🍑 / 🦦 (you pick) but something about married life w/ frank because I think you may need some of this (as do the rest of us)
ok ok so y eah I definitely needed to do this one. I started fluffy and then it got smutty and then it got fluffy again? so here we go…💕
calendar year - frank castle x fem!reader
warnings: fluff, smut, unprotected p-in-v (wrap ur shit), mentions of frank’s past, allusions to pregnancy/babies (I know I did another celebration ask w/ this but IT’S DIFFERENT OKAY), you know the drill
✨kay’s 300 follower celebration✨
Frank’s always had a mind for dates. He always has. It was almost helpful, when he was young, when it came to school. History was his favourite subject, and he always got the date of big events right on every single test, without fail.
He was always good at remembering birthdays, anniversaries, important stuff like that. Lisa was born at the end of the summer, August 31st; Frank Jr. at the start of winter, November 21st. Maria was right in the middle, October 18th, and they were married in early spring, April 7th. Those dates loom in the back of his mind now, turn into dark days with every year that passes.
But now, he has new dates, new firsts, a new birthday to remember. Now there’s you.
The first day you met: September 17th.
Your first date: September 31st.
The first time he told you he loved you: December 31st.
The day he asked you to marry him: March 9th.
And the day you became his wife: June 24th.
He can still remember every second of the day he married Maria. The memory of his day with you hasn’t painted over it, but rather set up shop in his brain right beside it, a gallery wall filled with the great loves of his life, memories on a loop that he falls into when the world gets to be too much for him.
With Maria, they did the whole big thing. The church, the dress, the cake, all the people. Mostly her side, but Frank didn’t mind. He was just happy to be around family.
With you, it was just the opposite. Just the two of you in the court house, you in a short white dress that had not so quietly driven him mad, a small bouquet of daisies in your hand. Karen and Matt had played witness for you both, and the whole thing had been over in a span of fifteen minutes, your signatures still wet as the judge smiled at you both and said, “You may now kiss the bride.”
He remembered that part, from before, and now it was something different.
You were on him before he could even blink, flowers cascading down his back as you threw your arms around his neck. Frank could taste your lipstick as he kissed you, unable to stop from grinning into your mouth, big hands spanning your waist as your body collided with his.
Afterwards, when everything had been signed and filed and your marriage certificate was stamped with the New York seal, you had walked down the street hand-in-hand, the sun sinking into the distance and painting the sky a million different colours. He had spun you around the sidewalk, watching the skirt of your dress flare out as you turned beneath his palm, and you grinned back at him, leading him down the pavement and into your new life together.
+
A year has passed in a blink of an eye, and Frank wakes on the morning of June 24th the same way he has since you married him: in your arms. You’re still passed out, head tilted up against your pillow, arms draped around his neck, holding his face against your chest. The corner of his mouth quirks and ever so carefully, he disentangles himself from your grip, sticking his pillow in the gap his absence leaves. He pauses, waits to make sure you’re still sleeping soundly, and pads from the bedroom as quietly as he can.
He was home late last night, and picked up the daisies on his way home, making sure they were the same colour as the ones you’d carried on your wedding day. He stuck them in water the moment he was sure you were already in bed and hid them in one of the closets. Now, he pulls them out, sets them on the kitchen table along with the card scrawled with your name and the little velvet box. He turns the coffee machine on, rubs a hand over his sleep-drenched face, and heads back to the bedroom.
You’re still in exactly the same spot, your hands gripping his pillow like a lifeline, but as he slips back into bed, legs sliding beneath the covers to tangle with yours, you start to stir. “Baby?” you murmur, your voice raspy and sleepy and sending a shock through his body. You push the pillow away, hands searching for him. “Frank?”
“Right here, sweet girl,” he drawls, a hand reaching out to cup your shoulder, pushing you back until you’re flat on the bed, spine pressed into the mattress. It’s perfect, the way he can plant his hand beside your neck, lean up to hover over you, stare down as your eyes slowly blink open.
As Frank watches, the almost-scowl that had appeared when you realized the pillow wasn’t him, is replaced with a beaming smile. “Happy anniversary,” you murmur in that raspy voice, and he can’t stop himself from bending down to kiss the words right out of your mouth.
“My little wife,” he whispers against your lips, knocking your knees apart with his own so he can sink between your legs, slotting his hips into yours. It’s a familiar feeling, a familiar place, but one he never tires of. His kisses trail down the side of your mouth, down your jaw, over your throat. “Happy anniversary.”
