Archive of Our Own

Frank spits blood onto the warehouse floor and comes back swinging.

It’s his own blood, a cut in his mouth from a nasty punch, but his heart is racing and the adrenaline is singing and he hasn’t felt this good in a long damn time. The garage around him is in chaos: half-repaired cars splattered with blood, the shouting and yelling of grown men as they realise that they’re not going to win this fight.

Frank dodges the next punch. Takes one after that straight to the face and gets yanked off his feet, right down the ground. Pain explodes in his right cheekbone but he gives as good as he gets. Somewhere in the dark on the other side of the workshop he can hear the smack of fists on flesh and he knows he’s not the only one on a mission here tonight.

It isn’t Hell’s Kitchen if the Devil doesn’t turn up to spoil Frank’s fun.

He thrusts his knee into someone’s guts and pushes them off of him while they groan in winded agony. Scrambles back to his feet and buys himself enough time to pull a gun from its holster.

“Frank,” comes snapping across the room, followed a second later by the whip of a red baton. It slams into his gun and sends it skidding back out of his hands along the concrete. “Stop it.”

Little choir-boy getting his panties in a bunch, what else is new? Frank grunts and slams his boot into someone’s leg instead, hears that satisfying crunch of bone and the pained, startled cry. “Stay out of my way, Red,” he calls across the room.

This isn’t a team-up; they’re not on the same side here. They’re two men on parallel missions. For all Frank knows, Matt has followed the same clumsy bread-crumbs to lead him here: a half-assed cover for a crime cartel, laundering dirty money through the tills of the garage by day and messing with some dirty-ass weapons-dealing by night. Whispers about new biotech, something messy that doesn't belong in their streets. If every single one of these assholes dies tonight, it’s no great loss to the world.

Frank smashes someone’s head against a metal support beam - once, twice, a third time, before the body goes limp in his hand. He shakes his grip free and advances on the next asshole, pleased to see the way they’re starting to scatter right towards the other half of the chaos.

He won’t lie. Seeing Daredevil in motion is one hell of a thing. Every move choreographed to perfection - a force of nature, not a person. Even storming his blood trail through this operation, Frank can take a beat to take him in, like watching lightning strike and scorch the earth.

There’s still a dozen of this scum left, scrambling like bacteria to save their pathetic little lives, but Matt still grits his teeth when Frank picks up a wrench and advances. “Frank, no,” he insists again, not even glancing his way.

“You get yourself killed with this shit, don’t expect me to mourn you,” Frank complains. He tosses the wrench in his hand once, up and down, before he swings hard: bones cracking, blood splattering, he’s left with a grim smirk of satisfaction. The scum swarms back on him again.

Even in the chaos, he’s aware of the door to the back office opening. Someone slips into the room - and Red might have the senses to laser-point every movement in the madness and darkness, but Frank’s struggling here. 

Someone joins the crowd and pushes forward: they’re getting willingly closer to Matt rather than avoiding him, and everything about that sets off red flags. “Now,” he hears them order.

“What?” Frank mutters, a sense of unease spiking through the adrenaline. He turns, but as he moves someone grabs his shoulder and yanks him backwards - and, fuck it, if they’re that keen for his attention he’s happy to give them what they’re asking for, swinging the wrench for their head, a few hard hits.

Their blood leaks from their forehead when they slump to the ground, but when he glances back over his shoulder at Red and the others something has changed.

Red, surrounded by grabbing hands and frantic eyes and three men working together to struggle to hold him still for one damn second.

Red, struggling as someone stabs a specialised syringe through the damn protection around his neck and plunges the needle in deep.

Red, brutal and angry as he bursts free and slams his elbow directly into his attacker’s face.

“What the hell are you doing?” Frank shouts. His heart is racing now, and it isn’t the fun kind of adrenaline in his blood any more. “Get away from him.”

He throws the wrench hard enough to hear the scrunch of someone's nose. They’re scrambling now, running for the exit and retreating as Frank charges forward. That needle is lingering with him, that unknown drug: he feels that old red-hot rage in his blood surge from him - because who the hell does that? Who the hell plans that? There’s something premeditated in the whole thing and he’s going to beat it out of every single one of them.

He grabs one by the hair as they’re trying to run and he yanks back so hard they fly from their feet. “What was that?” he sneers, pulling so tight he feels hair start to rip at the root. The guy is blubbering nonsense, and it doesn’t help when Frank shakes him to make him pull it together. “Talk. Now.”

His other hand clenches and he can see himself putting his fist through this guy’s skull: the image is so clear it feels real. Inevitable.

“I don’t know,” the guy pleads, “I don’t know, I promise, they don’t tell me, I didn’t do anything.”

Useless.

If he has nothing for him but guilt, Frank has no need to keep him here. He pushes him down to the ground and grabs for the wrench again, ready to end this quickly - but then there’s Matt, grabbing his wrist before he can finish the swing.

Matt’s grip is firm and he pushes Frank back with all his might. Beneath them, the guy on the ground starts to scramble away.

“No,” Matt insists, and it’s enough to make Frank notice he’s out of breath. Voice hoarse. Sweat leaking from behind his mask.

As the last guy flees, Matt is standing between Frank and the exit, and all Frank can see is how unsteady he looks on his feet. “What did they do to you?”

Matt shakes his head. No answer. “I don’t know. I feel….” He swallows and his breath comes out wavering. Shaking. “This isn’t good.”

“No shit,” Frank agrees. “Hell’s Kitchen’s latest weapons dealers just stabbed you with their new cocktail and you think it’s ‘not good’? Should’ve let me handle it, Red.”

“You were going to kill them.” Matt’s voice sounds more distant than ever. The way he’s swaying on his feet, Frank’s starting to worry if he’s going to drop.

“I’m still going to kill them,” Frank grumbles. He glances towards the door, then back at Matt. “Can you make it out of here yourself?”

He knows the answer to that before he asks the question. Still isn’t surprised when Matt’s immediate reaction is to lie. “I don’t need your help,” Matt insists.

“Sure.” Frank steps forward anyway. He doesn’t try to steady Matt, just walks past him towards the door then waits. “This way.”

Matt takes one step after him, and winces.

Frank has seen this guy take stab wounds and shrug off being shot; he’s personally kicked Matt so hard he’s broken multiple ribs and together they’ve lost enough blood to fuel a hospital. Frank knows Matt well enough to recognise that a wince like that is the same thing as a scream.

“Enough.” He turns back and returns to Matt’s side, slinging Matt’s arm over his shoulders. “What is it? You bleeding?”

Matt’s trying to hold his own weight, but it doesn’t take much pressure to force him to lean on Frank a little more. “I’m fine. It’s… a lot.”

None of that makes any sense, but Frank half-supports half-drags Matt out of the garage anyway. They’re leaving behind a scattered mass of unconscious bodies, a few dead ones too courtesy of Frank. He’ll come back later to finish things up.

First priority is getting Matt somewhere safe, then working out what the hell is going on with him.

*

When Frank shoves Matt into the passenger seat of his van, his first worry is that Matt has been stabbed or shot and just isn’t owning up to it.

By the time he’s driven them just a couple of blocks, the worry has morphed into something else entirely.

Matt’s breathing is heavy and laboured, and there’s a sheen of sweat on his upper lip. He won’t sit still in his seat, writhing back and forth like the whole van is on fire, and it’s accompanied by some of the most pathetic wounded-animal sounds Frank has ever heard.

He’s trying to focus on the road. It’s not working.

“Take the helmet off, Red,” he tells him. “It’s got to be fucking with you right now.”

He hasn’t finished with his sentence before Matt is frantically tugging at the gloves of his suit, throwing them down into the footwell. Helmet next, before his hands are scrambling at the rest of the fastenings on the armoured vest of his suit. Frank glances away from the road to look at Matt: pale face, sweaty brow, helmet-hair. His breathing is heavy and ragged and he’s groaning to himself as he struggles to wrestle with the devil suit in the confined space of Frank’s van.

“Talk to me. What’s happening?” His first thought had been poison, or an overdose, something that’s going to drag Matt down into a painful, slow death - it would have meant a hospital, never mind Matt’s complaints. Frank hates the places, but he’d hate having Matt’s corpse in his van even more. But this is different. This is wrong in a way that Frank can’t place. Matt shakes his head with a little grunt and manages to peel part of the armour away from his neck. “Red. Quit it. Can’t help if you don’t tell me what’s going on.”

It prompts a laugh from Red’s flushed mouth: frantic. Hysterical. “Help?” he asks. “You want to help me?”

Frank’s foot presses down a little more than it should, the van racing along the streets. He needs to be careful. They can’t risk attracting any attention. “Don’t be a little shit.” He adjusts his grip on the wheel, over-aware of how tightly he’s been gripping it. “Tell me what you need.”

