trustinthedevil | (no subject)

Okay, so it takes longer than Matt thought. He kept finding new things and he couldn't just go home. No matter how much he wanted to crawl back into Frank's lap. Frank probably was past the mood, anyway. But he's still in the apartment - if Devildog weren't the give away, Matt can hear Frank's steady breathing. He moves quietly, petting the dog and peeling off the layers of costume. The clothes he was wearing earlier are where he left them, and once he puts those on, he creeps into the bed. A moment of hesitation and then Matt shimmies himself closer, cozying up to Frank's back. The feeling of bare skin both delights and embarrasses Matt, but it's warm and instantly relaxing.

He hopes he's allowed to cuddle without permission.

Frank doesn't actually wake up—he had to learn to sleep through mortar rounds overseas or he'd never have gotten through a night, so he's not going to spring back into consciousness for Matt tip-toeing through his apartment—but somewhere through the night he turns over onto his back and finds a way to snake his arm under the devil.

He finally peels his eyes open some time just slightly after dawn, with his mouth pressed against Matt's hair and his hand (the one that had been curled around the pistol at the start of the night) tucked up under his flimsy tshirt, knuckles pressed the bare skin of his side.

It takes him a moment to reorient himself with the real world. To remember where he is and how he got there, and after a few split seconds of tenseness he relaxes carefully back into the smooth silk sheets.

He sniffs, slowly retracting his arm, jostling Matt awake in the process if he wasn't already. "Mornin', Red."

Mstt's had Frank over enough know to start learning Frank's sleeping habits. He knows that, when Frank wants to sleep, really sleep, he's out. But he knows, too, that Frank is certainly capable of resting enough to carry on and spring into action if needed. Sometimes it's hard to tell what, exactly, Frank is doing in the moment.

But it doesn't take long for Frank's easy breathing and heartbeat to lull Matt into sleep. He can sleep pretty well, too, when he wants to. When he lets himself let go of the day (and when he makes his way to bed as opposed to the couch). So the jostling is moderately unpleasant as sleep clings desperately to Matt while his brain whirs into something resembling consciousness, and his hand reaches over to slap the clock so it can speak the time to him.

"It's. Five," Matt vocalizes. Barely. It's five in the morning and Frank is moving away and Matt feels bristly at that. He rolls over, to settle more firmly into the pillows. His mouth feels dry and he licks his lips, tasting dried blood from last night's outing. Maybe he should've showered. Maybe he can shower at a more reasonable time of day.

"Uh huh," Frank says, thickly, like it's a perfectly reasonable time to be up and about. "Sun's up." He runs a hand over his face and sits up so he can swing his legs over the other side of the bed, hauling most of the blanket down and away from Matt in the process.

Oops.

Frank finally glances over, taking in the state of him. Shit. "You look awful." That's definitely a lie, but he does look like he had a rough night.

"You're an asshole."

His words are hardly words. It's more a string of syllables with something like vowels connecting them. He's more coherent when he's on death's door, as evidenced when he groans at the loss of both Frank and blankets.

Rolling over, Matt reaches for Frank, catching him in the abdomen to try and push him down. Back to bed. Back to coziness and sleep. "It's five in the morning, Frank."

Frank lets himself get pulled back, mostly just because he's too surprised that Matt was even conscious enough to lift his arms up and apply some close approximation of force. He shifts to avoid laying entirely on top of the devil.

He's really starting to regret not taking one of Matt's shirts, now that he's been stopped from moving to the shower or the kitchen for a cup of hot coffee. The air is cool on his skin, and Matt's arms are very warm.

Yep. He's fucked. "Don't you have work, or some shit?"

"Self employed."

Matt rests his head on Frank's shoulder, feeling a bit smug. That's what happens, Frank, when you wake up a sleeping devil in its natural habitat. You become trapped by its wrath. It's sleepy, cuddly wrath.

"Meeting a client this afternoon. A paying client." Important, that bit. He huffs out a breath. "I need a better office."

"You need a better job," Frank mutters, dryly. He'll never be sold on the nobility of protecting shitbags, whether with fists or the law. And Matt can argue about innocence all he wants, but he'd tried to defend Grotto and he'd tried to defend Frank: they'd both been guilty as sin.

So.

