Chapter Text
At first, Jason Todd thinks the man slumped on the floor of the shitty, empty apartment is dead. The place stinks like Crime Alley during a sanitation worker strike.
Crouching just out of reach, he sees the man's chest move—shallow and worryingly slow, but steady—under a half-zipped hoodie. He watches his hands intently, waiting for a twitch that means he’s about to get mauled by 220 pounds of pissed-off Marine.
But there’s nothing. Frank Castle left blood and whiskey and crushed yellow Xanax smeared on the floor beside a bucket even Jason finds disgusting. The pills give him pause—he’s never seen Frank take as much as an Advil. He cautiously runs his hands over Frank's stiff hoodie pockets, finding a switchblade and a crumpled receipt. Frank doesn't move.
Jason sighs.
The personal items in Frank's apartment comprise guns, the knife, and a military bag so enormous it might as well have “guns here!” embroidered on the side. Having once carried a trash bag of heads through Gotham, Jason doesn’t judge, but he does feel that the goal of a bag should be to disguise the contents until the right moment, not advertise to every criminal in town.
Frank is still the entire time Jason ransacks the apartment, occasionally yelling out his name in case he decides to regain consciousness. He tosses magazines, fixed blades, and stray bullets in the bag as he goes. Stray bullets on the floor, not even in the process of being hand-loaded, just rolled into corners and forgotten.
Jason finds no extra clothing, not even socks, and no shoes except the mud-streaked boots Frank's wearing. The shower holds a mildewed towel and a sliver of bar soap. Jason's mouth tightens as he searches the kitchen and finds nothing even resembling food except a mug smelling strongly of mildew in the microwave.
He finds Frank's phone wedged between his ass and the floor, a partially unraveled cord stuck in the charger port. "This is a fire hazard, Frank," Jason grumbles, yanking the cord out and pocketing the phone. He squints down at Frank, then kicks him hard enough to hurt, not enough to injure. Nothing.
Jason sighs again and jams on his helmet. Manual extraction it is.
He hefts Frank over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry, tense, ready to drop him if he feels the slightest twitch. He's seen Frank snap a big guy's neck from this position before the would-be abductor even realized Frank was conscious.
But Frank stays dead weight, though Jason revises that 220 pounds sharply downward. Jesus, he thinks as he shoulders the fuck-off gun bag and heads down the hallway to the elevator. At least the apartment building is typical of Frank, run down and populated mainly with immigrant families. The few residents he passes practically feign blindness, so keen to avoid witnessing Red Hood carrying an unconscious body.
It's dark as Jason slings Frank in the back of his murder van, throws his dumb bag in the passenger seat, and hoists himself into the driver's seat. He starts the engine, locks the doors, and stares into the distance, thinking. His original plan included sedating Frank at this juncture. Jason has never seen anyone except Nightwing react positively to being a surprise hostage in a moving vehicle, and he does not want Frank to wake up somewhere unexpected while traveling eighty miles an hour.
But he doesn't want to be responsible for sending the Punisher into respiratory distress, either. He ends up shrugging off his motorcycle jacket next to Frank and sticking his Red Hood helmet on top. Given their history, if Frank decides to attack, he'll at least wait for the van to stop first.
Originally, Jason planned to take Frank to a safehouse on the north edge of Gotham, but an hour into the drive he finds himself looping endlessly through the options. He knows he’s doing it to avoid thinking about how long Frank had been on that floor, how deeply the grime is embedded in his skin, and how he didn’t see any food in the entire place. Food scarcity always triggers the absolute shit out of him.
He knows it's PTSD, but knowing doesn’t stop the fear from seeping into his chest and stomach, so he uses that energy to fret about where to take Frank rather than think about empty stomachs and hollow eyes. And while Frank can have a miserly interpretation of what’s necessary to live, Jason has never known him to not have a second pair of socks or one goddamn shirt. He's trying not to think about the fact that Frank in possession of even half of his faculties wouldn't go this long without a shower.
But that gives him an idea of where he wants to take Frank. It's half an hour later than he planned, to his real home. Frank's never been there, but he thinks it might be a good idea to show a little belly, since he walked in on Frank unknowingly bare his.
The people who live in Jason's apartment building are not the type to turn a blind eye to fucked up vigilantes hauling unconscious bodies around, but he’s got a permanent parking spot in the garage, directly next to the stairwell that empties out by his door.
He’s sweating by the time he drops Frank’s unconscious body and the 1,000 pound melee bag on the living room floor. He engages all the locks, activates his security system, and goes to shower.
The rank smell of Frank’s unwashed, dirt- and blood-encrusted body hits him hard when he comes back, dressed in sweatpants and a Wonder Woman t-shirt. Jason's got a strong stomach, but it is actively upsetting him to see Frank like this.
