okay started working on the mob frank fic, and idk how i feel? like is it cringe? am i even making sense? it might be more than one part idk yet, but lmk what you think or send in an request/question cause i haven’t been posting a lot, and i want to i swear i’m just mentally ill. i’m gonna try to be active tho i swear, so you better send sum to my inbox. violence beware - youre in control of your own media consumption. anyways -
people say love is blind. you’d beg to disagree; you never saw frank through those supposed rose colored glasses. you’ve seen something sinister in frank more than once, and you’d seen the destruction he could cause. you didn’t wrap him in your arms and kiss his scars because you were blind to it, no, quite the opposite. it was because you had seen all of him. seen him kill people with nothing but a finger on a trigger, but have seen that same trigger finger softly trace patterns into your skin. for every atrocity he commits, he compensates with a soft kiss. even the devil was once an angel.
When you sleep, you don’t have nightmares. You don’t see blood behind your eyes. The sounds of firing guns and tearing flesh don’t crash over you in the quiet of night. Memories of the day you died chase you like ghosts as you walk down city streets in the sunlight, but they leave you alone in the dark.
When you sleep, you dream.
i. You lie down with her. You say “Yes.” You don’t make her beg. You read the same story over and over until she falls asleep against your arm. Tomorrow, she’ll die anyway, because you haven’t changed anything at all, but you don’t dream about that part. You dream of the soft blonde hair and pink flushed cheeks she got from her mother. You look at her gentle sleeping form and thank God for not giving her a single part of you.
ii. You leave the park early. She’s whining, so is your boy, but you insist. You get home and turn on the news and see the leftovers of a massacre. Your wife speaks in a hushed, horrified tone. “What if we’d still been there?”
iii. You see them coming. You don’t let down your guard, and your trained instincts don’t fail you; they don’t fail your family. One goes down, you’ve got his gun, and the rest fall quickly. One batch, two batch; penny and dime. You move like a machine and fight until the concrete is painted red. She’s scared, but alive; so are your wife and boy. She’s breathing in short little gasps, but she still has a mouth and lungs to use. She clutches onto your blood-stained shirt and she doesn’t cry. Your girl never cries.
iv. You see them coming and make a different decision. You reach for her instead of a gun. Metal rips through every piece of you, leaves you like a tattered chunk of meat, but you fall onto her. You cover her up and hide her. She’s so small. She doesn’t cry. Your girl never cries. Not like you. You live long enough to watch the survivors walk away, and you weep in relief as your sight fades into darkness and you bleed out on top of her. She’s alive. It doesn’t matter where you go, as long as she doesn’t follow.
v. You don’t go to the park at all. She gets sick, she changes her mind, you keep your promise to play ball with your boy, your wife keeps you in bed — it doesn’t matter. You stay home. You eat dinner together and you tuck her in at 10 and you read her a story. Tragedies happen to other people.
You dream of saving her and your wife and your boy. You dream of being the big damn hero and not failing your family. You dream of a reality where you could believe that the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen is right.
Then you wake up in a cold sweat, tangled in a thin sheet, and your inhale is rough and jagged as you remember where you are. You wake up smelling the tainted city that tore them away from you. You wake up alone, and you feel the pitch black hatred seething inside you, wrapping tightly around your ribs and pulsing in the hole where your heart once was.
It’s good. The nightmares would smother you. The dreams, though, they make you remember. They dig into the wound in your skull. They remind you of why every piece of scum in Hell’s Kitchen has to die.
Whenever Frank Castle feels particularly upset by humanity, he locks himself in his apartment, closes the blinds and cleans his guns. This helps him calm down and either forget about the problem or figure out a course of action
Frank Castle has been addicted to coffee for years. He drinks it black, bitter and very, very strong. Peter Parker, whose own coffee is at least 80% milk, has dubbed it “Frank’s Frankly Ghastly Frankencoffee”. Daredevil thinks this nickname is both fitting and hilarious.
– A drabble for @gabymiller about mother’s day. You can take it as a glimpse into the future of- In Other Words.
On mother’s day, you wake up to the smell of food cooking and when you get downstairs, you’re welcomed by your daughter first, literally jumping into your arms the second she sees you. She’s always the one to wake you up but you figure Frank didn’t let her today. She smooches your face, leaving your skin sticky from whatever she was eating.
