Chapter Summary: You bring desserts, Frank brings death. Careful now... there's a heat between you.
Pairing: Frank Castle x Baker!Reader
Chapter Warnings: 18+ Always. Language. Attraction disguised as hate.
Word Count: 2.5k
A/N: This chapter has a lot of story set up. Frank doesn't show until 2/3rds of the way through. But after, he and the reader are attached at the hip.
a playlist if you'd like to listen to the songs that inspired the story
Chapter 1 - Preheat to 375°
The first Wednesday of every month, from 5:00pm until 5:30pm, is carved in your schedule. Dough prepped, registers counted, you close shop early at your nine-month-old bakery, WHIPPED.
Tonight, you show up for those who’ve served. Your brother, Curtis, holds group sessions for vets. It’s your job to cut through all that darkness with a bit of sugar. Nothing too pretentious, you know the crowd you’re dealing with. When a 71 year old Army vet with skin like chewed leather mentions he and gluten no longer mix, you work late crafting something just for him.
If he likes it, it’ll become a part of your weekly limited edition rotation. You can already see it, written in black ink on the cream menu behind the register.
Whip It If You Want It: GF Sin-amon Rolls
“Not to be a bitch, but I think you should carry these,” Chloe says. She stacks two white boxes of pastries atop the ones you’re already carrying. “I don’t want to get all sweaty and ruin my cake.”
This isn’t about mini lemon poppyseed cakes you made. What concerns her most is the glowy makeup adorning her face. A nude lip, smoky brown winged liner, bombshell ginger hair that takes hours to perfect…
“When did you have time to do your hair and makeup?” you say, straining beneath the new weight. Chloe avoids your stare, keeping her eyes firmly on the church slowly coming into view. “I’ll kill you if you didn’t finish the McCarthy order, you know how much we need that done.”
She fidgets with a loose button on her wool coat. “Sometimes you have to make choices in life. Mine was between frosting a tacky geode cake that’s three years out of style-”
“Who gives a shit about style? She’s paying. Tips well. That’s what she wanted.”
“-Orrrr spending that time making sure I looked wifeable. Veterans have great benefits, especially if they have a disability. Plus, we’d have a permanent guard dog for the shop.”
“We don’t need a guard dog.”
“Yeah, we do,” she says softly. “I swear I hear something in the vents at night. Scared the shit out of me yesterday.”
“Ten minutes,” you demand. “Help me set up, and then you go back and finish the order.”
“That’s not fair!”
You hand Chloe a hard glare, one that shuts her twenty two year old lips of any more chatter. “I’m not your babysitter, and I trust you to make the right decisions, you know that.”
She hangs her head and shoves her hands into her pockets. With all the hours you spend together, you no longer feel like her boss. You know so much about her. Her troubled past. Her needing some direction. Chloe’s mistakes feel like they’re yours. “Yeah, I know.”
“And when you don’t make the right decisions, I worry what else slipped through the cracks. Did you lock up?”
“Yes!”
“You sure?”
“I screwed up one-”
“Three.”
“Three times. I spaced. I know you think I’m a fuck up, I’m trying to do better. I locked the shop. It’s never gonna happen again,” she says, voice trailing off as you approach Saint John's. The Autumn wind has a bite to it, turning dead leaves into a spiral on the sidewalk. This winter will be a harsh one.
Inside the empty church, words become hushed. Past the pews and the stained glass depicting Christ’s final hours, you head through another crickety door. A weight hangs in the silence. It was there before you and Chloe arrived. You walk down a flight of steps that give you away before the group therapy veterans can see you. The wood screeches, they’re here, they’re here, beneath you.
“Ten minutes,” you remind her. “We really need that order finished. Now stop sulking, and smile.”
She exhales hard, pulls her shoulders back, and mimics the confectionary smile you carry. Hospitality and light. That’s the name of the job.
Crossing the threshold into Curtis’s space, you share a brief glance. The session carries on. You don’t listen too hard. This is their world, not yours. You had your fill growing up with two parents who served and a brother that followed suit. You sit at a different vantage point than they do and can only relate so much. Bullets and Kevlar got traded for whisks and aprons.
Twenty or so people sit in foldout chairs, creating a circle. Curtis is mid thought, talking directly to the group, not as a lecturer, but a man trying to help. You look to the table behind him. That’s where you’re setting up shop.
His words break the wall you’ve built to remain an outsider.
“The goal isn’t to go back to how things were. It can’t be. Life don’t got a rearview mirror and if it did, you’d crash spending too much time looking back at what once was. My pops, served in Nam, had a saying, made us repeat it over and over.” Curtis says. You mouth the saying with him.
“Nunquam retrorsum. Never backwards. Mitchell, help sis with the boxes-”
Your favorite veteran follows the order immediately. Wrinkled hands take the boxes from you, You detect Mitch’s infamous scowl beneath his American Flag hat. You and Chloe head to the metal table, and begin setting up shop.
