with the gun in hand to the opposite side of your bed, closer to the window. Your curtains are closed, and you intend on keeping them that way, but there’s a big enough gap between the fabric and the window for you to peek outside.
At first, you see nothing out of the ordinary. There’s enough light from a streetlamp at the mouth of the alleyway that you’re able to make out the trash bins and a dumpster that belongs to the bakery next door to your apartment building. You watch with bated breath, waiting for any kind of movement.
Just when you’re convinced that the shooter (or shooters) have fled the scene, a flash of movement catches your eye from the far end of the dumpster. You can tell that it’s a man – he had been hiding behind it, just out of your field of view. His head peeks around the corner, as if checking to make sure the coast is clear.
He steps out from behind the dumpster, taking several wobbly steps before leaning against the metal siding for support. Thanks to the streetlamp and tonight's full moon, you’re able to see that the side of his head is caked in what is presumably blood – whether it’s his or someone else’s, you have no idea. You watch as the man pulls back his coat, revealing a white t-shirt soaked in dark red near his shoulder.
You can’t stop the small gasp that escapes from your lips. You immediately cover your mouth with your hand, backing away from the window to search for your cell phone. He has clearly been shot, you need to call for help—
“Shit. Shit, shit, shit,” you whisper as renewed panic begins to surge through you.
Your fucking phone is dead. You press the power button repeatedly, hoping for it to miraculously turn on. You worked a sixteen hour shift at the hospital yesterday and crashed as soon as you got home. Didn’t eat anything for dinner, didn’t shower, didn’t even change out of your scrubs…and didn’t plug your phone in to charge.
You peer out of the window again. The man is still slumped against the dumpster, seemingly clutching at his wounded shoulder in an attempt to slow the bleeding.
You rack your brain, knowing that you need to do something. You’re a trauma nurse for Christ’s sake. You see this kind of thing and worse every day. You can’t just leave him to bleed out in the street while you watch from the comfort of your apartment.
You fear that if you turn your bedroom light on, he’ll see the light from the cracks in your curtains and attempt to run away. So you fumble around in the dark until you find a pair of slippers and a coat, cramming your pistol into an interior pocket.
You want to help – but you have no way of knowing why he was being shot at. The assailant could have a reasonable excuse as to why they put a bullet in this man’s shoulder. He’s injured, yes, but what if he deserves to be?
Your brain and your heart go back and forth with each other the entire trek down the apartment building’s stairwell. Ultimately, your heart wins, and you ease open an emergency exit door that leads directly into the alley where the man still sits with his back against the dumpster.
The second that he notices you step out of the building, he forces himself to his feet. He turns away from you, but not before you note just how much blood is all over him. He tugs the hood of his jacket over his head and begins to walk in the opposite direction, still obviously unsteady on his feet.
“Hey!” You call after him against your better judgment. “Judging by the way you’re walking and the amount of blood on you, I’d bet that you’ve lost a fair amount.”
You notice that he has a bit of a limp that causes him to walk slowly, but he doesn’t stop or so much as look back at you.
“’M fine, lady,” he grunts over his shoulder. “Don’t worry about me, just go back inside.”
You know that you should listen to him. Every rational and logical part of your brain is screaming at you to do as he says – turn around, go back to your apartment, and lock the fucking door.
But the pain etched in his voice roots you right where you stand. If he had any desire to harm you, why wouldn’t he do so right now? There’s no one else around. But he isn’t jumping at the opportunity to attack you – he’s actively trying to distance himself from you.
“I can help you,” You implore, your voice a bit louder this time. “I’m a trauma nurse. Let me help you.”
He stops, bracing a hand against the brick wall beside him for support. He glances back at you over his shoulder – just enough to give you a view of his side profile. Even from here, you can tell that his nose looks broken.
“See,” you continue, opening your coat enough to let him see the mauve colored scrubs that you had fallen asleep in. “No cops,” you add, reading the hesitation on his face. “I just wanna patch you up so I can go back to sleep with a clear conscience.”
Still, he says nothing. He turns, eyeing you up and down like he’s weighing the pros and cons of putting his trust in a stranger.
Truthfully, you should be doing the same right about now.
You shiver, closing your coat once more at a sudden gust of wind. “Or bleed out,” you shrug. You take a step backwards, towards the emergency exit you had come out of. “At least I know that I tried.”
You turn around, grabbing the door handle but freezing before pulling it open when you hear him finally speak.
“Wait,” he starts, his voice gruff and strained. You look back at him expectantly. “No cops?” he reiterates.
“No cops,” you promise. “Just a nurse trying to do what she went to school for.” You pause. “And maybe get some good karma out of it.”
You hold the door open for him, motioning with your head as if to say after you. He hesitates for a second longer, and then begins to limp towards you. The thought crosses your mind to help him up the stairs to your apartment on the second story, but you quickly remind yourself that you do not know this man. You’re already being risky by simply offering him help – you should at least attempt to keep some amount of space in between the two of you.
He hobbles up the stairwell, one hand clutching the railing and the other holding pressure to his shoulder wound with his t-shirt that is already soaked through with blood. You can tell he’s in a decent amount of pain, despite how he tries to conceal it.
You open your door for him before you can talk yourself out of it, mentally saying a prayer to whatever higher power may be listening that you don’t end up regretting this.
“You can take a seat on the couch,” you say as you close the door behind you. “And remove your coat and shirt, if you can. I’ll gather my supplies.”
You instinctively begin to shrug out of your own coat, but then remember the pistol that rests in the pocket and decide it’s safer to resume wearing it. He is a complete stranger, and a bloody, bruised one at that.
With his back still turned to you, he slowly slips off his coat and then carefully pulls the blood-soaked t-shirt over his head. He hisses in pain, which isn’t shocking considering the intense bruising that decorates the thick muscles of his back.
Your gaze lingers for a moment longer than it should before you start gathering the necessary supplies from around your small apartment. Towels, sterile saline, medical shears, gauze, bandages…
When you reenter the room a moment later with everything you managed to scrounge together on such short notice, he’s already sitting on the couch, fiddling absentmindedly with the wilted petals of the dead flowers in a vase on the table in front of him.
Your eyes are instantly drawn to the entry wound just under his clavicle, near his left shoulder, and you breathe a small sigh of relief. Though it still leaks dark red, it isn’t gushing as you had feared it would be.
“I’m going to do a basic assessment first,” you tell him as you take a seat on the edge of the coffee table in front of the couch, your voice doing little to conceal how nervous the newfound close proximity makes you. You reach for his left hand, which you take in your own. “Any numbness or tingling?”
He shakes his head after a split-second. “No.”
“Can you wiggle your fingers for me?”
He does so without hesitation, the calloused, blood-streaked fingers flexing against your palm.
“Good,” you murmur, bringing two of your fingers to check his radial pulse.
He makes a low sound, something halfway between a laugh and a grunt. “Am I dead?” He hums, voice gravelly but light with amusement.
You roll your eyes. “Not yet.” You pause, feeling the steady beat of his pulse beneath his skin. “I’m just making sure you’ve got good blood flow to this arm and hand.”
“And?”
“And you got lucky,” you tell him, dropping his hand to reach for a towel and the bottle of sterile saline. “Another inch to the left and the bullet would’ve nicked your subclavian artery. You would have already bled out behind that dumpster.”
“Lucky,” he scoffs, the word dripping with sarcasm. “If I’m lucky, it’s only because I chose the right alley to get shot in tonight.”
You snort a laugh without meeting his gaze as you begin to wipe away the excess blood from his skin, the words and the rough timbre of his voice sending goosebumps across your skin.
“Try not to make it a habit,” you mutter, forcing yourself to focus on the wound instead of the pair of dark brown eyes that appear almost black in the dim lighting of your living room.
The man is silent while you work to clean up all of the blood that is dried to the skin of his neck and chest.
“What about you?” He asks when you pull the now red-tinged towel away for a final time. “Do you make a habit of bringing strange, wounded men into your home?”
“Can’t say that I do. You’d be the first.” Then, because the way he’s looking at you makes you feel like you’re the one who lost a liter of blood, you speak again before he has a chance to respond in that voice that makes it hard for you to focus on what you’re supposed to be doing here.
“There‘s no exit wound, so that means the bullet is probably still inside. I’m going to leave it there, because attempting to extract it here could do a lot more harm than good.”
He gives a nonchalant half shrug. “Wouldn’t be the only bullet to live inside me.”
“Oh?” You quip, somehow only mildly surprised by the admission. “You collecting them?”
The corners of his mouth tug upwards into something resembling a smirk. “Something like that.”
As curious as that makes you, you don’t pry. You don’t think you could possibly like the answer. You do the rest of your work in the kind of silence that doesn’t actually feel quiet because it only gives your thoughts time to get louder and louder.
You blot a few fresh droplets of blood. What the hell is this guy involved in?
You place a sterile dressing over the wound. If this isn’t his first time getting shot, how many times has he been shot?
You secure the dressing to his chest with medical tape. What is his name?
As soon as you pull your hands away, he starts to stand in front of you. “Oh,” you squeak, “No, I wouldn’t stand up quite yet. You should give it a few minutes to make sure your bandage doesn’t soak through—”
The man, now towering over you, shakes his head. “This should hold me together. I’ve had worse.”
Jesus Christ.
“At least let me give you something for the pain,” you try to reason with him, standing up. When you do, your chest is only a few inches from his, still bare in front of you. You instantly start to put some space between you. “Seriously, that’s going to fucking hurt—”
He chuckles low, cutting you off. “Extra strength ibuprofen doesn’t really do much for me these days, but I appreciate it.”
You’re at a loss for words for a moment, and you aren’t even sure why. It’s not like you should be thinking of an excuse to make the man hang around your apartment for any longer than necessary. You’ve done what you set out to do - bring him inside, make sure he isn’t going to bleed out, and patch him up. Mission accomplished. Now all that’s really left is to send him on his way and lock the door behind him.
“Right,” you huff a humorless laugh. “Well, I would tell you to stay out of trouble, but something tells me it wouldn’t do much good.”
He grabs his jacket and blood-soaked t-shirt off of the couch, choosing to forgo the latter and instead slip only the zip up hoodie back on.
“No, probably not,” he deadpans, the huskiness of his voice making your apartment feel hotter than it actually is. “Thank you, though. I appreciate this. You didn’t have to help me.” He pauses, looking you directly in the eye, his expression grave and unreadable. “And if you were smart, you wouldn’t have. So let’s keep this the one and only time you do this, yeah?”
The way he’s looking at you gives you very little confidence to fight him on that. Every smart retort that pops into your head dies on your tongue under his stare.
You only nod, and after another wordless, tense moment, he begins to show himself out.
“You at least gonna tell me your name?” You call after him, willing your voice not to crack.
He doesn’t so much as look over his shoulder when he answers with another humorless laugh.
“I promise, it’s better for us both if I don’t, angel.”
ִֶָ. ..𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ🪽་༘࿐
Three days pass, and with each one, you’re a little more convinced that the man with the haunted, espresso-colored eyes who sat bleeding in your living room was nothing more than a figment of your imagination.
Then you see the blood-stained hand towel you had used to wipe his skin clean, and you’re reminded that it was not a fever dream. He really had been here, and you had helped him, and you have no reason to believe you’ll ever see him again now.
That is, until a knock from outside your bedroom window wakes you up at seven o’clock in the morning on your day off.
At first, you think you dreamed it. But then you quickly remember what happened last time you heard something from outside this very window, and before you’re fully awake, you’re swinging your legs over the side of your bed and walking the short distance to the window. You peak out of the curtain, and upon first glance, you see nothing.
What would there be to see, anyway? You’re on the second story. Someone would have had to climb your fire escape to—
You glance down and freeze, your entire body going rigid at what lay on the platform of your fire escape.
Flowers.
It’s nothing extravagant. A small bunch of wildflowers tied together mid-stems with a string. But still, flowers. On your fire escape at seven o'clock in the morning.
A folded piece of paper rests beneath the stems, enticing you to open the window and see what it says. To see who the hell they could possibly be from, though a specific, bruised face already pops into your mind in answer.
You look around again, peering both ways down the alley outside your window. There’s nothing but a few trash cans and the same dumpster that your mysterious, after hours patient had hid behind.
If not him…then who the hell else? You can’t even recall the last time someone gave you flowers. The dead, wilted ones currently on your coffee table are from a street vendor that sells them down the block from the hospital you work at. You bought them for yourself.
Once you have convinced yourself that no one is lurking in the alleyway, watching for you to open your window, you do so, quickly grabbing the small bouquet of multi-colored wildflowers and the piece of paper before shutting (and locking) your window once more.
The handwriting on the folded note is a masculine scrawl.
The flowers in your living room need to be thrown away
Thanks again, angel
- F
ִֶָ. ..𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ🪽་༘࿐
You installed a security camera outside of your bedroom window the following day.
Its position allows you to see your fire escape, as well as the mouth of the alleyway outside of your bedroom.
You didn’t do it because you’re creeped out, or because you feel unsafe. You did it because if he were to come again, you don’t want to miss him. You don’t want to be left wondering if it’s really him.
The man with a scar just under his clavicle, the man who left flowers on your fire escape and then ran before you had a chance to get out of bed, the man who called you angel, the man whose name starts with F.
You’ve been referring to him as Frederick in your head for two months now. You spent an embarrassing amount of time scouring baby naming websites for male names that start with F, and Frederick stood out the most. It means peaceful ruler, and the irony of that makes you laugh considering the circumstances under which you met, but unless he ever returns and tells you his actual name, you will continue to let yourself believe it’s Frederick.
Fred, for short.
After two months, you begin to doubt that will ever happen. You helped him, and he returned with flowers to thank you, and that is the end of that. You eventually stop glancing out your window at every little bump in the night, you stop checking the Ring camera footage hoping that one of the notifications is him, and you resume life as normal.
So when a tapping sound randomly wakes you in the middle of the night after more than two months without a trace of him, you first assume it’s only the thunderstorm raging outside. You think so little of it that your initial response is to simply turn over, pull your comforter tighter, and close your eyes.
Then you hear it again.
Just a bit louder this time, but now undeniable. Knuckles against glass. Still, you hesitate, the fear of realizing that someone is outside of your window, on your fire escape in the dead of night momentarily paralyzing you. Then, still half asleep, you remember what happened last time there was a knock on your bedroom window, and you quickly grab your phone off of your nightstand, jerking it from the power cord.
Your most recent notification is informing you of movement on your security camera. The description reads a person is standing on the fire escape knocking on a window.
You pull up the live footage as your heart threatens to beat right out of your chest. Your hands go clammy, anticipation surging through—
His hair is longer and his beard has grown in full since you last saw him, but there’s no doubt in your mind that it’s him.
Your trembling thumb hovers over the microphone button for a moment before you’re able to work up the courage to press it.
“No flowers this time?” You speak into your phone, loud enough for him to hear you over the rain that pours down around him. Right away, he glances at the camera located in the upper corner of the window, his expression somewhere between a smirk and a pained grimace.
“Sorry,” he huffs. “Didn’t exactly have time to pick any in between getting my ass kicked and climbing your fire escape at three in the morning.” He pauses. “So what’s it gonna be, angel? You gonna let me in or do I need to walk to the closest emergency room?”
You don’t answer him over the camera. Instead, you put your phone down, flick your nightstand lamp on, and then take a few steps to your bedroom window. Your curtains are closed, and you take a deep breath before pulling them open.
You’re actually doing this again. Letting this stranger, this injured man, into your home again in the middle of the night.
Only this time, he’s sopping wet.
He doesn’t say anything when you first open the window. He just ducks beneath the frame with a sharp hiss, one forearm braced against the sill as he carefully maneuvers one leg through the opening. For a moment, he pauses halfway inside, his shoulders tense beneath the rain soaked fabric of his hoodie. His eyes squeeze shut as he shifts his weight, and a low, involuntary grunt escapes him.
You automatically reach out, your hand hovering near his elbow.
“I’ve got it,” he mutters through gritted teeth.
You don’t argue, but you still stay close while he swings his other leg through the threshold of the window and then straightens his posture as much as he can manage. One arm instinctively folds across the right side of his ribcage, guarding it, while rain droplets drip from the ends of his hair onto your bedroom floor.
“Sorry about the mess,” he grunts, glancing down at his boots that squeak against the hardwood.
You offer a small shrug. “I need to mop anyway.”
Now that he’s inside, you take a closer look at him. There’s a bruise forming along his cheekbone, and another reddish, puffy knot at his temple. His bottom lip is slightly cracked, caked with dried blood. There’s bags beneath his brown eyes, as if he has hardly slept since you last saw him.
“You look like hell, Fred.”
Thick brows scrunch together. “Fred?”
You nod. “That’s what I’m going to call you until you tell me your actual name. Which I’m assuming is not Fred, then?”
Air blows through his nose in a near silent laugh, his chest shaking with the movement before another pained grimace flashes across his face. “Not Fred.”
Your eyes rake downwards where he still clutches his side. “Let me guess,” you sigh, “ribs?”
“Yeah,” he grunts. “Think so.”
You jerk your head in the direction of your bedroom door. “Go to the living room. I’m gonna see if I can scrounge up some dry clothes that might fit you.”
He hesitates, another ghost of a laugh escaping him as his eyes trail downwards. “Maybe grab some pants for yourself while you’re at it, yeah?”
By the time your brain processes his words, he’s already walking towards your bedroom door, leaving you wide-eyed and warm-faced. You glance down in confirmation of what you’re already painfully aware of: you aren’t wearing any pants.
A t-shirt just long enough to conceal the curve of your ass, but no pants.
You recover from the embarrassment quick enough, springing into action to find a pair of pants for yourself as well as a change of clothes for the drenched man in the other room. Luckily, you still have a bag of random clothes your ex had left at your place forever ago that you had forgotten to throw out. He’s a bit stockier, more muscular, than your ex, but they are similar in height. These might be a little bit tight, but they will at least be more comfortable than wet, cold clothes.
When you enter the living room with a plain white t-shirt and a pair of black sweatpants only a minute later, he has already removed his jacket and undershirt.
His eyes flicker downwards and back up again, lips twitching with the threat of a smirk at the realization that you had taken his advice and put on a pair of pajama pants before his gaze lands on the men’s clothing in your hands.
“Ex boyfriend’s,” you explain, probably quicker than necessary as you place them on your coffee table. “They got pushed to the back of my closet. Should fit you well enough.”
His gaze softens a tad at that. “Thanks.”
You nod, then glance down, your attention instantly drawn to the right side of his ribcage. The skin there is already darkening, a bruise beginning to bloom beneath a patch of angry redness and subtle swelling. You take a small step towards him, a tentative hand coming to his side. Your fingertips brush the skin there ever so lightly, and he lets you, the muscles there tensing.
“Take a deep breath for me,” you murmur.
He inhales, his torso stiffening and muscles in his jaw clenching before he releases a shaky exhale.
“Again.”
Though it clearly brings him discomfort, he’s able to take a reasonably deep breath, which puts your mind somewhat at ease.
“You know, telling me exactly what happened would help me assess the injury more accurately,” you hum, dropping your hand from the warm skin of his side and crossing your arms over your chest.
He snorts. “Got kicked. Boot to the ribcage.”
Considering he had a bullet in him last time he was in your living room, the answer is only mildly alarming.
“People seem to enjoy beating the shit out of you.”
He raises a brow at you. “Is that my official diagnosis?”
You sigh, eyes flickering back down to the puffy, red skin of his otherwise toned abdomen. “It’s impossible to know for certain without an x-ray,” you shrug. “It’s probably just a bruised rib or two. Possibly fractured. Not much to be done either way.”
“Yeah,” he grunts, reaching down for the t-shirt on the coffee table in front of him with a grimace. “That’s what I figured.”
Now it’s your turn to cock a brow. “Why’d you come here, then?”
You can’t help the question as it slips out. He has clearly had more than his fair share of injuries - the evidence of them are littered across his body in old, fading bruises and scar tissue. A cracked rib is minor in comparison to the marred skin of his chest where you had patched him up just two months ago.
For once, he doesn’t meet your gaze. Instead, he gives a nonchalant shrug as he maneuvers the dry t-shirt over his head.
“Guess I thought it would be a safe place to lay low until this storm blows over.”
A crack of thunder booms in the distance as soon as the last word leaves his lips. Part of you wants to press for more, but you figure that is likely as honest of an answer as you will get from him, so you hold back all the other questions that threaten to spill from you.
What kind of mess have you gotten yourself into? Why here? You really had nowhere else to go?
Who the hell are you?
Instead, you say nothing. You simply pick up the pair of sweatpants still sitting on the table next to you, and hand them to him in offering until he accepts them.
“There’s a bathroom just down that hallway,” you tell him with a small nod in the direction of the guest bathroom. “You can throw all of your clothes in the dryer, if you’d like.”
For a moment, he only stares at you. His mouth parts slightly as if he’s going to speak, but then changes his mind and only nods.
“I’ll get you an ice pack. If you’re going to hang out here, you’re going to ice that rib, Fred,” you sigh as you start to walk in the direction of your kitchen. “And you’re going to take some ibuprofen—”
“It’s Frank.”
You stop in your tracks, quickly turning to look at him. “What?”
“My name,” he clarifies, voice gruff, “it’s Frank.”
Your surprise undoubtedly shows on your face at the revelation. You repeat the name, more to yourself than anything, with a slow nod.
“Nice to meet you, Frank.”
ִֶָ. ..𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ🪽་༘࿐
To your disappointment, but not your surprise, Frank had already left when you woke up later that morning.
Frank. At first, it felt odd to finally know his actual name after calling him Fred in your head for over two months. You got used to it quickly, though. By the fourth, fifth, sixth time that he shows up on your fire escape, you forget how it ever felt to not know Frank Castle’s name.
His appearances became somewhat predictable.
Every two to three weeks, you wake up to soft tapping on your window in the late hours of the night. Sometimes he has cuts, sometimes bruises. Sometimes both. You patch him up to the best of your abilities, you offer him food and water, you let him sleep on your couch until daylight comes, and then he slips out of your front door so silently that it doesn’t even wake you.
That is, until his most recent visit, when you woke up and found him still snoring softly in your living room. He had shown up on your fire escape, as he always does, with a split lip and black eye. The injuries hardly warranted a nurse’s consultation, but you welcomed him in, anyway.
You walked into your living room that morning fully expecting him to be gone. When you realized that he hadn’t moved, you couldn’t help but stare at him for a moment. Early morning sunlight was trickling in through your curtains, spilling across his face and catching on the bruises that colored his skin.
It was by far the most at peace you’ve seen him in all of the months that you’ve known him.
But Frank is a light sleeper. As quiet as you tried to be, he woke as soon as you started moving around your kitchen to make yourself a cup of coffee.
He seemed just as surprised as you were that he had slept so long. And then, when you offered him breakfast, he surprised you both again.
He stayed.
He stayed while you cracked eggs into a bowl and whisked them together with a splash of milk and extra shredded cheese - just like your grandmother always did when making omelettes, you told him. He leaned against your kitchen counter with a cup of coffee, quietly watching you move around your apartment as if he had done so a hundred times before. As if it was any other Tuesday morning.
Conversation flowed easier than it had ever had. You told him about some of your patients from the past week. About a little boy who had proudly showed you his dinosaur bandage after getting stitches, and about the elderly man who shamelessly flirts with every nurse in your unit despite having recently celebrated his fiftieth wedding anniversary.
More than anything else, you talked about yourself, because Frank asks more questions than he answers, but you did learn that he hates mushrooms with a passion, and takes his coffee black.
That was a month ago now, and you haven’t seen him since.
Not a word. No late night visits, no flowers or thank you notes left on your fire escape in the dead of night. You had given him your phone number scribbled on a post-it note the fourth or fifth time that he showed up to your place, but he hadn’t made any use of that, either.
The first couple of weeks, you didn’t think anything of it. It was normal to go a few weeks without seeing him. But now that it’s been a whole month, you’re worried.
Why hasn’t he come by? Is he okay? Did he skip town? Did he get into some kind of altercation that he wasn’t able to walk away from? Is he even alive?
You stay up late each night, unable to find sleep, your thoughts racing with all of these questions that you have no way of finding the answers to.
You’ve spiraled over the unknown more than you care to admit. From randomly checking your security camera footage in the middle of a shift to searching for his name in local obituaries, you’ve let his extended, unexplained absence consume you. When you’re awake, you’re wondering where he is, what he’s doing, and when you’ll see him again. When you’re asleep, his brown eyes and scarred skin appear in your dreams.
Friends and coworkers have started to notice how distracted you’ve allowed yourself to become, too. Hence the reason you’re at a crowded, noisy bar at 10:30 on a Wednesday night.
A couple of coworkers had all but drug you with them after your shift earlier today, insisting that you needed to get out, have a few drinks, and get the mystery man who you refuse to admit actually exists off of your mind.
For the first hour or two, it worked.
You mingled, gossiped, laughed. But now? Two martinis in, exhausted from a twelve hour shift, and listening to some twenty-one year old sing karaoke off key? You can’t stop your thoughts from wandering back to the very person that you had hoped to drown from them.
When you tell the coworker who had invited you that you’re going to head home because you’re exhausted, she tries to convince you to stay for one more drink. When that doesn’t work, she tries to convince you to let her walk you home, and although you appreciate the offer, your apartment is only a few blocks from here and you really just want to be alone with your thoughts and the crisp night air.
Very quickly, you regret not letting her walk you home, or ordering yourself an Uber, or flagging down a fucking taxi.
“Hey, sweetheart. You need a ride somewhere?”
Something in your gut tells you the sudden, masculine voice is talking to you without even looking. You stumble the slightest bit, but you keep walking, giving no acknowledgment that you had even heard him. Your hand instinctively goes to your purse that rests against your hip. Inside is your Glock that you’ve still never actually had to use.
Footsteps thud against the pavement behind you. Your fingers twitch against the leather fabric, preparing to reach down inside.
“Hey!” The voice calls out, louder this time, right behind you. A hand clamps down on your shoulder. “I’m talking to you. Don’t be rude now—”
Three things happen at once.
You shove your hand down into your bag to grip the gun nestled inside, you come face to face with the tall but scrawny man still grabbing your shoulder, and a faceless, hooded figure emerges from the shadows of the nearest alleyway.
“Doesn’t seem like she’s very interested to me,” a deep, gruff voice booms from beneath the hood. It startles the man enough to release his hold on your shoulder and take an immediate step back. It startles you, too, but for different reasons.
You instantly recognize that voice. You’ve thought of it every night since you last heard it a month ago. You’ve thought of it every night since you first found its owner bleeding outside of your apartment.
And if the voice isn’t confirmation enough, the thick, dark beard peeking out from beneath the hood is plenty.
“Oh, I was—” The scrawny man stutters, taking a few steps backwards, attempting to put some distance between him and the unexpected presence, “—was just seeing if she needed a ride—”
“Wrong woman,” Frank barks, lifting his hood enough to reveal eyes so dark that they look black beneath the streetlamp, fixed on the man with an unwavering intensity that silently promises violence.
The man continues to stumble backwards and your grip on the Glock, still tucked out of sight, relaxes.
“S—sorry, man,” he squeaks. “I don’t want any problems. Swear—”
“Get the fuck out of here.”
The man doesn’t say another word before scampering away in the opposite direction, leaving you alone with Frank Castle.
Are you hallucinating? Did someone spike your fucking drink at the bar? Or is he actually standing in front of you, beard fuller and hair longer than you’ve ever seen it, looking at you like he doesn’t know if he should stay or disappear again?
“Hey, angel.”
The words seem to snap you out of a trance. One second, you’re standing there, staring at him with squinted eyes, and the next, you’re pulling your pistol out of your bag, the muzzle pointed directly at his chest.