Matt’s head thuds back against his seat and he drags the armoured vest off of his torso, leaving the body suit behind. After a brief scramble with the fastenings, he seems to give up on the rest of the suit: one shoulder exposed, clammy skin out in the open. He screws his eyes shut and takes a deep, steadying breath. “Just need somewhere quiet,” he asks.

Quiet.

Frank can do that.

“On it,” he promises. It’s not an explanation but it’s a request: it’s something for Frank to focus on for now, step one of whatever messed-up mission this is.

Matt isn’t quiet for the rest of the drive, panting and groaning, but he doesn’t try to speak again. After a while, his only response when Frank tries asking questions is a pained wince and more restless, frustrated squirming in his chair, so Frank stops trying. Just drives until they clear the busier streets of the Kitchen and he makes it out to an abandoned warehouse he knows about. The building is half-way condemned and in the middle of a dispute with the zoning department: it’s been standing empty, gradually falling into disrepair, for years. It’s perfect.

Frank throws the van into park and gets out. He opens the passenger door and finds Matt with his head tilted back, his eyes screwed shut. When Frank reaches for him Matt flinches away. “I’m fine,” he insists, again and again. “I don't need help.”

Frank doesn’t bother arguing with him - he grabs Matt’s arm and pulls him from the seat, and tells himself that the way Matt’s arm is shaking in his grasp doesn’t leave him unsettled. Matt hisses in pain from the first moment of contact, and he’s uncharacteristically shaky on his feet when Frank pulls him towards the door of the warehouse and its broken-down lock.

“You keep this up and I’ll carry you in,” Frank warns. Threatens. One of those, anyway.

Even in his current state, that gets a shaky laugh out of Matt. “Try it,” he suggests. “Let’s see how that ends.”

And damn if that doesn’t make it even more tempting.

 He tightens his grip on Matt’s side and half-drags him to safety. Matt is wincing and groaning the whole way, his feet shuffling on the ground as he struggles to keep his footing. Frank’s fighting back a rising sense of righteous panic that threatens to kick-off in his chest - there’s something wrong here, real wrong, and Matt isn’t giving him a single detail to work with. Figures.

Inside the warehouse is a cavernous gloom of cobwebs, dust and half-forgotten machinery. Nobody other than Frank has been here in months, probably even years. It’s dark inside but that usually wouldn’t slow Matt down. For once, Matt is moving with uncharacteristic uncertainty in a way that forces Frank to tighten his grip around him and make them keep going.

The room in the back might once have been a manager’s office. Somewhere to shuffle papers and make puffed-up phone calls. There’s still a desk, a chair and a set of empty filing cabinets. On the floor, there’s also a mattress with clean(ish) sheets, a more recent addition by Frank. This isn’t the first time he’s had to make a run for it and lie low. Far from his first rodeo.

He dumps Matt onto the mattress and listens to the quiet ‘oof’ he makes when he lands.

This is like babysitting someone other than Matt. Micro, maybe. Amy. A few of his old charges flutter through his mind’s eye, and he doesn’t let it go back any further than that. Won’t stir up dusty memories of his old life. Before.

“Murdock, you got to start talking,” he warns. Matt is trying to get up from where he was thrown down against the mattress. When his hand touches the sheets he flinches and withdraws like they’re burning. “You keep this up and I’m calling a medic.”

Frank’s thinking of Curtis, wondering what the hell army-training would cover something like this, but Matt shakes his head. “No. No .” He sits up and shudders, full-bodied. “I’m fine.”

“I’m going to beat your head in if you say that again,” Frank promises. “Try again. What’s going on?”

Matt presses his hands against his face, fingers pressing into his sweat-soaked temples. “I told you,” he breathes. “It’s a lot.”

Frank thinks about shaking him to get some real answers, but something tells him Matt’s being sincere. Honest, even if there aren’t a lot of details to work with. It leads Frank to take a knee by the mattress, trying to get close enough to work out what’s gone wrong. As soon as he moves, Matt flinches: not from contact, not from anything physical, but from the sound of Frank’s knee hitting the floor. 

“I need more than that, Red.” He knows that he isn’t the person that Matt would choose to have with him at this moment, but he’s all they’ve got. “Christ, look at you. You’re shaking.” He brushes his hand over his own face and fights with what to say next. What might work. “Need you to work with me here. What did they stick you with?”

Matt’s head hangs low and he’s not just shaking any more - there’s a faint sway where he sits, side-to-side, like he might drop if he doesn’t focus. “I can hear it,” he says quietly. “It’s getting louder.”

“What is?”

“Everything.” Matt swallows hard as he focuses. He’s barely even whispering, and Frank has to lean in to hear what he says. “Usually I can filter it out. Learn how to focus. What to let in. But this is… It’s too much.” His eyelids flutter, his whole body tenses and Frank watches as his hands curl into useless fists. “I can hear insects crawling on the ground outside, Frank. It’s like my skull is going to crack open.”

Frank’s long made a vow not to question how Matt does what he does: he’s stopped trying to match up the straight-laced blind lawyer with the brutal vigilante, and he’s never asked what powers Matt uses to fuel his nighttime activities. Magic, mutations, whatever the hell. It’s not his world. He’s never wanted the details.

It makes him nod as he commits that to memory. They’re fucking with Matt’s hearing. That’s one thing. “It’s more than that, isn’t it?” He drops his voice down as low as he can, as quiet as he can, and thinks he hears Matt sigh in relief. “You’ve been moving like you’re on fire this whole time.”

Matt twitches like he’s trying to smile, or maybe laugh. Something brutal and broken, but it fades fast. “It’s the suit,” he rasps. “The fibres. They feel like razor-wire.”

Something he can fix. “Take it off,” Frank prompts. “We’ll sort it.”

The helmet is gone, abandoned in Frank’s van already. The gloves and armour too. The top of the body suit is unzipped, but otherwise it’s clinging on. Still, the suggestion leaves Matt shaking his head. “I can’t.”

Frank waits him out. Something tells him that this isn’t down to needing to keep his modesty around Frank. Probably isn’t even a need for safety.

A long beat of silence stretches between them before Matt flinches - possibly at an invisible sound, possibly at his own thoughts.

His voice has gone even quieter by the time he eventually speaks, frustration clinging to each word. “It hurts,” he says between gritted teeth.

Hurts to keep it on. Hurts to take it off. Frank knows that Matt has suffered from gun-shots and stab-wounds and kept on moving. If he says it hurts, Frank believes him.

Frank takes a breath. “I can get it off you if that’s what you need.” He glances over it, trying to figure out buckles and zippers and the fastest way to get this done. “Can’t promise it won’t hurt, but it’ll be quick.”

Maybe a little humiliating too, and that might be what’s stopping Matt from taking him up on the offer. Matt reaches for the edge of his own sleeve and tries to tug it down his arm - but stops, immediately, as he bites back a yell. The agony is caught between his teeth but the muffled sound explodes through the office all the same. He’s out of breath, panting, as he sits there on Frank’s mattress and stews in his own misery.

Frank looks over him, completely motionless. There’s a set of buckles. A zipper at the back. A couple of interlocked pieces and hidden catches that are going to be hell to get over Matt’s joints.

Frank’s always been the kind of guy to rip a bandaid off.

“Here we go,” he mutters, the only warning Matt gets before Frank grabs for him.

Under normal circumstances, this might be more of a fight. Now, the first hint of pressure from Frank’s hand leaves Matt reeling. He’s still dangerous and Frank has to dodge a swinging fist as he grabs for the buckles and makes short work of the suit. Feels the second attempt as Matt’s fist makes contact with his face. Frank has to grab hold of him, shoving his arm out of the way so that he can help this asshole.

It’s a stupid, messy wrestling match that leaves Matt shouting underneath him - but they’re a long way from civilisation. There’s nobody to hear him, and Frank can let him shout all he needs to.

He leans back when Matt’s arms are free and the top of the suit has slipped from his shoulders. Matt’s bare chest and arms are as sweat-soaked as the rest of him, and Frank’s just about polite enough not to let his eyes linger on the scars he can see criss-crossed over Matt’s torso - a thought crosses his mind asking how many of them are from him. He stamps it down.

“There,” he says. He’s panting now too. “Nothing to cry about.”

Matt’s breathing is ragged and his hands are shaking as he bows his head. He really does laugh this time. “Thanks,” he says, as if he hadn’t been trying to claw Frank’s face off two seconds ago. “But if you come for the pants we’re done.”

Frank chuckles. “You’re on your own there, sunshine,” he promises. “Need help with the boots?”

It takes a second, probably swallowing down pride, before Matt nods. Frank helps him out and leaves the boots sitting neatly at the side of the mattress. He’s trying not to comment on it too much. Trying not stare, trying not to think, trying not to react in any way to the shit-show this night has become.

“It’s been an hour,” he says when he eventually gets back to his feet. “Whatever shit they gave you, it’ll be out of your system soon. Just got to sleep it off, I bet. You think you can do that?”