“Mitch,” you whisper, hoping the old man’s hearing aids pick up the sound. Opening the tuck-top lid, you reveal a bevy of perfected confections, cinnamon rolls included. You point to one. “I made these for you. No gluten.”
He’s not one for excited gestures, but reaches for the treat.
“You’re not supposed to eat one right-”
“Watch me. Ain’t a damn person in this room got the balls to tell me otherwise.” He takes a huge bite. No napkins, no etiquette. Cream cheese frosting mixes into his already white ZZ-top beard and you know better than to point it out. He wouldn’t care. He’s already chewing loudly with half a mouth of teeth. “These ain’t fucking around.”
“Really!” You’re beaming. You had a hunch they were amazing, but to hear it from someone who is the furthest thing from WHIPPED’s typical demographic, means more to you. This sort of honesty isn’t something you hear every day. Not in the gen z crowd, always focused on content creation rather than the art of your skills.
“Keep bringing these, they’re gonna be what kills me.”
“Alright,” Chloe says. She’s finished setting the table, removing the goods from their boxes and setting everything up to be presentable for the rest of the veterans. “I’m outtie.”
It’s baked in her tone. She’s not happy to be leaving. A nodule sinks into your stomach. You can’t let her make the trek outside alone. Not on a bad note. You want to make things right within the last three minutes you have together.
“Look, I don’t mean to be a type A bitch.” You start, crossing yourself when you realize you’ve sworn in a place of worship. “We just really need as much money coming in this month as possible. We’re in the negatives.”
The last part of your sentence, the one revealing how this month you’re on track to lose money, Chloe doesn’t seem to care much about.
“How did you find out Noah called you that? You weren’t even there that day.”
“Just had a hunch.” You give her a hug, a final way of saying you’re sorry for being a hardass. “You’re over your scheduled hours. Consider today double pay.”
“You don’t have-”
“Yes, I do. Be safe walking back.”
“Okay, mom,” she teases. “But when you deliver that ugly cake you tell the McCarthy’s I said to stop getting their cheap inspiration from pinterest.”
With a final goodbye, a sentimental departure reduces to you watching Chloe disappear. She pushes open the hard wooden church door, her muscles straining against their heaviness. Amber light of a New York setting sun engulfs her. She becomes light itself. Blinding. Radiant. And then she’s gone. The door shuts and aside from dust particles and the looming cross behind the pulpit, you’re alone.
Back downstairs, your brother’s session is wrapping up. The deliveries you make are always scheduled just as time is dwindling down so you don't have to wait outside while vets share intimate details of their lives. You refuse to carry that weight. It’s not for you to solve their problems, but you hope that maybe the light you bring with confections helps none the less.
“This damn leg of mine is kicking my ass.” Curtis says, picking up an aluminum metal chair. He folds it and limps to the far side of the empty room to hang it. “It must be about to rain something bad.”
“Don’t jinx it,” you say. There are but a few treats leftover for you to clean up. You stuff them in a small container you keep in your tote bag. You’re sure a transient somewhere would enjoy them. “Customers are down twenty percent on the days it rains.”
“You need a hobby. All I ever hear from you is WHIPPED this and WHIPPED that. Don’t let that place whip you out. Start living a little. Life passes by workaholics.”
A frown almost forms, but you don’t give into it. Curtis understands your world far less than you understand his. When you were younger, you hoped your brother could see your ambitions and validate what they meant for you as a family. Growing up taught you to know better. If he thinks you’re a workaholic, then he simply didn’t get it, and the ache pressing into your spine after standing for fifteen hours today reaffirms you don’t owe him an explanation.
“Quintessential big brother tactics.” You sweep crumbs into a dust pan. “Giving advice they don’t take.”
“Call it me passing along years of wisdom,” he says. “You should ponder on it as I take a piss.”
“I’m not one of your group therapy vets, Curt.”
“I know.” He edges to the door. “They actually listen to me.”
“They actually listen to me,” you mock that little sanctimonious tone he’s perfected long before joining the Navy. This was something he’d hard earned growing up as latch key kids. Your household was self-governing, and with Curtis being the eldest, and a man, he assumed he was in charge.
He was wrong.
The white glass plates you keep as a mainstay here need to be washed. There’s a serious streak of lemon curd crusting on one curve. Means that last month Chloe didn’t clean them well, of course she didn’t. She hates cleaning.
Curtis comes back, feet hitting a little harder than before, a bit more rhythmic than the limp he once held. The air is off, feels thick like smoke, and you instantly wonder if your brief exchange has left him more pissy than using the bathroom did.
“Not like I owe you an explanation,” your turn, plates in hand, to take them to the church’s cramped kitchen. “But I have plenty of ho-”
Glass sprinkles into confetti shards on the floor, ending your sentence. Your grip on the plates slackened so quickly you hadn’t even realized. Your eyes snap to the stain of a marine standing next to the room’s entrance.