"Maybe I got shit to do," he tacks on, a smidgen unconvincingly. Maybe four hours of sleep after the last two days he'd had isn't entirely enough...

"Nobody has shit to do this early."

Not everyone Matt defends is bad. Hes still thinks, sometimes, about Mrs. Cardenas and how he couldn't help her. Those are the people he wants to help. They need his help. He exhales through his nose, because now he's thinking about it, and he rolls away from Frank. Let him get up and do his shit.

"If you can try to be quiet, that'd be nice."

Well, his goddamn bluff got called, didn't it? (Frank needs to stop expecting he can get away with that shit with Matt.) Still, he can practically taste the mood shifting, and he lays there for a split second longer without Matt warming up his side before deciding it's probably for the best anyway. Really. It is.

So much for holding onto shit with both hands, huh?

He grunts, pointedly doesn't examine why he feels a touch guilty, and rolls out of bed more carefully than the first time so as not to steal all the covers away again. He pads into the kitchen, makes a cup of coffee, takes a shower (without singing, you're welcome Red) then makes two more cups of coffee and hunts for wherever he'd discarded Devildog's leash the night before so they can bail while Matt's still sleeping.

Well. Now Matt's awake. Without Frank there, it's hard to settle back down. Stupid as that is. He lies there, looking up into nothingness, listening. The Keurig. The shower, the water kicking in and screeching quietly through the old pipes. The Keurig again. By the time he hears the leash, Matt's out of bed.

He rubs at his face where the blood is (he thinks), moving with a bit of lag. He leans against the counter, waiting for a moment or two. He's awful at this, he's convinced he's somehow ruined it all, and that's ... Typical. Class Matt Murdock. Fun while it lasted.

"It's customary to say goodbye," Matt says. "I'm just guessing you're leaving." Frank might not feel like he's rushing, but Matt can hear it. Moving faster than usual, an urgency in it all. "Thanks for dinner last night."

Frqank pauses, having finally found the leash mostly tucked beneath the couch, with only the clasp sticking out in the open. Holding it now, as Matt finally emerges from the cocoon of his bed, Frank feels an awful lot like a kid caught with his hand stuck in the cookie jar and he's not entirely sure why.

"You wanted quiet," he reminds Matt, in his own defense, giving Devildog an exasperated look as the pit makes a beeline for Matt and waits expectantly for the petting that always comes when he trots up close enough.

"Oh, right," Matt says. He obligingly pats the dog on the head, ruffling his ears. "And goodbye would have really just thrown me over the edge."

But he's smiling. He's not sure if he believes himself or not, this could be another one of those moments where Matt's tricked himself into thinking everything's fine. "I'll ... Talk to you later."

Frank hesitates. Frank never hesitates anymore, except with Matt. When they're tucked together in bed, or on the couch, or in the kitchen he forgets, maybe a little too easily, how out of sync they are. How new they still are to each other. With his wife, even when their tempers snapped and they fought like cats and dogs, he got her, what she wanted out of him.

Or maybe that only exists now, in retrospect, colored by nostalgia and the awfulness of her absence. Of not being able to fight with her about the petty things anymore.

Matt isn't nearly as brutally blunt as she was: no, he's more or less the opposite. Frank's still all about facing issues head-on, though, so, "Why're you being so squirrelly, huh?"

Any chance that might have remained for Matt to find the humour in this is gone. He feels chastised by the accusation and he shrugs, feeling tired and sore.

"I don't know. Habit?" They can't even go twelve hours without stuff like this happening. Maybe the night before was a fluke. It makes Matt sigh. Resigned. He finds Frank and touches his chest, leaning in to kiss his cheek. The action is quick and Matt's on his way back to bed. It's too early to argue. Better to just avoid it.

"Goodbye, Frank."

Frank's not fast enough to catch his arm before he goes, but that sure as shit doesn't mean he won't follow. "Goddamnit, Red," he complains, dropping Devildog's leash back onto the couch in a pointed rattle of chains. "It don't work like that. You know? This don't—I don't work like that. Yeah."

