“ you got some balls on you, brother. ” rick

"Always did have more balls than brains," a statement that had defined and followed Frank from the schoolyard to the service and all the way back home again. The kind of stupidity that LOOKED like courage had been his calling card as a youth, running around from Bay Ridge to Bed-Stuy, taking lessons from Sal and always staying overly concerned with reputation and image. He'd been plotting on being a different kind of soldier back then and it had mattered never to be caught flinching— never to hesitate before leaping.

BOLD AS BRASS was the nicer way of putting it. The way he'd wink at girls smack in the middle of mass when they were sitting with their fathers and brothers, the way he had no qualms letting it be said that he was Sal's own blood instead of Mario's, his swagger, his attitude, his SHAMELESSNESS.

Turns out... Frank Castle never really did outgrow most of it.

If anything he just refined it, honed it's edge and made it work for him— like a weapon. It became that mutable demeanor of his; the eerie calm he wore when better men would be sweating. He made people sloppy with it, enraging them, offending their sensibilities until they were the ones fucking up and giving him openings to exploit and conquer them with. And that? Well, that just kept him as cocky as his stupid fourteen year old self had been At least now he had the skills to back it up; the kind of skills that put four scumbag bodies at his feet even though he'd had nothing but his ka-bar to his name.

Had it been stupid to bait them into attacking him? Probably. Did he get the job done though? Damn right. Now he's just pleased he's managed to impress.

Tell us about a small, passing relationship your muse has with someone in their everyday life. Are they on a first name basis with their barista? What about the busdriver?

Frankieboy! — as he is so often called in the neighborhood he grows up in, knows EVERYBODY. NEW YORK CITY might be a big sprawling metropolis of some eight million souls, but his little slice of BAYSIDE, QUEENS is so much smaller than that. It's the kind of place where your neighbor's house literally touches your own sometimes and there's no such things as walls thick enough to muffle loud Italian voices and families.

He knows the butcher his mother favors by name, like he knows the names of the priests at The Sacred Heart of Jesus where his ears get pulled on the regular. He knows them and they know him in return, the surprisingly late in life baby given to the Castigliones from 27th St.

He calls them all by name or nickname when the relationship is informal enough to allow it, even for a teen like himself, or by honorific and surname when respect demands it. Days are filled with quick greetings called out and given with a nod or a wave. "Mornin', Big Paul! — Hey, Nico!" There are juniors and seniors and ma'am's and Frankie does his duty by them all, nodding his hellos or allowing his cheeks to be kissed or pinched-- or worse, having his gelled hair ruffled and fucked up.

Where he comes from? There are no such things as strangers; be they paper boys, corner shop workers, tokenbooth people, delivery van drivers, or beyond. If you existed within his neighborhood someone was bound to ask why and who you were and then word would get out about it and you wouldn't be a stranger anymore.

Frank doesn't come into more of the traditional Mind Your Business way of life that all New Yorkers cleave to until he's back from Basic. By then though, the amount of time he spends in Queens is minimal, with the bulk of his free time actually goings to Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. There he only sometimes requires a name or introduction. People are reminded or introduced that he's Sal's boy!

In that neck of the woods Frank maintains a plethora of passing relationships formed by the various errands he runs for his family of choice-- or the ones he escorts Eve to and from. Because of his association with them those passing relationships see him almost always on his best behavior. He's polite-- a generous tipper when it's called for, patient when it comes to waiting on something, and generally the opposite of troublesome. He's always got a chuckle for the same five recycled jokes told at the Post Office window by the old timer who works it and hands him his packages-- he always leaves promising to buy some more shit so he can come back sooner. He's like that at the dry cleaner's, the bread baker's, and the local florist where he keeps Sal's account current and updated so that Mrs. Scozzari is never bored by their deliveries.

He's an easy-going guy with people who have no cause to trip his temper and he remembers everyone who comes across him twice, just in case they ever be an important cog in something greater.

Pete Castiglione on the other hand exists purposefully in a way he hopes is forgettable. This is something in which he's been trained, and yet that even earlier childhood rearing trumps the subterfuge later taught to him in the service. On security camera he may just be another scruffy shadow of a shambling man, but in person he's the type of guy who play-flirts with old waitresses that greet him with coffee pots at the diners he frequents. His voice is a rasping growl of a thing that leaves an impression-- he shouldn't use it so much, but he's always got a joke in his pocket to lighten moods and let people go off of something other than his intimidating build and harsh appearance. He knows he looks like a threat but he NEEDS people to be calm.