Matt is a mess, worse than Frank has ever seen him before, as he curls in on himself and nods. He’s still sitting upright on the mattress, but Frank bets one little shove would be all it would take to knock him over at this point. The guy’s barely holding himself together.

“I’ll keep watch,” Frank promises. “Don’t worry about it.”

He paces to the doorway of the abandoned office - it’s not like there’s anything to watch out for, and not like the surviving wannabe gangsters they were fighting would’ve followed them here, but Matt needs some space. Hell, Frank needs some space: he needs some time to let his heart-rate return to normal and let the churning anger in his mind settle down to something he can harness, something he can use.

Before he goes, Matt clears his throat. Still speaking softly, gently, he calls out after Frank. Just a few words. “Thank you, Frank,” he murmurs, soft enough that Frank can pretend not to hear it.

Frank closes the door quietly as he leaves the office, then leans against the wall outside. He listens out for sounds inside the room, but can only pick up on Matt’s unsteady breathing and the rustle of sheets as he curls in tighter on himself.

It’s going to be a long night.

*

Six hours later, dawn has broken to the sound of Matt’s pained moans. Frank’s teeth are on edge and his jaw aches from clenching it for hours. When the cries started a few hours ago, he’d assured himself it was going to pass - that it was getting worse before it got better, but they’d turn a corner. Now the end isn’t coming and he doesn’t know what to do.

Matt had started out with promises that he was okay, he could handle it, but now he’s down to single syllables and grunts. Frank’s out of his league here. This is a long way from anything he knows.

Frank leans against the dusty machinery of the old warehouse, as far from the office as he can get. Even then, he knows every word is like a loudspeaker into Matt’s ears. The ringing of the call must be like an emergency siren.

Karen’s voice on the other end? That must be a betrayal.

He doesn’t waste time with explanations. “Your boyfriend needs help,” then the address. He hangs up before she can ask any follow-up questions, and waits at the window, watching the empty, abandoned road outside the warehouse. In the background, the soundtrack of Matt’s pain rises and falls like a symphony from hell.

She makes it there so fast he thinks she might’ve broken a law or two - and even with the stress of a sleepless night and a stupid mistake, Frank’s relieved to see her. Someone else who knows how to carry this kind of weight.

She’s cautious as she enters the warehouse, her hand in her handbag and no doubt wrapped around the pistol he hopes she’s still carrying with her at all times. When she sees him, the first thing she says is, “He’s not my boyfriend.” Any other time he might've ribbed her some more, played around in the wreckage of their shared history and lost chances. Now, her words falter as the sound of Murdock’s pain starts to hit her. “What is that?”

He gives her the cliff-notes: the attack in the garage, the injection into Matt’s neck, the hellish night that followed. It’s like being back in the army, reporting on a mission gone wrong. His own failures filter through his head: assigning blame, assessing responsibility, kicking himself over and over for letting them both get distracted in a fight like that. The bickering could’ve waited. They should’ve stayed sharp.

“I want to see him,” she says before he’s finished. She crosses her arms over her chest. “I need to see him.”

It’s what he called her here for, but there’s still a tug of reluctance that Frank buries deep: in his right mind, he thinks Matt might hate him for pulling anyone else into this, never mind Karen. But right now Matt isn’t calling the shots and Frank’s in over his head and he needs someone to take a look at this mess and tell him how to help. He needs someone to tell him how to fix it.

Inside the office, Matt is curled in on his side, as small as he can get. The mattress beneath him is soaked with his sweat and his hands are pressed hard against the side of his head.

There are scratches on his skin now, red welts from his fingernails against his forehead, near his ears. They sure as hell weren’t there the last time Frank checked on him, and he feels a cold plunge in the pit of his stomach at the sight of beading blood on Matt’s skin.

Matt’s breathing is a shuddering mess. It comes in unsteady gasps: irregular, like he’s forcing himself to do it.

Frank stands back as Karen rushes forward. He hears the quiet rasp of her name from Matt’s lips and is just relieved Matt seems to still be with it enough to realise who’s in the room with him.

“I got to find the people that did this,” Frank says from the doorway. He looks down, hands on hips, and tries to figure this out. “Whatever was going on, they were ready for him. The shit they stabbed him with, that wasn’t random. It was made for him.”

He’s had time to think about it, long sleepless hours. The goons in the garage, they hadn’t tried stabbing Frank with that bullshit needle. They’d barely even looked at him. Nah, they’d gone right for Matt, like they’d been waiting for him. Like they’d known he’d be there. It makes Frank’s skin crawl, but it’s a place to start.

“Matt was tracking down a crime ring smuggling weapons,” Karen says. “Not just any weapons. Powerful ones.” She sits by the edge of the mattress and reaches out to stroke her hand through Matt’s hair. 

Too late, Frank snaps, “Careful.” The flinch from Matt is to be expected, but it makes Frank grind his teeth all the same. “You can’t touch him. Can’t speak too loud. No eating in here either.” New ground rules. He’ll add to them as they go along. For now, Karen nods silently, her expression stricken as she watches Matt struggling to pull himself together. Frank knows that look on her face. He feels it.

“It’s fine, Karen,” Matt whispers when he catches his breath again. “It doesn’t hurt.”

Neither one of them are buying that.

“I’ve got some leads I can follow up,” Frank murmurs. “But I need your help finding out where to go next. And I need someone to watch him while I’m…” He shrugs. Doesn’t feel quite right to name what he’s going out to do. “While I’m gone,” he says in the end.

“Frank, don’t,” Matt insists, as loudly as he can in his current state. It’s still barely above a whisper.

From the look in Karen’s eyes, she knows exactly what Frank is planning - and there’s that fire in her eyes, that ruthlessness, which says she doesn’t disagree.

“Go,” she says. “When I find something, I’ll let you know.”

Matt gives a mumble that might be a protest, but for now he’s outnumbered and overruled.

Frank takes in the sight of them, Karen watching over him while Matt struggles to hold himself together, and takes it with him to the door.

Time to get to work.

*

When it comes to breaking bones and spilling blood, this part is easy. Frank knows destruction. Breathes it.

It’s easy enough to track down the surviving idiots from last night. Some of them have been patched up by the gang’s medic, bearing bandages and stitches, and it’s so damn easy to scare them so much they piss themselves with it. The hard part is keeping one of them alive long enough to answer any questions.

He’s got fresh blood on his face when he pins one of them down to the floor, his knee on the centre of the guy’s chest. The guy is middle-aged, bearing bruises from the night before. The one thing that Frank remembers is that he wasn’t one of the assholes that held Matt still for that needle. That’s the only reason he’s still breathing.

The guy is pleading, snivelling, as Frank takes his gun and holds it to his temple. The need to pull the trigger is so strong it’s a battle to hold himself back. “You better start talking,” he growls. “Last night. The Devil. You were waiting on him.”

It isn’t even a question. The guy beneath him starts stammering in desperation, his eyes purely fixated on the barrel of the gun. “No. Yes. I don’t know, I’m sorry, I didn’t think… We didn’t think…”

“You thought he’d be alone,” Frank finishes for him. He tries not to imagine what would’ve happened if that was the case. How this would have played out for Red. It makes him lean a little harder, press the gun a little firmer into this asshole’s skull. “What was it?”

“I don’t know. I swear, I don’t know. They just said, they said it would help, it would slow Daredevil down. Turn the tides.” The guy swallows desperately. “Please, man. Please. I didn’t do it.”

“You would’ve. Different circumstances, you would’ve been there holding him down, wouldn’t you? Might've even got to be the one with the needle.” If this asshole had been on the other side of that garage, dealing with Matt instead of dealing with Frank, he wouldn’t have hesitated. All Frank’s thoughts boil down to static. “Where’s it come from?”

“Please. You’re asking the wrong guy, I’m nothing. I’m nobody, I just do what I’m told.”

“If you’re nobody, I can shoot you right now. If you’ve got no answers, I don’t need you.”

“There’s a lab, that’s where it comes from,” he says, his voice jumping an octave. “I don’t know where it is, I swear, but they make this stuff there. Counters for superpowers, shit to deal with vigilantes. Whatever you want. You name it, they cook it up.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know, I swear I don’t know, I’m telling you everything, I promise.”

The pleading goes on, and Frank presses him a little harder to make sure he’s really given up everything he knows. It’s not much to go on. No location, no names, just a ghost of a threat to get started with.

At the end, he listens to this guy begging for his life, and thinks for a second about how these people would have responded to those same pleas from Matt’s mouth. Begging. Bargaining. Suffering.

He’s got Matt’s cries of pain hard-wired into his brain now: a sound he can’t wipe from his mind.

Pulling the trigger is easy. Just like it always is.

