It’s Christmas Eve.
The bar is decorated for the holiday with limp red and green streamers lining the back wall. Twinkle lights are half-tangled along the underside of the bar, illuminating heavy winter coats and purses. Someone managed to duct tape mistletoe above the door to the stockroom. Her stool is making that sticky sucking sound when she tries to get comfortable.
Foggy looks over at her from his glass of whatever he’s ordered, “Christmas at Josie’s.” His eyes are sad, and she gets that, she does. This was their thing - Nelson and Murdock - the drinks together before late mornings and the way better food at a decorated Nelson family table that didn’t cling to your shirt. Marci grasps the martini glass in front of her and smiles gently in his direction.
“Karen said she was coming, right?”
“Uh,” Foggy hesitates. Looks around and then back at her quick. He leans forward, hunching himself over his drink to find two new glasses, twinning them in his fingers to clatter on the bar. He’s avoiding her eyes when the door opens. “Yeah, she said that.”
It’s a cold blow across her ankles and her heels adjust on the metal of her chair. She takes a sip of her drink when Karen appears, cheeks bright with an icy red flush, her black cargo coat too large for her body. There was a hat, at some point on her head, evidenced by untidy strands lifted away from her face. “Hey!” she greets them. “Sorry I’m late, we drove over, someone did a shitty plow job of the parking lot.”
Foggy lifts his arm for a hug, his hello a muffled sound in her ear when they meet. It does not slip past her, though. We.
Karen is turning to face her, wary written all over her face. “I forgot to tell you,” her voice is apologetic, an explanation coming, her eyes staring. “I told him where we were going to be and he wanted to come.” The door opens again and whoever walks in stomps their boots hard and firm to get the snow off. Marci instinctively tilts her head to the side to see. “His name is Pete.”
The Punisher has got some seriously nice stubble.
It’s him under the hood, that’s for sure. All the photos from the newspaper and when he was resurrected on the news stations recently don’t give his jawline justice. Her arm shoots out to the side to grab at her drink, Foggy, the bar, anything. It lands in place with a thump on his shoulder. Marci’s gaze flickers to Foggy, who is looking at him too, a wince on his mouth. His hand not holding his drink covers his brow like he’s got a headache just by staring.
Frank Castle - the mass murderer and escaped felon, the falsely accused terrorist, the hunk in a thick fleece-lined hoodie - looks around the bar with a lip turned up in nearly childlike wonder. He does the once over before settling on their little group, yanking the hood back.
Whatever Karen is trying to pull with this Pete line is useless. “You know that I know it’s not,” she tells her with a whisper.