He still knows people by their names even if they know him as Pete-- and try as he might to make things different, to move through the world like a ghost, he's still out here befriending the pet shop owners who sell him kibble and the corner-store dames who make the only coffee left in the city that costs less than a dollar. He lives in mortal peril that he's painting targets on them all but sometimes there's just no teaching an old dog new tricks.

❝I’m headed to Europe t'night,wan ask if you’d come." Everyone, even the Punisher, needed to be able to just breathe, and with a private plane, there's no TSA to worry about. "Goin' t' present a paper an' Geneva's gorgeous dis time of year. Every kine paid for. An' if I still need make you an argument, consider yaself my personal security. I could even pay you. Wha'ya say Iniki?"

"Private security?" That detail makes him scoff what only those closest to him would know was a laugh-- just a short exhale through the nose that hardly sounded of merriment and YET. . . That is how one Frank Castle most often expresses his amusement with any given thing. "Wasn't ever my gig."

He's been a SPOTTER, a SHOOTER, and a half dozen other things in between as necessitated by the overstaffed and yet hilariously undersupplied USMC; mechanic, technician, ditch digger and literal human TENT POLE. And yet, his superiors in their infinite wisdom, had seldom selected him for escort duty when that time came around. It definitely brings to mind though the one they did haul off most often to play tour guide in shining uniform.

"Had a brother who did that-- You'd have liked him. Made a whole-- a whole uh, company out of it." ANVIL. He assumes because HAMMER was already taken by that dope rival of Stark's, with his janky discount tech for sale. Maybe it'd been Billy's way of remixing the old saying THE BUCK STOPS HERE. He'd been a survivor of incompetence and cut corners-- maybe he'd been stepping up to the plate to show the private military contractor game how it SHOULD be done. ANVIL, the place where the HAMMER stops.

GOD-- he was so fucking PROUD of him, even now, way too late for it-- pointless and useless given the way it all ended. ANVIL is no more, blown to ASHES by it's own founder when he'd gone to ground. But there'd been no time before! No time at all to be proud of Billy and his fancy suits and nice overpriced car. Frank had Homeland chasing his tail, Micro whining in his ear and both hands full of bullshit he thought he'd been DONE with. Still, it had warmed his chest to see Billy out on that pier in his slick leather jacket, so proud of his damn self when he said 'I GOT A COMPANY NOW'.

Even now-- light-years after betrayal, discovery, revenge and REVERSAL, Frank is STILL proud of that orphan kid from ALBANY who took every inch given to him and turned it into a MILE of upward climb. He fucking deserved it-- right up until he didn't.

"I'll go-- yeah. I-I'll go with ya." Frank rises from the warm submersion of memory and nods his consent to the mission. Hell-- he's even got a good passport just going to waste in the glove of his van; shiny and unused payment for keeping his lip buttoned about the CIA's little clusterfuck on home soil. It'd be good to put it to use and get some distance from his GHOSTS.

“  who  did  this  to  you  ?  ” (from lisa???)

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Of all the things he could have prepared for— the endless possibilities he DOES prepare for nightly when he dons the skull and goes out to do what he does. . . NOTHING could have made him prepare himself for THIS. Not this. A face that has been smudged by time, but is still familiar enough to be recognizable from his dreams and nightmares alike. It isn't possible for his babygirl to be here in one of the side-alleys off Arthur Avenue's main drag, looking him over and cradling his face in her gentle hands. Not unless it really truly is his time to and this is who God has sent to guide him home. A most unexpected kindness to a man of such lapsed and imperfect faith. Still it pains him that she should see him this way— shames him, even.