*

When Frank has been running on violence, adrenaline and coffee fumes for over twenty-four hours, he makes his way back to the warehouse. His fists are aching and even if he’s tried to wipe the worst of the blood from his face, he knows there’s no hiding anything from Matt.

The part of him that had hoped that this might have resolved itself by the time he got back dissolves in his chest as he enters the warehouse and hears the sound of Matt’s heavy, shuddering breaths. “It’s going to be okay,” he hears Karen promise him. “Frank’s looking into it. You just have to hold on.”

“Can’t…” The asshole can barely string a thought together, but he’s still trying to argue. Frank hesitates outside the office door. “He’s going to hurt people, Karen. Kill them.”

Half-way dead and still trying to save the scum of the Earth. Frank rests his hand on the door handle.

“Yeah,” Karen answers, her steel resolve acting as a challenge of its own. “He is. And, right now, that’s what we need. What you need.”

Frank pushes open the door before Matt can waste his energy arguing any more. Matt drops his head against the pillow then hisses in pain from the contact. Serves him right.

“You’re awake,” Frank observes, quiet as he can. “Good. You should know this: they got you deliberately.”

Matt’s answer is a garbled noise, so Karen picks it up instead. “What do you mean?”

“They knew he was coming. And they were ready. Talking about some kind of lab pumping out counter-measures for ‘superheroes’.”

“I’m not a superhero,” Matt whispers.

“Tell that to the assholes pissing themselves over ‘The Devil’ dropping by for a visit,” Frank grumps. Doesn’t quite have the same effect when he has to whisper.

“That makes sense,” Karen says as she reaches for her laptop. “A contact of mine, they were talking about something new on the streets. Black market biotech. I need a second.”

She exits the office, opening the laptop as she walks so that she can get to a distance where her typing won’t sound like a marching band to Matt’s over-sensitive ears. It leaves Matt and Frank in the room together, stewing.

Frank takes a second to study the state that Matt is in: he’s stripped down to his briefs, and Frank would bet if Karen wasn’t here he’d be wearing even less. The bedsheets are draped uselessly over his hips and even at this distance Frank can see the scabbed-over scratches around his face and ears. Fingernail indents along his arms and in his palms where he’s clung on for dear life.

Frank stares at those marks. Takes them in. Lets them settle. Something tells him he’s going to need the inspiration to keep him going when Karen tracks down the next link in the chain.

“Frank,” Matt breathes. Frank has to take a step closer to hear him: he takes to his knees at Matt’s side again, and hates knowing that he’s brought the stench of blood and death on his skin. Wouldn’t usually bother him, but today he swears he sees Matt recoil. “You don’t have to do this, Frank. I’m not your responsibility.”

“If they’re doing this to you, they’ll be doing it to others,” Frank whispers - even if that had hardly occurred to him until this moment. He doesn’t give a shit if they try to pull this crap on Captain America himself. It just shouldn’t happen to Matt. “And I don’t think you’re up to cracking skulls yourself right now.”

“I mean it. I don’t want anyone to die because of me.”

“Won’t be ‘cause of you,” Frank promises. “Don’t put this shit on your conscience, altar-boy. You’ve got enough to beat yourself up about before you try adding my sins too.”

It gets Matt to chuckle, though he chokes on the pain right after. “Think I’d be at confession for a while if I tried that.”

“You’d get barred from church, trust me on that,” Frank promises. He heaves a sigh from his lungs. “How’re you holding up? Won’t be much longer. Got my word.”

Matt looks as if he wants to nod, but he keeps his head deliberately still instead. “It’s not the first time,” he murmurs. “After the accident, when all of this first started… I could hear pipes in the walls, feel air currents across the room, hear the blood in the nuns’ veins. I thought I was losing my mind.”

“You were just a kid, right?”

“I was young.” Matt tilts his head towards him and wets his lips, pained urgency on his face. “I was laid up for weeks, Frank. It didn’t fade. It didn’t stop.”

Frank hears what he isn’t saying: what if this doesn’t stop either?

“This is different,” he insists.

“How?”

He shrugs. “You didn’t have me back then.”

Matt gives another pained chuckle and pushes his head back against the mattress. It’s not exactly a vote of confidence, but Frank will take what he can get right now. “Keep thinking I should try and get control of this,” Matt says. “Learn to use it. Stop being a pussy.”

Frank’s gaze snaps to Matt’s face. Those aren’t his words, they sound out of place on his lips. Matt’s expression is far-off and distant, as if he’s living somewhere far from here. “Who told you that?”

There’s an echo of a smile on Matt’s face, something pained and simple. “The man who trained me.” His voice has gone so soft, so quiet, that it’s almost as if he isn’t talking to Frank any more. “A long time ago, now.”

Frank doesn’t know much about Matt, but he knows this: he knows Matt was too young for someone to be telling him shit like that, burrowing those barbs down deep in his psyche. Shit. “He sounds like an asshole.”

A rush of air that isn’t quite a laugh leaves Matt’s chest. “Yeah,” he agrees. “He kind of was.”

Was.

Fuck.

Frank bows his head and lets those words linger in the air: he waits to see if there’s anything else that Matt wants to add, but all he gets is the fluttering sound of Matt’s heavy breathing. “We’re fixing this,” Frank states, as strongly as he can when he’s whispering. “Last thing anyone needs is your radar-hearing getting another boost.” He’s struck by the desire to reach out to Matt - a hand on his shoulder, something to steady him and promise that Frank really is there, or even a solid hold of his hand. But he knows the pain that will inflict, and he knows Matt wouldn’t welcome it, so he lets his hand twitch on his own knee and then drop.

He leaves Matt alone in the office and tracks the sound of Karen’s typing. He finds her outside the warehouse, her laptop propped up on an old barrel that seems to be barely holding its shape. In the daylight, she looks exhausted. Frank thinks they must match.

“He’s holding up pretty well,” he says as he joins her. He leans against the wall and stares out across the abandoned road.

“Yeah,” Karen says, though she really doesn’t sound like she’s agreeing with him, “Which means anyone else would be screaming by now.”

There’s not much Frank can do but nod.

Karen takes a breath and pulls her hands from her keyboard. She looks up at the sky then closes her eyes. “He keeps trying to go after you, you know,” she tells him. “Saying something about duty. He can’t even walk and he’s still trying to…” She shakes her head. Frustration coming through. “He’s still trying,” she finishes.

“Wouldn’t be Murdock if he wasn’t,” Frank says. “Guy like that, he doesn’t stop fighting. Not for anything.”

Karen turns her gaze on him, so sharp he wants to squirm. “And what about you, Frank? What’s this about for you? You called me in a panic, didn’t even tell me what was going on until I got here, and you haven’t stopped moving for a second since it happened.”

“I got him hurt,” Frank says. “You telling me you’re gonna get this fixed without me? Or, what, you think we take him to a hospital? Throw him at the doctors and think they’ve got a chance of working out what’s wrong?”

“That’s not what I’m saying,” she insists. “But you’re… focused. Real focused. I’ve not seen you like this in a long time.”

“I got him hurt,” Frank repeats. “We were fighting. Squabbling. I had him distracted. Those numb-fucks wouldn’t have even got near him if I wasn’t there, you know that. He was too busy trying to take me out to pay attention to what they were doing.” He scuffs his boot along the ground and channels some of his frustration through his tightly clenched fists. “I figure I owe him one.”

She’s still watching him like he’s under a microscope, like this is all part of an expose she’s pulling together. Puzzle pieces.

Makes him restless.

“And that’s all? You owe him one?” she prods.

He clears his throat and nods at the laptop. “Did you find anything?”

She turns slowly to look at the screen. He knows she’s taking pity on him by letting him clumsily change the subject, and he thanks god that she’s letting him get away with it. “Not yet,” she admits. “But I think I’m close. You should get some rest, Frank.”

She’s right. The second she’s got a location for this lab, he’s going to burn it to the ground. Do this right .

Standing down for now, he leaves her to her research and heads back inside.

He could find a dark corner of the warehouse and curl up there to close his eyes, but he heads into the office instead. Matt’s head twitches towards him but he seems to be sleeping, leaving Frank to settle down on the hard floor to the side of the room.

Frank could spout off some bullshit about security and tactics and safety in numbers, but the truth is that he wants to be in here so that he can watch Matt in the semi-darkness. Listen to the ragged sound of his breathing and let himself soak in the smothering guilt that comes from bit-back gasps of pain and tiny groans each time Matt moves wrong against the sheets.

“You got to hang on a little longer,” Frank murmurs. “I can’t stand this, Red. Can’t take another goddamn second. Just need you back on your feet.” The second Matt is back to normal and arguing with him again, pulling that pissy little smirk out at the slightest provocation, Frank knows he’ll be able to breathe normally again.

He hates how rattled he feels. Hates the old panic rising in his chest. Hates that none of this has ever bothered him before, that he has left blood and bruises all over Matt in the past but it was fine back then - Matt’s always seemed untouchable, in his own way. Above them all.