“Here,” Frank wets the end of a kitchen towel that he had draped to his shoulder, and dabs your face before planting a kiss on your mouth, “hey, you.”
“Hey,” a smile pulls up your lips.
“Happy mother’s day, baby.”
“Thank you,” you squeeze his arm and take a good look around to see that he has set the dining table with a feast of all your favorite breakfast foods surrounding a bouquet of peonies in the middle.
If that’s not enough, you receive a handmade card from your daughter and a gold pendant from your husband.
He tries to have a quiet, romantic moment with you while you eat, but it’s hard when a 5 year-old is reenacting all the songs from Encanto. You wouldn’t have it any other way, though. You love how passionate she is about everything she loves, and right now that’s all she ever wants, just putting on a show for mommy and daddy to watch.
Frank doesn’t go over the top with big gestures but treats you with many little ones, and after breakfast, he takes Lisa and the dog to the park while you have a relaxing bath on your own.
When they come back from the park you drive to Coney Island just so you can get on the Ferris Wheel at least three times cause that’s always been your favorite ride, and then stuff your face with more junk food.
You have a lovely day altogether, just the three of you.
Lisa is absolutely beat at the end of your little trip that she falls asleep on her car seat on the way back. It’s daddy who picks her up, gets her in her pj’s, and tucks her to bed while you take the dog out for a walk.
Frank is waiting for you on the couch in utter silence when you cross the front door. You take off your shoes and curl on his side, enjoying that little moment with him that he’s been wanting to since earlier this morning. He smiles at you, cupping your jaw ever so tenderly for a moment, before stealing a kiss from your lips.
Rating:T // Warnings: Angst, Language. // Word Count:4,834
Summary–@gabymiller asked – can I request a frank castle fic where he’s married with a baby girl and they see on the news that he is dead but with the help of Curtis his wife finds out he’s Pete and they have a angsty fluffy reunion ❤️
A/N:This came out more angsty than I expected but I hope you like it anyway. There’s still some fluff and many bittersweet moments. // A/N 2: Lisa is Frank and Reader’s baby, with all my respect to Maria and the Castle family. A/N 3: The title comes from the song Baby, I’m yours, by Barbara Lewis. It’s mentioned a couple times if you wanna listen beforehand.
That’s what he believed. That’s what he needed. To be home and become the husband and the father he always wanted to be, but the universe cared little for what Frank Castle wanted. It had other plans for him and wasn’t going to let him settle that easily just cause he had a change of heart.
No, it wouldn’t be that simple. Not after what happened during his last deployment. Not after Cerberus.
His bliss at home – with you and getting reacquainted with Lisa, who had just turned one, – was quickly cut short only three weeks after settling back in your lives.
What pulled him out of that delusion was when, one day while you were at work, he took Lisa to the park and on his way back he found an envelope in the mail slot with no stamp or address on it. Just his name and CD that contained a very damning video of his last mission in Kandahar.
A couple days later, he disappeared before you woke up.
He took that piece of evidence as a threat and in order to figure out who was behind that, he had to be as far away from you as possible. It was the only way to keep you safe cause he knew that that mission was different, and while he hoped it had ended with that bullet, it didn’t. It followed him back home and he couldn’t have that. He wasn’t going to be the reason to put you and the baby in danger.
He wrote you a letter, though, that felt like a joke where he vaguely explained that he had to go away to figure things out and that he didn’t know if he would ever come back. He said that you and Lisa were better off without him, that he’d never be what you wanted him to be.
You couldn’t understand how he could have sunk that low to bury your relationship in such a crude manner like it was nothing. And despite being mad as hell, deep down you were certain that those words weren’t true. If he was trying to make you angry, he knew how to. But he couldn’t possibly believe that you were stupid enough to buy that.
You’ve been together long enough to read between the lines, and if he thought you were going to give up that easily, he was wrong.
Something was off and you needed to know the truth and the best way to do that was to visit some of his closest friends.
None of them knew shit, or so they said. Except for Curtis, if the others had lied, Curt didn’t. He couldn’t. He was an honest man and told you straight up that Frank had to leave to keep both of you safe, that there were people after him who weren’t going to hesitate about hurting you to get to him. He also reassured that Frank didn’t love anything more in the world than you and Lisa, that he was completely torn apart the last time he saw him.