How could he know that she is not a divine messenger as much as she is a student of Fordham University— it's campus barely half a neighborhood away from where this particular mission had brought him. The last he knew of her was the horror of the carousel before a bullet caught him in the skull and rendered him senseless. Rawlins, Schoonover, they conspired afterwards to clean up everything they considered a loose end. Including taking out the corrupt DA before she could confess every detai of her crimes against him. Such as taking a minor and shuffling them immediately into witpro before giving her still surviving parent a chance to emerge from his coma. The possibility that she is real begins to sink in slowly only because the darkness doesn't come for him— neither does some light. There's only her, urging him to his feet if he can get to them, to explain what has happened to him, who has done this. So he rises, stumbling more from disbelief than his injuries, and not for the first time lets Lisa be the one to hold him up.

"Doesn't matter, babygirl. They're not comin' back."

“ who did this to you?”

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One of these days. . . One of these days he's gonna get his hands on Dinah Madani and he's gonna ferry her ass right straight to Amy's door in Florida for that signature girl-downing move of hers. She's earned it with how much she loves to flake on his ass, even though he never fails to pick up HER calls. First she left him dangling in that sheriff's station in Ohio until she needed him to deal with Billy— now he takes a knife in her service over her bad man with a big target, and yet again. . . Where is she? Not answering the number he has for her, that's for sure. She's left him with little option than to try tracking her down at one of her places of work.

He must lose time and consciousness both to suddenly wake to the question, careful but efficient hands pressing around the edges of his wounds to assess the state of them. Blonde lady. Pretty. Not a familiar face, though. If she's one of Dinah's, Frank doesn't know it. Not with any kind of certainty. She could be anything from a colleague to a janitor come to empty the wastebasket and finding him ready for the dumpster instead.

"This? Oh this— this was a real nice man. Real nice. Yeah. Can't ya tell?" The hurt makes him sarcastic, words delivered through a pained scowl, all that checking on him making him draw backwards as much as he can. What is he the Jesus to her Thomas? There's only so much he take of her pressing fingers in his wounds, feeling like she's playing Operation with him sans the anesthetic. Just mean. She could at least let him bleed out the nice and painless way.

"Where's Madani?"

who did this to you ?

marine down! || no longer accepting

"This? Oh— this was a pal'a yours." Like a giddy schoolboy who has been waiting all day to set up his much practiced lines, Frank is all smiles and glinting eyes at Beth. Nevermind the bruises quickly setting in, or the torn open skin that she so often mends and mends and mends only for it to be rebrutalized on knuckles and teeth and worse. These things don't seem to touch him much in the moment, in spite of the fact that he's yet again helping himself to her clinic's services; to HER services, knowing he needs the patching up before a headline soon tells the world that he went down at the hands of some nasty bacteria instead of in a gunfight.

To know Beth is to know that she loves all things related to the ocean. Will she love the man who has put him in this sorry state? No, probably not, but Frank's hoping to get at least ONE snerk from her on account of his chosen moniker. He just waits for her curiosity to bite— for the inevitable question of what 'pal' she could ever have that would put a violent hand on him and when it comes mutters the name with half a grin. "Barracuda."

The momentary confusion quickly followed by her incredulity has Frank laughing himself into pain, bruised ribs making their complaints known as he curls on himself and tries to keep it together. "What— you on't like that? I-I-I thought he might be some schoolmate'a yours, y'know? Prom king of your class. May-maybe he went to a different SCHOOL." Laughing turns to wincing but there's no helping it. It's not his fault that gangsters have started taking the oddest of names for themselves. SHIT, at least Hammerhead makes a sort of sense what with the steel plate in his skull. But Barracuda? He's just some mook up from Florida— if he's got a reason behind his nom de guerre, Frank doesn't know it, he just exploits on a bet to make Beth question whether or not he fell into an aquarium tank with a particularly ornery fish.

“Who did this to you?”

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The same thing that had stayed Frank's hand with Poloznev had done it againg with John— that damning mention of their kids in what should have been their final moments. Innocents. Little people he had no right to inflict his bullshit on, even if their parents were everything the opposite. He'd been that chain link once and his own children had paid the ultimate price for his work. They didn't lose a finger to some mobster trying to scare him, or get roughed up in a dark room until he burst in for the rescue. No, they just died hard and ugly and most likely not nearly as fast as he sometimes prays. So when he took on the mission of punishing those involved? He hadn't cared. He mowed down fathers, brothers, uncles— he put them on hooks or wired them to steel chairs until he got what he needed from them and then he ended them and he didn't lose a wink of sleep of anyone that might have been waiting for them back in whatever hole they called home.