He takes an involuntary step back, his hands raising in front of him in shocked defense. “Christ, what the fu—”
“I had that handled.” You wave the gun around haphazardly for emphasis.
Frank grabs the barrel of the Glock, pushing it downwards. “Would you stop swinging that thing around?” He pauses, leaning in to take a closer look at you. “Are you drunk?”
You’re unable to stop the laugh that escapes you at that. “Why don’t you tell me? You know, since apparently you’re stalking me.”
“Stalking you?” Frank scoffs, almost offended. “I ain’t stalking you.”
You shove the gun back into your purse without taking your eyes off of his incredulous expression. “Oh, no? You just so happened to be in the exact right place at the exact right time after ghosting me for a month?”
He falls silent, giving a small nod to himself as his gaze wanders up and down the street before settling on the cracked pavement beneath his boots. Anywhere but your eyes. “I wasn’t trying to stalk you, alright? I was in the neighborhood and saw you go into the bar. Just wanted to make sure you got home alright.” He pauses, meeting your gaze once again, his dark eyes as intense and unyielding as ever. “And it’s a good thing that I did.”
It’s your turn to scoff at that. “Right. So you care enough to make sure that I get home safely…” You take a step closer to him, your stare unblinking as you look up at him in the light of the streetlamp, “but you couldn’t pick up a phone and call me? Couldn’t leave a note? Couldn’t climb my fire escape at any point in the last month to let me know you hadn’t been gunned down in a random alley in Hell’s Kitchen?”
Frank’s jaw tightens as he swallows thickly. No answer.
You snort a humorless laugh, taking a step back. “That’s what I thought.”
You start to turn around, to walk away, when the small, petty part of you easily influenced by alcohol begs you to open your mouth again. “And just so you know, Frank, I checked the obituaries to see if you were dead.”
He opens his mouth to respond, but you’re already walking in the opposite direction.
He lets you go and does not try to hide the fact that he follows you the rest of the way to your apartment, not turning around until you’ve safely entered the building.
ִֶָ. ..𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ🪽་༘࿐
That night, Frank Castle appears in your dreams.
It isn’t the first time he’s been conjured by your subconscious, but it is the first time that you wake up and have to question what is fantasy and what is reality due to how utterly lifelike it had all felt.
You hear a gruff voice calling you angel. You see tortured brown eyes staring at you the way they had beneath the streetlights, heavy with the weight of everything he had refused to say. But instead of staying silent when you start to walk away, he stops you. He calls out for you with a restrained grunt of your name, and asks you not to go.
When you jerk awake to the sound of your alarm, your heart is racing, and for a few disorienting moments, you have to remind yourself that you’re alone in your bedroom. Frank Castle is not here. He’s not snoring in your living room, he’s not waiting on your fire escape for you to open the window and let him inside.
You don’t know if he ever will be again.
It’s the kind of dream that leaves you in a melancholic headspace for hours after waking.
You try your hardest to go about your day as normal. You clock in for a twelve hour shift at the emergency department, feeling severely unrested and slightly hungover. You drink more coffee than you usually do to get you through the first few hours of the morning, in between patients.
First, a seven-year-old boy with a fractured elbow. Skateboarding accident. Next, an elderly woman with a nasty grease burn. Bacon accident. Then, a construction worker with a mangled finger. Nail gun accident. And now…
“There’s a man in Central 12. Says he hit his head. Possible concussion.”
You briefly look up from your task of restocking a crash cart to give your charge nurse, Jenny, a nod of confirmation. “I’ll be with him in just a moment.”
She’s silent for a second. “He asked for you by name.”
That gets your undivided attention. You look up again, this time noticing an amused expression on Jenny’s face that piques your interest even further. “Do you know who it is?”
Jenny shrugs. “Never seen him before. Says his name is Fred?”
You drop the oxygen mask you’re holding out of surprise. “Fred?” You echo as Frank’s face flashes through your mind.
She nods, the amusement on her face quickly shifting into confusion. “Yeah, why? You know him?”
You can’t bring yourself to say yes until you walk to Central 12 and see him with your own two eyes.
And even then, when you see Frank Castle sitting on the exam table in his normal attire of bruises and all black, you still have to question whether or not you’re actually awake, or in your bed, still dreaming.
You close the door before speaking. “You know, showing up to my job isn’t really helping you with the stalker allegations.”
His broad shoulders lift with silent laughter as he looks around the room, not meeting your gaze. “Tried to go by your place this morning,” he says simply. “You weren’t there, so I took a guess…figured you might be here.”
You hum, crossing your arms over your chest as you come to stand directly in front of him. Your eyes skim over his face, looking for any sign of visible injury. “Here I am,” you exhale. “Let me guess. You didn’t actually hit your head?”
Another snort of laughter as his gaze meets yours. You’re aware that it could be your imagination playing tricks on you, but you swear that for a split-second, his eyes flicker down to your lips and then back up.
“I’m having a hard time remembering,” he grunts, a spark of something humorous appearing and then disappearing from his stare. “Maybe you should check me over and make sure I’m not concussed while you hear me out.”
Maybe it’s the rough timbre of his voice, or maybe his choice of words, or maybe the way he’s looking at you, but whatever it is makes goosebumps spread all the way down your spine.
There’s a waiting room full of people waiting to be seen just down the hallway. People with actual injuries. People who might really be concussed. People who don’t come in and out of your life like ghosts.
At least a dozen different reasons as to why you shouldn’t indulge him come to mind, but none of them stop you from reaching for the penlight clipped to your scrub pocket.
“Follow the light.”
He obeys without complaint, lips quirking slightly at the corners as his eyes track the beam left, right, up, and down.
“Any dizziness? Blurred vision? Nausea or vomiting?”
You already know the answers before he opens his mouth.
“No. None of that.”
You click the pen off. “Tell me your full name.”
He huffs something between a laugh and a sigh. “Francis David Castle Sr.”
That answer does take you by surprise. Not the fact that his first name is actually Francis. No, what surprises you is the suffix. Senior. Because if Frank is actually Francis David Castle Sr., then that can only imply…
“You have a son?”
His expression changes almost immediately. The slight amusement disappears from his face, but he doesn’t drop your gaze. “Had,” he grunts. “Had a daughter, too.”
He doesn’t need to say anything else. His choice of words makes it clear. Had. Past tense. No more.
“I’m very sorry to hear that,” you murmur sincerely.
Frank nods, so small that it’s nearly imperceptible as he clears his throat. “Yeah. Me too.”
You don’t press the subject further. Not here, not now. You just lock the information away with every other fact he’s hesitantly handed over since meeting him. Like his name and how he takes his coffee.
“Alright. Last question,” you say gently. You swallow down the small lump that has unexpectedly formed in your throat, forcing your attention back to the matter at hand. “Why are you here right now, Frank?”
He studies you for a long moment before answering, making the small exam room suddenly seem suffocating.
“I’m here to tell you I’m sorry,” he says, his voice and expression equally grave. “For disappearing the way that I did. For…making you worry. I didn’t think…” he trails off, rubbing a hand across the back of his neck. He shakes his head, a humorless laugh escaping him. “Hell, I don’t know what I was thinkin’.”
You nod slowly, taking a seat on the stool in front of him before responding. You glance down at your hands in your lap. “Why did you?” You ask, voice meeker than you intend for it to sound. “Disappear?”
Another moment of silence that feels eternal. “Thought it’d be better for you. Safer.” You meet his gaze at that. His lips purse, and you think that’s as much of an explanation as he’s going to give, but then his lips part again. “…and I guess it’s been a long time since I’ve had someone care about me like that. Kinda forgot what it feels like.”
He swallows thickly at that, like he’s holding himself back from saying anything more. Without thinking, you wheel yourself closer to him until your knees are nearly brushing his where they dangle from the exam table. He stares down at you, and you up at him, and the rest of the hospital outside of these four walls seems to fade away.
“Safer?” You murmur. “You know you’re talking to the girl who invited a bleeding stranger into her apartment in the middle of the night, right?”
He chuckles low, his broad shoulders rising and falling with it. “Exactly,” he sighs. “You won’t keep yourself safe, so I guess it’s up to me.”
You quirk a brow. “So you were stalking me last night, then.”
He hesitates just long enough for you notice the faint, barely visible blush that blooms beneath his beard. “Stalking is a strong word.”
“I knew it.”
The blush on his cheeks grows a deeper pink and he rolls his eyes, now avoiding yours. “Look, I wasn’t…wasn’t trying to follow you or anything weird. Just…every now and then, I’d check in. Make sure nobody’s hanging around your building.” He pauses, his jaw clenching. “Make sure that nobody has connected you to me.”
Although that might possibly be the most honest Frank Castle has been since you first met him, it somehow leaves you with more questions than answers.
It’s never been a secret that the man who shows up on your fire escape bloodied and bruised on a regular basis has his fair share of secrets that reek of violence and destruction, but hearing it come from his own mouth that merely being associated with him could potentially jeopardize your safety…
It’s the kind of honesty that should send you running in the opposite direction. But then again, there’s a lot about Frank Castle that should have sent you running in the opposite direction a long time ago.
Yet here you are. Not running. Not even telling him to leave. You weren’t able to walk away from him the very first time that you found him bleeding outside of your apartment, and you sure as hell aren’t able to now.
Slowly, you rise from the stool you’ve been sitting on. Once at eye level with him, you take a small, tentative step closer, stopping when your thighs brush against his knees. Usually, the two of you are only ever this close when you’re examining a black eye or busted lip, but right now, there’s no injuries in sight. Just his big, chocolate brown eyes and slightly chapped lips inches from your own.
“You were wrong about one thing,” you murmur, voice breathy. Your hands hover awkwardly for a moment before settling atop his thighs, the touch intimate in a way that’s brand new. “You disappearing wasn’t better for me. It only made me feel like I was losing my mind.”
The air in the room turns thick and heavy at the admission. Borderline asphyxiating. At first, he says nothing, but brings one hand to rest against your hip. His grip is loose enough that you could easily step away if you wanted to, but tight enough for you to know that he hopes you don’t.
“Yeah,” he grunts, voice low. “That makes two of us, then.”
The confession comes as a pleasant surprise that gives you enough courage to ease yourself just between his legs, further into his embrace. His eyes flicker down to your lips for not the first time since stepping foot in this room, this time undeniable and unabashed.
You clear your throat a bit in a failed effort to break the tension. “Well, good news,” you breathe, “I don’t think you’re concussed.”
He chuckles low, his gaze unwavering. “That is good news. I’d hate for you to think I’m not thinking clearly right now.”
And before you even have a chance to wonder if he’s really about to do what you think he’s about to do, he leans forward and closes the small amount of space separating your lips from his.
ִֶָ. ..𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ🪽་༘࿐
Your phone rings at 8:30 that night, just one hour after you get home from your twelve hour shift at the hospital. You’re stepping out of the shower when your screen lights up with an unknown number.
Normally, you ignore or send them straight to voicemail. More than half of the calls that you get these days are robocalls, but this particular number isn’t being flagged as a potential spam risk. In fact, it’s a local number, with a Hell’s Kitchen area code.
And though there’s no way of knowing for sure who it is, you secure your towel around your midsection and answer as if you do.
“I was starting to think you’d lost my number.”
You’re first greeted by silence. Then a familiar, rough chuckle that makes goosebumps bloom on your still damp skin.
“Nah.” There’s another beat of quiet. “Just took me a while to work up the nerve.”
You snort a laugh and take a seat on the edge of your mattress. “The man who gets into gunfights on a regular basis was afraid to call a girl?”
He doesn’t deny it. “I didn’t say it made sense.”
You hum in response, trying to fight down the flight of butterflies in your stomach at the mere sound of his voice in your ear. “So, where are you bleeding right now?”
Another low laugh pours through the speaker. “No blood yet tonight,” he sighs. “That’s not why I’m calling.”
“Oh?” You chirp with a hint of sarcasm. “Anything you’d like to share with the class?”
More silence. He clears his throat, as if he’s trying to force the words out, “I’m calling to ask you something I should’ve asked you earlier.”
You grin despite the small bundle of nerves in the pit of your stomach.
“You got any plans tomorrow night?”
ִֶָ. ..𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ🪽་༘࿐
When you hear a knock on your front door at exactly seven o’clock, you’ve already been dressed and pacing your apartment for nearly half an hour.
Even though you already know who is on the other side, you instinctively glance through the peephole. You see a freshly shaven Frank Castle - looking around almost nervously and holding a small bouquet of wildflowers.
Just like ones he had left on your fire escape several months prior.
You take a steadying breath, smoothing your hands over the front of your outfit and hope that it’s good enough for whatever the hell you’re going to be doing tonight. When you had asked what he had in mind, he had laughed, painting a vivid picture in your mind of the light blush that was undoubtedly blooming on the apples of his cheeks.
“Haven’t figured that out yet,” he murmured. “Wasn’t sure I’d even get this far.”
You struggled to see Frank Castle taking you to a five star restaurant, so you picked something somewhat casual but still cute. Comfortable, and weather appropriate, but cute.
At least you hope so. You don’t even remember the last time you had to select an outfit for a date. A date or…whatever this is.
Before you can overthink that, you open the door for him.
For a second, neither of you say anything.
Frank’s eyes travel over you slowly, but not in a way that makes your skin crawl like it would if it were literally anyone else. He looks at you in a way that makes you feel like he’s trying real hard not to look at you, and that makes you feel warm all over.
“…Hi,” he says at last.
You can’t help but smile at how simple yet nervous the singular word sounds coming from his lips. “Hi.”
His gaze drops to the flowers in his hands as though he’d forgotten he was holding them. “These are for you.” He holds the bouquet out to you in offering. “Figured the others probably needed to be replaced a long time ago.”
You exhale a shaky laugh, thinking of the flowers he had left on your fire escape just days after you first met. You had kept them in a vase in your kitchen for long after they wilted, not wanting to throw them away.
You don’t tell him that, though, or that you intend to keep these for even longer.
ִֶָ. ..𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ🪽་༘࿐
….i had originally planned for this to be longer, but life and my brain had other plans, so i hope it’s still cute as is. sorry if the ending seems rushed. maybe one day i will pick this story back up and write a part two with my original plans for this fic, if people are interested and inspiration strikes!
thank you for reading, as always comments/reblogs are very appreciated <3
Peter Parker / We don't have to be lonely ── 18+ (MDNI)
Summary ⟅After Spiderman saves you yet again on one of your dangerous investigative journaling missions, you find yourself connecting with him in a way neither of you expected.
Peter Parker x Journalist!reader / ⟣ SMUT / 5.5k ⟢
Warnings: No spoilers! BND!Peter, slight angst (they are both lonely again), enemies to one night stand, big cock!peter, switch!Peter (but he's mostly subby), porn with plot, sensory deprivation (reader wears a blindfold), reader kisses him mask on 😵💫, switch!reader but leaning dom, blowjob, praise, throat fucking, more dry humping, fingering (fem receiving), peter whines and whimpers duh, penetration, riding, machinery, creampie, cockwarming, that must be everything....
Lily's note — 🪷 mind you this was supposed to be 2k words max... yeah okay anyway i'm lowkey proud of the dialogue in this i feel like it's very peter-like... if u enjoyed don't be afraid to like, reblog, or drop a comment to fuel me :D
"We have got to stop meeting like this!" you shouted into Spiderman's ear, clinging onto him tighter as he shot out another web, swinging you between the high-rise buildings.
"’Ya think?" he sneered back, his New York accent thickening with annoyance.
You yelped and closed your eyes in fear when he swung a sharp left. A moment later you exhaled a sigh of relief when you felt his feet connecting with the ground.
You opened your eyes to take in the familiar sight of your apartment building's rooftop, quickly detaching yourself from the masked hero to plant your own feet on the ground beside him.
"Thank god. I seriously don't think I will ever get used to that,” you muttered out, doubling over with your hands on your knees to try and force the nausea spell away.
“Yeah, well I hope you won't have to.”
You glanced up at him with a raised brow at his annoyance, slowly rising to stand straight, your hands settling on your hips. “What's that supposed to mean?”
“That means,” he began, chuckling without an ounce of humor in his voice. “You can't keep putting yourself in danger like this.”
“Look spider-boy, danger finds me,” you said defensively, ignoring his weak “It’s Spiderman.” “And I never asked you to keep saving me.”
“If I don't you’ll get hurt. You almost got killed back there! Don't you get it?”
“Oh, are you starting to care about me, Spiderman. What happened to hating me?” you cooed with a flirty tilt of your head.
“I-I never hated you…” he paused, his breath hitching when you stepped close enough for him to reach a hand out and touch you. You leered at him expectantly, waiting for him to say what he was really thinking.
“...I only disliked you. Mildly.”
“There it is!”
“Well what would you do if someone wrote a smear campaign against you?” He retorted, leaning in to try and intimidate you, his plan failing when you met him head on.
“You’re still on that? I already apologized to you and took back my article,” you scoffed, crossing your arms over your chest protectively.
Yes, it was true that you did write an article detailing how you didn't think Spiderman should be praised for “saving the city,” when he contestantly left it in a state of destruction, leaving regular civilians to pay the price for his damages.
Yes, it did garner enough public attention to have a lot of New Yorker’s turn their backs on him, but after he saved you the first time (and all but practically forced you to listen to his defenses), you were able to admit that you were speaking from a place of rage fueled bias, since your apartment was destroyed when he flung a car into it.
But you apologized. So all should’ve been well.
He backed down from your stare off, raising a hand to awkwardly scratch the top of his head. “You’re right I’m sorry…”
“Look,” you started, taking a deep breath. “I’m sorry you have to keep saving me, but if it's so much of a hassle you can stop… It's fine.”
“Wha—no!” he blurted, rushing to grab your arm to stop you from turning away. “No! It’s not that I just… What if I’m not there one day and you—”
“Get killed?” You cut him off sharply. “So be it then.”
Peter froze in place, his grip on your arm loosening slightly as your words settled uncomfortably in the air between you. His hand slowly slipped off until it hovered awkwardly, his eyes boring into yours through the suit.
“Kidding!” you interjected before the moment could grow too serious, despite meaning your words.
“Gosh, Spidey. Lighten up. I’m alive, you’re alive. All is well in the world,” you quipped sarcastically while making your way to the stairwell.
You turned around when you didn't hear his footsteps following, waving your hand to urge him forward. “Come on, so I can thank you properly. You must be hungry.”
He hesitated, debating the idea in his head. It had been almost a year since he first saved you on one of your investigative journaling missions, and this was the first time you ever actually invited him down to your apartment instead of parting ways with him on the roof like usual.
He was fully intending to reject your offer, seeing no point in spending any extra time with you than necessary, but then the sight of his bleak apartment rushed through his mind, along with another lonely night of testing his tech and wallowing in his misery.
Or maybe it was the faint look of hope he saw in your eyes that convinced him, your hand resting on the door handle, waiting for his reply.
The response fell from his lips unconsciously.
“Sure.”
Sat at your small round kitchen dining table, he stared down at the plate in front of him, the sad slice of pizza steaming from where you’d heated it up in the microwave.
The eyes of his suit narrowed, glancing from the plate up to where you were already halfway finished with your own.
“This is my thanks?”
“Mhm,” you hummed through your chewing, jerking your head up at him. “You don’t like leftover pizza?”
This situation was so absurd, he couldn’t help but let out a breathy chuckle. He lifted the mask above his lips, carefully trying to obscure as much of his exposed face as he could, and took a bite of the pizza, lowering the mask back down to chew.
You watched him with a bewildered stare, your chuckles escaping you in short bursts before you let the laugh fully escape free. You raised a hand to your mouth to try and conceal the sound, but the sight was just too ridiculous for you to do so.
“W-What? What’s so funny?”
His confusion only made it worse, your laugh transforming to a full body giggled as you struggled to breathe.
He stared at you like you were crazy, your laughs eventually dying down enough for you to speak. “Do you seriously eat like that?”
That’s what you were giggling about?
“What? No, no I—obviously when I eat at home I don’t wear the mask.”
“I mean in public.”
“I don’t usually eat out as Spiderman… You know, too busy saving lives, fighting crime.”
You nodded at him, the last of your chuckles dying down as you considered his words. It was easy to forget that there was a person beneath it all. Your curiosity brewed as you tried to imagine who it was behind the mask, who the city’s masked vigilante really was.
You didn’t realize you were staring until he cleared his throat. You tore your eyes away, taking another bite of your soggy pizza.
You finished your food in a silence that was surprisingly comfortable despite your histories, and when he finished swallowing his final bite, an unexpected pit settled in your stomach.
Peter pushed his plate forward, slowly standing from his chair. “Well, uh, thank you for the food. I should go now, don’t want to take up any more of your time.”
You picked at your cuticles without looking up at him, contemplating why the thought of him leaving made you feel so disappointed. It was the same feeling you had on the roof when you thought he was going to reject your invitation.
You would never admit it out loud, but something about his presence was comforting. You weren’t sure if it was because he was always saving you from harm’s way, or if it was because he was the only sense of consistency in your life, the only person you’d formed a relationship with—albeit it being dysfunctional—within the past year.
Whatever it was, it had you saying, “Stay.”
His suit eyes widened in surprise, your picking halting when you realized what you just said.
The comfortable silence was replaced by a thick tension as you glanced up at him. “Stay,” you repeated.
“Why?” he asked suspiciously.
“Why not? It’s not like you have anywhere else to be.”
Peter’s brows furrowed beneath the suit, trying to gauge what you were playing at. “How would you know that?”
“Am I wrong,” you shrugged, giving him space to correct you, then continuing when he didn’t. ”You don’t seem like you have any friends, maybe a girlfriend? I don’t think so. You just seem pretty… lonely.”
He gripped the top of his chair, the memories of MJ and Ned painfully resurfacing after he’d successfully blocked them out for the last few hours while caught in the whirlwind of saving you.
“How would you know? You don’t know anything about me,” he whispered, his voice dropping to a low, careful tone.
“Because you remind me of me,” you murmured, rising from your chair, rounding the table to stand in front of him. “And I’m pretty lonely, Spiderman.”
His grip on the chair tightened as he breathed in a shaky breath at your proximity. “I-I’m sorry to hear that. It sounds tough.”
“You understand how it feels? Don’t you?” You take a step forward as he takes one back, then another, until his back is pressed against the wall. “I can only imagine how it must feel, having to keep this secret. Being the world's hero, admired by millions, then having no one to share that burden with.”
His chest rose and fell with frantic breaths. You were right, you read him like an open book. He should have denied it, denied you, but he couldn’t.
“What do you want?” he whispered, the words coming out strained.
“Tell me I’m wrong,” you whispered back, your voice a soft counterpoint to his.
He tried to force the words out, but he was never a good liar. Your hand rested on his chest, feeling the fabric of the suit beneath your fingertips, and the wild beat of his heart. You moved it up, testing the waters, feeling the sculpted muscle until your fingers found the base of his neck.
“We don’t have to be lonely,” you mumbled, your thumb stroking below his jaw. “At least… not tonight.”
He swallowed the thick lump in his throat, shaking his head. “I-I can’t. I’m sorry.”
A flicker of hurt flashed over your eyes that you tried to mask by looking down. “Why? Is there someone else? Or… do you just not want me to know who you are?”
“I-I…” his voice trailed off as the guilt flooded his stomach like an expanding black hole. MJ. MJ. MJ. Her name lived like a ghost in his brain, a phantom pain in his chest. To do this—reveal himself to you—somehow felt like letting her go in a way, the final cut across the already frayed thread holding him to her. He wasn’t sure if he was ready to do that.
“I can keep a secret,” you said with a bitter chuckle. “I have no one to tell.”
He stood with your words, trying to make sense of them when he realized, that’s why. That’s why on the roof you were so casual about the prospect of death reaching you. You had no one in your life to mourn you. It was startling, how you reflected him like a mirror.
His heart hammered harder against his sternum when your hands slid to cup his cheeks through the mask.
“Is this okay?”
Words were beyond him. He could only give a singular nod so subtle, you almost missed it.
You smiled, so tender and full of care and unlike the rough around the edges journalist he was so used to encountering in the streets of New York. You gave him every chance to pull away as you slowly leaned in.
He stood frozen, letting you carry out your experiment, his eyes slipping shut when you placed your lips over where his would be on the fabric.
The kiss was chaste and over within a second. You opened your eyes, searching the white lenses of his mask before kissing him again, a little firmer, a little longer.
Your warmth managed to seep into the thick layer of fabric, reaching and flooding his body. Loneliness reached for loneliness, desperation seeking solace, he didn’t stop you when your fingers found the bottom of his mask.
With a careful tug, you pulled it up just enough to reveal his pale skin, his lips pink and shiny from where he’d ran his tongue over them. Without wasting another moment, you leaned in again, pressing your mouth to his.
The kiss was hesitant at first, your lips simply touching, until his parted with a sharp inhale, his body jumping back to life under your touch. He kissed you back, a little clumsy and hungry, the urgency fueled by a year’s worth of banter and his craving for human connection. You tugged him harder against you, his hands finally leaving the wall to settle on your hips.
Drunk on the sensation, you nudged the fabric higher, intending to pull it fully off when his hands shot up to encase yours, stopping you dead in your tracks.
“I’m sorry,” he gasped, breaking the kiss, his breath brushing your cheek. “I… I just can’t.”
Your blood ran cold, the disappointment returning, though you understood. Of course you did. You were a journalist and only within recent months were you cordial with each other. Of course he couldn’t trust you. But that didn’t make it hurt any less.
You nodded, your hands going limp in his grip.
The guilt laced through him again at the resignation in your eyes. A part of him begged himself to let go, just let go, but the better part had already decided that he wasn’t ready. Even after four years.
He began to pull the mask back down, his movements signaling an ending you weren’t ready for. “I should—”
“It’s okay,” you whispered, cutting him off. Your hand gripped his wrist, tugging gently. “Follow me.”
He let you guide him, the yearning part of his soul willingly going along, until you were both standing in your bedroom. You released his hand to rummage in your closet, emerging with a sleek black tie you pulled from one of your suits.
You stood before him, smoothing the fabric in your hands as he watched, unsure of what was about to happen.
“What are you doing?” he questioned, his voice raspier than it was in the kitchen.
You answered him by raising it to eye level, securely tying it around your head, engulfing your vision in darkness. “This way,” you reassured, “I won’t be able to see you. Your secret’s safe.”
A breath he didn’t know he was holding escaped him. Just like that, the panic in his stomach began to dissipate, replaced by a heat, simmering low and insistent in his belly.
“You’re serious?” he asked, still slightly in disbelief by the display.
You nodded, lacing your fingers behind your back, offering yourself wholly to him. “You can leave now and we can forget this ever happened. Or…”
“...We can not be lonely for the night?” Peter finished.
You nodded, and waited.
The silence stretched as your pulse roared in your ears. You waited with a bated breath as the dread began creeping in. You were convinced he’d left and were seconds away from tugging the makeshift blindfold off when you felt the air shift in front of you.
His hands brushed your cheeks. You held your breath when he cupped your face, his palms holding you steady to connect your lips once more.
You sighed into the kiss, an exhale of pure relief and surrender as you let him take the lead, his mouth learning yours with a newfound confidence. He tilted your head, slipping his tongue in to deepen the kiss.
You moaned softly into his mouth, your hands releasing their grip to hold him at his waist.
You tugged at the textured fabric, allowing your hands to roam, sliding over his shoulders, down his back in search of a zipper, or anything to release him.
Your lips, in their distracted state, stilled on his. He broke the kiss, breathless. “What’s wrong?”
“How do you take this damn thing off?”
You missed the fond smile that touched his lips at your frustration. He kissed you again, a quick, hard press, before you heard a distinctive whoosh of air followed by the sound of the fabric falling to the floor.
You cautiously placed your hands back on his chest, your fingers meeting warm, soft skin.