He stops in the bedroom door. Awake but not particularly even-footed. He's got words, but they're all in a jumble. "I gotta know what you want. But you won't talk, you know?" Never really does, either. Before it had been... cute, honestly. But after last night and this morning, suddenly it doesn't all just seem like a case of being shy, or a little too catholic for his own good. "I know you got shit to say. I need you to, you know, I need you to say it."

"Right now I want you to go."

The moment Matt says it, he regrets it. He turns around and moves to Frank, to catch him before he steps away. His fingers press into the fabric of Frank's shirt and he clutches, just a bit, just in case Frank tries to go.

"No - that's not ..." He's a disaster. Matt presses his forehead to Frank's shoulder. "Can we restart this morning? Rewind back to bed. If you want to go that's fine. I can't make you stay. I want you to stay."

Ain't that a kick in the teeth? Frank twitches when Matt's fingers find their way into his shirt, but it's not because he's got any desire to actually step foot out the door.

Then Matt's head comes to rest on his shoulder he almost agrees—almost—but he knows better than anyone that letting this shit lie is a good way to have it blow up in his face later. "I'm not going anywhere," he says gruffly, which is more or less a threat considering Matt's initial reaction. "We still gotta talk. Going back to bed and pretending it didn't happen isn't gonna fix what's bothering you." A beat. He leans back, and touches the corner of his mouth where he's still got a bit of dried, flaking red. "And you still got blood on your face."

"Yeah, well, nothing new there," Matt says in regards to the blood. He shifts his weight from one foot to the other. He's not sure what to say, what he wants to say or what Frank wants him to say.

"Frank, it's - Five-thirty in the morning. I can't think full thoughts let alone talk about them. I just ... Want you to stay until I can. Preferably with me in there," he nods back to the bed, "and we can fight after. Even if I don't know why we're fighting."

Five thirty in the morning is perfectly viable daytime, Frank feels.

But he's mollified enough by the promise of talk later that he'll allow himself another hour or two of sleep for once. Reluctantly. (Well, """reluctantly.""") "We're not fighting," he grouses, taking Matt by the elbow to steer him back towards the bed. "Sit," he adds, heading into the bathroom for a washcloth and warm water, at least, to clean off Matt's face. No sense in getting into the nice sheets twice speckled with someone else's blood.

"Hmm. That's true. No one's been punched yet."

He feels better, though. Less anxious over Frank slipping away. Matt sits down and listens to Frank move around.

"It's just that, usually when people don't announce they're leaving, it's because they're trying to sneak away. I thought I did something. Maybe."

When Frank comes back he flips on the bedroom light, and tilts Matt's face up towards it with the tips of his fingers so he can see which patches of red are his own blood and which are someone else's before he rubs them off with the damp cloth.

"Thought you were going back to sleep," he says, brow wrinkling half in concentration over the task at hand, half at Matt's sentiment. "And you weren't thrilled the first time I woke you up."

"That was my own fault. But I still don't think a see you later would be hard."

Matt presses his fingers to Frank's sides, snorting when he discovers Frank's shirt is tucked in. He plucks the fabric free, then realizes there's also a belt. Cone on, Frank. Going back to bed isn't condusive to belt wearing so Matt takes care of that, too. Matt stands up to press a kiss to Frank's lips.

Frank rolls his eyes to the ceiling but returns the kiss anyway. He'll not hear any insults to his impeccable Dad Fashion, damnit.

He hooks his fingers around the backs of the devil's thighs, hoisting him up off the ground and tipping him back onto the mattress. He tosses the washcloth back through the bathroom door where it hits the sink with a wet splat! and pulls back the sheets so he can slide back in.

"How late do you plan to sleep?" he rumbles, already feeling the extra weight in his bones that comes from laying back down while tired. Not that Frank can actually tell what Matt's clock says without practically rolling him over onto the floor so he can reach the alarm and slap the top...

Edited 2016-06-23 00:11 (UTC)

There are worse ways to get moved around, Matt thinks. If Frank isn't careful, Matt's going to start expecting to be carried around everywhere in his apartment. The thought makes the corner of his mouth turn up and he rolls over, pressing into Frank's side, nose to Frank's neck. For a moment, Matt thinks he's wide awake but the fatigue settles in quickly. So he just hums and shrugs.

"At least until eight." He does, after all, have to finish reviewing the documents that got abandoned the night before and get ready for his meeting. "Nine, latest."