That had changed with the Irish kid at his trial. His first real brush with one of the orphans Red had been talking about on rooftops— widows and orphans created by his own personal war, by bullets he set flying in the direction of men they depended on. And he found out that he wasn't as hard to it as previously believed. What could he do then, if not toss aside the heavy metal pressurized tank he'd been beating the other man half to death with and help get him back on his own two feet? They traded stories between wheezes and somehow slumped together in just the right configuration to keep holding the other one up.

So it had become Frank's turn to darken Simon's door for an assist— if only because it was his last bridge left unburnt. Neither he nor Pilgrim could hit a hospital without them both ending up in cuffs or worse, so it was to the mercy of friends they had to turn. John had none. Frank had one left. So they staggered, stumbled and bled their way there, and the whole time. . . it never occurred to Frank that his good friend might not be home knitting doilies for his hope chest; that he might be out getting a drink or finding company or doing anything else he wanted with his life and his freedom. So he laughs when the door goes unanswered and hears John do the same before they both end up just sitting on the floor in front of it. Nowhere else to go but heaven or hell if they just stay put long enough.

It isn't intentional but Frank dozes off into unconsciousness at some point— waking only when Simon's gloved hands are patting his cheeks roughly enough to be called a slap and putting a murky underwater question to him.

"Who's it look like, Riley? He's— he's fuckin' sittin' right there."

“  who  did  this  to  you  ?  ”

marine down! || no longer accepting

Oh. So NOW she understood the desperation of wanting a name and some details to put to such an affront? It makes Frank scoff a sarcastic laugh even as he lets her manhandle him and take a look at his battered face. It's no worse than what he what he got for his troubles chasing down the Blacksmith with her. It's just part and parcel of what he does. Not every job is an easy sniper gig. Sometimes he gets got back. Frank's accepted that eventuality along with the mission and he's got no real complaints. None except the one about the hypocrisy between them. Shamelessly, he calls her on it.

"Why? You gon' do somethin' about it with that .380 in your purse? Show 'em your rodeo skills?" Karen gets got too sometimes, kicking as many hornets nests as she does from her pretty little desk at The Bulletin's office. Frank knows well the feeling of coming to check on her only to find her painted in the same shades of black, blue and purple. If it were up to him, he'd make examples out of the people who dared just to drive home the point of how bad an idea it is. It won't stop the truly determined, but it'll deter enough of the morons who think a little smacking around will scare her off to give HIM some peace of mind. Peace of mind that she stubbornly denies him by keeping details to herself, sparing the people who hurt her from his infamous retribution and punishment. As if any more blood on his already soaked hands would make an inch of difference.

"You first, Page. Huh? Who put hands on you that night I found you in your apartment with a black eye and a busted lip?" It's just the pain of having gotten his skull rung making him petty, but there's no taking back the challenge now. He's already spit it at her feet— too late for some Tylenol and a good nap to fix. Faintly in the back of his head he hear's a boxing bell ring twice and announce round two and he braces himself all over again.

“ who did this to you?”

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"It was a guy. Just-just the one." Special delivered right to him courtesy of the crime family he was currently making things rough for; big and strong and packing a punch that made the memory of John Pilgrim's brutal hits feel like tickles. "Big guy. Fists like trains." Vaguely he tries to motion at a height that towers over his own impressive stature, details pouring out of him sluggisly despite the deeply trained habit to answer questions put to him quickly and precisely. In the air between them he tries paint a picture of a man not just taller than him but broader too, built almost unnaturally. Frank doesn't realize he might as well be miming a cloud. "Might'a been an enhanced."

His experience with them is nearly nil— so if there's a way to tell whether or not an opponent is a mutant anything else along those lines, he doesn't know it. There's also the fact that some of the intel he has on the guy would be of no use to this lady, medically speaking. So he tries to stick to the relevant things. "Some'a this is from a sink he ripped outta the wall. The rest is just— tradin' hands and him bouncin' me off every surface that he could." Scarily fast for a man of that size, contributing to Frank's wondering if there was more to him than just genetics and a workout routine action stars would pay bank for. He knows beatings— hell, he's government trained to withstand torture, but this was something else. Bad enough that rather than try to sleep it off he'd scrambled his ass to the much rumored location of The Clinic. One of the city's truly neutral zones where aid was promised to those who needed it. Rarely has he felt that need more than now.