You spread your palms over the muscle, mapping the planes of his chest while trying to visualize him in your head. You moved up over the column of his neck, holding his jawline in your grasp. You traced his features—his lips, still damp from your kisses, over the bridge of his nose, his brows.
He struggled to hold back his moan as you explored him with your touch, something about the careful caress feeling even more intimate than being seen.
Your fingers slid into his hair, tangling in the curls as you carded them down to gently fist the strands at the base of his neck, giving a tentative tug.
He whimpered as goosebumps brushed up his arms, any remaining restraint shattering.
He dove back in, capturing your mouth in a searing kiss, all tongue and heat and desperation while you tried to keep up. He explored your body freely, his hands landing on your waist to pull you flush against him, erasing every last inch of lonely space between you.
You pushed him back, hoping you were on track for your bed. When you felt him fall down to the mattress, you sank to your knees on the floor between his parted legs. You bit your lip at his needy little pants while you ran your hands along his thighs, trailing higher until you felt the elastic of his underwear.
You hooked your finger beneath it, tugging to pull them down when he stopped you, panicked and fidgety. His hand in yours was fever-hot.
“What?” You asked.
“Nothing I just…” he stammered.
Your lips curved into a sly smile. “Has no one done this for you before?”
“What? Haha, no, of course I just—”
“You’re a terrible liar.”
He was glad you couldn't see the hot flush that painted his chest, rising up his neck. His hands fell away from yours, surrendering, almost regretting it when he saw your smug expression.
“Lift your hips for me.”
His heart did a little flip as he obeyed your order, his lips falling open when you freed his aching cock from the tight restraint.
He held his breath as you reached out, his cock pulsing at the agonizing wait until finally, your fingers wrapped around his tip.
A broken whimper escaped him, unrestrained and full of need, his hips bucking involuntarily up into the tight ring you created.
“O-Oh f-fuck…” he gasped, fisting the sheets on either side of him until his knuckles turned white. You began stroking, small little movements that explored lower and lower, feeling him twitch in your grip.
“Spiderman—” you cut yourself off with a chuckle, not being able to take the name serious in a moment like this. “Sorry, it’s funny calling you that right now.”
Peter could barely hear you over his distracted state, all of his senses zeroed in on your soft hand gripping his cock so perfectly.
“Hey,” you called to get his attention. “I can't see you. The only way I can tell you’re feeling good is by hearing you. Okay?”
He nodded, forgetting that you couldn't see him, letting out a choked mix of a hum and whine. You smiled, satisfied with his response, and leaned forward till your breath brushed over his tip.
“Let me hear you, then.” You parted your lips and took him into your mouth.
You wished you could have preserved the sound he made, a loud, punched out whimper that had you pressing your thighs tighter together, trying to give attention to your throbbing, neglected clit.
His back arched when you circled your tongue around his slit, tasting the thick beads of salty precum. You sucked gently, drawing out a litany of oh god, oh fuck from him.
Struggling to accommodate his thickness, you hallowed your cheeks, pushing further down his length until he was poking the back of your throat, triggering your gag reflex.
“Fuuuuck—” he cried, his hand shooting to rest on your head, his fingers tangling in the strands.
You pulled off with a soft pop, heaving in a deep breath. His hips thrusted to chase the warmth of your mouth, his eyes scrunching shut at the sudden absence of pressure.
They shot back open when you placed a delicate, open-mouth kiss over the tip. “I can tell you’re holding back.” Another kiss, his fingers gripped your hair tighter. “It’s okay… you can fuck my throat if you want…”
His face scrunched in pleasure, a high, wanton whine leaving him at the sound of your offer alone.
You wrapped your lips back around him, taking him all the way in, relaxing your throat around his size.
Forgetting his own strength, he pressed you down to take his cock deeper, forcing his length down your throat, his eyes rolling back when it contracted around the intrusion.
Below the blindfold your eyes watered as you coughed, but you fought through it, determined to take everything he gave you.
“Oh my fucking—mngh!” he choked out.
You focused on relaxing your muscles as he began bobbing you on his cock, setting a frantic, desperate rhythm.
He took a deep breath, taking in the smell of your intoxicating arousal with his heightened senses, the strain of your throat, the sloppy sounds, overwhelming in the best way.
He steadied a hand behind him on the bed, bracing himself to snap his hips up into your mouth with shallow thrusts.
“‘S so good,” he chanted, “God your mouth—o-oh fuu-ah!”
His moan tapered off into a silent shriek, his stomach clenching as the pressure built, threatening to snap.
With a pained groan he pulled you off. You sputtered out a series of coughs as you sat back on your heels, saliva coating your chin. His eyes widened as you brought a hand to rub over your throat.
“Oh my god, I’m so sorry! I don't know what—”
“Why’d you pull me off?” You interjected.
“W-Why? Um, I uh… ‘Cause I was gonna come….” he said shyly, his bravado disappearing.
“Okay…” you started with a small smile spreading on your lips. “That’s the point.”
He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “Yeah, well I didn't want to before… you…” he trailed off, cringing, unable to finish the sentence.
“Wow, even during sex you’re annoyingly sweet.”
He tilted his head back with a groan. “Shut up.” But he was smiling too now, bright and bashful.
He watched you rise to your feet, unbutton your jeans, and pull them down. Next you tugged off your shirt, carefully pulling it over your head to not move the blindfold.
The small, mindful act sent a jolt of tenderness to his heart amidst the lust. His eyes widened at the sight of you in nothing but your undergarments as you held a hand out for him, silently asking to lead you to him.
He took your hand in his, his grip firm as he pulled you forward until your legs were bumping his. You pushed him further back on the bed, following along to straddle his waist and settle back on his cock, pressing him against the damp fabric over your heat.
You sighed at the contact, his hands gripping your thighs, fingers digging deep into the flesh as his eyes screwed shut from the pressure on his cock.
You leaned down to kiss him, while subtly grinding down, making him moan through the kiss. You reached back to unclip your bra, separating from him to let it fall away.
He stared, mesmerized, at the newly exposed skin as you sat back, looking down at him with a challenging look, the same one you’d used on him countless times before.
Maybe he hadn’t misread the tension between you?
He sat up urgently, gripping your body to pull it back against his, kissing you messily while he flipped you over. He laid you down gently beneath him, kissing down your neck to your collarbone, until he reached your chest.
He glanced up to make eye contact with you, his expression falling when he forgot you couldn't see him. He shook his head, pushing the thought to the back of his mind, and kissed over the swell of each breast, his tongue darting out to lick one of your nipples to a stiff peak before fully taking it in his mouth.
“Mmm, fuck…” you moaned, arching into him as he flicked and sucked, releasing it with a wet sound to give attention to the other. “You’re good at this,” you breathed, your fingers curling into his hair.
He smiled against your skin, delighted by the praise.
“Thank you,” he said gently.
A smile bloomed on your lips at how adorable he was, thank you with a proud earnestness that made your heart swell with affection.
He trailed a hand down your stomach, settling it over your clothed mound, reaching lower to rub a single finger over your soaked slit. He took a deep, shuddering breath, inhaling your scent as he slipped his hand into your panties, his finger dipping into your arousal. He parted your folds, slipping through them to collect your slick only to rub it over your swollen clit, tracing it with soft circles.
“Shit—Spider—,” you cut yourself off with another breathless laugh.
He hesitated for a second, whispering, “Peter,” before he could think twice.
Your surprise was interrupted when he pressed a finger into your entrance, curling his fingers to draw a moan out. “P-Peter?” you gasped.
His fingers stilled in you when he realized what he let slip. He’d given his name to you, willingly. He swallowed down the nerves clawing up his throat, reassuring himself that there were hundreds of Peters in the city. It didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. He kissed you to convince himself that it was okay, mumbling “Peter” against your lips again as he slipped in another finger.
“P-Peter!” you cried out, the melody of your voice calling his name an angelic symphony to his ears. He whimpered in response, pumping his fingers deeper into your tight entrance.
“Sound so pretty, feel so… mnghh—” Peter whined, his forehead dropping to yours when your cunt gripped his fingers.
“F-Feels so good, Peter.” A shudder ran through you as the pressure in your stomach built, your clit aching to be touched. The second his thumb ran across it, you were grabbing his wrist, pulling his fingers out and away from your dripping cunt.
“Look who’s stopping who now,” he said cockily with a teasing smirk.
You scoffed and shoved him off. He laughed, free and unbothered, the sound sending your heart soaring with joy as he fell back against the bed. You tugged your underwear off and sat back over him, taking his wrists and pinning them above his head. His cock twitched against your thigh at the dominating display.
You slid your pussy over his cock, nestling him between your folds, rolling your hips and shuddering as the head nudged your sensitive clit with each pass. He cursed, his head thrashing side to side as your silky skin hugged his length.
“P-Please… can’t… I n-need more—”
You crossed his wrists, holding them with one hand. The other fell to his throat, holding him there and cutting off his train of thought. Your fingers curled, holding him tighter, his eyes fluttering shut with a helpless whimper.
“Yeah, you like that?” You smiled.
His skin burned hotter. He pushed against your hand at his wrist, a weak attempt at a warning despite both of you knowing he could overpower you in a second. But he didn’t, and the thought made a warm, fuzzy feeling expand in your chest.
You released his wrists to grip his cock, rising on your knees to position him at your entrance. You sank down slowly, your pained moans coming in tandem when the head of his cock slipped in. You paused there, trying to adjust to the uncomfortable stretch.
“Just give me a second,” you panted, lowering yourself slowly. You could feel how much he was holding back, his hands returning to grip at your thighs. “Fuck, Peter, you’re so big.”
He whined, his hands shifting to your hips, squeezing hard as he ignored every instinct to fuck you dumb.
You grinned at his obvious restraint. “Good boy,” you cooed.
“Fuck, you’re gonna kill me,” he gasped, his head digging into the mattress when you took him halfway.
“You think so, Spiderman?” you taunted. He bit his lip at the way you said the name like an endearment, his cock twitching insistently inside you. You sank all the way down, taking him fully in your cunt. His hand reached to rest over yours braced on his stomach, needing the comfort to keep him grounded to earth as he felt himself slipping away, his brain going fuzzy.
“I knew you’d be this big,” you murmured, “The suit really does you justice.”
“H-Huh—”
Before he could question you, you were pulling out until only the tip remained inside, then sinking back down in one slide.
A choked string of whimpers left him as his eyes glazed over. You steadied both hands on his abs, using him as leverage to ride his cock, rocking your hips earnestly to feel every inch of him press into your velvety walls. You looked like a vision above him, your breasts bouncing with every thrust, your mouth hanging open in pleasure.
“Yes,” he gasped, guiding you harder over his cock. “Just like that, o-oh fuck—you feel incredible.”
His eyes threatened to close when your walls fluttered around him, but he forced them open, determined to watch you come undone. Your nails dug into his muscle, leaving red angry scratches on his skin, the slight pain combining perfectly with the pleasure.
He could feel the pressure building, faster and deeper in his gut than the first time. “P-Please, please—”
God, he needed more. He flipped you over once more, slipping between your legs the second your back hit the mattress. He started thrusting into you with a pace you couldn’t fathom, raw and primal, each drive of his hips reaching a new depth as pure need took over.
You gripped his shoulders, your mouth falling open in a silent cry as the head of his cock slammed repeatedly into that spongy spot inside over and over again. Your world and thoughts narrowed down to him and the dizzying, coiling pressure dangling over the precipice.
“You’re c-cunt—fucking perfect,” he whimpered a desperate little cry into your ear, driving in harder with his enhanced strength, pushing you off the edge.
Your orgasm exploded with a violent, blinding force. You bowed off the bed, a fucked-out scream tearing from your chest as your cunt spasmed around him, the final trigger for his own release.
“Gonna come—f-fuck ‘m so close—I—”
He buried himself to the hilt, his whole body tightening as his release cut through him. “Coming! I-I’m coming!’
Thick ropes of cum shot deep inside your cunt, your releases mixing as your body shook with aftershocks of pleasure, his cock prolonging your orgasm.
His hips bucked lazily into you to milk out every drop of cum from his cock until there was nothing remaining.
He collapsed on top of you, panting with exhaustion, his weight barely braced on his forearm by your head. He looked down at your swollen lips, your blindfold still in place, and kissed you again without another thought, soft and languid.
Right as he moved to pull out, you stopped him with a hand on the small of his back. “Wait,’ you whispered, your voice spent and hoarse. “‘S-Stay?”
His eyes softened as he looked down at you, sensing your vulnerability in the question. You tried to find the words to explain, but you didn’t have to. He understood without explanation; you weren’t ready to let go of the temporary bliss of being this close to another person, and neither was he.
He moved gently with a pained moan, his over sensitive cock twitching inside you, still half hard.
He turned you onto your side to slide in behind you, tugging you back snug into his chest. When your breaths finally settled, he carefully tugged the knot of the blindfold free, pushing it off. You were facing away from him, anyway, he told himself.
Your eyes widened at the loss of the barrier, but he just pulled you in closer, burying his face into your hair, his arm secured around your waist, silencing any lingering thoughts.
Your mind was already drifting to the next morning when you’d wake up and inevitably find him gone. The hero would have slipped back into the night, leaving only the warm bed and his scent in your sheets as a reminder.
You closed your eyes anyway, deciding to pretend all was well for a little while longer.
Comment or message to be added to the spiderman taglist <3
summary: as a member of the newly formed Avengers, you can't stand the vigilante from Queens. But before long, you realize you have far more in common with him than you'd ever care to admit.
masterlist
Reader was Team Cap during CW. Forgive me if you are Team Iron Man (me), it was for the plot's sake. And also, Sam is a GREAT Captain America, in case it is implied otherwise during the narration.
If someone were to ask you when it all started, you would probably answer with the wrong date. You would say it was the day Captain America involved you in a conflict you weren't even old enough to understand; or the first time you had to use a gun. Maybe you would mention the day you reunited with Bucky, years later.
Everything had started much earlier, in a house where conversations about missions were as normal as talking about the weather, and where you learned that observing would always be more important than reacting.
Your parents were always proud to belong to S.H.I.E.L.D. They believed that, with their knowledge and skills, they were contributing to making the world a better place. Because, in theory, that was how it was.
But when the agency fractured under the weight of corruption and HYDRA's infiltration, your parents' work ceased to make sense. Three years later, that same spirit to find answers and do the right thing ended up costing them their lives.
You were left adrift, under the care of the State until you reached adulthood. Then the blip happened. And now, six years later, you worked the same way they had, clinging to the hope that, maybe, the world could still be a little less fucked up.
The problem was your teammates; who had lost that hope long ago and, furthermore, had actively contributed to making the world the fucked up place it was now.
They were a rather peculiar collection of people. You knew that, of all of them, perhaps the least terrifying was Bob. Although, from the stories the others told, if you had known his other side you probably wouldn't think the same.
You were a strategist, so you always believed your place was behind the scenes. However, you soon discovered that, for a plan to succeed, you needed more than just giving instructions through a communicator. Especially considering the team you were working with.
One way or another, everyone had something to teach you. Little by little you learned to shoot, to fight, and, only when strictly necessary, to kill. That last one was always your last option.
A priority that seemed unshakeable, until Spiderman started crossing your path.
You had met him during a mission with John. You had spent weeks tracking a small criminal group that Yelena considered "small potatoes." However, you insisted that, if they didn't stop them right then, sooner or later they would end up becoming a bigger problem.
The operation consisted of intercepting a weapons transaction before the merchandise left the building. While Walker guarded the only escape route, you had to disable the security cameras, block communications, and give the signal to enter when all the buyers were gathered. No gunshots, no chases, and, if everything went well, no casualties.
What you didn't expect that night was for a red and blue blur to burst through the building's window, ruining any attempt to follow the plan.
You had seen him countless times on the news and knew the city adored him. No headline questioned his work as a hero —something that did happen constantly with your teammates and, by extension, with you—. He was always recognized for his bravery, his ingenuity, and his ability to save the day.
The problem was that, at that precise moment, you didn't need the friendly neighborhood guy. You needed him to stop ruining a perfectly planned operation.
In the end, the target was captured and the mission was a success. The credit, of course, went to Spiderman.
On the way to the tower, Walker asked you why it bothered you so much, if in the end they had gotten exactly what they wanted.
What Walker didn't understand was that the problem had never been the outcome. What was truly unbearable was knowing that the masked kid had ruined what would have been an impeccable operation. He was chaotic. And chaos was not tolerable to you.
When you told Bucky what happened, he made sure to remind you that that hadn't been your first encounter with the arachnid; or, at least, the first time your paths had crossed. Spiderman had fought on Tony Stark's side during the events related to the Sokovia Accords, the same time Steve had turned to you for help. After all, he knew your parents and —it went without saying— held a special affection for them. He confessed to you that he hoped you possessed the same brilliance they did.
While you had provided him with the strategy to advance their mission without being detected by the government, that kid had fought against him on the battlefield. What for you had been nothing more than a consultation, for him had become an experience that would mark his life. You couldn't help but feel a pang of jealousy. And, as if that weren't enough, your rejection of Spiderman only increased.
Soon, it turned out that the arachnid wished to maintain communication with the team of self-proclaimed "new Avengers." Yelena was in charge of doing so, luckily, because if it had been up to you, you wouldn't have accepted a single one of his meetings.
Sometimes you were forced to work with him, although you had never openly mentioned that you didn't completely like him. Some suspected it, because of the expression you made every time someone mentioned him or your refusals to ask him for help with anything minor.
Almost a month after your first encounter with him, another case appeared on your desk.
It didn't come from a mission assigned by Valentina nor was it among the team's priorities. It was a police report that someone had filed as a simple attempted robbery: a group of armed men had broken into a small convenience store in southern Brooklyn, taking a safe and disappearing before the authorities arrived.
Nobody seemed interested in investigating it. Yelena barely gave the file a glance.
“Not worth it. We have more important things,” she had said.
Maybe for her, but you had been studying criminal organizations long enough to recognize a pattern when you saw one. Those men had acted with too much precision to be improvised criminals. Furthermore, one of the faces captured by a security camera matched that of a buyer who had managed to escape during the operation Spiderman had ruined days ago.
It wasn't an isolated case. And you were convinced it was your duty to do something about it.
You didn't need the rest of the team, checking an address was enough to make it real.
The next forty-eight hours were spent discreetly following one of the suspects to an old commercial building. They entered and exited carrying unmarked boxes, always at different hours, always taking different routes.
To you, it looked more like a distribution point than a warehouse.
You waited until nightfall to approach, and getting inside turned out to be ridiculously simple. The lock gave way after a few seconds, with an alarm system so old that disabling it barely took you a minute.
The ease of it should have warned you, made you back off. Instead, you moved forward.
The interior was practically empty. Just a few stacked boxes and metal shelves covered in dust. You navigated the place cautiously, photographing documents and noting down serial numbers printed on several containers.
You found exactly what you were looking for. And you also understood too late why it had been so simple to get in.
When a metallic click echoed behind you, the lights came on and a voice resonated saying:
“I knew you'd come back.”
Looking up, you discovered the man who had escaped. Around him several armed figures appeared, occupying the upper walkway while as many others emerged from between the shelves.
They had used that warehouse as bait and you, stupidly, had fallen right into the trap. You sighed just a moment before reaching for your weapon, trying to hide your nerves from the men.
The first shot came even before you could say anything.
You threw yourself behind a concrete column as several bullets shattered the boxes you had just inspected. You took advantage of the brief silence to return fire, forcing two men to take cover.
You only hit one, as he uttered a scream upon taking a hit to the side.
You changed position before they could surround you and you knew your training was paying off. You knew where to position yourself, when to shoot, and when to move. You closed distances, forced the enemy to make mistakes, and made the most of every second of cover.
But there were too many of them.
You didn't realize when one had already come up from behind, and you turned just in time to dodge a blow from the butt of a rifle, responding with an elbow that made your attacker stagger. You managed to disarm him, but another man hit you in the ribs before you could recover your balance.
The air escaped your lungs, but even so you managed to fight your way to an emergency door and pushed the metal bar with all your strength.
It didn't budge at all.
Understanding that they had blocked it from the outside, you looked for another exit. However, a second later you took an impact to your vest, forcing you back several steps as pain spread through your entire chest. Once there, another shot grazed your shoulder.
It didn't take long for them to surround you –and of course they were going to, it was just you out there in the middle– until panic took hold of you. You had never thought it was reckless to go alone and now you feared it was going to cost you your life.
One pointed at you and you had no time to react.
A web attached itself to the barrel of the rifle, deflecting it toward the ceiling just as the shot echoed through the warehouse.
The gun flew out of the man's hands, while a red and blue figure descended swinging between the ceiling beams, landing with the lightness of someone who seemed to have rehearsed that movement hundreds of times.
“You know?” he commented while another web immobilized two more men “There are much healthier ways to receive visitors.”
You felt something tighten in your jaw.
No.
It couldn't be him.
Spiderman dodged a burst of gunfire with an almost insulting ease. He jumped between the shelves, used webs to disarm some, knock down others, and leave those trying to escape immobilized.
Chaotic. Unpredictable. But ridiculously efficient.
You took advantage of the distraction to get up and return to the fight. Between the two of you, you quickly reduced the rest of the group, until the warehouse was plunged into a silence interrupted only by the groans of the criminals stuck to the floor.
You were breathing heavily when he approached.
“Are you okay?”
The question sounded so natural that it almost managed to irritate you more. You looked at him for a few seconds before answering.
“I had it under control.”
Spiderman tilted his head slightly, observing the vest marked by the bullet impact and the blood slowly trickling down your arm.
“Sure.”
He paused.
“If it helps, from the outside it didn't give that impression.”
You clenched your jaw.
“Who called you?”
“Nobody.”
He answered as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
“I heard gunshots while I was patrolling.”
He wasn't following that investigation. He didn't know your operation, he didn't even know who those men were. He had simply heard that someone needed help.
And he had shown up.
You wished you were upset with him, but you couldn't be. Especially not after he had probably saved your life.
He remained there until you obtained all the information you needed. Afterward, he even offered to take you back to the tower, which you immediately refused. Still, a part of you knew, even before crossing the main door, that he had stayed close enough to make sure you arrived safe and sound. He was absurdly gentlemanly. And you hated him for that.
The days kept passing. From time to time, his figure appeared on the news or flooded social media: saving a child trapped under the rubble of a building, thwarting a robbery on the subway, helping an old man cross an avenue after an evacuation. He was always there. He always arrived on time.
You kept doing your job, but you couldn't get him out of your head.
You weren't thinking about the boy hiding his face under the mask. You were thinking about Spiderman.
Since Tony Stark's death and Captain America's disappearance, the world had ceased to have figures who seemed to belong to something larger than themselves. Sam Wilson was doing what he could to fill that void, trying to assemble a new team under Steve Rogers' legacy. However, Valentina had built hers first, and you were already part of it.
That was supposed to be the right path.
Wasn't it?
Bucky had known Steve better than anyone. If anyone understood what it meant to continue his legacy, it had to be him. So why did you keep feeling like something didn't fit?
It was enough to remember the past of each of your teammates for the contradiction to appear again. Murderers, mercenaries, spies... people trying to do good while carrying decades of mistakes. You yourself were no exception.
It was frustrating.
And then you went back to Spiderman.
He didn't need to belong to any team. He didn't answer to anyone, he didn't wait for orders or permission. He simply saw someone in danger and acted. While the rest argued over governments, jurisdictions, or who had the right to call themselves an Avenger, he kept roaming New York, saving one life after another without asking for recognition.
That was what hurt you the most to admit. Because he was exactly the kind of hero you had always wanted to be. And, instead, the last time you tried to do something on your own, you had ended up needing Spiderman to rescue you.
You hadn't even been capable of completing a simple reconnaissance mission without turning into someone who needed to be saved.
The feeling was unbearable.
You felt... small. Pathetic.
That night, unable to fall asleep, you ended up wandering around the tower. The balcony was one of the few places where silence still existed. You liked to imagine that, years ago, Captain America had also stopped there, observing the city with the same weight on his shoulders. Maybe wondering, just like you now, if wanting to do the right thing would ever be enough.
It was then that a noise alerted you. It had been barely noticeable, but for a trained —and sharp— ear like yours, it was enough. The first thing you thought of was Bob.
Maybe he had another nightmare. Maybe something had gone wrong.
However, you discarded the idea almost instantly. Bob was incapable of moving discreetly. He tried to, yes, but he ended up tripping over anything or announcing his presence before even entering a room. Getting scared easily had that effect on him.
Then, who?
You frowned.
The tower was practically empty. The rest of the team had left hours ago and you had stayed behind as support in case Bob needed anything. There was no one else who should be there.
That only left one possibility. An intruder.
Out of pure instinct you reached a hand to your waist, searching for a weapon that you knew perfectly well wasn't there. You had gone out to the balcony convinced it would only be a few minutes; you hadn't considered it necessary to carry one. You were at home, why the hell would you walk around with a gun in your own building?
You took a deep breath and advanced slowly, making sure not to make noise. If whoever had entered didn't expect to run into anyone, you still held the element of surprise. And if they also didn't know how to fight...
Well, you would have a chance.
As soon as you turned the corner, two familiar colors appeared in front of you: red and blue.
You closed your eyes for a second and let out your breath in a sigh heavy with annoyance.
Of course it was him.
“What are you doing here?”
Spiderman gave a small start upon hearing your voice.
“Oh! I'm sorry, I...” he raised both hands immediately, as if he had just been caught doing something wrong “I didn't expect to find anyone.”
He pointed inside the tower with his thumb.
“I was looking for Agent Belova.”
“Yelena?”
He nodded.
“She's not here,” you explained, regaining your composure “In fact, nobody is. They went out on a mission.”
Wishing that he wouldn't underestimate you or believe, for a moment, that they hadn't wanted to bring you along, you added:
“I stayed behind to keep Bob company.”
For a moment, Spiderman remained completely motionless.
Although the mask hid his expression, there was something in the way he slightly lowered his shoulders and averted his gaze that conveyed a silent apology. It was evident that he hadn't wanted to barge in that way, much less startle you.
“It's just… I need help with something and I thought she could help me.”
“Well, she's not here. Call her when she gets back.”
He let out a brief laugh, more out of nerves than amusement.
“Yeah... that's what I was planning to do.”
He kept quiet for a moment, as if he were deciding whether to say something else or simply leave.
He ended up doing the former.
“It's just... I've been following a group for a couple of days that has been stealing tech equipment. Nothing especially eye-catching separately, but when you put all the robberies together... they start to look too specific.”
He reached a hand into one of the compartments on his belt and pulled out a small metallic device, the size of a USB drive.
He held it between two fingers.
“This dropped during the chase of one of them. I thought it might tell me something, but I haven't been able to figure out what it is.”
You observed it for barely a second. You didn't recognize the device.
“And what does that have to do with us?”
He scratched the back of his neck over the mask.
“Well, I thought that… Yelena would know how to identify weapons, military tech, and stuff like that. Or that there would be something in the databases.”
You couldn't argue with that logic.
“Besides,” he continued “I was told that before forming this team she did a lot of intelligence work. I thought maybe she could help me figure out who is behind it.”
He slowly lowered his hand.
“But if she's not here, I'll find another way.”
He took half a step toward the edge of the balcony, ready to leave. You noticed by the way he slightly flexed his legs, preparing to shoot a web.
You could have let him leave without any problem because, at the end of the day, you didn't even care about helping him. But a part of you felt that it wasn't the right thing to do.
One always had to do the right thing.
“Wait,” you murmured, before he left “Let me see that.”
In barely two strides he came back to you and placed the device on your hand.
You turned it over a couple of times between your fingers. It had no visible markings, no serial number, no inscription.
“I don't know what it is.”
Spiderman nodded with barely perceptible disappointment.
