#JDKFNGSKJDFGNSKJDFN

[karenpage]

For your Kastle prompt: Karen finds a stray dog and doesn't know the first thing about caring for it, so she calls Frank.

@mostlyactorsandfood this was the sweetest thing and it sort of got away from me, I hope you enjoy!

“Fr—Frank, stop– stop laughing I’m serious. He’s chewed through half of my shoes. And I mean that literally, only the left pair — I think he’s trying to make a statement.” She’s snapping into her phone, rapid-fire, trying to talk while fielding Frank’s gut-busting laughter – he’s in absolute stitches while Cujo claws plaintively at the bathroom door. She’s holed up in there, like an anti-canine bunker, pacing the short distance between the bathtub, and the sink.

Frank finally does calm down, she can hear the crinkle of something, a newspaper, maybe? through the static connection “What, Page? Never had a puppy before?” The smile in his voice is as clear to her as if he was standing by her side. She’s too annoyed to be endeared, and her face twists up into a scowl.

“No, Frank. My parents didn’t let us have pets and – well – I’m more of a cat person, anyway.” She lies, and whatever Frank’s doing, he stops.

“Makes sense.”

Karen’s not sure what that’s supposed to mean, but she certainly doesn’t take it as praise. The stomp of her heel is audible over the phone, “Please. Help.”

A deep, brooding sigh on his end, but he grumbles out, “Okay okay, ‘m on my way. Don’t worry little red.” The line drops, and Karen stares down at the blank screen of her phone in a combination of dismay and annoyance.

Very funny.

This dog just might be the actual big bad wolf.

An absurd thought while she runs her hand through her hair and pleads with it in a hushed, panicked whisper: does that make Frank the Huntsman?

Whatever. Fairy tales are bullshit and her phone charger is on the other side of this door, so she puts on a brave face, and opens it.

Fear makes things larger than life, and this knee-high pit bull’s tail thumps happily against the hardwood floor. “Oh, so now you’re happy to see me.” A raspy ‘woof’, Karen purses her lips, alright. Fine. Okay.

“Do you want … something to eat? Food?” He rises on all fours, tail going Mach 3. Now they’re getting somewhere.

Karen sticks close to the wall, like some housewife from the 1950’s lifting her skirt to escape a mouse. Only this mouse is about eighty pounds with a wide mouth full of teeth and looking at her with a glob of drool caught in its low hanging jowls.

Fantastic.

“I don’t have dog food,” conversationally, the click-clack of nails on the hardwood floor trailing after her is kind of endearing, as are the happy little snuffling sounds that accompany whatever she says to him. Like he understands.

“But–” Karen taps her finger on her chin, grabs a bowl from the cabinet and sets it on the floor. He goes up to it, sniffs the empty porcelain, and looks up at Karen like ‘what gives?’  “Hold on I’m improvising.”

Another woof, “You’re impatient. Wait. Sit.”

He listens to that last command, tail thumping even louder now that it’s against her kitchen tile.

Karen lofts a brow, pulls a steak and some frozen vegetables from her fridge, a quick google search says that all the ingredients would meet his nutritional needs, and so she sets to cooking it.

“I don’t need to season the sirloin, do I?” More to herself, as her own stomach growls once the meat is cooking – the realization that this dog is about to eat better than she does, and she’d been saving that steak for Frank – well, it’s his fault that she saw the damn thing and felt bad enough to bring him up to her apartment.

He was sitting on her complex’s stoop for Christ’s sake, all mopey eyed, half-soaked from the rain and seeking shelter from it under the meager awning. Karen’s compassion outweighed concern and now she’s got a giant grey shadow with soft brown eyes that seem far wiser than any dog’s ought to be.

Time passes by in companionable silence, Karen won’t admit it, not even to herself, but it’s nice to have another … living, breathing soul in her home. It’s less lonely, she even catches herself smiling as she spoons out the food into the bowl.

“Now–it’s hot, let it cool down.” She sets it on the counter out of his reach for good measure, he barks once, loud. “Don’t get mouthy with me, I just cooked you a three-course meal and all I’ve had today is a half a cup of coffee and some cheese-its I stole off of Ellison’s desk.” Not that a dog would understand any of what she’s said, but his mouth hangs open in a canine approximation of a grin, and Karen returns it.