"Pretty sure I swallowed a tooth, but I figure that'll come out on it's own. Could use something antibiotic for the open wounds though— I don't wanna think about where those fists have been."

"who did this to you?"

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"Couple'a assholes wanted my wallet." Life in the city is just like that sometimes. Or so Frank abuses the half-myth, half-truth. Petty crime is way down in New York, courtesy of the uneasy joint efforts of the law and the good guys on the other side of the law who pitch in too. Still, it happens just enough to be believable as an excuse for the calling card of his own night work painted all over his face. "I ain't feel like cancellin' all my cards an' shit. Go to the DMV for new ID? Fuck that. I'd rather trade blows. So we went a few rounds."

As proof of his victory, Frank goes digging in his back pocket and pulls out said wallet to flash at Alex with a rogueish grin. "Worth it. I fuckin' hate goin' to the DMV." Just like that he tucks it away again, satisfied that he's successfully sold his story to the poor neighbor lady who probably had a heart attack just innocently turning a corner only to run into his ass looking all tuned up and shit. "Just gonna head inside now, put some ice on this shit, stop bleedin' all over the hallway before they fine me for it or somethin'. You watch yourself, yeah?"

❝ If you want, you’re welcome to use my machine. Might be cheaper than the one in the basement. ❞

meet your new neighbor Mr. Smith

She'd said her name was Alex over a pile of junk mail not too long ago— and had said the occasional hello since, whenever they crossed paths coming or going from the building they both rented in. Even so, it's precious little interaction for her to be making so generous an offer to a man she barely knows; or so Frank thinks. Maybe he's been spending a little too much time taking notes while Dateline and 20/20 play on the t.v., carving away at what little faith in humanity existed within him still. She's just being neighborly, he reminds himself, even as there's an impulse within to scare her straight off such behavior. It's too easy to exploit. It could end so poorly. It so often does.

"Nah— I'm hittin' the laundromat instead. Too many loads, y'know?" The filled bag tossed over his shoulder is given a careful shrug. It's packed to pass cursory inspection, but one can never be too cautious with weaponry. "S'gonna take me all night to dry— and then some to fold." The last of it he delivers with a tiny little chuckle, letting his expression go sheepish for the shame of piled up laundry too long unattended. How like a man to put off his chores to the breaking point— it's so easy to make an alibi out of the expected and he's such an old hand with it.

"Thanks though— 'preciate it. Maybe next time when it's not all sheets and towels and shit."

20/MF/Beth

spin the wheel fucc the frank || no longer accepting

"Yeah?" Frank is reduced to nothing more than a man utterly stunned. He is awestruck. AMAZED. Just completely enthralled by the woman above him— who has by her own will put him on his back and is taking her pleasure from him just as she wants and apparently needs it. So he lays back and watches her go at it, his hands loosely on the petite frame of her hips— not there to guide her speed or rhythm, or even influence it, just holding on. Perhaps for dear life, even.

Beth's eyes are sea and land both, jade seas that reflect her temperament broken up by islands of hazel; together an enthralling feature that brings to mind in whole new ways her talk of being a witch. He FEELS bewitched— stupidly in love with her the way that love felt when he was seventeen and new to the reality of it. How deep it went, down down down to the very bones— how it made everything else pale in comparison, could just make the whole world melt and fade away like it does now; until there is only him and her. Him and her eyes and that one strand of hair that has fallen so perfectly across her face and moves with her every hungry bounce.

Frank knows there's precious little he wouldn't do for this woman. He's a man bloodied already, a finely tuned machine, a weapon built for war. Accordingly he'd topple whole empires for her if she asked him to, if she gave him just one reason that sounded good enough to take. He'd burn whole swaths of the world— and even thinking it he knows she would never desire it. Not literally. She cares too much for every innocent life, especially the green ones. But it doesn't change the feeling of knowing that he would. For her.