It’s different now, and the realisation makes Frank sick. It makes him realise what a hellhole the Kitchen would be without this dickhead running around.

For now, all Frank can do is lie in the darkness and listen to the sound of Matt’s pain.

He can’t fight the feeling that he’s not doing nearly enough.

*

He gets a few hours rest, and when he wakes up Karen has a location. Somewhere wrapped under layer upon layer of whisper and rumour.

If it’s anywhere, it’s there.

Karen stares up at him earnestly as she passes the details over. A second night has passed with Matt’s pain on a knife-edge. It’s getting worse, they both know it. Louder. Pretty soon, Matt might not be able to hold it together at all.

“Knock ‘em dead, Frank,” she whispers. “Matt needs it.”

“Not doing it for him,” he repeats, just in case Matt’s hearing carries those words back to him. He’s not putting this shit on that guy’s conscience.

From the outside, the lab doesn’t look out of the ordinary. It’s taking up office space near an abandoned mall: even in the middle of the night, the lights are on inside the building.

Luckily, their security system isn’t worth a damn, and people start dropping fast once Frank starts shooting. As soon as he bursts into the building, he recognises bruise-stained faces from the garage: he fires before they have a chance to pull a weapon of their own, and keeps moving, leaving the bodies in his wake without needing to look back. Some guards are there to fire back, but they’re in over their heads without even knowing it - one of them gets a lucky shot, nearly skims him, but the danger doesn’t even register as he keeps going until the hallway falls silent.

The building stinks of chemicals and singed metal as he makes his way into a laboratory. A couple of scientists in white lab coats cringe under their benches, hands raised to show they’re unarmed.

“You,” Frank says, pointing out the older of the two. “Get up.”

She gets to her feet, hands still raised, though they aren’t shaking. “Don’t shoot,” she says. “Please. They’re keeping us here.”

His gun is steady. Doesn’t waiver and he doesn’t speak as he waits her out.

“They said we had to make what we were told, or they’d hurt us,” she continues. “They bring us samples, notes, data. Clues. And we synthesise from there.”

Frank is sure that the Avengers would find all of this fascinating, but Frank just hears Matt’s desperate breaths hitching in the dark. “I need a cure,” he cuts in. “You got that here?”

“We’re in the business of making weapons. Not antidotes.”

“Didn’t ask what ‘business’ you’re in. Can you make a cure?”

She stares at him and holds his gaze steadily, without flinching. “What we do, it’s meant to be permanent. They want people like him off the streets. Just make the problem disappear.” She takes a small step towards him. “There’s no reason for them to ask us to find a way to undo it.”

“One more step, I pull the trigger,” he warns her. Beneath the desk, the other scientist has a hand over her own mouth, eyes bug-wide.

“It wouldn’t be very smart to shoot the only person who knows how to undo this,” she reminds him.

“So which is it, lady? You know how to do it, or you don’t?” His heart is hammering so loud he can barely hear himself think any more. “Sounds like you’re stalling. Waiting for back-up, is that it? Security?” He shakes his head. “They’re not coming, ma’am. I killed every last one of them on the way in.”

He feels the cold, hard tension in his gut start to sing with perfect clarity. It’s a struggle not to end this right here.

“So, no, I’m not buying that hostage story. You’re not scared. You’re in charge. That’s good ‘business’, ain’t it?”

He sees the shift in her expression as she decides to stop hiding. “We won’t make what you’re looking for,” she tells him. “When we hit someone, they stay down.”

Frank looks at the second scientist, still cowering under their desk. “You,” he says, “You know how to undo it? Think you can figure it out?”

Their answer isn’t quite a ‘yes’, but it’s not a ‘no’ either. It’ll do. He focuses his attention on the scientist in front of him, the architect of this whole mess. And Matt might’ve just been a beginning, might’ve been a stepping-stone to whatever this operation had planned, but Frank could not give less of a shit. Whatever games they were playing, superheroes and supervillains, it doesn’t get to touch them. They don’t get to experiment on Murdock just to see what happens, just to find out if it works.

He doesn’t feel a thing when he pulls the trigger. The blood doesn’t register any more.

With his gun, he gestures for the second scientist to come out from their hiding spot. “Get to work,” he tells them, knowing there’s only one shot left.

*

He leaves the researcher still breathing, cuffed to a pipe in the laboratory - just in case.

Picks his way past bodies as he leaves, a vial stashed in his pocket. He’s fairly sure that scientist was too scared to try and pull something over on him: it’s what makes him trust that this might work. It’s starting to get light outside already. Another night gone with Matt in this state. If this works out, it’ll be the last one.

Back in the abandoned warehouse’s office, Matt looks even worse than when Frank had left him. He’s whispering something under his breath, wisps of words that Frank thinks might be a prayer, but his only reaction when Frank enters the room is a shaky, panicked moan.

Sitting in the corner, Karen jerks out of a nap. “Frank?” Her eyes widen at the sight of him. Frank isn’t going to look down at the blood on his vest, doesn’t want to know what warrants that reaction.

“I’ve got it.” It’s going to work. It’s got to work. “Your lead worked out.”

He pulls the vial from his pocket and makes his way over to the mattress. As he gets closer, Matt starts to try and push himself upright again, wincing at his palms against the sheet like he’s pushing them into broken glass. 

“Red,” Frank whispers. No response. “Matt.”

Nothing. His voice lost in the cacophony inside Matt’s head. Frank shares a look with Karen and she shakes her head. Doesn’t tell him how long it’s been since Matt stopped responding to anything she says. From the pinched, worried look on her face, it’s been a while.

He holds onto that knowledge, feels it burning bright and painful in his chest; if this doesn’t work, if they can’t fight it back, Matt might lose touch for good. No more bickering, no more snark, no more midnight conversations about their moral tug-of-war. Just Matt drowning in a tsunami Frank caused. He can’t stand how much he’d miss it all.

He stares at Matt and braces himself for what’s going to come next.

“You might want to go outside for this part, Karen,” he warns her.

With anyone else, he’d bet she would argue. With him, she listens, throwing a shaky apology out to the world as she leaves the room. Then it’s just Frank, alone with Matt’s wounded breathing. Maybe he should offer up an apology of his own, but it’s too late for that. He knows this is going to hurt like hell.

With the needle ready, Frank tries to get in there fast - but Matt is faster. The second Frank grabs his arm Matt pulls back so fast he slams himself against the mattress with a pained hiss of air. Frank follows and gets a wild punch to the face for his trouble, sharp and heavy and annoyingly familiar. He takes it and keeps moving, scrambling for Matt again.

“Damn it, Red, just sit still for once.”

It dissolves into a messy wrestling match, with Matt’s knee smashing hard into Frank’s ribs as soon as he pins him down. Clumsy and sweaty, both of them panting, Matt’s body wracked with fresh moans of agony even as Frank is doing his best to help the bastard for once. He pins him down, one knee pressed to hold Matt's arm in place while his hand grabs Matt’s other wrist and holds it with all his strength against the mattress.

The words chattering from Matt’s lips are starting to crystallise. “Stop. Please. Just stop.”

He can’t unhear that, sinking like glass shards into his gut. He uncaps the needle with his teeth and does it as fast as he can, sinking it into the soft skin of Matt’s arm and hearing an honest-to-god whine of pain shake from between Matt’s teeth.

It’s done.

It’s in.

Matt’s face is still twisted with pain, but he’s stopped thrashing underneath Frank - collapsed against the mattress as it all becomes too much. Frank hangs his head and tosses the needle to the side. He’s not sure if it’s Matt’s hands that are shaking or his own as he rolls to the side and watches, too tense to remember how to breathe.

This has to work. It has to.

But all they can do is wait.

*

The storm breaks after a couple of hours.

The signs are small at first. Matt starts reacting to their voices again, like he can pick them out from the general din. His breathing starts to level out once more. He stops hissing and moaning every time a breeze flutters over his skin.

It’s slow but it’s in the right direction, and Frank makes a note to head back and free that scientist from where they’re still captured in their lab. Whatever bullshit cure they created, it worked.

Karen looks so relieved it’s like she might crumble on the spot. Privately, Frank might be right there with her. He’s never been so happy just to talk at a normal volume, no more whispering required.

He thinks about leaving: now that his part in this mess is done, it’s time to slip away and let the dust settle. Matt’s got a lot of recovering to do, and Frank doesn’t want him thinking too hard about what had to be done to get him back on his feet. Frank doesn’t regret it, not for a second, but he knows what Matt is like. The moral quandary might just have him writhing around on the floor again, and that’s something they could both do without.

When he’s loading up the van, getting ready to leave, he finds Karen waiting for him, leaning against the driver’s door patiently.

“You should be inside,” he tells her. “Someone’s got to make sure he gets back on his feet.”