But that wasn’t very reassuring at all. It was bullshit. You loved Frank but it didn’t make sense to you what he could’ve done so wrong that prompted an escape number instead of going to the police or coming up with something else.
A lot happened in the next few weeks since he left. To say it turned your life upside down was an understatement.
First, you were stunned by the bombarding news and headlines pointing your husband as the perpetrator of a series of murders, including his former CO, Ray Schoonover.
Quickly after that, you were brought in for questioning twice, once by the NYPD, and a second one by Homeland Security, claiming that he was part of two bombings along with a man named Lewis Wilson.
They got warrants and all kinds of bullshit to search the house. To their disbelief they didn’t find anything that could point them in Frank’s direction.
It was then that you understood the coldness of his words in that letter he wrote. He wanted everyone to believe that he had abandoned you so they’d leave you alone. He anticipated that happening and they still went at you either way, but not as viciously as they’d have if they believed you knew what he was up to.
It was heartbreaking seeing your husband dissected by the so-called experts and people who once knew him trying to put the pieces together of this person they claimed was a psychopath.
You wanted to believe Frank was innocent but the evidence kept piling up against him.
At the end of the day, you missed him dearly and there wasn’t a side or another, it was only his and yours and Lisa’s. And you were certain that behind all the secrecy, there was a good reason for his actions. You wished he had told you. Maybe he thought you were useless to him, or it was as dangerous as he said it was for you to be privy to all that, but being in the dark was just as bad. You’d have done anything for him if he had asked.
It was exhausting, you could barely keep it together. Most nights you didn’t sleep. And if it wasn’t for your commitment to Lisa you definitely would’ve lost your mind a long time ago. Taking care of her and making sure she was happy and healthy was the only thing that kept you going. She had the most beautiful face and smile, and you marveled at how much her eyes looked like Frank’s every time she opened them in the morning and you could even see it at night before she closed them.
Every evening before bedtime, you’d hold her up in your arms, showing her the picture of daddy in his dress blues sitting on the mantle cause you wanted her to remember him as the good man you knew, as that same guy you met five years who stood in line for ten minutes every day just so he could talk to you for one while he ordered his coffee, until one day he was brave enough to ask you out.
“Don’t believe anything you hear, okay? Daddy loves you,” you whispered in her little ear, staring at Frank’s portrait, as if she could understand anything that was going on.
“Dada,” that night she stuck out her arm and pressed her tiny finger against his nose over the glass.
“You like dada’s nose? It’s kinda funny, isn’t it?”
She stared at you and repeated dada.
“Don’t tell him I say that,” you smiled tiredly and glanced at the still portrait of Frank one more time, holding back tears, blindly hoping he’d come back some day.
In an old building near the river, Frank was watching the whole thing through the cameras he had David install in the house so he could keep an eye on you. The pace of his heart picked up, capturing his baby girl calling him dada behind a screen, and as much as he wanted to run back home and hold the both of you, it was nearly impossible. You were being watched, not just by him, and there wasn’t a safe way for him to contact you without arousing suspicion.
He could see how tired you were and how much you had endured. You were strong, he had no doubt, but he hated seeing you suffering, and if he could go back in time and change the course of his actions so he could be there with you, he abso-fucking-lutelywould.
Once Lisa was asleep and you turned in for the night, he laid back on the uncomfortable cot and closed his eyes, as all those beautiful memories he built up with you flashed behind them– from the moment he saw you behind the counter at the café, the first date, the first kiss, a couple of arguments in between, all the times he made love to you, countless of times speaking on the phone, your wedding, the day his baby girl was born…
If you had Lisa, he only had his treasured memories wrapped in an old song that started playing in his head that you first danced to on the second time you went out with him, and that was later the song that played at your wedding. It’s called– Baby, I’m yours.
Frank could hear the melody clearly and still feel the weight and touch of your hands when they linked around his neck on the dance floor when he invited you to dance. He couldn’t do the twist but he could definitely swing with you to a couple of slower songs like that one.