In the greater scheme of things, giving up his oh so careful hold on the reins in the bedroom is nothing by comparison. He lets her remind him that she is so much more than something sacred and precious and fragile— she is flesh and blood and filled with all the needs that come with those, and he's lucky enough to be the man she wants those needs filled by. Though, given the way she's put her point across? He may well pretend to forget a few more dozen times just to end up right back here again, mesmerized by the way she moves, by the breathy little sounds she makes each time he bottoms out in her, by the way her one hand skitters over his shoulder and chest and occasionally digs in with the tiniest bit of bite. He'd like nothing better than repeating the lesson again and again and watching the way she throws her head back when she's vocalizing her ramping pleasure— the way she loses herself to it to a soundtrack of skin hitting and sticking just the tiniest bit; both of them sweating in the heat they generate together, her slick dripping all down his cock and smeared into his groin, contributing to the absolutely filthy chorus of their bodies.

Frank waits for his cues in the changing of the tides, holding still right where she wants him until she gets most of the way there, then taking over and working her through with with the upwards surging of his hips— still keeping her steady rhythm she's set, just carrying it on for her as she begins to fall apart to it and only stopping when she's done.

At least for now.

xx

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Lucky number 9 (for funsies if you want!)

spin the wheel fucc the frank || no longer accepting

Oh he has had a pleasurable time learning Karen— learning her body, her likes, her dislikes and just how much she can take. Months now they've been doing this; living a secret life together in her midtown apartment, sneaking around Murdock and anyone else who would be troubled to know that the rumors of Frank's death are yet again great exaggerations. What do they know or understand of the needs and wants Frank and Karen fulfill for each other? Who are they to judge?

It isn't any of their business what they do when alone behind closed doors— though it occasionally becomes the business of her neighbors when neither doors nor walls nor even ceiling are thick enough to muffle the more intense sounds of their passion. Sometimes a body just needs a good hard reset and Frank knows how to give it to her now; knows just how to fuck her until she's ragdoll limp with pleasure and weak from it. More importantly, he knows to keep going; that she gets a thrill from the way he can just pick her up and move her at will as if she weighs nothing to him— that it excites her and quickens her all over again feeling herself used this way, held aloft midair and plunged into hungrily with little to no ability to do a damn thing about it.

Frank's learned how to guide her through and past the bittersweet pangs of overstimulation to that place where he can build her up one more time, one last time, before they are done. So he does. Draws her up against the wall of his body and holds her there, breathing in the scent of her hair care stirred up by the tossing of her head, groaning his own quickly cresting pleasure in her ear. He's so damn close himself, hips pumping wildly with his pent-up need, hands slippery with sweat and yet tight in their grip— on the move to play with her breasts, pinching at her nipples gently, tugging just a little. He listens for that tell-tale hiss of hers, feels her clench and flutter around his cock; plays her body until they're both riding the same wave of desperation, panting with it, their ears filled with the sounds of slick thrusts, wet snaps of flesh on flesh, and the creak of the floor beneath Frank's firmly planted feet.

"Fuck, Kar'... feel what y'do to me? Huh? Gonna make me come all in that pretty pussy of yours."

xx

"That's uh, that's a nice radio y'got there, man. S'what the kids are into these days, huh? Whaddya— whaddya call it, uh— vintagecore."

Vintagecore?? Did he have that right? No— he's got that sense tickling at the back of his neck that Lisa would be snickering behind her cupped hand if she'd heard him, putting that fond look of disbelief on Maria's face; their eternal exasperation with how behind the times he could get while away. Shit, he must'a picked it up somewhere but he'll be damned if he can remember where or why— let alone puzzle out why the hell it was what tripped out of his mouth except that he had to say SOMETHING to the guy behind the opened door. Eyes landed on radio, bullshit emerged.

Now left hand rises, pastry box held in it and vaguely wagged at the under the table medic, it's clear cellophane window giving him a glimpse at the dozen donuts within. "Sorry— thought I'd uh, y'know, bring you this." A small taste of gratitude for a favor now owed to a man whose name he didn't even know. Bill had scraped him off the concrete dazed, bleeding, his hearing and sight shorting out and flickering back intermittently. Frank had gathered he was being taken somewhere— maybe to his death, probably to his burial, but there'd been no fight left in him; no strength with which to get away. Instead he'd wound up traveling here, the metal numbers on the door sticking in his battered memory of that night, neatly slotted alongside the route he'd taken out of this neighborhood and back to his own when he could stand for longer than ten seconds at a time— easy enough to retrace with a peace offering.