“Uh-huh,” she agrees slowly. “We’ll head out soon. Matt wants to make it back to his place, thinks he can stand the sound of it now.”

Good. Dragging him out here had felt good at the time, but now it’s another safe space scratched off of Frank’s list. Compromised.

He nods and looks away from her, not willing to meet her gaze for a second longer than he has to.

She sighs. Gives in first. “You should stick around, Frank,” she says, saying it bluntly instead of dancing around the request. “He’ll want to say ‘thank you’.”

“Don’t need it. Don’t want it,” Frank answers without waiting a second. “He’s back. If he wants to, he’ll find me.”

“He’ll want to,” Karen tells him firmly. “Frank… You’ve been worried about him. Chasing leads all over the city. And don’t tell me it’s ‘cause you ‘owed’ him, we both know it’s not just that.”

She hesitates, like she’s trying to give him a space to speak up and fill the gap. It’s a space where he could tell her that thinking of Hell’s Kitchen without Matt running around and making trouble had made him want to puke. It’s a space where he could tell her that his only regret is that the bastards responsible for this hadn’t suffered enough for what they did to Matt: he made their deaths too clean. Hell, maybe it’s even a space where he could tell her  that he needs to get out of here because seeing Matt like this, truly vulnerable for the first time, has made him realise just how easy it would be for someone to take him out for good - and that thought isn’t something he’s ready to live with.

He doesn’t say any of that. Purposefully, he lets the moment pass.

With a sigh, she steps away from his van so that he can climb into the driver’s seat. “Take care of him,” he asks her, and hopes the desperation doesn’t leak out through his voice.

He can’t even glance towards the warehouse as he leaves.

*

He tells himself his part in all of this is done. He’s paid his debt, got Murdock back on his feet, and now it’s time to move on. Matt can get back to springing around rooftops like a ballerina and Frank can get back to doing what he does best.

That’s how it’s supposed to go.

Instead, Frank finds himself trying to keep an eye on the most reckless asshole in all of New York City. At first, he figures it’ll be easy: set himself up on a perch at a distance from Matt's apartment, keep an eye on him through a scope as he recovers, and that way he’s ready to pull a trigger and help out if the idiot needs it.

He’s barely caught up on his sleep - a couple of hours, a cold shower, that’s all he needs, because he knows that Matt won’t be taking it easy either. He could’ve put hard money on it.

Turns out he’s right, and keeping an eye on Matt turns into watching him pay a visit to the Rand Enterprises building. Suited up like a lawyer instead of a vigilante. It’s far out of Matt’s usual patch and that means that Frank has to abandon his sniper scope and follow him on foot, keeping as much distance between them as he can.

From what he can tell, Matt’s on tour. First Rand Enterprises, then a bar in Queens, then all the way back to a private detective agency in Hell’s Kitchen. Frank doesn’t have a damn clue what he’s doing, just knows that following him while trying to keep out of the range of his souped-up radar sense is a pain in the ass.

When he’s done making house-calls, Matt returns to his own practice: from a rooftop across the street Frank can finally settle down and keep an eye on him for a while, as he sits at his desk and makes phone calls. Here, at least, he’d bet that all Matt is dealing with is disgruntled clients, the payback after disappearing for a couple of days. None of them will know the hell he’s just been through, not as Matt smiles down the phone lines and makes self-deprecating apologies through the bruises on his face.

Frank settles into the stillness. The silence. He stays alert for signs of trouble but the loose strands of fear in his chest are starting to gently release. Something like normality returning.

And then he blinks. 

Looks away from the scope for one damn second. 

And Matt is gone.

It’s early evening, sun starting to dip towards the horizon, but Matt had been head-bent over his paperwork two seconds ago. Frank searches the windows in the building to try and find a sign of him, some hint of that telltale cane or those red glasses. Matt moves quick, but not that quick.

“Damn it, Red,” he mutters to himself as he shuffles to the edge of the building to try to catch sight of him again. Watching over someone who can fade into the shadows is a pain in his goddamn ass, and he can feel his heart rate starting to pick up again as thoughts of rough laboratories and pinprick needles start to invade his mind all over again -

– Until he hears the crunching of a set of shoes on gravel as someone else joins him on the roof.

He hangs his head with a groan and knows who’s going to be there before he even turns around.

“Fun day, Frank?” Matt asks.

He’s looking put-together with his grey suit and coordinated tie. Red glasses. It’s a long way from the imprinted images that Frank has behind his eyes: Matt shirtless and sweating and pleading for the sounds to stop. It leaves him searching Matt’s face for signs of that pain, for a promise that Frank really did fix it. What he finds, buried as deep as it can go, is a layer of exhaustion and the ghost of healing scratches on his forehead and near his ears. Lingering aches. Matt should be at home in bed, not travelling around half the city.

He reminds himself he no longer needs to whisper, and brings his voice back to normal. “What do you want, Red?”

“I think I should be the one asking the questions, don’t you?” Oh. So they’re doing that. Matt’s on edge and Frank’s playing hostile witness all over again. He feels his hackles rise, but then Matt’s expression softens. “You’ve been following me all day. You need to go home. You need to sleep.”

“You hear yourself?” Frank almost laughs. “You think I want to be out here, covering your ass?”

“I had some loose threads I had to take care of. Nothing dangerous.” He seems to think about it, then tilts his head in acknowledgement. “Nothing I couldn’t handle.”

But he would’ve said that about the garage before they raided it, their paths colliding, and Frank’s done with trusting Matt’s judgement. “What about now?” Frank asks. “Tonight. You hitting the streets? Tracking down ‘bad guys’, huh?”

Matt opens his mouth like he’s about to start arguing with him - and wouldn’t that be familiar? Old arguments, old wounds, back to normal like Frank can pretend the past couple of days didn’t happen. Like he can shut off everything he’s seen, everything he’s felt.

“From what Karen tells me, you’ve already taken care of them,” Matt says, so careful with his phrasing. Frank wishes he knew exactly how much Karen had told him about what he’d had to do. A long, heavy breath leaves Matt’s lips. “And I could do with a night off. You coming with me?”

“What?”

“It might beat watching me from across the street,” Matt suggests. He takes a step backwards towards the fire escape and shrugs. “But it’s your choice.”

Given the option between a night out in the cold, or the strange welcome to Matt’s place, it doesn’t feel like much of a choice at all.

*

Frank feels out of place in Matt’s apartment: it feels like he’s breaking and entering, even when Matt holds the door for him and invites him inside. He knows that he’s part of Matt’s other life, his other world. Not the side of him with a fancy-ass apartment and slick little suits. Frank feels like he might drag his dirt and chaos into all of the highly-structured corners of Matt’s life. He can’t fight the part of him that desperately wants to mess Matt up, but he’s doing his best to keep it leashed.

Directing him over to the couch, Matt doesn’t seem like he cares. He walks into the kitchen and leaves Frank to settle down as he grabs drinks for them out of the fridge. He tosses a beer bottle over to Frank, leaving him catching it easily from mid-air.

When Matt comes back over to him, leaving his glasses on the counter, loosening the tie around his neck and getting ready to shed the suit jacket, Frank finally can’t take it any more. “You’re really alright?” he checks. He brushes his hand restlessly against his own knee, worrying at a loose thread from his jeans and making the damage worse. “Had me going for a while. Back there.” He shrugs. Looks away from Matt and down at his beer bottle instead. “Kinda worried.”

Matt drapes his jacket over the side of the couch and settles down. “The drug is out of my system, if that’s what you’re asking,” he responds. “Everything’s back to how it should be.”

“No pain?”

A smile. Almost a grimace. “No more than usual.”

What kind of a bullshit answer is that? Frank frowns at his beer bottle and starts to pick at the paper of the label. “You were hurt,” he says quietly. “Crying and shit.”

That smile of Matt’s, hollow and deliberately charming, it’s not going anywhere. “I might’ve overreacted,” he suggests. He even throws in a chuckle. Low, self-deprecating.

“I know torture when I hear it.” Frank’s voice is rough with it. He knows it personally, intimately: he knows what people sound like when they think they’re going to die -  when they want to. He rips another strip off the label from the beer bottle. “Didn’t like hearing it from you.”

He won’t look up from the bottle in his hands, but he hears the sound of Matt moving on the couch - shifting a little bit closer to him, closing that gap. “I’m sorry,” Matt murmurs. With his voice dropped down low, it’s like they’re in that little room again. Keeping the rest of the  world out. “Karen says you’re the only reason we got that cure. I don’t like how you did it, but - “

“Don’t start that shit, Red, I -”

“Thank you.” Matt cuts in before Frank can rise to the bait: emphatic. Final. Clear. Frank risks a glance up from his bottle towards Matt, and he can see the sincerity on Matt’s face. He means it. Frank takes him in, that handsome face now free from pain. There are a couple of healing bruises and red scratches around his face; they’re the only remaining evidence of all that’s happened in the past few nights.

