Chapter 5
A hoodie was the best solution that Matt had been able to come up with, deciding to shove his hands in its pockets. It was far from a perfect solution but he was limited on times and couldn’t think of an explanation. Internally, he cursed himself for being so careless and letting rage overcome him as it had. But then, rage wasn’t always as easily contained as Stick had seemed to think.
Clint and Laura were watching out for Nat downstairs. With the time of her flight in, she should have arrived a few minutes ago and Clint seemed to be worried something had happened. “What if it’s work?” he was asking Laura, who calmly reassured him that Nat wasn’t the only person who worked ‘there’.
Matt felt it was best for him to remain upstairs until their guest arrived. Less focus on him that way, easier to hide his hands. Hiding in his room wouldn’t last much longer, though, with the sound of a car engine turning onto their road. A few moments later, Clint spotted the car in the distance followed, again a few moments later, by Laura also seeing the vehicle.
It made sense to Matt that Clint’s vision would be better than average. It likely compensated for his lack of hearing, just as Matt’s senses compensated for him, though to a much different scale.
Matt grew nervous as the car slowed down outside. Her arrival meant he would have to go downstairs. Going downstairs meant risking them seeing his hands and there were no plausible explanations for the cuts and bruises he had. And whilst Clint and Laura had been loving and accepting of him so far, he didn’t know if that would stretch if they discovered he went around punching things in the middle of the night. Especially when he would inevitably refuse to tell them why.
Matt didn’t want them to abandon him. He hoped that they would stay. That he would live with them for much longer. Which was...New.
He hadn’t allowed himself to hope that people would stay in a while. Instead, he’d expected people to leave. After Stick, he had no reason to believe that anyone would stay. His mum hadn’t, his dad hadn’t, and Stick hadn’t. Others at the orphanage would get adopted, just as he had, so he didn’t even try and get close with any of them in case they left.
He didn’t even really have Father Lantom or Sister Maggie anymore. He knew that he could go back and that they’d let him be adopted to help him. ‘For stability’, Father Lantom had said. Logically, Matt knew they cared about him and he even had the option of going back, but if he thought about it too much he also knew that he’d uncover familiar feelings of abandonment and the sense that they had gotten rid of him.
Sighing, Matt put on his glasses and headed for the stairs, with the car’s occupant a few steps away from the door. She didn’t even get the chance to knock before Clint had opened the door for her and was beaming at their guest. “Nat,” he greeted.
“You haven’t been this happy to see me in years,” she replied.
“No idea what you mean,” Clint responded, stepping aside to let her in.
“I think it’s separation anxiety,” Laura suggested, “he can’t cope without you.”
“That I don’t doubt.”
Nat and Laura embraced as Clint grumbled about how he was coping fine. Now that Natasha was inside, Matt was much more able to distinguish her scent. He should work on that; a voice told him in the back of his head. The strong smell of leather was the first thing he noticed, quite clearly coming from her jacket. Going past that, he could sense lingering shampoo in her hair from that morning. Mild perfume hid in the background; she hadn’t applied it since the day before. What caught his senses the most, though, was the familiar and unwelcome scent of a used gun.
He couldn’t sense one on her, but it was clear she had used one recently. This instantly put him on edge.
“Matt!” Laura called, signaling for him to go downstairs.
Putting aside his hesitations, Matt rounded the corner he had been hiding behind to the stairs and descended them, careful not to allow the hoodie’s sleeve to uncover his knuckles as he trailed his hand down the banister.
“Nat, this is Matthew and Matt, this is Natasha,” Laura introduced them.
“Hello,” Matt greeted, hoping he sounded polite, adding a smile to be certain.
“Hello Matt,” Natasha greeted in return.
She seemed nice. But then, many people did. Her heartbeat was strong and as steady as one could get. He really wasn’t sure what to think of her, though he felt as though he could feel her gaze returning to him every few moments.
“Well, I need coffee,” Clint announced.
“I am shocked,” Nat remarked sarcastically.
The four of them sat in the living room, Clint and Nat with coffee talking about work while Matt and Laura listened. Frustratingly, neither said anything that revealed much about what the work involved, just vague comments about a paranoid boss and ‘the old man’.
After that conversation had died down, Clint had gestured towards Matt, hinting something at Natasha. She seemed to know what he was implying. Matt guessed it was something to do with drawing him into a conversation but, of course, he couldn’t let on any sign that he knew something was happening. Sometimes, pretending he had little knowledge of his surroundings was far more tiring than actively reaching out his senses to search.
The secrets around Nat’s job didn’t sit well in Matt’s mind. Secrets were normal. He understood that. He had multiple of his own, but that never made him like them. His dad had decided to make deals with criminals and leave Matt completely unaware of the whole thing. Now he was dead, and Matt had been left knowing that it was his fault. And this secret felt dangerous.
“Where do you work?” Matt asked, ceasing the sign language that had begun between Clint and Nat.
“New York mostly.” True.
“What do you do?” he questioned further.
“Security for a large business,” she replied quickly, no hesitation in her voice.
Her heartbeat told a lie. Not an obvious one, much unlike how it would appear in a regular heartbeat, but the small stutter in her regular rhythm was enough to tell Matt. Stick had trained him well. However, Stick had never gotten around to teaching Matt much more than using his senses and fighting. Matt caught his change in expression too late and he could tell Nat had noticed.
“What do you want to be?” she questioned him, turning the balance of the conversation.
“A lawyer,” he answered confidently.
He desperately wanted to help people and his dad had always told him to value his brain over his fists, so the law was the clear path to that. It was the one thing Matt was now certain about. He just needed the grades to get into college. Grades that he was well on track to getting if he continued the way he was going.
Nat didn’t ask another question. Maybe he’d misjudged and she wasn’t trying to get information out of him. In fact, now he thought about it, that seemed like a conclusion requiring at least three jumps to reach. Slowly, Matt began to relax and listened to the three adults talk around him, occasionally adding a comment or sarcastic remark, usually directed at Clint much to his annoyance.
The day went by much the same and Matt’s earlier hesitations at meeting Nat had disappeared. He remained slightly cautious but was surprisingly glad that he had met her. And it meant that he could listen to someone else bullying Clint.
Night rolled around and Matt was sent upstairs. Lying in bed, he didn’t manage very long before listening in them talking without him. “He’s smart,” Natasha was saying.
“We know,” Laura replied, sounding happy.
No, not happy. She sounded proud.
“He was nervous meeting me, though.”
Oh. She could tell.
“We don’t think he’s really a people person,” Laura explained.
“He was doing a good job at hiding it,” Natasha commented, “just as he was doing a good job at hiding his hands.”
Shit.
“What?” Clint sounded confused.
Why?
“His knuckles are bruised and cut. They look like he’s been in a fight.”
Not quite.
“They were fine yesterday,” Clint stated, “what could he have done to them?”
“We’ll talk to him tomorrow,” Laura told them, “It’s too late tonight now. Thanks for telling us, Nat.”
Matt tuned them out. He should have known his luck was drying up. He should have predicted this. God never answered him, why would he listen to his prayers now?