He dithers for a minute, mentally cataloging Frank’s history, and decides that waking up being undressed or actively naked isn't going to scream rape to Frank’s brain. As part of their former-Robin bonding, Stephanie had taken him to a seminar called "Trauma-Informed Medical Rescue." He figured spending most of his twenty-something years around trauma, medical emergencies, and rescues meant he wasn't going to learn anything, but it had been surprisingly helpful in the field.
It's Alfred's quiet, matter-of-fact example of how to treat a family member's nudity in a medical setting that helps him now, though. The hoodie, boots, and socks are easy to remove (and stuff directly in a trash bag; he'll tie it off and save it if Frank wants to go through it later). He stills when he sees the deep lines carved over Frank's tattoo, crusted with blood and pus. "Shit," he says quietly.
Frank's jeans are so stiff with blood that Jason ends up cutting them off, worried he'll reopen wounds if he slides them down. He exhales sharply when he realizes how much denim is fused to Frank's skin. A couple of the wounds should have been stitched awhile ago.
What the fuck happened to you, Frank?
Oracle had originally owned this apartment building, and she'd helped him with some of the security and design. Among other creature comforts he wouldn't have normally selected for himself, he has an enormous heated soaking tub in his bathroom. He gets Frank in and starts the water. His shirt is streaked with Frank's grime; he sighs and tosses it in the direction of the hamper.
With a slight feeling of unreality, he tips liquid soap ("sea and surf") into the tub. Brownish bubbles crawl up Frank's body as the water level rises. His bathroom smells like a sewer with faint overtones of inoffensive soap—who the fuck knows what sea and surf is. Jason had picked it because it wasn't overpowering. He's regretting that a little now.
Frank looks like he's marinating in mud. Jason drains the tub, then turns on his fancy handheld shower head full blast and rinses his body off, watching the dirt and dried blood snake into the drain.
He fills the tub with soap and water again, drains it, and hoses Frank down a second time. The third time the tub fills, the water stays mostly clear, bubbles foaming white. He eyes Frank to make sure he's not slipping down, then bangs through his cabinets to assemble packaged toiletries on the bathroom counter: toothpaste, toothbrush, nail clippers, razor, scissors. Then the medical supplies: gauze, tape, saline, tweezers, a suture kit.
When he turns back to the tub, Frank is staring at him.
Jason braces for imminent attempted murder, Frank’s typical reaction to waking up somewhere he didn’t put himself. Frank is challenging enough in hand to hand combat without being wet and slippery. Instead, Frank gives him a hazy smile, eyes crinkling.
It's not a punch, but it crushes Jason's chest anyway.
“You comin’?” Frank slurs, beckoning Jason towards him with a bloody hand. “Thisa… buddy bath… situation?”
Jason works to make his face blank.
It’s been four years—an eventful four years, for both of them—since Frank has shared his bed and, yes, his bathtub, but as Frank lowers his arm and slides his eyes down at the bubbles with a happy little smile, it occurs to him that only one of them seems to know that.
Hallucinations, he thinks. Frank’s being visited by ghosts, and the version of Jason he's seeing is years old. Jason is intimately familiar with hallucinations. They tend to be mean, steeped in your own self-hatred, but they feel real. He won’t argue with wherever, whenever, Frank thinks he is.
Frank, who never asks anyone for anything, is out of his fucking mind so badly that he called Jason yesterday and asked him for help. If he had anyone at all to care, he wouldn’t have been on the floor of that apartment. He would have called someone else.
Jason mentally travels in time, just a little. Just enough for it to hurt. Frank had been affectionate, lustful, and respectful, but Jason had fallen in love.
He smiles at Frank.
“I thought you were asleep,” he says lightly, kneeling smoothly on the bathmat. Frank is loose-limbed, almost lolling in the tub, but he frowns as he watches Jason.
“Tha’ bad, huh?” he says with a quarter of the surprise and none of the hostility Jason expects. “We get… stuck? Somewhere?” He scans Jason's bare chest, looking faintly puzzled.
“Yeah,” Jason answers, watching his eyes stutter. “Yeah, looks like you got, uh, drugged a little. Took me a little while to find you, but you’re okay. Just not rated for the shower, yet.”
“Feel like shit,” Frank says, sounding surprised. He shifts a little, orienting towards Jason. “You okay?”
Before Frank can pat him down and transfer some of that grime directly onto his bare chest, Jason slaps a washcloth at him.
“I’m good, Frank,” he says, squeezing the soap over the washcloth. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”
Frank obediently starts to scrub at his arms. Jason, resolutely not thinking about one goddamn thing, dumps shampoo in his hands and goes to work on the matted nest that is Frank’s hair.