Matt allows his gratitude to melt between them for a few long, quiet beats, before Frank gives a small nod of acknowledgement. That seems like it’s enough to activate him again, because Matt adjusts how he’s sitting. He leans forward and it’s almost like he’s trying to catch Frank’s gaze or force him to look at him, getting into his space and leaving little room to retreat. “But you’ve been following me today, Frank, and that’s not okay.”

Frank leans back against the couch and takes a long, slow drink from his beer. He barely even tastes it, only focused on Matt instead. “Wasn’t sure I got them all. Thought they might’ve come after you.”

Matt gives a slow, steady nod. “That could happen,” he agrees - which really doesn’t help to set Frank’s mind at ease. “And if it does, I’ll be ready for it. I don’t need a bodyguard.”

You did, Frank thinks. He thinks about Matt writhing in pain in his safehouse and he knows he’ll be thinking of that image for a long damn while.

Outloud, he doesn’t answer. Just grunts and takes another drink.

“What we do is dangerous, Frank. You know that,” Matt murmurs. “I don’t want you to think I need your protection just because they caught me off guard, once. I won’t make the same mistake again.”

“No, you’ll just make another one.” Frank shakes his head. “Not risking it. You want to run around joining gunfights with your little sticks, you need someone to watch your back. I should’ve seen it before.”

Matt calls his name one more time, and this time he reaches out - his hand on Frank’s knee, a heavy, solid warmth. It kills Frank how desperately he needs that contact. “What happened wasn’t your fault,” Matt states: he’s full of quiet certainty, and it just makes Frank want to laugh.

He knows what it’s like to have his crew’s blood on his hands. He knows what it’s like to lose good men to bad decisions, to have a fight turn against you with nothing you can do about it.

He’s been to war, he’s lost brothers to unlucky gunshots, and now he’s got the sound of Matt’s agonised breaths in his head and he doesn’t know if he’s ever going to get them out.

One more thing to haunt himself with. All that matters now is Matt's hand on his leg, warm and gentle and alive. Contact. It’s something Frank desperately needs more of.

“Frank,” Matt repeats. “Did you hear me? It wasn’t-”

Frank cuts him off with a kiss. He doesn’t plan it - he just moves. He leans in while Matt’s still talking and takes the false words from his lips. His hand slides carefully to the side of Matt’s face and he cups it gently as his eyes slide closed.

He feels it, the moment when Matt adjusts and decides to go with it. He feels the surrender in the soft sigh of air against his lips and the thread of Matt’s fingers through his hair. It’s disorienting and steadying all at once. They kiss, quietly, carefully, until the buzzing in Frank’s head starts to subside.

When they part, Frank rests his forehead against Matt’s and lets his hand drop to Matt’s shoulder. Matt is quiet. Thoughtful. He feels safe and sturdy underneath Frank’s palm. “If something happened to you, I…” Frank doesn’t have the words for it, scrambles for them. “I didn’t realise it until I saw it, Red. Saw you laid up like that. If something happened to you, I’d burn this whole city to the ground.”

Matt’s thumb strokes his cheekbone and takes his time processing the weight of what Frank’s just said. He wants to claw back the words before Matt responds to them, but it’s too late now. All of it, all those confusing, messy feelings, they’re out there.

“Stay the night, Frank. You need to rest,” Matt says. It could sound like a dismissal, like Matt is side-stepping around the words Frank needs him to hear, until Matt gives a small, tight smile. “I’ll feel better if you’re here. Safer.”

Frank doesn’t tell Matt that he wouldn’t be going anywhere - Matt could throw him out right now and he’d be right back on duty, keeping watch. It’s better doing it with Matt’s permission.

He knows that Matt might just be humouring him by inviting him to play guard-dog - god knows Matt can handle himself, Frank’s been on the receiving end of it too many times. He knows watching over Matt is for him, not for Matt, but it’s the only way he knows to set his mind at ease. After all he’s lost, all those blood-soaked memories, he’s not willing to add Matt to the count. Not tonight.

He parts from Matt with one gentle kiss to the scratches on his forehead. After that, he leans back against the sofa, while his whole body cries at him to close the gap again and take another kiss, take a whole lot more - he tells himself he’s practising self-restraint, while in reality he’s waiting for Matt to make the next move.

Matt leaves him hanging. Stewing in need and confusion and something heated and messy. It’s like the bastard is savouring it, his head tilted to the side to pick up everything he wants from Frank. There’s no rush or urgency, just the faintest, smallest crook of a smile on Matt’s lips.

“So. You want me playing bodyguard,” Frank says eventually, which might be a mistranslation of Matt’s actual request. “That mean you’re going to feed me?”

From the look on Matt’s face, Frank thinks he might be lucky to survive the night.

It’s a soft evening. Gentle. Matt makes dinner and plays records and Frank tries his hardest to ground himself here: not in the war on Hell’s Kitchen’s streets, not on the rooftops where blood gets spilled, and sure as hell not on the sweat-stained mattress in his lost safehouse. He tries to wrap himself in the domesticity and follow Matt’s lead through it all.

Matt hasn’t kissed him again all night. Hasn’t even brought it up, even while Frank claws at himself to talk about it. To try again. He holds himself back, since the ball is in Matt’s court, and when the sun has gone down and they’re both getting tired, Matt finally takes him by the hand. “Come with me,” Matt says.

They’ve barely made it onto Matt’s expensive, high-class sheets before Matt is kissing him again. It’s slower this time but there’s an edge to it: a purpose. From the first moment of contact Frank feels something break inside - it’s like the knowledge of how badly he wants this washes over him all at once. The certainty that it’s going to crush him if this is taken away.

Matt eases down against the bed and Frank climbs over him, gets a leg between his thighs and bears down against him on the mattress. He throws his bulk around and cages him in as their lips part and his tongue explores. Making out like high schoolers, grinding slow and lazy together like it’s a summer day in the park.

Frank’s hand covers Matt’s jaw and holds him in place as he takes what he wants from him, tastes him deep and leaves their lips raw and tingling. He listens to the choked-back sound he gets from Matt in return, as if he’s outraged or turned on and can’t decide between the two. Against his leg, he feels Matt’s hips starting to buck and slowly ride his thigh, the hard jut of his cock still covered by his suit pants.

Frank breaks the kiss just so that he can look down at Matt, already pleasantly flushed. “We really doing this?” Frank checks - because he needs to hear it from Matt. He’s been out of his mind since the second that needle pricked Matt’s skin, but this is something he needs to hear for himself.

What he gets in return is a frustrated groan and Matt pulling at his shirt to try to get him to take it off. The impatience leaves Frank grinning, flattery sinking into his blood.

“I mean it, Matty,” he insists. “Wanna hear you say it.”

The request gets Matt to focus - at least for long enough to lean up and kiss Frank again, sweet and demanding all at once. When they part, he nods. “We’re doing this,” he agrees. His next words, when they come, are careful. Fragile. “I heard you, Frank. Even when it was too much, when I thought my skull might crack from it… I heard you, the whole time. Your heartbeat. Your breath.” He rests his head against the pillow and lets Frank look at him without shame. “That’s how I knew it would be okay. I knew you wouldn’t give up.”

It’s too much. That trust. That faith.

Frank kisses him again like he can’t help himself. Between them, clothes begin to disappear, thrown thoughtlessly onto the floor, until it’s bare skin on bare skin and Frank’s sure he’s going to lose his mind all over again. Underneath him, Matt is built like a renaissance sculpture, all perfect abs and smooth skin. His skin is heated underneath Frank’s hands as he carefully runs his hands over individual scars, locking them into his memory. It’s a long way from the clammy, desperate sight in his safehouse; he vastly prefers the way Matt moans for him now.

“Wanna be inside you,” he mutters when his hands reach Matt’s hips - and lower, down to the firm curve of his ass.

Matt’s agreeing before Frank even finishes speaking. He reaches over to the bedside table and opens a drawer there: lube and condoms. After drawing out the lube, Frank sees him hesitate for just a second over the protection. “I’m clean,” he tells Matt quietly. “Don’t need it unless you do.”

Stupid risk to take. Reckless. But as Matt closes the drawer and leaves it behind, Frank’s cock aches in need all the same. He drags his mouth against Matt’s neck and soaks in the heat of skin. “You gonna take me in you raw, Red?” he breathes. “That it?”

Matt’s hand cups the back of his neck, nails scratching lightly against his skin, against the chain still hanging around Frank’s neck. “I trust you,” Matt says, simple as a punch to the gut. “So hurry up and fuck me.”

Frank gets to take his time opening Matt up - plenty of lube, plenty of slow, measured twists of his fingers against his prostate that leave Matt shuddering underneath him. He gets three slick fingers inside him and he’s pretty sure that he could make Matt come, just like this, just the steady movements of his hand. Matt’s head has fallen back against the pillow again and his eyes have closed, but his hand is gripping bruises into Frank’s upper arm.