“But we can investigate it.”
“Really?”
“Inside. We have analysis labs, databases, and reconnaissance equipment that are considerably more advanced than any home computer… or whatever it is you use.”
There was a brief silence.
“Come.”
You led him into the building. The balcony doors closed automatically behind you both, and the silence of the night was replaced by the constant hum of the electrical systems.
Spiderman walked a few steps behind you, discreetly looking at every corner.
The lobby was immense. Glass panels lined the walls; several screens remained on displaying maps, satellite readings, and real-time reports. Even at those hours, the tower seemed to keep functioning as if it never slept.
“Wow...”
His voice came out almost as a whisper, genuinely impressed by how imposing the inside of the tower was. You wondered if he had ever been inside during its prime, that of the original Avengers, but you doubted it.
You led him to an analysis room located several hallways further ahead, where the doors opened upon recognizing your ID.
The lab was practically empty.
In the center rested a huge interactive glass table. Several holographic screens remained suspended above it, while different analysis modules surrounded the room.
Spiderman stood motionless as soon as he crossed the door. He slowly turned his head from one station to another.
“All of this is… next level, right?”
You smiled faintly to yourself. It was impossible not to notice the genuine awe with which he observed every piece of equipment.
There was no ambition in his voice, nor greed. Just curiosity.
You approached the main console and activated the interface, making the room come alive immediately.
You asked him to put the device in one of the slots and a few seconds later, the scanner began to slowly move across the surface of the object.
As the system initiated the analysis, you crossed your arms.
“Don't get used to it. I'm only helping you this time.”
His white lenses narrowed slightly, as if trying to interpret the reason.
“Why?”
You looked at him directly.
“Because you helped me last time.”
You paused briefly.
“Consider it a settled debt.”
Spiderman remained silent for a few seconds. Then he tilted his head slightly.
“I don't… think we were in debt. I didn't do it for that, really.”
“I know,” you admitted.
Silence settled between the two of you again. He didn't press.
He simply watched as the screens began to display the first results, understanding that, behind that distant attitude, there was a person incapable of ignoring someone in need of help. Even if she wasn't ready to admit it yet.
When it was all over, you told him you hoped the information would be useful to him and he thanked you before leaving.
A few days later he returned to the tower, but this time, he wasn't looking for Yelena, but for you. He told you that thanks to the information he had managed to discover the origin of the robberies; it was an altered weapons trafficking network. He managed to dismantle it thanks to the lead he had.
It surprised you that he had decided to tell you about it, as if the trouble of using the machines ought to be rewarded with good news. You accompanied him to the balcony and as you watched him swinging through the city, you promised yourself it would be the only time you were going to do him a favor.
Unfortunately, that wasn't the case.
He appeared more often than you wished on the tower balcony to ask you endless questions and request that you investigate something for him. It was almost always minor things, something that would only help him take the necessary step or find an adequate starting point for his investigation.
The news was right about something: New York was safer thanks to him.
When you got fed up with being surprised at the window of your room in the complex or having to go to the balcony to meet him, you told him he could have your number. Only in case of emergencies.
Thus, you ended up getting calls at least once a week from the vigilante from Queens.
“But it makes no sense,” you heard him say, on the other end of the line.
You were leaning against the kitchen island resting, after having handled off-the-record matters assigned by Valentina.
His voice came through broken up by the wind. You didn't need to ask him where he was to imagine him swinging between buildings with the phone held between his shoulder and his mask.
“What makes no sense?”
“Last week we dismantled a substance trafficking network. Today I found another one. Two days ago I stopped a robbery in Queens and, while I was taking the guy to the police, I received three more alerts. It's like the city always finds a way to fill the gaps.”
You remained silent for a few seconds before answering.
“That's crime for you,” you admitted bitterly.
If he had been in front of you, he would have seen you press your lips together and shrug. You heard a sigh on the other end of the line.
“I guess I hoped that, over time, things would get better.”
“Do you think they haven't gotten better?” you asked, almost offended.
It took him a moment to answer.
“I don't know.”
“Well then you're dumber than I thought.”
“Do you think I'm dumb?”
“Naive would be a better adjective.”
The silence that followed was brief, but different. It wasn't uncomfortable; it sounded more like someone thinking while traversing the city.
“The city is safer,” you assured him “Even if you don't believe it.”
“And how are you so sure?”
“Because the numbers say so. The news too. I thought you watched it... especially since lately they won't stop talking about you.”
The kid let out a low laugh.
“I try not to read much of what they say about Spiderman.”
“Why?”
“Because one day I'm the neighborhood hero and the next, responsible for all of Manhattan's problems.”
The conversation seemed to remain suspended after that. You stood looking at an indefinite point in front of you, with the phone pressed against your ear, while the distant noise of the city formed an indistinguishable murmur.
On the other end of the line, he waited. First one second. Then two. He didn't push; he thought you were simply thinking of a response. But the silence stretched long enough for it to stop seeming like a natural pause.
The only thing he could hear was your breathing.
“Are you okay?”
You frowned slightly.
“Why?”
“You sound weird.”
You let out a nasal laugh.
“Great. Now you can tell how I am by the way I talk?”
“And how do you know I'm not spying on you through the window?”
By reflex you turned your head toward the huge kitchen window. The city was still there, immense, illuminated, and completely empty.
Then you heard his laugh.
“You turned around, didn't you?”
You rolled your eyes.
“You're a dummy.”
“But you did turn around.”
You shook your head, surprised to have let yourself be fooled so easily. Why had he made you smile?
“But seriously, is something wrong?”
The smile faded bit by bit. You rested a hand on the kitchen counter, debating whether you should tell him what was bothering you or not.
“Today I was in a meeting,” you began.
A part of you expected him to interrupt you, but since he didn't, you continued.
“There were people arguing for hours over who had the authority to intervene in a situation that's been getting worse for weeks. In the end they resolved nothing. They only agreed to meet again.”
He kept silent.
“And while they talk about jurisdictions, permits, and diplomatic consequences… someone else ends up doing the job.”
You weren't going to admit it out loud, but both of you knew exactly who you were referring to. Silence returned. You paid attention, almost out of habit, and noticed how the wind disappeared on the other side of the call.
“I'm starting to think the world spends more time discussing problems than solving them.”
Spiderman's breathing became more steady, closer. He had stopped moving. You imagined he had just landed on the roof of his building and that, for the first time since you had started talking, all his attention was on you.
“Sometimes I don't know if it's worth it.”
This time his response came almost immediately.
“You don't want to be in the new Avengers?”
“What? No! I didn't mean that. Of course I want to be there. But...” you let the air out slowly, searching for the right words “sometimes it's frustrating to want to do something and discover that, no matter how hard you try, you simply can't.”
He remained quiet for a few seconds. This time he didn't try to contradict you or offer an immediate solution.
Silence settled back in, although it no longer felt so heavy.
“Well… there's always space on my team.”
You smiled involuntarily.
“Spiderman works in a team?”
“I could start doing so.”
You raised an eyebrow, even though he couldn't see it.
“What a terrible way to recruit people.”
“I don't have much experience.”
A laugh escaped from both of you, small, genuine.
For the first time since you had answered the call, the conversation no longer revolved around a case or an investigation. You were simply talking and, honestly, neither of you seemed to be in a hurry to hang up.
“Did you get home?”
“Just now. Honestly, I hope no emergency pulls me out of bed. I'm exhausted.”
You smiled faintly.
“Crime doesn't rest. But you should.”
“I'll try.”
Thinking that there was nothing left to discuss, you sighed:
“Good night, Spiderman.”
“Good night.”
He made a brief pause before adding:
“I hope you feel better tomorrow.”
You frowned slightly.
“Thank you.”
The call ended a few seconds later.
You would have never thought you'd end up swinging through the city in Spiderman's arms. In fact, if someone had told you a few weeks ago —a few months, actually— you probably would have thought it was one of the most absurd ideas you had ever heard.
And yet, there you were.
Your arms were around his shoulders while the lights of New York passed beneath your feet, trying to ignore how un-normal the situation was.
Spiderman always called you when he needed a favor. A clue, a location, an answer that only you could find. That night had been different: this time it was you who had called him.
You had hesitated before dialing his number. Not because you didn't trust him, but because asking for help had never been easy for you. You were used to solving things alone.
A tracking device had disappeared during an operation and the last signal located it inside an abandoned building in an industrial zone. It wasn't something that justified mobilizing an entire team, but you couldn't simply go in either without knowing what you would find. There were too many variables and very little information.
Spiderman had agreed to help you without thinking twice about it.
You had spent the last hour following the signal, checking the place, and making sure no one else was using the building as a meeting point. In the end, it turned out to be less complicated than expected: the device was hidden among abandoned equipment in one of the upper rooms and it had only been impossible to retrieve because the structure was unstable.
When you finished, the tension of the mission vanished almost at once.
That was when you mentioned that you were dying for a burger. It hadn't been a request or an invitation, just a comment after a day that was far too long. But Spiderman seemed to have taken it as a new task.
“Is it much further? I feel like you're going to drop me any second.”
“I would never,” he assured you, letting out a laugh.
In reality, his grip was quite strong. You had never noticed how muscular he was. Of course you knew Spiderman possessed extraordinary strength; you had seen him stop blows capable of knocking down walls and carry objects no normal person could move. But there was a difference between observing him from a distance and feeling the security with which he held you while crossing the city.
After a few more minutes of swinging between buildings, he finally slowed down. The city lights stopped moving so fast around you until you landed on the roof of a building.
Although Spiderman tried to go unnoticed, it wasn't exactly easy to ignore someone in a brightly colored suit coming in to eat a burger. So he had bought takeout from a nearby place and had decided a rooftop was the best alternative.
Apparently, after so many years traversing the city that way, he also knew which ones had the best views.
“Before being Spiderman, were you afraid of heights?” you asked with apparent indifference.
As you spoke, you walked along the narrow edge of the roof with your arms slightly spread from your body to keep your balance. Every step was deliberate, almost playful, as if you enjoyed testing your stability. Spiderman, on the other hand, didn't take his eyes off you for a second.
“No... but now you're making me nervous. Do you want to get down from there?”
You smiled sideways, amused by the change in his tone.
“Seriously? Would you let me fall?”
“No,” he answered immediately.
You didn't even notice when he had closed the distance between you. You only realized it when his hand found your arm and held it with a delicacy that contrasted with the urgency of his movement.
“But I don't want that to happen either.”
You couldn't see his eyes behind the mask. Even so, there was something in the way he stood in front of you, with a firm hand on your arm and his body prepared to support you if necessary, that made you lose part of that carefree confidence.
Without saying anything else, you stepped down from the edge of the roof. He didn't loosen his grip until both of you had your feet on solid ground.
“So then?”
“So then what?”
“Were you afraid of heights?”
“No,” he confessed “But I was of spiders.”
“You're kidding.”
“I'm serious,” he laughed. He was already moving some boxes so you could sit down “Great irony, right?”
“That's a lie. You're saying it to annoy me,” you murmured, still incredulous.
He made a polite gesture to you, as if giving you passage to a chair of honor, and you took a seat. He did the same and then handed you the food bag, where there were two plain burgers and an order of french fries.
As soon as you had it, you took a bite of yours. The silence that settled between both of you was comfortable; it was only accompanied by the distant rumor of traffic and the occasional sound of paper wrapping the food.
After a few seconds, he turned his head slightly toward you.
“Where did you learn everything you know?”
“About what?”
“Well, about everything. You know, your… agent skills.”
The gesture he made brought a laugh out of you. He seemed to point at all of you with his hand.
“From my parents. They were S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, before the organization was dismantled.”
He let out a whistle of surprise.
“Really? How cool.”
You pulled the other burger out of the bag and offered it to him. He took it with a gesture of gratitude.
“What about yours? What did they do?”
“They died when I was a kid. Almost my whole life I lived with my aunt and uncle.”
You lowered your gaze.
“Oh... I'm sorry.”
He brushed it off with a small movement of his shoulders.
“It's okay. It wasn't your fault.”
You took another bite of the burger before speaking again.
“You know? It's really strange...”
He waited for you to finish the thought.
“There's so little I know about you.”
“That's supposed to be the idea of having a secret identity.”
You smiled.
“Fair enough. Then I'll ask normal questions.”
Spiderman tilted his head slightly, amused.
“What's your favorite movie?”
He thought for a few seconds.
“I don't have just one. I like the ones about space.”
You raised an eyebrow.
“Have you been there?”
“Yeah. A while ago.”
He said it so naturally that it took you a second to process it.
Of course. The Avengers. The originals.
“What food can't you stand?”
“Avocado. I hate the texture. And I don't like jello either.”
You smiled before throwing out the next question.
“Who did you vote for in the last election?”
He let out a laugh.
“I wasn't old enough to vote.”
You frowned.
“What do you mean you weren't old enough?”
“Yeah. It was four years ago.”
You froze for a few seconds.
Something didn't add up.
You turned your body to look at him better.
“Wait... how old are you?”
“Twenty-two.”
He made a brief pause before adding:
“Well... I'd be a few years older, but you know... the blip thing.”
You stared at him intently. The information took an instant to settle in your head.
Twenty-two.
Spiderman was twenty-two years old.
You had never thought about it. He had always seemed... older. Not because of his appearance —you didn't even know his face—, but because of the way he spoke, because of the responsibility he carried on his shoulders, because of the way he faced every situation as if he had been doing it for years.
He tilted his head.
“What?”
You blinked.
“It's just... I never imagined you were my age.”
He burst out laughing.
“And how old did you think I was?”
You thought about it for a moment.
“I don't know... thirty?”
“Thirty?!”
He let out a loud laugh.
“Of course not! Why would you think that?”
You shrugged, unable to justify it.
“I don't know... you just... give off that impression.”
Since you had started talking, he hadn't touched his food. When he unwrapped the burger you saw him lift his mask just a little bit to take a bite.
“You never take it off, do you?”
“Hm-hm,” he hummed.
You took a moment to observe him or, at least, what little he was revealing. He was Caucasian and, apparently, had brown hair.
“Did your curiosity run out?”
“What's your favorite color?”
“Red.”
“Yeah, well, that one wasn't that hard.”
You kept quiet, thinking of another question.
“Hmm, what do you love most in life?”
“Helping others. A person very important to me used to say that: when you help someone, you help everyone. And I think that's what makes me get up every day. Thinking that… maybe I can help make the world a better place.”
You stayed quiet for a second. You had never stopped to think that, just maybe, Spiderman and you weren't so different. You both wanted to do something good in life and, somehow, you were doing it. He had never done anything to you, all that rejection you had felt at the beginning stemmed from a childish spat that he wasn't even aware of.
He was a good person.
“That's the answer expected of a superhero.”
“I also have other passions, I must confess. I really like science, I like technology, legos…”
“Legos? Spiderman, you're a total nerd.”
You couldn't help letting out a soft laugh while turning your face slightly to look at him. He also tilted his head toward you.
“What about you? Did you always dream of being part of the Avengers?”
You felt the title was too big for you. In reality, you were nothing like the idea you had of what an Avenger should be. And yet, Spiderman recognized you as one.
“I just wanted to be like my parents. I wanted… to do something good for the world. Maybe not fix it, but help.”
His mask was still lifted to the level of his nose and, for the first time, you saw his smile.
“One would think that's everyone's dream, right? Though it turns out it's not always like that. That's why we have work.”
You two shared a soft laugh. Not as agents, but as friends.
You searched his eyes and going down toward his lips, you realized he had a stain of ketchup. Without thinking too much about it, you stretched out a bit to wipe it off him.
Upon feeling your hand touching his skin he flinched, but as soon as he understood your intentions, his shoulders relaxed.
“Is Spiderman afraid of being touched?”
“Of course not,” he huffed, clearly nervous.
Or uncomfortable, you couldn't figure it out.
“It's just… I didn't expect it.”
“That someone would wipe a stain off your face?”
“That someone would invade my personal space with so much confidence.”
You observed him for a few seconds, pretending to analyze him.
“I thought a New York hero would be more used to attention.”
“It depends on who it comes from.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“There are people who make me more nervous than stopping a robbery.”
A mischievous smile appeared on your lips.
“And which category do I fall into?”
He took a second longer than necessary to answer.
“I'm not going to answer that.”
“How convenient.”
“It's self-preservation.”
“So I do make you nervous.”
“That's not what I said.”
“But you didn't deny it either.”
He let out a laugh, shaking his head.
“You're impossible.”
Having annoyed him made you laugh and, for a second, you forgot who he was. You weren't with the hero of New York, he was just a twenty-two-year-old guy whose name you didn't even know, but with whom you shared a moral mission.
You two finished eating and he swung to take you home. Soon the already familiar goodbye scene unfolded on the balcony.
“Thanks for today,” you murmured, once your feet touched the ground.
“It was nothing.”
His voice sounded sincere. He stayed on the edge, waiting for you to go through the door.
But instead of walking backward, you took a step forward.
Your feet moved on their own and when you reached him, you gave him a kiss on the cheek over the mask. You were close enough to see the blur of his eyes behind the white visors.
He looked at himself for a second, surprised by what you had just done. Then, on an impulse that not even you managed to question, you raised your hands to the edge of his mask.
He instantly tensed up.
“Wait...”
His fingers moved by reflex, as if they were going to stop you, but they remained suspended halfway.
“Relax,” you murmured right away, without taking your eyes off him.
He remained completely motionless, watching you in silence, trusting you, even though evident nervousness ran through his whole body. With extreme slowness, you lifted the fabric just enough to reveal his lips.
Your eyes searched for his through the mask, expecting to find a refusal, a gesture of discomfort, or any sign that would make you stop, but there was nothing. Only his Adam's apple moving up and down in a clear sign of anticipation.
You closed the minimal distance that still separated you both and brushed his lips with yours. It wasn't a long or passionate kiss. Barely a brief, soft contact, almost a question. But he responded.
With his lips still revealed, you stayed watching him for a few more seconds.
“What color are your eyes?”
It took him an instant to answer.
“Brown.”
“Mmm...”
You hummed with a small smile, as if you had just discovered a fascinating piece of information.
“But a… sweet brown, right? With amber touches.”
“I guess, yeah.”
“I imagined them like that.”
He let out a low laugh, unable to understand why that simple question seemed to have left you so satisfied.
You took a step back and smiled at him.
“Good night, Spiderman.”
You gave him one last smile and began to walk away toward the door leading inside the building. You were a couple of steps from crossing it when something softly wrapped around your wrist.
With a precise tug, the web tightened and your body was pulled backward. You let out a small muffled gasp as the distance between you disappeared in an instant.
Spiderman caught you by the waist before you could collide with him.
You would have liked to have the wit to fire back anything, but you were left speechless. And he didn't say anything either. He simply leaned toward you and kissed you.
His kiss was long enough to make you forget the cold wind blowing on the roof and the distant noise of the city. When he finally pulled away, you knew you were completely blushing.
“Good night…” he said with a small smile “And, please, don't try to take off my mask again without warning.”
He covered his face again and, before you could say another word, shot a web toward the building across the street.
With a push he disappeared among the lights of New York.
You stood motionless for a few seconds, watching the place where he had gone, until an inevitable smile formed on your face. Then you went inside the building, still with the tingling of that last kiss on your lips.
summary: your cute upstairs neighbour holds many secrets. you're willing to close one eye to his secrecy or the way he looks at you as if you hung the stars, till you accidentally uncover letters upon letters nedpeter’s kept in his apartment—all addressed to you.
pairing: peter parker x reader
content: slight angst, flufff, comfort, no major movie spoilers!!, yes peter fumbled by using ned as his fake name, yearner peter parker!!
Hey! It’s Peter, your Peter.
Peter—clearly, Ned wasn't even his real name. Ned, the friendly neighbour from 28B who was a secretive, genius oddball—whom you suspect to be some sort of undercover agent after catching a glimpse of the ridiculously high-end tech flooding his apartment.
Overly sweet Ned, who never failed to offer a hand with your laundry basket or delivery packages, or dropping off your exact coffee order at the front door before your morning shifts, just because he could. Ned, who snaps his neck up half the time looking around with a widened, hopeful gaze when you do address him in the laundry room—as if looking for some other Ned that meant a greater deal to him than himself.
You had suspected he was likely involved in illegal activities, but when the temptation of finding his laundry basket unattended remained, you finally took the chance to return those little favours. Maybe he was the kindest stranger you've ever known, or maybe he just looked like he could use a helping hand—with how his shoulders drooped low whenever he thought no one was looking in the dingy hallways. He seemed—lonely.
Not like you were one to judge. You had always felt like a piece of you was missing, and that gaping hole behind your ribs didn't magically stitch itself closed when you grabbed your degree with crippling student loans biting at your heels, and a lousy job in the nearest soul-sucking company you could find within train distance to your apartment.
So, maybe Ned's smile that crinkled the corners of his hazel eyes flashed more than once in your thoughts, and you decided it was time to get to know the man who lived one floor above you. You expected his smile to greet you when you climbed up the rickety stairs to his apartment, not his door left ajar with webs sticking out the hinges—or letters all addressed to you scattered across the floorboards.
You didn't know what you had expected when you walked into his mess of an apartment. More so than usual, enough for you to sense the abnormality of webs upon webs coating his furniture. Stepping into what seems to be a genuine crime scene, it's as if the culprit was one massive spider that decided to make its hive in Ned's apartment.
"Ned?" You call out, worry raised in your tone as you look around—catching no sight of him through the thick layers of webbing. His large monitor screens are all left online, files left unclosed on the window tab, with no sign of their user.
You're one step away from the monitor, tempted to call the cops when you catch sight of crumpled papers upon papers scattered on the wooden floors beneath the desk. Brows furrowed, you crouch down, brushing away the loosened cobwebs coating the papers. They are— letters.
Your first instinct as your fingers trace over his handwriting, paper crumpled at the edges, is to leave it alone as it's most definitely personal—before your eyes catch sight of your name. No—you weren't imagining it. The letters were most definitely, addressed to you.
Hey! It’s Peter, your Peter.
Earlier was bad. Like, really bad. I can't believe I said 'Oh no!' to your face, like what kind of idiot does that as their first impression? Well, technically that wouldn't be our first meeting, though I doubt you'll remember me. I was anything but smooth on all the other occurences either.
Just talking with you in the hallway and carrying your boxes—I nearly forgot myself. I still can't decide if it's a curse or some cruel joke of a blessing that you moved into my apartment complex of all places. It's like the world's trying to tell me to just say the truth.
I should be going out there and telling you this instead of writing this stupid note or letter, but a letter should come in one of those fancy envelopes, so I guess I should call this a note? Anyways, I'm getting off track.
I miss being with you, and I’m so scared I’m starting to forget how it iswas between us, and talking to you again like everything was normal just—I had the urge to sit down and write to you, before I did anything stupid. So I could talk to you, in some way, without hiding behind 'Ned'. How stupid can I be, using Ned's name, like was that seriously all I could think of? I don’t know if this note will be worth anything by the end, but I think it’ll hurt worse if I just let what happened simmer in my brain.
I miss you so, so much. It feels like it's killing me sometimes, and I don't know what to do with myself now that you're here, so close to me, for what could be a really long time. I don't know what hurts worse, being apart from you or this, and I don't know what I'm going to do. You'd know what to say, and I wish you could tell me. I miss you ordering me around. I just miss you.
Love,
Your Peter.
Your heart thumps painfully against your ribcage, fingers tightening over the crinkled edges, digging deeper into the forming lines. What kind of sick joke was this? Had he known you for longer—since before you moved into this apartment?
His strange reaction when he had bumped into you in the hallway for the first time reformed in your memory, the intensity of a stranger that came off as more than usual awkwardness.
"Sorry for bumping into you—" You huff, a cramped smile peeking through the many boxes you're carrying. "Not my best line of sight right now."
Past the boxes, is possibly the cutest potential neighbour you've ever seen. With wettened curls drooping over his forehead, a towel draped around his neck, in his grey sweats and baggy hoodie—this stranger looks like a dream. Or maybe you're just in desperate help to ease the load on your arms that carries your entire future life in this new apartment complex.
"What are you doing here?"
You blink, stunned by his sudden interrogation. That was—not what you expected. You run faces through your mind, anyone you may have accidentally pissed off in the last four years of your university life, but his doesn't come to mind at all. You would remember that face.
Especially if he's staring at you like the existence of you in this cramped hallway was a signal that the world was collapsing on him and his perfect curls.
"Uhm, I live here?" You answer, shuffling the boxes awkwardly between your two palms. "Well, starting today—I do."
Your words register slowly for him, and you feel it in the strain of your arms under the boxes, as the fact that you're his actual neighbour slowly kicks in to his senses.
"Oh." His lips part in genuine anguish. "Oh no."
"Yikes." You wince. "That's a warm welcome."
He's panicking. The cute stranger looks like he's one miscalculated breath away from passing out in the hallway, and you're in no position to assist him when you're clearly winded yourself.
"No—I didn't mean—" His voice stutters, catching at the tail-ends and running out of breath. "Oh, this is not how it's supposed to go."
"No, I don't think I've ever caused genuine pain to a neighbour just from my mere existence." You snort, offering a lighter tone. "Though Margeret may disagree."
His lips quirk up slightly, involuntary even if he has no idea who Margeret—your old neighbour, is supposed to be. "No, I'm sorry. That was rude of me." He tries again, voice sincerely apologetic. "Can I please help you with the boxes to make up for it?"
You open your mouth to brush off his request, but the boxes tilt right as you make another forward step. "Fine." You oblige. "Just don't start spreading rumours about me taking advantage of your kindness. I really need a new start here."
"Had personal experience with that?" He raises a brow, almost teasing—softer than he had been earlier in his initial shock. His hands come up under your boxes, brushing over your fingers almost tentatively.
The warmth of his touch lingers for a second longer than it should, but you're too focused on the relief of the heavy weight being lifted off your palms as he carries it into his own arms, clearly handling the boxes with more ease than you had.
"Ask Margeret." You shrug, rolling your shoulders to ease the cramping. "Thanks..."
His lips part and close, realising he's supposed to introduce himself. It takes him awhile to gather the syllables of his name, before he offers it. "..Ned."
"Thanks, Ned." Your smile deepens, and he stares at you long enough, gaze tracing over the curve of your lips for it to teeter towards awkward.
He keeps doing that, registering your presence as something otherworldly, as if it was the last thing he expected in his path. Maybe the complex has few new tenants to explain his abnormal reaction.
"Oh, my door's 13B."
"What—oh, right!" He blinks, still looking stunned and turning with such an abrupt motion towards the direction of your new studio—and somehow, you're fond of it immediately.
Fond of Ned, even if your arrival seems to have jumbled his senses into a frenzy, and you have only known him for approximately four minutes.
Hey, it's Peter again!
It's two in the morning, my ribs are aching from Scorpion, and talking with you in the laundry room was easily the best ten minutes of my life since everything changed. My smile refuses to be wiped and it's been nearly an hour, and I can't sleep cause I'm thinking about you. You genuinely work better than painkillers, and I love you. I love you so much that I have never wished so desperately...
I wish I wasn't Peter Parker. That I wasn't the person who took your love for granted, who reassured you that I'd always make it back to you and that I'd help you remember. I can't even protect the people I love, not without ruining their lives just by letting them in. Being able to keep you safe from me, is the only reason that's enough to keep me from barging in and fulfilling my promise. From reminding you of what I used to mean to you, and what we used to be. I am a coward, but I can only hope that I won't be a selfish one. I've created enough reasons for why I can't stand being me, but I refuse to list another which involves hurting you.
That's enough for tonight. I just wish that if the universe ever gives me the chance to make things right, without making everything else much much worse, I just want you to know that I would never take anything for granted ever again. Over anything. Over pineapple on pizza, or the supremacy of rock bands, or the Lego pieces I stuffed under my bed, or me being Spiderman. I miss you so much, and I hope you're having a better night that I am.
