Chapter Text
One day Foggy came home and Frank Castle was on his couch.
Just sitting on his couch, drinking one of Foggy’s expensive beers, settled in like he was there for the duration. Like he had been sitting there a while, getting comfy in Foggy’s apartment and taking in the atmosphere. Foggy just stared at him and Frank just stared back and honestly?
This was not a staring contest Foggy was going to win.
This was not a fight Foggy was going to win, if that’s what it came down to. While they were almost the same height and technically, Foggy was a bit thicker around the middle, Foggy knew that was because he was made out of marshmallow fluff, not totally shredded core muscles.
His phone was in his pocket, his baseball bat was in his bedroom and Matt wasn’t in his life at all so the odds of Daredevil coming to his rescue was slim to none. Matt, he thought with a pang. Don’t be sad at my funeral, you dick.
“I don’t want to fight,” he blurted out and Frank just squinted at him. Foggy remembered that squint from the trial. Frank was good at squinting.
“I’m not here to hurt you,” Frank said, sounding a little annoyed, like it was so fucking rude of Foggy to think the guy with the moniker “The Punisher” might be up to no good. Foggy was going to die and Frank Castle was acting like Foggy was the asshole.
“You broke into my apartment. You kill people, you are-”
“I just wanted to see my dog.”
“Your dog?” Foggy demanded even as he hysterically wondered why the hell he was getting into an argument with the goddamned Punisher but unable to help himself. “Your dog? My dog. My dog, who I’ve taken to therapy, given a home, I pick up his poop off the goddamned sidewalk every goddamned day and you know what? Fuck you.”
Frank eyeballed him.
“You seem high-strung.”
“I’m a high-powered lawyer, no thanks to you. Of course I’m high-strung.”
They stared at each other some more.
“I just wanted to see the dog.”
And for a moment Foggy saw that vulnerability that he tried so hard to pretend didn’t exist when he was representing Frank. When he told himself Frank was a murderer and no matter how much Karen and Matt insisted he deserved a fair shot, a part of Foggy hadn’t believed it.
Didn’t want to.
Things had changed, though. Since the trial. Since everything good in his life had disintegrated and then reformed into something different and strange. Things weren’t black and white. A really hard lesson he’d learned the last few months, out on his own with only Marci as an intermittent anchor. It wasn’t fun running into the brick wall of his own convictions and realizing it was nothing but cracks.
The anger he had purposely been building to keep the fear at bay abruptly collapsed. Foggy had never been good at anger and his fear had always been better spent on people other than on himself. At least that hadn’t changed.
He reached up to pinch at the bridge of his nose.
“You just wanted to see the dog,” he repeated, trying to push back his blooming headache. “Sure, you know what? Yeah. See the dog.”
“I was worried about him.”
“How did you even know he was here?” Foggy demanded dropping his hand and finally slinging his bag onto the table. Frank held up a newspaper, wrinkled and a bit old looking. Max’s smiling face stared out at him, Foggy kneeling beside the dog like some sort of nightmare yearbook photo his mother would have insisted on.
His hair looked good though. He had spent an hour in a chair while a stylist went to work and chided him on the conditions of his ends.
“Shit,” he said. “Jeri made me do that. Said it was good PR.”
Next to him, leash still gripped firmly in hand, Max’s ears were perked up, looking at Frank like he recognized him. Max’s tail wagged slowly and Foggy sighed, leaning down to unclip the harness, slipping it off. Max turned to look at him and Foggy rubbed behind his ears.
“Go on, say hi.”
Frank patted his knee, whistled a bit and Max ambled over, nosing at his hand. Max was good with people, so desperate to please that it broke Foggy’s heart. Typical of fighting dogs, one of the trainers had told him. These dogs experienced so much brutality they knew that the only protection they might muster would be from the same hand that beat them.
“He’s still my dog,” Foggy told him as he headed towards the kitchen. “Now, did you leave me any beer?”
In the kitchen, once out of sight of Frank, he pulled out his phone and stared at the screen, swiping away the notification of a text from Marci. He’d get back to her later, feeling only a hazy sense of guilt that there were four or five unanswered messages from her from the last two weeks. This took precedence, right?
911 would be easy enough to dial. Three little numbers. He could do it. From the living room, he could hear Frank crooning softly to Max, Max’s nails clicking along the floor.
He called the Chinese food place down the corner instead, put in a double order of his usual. Foggy had no idea how well murderous vigilantes ate on the regular. Might as well feed him. Predators moved slower when full, didn’t they?
He headed back into the living room, tucking his phone back in his pocket. Max was curled up on the couch, leaning against Frank’s side like Frank was his long lost mother.
“Hope you like Chinese,” he said, “It should be here in about twenty. Don’t answer the door, I’m not about to get arrested for harboring a fugitive. I’m going to go change. Turn the tv on, relax. Enjoy yourself. Have another beer.”
Frank didn’t bother to deign him with a response and Foggy left him to go into his bedroom, closing the door firmly behind him. He stripped out of his suit quickly, hanging up the pants and jacket carefully. Considering how much money his new wardrobe had cost him, (Foggy-Bear, Marci had told him patiently as he tried not to hyperventilate at the price tags, stop being a baby) Foggy made sure to treat his clothes better than he treated his body.
He had no problem shoving greasy food into his body but he sure as hell wasn’t going to do that while wearing one of his new suits.
Sweats and a tee-shirt later, he walked back into the living room to find Frank had done none of the things Foggy had suggested. No new beer, no tv. Just Frank sitting in silence while Max got all the cuddles he wanted.