Frank can’t stop watching him, soaking him in. It’s only when Matt’s breath gets heavy and his soft moans start to turn urgent that Matt tugs desperately on his arm. “Frank. It’s too much,” he warns him. “You keep this up, I’m going to lose it.”

Frank responds with a gentle kiss against Matt’s sternum, his mouth lingering there even as he reluctantly pulls his hand free from Matt. Another time, he promises himself, already acting as if this is a surefire bet. A second round. Like walking away could never be an option after this.

A pillow gets shoved under Matt’s hips to help with the angle and he hooks his legs around Frank’s hips, drawing him closer. Frank pushes one leg higher, up by his shoulder instead, and is rewarded with a satisfied nod from Matt. “Anyone ever tell you you’re a demanding little shit?” Frank complains - but his barely-hidden smile gives him away.

“Something like that,” Matt agrees. “Once or twice.”

Frank looks down between them, guides himself where he needs to go until he feels the first hint of pressure and needs to fight his base instincts and do this right. “Don’t want to hurt you,” he breathes.

“I’ll be fine.”

“Not what I said.” Frank’s heard enough of Matt’s pain for a lifetime. He won’t be the cause of it, not here. He knows he’s thick, well-endowed, and as he first gives in and presses inside of Matt he’s watching his face carefully, trying to stay alert for any sign that this might be too much. As slick as they are, as careful as they’ve been, he knows Matt Murdock - he knows the masochist streak in him runs deep, but he’s not here for that. Not tonight.

All he sees is the way that Matt’s eyes screw shut and his mouth drops open, not from pain but from the intensity of it. Frank feels that too, slowly thrusting his hips a little deeper each time, skin on skin with nothing between them. He groans when he hits home, Matt stretched tight around him, somehow taking every inch.

The sounds that spill from Matt’s mouth when he moves are something else altogether. Like the lawyer has disappeared altogether and only the devil is here. There’s something almost animal in the way that Matt drags him in, takes him deeper. Frank’s hips snap even as he tells himself to take it slow.

Slow doesn’t work, not for them, not when Matt is wordlessly urging him onwards. They kiss like they’re at war and Frank pins him to the mattress and lets loose: days of frustration and fear and relief all rolled into one, all taken out between the pair of them.

The noises from Matt’s lips start to overwrite the cries of pain that have been haunting him all day - now he knows what Matt sounds like when it’s so good he can’t form words any more, when his senses are picking up pleasure and nothing else. He wants to keep Matt like this, always. Raw and lost. On the edge and fucking filthy with it.

Frank catches Matt by the wrist when he reaches for his cock, and pins it down firmly against the mattress just to hear the captured sigh Matt gives him. He realises that the only sounds he’s been making are grunts and groans of his own, desperately animalistic, when he tries to talk again for the first time. “I got you,” he says. “You said you trust me.”

Those words are burned into his mind now, written deep down in his subconscious. He gets his hand around Matt’s cock and relishes in his groan of relief. “That’s it, sweetheart,” he breathes, before he scrapes his teeth against the stubble on Matt’s jaw and feels him shudder beneath him. “So close, you’re so close, I can feel it.”

He really can, from the way that Matt’s muscles are starting to twitch and tighten to the delicious way his breath stutters and hitches as Frank takes him higher. He rocks into Matt, focuses on the angle that makes him shudder and groan, and coaxes him through it with soft words breathed into his skin until Matt finally comes - a hot splatter against Frank’s stomach and the sound of his name in ecstasy on Matt’s lips.

He kisses it from him, uncoordinated, as Matt nods and urges him onwards. He fucks Matt when he’s freshly spent and over-sensitive, Matt’s hands on his back drawing him close. Frank finishes with a moan, pushing as deep into Matt as he can get: he releases inside him and feels Matt’s shudder of satisfaction underneath him.

When he pulls out, he looks down just to see the mess he’s leaving behind. If he hadn’t just come, he thinks that alone might be enough to set him off all over again.

Matt’s a wreck, panting for air as he lies on his back, but he yanks Frank roughly towards him and lets him rest against the headboard. Matt rolls over to rest his head on Frank’s chest, still panting for air as Frank starts to thread his fingers through Matt’s hair.

“Jesus Christ,” Matt says eventually, breaking the silence. Frank chuckles. “Jesus Christ.”

“Language,” Frank reminds him.

“You got delicate ears, Frank?”

“After that? I better fucking not. Think your neighbours might be calling the cops.” He leans down and presses a kiss against the top of Matt’s head, just because it seems like the kind of thing Matt might actually let him do right now.

It seems to settle Matt down enough that he eases against Frank some more, even lets out a long sigh. “Waited a long time for that,” Matt admits. “Both of us.”

Frank gives a small nod, because he doesn’t even know if that’s the word for it. ‘Waiting’. It feels like so much more than that. It took nearly losing Matt to the intensity of his gifts, to the bad-faith forces in this city, for either of them to realise it.

“Heard there’s a job opening at your firm. Something about a bodyguard?” he says, and bites back a smile when Matt shoves at his shoulder. “Something about benefits?”

“You’re a menace, you know,” Matt complains.

“Your menace,” slips out of Frank’s mouth unintentionally. Shit.

He wants to bite it back immediately, but Matt tilts his head up towards him - and he looks stunning like this, a freshly fucked mess, his lips raw and skin flushed and his hair wrecked. It’s all Frank can do to keep breathing.

“My menace,” Matt repeats thoughtfully. His fingers tap thoughtfully against Frank’s ribs. “I could get used to that.”

Frank’s going to make sure he does.

*

He’s not really sure how long Matt is going to let him get away with this - the ‘bodyguard’ joke is wearing thin already, but being given permission to stay in his orbit and fight back the fears over a follow-up attack is a blessing. Frank tells himself it’s tactical. If someone else makes a swing for Daredevil, they need someone around who knows how to handle it.

He’s not sure anyone’s buying the tactics angle - not Matt, sure as hell not Karen.

“It’s cute,” is her conclusion. “You’re like a guard-dog.”

He’s heard worse.

But weeks pass and another attack doesn’t come. Matt has tipped off some of the heavy-weights in the scene to let them know that there might be new bio-weapons on the playing field, but the hollowed-out lab seems to have done the trick for now. It won’t be forever, but it’s bought them some time.

The sound of Matt’s cries of pain start to fade from his mind, replaced by something altogether better. Frank starts to get used to being in his life: he starts trying to figure out what this looks like when it isn’t fueled by adrenaline and fear.

Turns out what it looks like is fighting with Matt at every opportunity over every clashed scrap of morality. There’s no fucking that out of him.

Matt comes to find Frank out in the depths of Hell’s Kitchen. Frank doesn’t ask how he finds him; he doesn’t need to know, but he likes to think Matt knows the sound of his heartbeat by now. That Matt can find him when he needs him, no matter where he is.

“Busy night?” Matt asks as he walks over, Devil mask hiding his face once again. He talks as if they’re catching up over work.

“Heard about a deal going down by the docks. A couple of the gangs are planning on throwing their weight around. Figured I might join the fun,” Frank says. He knows what’s coming next. They’ve talked about this. He’s convinced himself he can handle it.

“You want company?” Matt offers, just like Frank expected him to.

Their first time fighting side-by-side since the last shitshow. His first time having to trust that Matt won’t get hurt.

Even when he’s fought hard to get himself here, it’s difficult to make himself agree. Nod and act like it’s fine, like he won’t be paying attention to Matt the whole time and like he won’t want to gun down anyone that draws a single drop of blood. He knows the mess they’re walking into. Matt is going to get hurt. As long as it isn’t more than he can take, Frank has to put up with it.

The silence is too long. “... If you’d rather, I can leave you to it,” Matt suggests. Frank knows that doesn’t mean that he’ll go home and listen to audiobooks for the rest of the evening. It just means that Matt will find his own patch of trouble to get involved with.

And, fuck, Frank doesn’t want Matt hiding at home anyway.

He wants Matt as he is: brutal, dangerous, annoying as fuck.

It means he has to screw his eyes shut and push away the memories of Matt all those weeks ago, and fight back the memories that are older still, the spilled blood he’s never going to forget.

He makes himself nod. Matt trusts him, he reminds himself. He’s got to prove he’s worth it.

“Let’s do it,” he says. “About damn time.”

Matt’s smirk is truly something beautiful. “No killing,” he reminds him.

Frank tries not to roll his eyes. “But maiming is a-okay.” He’s never going to get used to Matt’s flexible-as-hell morality.

“Maiming is a grey area…” Matt agrees.

They head out into the night, side by side. Frank doesn’t know what’s waiting out there - but they’re not facing it alone. He’s a bodyguard, a guard dog, a shadow. Whatever’s haunting Hell’s Kitchen tonight, they’ll come out swinging.