✖ - her shoulder or back because he's probably stitching her up to the best of his ability (from /post/ 164546308639/ send-a-body-part-for-my-muses-reaction-to !)
she really wants to move. she really, really wants to jerk around and smack his hands away. she really, really, really, really, really, really, really wants to. he’s not gentle about this at all! didn’t even give her something to chug to dull the pain or a bullet to bite down on or anything! maybe she should have expected this from him, but hey, can you blame her for wanting to believe there’s some soft part of him left in there? but he’s just hard edge after hard edge after hard edge. a maze made of barbed wire. what’s in the middle? what if there’s nothing in there for her to find but more pointy bits?
she’ll cross that bridge when she gets to it.
it’s not that she wouldn’t like that; she probably would. she likes him well enough so far. it doesn’t bother her if he doesn’t care about her pain, or even if he enjoys it. she’d just like to know if he cares about her smiles too.
“ow-- ow! hey! whaddya tryna do, turn it inside-out? ‘cause that’s what it feels like!”
“you want me to just let you bleed out?”
she’s got her hands balled into fists so tight that her nails are in serious danger of puncturing skin. these fists are, in turn, curled around her knees, which are brought up to her chest, and her legs are so tight and tense it’d be a miracle if she stops getting muscle cramps before the week is out. it really does feel like he’s trying to turn that wound inside out to her. what a disgusting image. normally, she’d find some childish pleasure in trying to imagine that scenario; right now, she’s got tears streaming down her face and is holding back a scream.
no-- make that was holding back a scream.
he’s stopped working on the gash in her shoulder, but whatever he was doing hurt so bad she hasn’t noticed yet. he’s lucky that he’s strong enough and big enough to hold her down. if he wasn’t, he might well be worse off than she is right now. she can vaguely register the feeling of flesh being pulled by stitches, but it’s through a haze of pain and tears, and this is the moment she vows never to let frank castle patch her up ever again, at all, under any circumstances.
“alright, you’re good.” he sounds mildly amused by her theatrical suffering. this does not comfort her much. he holds out his bloody hands to prove what he’s said. this does not comfort her at all.
he puts one of those hands on her uninjured shoulder and bends down until he catches her tear-filled eye. there’s something in his other hand. he holds it out to her, palm-up.
it’s a gcpd-issue nine millimeter bullet.
he was not patching up a gunshot wound.
“how long has that been in there? you know?”
she sniffs. wipes her faces a little (winces), unclenches her body (winces), blinks away tears and leans forward to get a better look (winces).
“that came outta my shoulder?”
“jesus. i’unno. few years, maybe?”
she looks at him. he looks at her. they both start laughing at the same time. it’s a weird sort of laughter, the kind that isn’t done solely out of humor, but it’s laughter nonetheless. it’s the first time she’s ever heard him really laugh at something. she likes the way he sounds when he laughs. she’d like to hear it again sometime.
(she hopes it doesn’t have to come at the same cost. she likes you, frank, she really likes you, but if you try to fix her up like this again, she just might kill you.)