It was at the fundraiser at a VA center in Brooklyn where everyone was dressed like it was the 60’s. He would have never agreed to go to a themed party like that, no, but it was for a good cause and it also gave him the opportunity to ask you out on a second date. So, he bought the tickets, found himself a classic, nice suit like Don Draper wore in Mad Men, and traded his tactical boots for oxfords. Admittedly, he didn’t consider himself as handsome as Don, but you made him feel that way. He wasn’t a cheater either, so, all things considered, he could take pride in that but he was too humble to recognize his own good qualities and wasn’t going to start any time soon.
For all the times he called himself old-fashioned, that day he looked the part too. He showed up with a bouquet of flowers and tucked his elbow out so you could link your arm with his as you walked up to his truck. It was adorable how bashfully he looked at you and the way his lips curved up when you kissed him at the end of the night.
He wished for more moments like those. His life couldn’t end like this without getting to hold you and Lisa again. Could it?
That unbearable need pushed him to keep going, to settle his score, clear his name, just so he could return to you and make new memories.
But again, his plans were destroyed once more the night on the pier when he found who was working with Schoonover…
All his dreams of getting back to you blew up in that explosion. The puzzle was more complex than he initially thought, so he ultimately had to let you go for good and let the world, including you, believe that Frank Castle had died in that boat.
In his wake, he kept working in the shadows with his partner while watching you helplessly bury a burned body that wasn’t his. He had David hack and falsify all the appropriate DNA and dental records so nobody would glance at it twice and it worked.
The world finally left you alone after his death and when they stopped watching– he stopped too because you deserve to grieve and live in peace; and because every time he saw you on the screen it was like being run over by five cars in a row.
He’d still get an update or photo of Lisa from Curtis, who tried to convince him many times to let you know that he was alive, but he wouldn’t budge. He still believed you were safer not knowing.
Curt hated lying to you and after the funeral you only saw him a couple of times, briefly. First, you didn’t want to face people at all for a while, and second, you stayed focused on Lisa and your job, and that didn’t give you much time to do anything else.
Frank grew a beard, got a new identity for the time being, and kept his dead down, living like a ghost for ten months, hitting wall after wall of bullshit that kept him from finding out who was the real asshole behind Cerberus. That was the last piece he needed.
Being dead was easy, kind of. He didn’t have to worry anymore cause nobody knew what he was up to, and becoming Pete Castiglione gave him the freedom to come and go as he pleased, even during daylight, he’d just slip a cap on and call it a day.
What kept him up at night was abandoning the two of you. His whole damn word that he missed so much, it physically hurt. You were so close, barely a handful of miles away, that he could just be there in less than an hour if he wanted to. And that was it, he always wanted, alas the fear of putting you in peril was greater.
He’d stare at the picture of the two of you every night. Traced your features with his finger before succumbing to reading instead to keep his mind occupied. He had never read as much as he did during those months.
One day, he was getting a couple of books at this bookstore, cause he had already gone through Curt’s and David’s entire bookshelves, and he needed new material.
In there, he was taken aback at finding you with Lisa on your lap over the kid’s section. It seemed like some mommy and me kind of class, with mostly moms and a couple of dads, surrounded by babies and toddlers listening to a young girl and boy taking turns reading from a Dr. Seuss book.
Lisa had grown so much since he last saw her, obviously. And he couldn’t turn his gaze away, memorizing every detail of his baby girl from her hair held in two buns atop of her head, to her outfit of a flashy purple shirt with a dinosaur, jeans and sneakers. He was stunned by the way she freely gestured, expressing herself like he hadn’t seen before, laughing at the kids’ funny voices, and being nothing but inquisitive at her surroundings. She wouldn’t just stay seated on your lap and would stand several times up on her short legs, spin around, and go over to the front row with the other kids whenever she pleased.
His eyes welled up realizing how much he’d missed. She could walk now and he wasn’t there to see that happen. She was about to turn two and wouldn’t be there to witness that either out of his own stupidity.
He tried making himself invisible, peering behind a bookshelf so he could see you smiling and quietly sharing just a few words with one of the moms on your side.
His heart stopped when he saw Lisa’s little hand waving at him in one of her spins like she had recognized him, but she was just probably playing around. She couldn’t have. Could she? It’d be astonishing if she could.
When he looked at himself in the mirror, he could barely see Frank anymore behind all that hair. Maybe it was the eyes that gave him away, or the nose, probably. He figured you kept showing her pictures of him and telling stories no matter how painful it was; and he was right, you did.
