|| @castlcd - who really wanted their heart broken again :v
The first words Billy Russo said to Frank Castle were: “Queens is a shithole.”
The afternoon sun was already doing its best to melt the bleachers. Billy had his faded baseball cap pulled down low, which almost managed to obscure the black eye, but his bare forearms were slowly turning from pink to lobster red, as were the tips of his ears, which he wasn’t going to grow into for another year or two. He wasn’t allowed in the dugout since he wasn’t playing, though the one kid with a leg brace was down there, enjoying the tepid knockoff Gatorade from their cooler.
Maybe Billy was looking for a fight; maybe that was just how New Yorkers made friends. There was a ancient-looking baseball mitt clutched in his right hand, knuckles too tight to be casual. If Frank wanted to shoot something back, he was interrupted by his coach, who yelled for him to get his ass back on the field. Billy flashed a grin that was all teeth.
The next week, the weather had turned shittier; the rain came down in sheets, turning the field into a mud pit, but that wasn’t enough to cancel the friendly. Billy was still parked on the sidelines. The black eye had mostly cleared up. The baseball cap was gone. His hair was cropped short, an unkind buzzcut that’d left a few noticeable nicks and at least two deeper cuts in its wake.
There was something particularly sullen about his expression, like the rain was just there to provide a dramatic backdrop to his mood. His threadbare jeans were soaked through, scuffed knees visible where the fabric had disintegrated completely, a single huddled figure excluded from the equally miserable huddle on the field.
When Frank idled on first base and caught his eye, Billy blew water off the tip of his nose and flashed him a mocking salute.
By the third game, Billy was still sidelined. The sun was back with a vengeance, but the baseball cap wasn’t. Billy’s nose was sunburned. A ball went wide, landed high up in the bleachers, and Frank trotted out to get it - of course he did, nothing but pent up energy and the constant need to move, even if everyone else wanted to lie down in some scrap of shade; Billy took the stairs to the top two at a time, met him half-way, tossed the baseball the last few feet between them.
“You might wanna teach the rest of your team the objective is to actually hit the ball with the stick,” he said, head tilted. “Nice home run earlier, Queens. You’re not as hopeless as that haircut makes you look.”