Love,
Your Peter.
“Ned, are you okay?” You ask, watching as he limped forward towards the washing machine, one hand gripped right at his ribcage.
Your own batch is tumbling along, and you're seated cross-legged across your machine as he slumps forward to sit right next to you, hand going towards the cover of the conjoined machine beside yours.
“Peachy.” The crinkles of his eyes deepen, tossing you a wayward smile with a barely concealed wince. “Tripped and slammed into the washing machine yesterday.”
“That’s like the third time this month.” You raise a brow, expression contorting in concern.
“Is it?” He chuckles self-deprecatingly. “Must be really off my game.”
“Of making amends with the washing machine?” You tease.
“Yeah, I suppose.” His smile softens, gazing up at you.
He does that a lot, go soft at the edges, as if he’s peeling back something fuzzy over his expression—and revealing something honest.
"My advice is to make an offer." You whisper conspiratorially. "Throw in your most favourite shirt or something, and the laundry gods will be kinder on you."
He snorts, and it feels strangely familiar to talk to him this way, under the dim lighting of the flickering lamp, surrounded by the scent of detergent. You barely get to see Ned as is, not like you're expecting a practical stranger to make up much of your socialising hours, aside from the quick friendly nods and occasional 'how's your day's' when brushing past each other in the hallway.
He's a busy guy, and the laundry mat has become a sacred space where the two of you existed in each other's worlds for just a few minutes, till the timer runs out.
"I don't really have anything of mine that'll please the gods." He whispers back.
"I could give you something." You shrug non-comittally.
His gaze widens, staring at you as you dig around in your inner pocket, before tugging something out. One of your favourite scrunchies in hand, you offer it to him.
"Here." You gesture. "Just toss it in with the pile, I guarantee you that the gods will leave you alone."
His gaze flickers between the scrunchie in your hand to you. He's about to say something, brows furrowing together in brief conflict, but chooses not to divulge as his hand reaches for the scrunchie. You note the bruises forming along his knuckles as his fingers loop around the silk, and your lips press together further in concern.
By the time your gaze meets his, he's already turned his head and placed the scrunchie gently on top of his pile of clothes. When he sets the settings and presses the button, the machine runs smoothly, beeping along with yours as his clothes begin to turn and tumble without fault.
"Wow, you really do make everything better." He mutters to himself.
Your smile softens. "It's just a scrunchie."
He shakes his head loosely, his curls falling to his forehead before he turns back to face you. His gaze pours over your features, the crinkles in the corner of his hazel eyes so soft in the dimmed lighting. "No, it's yours."
Peter here!
I just wanted to say happy birthday to the smartest, beautiful, kindest, most awesome human to ever exist! I ran out of big words, but you make up the whole dictionary of good synonyms in every language possible. I’m really sorry I couldn’t be there, you have no idea how sorry. I have many other things to be sorry for, but this week, that’s definitely going top of the list. I should really stop with these letters, but I really wanted to give you a proper wish just this once.
I’m sorry I wasn’t there to celebrate with you, I know you’d kill me if you remembered about my promise with the camera. You always did like the grain. You still look absolutely beautiful even without it. I’m so proud of you—for being you, and existing, and just killing it out there in the world. I did something a little sad, and not even close to what you deserve, but I bought a cupcake from Delmar's earlier, and I even have the candle right in front of me.
I wish for you to live the most happiest, fulfilling life, and that danger will never come close to you. I wish that you will achieve everything you've ever dreamed of, and that you'll have people who will look after you and love you just as much as I do. I wish—that you'll live a life worth remembering.
I love you, and I think this will be my last letter. I think it'll be nearly impossible for me to let you go, but I think it's time I accepted that for you to live the life I wished for, I have to try.
I love you,
Your Peter.
P.S. Sorry, just had to add this in one last time. You're always beautiful, and I'm not saying this because I only get to see you from a distance, but because I don't think I ever got to tell you that enough.
"Ned?" Your voice croaked out. "Is that you?"
You hear shuffling, before his left shoulder peeks out from the doorframe, slowly entering into view as he takes the lower step into the laundry room. He's staring down at you as if you've handed him an atomic bomb, and you're a sure mess, nose stuffy and eyebags swollen from crying.
"Hey." His soft call is close to making you lose it. "I didn't know if you wanted me intruding on your—"
"Date with the washing machine?" You huff, amusement dry as you turn back to look at your tumbling laundry. "By all means, join in. This current option isn't really doing it for me."
You spot the turn of his lips into a smile in your peripheral vision, before he eventually drops his weight beside you. His knee brushes against yours, and that contact registers like lightning to your senses, before he pulls back to that appropriate distance he always sets between the two of you.
You have no idea why it frustrates you so, even if you have nothing you should expect from him. Your gaze drops to his hand resting over his knee, bouncing slightly with a restless energy—and you spot your scrunchie over his wrist.
Your breath shortens, pulling your attention to his face only to find him already looking at you with unbridled concern.
"You okay?" He asks gently.
Your lip trembles, and you steady yourself as much as you are able. "Fine, just a real shit week."
"I'm so sorry to hear that." He's honest, you can hear it even without really looking him in the eye. "If you want, you can rant to me. I'm a real good listening ear. No mouthing off, just a still statue for your needs."
Your lips quirk up slightly at his attempt at minimising his presence, without even knowing how much it mattered to you that he came in here—or that he stood by the door for a solid ten minutes before you called him out. That he didn't leave, even if any normal stranger would.
"It's my birthday." You shrug, wiping at the tearstain at your cheeks. "And I just lost my job."
His lips part, brows pulling together—but he doesn't interrupt you.
"I was supposed to have a party today, and my college friends cancelled last minute." You mutter weakly. "Not that we were super close, but close enough that it mattered, y'know? I wasn't their first pick, or anyone's for the matter, so it really shouldn't have come as a surprise."
"No, you're—" His voice raises almost in frustration, and you meet his gaze. His Adam's apple bobs up and down, and his tone softens into an admission. "You're definitely my first pick."
Your laugh bubbles out of you, finding his statement absurd. "For what? You barely know me."
"I know you're extremely kind." He starts. "That you'd offer your favourite scrunchie to a stranger just to please the laundry gods. That you're funny, and beautiful—and my first pick for who I'd always want to run into."
You stare at him, unable to suppress your shock. He just called you kind, and funny, and beautiful—things people who've known you for longer hasn't thought to mention in years.
"That's—the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me in awhile." You confess, licking at your lips. "Thank you, Ned."
"It's only the truth." He presses. "I shouldn't be the only person to see that, and I know I'm not the only one who does."
"I don't know." You shrug uselessly. "My birthday hasn't even ended, and I feel completely unseen in my own life. I know it's a stupid thing, but I wish I had someone to take my picture, at least to comemorate that I've completed another spin around the Earth or something."
"You could use my camera." He offers almost instinctively.
"You have a camera?" You blink, before a slow smile spreads across your lips. "Of course you do. Do I need to be a tech-savvy to use those too, secret hacker?"
You're no stranger to the many monitors that crowd his apartment, courtesy to the many curious glances past the few times he's left his door ajar, into the premises of his own studio of what looked to be a completely different realm.
His smile deepens. "No, you just need to press two buttons. I could teach you how to work it out."
"You're into photography?" You ask.
His expression stiffens, thoughts trailing off. "Yeah, something like that. My aunt used to love taking physical photos, and I sorta inherited that trait. There was someone—who used to love using my film camera too. So, yeah—I guess I have some experience."
"You could teach me photography." You offer, almost tentatively. "Not just for the sad, lone birthday picture, I mean."
"Oh." He stares at you, and you see it then. Conflict—a pure, unmasked internal battle. "I—I don't know if I'm the right person."
You shrink slightly, less confident than you had been a few seconds ago. This really wasn't your day. "Right, sorry. I know you're a really busy person."
"No, I—" He winces, jaw clenching tight. "I would really love to. It's just that I'm—"
He pauses, staring at you with a nearly broken expression. Your brows furrow together, waiting for his answer—heart thumping in what could only be anticipation. Rejection is close at hand, and you hate that you find yourself waiting still, for something different. For him to fulfill something even you couldn't quite understand.
"Busy." He eventually settles on, voice trailing off in defeat.
You can't take it to heart. You don't allow yourself to, because disappointment is the last thing you wanted a taste of on a day like this. Ned was still nice enough to sit down here with you while you moped, and you shouldn't expect anything more. Even if you liked him, and the crinkles in the corners of his warm, brown eyes, and the sweet sound of his voice—more than you'd ever admit to yourself.
"That's not very creative." You mumble, presenting him with a weakened attempt of a smile. "I gave you that excuse, thief."
His own softened smile rises to meet yours, equally shattered. "I'm sorry. I promise I'll make it up to you."
You know he means it, you just don't know why your heart churns so painfully when you hear those words coming out of his mouth. You don't know if you have faith in promises lately. You haven't believed in those for a really long time.
You don't know how many letters you've gone through, flipping through confessions scribbled in secrecy, of mind-spells, and magic, and vigilantes—a life you don't even remember to be a fraction of your world.
A loud crash resounds behind you and you instinctively rise, tripping over your feet—almost frightened, lashes wet at the corner of your eyes when you turn and see Ned. No, Peter—dressed in a black tank-top much too short for his defined torso and… Juicy Couture pants?
He’s clearly disoriented, and you’re not sure if it’s the chronic migraines he usually gets—or something heavier he keeps hidden past the pile of letters that’s just spilled everything. You can barely look at him without feeling like you’re going to burst at the seams, and he hasn’t even noticed your presence in his apartment.
“What is this?” Your voice eventually breaks through.
His head snaps up, expression scrunched in tension—and he freezes. That same tentative smile he always tossed to you, always sweet and somehow all-too-knowing, locks in place as his lips part—assuming you’re talking about his outfit. Or the state of his apartment, there’s just too much about him that you could never quite put a finger on.
“Wrong laundry basket.” He huffs, churning out an attempt of a laugh to play it off. “Fell asleep in the laundry room, and I didn't even think to take a look at what's inside. I promise I'm not a thief.”
“Stop.” Your stern expression is caught by him immediately, and his attempt of a smile falters. Slowly, your hand raises the letters to his line of vision. "Peter."
His gaze snaps to the letters creased between your shaking fingers. You can't remember what breathing looks like, especially not when his own chest stutters visibly beneath the tank top, as if all the oxygen's been sucked out of him.
He knows, that you know.
"Oh—no." He whispers weakly, because that is the only appropriate thing to say. You’re struck with déjà vu, back to the first time you ever crossed paths with him in the hallway, when he had looked you with so much pain—one you couldn’t decipher.
He takes a step forward towards you, both hands raised with his lips parting to come up with an explanation. You instinctively take a step back, not on purpose, but the distance you've created lands all the same.
He flinches as if you've struck him, his expression shattered to pieces of that raw agony you've felt slip up from him once or twice. That same gaping sadness beneath his gaze, that he always covered up with a bandaged smile meant more for show.
"I'm sorry." His voice breaks weakly, hands clenching into a fist before dragging back down to his sides. "I didn't mean to scare you. Oh god, this was not how this was supposed to go."
"How was this supposed to go?" You echo back to him. "From your letters, it didn't seem like you were ever going to tell me."
It didn't mean to sound accusatory, but you're high on the precipice of a reality broken to pieces, and you're unsure if you're left alone in apartment with an actual lunatic, or with a truth you weren't suppose to discover.
"No, I—" He sucks in a breath, desperation seeping into his tone. "I swear I was going to, but then I found you and you looked so—"
His hands that have begun to brush through his curls fall flatly to the sides, defeated. "So peaceful—and safe. I felt so selfish to take that away from you. To drag you back into my world, knowing that all you'd face was danger or worse."
"And the truth is that hurt the people I love." He admits, his eyes squinting together as something wet flickers over his lashes, and you can tell he believes it. This so-called truth he tells himself. "Nothing good comes out of being close to me, and I couldn't lose you."
"I had to be okay with it." His gaze meets yours, broken. "Not being in your life will always be better than a world without you in it. I had to protect you, somehow—even if it meant leaving you alone."
"It was easier before you came." He huffs out, pained. "To keep a distance before I saw you everyday, just out of reach. I can't count the amount of times I nearly told you. I was just afraid, that if you didn't remember me, I don't think I can—live with hearing it. I'm a coward, and I took the only path I knew, which was to pretend. Like everything was fine, and that seeing you from a distance was enough."
You see it, the way his brain registers his actions as protection, but you don't feel protected. You feel isolated, locked out of your own memories and faced with a man you're supposed to know, someone your body is pleading for you to recognise past the fog in your brain.
“Listen—whatever worked worked, and I can’t remember.” You breathe out, exhale shaky from your lips. “I can’t remember what we had, but I know myself. I don't let people make promises to me, not unless I trust them so much that I—If you promised you’d find me, that you’d help me remember.” Your fist clenches tighter around the letters. "You should've known that I'd never be okay with leaving you alone to deal with this—"
"How could you know that?" He snaps.
You blink, stunned.
"I mean—you never had a normal life from the moment you met me." He goes on. "You never experienced a life without hoping I'd make it back home safe, without looking over your shoulder when I became the world's public enemy, or having to deal with stitches and blood and worrying about survival—instead of school!"
"You don't see the difference but I do." He confesses. "You're living a good life now, and I already screwed it up by entering it again."
"Peter." You cut him off, nearly pleading. "Stop it."
His jaw locks, lips clamping shut before he lets out a huff, one closer to a panic attack than frustration. "I'm sorry." He mutters, clenching his jaw. Something wet pries behind his lashes, and he runs his palms over them, covering his face. "I don't want to fight."
Your heart cracks a little, because there's something so heartbreakingly earnest in the way he says it, as if he's beating himself up over a million thoughts you can't uncover. Your steps inch closer, almost instinctively your body knowing the rhythm at the sight of a distraught Peter before you even have the chance to piece together the 'why'.
"We're not fighting, Peter." You reassure him, your hands tentatively lifting to rest atop his palm.
He freezes, unable to comprehend your touch. You peer through the gaps of his fingers, and find his gaze staring back at you, fractured and pained.
"I knew something wasn't right." You sigh. "I felt it this whole time. Like there was an absence of something—someone important. It gnawed at me, that emptiness, and it nearly drives me insane some nights."
He recognises the feeling, you know he does with the way his expression draws tighter—in understanding, in regret.
"I wish you came to me." You whisper. "I wish you told me, so you wouldn't have to go through this alone."
His lip trembles, as if he never expected you to hear the truth and stay. As if you'd pick the exit over him, when he clearly needs you now.
"If I had promised I'd be there for you, you should've let me keep that promise." You scold gently. "Even if it meant starting over. You’re not meant to deal with life alone, much less one as heavy as yours.”
His gaze is shaken, staring at you with his pupils blown wide. Waiting for reality to hit, or for you to take back your words—but you remain. You stand there, close enough for him to feel you. You don't falter.
Something in Peter gives—shatters completely, and it’s a mere blink before his arms are completely wrapped around you, squashing you into his chest. His fingers are shaking, trembling—a relieved exhale pressed against your shoulder blade before he buries himself deep into the crook above your collarbone.
“I missed you.” Wet tears pool at your skin. “So, so much. I know you don't remember me or what happened between us but—I love you and I’m sorry—I’m so sorry for everything.”
You can't answer him, not with the words he wants or deserves to hear with full honesty backing it, not without the memories you used to share. Yet, the hold of him is familiar, the way you run your fingers through his curls like memory work. His entire body caves in deeper to your touch, as if he’d been waiting this whole time since your arrival to let himself fall into you.
"From the first day I saw you." You admit. "I felt like I was meant to know you, Peter. I wouldn't have given you my scrunchie if it didn't mean something, if I didn't want to tie myself to you in some way."
Pulling back slightly so he meets your gaze, you find yourself mesmerised by the familiarity of him, the way his gaze pours over you automatically as if memorising you is all he wishes to do.
"I want to get to know you, Peter." You confess. "And I want to do it without you pushing me away, pretending like my life is happier without you when laundry nights are what I look forward to the most, because of you."
His breath halts, short-circuiting with your words. Something bright and warm bleeds into his face, and you recognise it to be happiness. Genuine, unconditional relief—before his forehead presses against yours, his lashes fluttering to a close as he embraces you.
"I can do that." He mutters softly. "I'll do anything you ask me to."
It's nice, to be held so tightly and finally feel whole. To have that gap in your chest you've never truly stitched up fade into something mind-numbingly warm and fuzzy, in the arms of the one person your body still commits to memory, past even some stupid mind spell.
“Also.." You murmur, still wrapped in his embrace. "Seriously, what is this outfit?"
A surprised chuckle escapes his lips, a little wet-sounding as he clears his throat. "I wasn't lying about the laundry mishap. I swear I don't dress like this normally."
You hum. "I don't know, I kind of like it."
The silence stretches for a brief second. "I'll buy more if you want me to."
a/n: this movie was everything i needed. much more peter parker fics to come!
likes, reblogs, and comments are appreciated! <3333
This movie was so unapologetically New York it was wonderful.
Bad Bunny started playing and my theater started cheering. There’s a halal butcher shop next to a bodega, the kid Peter saved is a wearing a Knicks jersey and there’s a random tourist bus that’s filled with people wearing tacky New York merchandise. My favorite detail is when Empire State turned on its lights to support Spiderman just like how it does in real life with actual events.
The city is alive, vibrant, and in tune with Spider-Man and we see it become its own character rather than just a background setting. Peter finally interacts with the city again as a figure and as a person as well. There’s people who talk to him, who try to help in battles and these are all the moments that make the city a living and breathing home for Peter Parker and Spiderman together.
Tom Holland has such a better Queens accent too and idk but like I’m a New Yorker, and I just looked around in my theater and I saw so many people like me all wearing Spiderman merch who were all able to look on screen and see our home represented perfectly.
summary: frank arrives home after a long day of dispensing justice. instead of finding his girlfriend's arms around him, he's met with her indifference as she's busy reading a smutty book.
warnings: +18 explicit smut. unprotected sex. rough sex. brief, very brief, orgasm restraint. p in v. couch sex (yeah). swearing. oral (f receiving). frank is jealous during sex, yes.
content: frank is jealous of a smut book. just smut, okay? lmao.
word count: +5k
a/n: one-shot thanks to this request! i apologize for the delay. <3
clarification: english is not my native language, so i apologize in advance for any mistakes.
Frank had forgotten what silence was supposed to feel like.
For years it had meant the few seconds after pulling a trigger, the ringing left inside his ears after an explosion, the heavy pause between one interrogation and the next while another man decided whether dying was preferable to talking. Silence had never been peaceful. It had always carried the weight of another corpse, another confession, another night that refused to end.
Tonight was no different.
His knuckles ached beneath dried blood that wasn’t his. A shallow cut stretched across his forearm where a knife had managed to find skin before he’d broken the man’s wrist. His back protested beneath the familiar weight of his vest, and every muscle in his body reminded him that he wasn’t thirty anymore.
He barely noticed.
Pain had long ago stopped asking permission before settling into his bones.
The apartment building appeared at the end of the block exactly where it always did, its windows glowing softly against the New York night. Frank climbed the stairs two at a time despite the exhaustion pulling at his legs, already picturing what waited beyond the front door. Maybe you’d be asleep on the couch again, pretending you hadn’t been waiting for him. Maybe you’d have burned dinner because you’d become distracted by whatever book currently occupied your entire personality. Maybe you’d hear his boots outside and throw yourself at him before he even had the chance to complain that you ought to be sleeping.
It happened almost every night.
The first pair of arms around his neck.
The quiet kiss against his jaw.
Your ridiculous habit of greeting him as though he’d returned from work instead of from beating information out of men who deserved far worse.
He never admitted how much he’d grown to expect it.
Maybe because admitting it would mean accepting that somewhere along the way he’d developed routines again. Small ones. Domestic ones. Dangerous ones.
Frank Castle wasn’t supposed to miss being welcomed home.
And yet...
The thought alone was enough to loosen something inside his chest before he’d even unlocked the apartment door.
The lock clicked open with the familiar metallic sound that usually announced your smile long before he heard your footsteps.
Tonight, there was nothing.
Frank stepped inside without bothering to turn on another light. The apartment was already bathed in the warm amber glow of the lamp beside the couch, filling the small living room with the kind of quiet most people would’ve called peaceful. He shut the door behind him with his shoulder, dropped the duffel bag carrying the weight of another night’s worth of violence onto the floor, and stood there for a moment, waiting.
Nothing.
No hurried footsteps crossing the apartment.
No cheerful “Frank?”
No arms wrapping around his neck before he’d even managed to take off his boots.
His brow furrowed almost immediately.
You were there. He could see you from where he stood, curled comfortably into the corner of the couch beneath the blanket you always stole from the bedroom. One leg was tucked beneath you, your nose nearly buried between the pages of an embarrassingly thick smutty romance novel, so completely absorbed that you hadn’t even noticed the front door opening.
For a brief second, Frank wondered whether he’d somehow managed to come home quieter than usual.
Then he noticed the mug of tea resting on the coffee table beside you, still steaming gently.
You were awake.
You simply hadn’t looked at him.
Something unexpectedly sour settled in his stomach.
It was ridiculous.
Completely irrational.
He’d spent the last four hours dragging information out of men whose names wouldn’t survive the week. One had laughed at him until Frank had introduced his face to a concrete floor. Another had cried. A third had begged. By the time he’d gotten what he wanted, his patience had disappeared somewhere between broken furniture and bloodstained walls. His shoulders ached, his ribs complained every time he inhaled too deeply, and dried blood—not his own—had stiffened across the sleeves of his shirt.
All he had wanted during the drive home was you.
Just you.
The thought had carried him through the entire night with embarrassing ease. He’d pictured your sleepy smile, the inevitable little lecture about tracking dirt across the floor, the way you’d wrinkle your nose before pretending the blood didn’t bother you as much as it did. You always kissed him first and scolded him second. It had become a ritual neither of you had ever spoken aloud.
Tonight, that ritual had been interrupted by four hundred pages and what looked like an offensively handsome man on the book’s cover (was it a fairy man?).
Frank stared at it for another second.
“You’re kiddin’ me,” he snorted, as he took off his bulletproof vest and dropped it to the ground without a care.
You hummed absentmindedly, turning another page.
That was it.
A low grunt escaped him before he bent to remove the knife from his belt, setting it beside the duffel with more force than necessary. His boots echoed heavily against the hardwood as he crossed the room, yet even then your attention never left the book.
“Hey.”
You lifted one finger. “One second.”
Frank blinked.
One second?
His jaw shifted.
He had waited outside warehouses in the freezing rain for six hours without moving. He had spent days tracking men across three states. Patience wasn’t foreign to him.
But waiting for a damn smutty novel?
That felt personal.
Frank trudged toward the kitchen, hoping you’d at least say something more, but you remained engrossed in your reading, lost in magical, obscene words. It was insulting that your attention was drawn to some unreal fairy man and not to him, not to your man.
It was absurd. It wasn’t as if Frank was jealous; he was simply annoyed that… you weren’t paying him any attention.
With that thought, Frank quickly washed his hands to remove the blood. One rule Frank Castle had was that he wouldn’t touch you with dirty hands, not with the remnants of the executioner’s justice. He couldn’t defile his sweet girl like that. You didn’t deserve that.
But once his hands were clean? That was another matter.
“Lemme get this straight…” he muttered, stopping beside the couch. “That damn thing’s got more of your attention than I do?”
You smiled to yourself at something you’d just read. “I’ll answer in a minute.”
His eyes narrowed. “Oh, will ya?”
There wasn’t any real anger in his voice, only a rough sarcasm that barely concealed something much softer. If anyone else had heard it, they might’ve mistaken it for annoyance.
You would’ve recognized it immediately.
Frank wanted your attention.
Every last bit of it.
“Hey,” he called you again, trying not to seem interested, but there was still no response from you beyond a giggle, probably due to one of those obscene scenes that you liked so much.
He let out a low grunt and snatched the book from your hands. His dark gaze was fixed on you completely, because everything about Frank now belonged to you, down to the smallest particle of his miserable being, which bore your name. It was pathetic, truly pathetic, that part of him was getting annoyed because his girl couldn’t put down her fairy-tale romance novel for a few seconds, but Frank, in this moment, was beyond all logic. Not after a long day where all he’d wanted was to be in your arms.
“That crap’s really more interestin’ than me, darlin’?” he muttered, looking disdainfully at the book cover for a few seconds and then returning his gaze to you.
Your reaction was instantaneous; you clearly didn’t want to interrupt your reading, the very thing that had kept you awake while you waited for Frank.
“Hey!” you exclaimed, getting up from the couch and letting the blanket fall to the floor. “I was at a really good part of the book!” you said. “Give it back, Frankie,” your tone was the same one you used when you didn’t care about getting into trouble, that same tone that drove Frank crazy in different ways.
Oh, you were really in the mood to annoy him. Not only was your priority a book and not him, but now you were standing up for yourself instead of throwing yourself into his arms.
Frank let out a derisive snort, his nose wrinkling as he caught the faint metallic tang of blood clinging to his jacket. He didn’t care about the plot, the characters, or whatever flowery bullshit was written on those pages. All he cared about was the fact that your attention was somewhere else when he needed it.
“Good part, huh?” he repeated, his voice dropping to a rough, gravelly register.
He approached you with decisive, strong steps. His presence was overwhelming, dominant in the space you shared, but you didn’t move away; instead, you remained planted in your place, letting him press closer, his broad, strong presence crowding your space.
You didn’t hold back or erase that mischievousness so characteristic of yours from your bright eyes; on the contrary, you let Frank present himself to you as the man who filled a room simply by being there, but who was reduced to a disaster because of you.
“Lemme guess. Some pussy-ass poet’s goin’ on ’bout how soft some girl’s lips are... or some poor bastard finally got lucky, huh?” he grunted, staring at you.
He looked at the book again; the cover was a man clearly designed for people whose fantasies lay elsewhere, perhaps for people who didn’t have a man like him to fulfill their desires. He didn’t read the title; he didn’t give a shit about reading now. He simply tossed it onto the coffee table like it was yesterday’s trash. His hands, calloused and rough from years of gripping triggers and breaking bones, slid to your waist, gripping you possessively. He needed to remind you exactly what kind of reality you were dealing with.
“Real shit don’t happen in books, sweetheart,” he muttered against the shell of your ear, his breath hot and smelling faintly of gunpowder and cheap coffee. “You want somethin’ that’ll actually stick with you? Somethin’ that actually fucks with your head?” His grip tightened just enough to be commanding, his dark eyes boring into yours with a raw, hungry intensity that no romance novel could ever replicate. “Look at me.”
Frank was usually the kind of man everyone would think was a beast in bed—and he was—but the truth is, he was generally the kind of man who adored your body, who fucked you with a rhythm that wasn’t lethal in the sense of roughness, but rather in precision. For Frank, exploring your body wasn’t a task, but a reality, as natural as breathing. His calloused hands always roamed your body not with the gentleness of a prince, but with the devotion of a knight errant returning to his lady’s arms.
Frank fucked you like no one ever had, but very rarely had he done it in a way that turned adoration into possession.
And you, at this very moment, wet from a silly smut romance novel, wanted to feel under the power of your beloved Frank. You needed to feel the other side he tried to keep buried most of the time.
You looked at him as he instructed, the blush involuntarily rising up your neck to cover the tips of your ears and decorate your cheeks as your eyes locked onto his intense gaze.