“Can’t believe it’s been a whole year,” you say, the rasp in your voice hitching as he grazes his teeth against your neck. “Mr. Castle.”
Frank smiles against your skin, the hand not holding him up moving up to hold your face, fingers sinking into your hair while his thumb follows the curve of your jaw. “Mmm, a whole year, and I’ve been lovin’ every second of it, Mrs. Castle.”
“Oh, really?”
“Really,” he groans, rolling his hips as he says it, jaw going tight as he remembers how little you’d worn to bed last night, how there’s only the thin cotton of his briefs and the thinner cotton of your panties between his cock and your wet heat. “Gonna let me show you how much?”
“Uh-huh,” you whine, one hand sliding up his arm, the other lifting to twine in his hair. He starts to move, trying to inch his way down your body so he can press his tongue into your core, lap up your sweetness until he’s drunk on the taste. But you stop him, tugging at his hair, squeezing his arm. “No, baby, just want you, please.”
“That so?” he asks, releasing your face to slip his hand between your bodies. You follow suit, reaching to shimmy out of your panties while he hooks his fingers into his briefs and pulls them down over his ass. “You gonna take me so good, sweet girl? Don’t even need to be warmed up?”
You shake your head slowly, a sly grin on your face as you sink your teeth into your bottom lip, your knees twitching around his ribs, one foot sliding along the outside of his thigh. “Was dreaming about my big, sexy husband,” you quip, and Frank chuckles, leaning his forehead into your collar as he takes himself in hand, already half-hard from the rasp in your voice and the feel of your skin. He pumps himself a few times, dragging the tip through your wetness, the heat making his jaw drop. “I’m ready to go.”
Frank drags his mouth back up to yours as he presses into you, revelling in the way you gasp his name, your feet hooking around his thighs, nails digging into his back as he lowers himself, filling you to the hilt in one fell swoop. It’s always his favourite bit, that first thrust into you, where you’re the warmest, the way he can feel how your body stretches to accommodate his cock, managing to grip him so tightly and so perfectly at the same time. He never gets tired of it. Never could.
He keeps his pace slow, every roll of his hips a calculated manoeuvre, focusing on the way the ridge of his pelvis drags against your clit with each pass. He watches your face, pulls back from your kiss just enough to see your eyes roll back, feel your nails drag down his sides. Any other morning, and that would have been the end of his restraint, would have kicked his pace into high gear, chasing his high as well as your own. But today, no, today he needs to unravel you more than usual, needs to hear every hitch in your breath and feel every tense of your muscles.
Frank plants his elbow after a while, digs his hand into your hair and ghosts his mouth over yours. You don’t miss the chance to catch his bottom lip between your teeth, tugging light until you let it go with a pop. He reaches his other hand down, grips your thigh in his palm and hitches it up, your knee moving higher over his hip and changing the angle, letting him dive deeper.
The build-up is intense. It’s shared breaths and whispered strings of curses and admissions of love. I love you so much, Frank. That’s gotta be the top of his list, when you tell him you love him while he’s buried in you, connected to you in the most intimate of ways. You always sound love drunk, your voice like syrup, sweet like honey to his ears.
It’s almost like dominoes, the way he feels your muscles go taut one after another. He can feel it thrumming in your blood, your skin practically trembling against his as you climb higher and higher toward your release. His own orgasm follows yours, two birds on a wire leaping into flight at the same time. Frank watches, eyes glued to your face as your nerves turn to fireworks, your core tightening like a vice around him as you flood his cock, nails digging in so hard you might draw blood, but he doesn’t care. He lives for it.
Lives for you.
A hoarse shout falls out of him as he spills inside you, the final thrust a little harder than the others, pinning you to the bed beneath you, sprawling your hips wide. “My sweet girl,” he grunts out, groaning as he fucks you through both your orgasm and his own, your pussy milking him for everything he’s worth. “My pretty little wife.”
+
An hour later, and you’ve eating breakfast together, fresh coffee in your mugs. You’d gasped at the daisies, cried at his card, and nearly toppled over at the little diamond studs sitting in the velvet box. They’re in your ears already, glinting in the sunlight streaming through the kitchen window.
You had a gift for him too, and good lord, if it didn’t bring him to his knees.
A leather-bound photo album, his name embossed on the cover. And inside, his whole life. Baby pictures — most of which he has no idea where you got — and then…his family. Maria and Lisa and Frank Jr.; a few more pages, and then there you are. The few photos that were snapped on your wedding day, the photo of you and him standing outside of the courthouse right on the last page.