His lips turned into a smile, and she smiled back widely, showing all her baby teeth before returning to mommy’s side.
When the class was over, he quickly slipped his ball cap back on and strode away towards the exit because if he didn’t, he might’ve ended up doing something he regretted.
“Bye-bye, dada,” you heard Lisa say to your surprise as you were putting her jacket on.
Your brow turned into a frown, glancing over your shoulder to see if she had seen someone that looked like Frank in the bookstore. That was the only explanation for it, you had never seen her say that other than when you put her to bed that she wished his picture good night.
She was too little to understand what death was so you saved that conversation for later, all she knew that even if she didn’t see daddy again, he’d always be with her. Maybe that was a little confusing too for an almost two year-old.
“You wanna see dada?”
She nodded and it broke your heart a little more, if it was possible, after everything you’ve been through.
You handed invitations to a few moms for Lisa’s birthday party that you planned for next week and chatted with them for a bit before heading home.
As you were finally starting to feel more like your old self, those few days left to her second birthday quickly changed that again. You couldn’t quite put your finger on it but you could tell someone was watching you, and it started to creep you out that Lisa kept babbling with her little vocabulary that she saw Frank more than once. First was at the bookstore, you thought it’d end there, but there was another time at the grocery store, and third time at the park.
It was like his ghost was haunting you. After all this time, only Frank would dare to show up right when you were pulling yourself out of the suffocating pit of sadness.
On the day of Lisa’s birthday, you found a package addressed to you on the porch but it was a present for her. Since there was no return address you opened it first, just for safety, unsticking carefully one side of the wrapping paper to find a box that had a stuffed green dinosaur inside, a cute card wishing her Happy Birthday, and a book titled ‘One Batch, Two Batch’ with a big bear and a baby bear holding a cookie on the cover. You knew she’d love that, so you put it back together as it came and hid it for later, wondering who could have sent that.
“I feel like I’m going crazy,” you told Curt after the party, fidgeting with Frank’s wedding band that was hanging on a chain around your neck.
He stuck around to catch up and helped you clean up cause you hadn’t seen him in a few months.
You had put Lisa to sleep already, which wasn’t hard after all the excitement of the day. She enjoyed every single second and went to sleep with that stuffed dino cradled to her chest from the mysterious sender.
“Yeah? What happened?”
“I don’t know, I just… she keeps talking about Frank and I feel like he’s watching over us or something.”
You saw Curt swallow as he towel dried the dishes.
“I am crazy, am I?” you said when he didn’t give you a reply.
“No, no… I was just thinking. That doesn’t sound crazy at all. You miss him, and so does she because you still tell her about him.”
“You think I should stop?”
“No, that’s not what I meant. I’m just saying it is normal to miss him. He’s a great part of your life.”
“Yeah, but I’ve always missed him. This is different. It feels like I’m back to the beginning when he left and I knew he was out there but I couldn’t see him, you know?”
Curt simply nodded.
He couldn’t keep up with the lie anymore and hated seeing you hurt because of Castle, which he was sure now he had been lurking around for what you’ve just had said. He wished Frank would’ve listened to him earlier. You needed to know the truth but it couldn’t come from him.
It was a few days later that you left Lisa with the babysitter in the afternoon and drove to St. John’s after getting a text from Curtis saying that he needed to talk to you alone, that it was important.
The sky was already dark, since days were shorter then, and as you pulled up at the end of the street you saw a few people coming out of the church, some gathering on the pavement to have a smoke and a few words before parting ways.
Curt was waiting for you outside when you got to the doors, a couple of guys were saying goodbye to him as you walked up the stairs.
“I need you to keep an open mind,” he started, treading carefully and motioning in the direction of the staircase that led to a basement.
“Okay.”
You didn’t know what to expect to be honest, but all the secrecy made you a little nervous. You started biting the inside of your cheek and tucked your hands in your jacket’s pockets, following him in silence down the stairs and across a long hallway until he came to a halt before reaching the end.
He glanced at you, tilting his head to the side, pointing to the room where his meetings were held.
“I need you to take a deep breath and go in. There’s someone who wants to talk to you.”
“What? Who?” Your brow narrowed.