Frank noticed the flush creeping up your neck, staining your cheeks a deep crimson. He wasn’t stupid; he could read your body language better than he could read a target through a scope. That blush wasn’t from offense, it was arousal. The way your pupils dilated, the way your breathing hitched just slightly it told him everything he needed to know. You weren’t reading about some noble knight saving a damsel; you were reading about something filthy. It’s not like he didn’t know it before, but your reaction? Yeah, that confirmed it.
A slow, predatory smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth. The cornerstones of his irritation crumbled, replaced by something far more dangerous: genuine interest.
“Fuck,” he rumbled, his voice dropping an octave as he realized what you’d been up to. “So that’s what this is, huh? Reading about some fantasy cock while I’m standin’ right here bleeding from my knuckles. You’re really gonna ignore your man for some made-up asshole?”
He didn’t give you time to deflect or make an excuse. His large hand slid from your waist, moving upward until his palm pressed flat against your sternum, feeling the rapid flutter of your heart beneath the fabric of your clothes. He leaned down until your noses brushed, his stubble scraping lightly against your sensitive skin.
“You want to read about what it feels like to be fucked properly?” he asked, his words dripping with crude provocation. “You want to know what it’s like when someone doesn’t write about it with pretty fucking metaphors, but actually takes what they want?” his free hand tangled in your hair, tilting your head back to expose the column of your throat. “Tell me. Was the book better than what I’m going to do to you tonight? Does that imaginary cock feel better than mine, princess?”
A gasp escaped your lips when he tugged on your hair. It felt good, the way his firm hand held you and reduced you to this, to a moment in which he took complete control of the atmosphere.
But of course, you were you. You were the one who won Frank Castle over; your attitude didn’t just disappear.
“I don’t know,” you murmured, a defiant smile playing on your lips. “I don’t know if you could fuck better than him,” you said, staring intently into his eyes; a gaze locked, without a flicker of blinking.
Frank’s entire demeanor shifted in an instant. The sarcasm died, replaced by something far more primal and volatile. That challenge hung in the air between you like gunpowder before a shot, and Frank Castle never backed down from a challenge. He knew you were playing with fire, poking at the beast just to see if it would bite but he wasn’t about to let you win this round. Not today at least, not when he completely needed your attention.
“You really think some ink on paper’s got a shot against me?” he growled, his voice vibrating with a dangerous edge. His grip on your hair tightened slightly, not enough to hurt, but enough to assert dominance, forcing you to meet his darkened gaze. “You think some made up bastard could make ya scream like you actually mean it? Some made-up son of a bitch who ain’t even real?”
His free hand slid down from your chest, past the curve of your waist, to your crotch. Frank’s calloused, large hand cupped your pussy through your pajama shorts. Firmly, but gently, he squeezed while two of his fingers moved along the covered slit of your intimacy, making sure you felt the length of his fingers caressing that area.
“Yeah... got you all worked up, didn’t it?” he said, with a smile that wasn’t playful, but rather a warning. “Over a damn book, uh? You got turned on reading about a nonexistent cock? Were you plannin’ to plunge your fingers into your pretty pussy while ya waited for me?”
A husky laugh escaped his throat when he saw your blush deepen, and he shook his head, almost as if your dampness were an insult. He didn’t cause it, but an idiot dressed in silk with ears like Legolas’s.
“That book can’t touch ya. It can’t make your thighs shake or make you beg for it like I can. It can’t fill your pussy over and over again, princess, that little bitch can’t even eat your pussy like you deserve,” his lips brushed against yours as he spoke, his words filthy and direct. “I’m gonna make ya forget every word that asshole writer ever wrote. By the time I’m through with ya, you won’t remember a single word that sorry bastard wrote.”
You let out a shaky breath, your fingers curling into the fabric of his black military jacket. “Prove it then, Frank,” you whispered, your voice a challenge wrapped in silk. “Show me I’m wrong.”
Frank didn’t need permission. He growled low in his throat and claimed your mouth in a kiss that tasted like desperation and possession. This wasn’t a gentle exploration; it was a collision. His tongue invaded your mouth with crude urgency, claiming your territory as he backed you up until your thighs hit the edge of the couch.
His saliva mingled with yours, his tongue conquered yours, and your teeth clashed in a dance born of a primal need to remember. To remind you, rather, that you could only get wet thinking about him.
“Jesus... that mouth’s gonna get you in trouble one day,” he muttered against your lips, his hands working feverishly. He yanked your shirt up and over your head in one rough motion, tossing it somewhere into the darkness of the room. His eyes raked over your soft skin, dark with hunger. “...Christ, you’re beautiful.”
He knelt between your legs, his calloused thumbs rubbing circles into your inner thighs, deliberately working your arousal. When his fingers finally found your slick, swollen clit through your panties, you gasped, your back arching off the cushions. “Frank,” you sighed.
Frank didn’t hesitate to carelessly pull your pajama shorts off. He didn’t care where the fabric fell; at that very moment, he could throw all your clothes out the window just to have you naked and presented to him.
“Shh,” he commanded, his voice raw. “Listen to yourself... already losin’ it” He hooked his fingers under the lace, tearing it aside to expose you completely. He leaned down, his stubble grazing your sensitive flesh as he buried his face between your thighs. The contrast of his rough stubble against your soft folds made you cry out, your fingers tangling desperately in his short hair.
Frank drank you in, his tongue working with precise, punishing accuracy, tasting every drop of your arousal. He wanted to hear you unravel, wanted to hear that angelic voice break into something filthy and undone.
Your hips bucked involuntarily against his mouth, your legs shaking as Frank’s tongue swirled around your clit with brutal, focused intensity. He was emphasizing his point, the inherent ideal within him that you belonged to him completely, even in fantasies.
“Oh fuck, Frank yes… just right there,” you cried out, your head tossing back against the couch cushions. Your fingers dug into his shoulders, nails leaving crescent marks through his shirt as you felt yourself teetering on the edge of a cliff.
Frank didn’t stop. He wanted to push you further, to drain every ounce of control you thought you had. He swirled his tongue faster, sucking harder on your swollen clit until you were sobbing his name, your cunt milking his tongue with involuntary spasms.
“Look at you, pretty girl” Frank grunted, momentarily pulling his face away from your crotch and using his free hand to run two thick fingers along your wet slit. “A mess…” he chuckled huskily. “Now tell me somethin’... this all because of me…” he asked, his voice dropping lower, “...or that dumb son of a bitch in your little book?”
Frank’s fingers parted your labia, becoming wet with the essence of your arousal and causing the hairs on your body to stand on end at the mere touch.
“F-Fuck off,” you cursed, letting out a trembling sigh as you were denied the sweet sensation of his tongue as you had done moments before.
“C’mon, sweetheart,” his words were accompanied by a firm slap against your pussy. Not hard, but enough to make a gasp of surprise and pleasure escape your lips. “Don’t go gettin’ shy on me now.” Two of Frank’s fingers wandered along your slit, pressing near your entrance to tempt you with the idea of being filled, at least, by his fingers now. “Tell me... was it me…” he asked, tilting his head ever so slightly, “...or that sorry bastard you’ve been readin’ about all night?”
You swallowed hard, the blush that had spread violently across your face being empirical evidence of the mess you were, all because of his tongue, fingers, and words. Even though you were the type of person who didn’t like to back down, the idea of missing out on your orgasm wasn’t something you wanted to think about.
“It’s for you,” you murmured, exhaling shakily. “Only for you, Frankie.”
You saw him smile briefly before burying his face again at the source of your wetness. You moaned loudly as his large hands gripped your thighs and pressed you against him, as if he wanted to merge with you.
His tongue moved with precision, the same precision of a man of slaughter and punishment, but now focused on making you feel the pleasure only he could give. His fingers were hard, strong, digging into your soft flesh, marking the insignificant area while his lips sucked your clitoris and then his tongue circled that spot. You closed your eyes, allowing yourself to imagine his jaw dripping with your pleasure because, at that moment, you didn’t have the strength to keep your vision focused, and you let the sensation of his tongue traveling from your clitoris to your entrance be enough.
His tongue was heavy, precise, and strong as it first circled your entrance and then fearlessly plunged inside. It was almost embarrassing how you disarmed yourself under this man, under the rhythmic touch of his passion for you.
“C’mon, princess. Gimme the first one,” Frank murmured, collecting your fluids with two fingers and then plunging them into your entrance. He soon began to move it, fingering your pussy as he lowered his mouth again to focus on your clit.
When you finally climaxed, your body convulsing as you screamed into the empty apartment, Frank didn’t pull away. He stayed there, tasting the salt and the sweetness of your release, savoring the way your pussy pulsed against his lips.
“That’s it? That’s all you got?” he growled, pulling back to look at you. His face was flushed, his eyes dark with a hunger that was almost frightening. “That pathetic little story didn’t make ya come like that, did it?”
Before you could even catch your breath, he was stripping off his own clothes with impatient, jerky movements. Precision in escaping the fabric prison didn’t matter now; he just needed to fill you completely. When he freed his cock, it was angry and thick, throbbing with need. You reached for him, your eyes glassy and unfocused with lust.
“Frank... fuck me. I need you,” you whispered breathlessly, but without shame, because there was no such thing in the world that was just you and him.
“Hell yeah, you do,” he said, pushing your hands. Frank grabbed both your thighs, hauling you to the very edge of the cushions so you were spread wide open for him. “Open up for me, baby.” He guided the head of his cock against your dripping entrance, pausing for one agonizing second to watch your expression. “Tell me what ya want, princess. Go on... say it.”
“I want your dick inside me,” you whined, your hips lifting off the couch instinctively. “Show me how wrong I was.”
Frank didn’t make you wait. With a guttural growl that sounded more like a wounded animal than a man, he drove himself home. He buried his thick, throbbing cock deep into your soaking wet pussy in one relentless thrust, bottoming out against your cervix.
You let out a strangled cry that was half sob, half moan, your eyes rolling back as your body stretched to accommodate his sheer size. The sensation was overwhelming the fullness of him filling you completely, stretching your walls until you felt like you might split apart. “Fuck, Frank oh god, you’re so big,” you gasped, fingers clawing at his scarred arms as you tried to anchor yourself against the storm he was bringing.
As you dug your nails into his skin, you felt a trace of his blood, a small cut he’d likely gotten earlier that day, and something twisted in you, rather than feeling worried, you found yourself even more aroused because Frank prioritized fucking you over tending to his wound. Even if it wasn’t a deep cut, he preferred the idea of being inside you to caring for himself.
“Yeah? You like that?” Frank grunted, his voice rough with exertion. He didn’t give you time to answer before he began to move. His rhythm wasn’t tender; it was punishing, each thrust a deliberate strike meant to claim you. He pulled almost all the way out before slamming back in, the wet, slapping sound of your bodies colliding echoing through the quiet apartment. “This better be better than that fuckin’ book.”
He reached up, his large hands cupping one of your breasts. His thumbs raked roughly over your nipples, which were already peaked and sensitive from your arousal. He squeezed it hard, his callouses grinding against the soft flesh as he leaned down to bite at your throat. “Look at you,” he muttered against your skin. “Fucking drippin’ all over me. My fucking mess.”
You were beyond words. Each thrust sent waves of electricity through your nervous system, your pussy clamping around his dick in desperate, involuntary pulses. You felt the raw power in his hips, the way his muscular frame dominated every inch of your space. “Yes... yes, fuck me like that,” you whimpered, your hips rising to meet every punishing stroke. “Harder, Frank. Don’t stop, please don’t stop,” you gasped between breaths that sought the normal rhythm of the air, but you weren’t going to allow it, not when agitation was synonymous with pleasure and union at this moment.
The friction was building toward something catastrophic. Frank could feel it too the way your cunt was milking him, the heat intensifying between you. His own climax was clawing at his throat. He shifted his grip, hooking his arms under your knees to push them higher toward your chest, opening you up even wider so he could fuck you deeper, harder, more viciously.
“Just me. We clear?” he growled between thrusts. You could feel his balls slapping against your ass, the force of his movements making every fiber of your being tremble, from the physical to the emotional.
The friction became unbearable, a white hot lightning storm building between your joined bodies. Your vision was blurring at the edges, the only thing anchoring you to reality being the crushing weight of Frank’s body and the relentless, rhythmic pounding of his cock inside you. Every time he slammed into you, you felt it in your teeth, in your bones, a raw sensation that stripped away everything except pure, unadulterated need.
“Frank, I’m—I’m gonna,” your voice broke into a high pitched keen as your climax began to build like a tidal wave. Your internal muscles began to spasm uncontrollably around him, milking his cock with desperate, rhythmic squeezes that drove Frank to the brink of madness.
You heard him moan your name in a desperate escape of pleasure. “Go on,” Frank growled, his own composure fracturing. His movements became less controlled, more feral. He wasn’t just fucking you anymore; he was trying to claim your soul. “Come for me, baby. Scream my fucking name.”
He accelerated, his hips moving in a blur of motion, each thrust faster and more violent than the last. The wet sounds of your coupling filled the room, the slap of skin on skin, the squelch of your juices being churned by his dick. Your hips bucked wildly as you finally broke, your body stiffening as a powerful orgasm ripped through you. “Frank! Oh fuck, Frank!” you shrieked, your legs locking around his waist as you convulsed around him.
The way your pussy tightened around his cock seemed to mimic a mold tightening around a sword; it was as if you wanted to melt every detail of it inside you, from the tip to every vein that decorated the cock that remained throbbing and restless inside you.
He was surrounded by you, by the fluids of the orgasm that he himself caused and that bore his name, only his.
Seeing you unravel was the final trigger. Frank’s vision went dark, his entire body tensing with primal force. “Fuck!” he roared, his voice raw and guttural as he gave three last, devastatingly deep thrusts. He buried himself to the hilt, his cock throbbing violently as he unloaded. He could feel his cum pumping into you in hot, thick jets, filling you up while his own climax wracked his muscular frame.
For several long seconds, the only sound in the room was your ragged, desperate breathing. Frank collapsed forward, his sweat slicked chest pressing against your heaving breasts, his forehead resting against yours as you both fought to regain your senses. The violence of the act left you both spent, drained, and utterly connected in the aftermath of the storm.
Frank stayed pressed against you for several long seconds, his heart hammering like a trapped bird against his ribs. His cock remained buried inside you, still twitching with the aftershocks of his release, each pulse sending a warm trickle of cum between both of your bodies.
Slowly, Frank shifted his weight, rolling off you just enough so he could prop himself up on his elbows. His hair was disheveled, sweat slicking his forehead, and his eyes, usually so cold and guarded, were still dark with the residual haze of lust. He looked down at you, watching the way your chest rose and fell, seeing the flushed glow of your skin and the way your lips were swollen from his kisses.
A slow, possessive smirk spread across his face. The satisfaction wasn’t just physical; it was a victory.
“So,” he rumbled, his voice gravelly and thick with satisfaction. He reached out, his rough thumb tracing the line of your bottom lip before dragging down to the damp hollow of your throat. “You still thinkin’ ’bout that damn book?”
You could only manage a weak, breathless laugh, your fingers curling into the sheets as you tried to catch your breath. Your body felt heavy, boneless, and completely undone. “I think... I might need a new book so you can show me how good you are,” you managed to whisper, your eyes half lidded.
Frank let out a rough chuckle, leaning down to press a surprisingly tender kiss to your temple before biting lightly at your earlobe. “Yeah? You can throw that shit in the trash,” his hand slid down between you, feeling the slick mess where you two were still joined. “’Cause I’m pretty fuckin’ sure I just proved I’m better than any bastard written on those pages.”
He nipped at your neck again, his tone dropping to that dangerous, possessive growl you loved. “Next time ya want somethin’ that’ll keep ya up at night, sweetheart... just ask me. Ain’t no book gonna beat the real thing.”
notes: i think this is the first time in years i've written anything smutty about frank lmao, i hope it meets the expectations of whoever is reading this ahaha.
Synopsis: “…because maybe, you’re gonna be the one that saves me.” [GIF Creds: milesgmorales]
WC: 3684
Category: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Heavy Angst, Angst With An Optimistic Ending, Slow-Burn, Mutual Pining, Shifting POV’s, {TW: Grief, Mentions of Loneliness}
[PART 1 | MASTERLIST]
LAST PART! Are you guys crying? Because I am 😭 Unironically, I never thought this would turn into a series but now i’m glad that all the support i got made it happen. So, thank you. All of you 💖
For some background on how I came up with this idea, I was watching the show Lost (very good show), and this song—the one I named this part after—became one of my favorites solely because of its importance due to two of the “main” characters.
I’ve always had this thought of “what if someone did remember Peter?” and this song was the game-changer in making my thought a reality. So, if you guys know this song as well as I do, get ready. This finale is a MESS of emotions
『••✎••』
Peter’s mind raced, trying to piece together the puzzle in front of him. You were a mess—a soaked, trembling, sobbing mess—and for a terrifying second, he thought someone had hurt you. His senses went into overdrive, cataloging every detail: the scent of rain and chemicals clinging to your clothes, the frantic, arrhythmic beat of your heart against his chest, the salt of your tears soaking into the collar of his shirt. He was ready to bolt, to hunt down whoever or whatever had caused this, to make them pay.
But then you pulled back, just enough to look at him, and what he saw in your eyes wasn’t fear or pain. It was recognition. A deep, soul-shattering understanding that made his blood run cold.
And he knew. He knew before you even said the words. You weren’t running from something. You were running to him because you finally, truly, understood. You believed him in the way he needed, the way he had never, ever expected anyone to.
You believed him and it was destroying you. The girl who had been so kind, so gentle, so quietly resilient, was breaking right in front of him, and it was all because of him. Because of the truth he had selfishly laid at your feet. He had thought giving you the truth would be a gift. A relief. But looking at you now, he saw it for what it was: a curse.
He didn’t know what to do. His entire life, people had relied on him for strength. May had relied on him to be responsible. MJ had relied on him to be honest. Ned had relied on him to be the hero. Spider-Man was supposed to have the answers. He was supposed to be the one who fixed things.
But what did you need him to be? Spider-Man couldn’t stop the storm outside. He couldn’t erase the grief etched onto your face. And Peter Parker… Peter Parker caused this. How could he comfort someone when he was the very source of their pain?
He made a decision. Not a hero decision. A Peter Parker decision. He guided you further into the apartment, his hands gentle but firm on your arms. He maneuvered you around a stack of textbooks and a precariously balanced pile of takeout containers, leading you to the one piece of furniture that wasn’t salvaged from a curb: the armchair. He gently pushed you down into it, then dropped to his knees in front of you, looking up at you with an expression of such raw, unguarded concern that it made your breath hitch.
“I’ll be right back,” he said, his voice soft but steady. “Don’t move.”
He was up and moving before you could respond, a blur of motion. He returned a moment later with the towel from the floor, now warm from being draped over a radiator, and a large, worn-out sweatshirt that smelled faintly of detergent and… him. He gently draped the towel over your shivering shoulders, then started unwrapping the wet lab coat from your body, his movements clumsy but careful, like he was defusing a bomb instead of taking off a piece of clothing.
You were too numb to protest, too overwhelmed to do anything but let him. He peeled the soaked fabric from your arms and tossed it aside, then held out the sweatshirt.
“Here,” he said. “Put this on. You’ll get sick.”
You nodded, your fingers fumbling with the damp hem of your own shirt. He waited patiently, his gaze fixed on a spot just over your shoulder, giving you a sliver of privacy in the small, cluttered room. You pulled the sweatshirt over your head, the soft, warm fabric enveloping you like a cocoon. It was too big, the sleeves swallowing your hands, the hem falling down to your mid-thigh. You were swimming in it, swimming in him. And for the first time since you’d run out of the lab, you felt a semblance of warmth return to your body.
He was still on his knees in front of you, looking up at you with those big, brown eyes that held a universe of pain. He reached out, not to touch you, but to peel away your set of safety goggles, which you’d forgotten you were still wearing. He set them aside on a nearby stack of books, then just… looked at you. He looked at you as if you were a piece of art in a museum, with a kind of reverence and a hint of sadness.
“You saw them, didn’t you?” he asked, his voice barely a whisper. He knew. Of course he knew. He saw the truth in your eyes, the same way he’d seen the truth in your kindness in that cafe, the same way he saw the truth in that quote on your book.
You just nodded, a fresh wave of tears welling up in your eyes. You tried to speak, to tell him about Ned and MJ, about Mr. Harrington and the AV cart, but the words got stuck in your throat, coming out as a series of choked, incomprehensible sobs.
He didn’t need the words. He understood. He just gave a small, sad nod, a silent acknowledgment of your shared burden. Then, in a move that was both utterly heartbreaking and profoundly comforting, he leaned forward and rested his forehead on your lap. You felt the warmth of his skin through the thin fabric of the sweatshirt, the slight tremor in his body. You were reminded at that moment that he wasn’t just the boy who was erased, who had to live with being erased. He was also secretly the friendly-neighborhood hero, bearing the weight of two worlds.
You kept forgetting about that part.
You let your hand fall to his head, your fingers tangling in his damp, soft hair. You could feel the slight, rhythmic buzz of his senses working overtime, cataloging your every shudder, every hitched breath, every frantic beat of your heart. But it wasn’t invasive. It was… intimate. A quiet, unspoken conversation between two people who existed in a space no one else could see.
“Is this… is this what it feels like?” you managed to choke out, your voice hoarse. “All the time?”
He didn’t lift his head, but you felt him nod against your knee. “A little,” he whispered. “You get used to it.”
He was lying. You both knew he was lying. You don’t get used to being a ghost. You just learn how to haunt the living.
He finally pulled back, looking up at you with an intensity that made your heart ache. His hair was a mess from your fingers, so much so that you had to fight back the urge to smooth it down.
“Why didn’t you tell me it was this bad?” you asked, your voice cracking with a mixture of anger and sorrow. “When you were at the cafe… you made it sound like a metaphor. With how you described it, I thought… I don’t know what I thought. But I didn’t think this. I didn’t think that I would ask about you and get blank stares. I didn’t think I had to convince my own mind that you were real.”
“What was I supposed to say?” he asked, his voice rising with a frustration that had been building for a year. “That I caused the multiverse to almost collapse, and to fix it, I had to make everyone I ever loved forget me? That my aunt’s last words were to a stranger? That I’ve been living in a glorified closet, eating expired microwave meals, talking to myself because the silence is so loud it feels like it’s going to crush me?!”
He was on his feet now, pacing the small length of the room, the frantic energy returning with a vengeance. “I barely know how to say it to myself without wanting to punch a hole through the wall! How was I supposed to say it to you? To the only person on the planet who doesn’t look through me? What was I supposed to do, scare you away? Have you look at me with the same… pity… that I see in my own reflection?!”
He stopped, his back to you, his shoulders slumping in defeat. You could see the tension in the lines of his back, the way his hands were clenched into fists at his sides.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice muffled. “I didn’t mean to yell. I just… what was I supposed to say?”
You watched him, your own tears momentarily forgotten. You saw the desperation in his posture, the raw, unfiltered pain. He wasn’t angry at you. He could never be angry at you. He was angry at the universe, at the cruel, cosmic joke that had become his life. And he was terrified. Terrified that you, the one miracle, the one anchor, would be snatched away just like everything else.
So you did the only thing you could think to do. You stood up, the sweatshirt—a tangible reminder of his care—hanging on your small frame like a shield. You walked over to him and, without a word, wrapped your arms around his waist from behind, pressing your cheek against the tense muscles of his back.
You didn’t say anything. You just held him. You let him feel the warmth of your body, the steady rhythm of your breathing. You let him know just how much strength he had. That he wasn’t alone.
He was tense for a long moment, a coiled spring of grief and anger. Then, slowly, incrementally, he began to relax. He leaned back into your embrace, the fight draining out of him, leaving behind a hollow ache. He brought one of his hands up, covering yours where they were clasped over his stomach, his fingers entwining with yours.
“You could have said that,” you whispered, your lips brushing against the fabric of his shirt. “I would have listened. I would have tried to understand.”
“You’re trying to understand now,” he said, his voice thick with emotion. “And look what it’s doing to you.”
“Then let it,” you said, your voice firm with a conviction that surprised even you. “Don’t you get it, Peter? That’s what friends do. They carry the heavy stuff together. You don’t have to be strong for me. You don’t have to be a hero. You can just… be. Be Peter Parker. And I’ll be right here.”
He turned in your arms, slowly, until he was facing you. His eyes were red-rimmed, his face etched with a sorrow so profound it seemed to age him by years. He looked at you, and for the first time, you saw something other than pain in his eyes. You saw… hope—a fragile, flickering ember in the vast darkness of his loneliness.
“Friends?”
He said the word with a mixture of wonder and disbelief, like he was trying on a coat that hadn’t fit him in a year. Friends didn’t seem like a big enough word for what you were, for what he needed you to be. It was too small, too simple for the weight of this truth.
“Just friends?” he asked, his voice barely a whisper.
You looked at him—at the boy who could apparently lift a bus, who could swing between skyscrapers, who could face down aliens and monsters, but was terrified of being forgotten. You saw the vulnerability in his eyes, the desperate, hopeful plea for something more than just a shared burden.
And in that moment the past came into play, for both of you. For him, it was all those years in high school where you had been just a face in the crowd. All those missed opportunities, all those silent observations, all those what-ifs that had suddenly become painfully relevant when he found you. In a matter of days, those short conversations and your quiet presence had become more real to him than years of memories with people who no longer knew his name.
The cafe conversation, the hug, the sticky note—it all came rushing back to him, a kaleidoscope of moments that had led to this. You had been there, all along, a quiet observer in the background of his life, and he had been too preoccupied with his own world to see you. And now, here you were, as if the universe had given him a second chance, a do-over for all the times he had been too busy, too distracted, too Spider-Man to just be a teenager.
And for you, it was all those years of watching from the sidelines. All those times you played observer instead of participant. All those moments you chose your textbooks over a chance at a real connection. You saw him—the boy who was always running, the boy who was always kind, the boy who was always just out of reach. And you had done nothing. You had let him run right past you, too caught up in your own quiet world of grades and expectations to see that he might have needed another friend. The trip to Europe was proof of that. You had seen the grief on his face and you did nothing. Nothing.
A wave of guilt washed over you, so strong it almost brought you to your knees. You regretted everything. The silence. The lost years. You should’ve gone to those parties. You should’ve spoken up in class. You should’ve gone up to him in Venice and asked if he was okay, even if you had never spoken a word to him before. You should have said something. Anything.
You looked at him, at the hope in his eyes, and you knew, with a certainty that was both terrifying and exhilarating, that ‘friends’ was not enough. It was a start, a crucial and necessary start, but it wasn’t the end. It wasn’t what this was. This was bigger than friendship. This was… fated. A cosmic collision of two lonely souls who had been orbiting each other for years, never quite close enough to touch, until a cataclysmic event had finally forced them into each other’s gravitational pull.
You took a deep breath, the air catching in your lungs as you made a decision. A decision to stop watching. A decision to start living. A decision to finally, after all these years, take a risk.
“If not friends,” you whispered, your voice trembling with a mixture of fear and anticipation, “then what would you call this, Pete?”
You let the nickname slip, a casualty of the intimacy, a sign that the old rules no longer applied. You saw the way it made him flinch, not in a bad way, but in a way that suggested it was a long-forgotten word that suddenly held new meaning.
“What would you call us?” you pressed, your eyes locked on his, daring him to give you an answer.
And he didn’t know how to. Not in words, anyway. He’d spent the last year learning that words were flimsy, unreliable things that could be erased with a wave of a hand. They were promises that could be broken, memories that could be rewritten. But actions… actions had weight. They had consequences. They had a truth that couldn’t be denied.
So instead of answering, he did the only thing he could think to do. The only thing that felt right.
He leaned in and kissed you.
Slowly, making it known he was giving you all the power. If you were to pull away now, he’d let you. If you had even a spark of hesitation in your eyes, he would have stopped. One of his perks of being him was seeing it all before it even happened. Spider-sense aside, he’d learned how to read people. And what he was reading in you now was all about the courage to take a chance. So that’s what he did.