He’s like a smear of soot against the wooden wall. A stain you can’t scrub away. This looming mass of man you’d be terrified of if you weren’t so engulfed in an acrid anger.
“Been a long time,” he breaks first, voice still as coarse as you remember. Itchy and gathering beneath your skin. “Curt still around?”
The sharp pieces of glass lie like minefields between you. If it means getting Frank Castle out of here, you’ll step on every one.
“Get the fuck out.”
“I guess that means he is.”
“He told me you weren’t even in New York anymore. Said you’d finally come to your senses and left town. Goddammit, I knew that was a crock of shit because you don’t have any sense to begin with.”
“You can still pretend I’m gone, if that gives you peace of mind,” he says. “Go back to cupcakes and cookies.”
“Peace is above your intelligence level, Frank. Don’t assume you know what’s best for me. Instead, I’ll tell you what I want. It starts with you leaving and ends with you never coming back.”
Frank doesn’t smile, but it’s in his tone as he tells you, “motion denied.”
When Curtis makes it back, he only gets halfway through the threshold before realizing he’s been caught. He stiffens like a child forced to admit their lie. “Shit.”
“You do this over and over and I don’t know why I fall for it,” you say. “You told me he was gone, Curtis.”
“He was!” Curtis wrings a hand over the back of his neck. “And… somebody’s gotta fix the sink in the bathroom.”
You kick some of the glass shards his way as you walk to an empty chair that still hadn’t been hung. “Then have the conversation in front of me. Frank, why are you here, and what did you want to tell him?”
They exchange looks and what’s said between them can’t be heard. Frank and your brother have a deep history that’s always kept at an arm’s length from you ever knowing about. But some things, you just can’t hide. Like the bruises, the broken bones, or the time Curtis came back missing a leg. That year was a real doozy for you both.
“Wanna go get some air, Frank? I’m thinking we should take a walk.”
“Yeah. Yeah, that’d be good.”
The landmine detonates.
“I’m a fucking stranger in my own family,” you say, “I can’t believe you’re allowing him to do that to us.”
“Don’t be like that, you know Frank’s family, too, after all we’ve-”
“No. No! He had his family!” You’re out of your seat. Heaving. That smoke Frank brought with him is choking you. “And you let him left-right-left march back into your life over and over. Every time he comes back, he brings hell with him.”
Neither men speak and you don’t look at Curtis anymore. Whatever hooks Frank has in him have sunken through sinew and hit bone.
That doesn’t mean you stop trying. You just have to adjust the tactic. Jacket in hand, you step to Frank. Inches from him. So close you can smell the aftershave he likes and see your reflection in his tar colored eyes.
“You want him dead, too, huh?” You almost laugh, but all you can feel is hurt. “Is that it?”
Frank’s brow furrows and you feel the breath he exhales through his nose. Bullish. Hard headed. It’s the closest to emotion you think you’ll get from him.
“Why would I want that?”
“Because you’re a plague, Frank.” Your hand pushes into his chest to shove him. He doesn’t budge. He takes it. An unmoving mass. You’re the one that’s off balance. Mind spinning. No control. Unlike you. “People don’t survive you.”
You wait for Frank to say something. Deny it. Hell, even Curtis has a chance to rebuke your accusations. Neither do.
“Either you leave or we do,” Frank says. “Dealer’s choice.”
You burn into him just a second longer, as if continuing the argument may change a damn thing.
“Go to hell,” you spit.
You take what little light you’ve built for yourself. Your jacket. The leftover desserts. And the crumbs of whatever this was supposed to be.
First off my friend, you are a storyteller, I have missed getting swept away in the stories you write so I was so excited to read this! Second, I got sucked in immediately and am obsessed with WHIPPED and this character, she’s so cool, very interested in her disdain of Frank, she ate his ass up omfg 🫶🏽
Truly your way of describing settings and characters is so artful, I love this baker and her attitude and her confrontational skills and you add context to her feelings so well, seeing the chaos he brings would be alarming and he’s standing right in front of her but also ohh that reaction to Frank was strong and I spy some feelings in that tension perhaps
So very considerate and sweet of her to come up with a gluten free option for Mitch!
Not Chloe being a bit of a mess, forgetting to lock up three times is wild bestie but I can see why reader is trying to give her chances and some positive direction, this position feels like it could be such a good thing for her long term if she can lock in a bit but damn 😳
The firm line she keeps herself separated from Curtis and his world and hers also makes so much sense, she’s obviously so talented and accomplished with her own bakery and the skills for it and is met with that response, I get her being withdrawn and putting that wall up, I love complex family relationships cause lol what it is it that frank said “cookies and cupcakes” yeah sometimes family isn’t all like cookies and cupcakes and sunshine
There’s so much emotional layering and setup, I love it!! Excited to keep reading! Amazing stuff as always!
I think when you correctly identify a trauma that is the base of a woe of yours it should just disappear. It should be like "aaahh. you got me" and vanish and leave 100 dollars behind