Foggy sighed and snagged the remote before taking a seat on the couch, budging Max over so that he was firmly between Foggy and Frank. He clicked the tv on, immediately switched away from the news because he seriously did not want to know if Frank was here fresh off another murder spree.
Law & Order was on, of course, and Foggy made a face as he changed the channel, settling on a rerun of Bob’s Burgers. He stared at the screen, tried to will himself to pay attention to the candy colored adventures of the Belcher family and not on the man seated half a sofa from him.
Life was surreal.
“He looks good,” Frank said, polite enough to wait for a commercial.
Foggy also remembered that raspy voice, rarely directed at him. Karen was who Frank had talked to and even though Karen had insisted to be the one to deal with him, part of Foggy was still a little ashamed at how quickly he had left all that to her. Being on the outs with Matt didn’t make that okay.
He didn’t look at Frank, instead he looked down at Max, running a hand along his haunch.
“He’s a good boy,” Foggy said, “I’ve been taking him to a trainer, they have to monitor him because of his background but he’s doing so good. He’s got his commands down, he’s not people aggressive, he’s still a bit wary around other dogs and we’re working on that. Work in progress, huh, bud?”
Max licked Foggy’s hand then laid his head back on Frank’s thigh.
“Guess he remembers you.”
Frank scratched at his chin, a bit of a shrug in his shoulders. Foggy knew he could be chatty, certainly had been with Karen. Foggy, he hadn’t spoken to much. Ignored him for the most part. At the time, Foggy had been relieved.
“I didn’t do much.”
Foggy would have protested that but was interrupted by his doorbell. Max didn’t bark but went alert, head perking up and eyes brightening. One of the first things Max had learned from living with Foggy was that the doorbell usually meant food. Foggy ate takeout a lot.
“Food’s here!” he said, a little too brightly. “Stay, Max.”
He got up, snagging his bag and rummaging for his wallet. Cash in hand he opened the door to Ryan, the disenchanted teen who always delivered Foggy’s dinner. They did the familiar exchange, money for bags of food, Foggy making sure to tip well and then he was heading back into the living, burdened with delicious Chinese.
“Hope you don’t expect plates or silverware,” Foggy told Frank as he set the bags down on the coffee table. “Plastic forks and eating out the carton is how we roll here in Casa de Foggy. I’m going to grab a beer, you need another?”
Frank grunted an affirmative, already peeling open a carton and rummaging for the forks. Seems vigilantes didn’t eat so great on their own after all. Shaking his head, he went to the kitchen, grabbed and opened two beers as well as snagging some napkins. The ones the restaurant provided were always so thin as to be useless.
When he got back, Max was off the couch and on the floor and Foggy took one look at him and knew.
“You gave him a dumpling, didn’t you?”
Frank froze, mouth full of chow mein and Foggy tsked.
“He always wants the dumplings.”
He sat back down, grabbing his own carton and took to eating. He was hungry and Foggy wasn’t sure what it said about him that being in the same room as a killer wasn’t enough to put his appetite off. Maybe it just meant he was super tough.
They ate in silence, the tv the only noise. Frank ate like a soldier in the middle of a mission, putting away huge swatches of it without seeming to enjoy it. It seemed a terrible way to live. Sighing internally, Foggy tipped the box of spring rolls Frank’s way. He could do without spring rolls this once.
They both pretended not to notice when the other gave Max bits and pieces of beef and pork and Max was kind enough to beg from both of them evenly. Eventually the food dwindled until it was almost gone, Bob’s Burgers turned into another Bob’s Burgers then into Family Guy which made Foggy change the channel and Frank sat back with the air of a man impossibly full.
“Good food,” he said, all laconic drawl and Foggy hated the fact that Frank Castle sounded so damn cool by barely speaking. Foggy never sounded cool, not even in his own head.
He was just wondering if he should be offering up his couch for New York’s most wanted killer when Frank got to his feet and began gathering up empty cartons. The lazy part of Foggy wanted to leave him to it while the part of him hammered into his soul by his mother shrieked about making guests do the cleaning.
“I’ll do that,” he said and even he could hear the reluctance in his voice. He was just really lazy, okay. “Don’t worry about it.”
Frank just snorted, tipping the remaining left overs into one or two cartons and making off with the rest. Foggy could hear him in the kitchen, tossing the trash, putting the empty beer bottles on the counter. It felt disturbingly domestic and Max was looking at Foggy then looking in the direction of the kitchen, clearly torn. Foggy was still sitting in front of food though, so food plus Foggy meant Max stayed put.
The best way to repay loyalty, Foggy reflected, was to give people what they wanted. There were two dumplings left.
“Last one is mine, you hear?” he said, tossing one dumpling and watching Max snatch it out of the air. Frank cleared his throat and Foggy looked up startled. He hadn’t heard him return, too distracted by Max’s puppy eyes.
Frank was hovering awkwardly near the edge of the room and it was strange watching him fidget now. At trial, even at his worst, the man had moved with precision, meticulous and hyperaware. Now he almost squirmed as Foggy stared up at him from the couch.
“Thanks,” Frank finally said, gruffly, “For taking him in.”
“I didn’t do it for you. He deserved a second chance.”
Someone did, out of that entire mess. Maybe Foggy didn’t, maybe Matt didn’t. But Max? Max deserved the best life Foggy could give him. Frank nodded and then he was leaving, The Punisher walking out of Foggy’s apartment after eating Chinese and checking up on his dog.
What the fuck was his life?
Max followed Frank out of the living room and Foggy stayed where he was, listening to his front door open and shut. A minute later, Max came back alone, tail wagging.
“Oh, now you love me,” Foggy muttered, then gave Max the very last dumpling because if there was one thing Foggy always was, it was a sucker.