His lips were hesitant at first, a question rather than an answer, a gentle exploration of this new, uncharted territory. He tasted of rain and grief and a desperate, aching hope that made your heart ache with a sweetness you had never known before. You responded in kind, your lips parting slightly, a silent invitation.
He knew immediately this was your first kiss. It wasn’t hard to figure out. The slight tremble in your lips, the way your hands remained at your sides, unsure of what to do. He would’ve smiled if he wasn’t so busy. So he made it a point to show you what to do, to lead you in a dance as old as time itself. His hands found their way to your waist, pulling you closer, the space between you disappearing until there was nothing but the shared heat of your bodies and the frantic, synchronized beating of your hearts. Your own hands came up to rest on his chest, feeling the solid, reassuring thump of his heart beneath your palm, a steady rhythm against the chaos of your own.
This was it. This was the answer to your question. This was what you were. This was what this was. It wasn’t friendship. It wasn’t pity. It wasn’t even a second chance. It was a beginning. A new beginning, born from the ashes of two lives that had been consumed by fire.
The kiss deepened, growing in confidence and intensity, a conversation without words. You weren’t the quiet girl in the front of the class anymore. He wasn’t the ghost haunted by a past that no one else could remember. You were just two people, two lost souls who had finally found their eye in the middle of a hurricane.
He was the one to pull away, not out of hesitation, but out of a need to breathe, to see, to process the monumental shift that had just occurred. He rested his forehead against yours, his breath coming in ragged gasps, his eyes closed, as if he was trying to burn this moment into his memory, to hold onto it with every fiber of his being. His hands were still on your waist, his thumbs tracing slow, deliberate circles on the fabric of the sweatshirt that now smelled like both of you.
You were breathless, your head spinning, your body humming with a new and unfamiliar energy. You felt… seen. Truly seen. Not for your grades or your quiet demeanor or your potential, but for you. For the girl who had watched and waited and regretted. For the girl who had finally found the courage to speak up, to reach out, to take a chance.
You opened your eyes, finding him already looking at you, a soft, wondrous smile playing on his lips. It wasn’t a sad smile. It wasn’t a tired smile. It was a real smile. A Peter Parker smile. And it was the most beautiful thing you had ever seen.
It took you a second to realize he was humming a song. It was soft, so quiet you almost thought you were imagining it. But you recognized it immediately. It was that one song you were always listening to in class, the one with the intricate guitar riff and the haunting lyrics. The one you’d been listening to on your headphones the day he ran into you, as well as the day in the cafe.
And ironically, thinking back, it had matched the situation more than you realized. The one about being lost and found, about being seen and unseen, about saving someone from the wreckage of a life they thought was over.
And he knew it, too. He heard it first through your headphones. And since then, he heard it everywhere he went, and for the life of him he couldn’t figure out what it was. He tried Shazaming it, he tried humming it to Siri, he tried searching the lyrics, but nothing.
Then, on a night he was feeling nostalgic and pulled out one of May’s old record players, he found it. Tucked away in a box of her old vinyls, a record by a band he’d remembered as her favorite. He played it, and he listened. And he understood.
He understood the lyrics, the melody, the ache behind it all. He understood why it had been playing on a loop in your head, why it had been following him around like a shadow. Because it was his song. It described his life to a tee. The feeling of being erased, of being a stranger in your own life, of knowing that the one person who saw you could be the one thing that could save you.
And when he looked at you now, he didn’t see the quiet girl from the front of the class. He saw the girl who had been listening to the soundtrack to his life, even before she knew she was in the movie. He saw the girl who had been singing the words he couldn’t say, feeling the pain he couldn’t show, holding the hope he couldn’t find.
He stopped humming, the last note hanging in the air between you, a fragile, ephemeral thing. You didn’t have to ask what it was because you were singing the same song. Always have been.
He didn’t know what tomorrow would look like. He didn’t know how you were going to help him, how you were going to navigate this strange new reality that only the two of you could see. He didn’t know how you were going to convince the world that a boy named Peter Parker existed, or if you even could.
But as he looked at you, as the lyrics said:
“…because maybe, you’re gonna be the one that saves me.”
He knew one thing for sure: that you would. And you did in more ways than you could possibly imagine. You saved him from the silence, from the loneliness, from the crushing weight of being the only one who remembered. You saved him from himself.
You were his wonderwall. And after today, he was starting to believe he might have been yours, too.
Story Synopsis: Reader is a Doctor alongside House. They have known each other for years, mostly been dancing around being intimate with one another. Even though it is painfully obvious to their close friend, Wilson. After finally allowing their guards to fall, the Reader receives a letter inviting her for her dream position at her dream hospital. She has to make the hard choice of staying or going. angst/smut/nsfw/new relationships/minor fluff/typical hospital talk/situationship/
Summary/Part 5: Reader has made her mind up. Heading out to Boston for the conference that would welcome her as the new Head of Neurology.
CW: vomit/vomiting, blood, form of self harm, mentions of OD, implied disordered eating, substance abuse, backstory baby!, ANGST ANGST ANGST, mentions of motherhood/wanting kids,
Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 <-
a/n: sorry if the timeline conflicts with anything canon in House, I kept finding different information about how long before the first season of the show that House had his leg injury. also I was so seriously tempted to make an entire playlist based off this fanfic, I’m so obsessed with their love story.
title track 🎶🩶
~~~
You hunched over the toilet in your bathroom. Unable to sleep. Rest a distant relative of yours. The paper crinkled under your grasp. Rereading it again and again.
Boston Children’s Hospital.
You threw up again. Spilling your guts into the porcelain bowl. Overwhelmed with anxieties from the fight you had with House. Mentally punishing yourself for everything. Manifesting as your upchucked stomach. Beating yourself up for allowing House to speak to you that way. For letting him have such a strong hold on your well-being. Punching the tile beneath you as you screamed. Loud enough you were sure the neighbors heard you. Knuckles bleeding from your repetitive assault. Tugging at your hair as you sobbed hard. Heartbreak never having such a strong toll over you before. Resting your cheek against the disgusting toilet seat, staining it with your tears. Not caring about the germ count.
Sliding into the floor. Clutching the paper flat against your chest. Staring up at the bright lights of your ceiling. Squinting at the harsh glare. Groaning now that your stomach was completely empty and your whole body ached. Praying to a God who went against everything you knew. Praying that House was not relapsing. Over-dosing on Vicodin and booze. Reaching for your phone you had discarded on the floor, typing out a simple message.
“I love you.” You stared at it. The words loosing all meaning the longer you looked that them. Dropping the flip phone against your face. Closing your eyes to block out the soft glow of the screen. Opting out of sending the message. It would do more harm than good.
You knew that.
~~~
You got yourself put together early. Taking a shower to wash away the night of regrets. Steaming room helping free the mucus from the obscene about of crying you had done. Using your favorite shampoo and soap. The ones you usually saved for a date or special occasion. Needing a confidence boost wherever you could get one.
A cloud of dread loomed over you as you checked yourself in the mirror. Bags under your eyes more defined from the lack of sleep. Putting on makeup for the first time in a while. Giving yourself a moment to close your eyes and breathe before stepping out the door to head to work.
The invariable hospital greeted you as always. Unforgiving and not allowing time to suffer. It was your job to help others not suffer, a fine distraction from any personal matters.
Forcing smiles at each colleague you passed. Hiding any sign of distress. Taking the stares, avoiding any risk of running into House. Making sure you would do everything to stay away from him today. Knowing you could not face him now. Any semblance of control you had would come crashing down the minute you would meet his sad eyes.
Marching into Cuddy’s office as quickly as you could. Surprising her. You were always an adequate doctor. Rule follower and no trouble, unlike your estranged lover.
“Y/L/N?”
“I need to talk to you,” you sighed, hand reaching inside your lab coat. Pulling out the letter that had been extended to you earlier this week. Handing it to her with a certain sadness behind your eyes. Swallowing down your broken voice.
“What is this?”
“My invitation from Boston Children’s Hospital. They sent a representative to speak to me earlier this week. Inviting me to join their team and become the head of their Neurology department,” you breathed out.
“That’s incredible,” Cuddy said with a smile, “That’s— wow, that’s your dream job.” You and Cuddy were never overtly close. But she was someone you confided in. Another woman who could understand you differently than your male friends. Sharing secrets with her that seemed too childish to share with others. And so, out of respect for her and the hospital, you thought it was better to present this to her instead of just disappearing as you usually would. Finally taking responsibility for that.
“Yeah, it is,” you smiled, frown tugging you down.
“It’s going to be hard to fill the position. No one has ever been a stronger candidate,” Cuddy smiled. Sensing the solemn nature of your resignation. Unable to look her in the eyes as you stared down at your feet.
“I’ve got an idea,” Cuddy started, voice steady as she smiled at you.
Finally earning herself a glance from your sad eyes.
“How about you go to the conference they’re hosting. And if you decide that Boston is what you want, you go there. But, if it doesn’t end up being what you want, I will keep the position open for you here,” Cuddy stood with hands flattened against her desk to prove her point.
“Lisa, I can’t ask you to do that,” you sighed, not wanting special treatment or pity.
“I want to. We would be taking a serious blow in our neurology department without you here. But I’ll be happy for you either way,” she circled, coming to stand directly in front of you. Hand resting against your arm trying to console you. Unspoken realization that things must not have went over well when you told your former partner. Cuddy knew House well, seeing a serious change in him since the two of you started seeing each other. She pretended to not notice the brand new ring on your finger. Beautifully twinkling from the sunlight that beamed through her blinds. Able to put all the pieces together of the circumstances in which you brought this to her.
House had came to here earlier this month. Asking some vague questions about the legality of marrying a fellow doctor in the hospital. Pretending he had no ulterior motive, throwing blame on Wilson. He just ‘wanted to make sure no one needed to resign if that was to happen’. She had rolled her eyes knowing exactly what he was meaning. Congratulating him. House had grumbled and scoffed as he waved her off. Exiting her office with the veins on his head pulsing.
Cuddy suddenly hugged you. Firm. Hand on the back of your head as she sighed. You needed this more than she could have imagined. Stomach flipping with your overwhelming emotions. Tears deciding to wade in your eyes again. Sniffling as she pulled away, awkwardly laughing as you looked at her. Exhaustion clear on your breath. “Thank you, Lisa,” you met her eyes.
“It’ll all work out, Y/N,” she reassured. A good friend. Knowing how to console you when necessary. You were thankful for her.
Continuing your day as if nothing was wrong. You were a Doctor for gods sake. Analyzing scan after scan. Brains and spines of all varieties. From newborns to elderly. Pediatrics was your speciality, but that did not stop you from helping people of all ages. Giving some harsher diagnosis than you wanted today, having to control your breathing as to not show weakness to the family. You had to be strong. You were the one who was going to help them. Life of their sickly child now in your hands.
Unsure where the entire had gone off to. Darkness crept across your walls. Simply, amber glow of your lamp was all you had. Having locked yourself away from any other physicians all day. Needing to clear your head and focus on work.
Frustrated when a gentle knock sounded from your door. Teeth gritted as you called out, “Come in.”
Wilson’s frame shadowed in front of the hallway lights. Causing you to stiffen your posture and fold your hands over your lap. Lip quivering as you attempted to catch your breath. Not expecting to see your alienated lover’s best friend. Sometimes you forgot he was your friend too.
Burnt coffee eyes lasered into you. Entering and closing the door behind him. Trying to conjure up a starting sentence. Subject sensitive. More so than you normally discussed. He exhaled loudly.
“Did you come to gloat?”
“I’m so sorry.”
Waterworks immediately flowed. Breath forcing itself out in broken rhythm. Mouth immediately stretching into a frown, followed by a loud sob. Hand cupping your mouth as you squinted your eyes closed. Fingers digging into your cheek. Shoulders heaving with every strangled sob.
Wilson moved on instinct. Kneeling beside you at your desk. One hand on your thigh and the other pushing your hair out of your face. Empathetic eyes scanned you, wishing he could have avoided all of this. Wishing he could have prevented this heartbreak for you. You were his friend. It hurt him to see you hurt.
He pushed himself up to hold you. Head resting against yours. Allowing you to expel every cry, whimper, or sob into his chest. Your body was shaking. Hands bawling his shirt in front of you. Wrinkling the soft blue cotton. Staining it with smudged mascara and lipstick.
“It hurts, James,” you cried pathetically. Clutching him to you.
“I know. I know, honey. I’m… so sorry,” Wilson repeated. He was bad at this. At consoling you. Intimacy something he was only good at faking with women he was going to sleep with. Good at pleasing others. But how could he please you right now? There was no real cure for a broken heart.
This would have to be good enough.
And it was. All you needed was someone to hold you. Understand you. Sympathize with you. Wilson’s warmth encapsulated you. Emptying every drop of pain into him.
“I love him,” you whispered, breathing flattening out. Letting up on your grip on your close friend. Resting your head in the crook of his neck against his shoulder. Nose framing his throat. Warm tears dropping along his collar.
Wilson tenderly kissed your head. There was only so much he could do for you, but he would be damned if he did not try. Despite you ignoring his warning. Despite all the times you had grown angry at him. Despite that you had been spending more time away from him. You were one of his best friends. He would do this for you if this is what would help.
You remained in his arms for quite some time. Letting it all out. The only way you knew how. Thanking Wilson for everything.
Parting ways with the unforgiving walls of the hospital. Being welcomed home by a quiet room. Previously alive with duets and coordinated dance routines, now dull and rhythmless. The mixture of your lives haunted every surface. Candy he had left on the counter, discarded clothes that assumed he would come back for them, his toothbrush contained next to yours. Worst of all, the indent in your bed from his body. Now cold and hollow. Pillow still smelling like his shampoo.
Nausea now a convivial partner. Not having the strength to force yourself out of bed. Porcelain bowl’s siren call a temptress. Small amount of food digested in your stomach preparing for their reunion.
It was not worth it.
~~~
Another two weeks passed. Conference in Boston narrowing in on your calendar. Bags already packed and laid beside your bed. Coming to terms with the real possibility of a new beginning.
Somehow, still avoiding House. Knowing he was doing the same. Opting for other neurologists to run tests for him. Anything to not lay eyes on you.
You chewed the inside of your cheek. Metallic taste overwhelming your buds as you dissected the folder before you. Stumped. Normally, you would ask House and his Team.
Your ego refused to face him.
But that did not mean you could not use the diagnostic team.
You parted your blinds into the busy hallway with two fingers. Only your eyes visible from the outside. Scanning the bodies that filled the hall. Waiting to pounce on the first one of House’s little minions that you spotted.
Bingo.
Creaking your door open. “Psst—“ you called out to the young doctor. His eyes peering to the side, acting like he did not see you. Trying to assess the situation, assuming the query was not directed at him. “Doctor Foreman,” you said with a whisper tone, albeit above a whisper. He looked around confused. Pointing to himself with a raise of a brow. You nodded, gesturing him to come to you.
Foreman shook his head in disagreement, motioning towards the folder already in his hand. You stomped your foot and pointed directly in front of you. Brows arching to silently show how serious you were. Sighing loudly as he solemnly walked over to you.
“You know, this got guy’s killed in war-times. Talking to the enemy,” Foreman smirked, leaning against your doorway.
You clasped your hands together in front of your chest, pointing your conjoined fingers at him, “I need you to do me a favor.”
His arms bulged as he crossed them over his chest. Sass dripping clean off him as his head fell to the side. Sucking his teeth as he looked around to make sure there were no cane wielding doctors nearby.
Reaching into your coat pocket and pulling out the case file, “I need you to take this patient folder. Take it to your team and see if you guys can figure out what’s going on. I’ve ran every test under the sun and can’t understand what I’m seeing. BUT— and this is the important part— you canNOT under ANY circumstances tell House this is for me.”
Foreman clicked his tongue. Rolling his eyes. Widening yours and wringing your hands in front of him, “Please.”
He blew his breath out, allowing his head to fall forward. Fully aware of the drama going on between the two of you. How could he not be? House brought it up at every turn. Angrier than he ever had been before. Extending his hand out to accept your offering. You beamed with glee.
“Just so you know,” he pointed with the filing folder, “This is petty.”
“Thank you, Foreman!” You waved him off. Earning a flick of his wrist in response. Finally feeling a sense of relief that you would possibly get an answer. Retreating into your cave. It would take them some time to run through every possibility. So now you could begin the new stack that had collected throughout the day.
It was easy to lose track of time when you were buried in paperwork. Only having time to eat lunch in Cuddy’s office with her. Suggested that you and some of the other doctors go out for drinks tonight. It was only a week until you would be leaving for Boston, so she wanted to treat you. Happy to oblige, anything for you to not be alone.
Staying late, something that happened more often than not. Telling Cuddy to come get you when she was ready to head out. Back to the door as you knelt in front of a filing cabinet. Fingers lacing through every filing folder looking for an older case file. One you hoped would help explain your current one.
Quick knocks against the wood of your door caught your attention. Assuming it was Lisa, not paying attention as you called out, “I’ll be right out.” Zoning out the sound of, what you assumed to be shoes, clicking against your floor.
Abrupt slamming of a hand on your desk made you jump up. Rising above your place on the floor and meeting angry, blue eyes. Air hitching itself in your throat. Heart immediately ramming into your ribcage.
“Next time you want to send me some absurd patient, call me yourself. Don’t rope my team into your dirty work,” House bared his teeth at you.
The first time you had seen him since your fight. Time freezing for you. Taking in every small detail of him. Scruff closer resembling a beard more than ever before. Neglecting trimming the prickly hairs. Something you had began doing together. Bags under his eyes heavier, bloodshot sclera matching your own. Cheeks sunken in and thinner. Not noticeable to the average eye, but when you had him memorized as well as you did it was obvious. Shirt half unbuttoned and wrinkled.
You stared slack-jawed. Fighting the delusion that this was fake. An illusion made up to comfort you. Eyes growing glossy. He was within touching distance. You wanted to spring up and wrap him in your arms. Kiss him and tell him how much you missed him.
“Close your mouth. You’re going to catch a fly,” House scoffed. Eyes rolling aggressively.
Your brows furrowed. Being reminded why this would have never worked to begin with. Jolting away from his piercing eyes. Jaw flexing as you swallowed the lump in your throat. Eyes drying out.
Taking the folder he had tossed haphazardly on your desk, “Did you figure anything out?”
“Of course I did,” his face scrunched up, offended. Angry that you would even ask such a stupid question. Mocking his intelligence in such a way.
You widened your eyes and nodded, “Okay…?”
“It’s MS,” he groaned like you were stupid for not knowing.
“No,” you shook your head in disagreement, “I tested for that. The lesions are from a prior head injury. He said all this pain started when he got hit the other day playing soccer.”
House nodded, “Uh-huh. That doesn’t explain the small white spot right at the base of his skull. His white blood cell count is through the roof. Persistent tingling sensation down the left side of his body. Black spot obscuring his vision, but no signs of corneal damage. It’s practically screaming ‘multiple sclerosis!’ at you.” House’s tone was riddled with condescension. Matter-of-factly correcting your misdiagnosis.
“Right,” you exhaled, trailing off. Frustrated that you had not put the pieces together yourself. Knowing this boy would have to go through some serious trial work for the next few months before he could even start treatment. All signs pointed to multiple sclerosis, but the MRI had you questioning everything.
“If you wanted to talk to me, you didn’t have to pretend to not know what was wrong with your patient,” House said cockily.
Igniting a fire in you. The implication making your blood run molten. Eyes narrowing in on him from above the folder. Mouth upturned like he had won a fight. Making you more angry.
Slamming the folder down on your desk, “You honestly think I’m so desperate that I would allow myself to look stupid just so you would come up here and yell at me?” Voice laced with a thick, deadly venom. Hissing through your teeth with each word.
House nonchalantly shrugged, “Whatever tickles your fancy.”
You growled, speaking through your teeth, “I can’t stand you.”
“Right… Is that why you’re still wearing that? Little reminder of how much you hate me?” House motioned towards your left hand.
The ring.
It had become second nature to just slip it on every morning. Eyes widening down at your digits. Pretending it did not hurt your feelings. Tears pricking against the corners of your eyes. Stunned into silence with his audacity.
“I… uh—“ you tried, really you did. But the way your throat burned and tightened you knew that if you continued you would be a crying mess in front of him.
Your eyes welled up at his. Pleading for him to back down. Begging for even an ounce of forgiveness, sympathy, something. Hands lacing together in front of you. Fidgeting with the ring that you hid under your right hand. Cheeks flooding with your embarrassment. Inability to come up with something to say making you seem weak. Your head hung in defeat.
House took the seat in front of your desk. Cane resting against the arm of it, feet propping themselves up. Far too casual for your liking. As if he had not ripped your heart clean from your chest and taken a bite.
“Boston next week,” unconcerned tone, faking excitement. Pretending that was not the entire reason things were this tense between you. Boston had been the wedge forced between you. Eyes harshly staring at you, “Must be exciting.”
You shrugged your shoulders. Hand rubbing up and down your arm. Trying to will yourself to look at him. Knowing you could not. Surprised he had kept up with what was going on with you. Completely opposite of what you had been doing. Maybe Wilson talked to him. Maybe he asked. It did not matter.
“Oh, don’t be coy,” House poked. His insistent need to pretend like everything was fine between you had anger swirling around your stomach. Falling back into habits that predated your relationship. Forgetting, more like ignoring, how much things had changed between you. Almost like you were just a coworker he found attractive, not that you had seen the most vulnerable parts of one another.
“House. Why are you here?” your eyes finally met his. Brows pinched together and teeth locked. Nostrils flaring with each steady breath you took.
“I brought your patient folder back. And a diagnosis,” House said.
“Greg.”
That made him sit up. Hands clasped in front of him, lips pursed together. Expression falling flat. Mischief behind his eyes fading quickly. Blowing his breath out loudly.
“You didn’t even call,” your words broke.
“Neither did you,” House sneered.
“You wouldn’t have answered if I did,” you defended.
A beat of silence.
“I know,” House huffed, “But I wanted you to.”
His words were desperate. Hiding the sadness that had overtaken him the past weeks. It was easy for him to suppress his emotions. Anger easier to live with than heartbreak. The night he forced you out had broken him. Wrecking his apartment beyond comprehension. Taking way more Vicodin than necessary just so he did not have to feel anything. Shattering all the picture frames along his tabletops. Cutting his hand deeply with one of the shards. Wincing, reminding himself he was alive.
That only made things worse.
Downing bottle after bottle of liquor. Not caring about the taste, but about how it made him numb. Your laughter and smile haunted his mind. Your hooks were so deeply rooted in him that there was no ripping them out. Wobbling into his bedroom where your discarded clothes littered the floor. Drunken rage causing him to shove the garments down his toilet, attempting to flush them. Only overflowing into the floor. Enraging him further. Beating his cane against the porcelain throne. Not realizing tears were burning down his face.
Shouting into the void of his bedroom. Pain coursing through his leg as he finally flopped onto his mattress. Your pillow beside his own. Sweet smell of you still embedded in his sheets. Fingers digging into the bedding as he ripped the fabric. Banging his head repetitively into the foam pillow.
“FUCKING BOSTON!”
He flipped onto his back. Hands grasping his face as he groaned. Instinctively extending his hand out to your side of the bed. Begging that you would be right there next to him and it would all have been a terrible dream. Cold and empty. Nails digging into the sheets once more. Breath coming out broken and strained as it all really hit him.
As always. House had ran off what he cared for most. Incapable of loving and caring. He was a disease. Infecting and ruining everyone who got close. And he had no desire to get better.
Not anymore.
Pitiful eyes looked into each other. Still grieving what could have been between you. Neither of you ready to let go.
Forced to break away when your door flew open. Cuddy’s smiling face quickly falling into shock. Not believing that the two of you were in the same room.
“Oh God. I’m so sorry! I’ll just go—“
“No, it’s okay. I’m coming,” you dismissed her. Clicking of heels exiting your office quicker than they had entered. Sighing remembering the commitment you had made to go out tonight. As sad as it was, you would rather be stuck in here with House than out with everyone.
Eyes falling back on House. Eyes telling you he had something he wanted to say to you. Swallowing before he quickly stood up. Looking at you with the biggest and saddest eyes you had ever seen. You walked around the desk, closing the distance between you. Closer than you had been all night. Within reach of perfectly falling back in together.
Every fiber of your being begged to tell him how much you missed him. How your life felt incomplete without him. That you had not slept the same without him there with you. Tell him that you loved him more than anything.
“Bye, Greg,” you mumbled, hand reaching out to pat his shoulder but stopping.
This time you were the one holding the gun. Aimed between his eyes, repositioning to his chest. Blowing him back. What remained exploding through the other side.
Walking past him and out your office. Leaving without saying what you really wanted. His silence ripped through your skin like barbed wire. Having to put on a fake smile when you met Cuddy in the hallway.
“Well?” Cuddy asked.
“He was… bringing me a patient’s diagnosis,” you lied.
“It’s good that you guys are speaking again,” she tried to cheer you up.
“Right,” you thought about it. About him.
In another week, he would be the farthest thing from your mind. All of this would be.
~~~
You stared at yourself in the mirror. Questioning everything. Suitcase tucked at your side preparing to catch your flight after work. Begin your new chapter. Conference your starting point before any final decision was made.
Today was the day.
Nerves had you flexing your hands at your sides. Stomach in knots of excitement. But also dread. Same black void that had consumed you prior, making itself known as it pinched and twisted your guts.
Tomorrow was a new day.
That kept you going. Able to calm down before heading to work for what could very possibly be the last time. The walls you had known better than those of your own home welcome you back. Surgical smell filling your senses. Taking the elevator all alone. Numbers clicking by as memories of the years of your life did. The first time you had ever taken this elevator feeling so long ago.
Towards the final year of your residency. Out performing the other promising neurologists, being transferred to the hospital where you would more than likely be hired. This very hospital.
Chaos ensued from the moment the doors opened. Patients coding in the halls, overflowed beds, and doctors yelling at each other. Your supervisor, a doctor who had long since retired from the position, told you to keep your head on straight. Try your hardest to ignore all the commotion and keep closing behind him. Helping run MRIs and watching brain surgeries. Feeling over your head in the fast paced environment.
You had finally gotten a moment’s peace as you paced around the hallway in front of a patients room. Having just delivered some devastating news to a family. The father was brain dead. There was nothing more you could do for him. It was their choice to leave him on life support or pull the plug, but the way you presented it to them was crucial.
You squatted against the wall, hand cupping over your mouth and pinching your nose. Clicking against the floor echoed through the hallway. The blunt end of a cane nudged at you, assuming it was an elderly patient. Surprised when you looked up to see a doctor.
“Not supposed to grovel where patients can see you,” his brash voice urged you.
“Sorry,” you said, standing and regaining composure. Leaning against the cold wall and examining the man before you. His large, early morning sky-like eyes doing the same to you. Curiosity getting the better of you both.
“So, what’s your—“
“Yes, I am a doctor. And yes I need a cane. Let’s get those stupid questions out of the way,” he said with a loud scoff.
“I was going to ask what your specialty was,” you awkwardly smiled.
His mouth morphed into an ‘O’. Teeth clinking together as he realized how harsh he had been. “Diagnostician. Specializing in Nephrology and Infectious Diseases.” Bragging clear on his tone. He was older than you, not by much. Enough to already have experience in the hospital that you could not begin to imagine. “I’m House,” he introduced himself with his hand splayed across his own chest. Not offering you his hand for pleasantries.
You nodded with tight lips. Unsure of what his motive was here.
House exhaled, “You’re new.”