“There are more pages,” you say softly, standing at his shoulder, watching him flip through the book. “More space for memories.”
He goes to flip the book shut, to gather you into his arms, but you stop him.
“Wait. There’s one more, towards the back.”
Brow furrowing, Frank flips the page, and there it is.
A black-and-white sonogram, your name at the top of the photo. He’s seen one before, knows what it means, feels the tears in his eyes before he can stop them. And written beneath it, in your handwriting…
Baby Castle. Arriving December 24th.
Frank’s always had a mind for dates.
—————
I have a taglist! if you’d like to be tagged in future works, please fill out this form!💕
iSpy - Calendar Year
By Corbin Leach | July 6, 2023
Along with the holidays you can also find:
- Darth Vader
- Jack Skellington
- Dinglehopper
- Togepi
- Fog Badge
- Animal Crossing Leaf
- Captain America's Shield
- Copper Key, Jade Key, Crystal Key
- Sea Salt Ice Cream
- Tamagotchi
- Coraline Button
- Digi-Egg
- Elephant Costume
- Pumpkin Person
- Pink Diamond
- Ruby, Sapphire
- Amethyst
- Pearl
- Chocobo
- Sun Sprite
- Mario Carrot
- Yoshi Egg
- Gudetama
i’d like to thank @chatterbean for being the initial inspiration here and @honestly-shite for getting so excited about the shitpost i made a thousand years ago that became this concept. because everyone deserves to fall slowly in love with benjamin miller.
this is kind of a chapter one, kind of a prologue i guess, but doesn’t relate to a specific celebratory day
main masterlist
word count: 977 // warnings: swear, food mention, this boy is pining HARD, unedited and written in about 30 minutes so abandon all hope ye who enter here
Benny still remembers the exact moment he met you. Shot for shot, like a movie he’s seen a thousand times - to be fair, he’s relived it about that much.
You’d moved into his old apartment and, like every age old cliche in the book, he was still shifting the last of his things out as the moving truck pulled up to the curb outside the building.
It was a steal, in all honesty. Maybe a little on the small side, maybe you could have done without the garish green bathroom tiles. But you’d fallen in love with the open plan kitchen and living area, with its big bay windows and eye level oven, and within a few weeks you were signing the rent agreement. It stood out, the little one bedroom apartment just a block away from the town centre. Something about it just felt homey when you went to the viewing, still full of furniture and picture frames compared to the stark emptiness of the others you’d considered. This was it, you knew it the moment you walked through the door, this was home.
Benny himself had been out at the base on the outskirts of town, spending the day organising his discharge papers while some chippy salesperson showed strangers around his house. He didn’t want to be there for that. It felt strange enough to be closing the book on the military chapter of his life, earlier than everyone around him seemed to think he should, he wasn’t up for putting on a smile and pretending like he gave a shit who’d be living there after he was gone. The key to his new place was still blindingly shiny, a cosy three bedroom house waiting for him only a few streets away from his brother’s. A new life. Or, at the very least, one where he could finally take in a couple of rescue dogs.
Just like that, he was done.
He’d actually been thankful, embarrassingly enough, that he hadn’t run into whoever he was meant to be passing keys to. Until he heard it, just as he was kicking the key under the door.
“Oh,” You’d squeaked, “Hi.”
He’d rolled his eyes, steeled himself with a fake smile as he turned around, and promptly almost dropped the last box tucked under his arm. Because standing in front of him, potted plant and shiny new keys in hand, was you.
You. With that disarming smile and flyaways and the quiet thoughtfulness that always seems to settle in your eyes, even now. You’d told him your name and he’d fumbled for his own and he was gone - he didn’t even have a chance.
And when he’d accidentally ordered takeout to his old address, to your new place, a week later?
Well, it would have been rude not to offer to share.
“Men suck.”
Your comment from the kitchen catapults Benny back to the present, seven years later almost to the day, on your couch in his old place just like every Tuesday night since. He has the decency to at least pretend he was listening when you clamber over the back of the couch to settle in next to him.
“Present company mostly excluded.” You smile ruefully as you reach forward to snag a slice of pizza from the box on the coffee table in front of you.
“Mostly?”
“You get mean when you play Mariokart, Miller.”
His booming laugh fills every gap in the space, insisting that blood feuds are what makes Mariokart great, and it’s like a balm to your freshly broken heart. Okay, maybe broken is a bit strong. More like vaguely disappointed but not overtly surprised. Boyfriends have come and gone in the time you’ve been living here, but Benny’s always been your best friend.