“Trust me. You gotta see for yourself.”
There was no breath to take but an exasperated sigh that left your nose before taking a couple steps forwards and crossing that little threshold into this room where a tall man, all dressed in black, was leaned against the big, yellow tiled wall, with his head hanging down.
You looked back for a moment and Curt was already gone or out of sight, and for lack of words facing this stranger, you cleared your throat loudly in order to claim his attention.
What came next was probably the last thing that you thought of finding here. You’ve never been hit by a bullet but in that moment – as the mysterious man slowly lifted his head, you captured Frank’s features behind disheveled curls and a bushy beard – it felt just like one went straight through your heart.
“Hey, sweetheart,” he said and it sounded like gravel coming out of his mouth that made the skin at the back of your neck rise at the texture of his familiar voice.
The utter shock that took all over your body didn’t let you move or speak up. You wanted to scream but you could only stare, noticing your face quickly heating up, and it took you a moment to realize you were already crying.
Your heart pounded anxiously in your chest, begging you to take a breath.
“I know it’s a lot to take in, but I’m here,” he spoke again.
It felt like a cheap trick your mind was playing on you because that person in front of you couldn’t be Frank Castle. It was absolutely impossible. You buried his body, almost in disgrace after all the things they said he had done.
You blinked once, and twice more, as he moved closer, slowly presenting himself more and more as the man that once you recognized as your husband.
He was barely standing two feet away when you finally let a shaky breath fall between your lips that was held beneath that huge knot in your throat. And when his mouth opened again to say he was sorry you used both hands to push him back with all the force you could muster, which wasn’t much to be honest.
Frank merely swayed, and you pushed him again, harder, and he let you, and a third one.
“Let it out, sweetheart.”
On the fourth push, you started sobbing uncontrollably and his arms finally surrounded you, holding you tight against his chest.
“Shh, shh. It’s okay.”
“I hate you,” you repeated thickly a few times, falling apart against his hoodie, balling the fabric in your hands.
“I know, I know… I’m sorry.”
You felt his lips pressed on your head and a hand soothing up and down your back. He kept you like that until your heart settled at a normal pace and there weren’t more tears to shed, at least for now.
With a little hesitation, you pulled your head back to take a good look at him again, calmer this time.
Locking eyes with him, you brought your hands up and framed his face, rubbing your thumbs on the bags of his eyes that were tear-soaked just as yours.
“You coming home?” Of all the questions you could have asked, that was the only one that mattered to you.
“I can’t. It’s not safe,” his gaze fell low.
“Will it ever be?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re an asshole, you know that?” He nodded in your hands and you released his face, turning your back on him in frustration, “you lied to me and left me alone to deal with all this. I’ve mourned you… and for what? You should’ve stayed dead.”
You didn’t mean that but emotions got the best out of you in that moment.
“Please, Frank. I miss you,” you begged right after, letting out a sob.
“I wish I could, baby. I wanna tell you everything and go home with you and Lisa, but there are still people out there that would hurt you if they knew I was alive.”
“Then, tell me what to do, I’ll help you. Whatever you need,” you wiped your face and shifted on your boots again to face him.
“You can’t. One of us has to take care of her, and I’m already dead.”
“You let her see you, didn’t you?”
“I just…” his lips twitched nervously, “I saw her at the bookstore and she smiled at me and waved. And I had to see that again. I tried to stay away but she’s just…”
“She’s perfect and misses you too,” you finished his sentence, fitting your hands on either side of his neck, capturing the warmth of his skin, “come by the house later at night, even if it’s just for a little bit, just to hold her for a while.”
“I wanna. I really do but if anyone catches a whiff that I’m around…”
“Nobody will. I promise,” you whispered and brought your fingers up to move his curls away from his forehead, “look at you… you look so different, I could barely recognize you.”
“Dunno know how she did.”
“She’s smart for a two year old,” you laughed softly, petting his beard next.
“She got that from you.”
“I don’t know about that,” you sighted as Frank got hold of one of your hands and brought your palm up to his lips.
A tap on the doorframe interrupted the moment and you glanced over your shoulder to see Curt looking apologetic for having to cut your time short.
“Everything good with you two? I need to close up.”
You both nodded.
“Thanks Curt.”