“I’m Dr. Y/L/N. Finishing out my residency here. I’m a Neurologist. Interested in the pediatric part neurology mostly, but I love any brain,” you smiled. Youth still beaming on your cheeks.
“Fresh meat. Wilson is gonna love you,” he, who you now knew as House, smirked at you. Eyes checking out your whole figure. This was the first eye roll you gave him ever.
“That your wife or something?”
House chuckled, “More like boy-toy with benefits.”
House could see the shock on your face. Eyes windowing into how fast your brain processed the information. Of course you had assumed he was hitting on you, surprised that he was batting for the other team.
“I’m kidding. He’s an Oncologist here,” House deadpanned. Your hand slid down your face. Already annoyed by him. Face contorting as you tried to read him. He was like a page freshly typed that had water spilt on it. Unable to be properly interpreted. He was challenging you. Seeing how you handled his humor and behavior.
“For Christ’s sake. You young people and not being able to take a joke,” he generalized with a wave of his hand.
You squinted at him. Really taking the time to try and understand him. “You’re kinda an asshole, aren’t you?”
House’s brows sprung up his forehead. Laughing from how shocked he was at your assumption. Pointing to himself as he spoke, “That’s rather forward of you, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. So is your eyes all over my breasts, but you don’t see me getting offended,” you shrugged, gesturing towards your chest with two hands. House’s brow knitted together as he tried to fight off the smile that tugged at the corners of his mouth. My God, he had met his match.
House clicked his tongue as he leaned forward with both hands on his cane. Eyes narrowing in on you. How your hand sat on your hip with confidence only people like him possessed. “Arrogance isn’t pretty on you,” House dared insult.
“Ooo, what else?” You mocked, agging him along.
House’s tongue glazed over his teeth, air puffing out of his nose with what could have been a laugh.
“Do you think your boyfriend will find it pretty?” You tilted your head with your question, trying your hardest to rile him up. Fluttering your lashes sensually at him.
House backed off. Smiling widely with his teeth, "Come down to the cafeteria with me."
You glared at him. One of many times where he would make you smile. His charm worked on you, and you liked it. You liked him. You always had. Even with the insults. The belittlement. His misogynistic way of complimenting you. It all made him House.
And you loved that.
Doors to the elevator opened. Forcing you out of the fond memory. Into a reality that you were much not caring for. Wishing you could grab your old self and shake her out of the infatuated haze. Warn her of how severe of a heartache she would experience at the hands of the diagnostician.
Ghosting down the mostly vacant hallway. Strange compared to your memory. Opening the door to your office. Safe space for you amongst the uncertainties. Appreciating it now more than ever. Giving you so many good stories and bad. Cases that ranged from tragedy to triumphant news. You had packed most of it up the days leading up to your departure. Preparing to leave this all behind.
Surprised to see a small box with an envelope underneath it on your desk. Beautiful red ribbon wrapped into a bow on top. You smiled. Assuming it had to be from Wilson or Cuddy. Now your only two friends. Ripping open the envelope and pulling out the piece of notebook paper. Small, with messy handwriting on it.
"Congratulations. I hope Boston is good to you. I love you."
Was all it said. Cracking open the box to find the prettiest necklace you had ever laid your eyes on. Holding up a dew-drop shaped gem. Shimmering from the office lights. Finding yourself gawking at the expensive chain that encapsulated it. Dainty and perfect to wear casually. Resembling one you liked from an older movie.
No name was attached anywhere to the gift. Striking you as strange, but you had a lot to get done before your flight. So you chose to ignore it. Going on about things like any normal day. Assuring your patients that they would be properly cared for in your absence. Catching up with Cuddy in time to grab a quick bite to eat together.
"Pretty necklace. Who got you that?"
Your brows upturned, "I... don't know. I thought it had to be you or Wilson. Guess it's the latter."
"Hmm," she sounded unsure.
You would have to thank Wilson before you left.
The day flew by. Wilson sat in your office. Insisting on driving you to the airport. Despite how hard you objected, it was 'his job as your friend' to see you off. He held your suitcase, waiting for you to finally be ready to leave.
"Come on, you Bostonian! We've got to get you to the airport," Wilson said in a sing-song voice.
You stared out the window. Sunset always beautiful from here. You fiddled with your thumbs. Weighing it all in your mind. Envisioning a new life for yourself in Boston. Unfamiliar and incomplete faces. Only able to put some shitty-over the top Boston accent with them, like the ones they would do on Saturday Night Live. No matter how perfectly you imagined them, they would never live up to the friends you made here. Even in your fantasy, where you tried to picture a future with a husband and children.
It was House.
Every time. Wearing a nice black suit and a bright colored tie as you locked arms with him, stunning white dress flowing down your figure. Flower peddles fluttering around your heads as your closest friends all cheered you on. His hands would grasp your face as he kissed you. That lovesick expression of his warming your heart. He would kiss you goodnight and tuck himself in beside you. Imagining trying to pretend you were both still asleep when little pitter-patters of footsteps would enclose on your bedroom door. His finger would push against his lips to shush you. Knowing the minute your sweet child would call out to you, both of you would fold. Inviting them into the warmth with you. And he loved you. Really loved you.
Wilson's hand on your shoulder brought you back. Looking over and meeting his dark eyes. Forcing a smile with an exhale. "You're gonna be late," Wilson chided. You shook your head, closing the blinds and circling your desk.
"I meant to thank you," you said as you put your coat on.
"For?"
"The necklace," your fingers outlined the metal.
"I didn't get you a necklace," Wilson responded, confused.
Skin pinching together between your eyebrows. Holding the pedant a little tighter than before. Not understanding who could have dropped this off in your office. Brain refusing to connect the obvious dots.
"Hmp," you mumbled. A thoughtful gesture accompanied by an even kinder note. Fighting your body's urge to sprint down to your suspect's office. It would only make your decision harder. Make everything complicated. You could not do that. Not when you were this close to your escape.
You and Wilson turned the lights off in your office and headed for the elevator. Opting out of your usual shared stair walk, seeing as you were having to carry luggage. Doors opening to the lobby. Cold from the constant opening of doors. A soft shiver went down your spine.
"Alright," Wilson said as you headed for the door, "Forgetting anything?"
That question made you freeze. Looking down at your finger. The same band and gem glistening. You were forgetting something. Completely leaving it behind. Tears finding their place along your waterline again. Closing your eyes and clinching your fist.
Why could he not come tell you goodbye? Why did he not even try to get you to stay? He never was a beggar, but maybe this once he could have been. Just to get you back.
That fucking bastard.
"No," you said softly.
Walking out into the now dark exterior. Cloudy sky blocking any natural lighting. Only the bright neon of your home. Soon to be a memory replaced by a new one.
"I'm going to go get the car," Wilson pointed over his shoulder with his thumb. Leaving you alone with your bags. Allowing your demeanor to change once your friend was out of site. Shoulders slumping, head falling in exhaustion. Having to fake excitement and joy for your new beginnings all day. None of this went how you wanted. Change was always so hard on you. But was it not on everyone?
"Y/N," a voice called out to you from the entry doors of the hospital. Turning to meet him. Your name from his tongue almost sounding fake. Wrong. Speedily, he walked over to you. Cane echoing against the silent courtyard.
Heart overflowing in your chest when you could finally make a clear image of his face. Agitated lines etched into his face. Misty eyes imploring you to delve headfirst into them. Teeth locked together while heavy breaths filled his lungs.
"I'm selfish. And cynical. And rude. An-And all around, I'm not a good guy," House presented to you. Words only angering you further. Arms crossing over your chest as you popped a hip out. Head falling to the side as you examined him.
"House—"
"Just," he abruptly cut you off, "Listen to me. Every bad thing you think of me is true. And I have done nothing to make you think anything different in the last month. My leg hurts if I think about you too long. Throbs beyond any pill's cure. Because it needs you. I need you. Even if you don't need me."
You stared blankly at him. Unyielding guard around you after one too many disappointments. Cold and distant as you looked at him. Unsure how any of this was supposed to sway you.
"But you've still got that ring on. And that has to mean something," House gestured, like it took everything in him to finally get to the point. Fist clinching at your side, thumb rubbing over the band. A crack in your shield. One he could weasel his way into. Under your skin and back into your heart.
Your eyes welled up. Blank expression falling into a sob. Palms cupping your face as your shoulders quivered. "Why couldn't you have came by earlier? Brought me the necklace yourself. Said what you wrote to my face," voice defeated and broken.
His hand reached out to you, "Y/N—"
"Don't touch me! You don't get to do this to me," finally allowing the damn of hatred to burst. "Do nothing but avoid and belittle me to the entire hospital for a month. Just at the idea of me leaving. Look where that got us! You are nothing more than a self-sabotaging man-child. I am not going to continue to cater to your fantasy anymore, House. I can't do this with you for the rest of my life," you shouted as your arms straightened at your sides.
House's posture straightened. Apologetic orbs falling hooded as they looked at you. Adam's apple bobbing in his throat as he silently swallowed. Fighting back the choke that tickled the back of his pallet. Nostrils flailing as he repressed any sadness that dared gather around his eyes.
You quickly removed the ring from your finger. Pinching it between two fingers as you held it out to him. Hands and breathing shaky. Hot tears burned down your cheeks. Lip quivering as you shook it in his face, "Take it. It's not mine anymore."
House refused to move. A singular stream of tears dripping from his eyes. Lips sealed as he shook his head. Vein on his forehead bulging as his eyes grew bloodshot. His lip barely pouting out like a child who had just been scolded.
"It's yours," House's voice was not above a whisper. Crestfallen publicly for one of the first times. Refuting any claims you had about the ring not being yours. He had it specialty made for you. Your initials were engraved on the band. His directly next to it. The gem he had chosen to match the month you fell in love. Every aspect was you. Meant for you in every way possible.
You aggressively grabbed his wrist, prying his fingers open and placing it in his hand. Closing the digits over it. Nails digging into his skin momentarily. “All this is is a reminder. Of this place. Of what I’m leaving behind. Of… you. I can’t take this with me,” you heaved.
The first time you had touched him in over a month.
Exuding nothing but hatred towards him.
He had really messed things up with you. And how could he blame you for being angry?
"You can't even tell me you love me when I'm about to literally fly away from you," you growled, drowned by tears.
"I do."
"Then say it, Greg!"
Daunting silence.
Your eyes burned as you squinted at him. Saddened by his lack of devotion. You could be down on your hands and knees. It would not change this.
Sound of the car door closing behind you made you look over your shoulder. Wilson’s eyes stared at you across the short distance. Assessing what was happening between the two of you. Deciding to not insert himself, packing your bags into the trunk of his car.
“I’m leaving,” you said shortly. He was the love of your life. A regret you would have for the rest of your life. There was no world where you did not need him. Your missing piece, but you could not live like this. And this was the only way he knew how to live.
Dying for a last ditch effort from him.
Anything.
You walked away for the final time. Sniffling back your tears. Meeting Wilson who had the passenger door open for you. Taking your seat in your friend’s car. Looking out the window to see House standing there pathetically. His hand raised in a final goodbye wave. What felt like miles away.
Wilson glared as he circled around to his side of the car. Taking his place behind the wheel. Looking at your now puffy cheeks. Admiring that even at what he imagined was your lowest, you still tried to compose yourself. Looking over and smiling at him.
“Alright, taxi driver. I’ve got a flight to catch,” you chuckled.
A mostly silent ride accompanied you. Pulling to a stop in front of the large glass doors. Families reuniting and departing. People holding signs. People having clearly heated phone calls. A place laced with every emotion you could experience. It was beautiful.
“Okay! I’ll help you get your bags out, but car’s gotta keep running. They get pissed if you park here for too long,” Wilson joked.
“Thank you, James,” you exhaled. Smiling at your comrade. Unpacking and sitting it all on the concrete curb. Standing with his hands on his hips in front of you.
You pulled him into a deep hug. He was the best friend you had. Wilson’s hand patted your back, squeezing you tightly.
“I’ll come visit,” Wilson said softly. He had been acting tough through all of this for you. Faking being unbothered by the fact you were abandoning him. Through thick and thin, he had you. This was going to be hard on him.
You pulled away with tears staining your face again. Becoming like second nature to you as of late. Smiling widely at him. “I love you, James. I can’t stop thanking you for everything,” you admitted.
“Love you too,” he said with melancholy.
Waving goodbye as you rushed into the airport. Wheels of your suitcase bumping against the ground with each step. You should have fixed the wheel before traveling, but you had more important things on your mind. Long process getting through everything and finding your terminal. Taking your seat against a window. Glow of the runway illuminating through the tiny glass. Putting headphones on to drown out all the rattling and bangs of takeoff.
To Boston.
~~~
The weekend conference had flown by. Attending lectures with doctors you never knew you would share a room with. Never thinking this level of success was within reach for you.
And maybe it was not.
Everyone who had been invited here was brilliant. Innovative and well-spoken. Beloved by all your fellow doctors. Inspiring the next generation. Things you were not sure you possessed. Finding yourself comparing to all those around you. Imposter syndrome wrapping you in its veil. Even when board members would recognize you and thank you for attending. Inviting you to each special lecture. Wanting you to feel accepted and honored, yet it only pushed you further away.
Separating yourself from who was supposed to become your new colleagues. Not clicking with any of them in a way that made you comfortable. Each field having their own clicks and groups. Not being welcomed in by any of them. Especially when they saw you speaking exclusively with board members.
It was all trivial.
You were here for work.
Yet something still buzzed in the back of your mind. Maybe this was not what you wanted.
Imaging yourself here no longer brought joy and comfort. Praying you would fall in love with Boston Children’s Hospital and its staff. Yet you had never felt more like an outsider in your own field.
But you had to want this. You had been so willing to leave everything else behind. Burning bridges beyond repair. Uprooting your life just for this opportunity.
Maybe it was not worth it.
You walked over a nearby bridge with another group of doctors. Finally being asked about yourself. What made you come to Boston? Oh, wow. That’s a serious change to make within a few weeks. What field were you in? Of course, they had an incredible neurologist heading the department before he up and left. No one was going to replace him in their hearts! Had they heard of any of your research before? Yeah, that sounds really important.
How could some strangers make you feel so small? When you had been built up so highly by the board? This was humiliating.
Parting ways with them in front of the hospital. Waving goodbye as they all laughed to some joke you did not overhear. Sighing and allowing yourself to shrink for a moment. Stepping in a circle as you stared up at the bright lights.
They promised you new beginnings. An out for a situation it had gotten you into. You had enjoyed exploring the halls. Seeing the smiling nurses and patients. All the advanced tech that lined their rooms. Incredibly impressed by how far ahead technologically they were. Funding was high here.
Still. You could only compare it to your home. No instant connection like you had with PPTH.
Maybe you could stay the same forever. Jumping headfirst at every chance of freedom. Fleeing whenever you felt that familiar itch in your bones. The only reason you had so swiftly made up your mind to begin with. There was a comfort in running. Escaping anytime you felt trapped. It was the final night of your trip. You needed to make your mind up and fast.
But. What if it was time to settle down? Warmth overtaking you when you thought of a mundane life. Early morning kisses. Breakfast in bed on the weekends. A baby cradled in your arms. Husband kissing you both on the head. It would not fulfill you anymore than your work had. Yet you found solace in the idea. It was a nice thought after all.
You turned your back to the building. Looking up at the night sky. Clearer than it was in Jersey. Stars still blurred from pollution. Yet they twinkled. Despite all the disgusting smog and reflection of lights.
Your back pocket vibrated. Fetching the small device out. The name illuminating the screen stunning you. Hesitating for only a split second before flipping it open and pressing it to your ear.
Unable to force any words out. Hearing him breathing on the other end causing your heart to flutter.
“Hi, Greg,” you exhaled, relief clear on your tone. Almost like you had been holding your breath without realizing. Surprised he even wanted to call you after how you had treated him last.
“How’s Boston?”
Straight to the point. Never one for pleasantries. Always brash and direct.
“It’s… good,” you lowly said. The words sounding fake as you said them. Propping your elbow in your hand to make holding the phone up more comfortable. Swaying side to side in an attempt to keep yourself warm against the cold breeze.
“Good…” he trailed off, repeating the word with the same conviction you did. Clearly having more to say, but holding his tongue.
“Feel like home?”
You laughed, “No. It never could.”
House chuckled in response. Your shared humor mellowing out into a comfortable silence. Feeling like it used to before this whole mess started.
“It’s nice… to hear your voice again,” you admitted, allowing any shame to roll off your body. Your love for him outweighing your anger. Missing him more than you ever would have led on. Especially this side of him.
“Yours too…” you could hear his smile with each word. “Think you’re gonna stay?”
You hummed. Uncertainty in your vocals. Lip scrunching up with your eye as you thought. Not wanting to lead him on about anything. Knowing few things could sway your mind.
“I don’t know,” you breathed. Eyes falling closed. Images in your mind blurring. Incapable of picturing yourself in Boston.
“Yeah…”
“I kinda miss Jersey. I miss… you guys,” you admitted. Hurting your ego, but it needed to be said.
“I miss you,” House said casually. Shooting an arrow through your heart. Pooping as it caused your blood to flow toward your cheeks. Smiling like it was the first time you had ever been complimented. Knowing he did not just mean from this weekend. He missed you. Every day with you. Distance you had over the last month causing him distress.
You sighed, “It’s not home.”
Those words solidifying the decision you had been teetering on. Voice not above a whisper when you heard more footsteps outside. Not wanting to sound ungrateful to any passersby. Clicking clueing you in that it could be a board member in her fancy shoes.
“Then come home,” deep, gentle words melted down your figure. Causing you to jump when they came from directly behind you. Turning to see him. Figure towering over his cane. Sophisticated hat atop his head. Wearing an overcoat and jeans. Familiar smile across his face.
Your phone dropped out of your hand as you rushed over to him. Tears flowing freely when you jumped into his arms. Knocking him off balance, but making sure you kept both of you standing. Your face tucking into his chest as half breaths escaped you. His large hand cupped the back of your head.
“It’s really you,” you exhaled. Leaning back to cup both sides of his face. Thumbs tracing along each worry line and scruffy hair. Grasping him tight as if some outside force would rip him away in an instant. Eyes wide and finally getting the life back in them.
“Pretty girl,” he cooed, his own thumb wiping away your tears. Hooded eyes lovingly looked into yours. Head tilting slightly as he took in each feature. Waterline stained from how much you had cried. Somehow more beautiful than the last time he saw you.
“Greg, h-how? Why are you here?”
“You know Wilson and I will come up with any excuse for a roadtrip,” House smiled. Cocky grin overtaking his expression as his brows raised. Pulling a laugh from you. Tucking your face into his chest to hide how your face scrunched up. His heart flourished hearing you. Comforting sound that had became a distant memory. You softly shoved his shoulder with your hand.
Doeing your eyes up at him. Lashes wet with joy. Both of you breathing in tandem. Your hands flattened against his shoulders. His now cupped your face. Darting between each other’s eyes.
“I love you,” House said.
You mouthed words that did not escape. Brows upturning. Glossy eyes filled with sincerity. He meant it. Deep down, he always had.
“I love you too,” you admitted. Capturing you in a deep kiss. As if you had been lost at sea and he finally got his eyes on you. Desperate and filled with desire.
“You came all this way to tell me that?” you chuckled, your hand joining his on your cheek.
“What can I say? I’m a romantic,” House shrugged, lips pierced together. Earning a giggle from you. Body instinctively following his as he pulled away. Eyes saddening for a moment as you watched him drop his cane.
House began to take one knee before you. Kneejerk reaction to stop him. Hands waving frantically. Cringing when his face contorted in discomfort. Wincing under his breath as he shimmied through his coat pocket. Presenting your ring back to you. Pinched between shaking fingers. Yearning, ocean eyes gazing into yours.
“You deserve a proper proposal,” House muttered. “Y/N. I love you. More than I will ever be able to show you. I-I love you so much… it hurts. But I would do it all in pain, as long as it’s with you. I want you to be my wife,” House said with vicious valor. Meaning every single word. Pouring his heart out to you in the most vulnerable way possible. Regretting not doing this all sooner.
Your hands tented over your mouth. Nodding profusely. Reaching out to help him to his feet, trying to minimize the pain. Wincing again as he finally got footing, handing him his cane once more. Allowing him to put his weight on it.
He reached for your left hand, sliding the ring on your finger. Where it belonged. Designed and custom made for you. His love.
Lips connecting once more. He greeted you with a toothy grin when you pulled back. Reciprocating as you laced your fingers together.
A weight lifted off your shoulders. Encapsulating you with warmth and love. Acceptance that it was okay to be happy where you were. Not having to chase the next high. This was better than what any board member could offer you.
“Wilson should be parked up front,” House pointed. Guiding you to the place your best friend was located. Watching his figure do a double take from the inside of his car. Fumbling as he got out of the vehicle and met you and House halfway. Smiling widely at you both. Happy to see your face once more.
Wilson pulled you into a hug, hand never leaving House’s. Still too afraid of never feeling it in your own again. “When you said you would come visit I thought you meant in a few weeks, not two days,” you laughed. Poking fun at him.
Wilson’s hand rubbed the back of his neck. Chuckling with amusement, “I couldn’t resist a trip to bring you home.”
Overwhelmed with the love presented to you from them. Your found-family. The ones you loved and cared for most. Using their best efforts to bring you back to them. Cup overflowing with gratitude and appreciation.
“You are coming with us, right?” Wilson double-checked.
You nodded, “How could I not?”
House pulled you tighter against his side. Planting a kiss against your head. Engulfed by the smell of your shampoo. It was all the little things he missed.
“I just need to swing by the hotel and get my stuff. And we can go,” you giddily said, motioning a takeoff with your hands.
“Eager, aren’t you? I thought we’d catch another lecture or two. Heard Dr. Who-Knows-What is here, I’d love to hear her presentation,” House chided. Sense of humor never lost on him. Smiling with his teeth widely when you rolled your eyes at him.
There she was. His girl.
“I’ll give you the ‘for dummies’ version on the ride home,” you poked him in the side. Making him wriggle and exclaim an ‘OW!’ that would have gotten the attention of any strangers. You quickly forced your palm over his mouth to shut him up. A warm, wet tongue lapped at your palm. Causing you to shake your hand vigorously, “GROSS!”
“Ooh. You’re acting like my cock hasn’t been in your mouth,” House smirked. Your face flooded with heat immediately. Jaw slacking as he laughed.
Wilson scoffed. Unamused by both your childish antics. Not surprised with the casual way House spoke about your sex life. He had missed this.
“Okay, lovebirds. Let’s go,” Wilson motioned towards the parking lot with his whole body. Hurrying you both along.
Whipping your head to look at House, “Shotgun.”
You stuck your tongue out as you ran towards the car.
“Oh, come on now! That’s not fair—“ House whined, “Challenging a cripple to a foot race? You should be ashamed!”
“I’m not!” you quipped as you quickly opened the door.
House smiled. Wilson giving him a knowing glance over his shoulder. Laughing at House’s defeat. Joining you in the vehicle, House leaned between the two front seats.
“I was hoping you’d get in the back with me. I’ve got a welcome home present for you,” he wiggled his eyebrows and motioned towards his groin. Your hands hid your face from the embarrassment. Groaning loudly. A soft ‘Jesus’ coming from Wilson.
“You’re such a pervert!”
“And you love me,” House poked your cheek. You leaned to look back at him. Eyes full of love for you as he smiled. You blew a kiss at him.
The ride home was long. Filled with sing-a-longs and pointless discussions. House arguing about some tv show he was watching. Neither you are Wilson really disagreeing, but you knew he liked a good argument. Wilson would make fun of you when a new pop song would play and you knew the words. House’s fingers would rub your shoulders from the backseat, any excuse to touch you. Long digits playing with the necklace he had gifted you. Familiar tug of sleep wrapping around you, but you were too afraid. What if you woke up and this was all just a dream?
You shouted when you crossed back over the New Jersey line. Alarming your fellow riders. House reciprocating the shout simply to annoy Wilson. Everything suddenly becoming more familiar. You knew the way back and it felt like home.
“You guys just want to stay at my place tonight?” Wilson asked as you got closer to your destination. Your arm was bent backwards so that you and House could interlock fingers. Holding hands was one of his favorite things to do. Analyzing and learning your digits. They were just so you. Alive and beautiful.
“Awww. Missed me so bad you wanna hawve a sweepovwer?” you teased Wilson with a pucker of lips.
“You’re an ass,” Wilson groaned.
“Don’t talk to my lady that way!” House defended jokingly.
“I would love to stay with you tonight,” you yawned. Eyelids growing heavy. Nuzzling your face into the leather seat. Not admitting how much of a comfort it would be to have the two most important people in your life under the same roof as you for your first night home. Even if it was nearly 1 a.m. right now.
House kissed your hand. Resting his cheek against your conjoined appendages. Pulling onto the street beside Wilson’s home. Warm yellow glow from the inside inviting you in. House opened the door for you, offering your tired body a hand. Leading you to Wilson’s front door. And of course, he fumbled with the keys. Taking his time to unlock it. Your sleep being withheld from you a little longer.
Wilson pushed the door open to allow you inside first. Flabbergasted by the sight that greeted you. Balloons scattered across the floor, streamers hanging on every surface, and a ‘Welcome Home’ banner hung up perfectly in your line of sight. Eyes meeting Cuddy standing in the kitchen, hands clasped together as she bounced with excitement.
“Surprise!” she shouted and rushed over to you. Wrapping you in a tight hug.
“Hi, Lisa,” you exasperated.
“Thank God these two idiots didn’t come back empty handed. Probably would’ve given them both extra clinic duty,” she ragged, “I’m so happy you’re back.”
“You guys didn’t have to do all this for me,” you blushed. Looking over to House and Wilson. Both smiling and happy to see you doing the same.
“There’s some pizza in the oven and champagne in the refrigerator if you are up for celebrating,” Cuddy suggested.
You shook your head. Completely awestruck. Convinced you were completely replaceable in everyone’s heart, but you were sorely mistaken. You would never find such incredible colleagues— friends, as you had here. At home.
“Of course,” you admitted. Grinning from ear to ear.
The four of you celebrating for hours. Catching up from your short absence. Telling them all about Boston Children’s Hospital. All the incredible tech they had, and how large the hospital truly was. Food tasting incredible, not even thinking that you had forgotten dinner. Champagne buzzing against your cheeks. Wilson and Lisa were quick to pass out. Exhaustion hitting them like a bus. Asleep in the living room, so you decided to take Wilson’s guest room.
The room was dark. Light shining in from the partially opened blinds. Yellow hue of a street lamp illuminating your face as you stared at House. Laying on top of the comforter together. Hands flat in front of your faces. Taking the time to be alone together. Dancing your hand up his cheek, softly through his hair, and cupping his neck. Thumb tracing his jawline. Tickled by the pokey facial hair.
Sleep had its hooks in you. Blinks becoming slower. Covering your mouth when a yawn broke free. House chuckled, “You can sleep.”
“Noooo,” you whined, “I’m not even tired.”
His hand petted through your hair. Smiling at your denial. As much as he wanted you to stay awake and keep talking to him, he knew you had to be exhausted. Heavy lidded eyes barely peaking up at him as your lips parted with small breaths escaping.
House pressed a kiss into your forehead, “I will be here when you wake up.”
You reached out for his hand. Squeezing it between your own. Checking to make sure it was all real. That he was there and not a dream.
“I love you, Greg.”
“I love you too.”
~~~
[END/Final]
// Thank you so much for reading! This chapter ended up being quite a bit longer than I had originally planned, but I got everything in I wanted. I have truly fallen in love with this story and it is one of my favorite fics I’ve ever written. To all of you who have kept up with it and supported me, I love you! If I could give you all a big hug and kiss I would. As always, requests are open. Comments and Reblogs are appreciated! //
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