"It is not that I understand what it is like to have lost it all. It is that I have lost it all." Sometimes, that loss has even included herself. The Amazon is not so pure as to have not known the flames of wrath. "But I still believe love is how we save the world. It is a decision we all have to make." She tilts her head, and her face is so, so tired. Because the truth is she knows how impossible it is for some, to chose love. It feels like a losing game, betting it all on love. Maybe it is.

It''s a neat trick that nearly makes him go on the offensive; her sudden silent appearance there in his one-man base of temporary operations. Unexpected movement in his peripheral is usually reason enough to squeeze a trigger— but Frank's not quite as reckless as he is often painted to be. True, he did swing around and point his barrel right at her armored center, but it had lasted only a moment before he was relaxing out of that ready stance and setting aside the matte black rifle.

He knows who she is.

And yes, some measure of his ease and confidence does come from the fact that he is still armed enough to put up a fight should he need to, but he has no real intention of it. If he's to be arrested— detained, whatever it is that her kind of hero do, he'll go with as little disrespect as he can inflict on her person as possible. It won't be his first time caught, after all. He might make a break for it, if the right opportunity shows itself... but he won't fight her if he can help it. Unlike a certain devil that likes to ride his ass with little right to it, she is an authority he's willing to recognize to some degree. What she does— what she means for the world, it merits more from him than a defensive scrap for either his life or his freedom. God knows both mean little enough to his battered soul.

For the first time since taking on his mission, Frank even feels a measure of shame. Shame that it has brought his deeds to her attention in what he assumes is a negative light. How pleasant is the surprise then when she deigns to speak with him— to ask her questions and even relate to him in return. He makes short work of telling her about his loss and listens thoughtfully to what she so gently offers in return. Wisdom. Maybe it's the faint accent— might could be that saying ANYTHING in it would sound deep and clever. Maybe it's the proximity to the Catholicism he was born into— the faith he nearly followed into ordainment; love was the way of Christ, after all. FOR HE SO LOVED THE WORLD. . . that he saved it with his love, in a manner of speaking. It's an idea that plucks dusty old chords within him, so he nods his slow agreement.

"It's a nice idea, ma'am. Real nice." Honorable, even. He imagines her proposition as acts of kindness, good deeds— maybe even some of that forgiveness and redemption that Red is always banging on about. How either of them apply towards the kind of scum that he deals with? That part he's less sure about; forever stuck on the niggling fact that those criminals are undeserving of it, that their lives are forfeit and so he reaps them as his own personal contribution to a greater good he'll never again experience. "Problem is. . . They ain't leave me nobody to love." No vessels to receive the outpouring of her suggestion. Rawlins, Schoonover, Bennett— anyone and everyone else tied in by association, by willing or unwilling participation; they had taken it all. They'd turned his own brother against him. Gunned down his family. Poisoned everything. Gunner was gone on account of them. Curtis went but by the grace of God— and only so long as Frank stays far from him, stops bringing his bad luck around him.

There was nothing to go back to. No one left to love.

“You’re such a tease." The laugh is soft. Soft as the rest of her when she settles onto his lap, one slight knee on either side of his hips. She takes the bottle from his hand and takes a sip before arching back a touch to set the beer on the table, next to the box of mostly gone pizza. She's learned now what a Frank joke sounds like, as opposed to the acrimony he holds for the world. "You kiss ya maddah wi' dat mout'?"

demon time w/ frank || no longer accepting

"Me? I used t'run from that shit," Frank regales with a soft huff of a laugh, shifting with the added weight of her in his lap so they're both properly comfortable. He doesn't miss the beer that was just in his hand; he drinks Beth up instead, peering up into her expressive face for once now that their differing heights have been mitigated and reversed. "Hated it— my ma smearing her lipstick all over my face, slobberin' on me."

"I was a little shit. Couldn't wait to get outta the house, be on my own. Thought my parents were old and lame. All that mushy affection shit? I was too cool for it— or thought I was. I 'bout busted a rib half a million years later, when it was Junior wipin' my wife's kiss off his cheek and makin' faces about it. Nearly slept on the couch about it too for encouragin' the brat."

"All this mouth is good for is gettin' me in trouble."

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