“You got new year plans?” He interrupts his own monologue suddenly, narrowing his eyes at you like he already knows the answer.
“Well, not anymore, I guess. Right?”
“Wrong!”
Oh, but he won’t tell you. Not even when you launch yourself across the cushions and dig your fingers into his sides until you’re both breathless with laughter. The pizza box balanced precariously on the edge of the coffee table, one kick away from falling, as you lie practically on top of him. Nose to nose, warmth bleeding into one another, and you’re almost tempted. It would be so easy, just to shift a tiny bit and- no.
No.
This is Benny.
This is a line you can’t cross, this is a friendship you can’t risk.
Even if sometimes you think you catch him looking, even if sometimes you catch yourself looking. You can’t do it. You won’t.
So you ease up, sit back in your own space and push the pizza box safely back into the middle of the coffee table. Because it isn’t worth it.
All the years of military training rush back into his muscles the moment you pull away, carefully schooling his features into an easy smile and a chuckle. So you won’t have to hear his heart crack a little. He can hear Will’s voice, Frankie’s, Santiago’s, even fucking Tom’s. All of them telling him seven years is long enough - too long, in fact - to be hung up on one person. Even if he’s pretty sure you’re the love of his life. Even if all he sees when he closes his eyes is you in those first few seconds, dishevelled and tired but happy. So he stamps it down, just like he always does, and crams half a slice of pizza into his mouth so he doesn’t say something fucking stupid like ‘I love you’.
“You can’t hide things from me, Ben,” You grin, “I’ve known you too long.”
He just laughs with you, settling back into the couch cushions as you press play on your latest Netflix binge watch.
Sure he can’t.
TAGLIST (and people who were excited about this post - add yourself here or lmk if you would like to be untagged):
The month of Yule, the birth of Winter, and the end of the year. Patron of the Sagittarii, Dhanuṣa, the Archer, and the Capricorni, Makara, the Crocodile. The hunt is upon us. May your hearth stay warm.
There is more to me than Christmas.
Meaning of December: “Tenth Month”, from before January and February were created, and December was the Tenth
Flower of December: Narcissus
Gemstone(s) of December: Turquoise
Holidays in December:
December 1st: World AIDS Day, Day Without Art
December 2nd: International Day for the Abolition of Slavery
December 3rd: International Day of Persons with Disabilities, Immoral Acts Day
December 4th: Unhinged Day
December 5th: International Ninja Day
December 6th: End of Hanukah
December 7th: International Civil Aviation Day
December 8th: Pansexual/Panromantic Pride Day
December 9th: International Day of Veterinary Medicine
December 10th: Human Rights Day, Nobel Prize Day
December 11th: International Mountain Day
December 12th: The Day of the Virgin of Guadalupe
December 13th: Worldwide Candle Lighting Day
December 14th: Monkey Day
December 15th: Cat Herders Day
December 16th: Chocolate Covered Anything Day
December 17th: Wright Brothers’ Day
December 18th: Arabic Language Day, International Migrants Day
December 19th: Super Saturday/Panic Saturday
December 20th: Games Day
December 21st: Winter Solstice, Blue Christmas, Midsummer [Southern Hemisphere], Yule [Northern Hemisphere]
December 22nd: Be a Lover of Silence Day
December 23rd: Festivus
December 24th: Christmas Eve
December 25th: Christmas Day
December 26th: Start of Kwanzaa
December 27th: Saint John the Evangelist's Day
December 28th: Boxing Day
December 29th: Make Up Your Mind Day
December 30th: Festival of Enormous Changes at the Last Minute
“memories of scattered brains
coffee mugs and innocence
trying and failing to make sense
four or five years made no difference then
these saturdays might be everything someday
grey clouds above trees of
orange and red gaze at me
our youthful adventures before life began
are not any longer
our youthful adventures are not any longer
why can't these things
sort themselves out
why can't i learn
to be myself
why can't these things just sort themselves out”
Found this comment exchange on a popular YouTube video by Clickspring in ref to the Antikythera Mechanism. The whole idea, here, is that the Greek/Egyptian calendar originally consisted of 360 days per year. Then, through years of research by astronomers and mathematicians, we transitioned into the 365 day calendar year that we see today. One comment suggested that the transition practically happened overnight, perhaps with an “astronomical catastrophe,” that actually altered the Earth’s rate of rotation by 5 days. The highlighted comment is pure gold!