He was a saint. Whatever he did to convince Frank to show up here to see you, it mustn’t have been easy.
Frank rode with you and explained everything on the way back home, every single detail without overstating or sugarcoating anything, and you listened quietly without judgment. You always knew he had his reasons and now they were all out in the open, and you didn’t know how to process all that in that short time frame. You couldn’t get behind all of it and wished he had found another way, but you couldn’t resent him either.
“Do you still love me after all that?” he asked once you were in the garage.
“Frank,” you stated his name as if it wasn’t obvious already that you’d never stop no matter what. “Until the end of time.”
It was a cheesy line from that song you both loved so much.
“Until the stars fall from the sky?”
“Until I die,” you leaned closer and pressed your lips chastely against his, and couldn’t help but smile at the prickling of his facial hair.
Then, he cupped your face so tender as his forehead touched yours, staying there a moment in silence, gathering some much needed courage to face your baby girl.
You went into the house first and when the sitter was gone he came in through the back door.
Lisa was soundly asleep, sucking on her pacifier, in her toddler bed that was converted from her former crib. That same crib Frank built three days before she was born because he got home just in time to see that happen. Then, she spent about three months sleeping in a bassinet next to your bed afterwards anyway. There was no rush you told him, but he spent a day just putting all that together cause he needed something to do.
You switched the night light on that turned the room into soft blues and yellows, and projected stars and moons across the ceiling as Frank took a seat in the rocking chair.
You carefully picked up Lisa and laid her on her tummy across Frank’s chest. She stirred up a little but stayed comfortably curled in daddy’s embrace without fussing too much, even tucked her arm underneath his beard.
Your heart swelled watching them both and you propped yourself on the arm of the chair, tucking your legs over his lap and hugging his neck.
Hey guys, I’ve decided to take a tiny break from trying to get through our currently packed inbox and write something a little more self-indulgent for myself. Thought a little bit about keeping it strictly g/t, but decided to keep everyone at their natural heights to make physical comfort a little easier to write. This post does not mean this blog will be straying far from g/t :^)
Gender is ambiguous as per usual! Fluff, cuddling, just the sweet stuff following a little angst. The reader is sad in this story, but I’ve kept out mentions or implications of depression etc. to a minimum. There’s some harsh language as this is Frank we’re talking about after all.
Once again not proofread!
~ 1.3k words, short n sweet
…
To say your day was going badly would be a terrible, terrible understatement. When you’d gotten out of bed this morning, things had been like any other day. Frank had already left the house; he woke up much earlier than you did, and as a result you usually only saw him if he came home the following night.
You’d never really found yourself wishing that he wouldn’t end up back tonight. On occasion he didn’t, be it because he got caught up, or was too tired to drive home. You didn’t want him back tonight not because you wanted to be alone, but because you were worried. What would he think if he saw you like this? Surely, it was a problem he really wouldn’t want to deal with.
Only a few hours ago you’d shut the door to your bedroom, and you’d been lying beneath your thick, weighted blanket since. Long enough that it no longer really felt very comfortable, more so suffocating and invasive. In your state, you didn’t care very much. Your eyes were still a little puffy, and it felt as if the melancholy expression pasted on your face was as happy as you could muster. You kept telling yourself the worst of it had passed, but a little knot of unreleased emotion swirled in your chest, reminding you otherwise.
Breath shivering a little in your exhale you shrank into your blankets at the sound of the door opening, and shutting just a few moments later. Your grip around your blankets tightened a little. Most of you wanted nothing more than to get out of bed and seek him out immediately, but some selfless part of you reminded you he wouldn’t want to put up with something like this. Feeling emotion rise in your throat you forcefully swallow, moving so your back would face the door to your room, and tucking the blankets higher still.
Frank had gone to his own room to fetch clothes, a towel, and was showering by the sounds of it. Again, the urge to wait for him, just be with someone in your state swept over you again. For the second time, you pushed it back, and closed your eyes a little to shut out the sounds of Frank cleaning himself up, and maybe, just maybe, sleep.
A little knock on your door made this plan turn sour in an instant. You knew who it was, of course. There was nobody else it could be, after all; but it didn’t take much to remind yourself why you didn’t want him around just about now.
“Kid?”
His voice almost startled you despite you having known he’d been there. Silence blanketed the room, only broken by the sound of the door shutting.