The hell of it is that Frank hates buddy baths—they both do, too stubborn and self-reliant to be gracious about accepting help, even when their bodies are past their limits. The last time Jason helped wash Frank, he argued for ten minutes first before throwing up his hands and sulkily clutching onto Jason as he eased him into the water. He bitched at full volume the entire time to distract from his inability to reach about half his body. Jason had ended up turning the shower on him, cold.
Jason knows Frank is still high as a fucking kite because he offers no resistance or commentary as Jason washes his hair and beard, twice. He does a decent job scrubbing the washcloth over himself. When Jason checks, even the denim stuck on his wounds is gone. He drains the tub for the last time, then sprays Frank down, rising out his hair and beard carefully. Frank blinks up at him guilelessly when he's finished, water dripping into his eyes. Jason offers him a hand up and a towel.
Frank steps out of the tub, slow but steady. As he wraps the towel around his waist, his eyes catch on the Batarang scar across Jason's throat. He goes still.
Shit, Jason thinks. It's years old now, faded, but Frank has never seen it before. Frank's eyebrows furrow in an expression Jason is intimately acquainted with: I'm gonna go kill whoever did this to you.
He touches the side of Jason's neck, lightly, confused. "You okay, sweetheart?"
Jason nods tightly, and Frank clocks his exhaustion, seems to forget the scar. "Go to bed," he says, eyes sliding to the items arrayed around the sink. "I got it."
"Okay," Jason says as steadily as he can, then flees.
He cleans up the living room, locking Frank’s fuck-off gun bag in his largest safe. His mind is a boring, frantic loop of what the fuck, jesus christ. He busies himself turning off lamps, re-checking the locks, grabbing their phones.
Reassuring noises drift out of the bathroom occasionally: the sink running, the toilet flushing, items thunking down on the counter. Jason flicks on the lamp in his bedroom, finds boxer shorts and the smallest T-shirt he owns for Frank.
He thinks the shirt is Dick's. Usually, he and Frank are about the same size—Frank is taller, Jason is broader—but Jason has never seen Frank with so little muscle. Though, unfortunately, while Jason's brain registers Frank wasting away as a significant concern, now that Frank is awake and ambulatory, his dick has flagged his new physique as "still built, still hot as fuck."
Jason grits his teeth.
Eventually, Frank comes into the bedroom, towel still wrapped around his waist. One of his shins is bandaged. Jason catches only a faint whiff of saline and toothpaste. Frank’s eyes sweep the room, practiced but slow. He hesitates.
“You move again?” he asks uncertainly. His right hand goes to settle on a gun that isn't there, drifts down to his side instead.
“Yep,” Jason says easily, handing him his clothes. He turns to pull back the sheets and plug in his phone as Frank dresses himself. If he can get Frank to sleep, he thinks, maybe his brain will reboot overnight. Or course, it's also possible that he'll stop breathing, so Jason has some security protocols to engage before he's able to sleep.
He says, “I’ll give you a tour in the morning, okay? You good to crash?”
"Yeah," Frank says. He hangs up his towel, slides into bed next to Jason. His hands are restless, eyes traveling around the room, taking in the long dresser, the open bedroom door, the short bookshelf sagging under the weight of assorted paperbacks. Jason watches, trying not to tense. He's less worried about violence now; he just doesn't know what to expect from Frank's brain.
Frank shifts over until his side presses against Jason's. When Jason turns his head, Frank won’t meet his gaze.
“Are you...” Frank's voice is threadbare. His eyes dart, tracking: door, dresser, bookshelf. “Are you here, Jason?”
Jason can't speak. Frank's shame is a live, scalding thing, sucking the air out of the room.
Frank's hands are trembling. His voice breaks as he says, “Jason, are you here with me?”
Jason reaches up and gently cradles Frank’s cheek. “Yeah, Frank,” he says, and Frank’s eyes meet his. “Yeah, I'm here.”
Frank leans in, looking unsure of his welcome. Jason closes the distance, brushing his lips against Frank's. Frank slides his hand behind Jason's head and kisses him, soft, sweet.
Years ago, Frank and Jason were raging infernos, burning even brighter and more out of control together. And Jason might have been in love with him, but revenge was the highest, purest truth they both knew. Frank had made it look easy, leaving him to execute his one-man mission against Cerberus. Years and years, he'd assumed that he was only a footnote in Frank's story.
He thinks maybe he was wrong about that.
Jason pulls back from the kiss, dazed. Frank huffs and wraps his arms around him, and Jason slides his arms around Frank's waist, relearning how they fit together. Frank's head thunks down on his shoulder.
Eventually, Frank says, quietly, “I think I need some help.”
Jason runs his hand over Frank's head, stroking his wet hair. “It's okay,” he says. “I’ll help you.”