When she tests the heat of the food, and it seems palatable, Karen kneels with the bowl in hand, eyeing him warily.

“Alright, don’t get it in your head that I’m going to be feeding you like this daily. This is a special occasion. Because I didn’t have anything else.” He licks his nose, Karen takes that as a ‘get on with it’, and he immediately buries his face in the food.

No sooner had she sacrificed the only groceries in her fridge, than Frank comes through her front door, a bag of dog food on one shoulder, and a black plastic bag in the other.

“– you been cookin’?” Karen resents the disbelief in his voice, but he’s smiling at her so she’ll forgive him. “Seems like you got ‘Cujo’ under control here, Miss Page.”

Karen’s rebuttal is offered when she rises, dusting her knees off and adjusting her now-wrinkled skirt, “Yes. He was starving and just because I’ve never taken care of a dog before doesn’t mean I’m going to be cruel to this one.”

But Frank’s not really listening, just staring at the dog - or what he can see of him, since he’s half-immersed in the too-big bowl, teeth rattling against the bottom of it as he practically strips the paint from the porcelain.

“Where’d you say you found him?” Voice unerringly even, it startles Karen, given the domesticity of the moments just before. She blinks, tucks a strand of hair over her ear, and follows Frank’s hardened line of sight, watching the dog push the empty bowl around the kitchen floor while searching for scraps.

“He was on the building’s doorstep. Trying to hide out from the rain.”

Frank sets his supplies down on the couch before making his way to stand right beside the dog, looking like he’s seen a ghost all the while.

“Hey boy,” gruff, but the dog’s ears perk up at that and if at all possible, his tail’s wagging harder than it ever has before. “You come back for me? Huh?” Now he’s sitting on the floor and there’s a torpedo of solid-dog muscle launching itself into Frank’s lap, full body wiggles and happy, high pitched whines fill the quiet.

“You two know each other?” She can’t mask the amusement from her voice, and so Karen doesn’t try. Seeing Frank Castle with a dog in his arms is about the sweetest thing, so she’s not about to ruin the moment. Frank’s so rarely happy, or genuinely, thoroughly happy but the smile on his face right now? It’s the before smile, the one he’d had in the pictures all over his house, and it makes her heart tighten just a little.

“Yeah, he was one of the fightin’ boys for the Kitchen Irish, stole him when I uh, interrupted their operations. Hadn’t seen him since they cut him loose.” He’s scrubbing blunt nails over his scalp, happy as can be.

“Does he have a name? Now that you’re here and he’s basically a marshmallow with teeth, I don’t think Cujo’s all that fitting.” Even if she’d only ever said it jokingly.

Frank gives him some consideration, “Nah, but he looks like a Beretta to me, don’t you boy?” More tail wagging, and a loud series of happy barks– bouncing between lying on Frank, and zooming around the small apartment.

“After a gun? Really, Frank?” Karen isn’t actually chastising him, if anything she’s amused but Frank looks up from where he’s still sitting, and reaches for Karen’s hand, the rough pad of his thumbs sweep over her knuckles. A fond, reserved gesture but it’s enough to make her bite her lip and look over her shoulder to watch ‘Beretta’ get his head stuck in the bag Frank had brought in - turns out it’s full of toys, a dish for food, and one for water; Karen learns this because the contents spill out and he’s got a tennis ball in his mouth that he presses wetly against her calf.

“I’ll take you out to play when it’s not raining, okay?”

Frank chuckles, sniffs, wipes the drool from where it stuck to her leg with his sleeve, “Yeah, the m9 was uh, my ‘go to’ during my years in the Corp, security. Safety. Familiarity. Kept my brother’s safe, my family–” He stops nose wrinkling as he sniffs again, looking at the dog that’s gnawing happily on his new toys, “figure since he’s goin’ to be stayin’ with yo– us, there’s gotta be a reason he came back, you know? So he can keep you safe when I can’t.”

Karen’s not a dog person, but as it turns out, this mutt with scars on his ears and the worst breath she’d ever smelled (and she used to work in a pro bono defense office) is not just some four-legged hellhound, but a part of her family that just sort of fit. It didn’t take long to win her over and maybe that’s okay.

They have their little piece of happiness here because sometimes a family is the punisher, a persistent journalist, and a dog named after a handgun.