Whether or not he’d left or come in and shut the door wasn’t a mystery for long as the floor creaked beneath his weight, and his little sigh of relief to confirm you were in bed. Your eyes fluttered shut; you didn’t really want him to know you were awake, or so you told yourself.
“Hey,” his voice came again, more soft spoken than before. Of course he could tell you were awake; you practically jolted at the feeling of his hand against your back. He murmured something inaudible in response to that, carefully rolling you to your back as to check your face.
His gaze immediately softened a little. You looked positively miserable, hair disheveled and your eyes a little puffy. “Hey…” he said again more quietly still, seating himself on the edge of the bed beside you. “You alright?”
To his surprise and yours you found it in you to push your blanket back, arms finding their way around him in a few heartbeats of him being close. It was a relief you didn’t know you needed; he was solid, warm, real. Real and quickly returning your embrace, his arms wrapping you up. He was a little taller than you, and definitely broader; that only made it much easier to curl up against him. For a few moments you only wanted to vanish against him, holding to him like a lifeline. He only returned it, quiet as he worked out just exactly what was up.
“Hey. shh, shh,” his voice rumbled against you lowly with your head on his chest, “I gotcha. I gotcha. It’s me, you’re okay,” he continued, lifting his legs into your bed and tucking you on to himself properly. Pushing up your pillow he leaned back, making himself more comfortable. “You’re alright kid. Take the time you need…”
You took his offer of time gladly, face buried in his chest as you tucked up your legs. He still smelled like your body wash, you noticed. He must’ve used it only moments ago in the shower. His heart beat rhythmically below your head, lulling you into a sense of security that was only supported by his arms tightening around you, keeping you close as he could.
“What went down?” he asked lowly. Frank wasn’t much of a talker; his question was a little surprising as it broke the silence. At the thought of the answer you felt your throat tighten again a little bit, quickly hiding your face in his chest once more so as to not reveal the hot tears that threatened to break free.
“Nothing important,” you replied, hands tightening around the fabric of his shirt lightly. “Just…”
“Just one of those days?” he finished for you, resting his lips on the top of your head. “S’alright sweetheart. You don’t need to get into it. Next time you come to me, okay?” You stayed still, giving him no sign that you’d understood. One of his arms left your frame as he lifted your chin gently, prompting you to look up at him. “Come to me next time, alright?”
“I-I dunno, Frank,” you stammered back, eyes a little rounded but dropping. “I…I didn’t want to do this in the first place. I don’t want to drag you into all my issues, y-you know. I feel bad about it, and…” with a rapid breath out you nuzzled yourself into him. He’d used his arm to pull the blankets up above the two of you before it returned to its original position wrapped tightly around you.
“Hey, listen,” he spoke up, “I drag all my shit to your door every time I come home, you know that? This is the very least I can do, y’know. You’re alright, it’s alright. Come to me when this happens. If you hide from this sort of shit it’ll only build up.” When you nodded he did too, more to himself than you. Though you’d expected him to get up after his little pep-talk, it seemed like his plans involved anything but. You could feel him shifting below you even with your eyes shut, getting more comfortable in your bed.
“I-I know, but,” you stammered, your chest tightening a little, “it’s just- I-I dunno, this isn’t your kind of thing. You‘re…o-oh,” you ended up cutting yourself up, curling yourself up more tightly against him, that knot of emotion in your chest bursting before you could stop it. Buried in him you felt it all come out, quiet sobs shaking your body.
In silence he shut his eyes, hand stroking up and down your back to soothe you. Frank hummed a single note, rocking himself the smallest amount in bed. “Hey, shh…there you go, let it out,” he encouraged, “You’re good, you’re okay. I’m going to take care of you, alright?” he leaned back a little more, resting his head more comfortably on your pillow. While normally he’d go to sleep in a separate bed, it looked like tonight he would stay with you.
How long it really was that you lay curled to Frank was a mystery to you. Neither of you seemed to be in any rush, and after having exerted yourself nothing felt more appealing than sleep. Frank was much warmer than your mattress was, and definitely more comfortable. His arms around you felt infinitely better than the weighted blanket from earlier had. It didn’t feel like very long before you were asleep, hardly aware of it as it came.
