Chapter 8
Matt’s whole body went tense. His muscles prepared to bolt out the diner. His hand gripped the saltshaker hard enough he could hear his bones creak with the effort. His senses singled out Natasha and focused on every slight movement she made; the noise her hair made on her shoulders as it moved, her steady heartbeat, how her muscles were reacting in case they displayed her intent to grab him, and changes in her breathing indicating she was about to speak.
“Matt, calm down,” her voice perfectly emulated the feeling that there was no need to worry, “I just want to talk. I won’t do anything until after that.”
Her heartbeat told no lie, but he had a hard time trusting it. Stick had always been able to disguise his heartbeat from Matt, why would Natasha Romanoff have any more trouble steadying hers? And yet, Matt relaxed ever so slightly. Enough that he placed the shaker onto the table and rested his hands beside it as a sign he would stay, but not enough so that his muscles wouldn’t be ready to run. Nat’s body language seemed to relax with his, yet he had no memory of noticing it tense.
“Correct me if I’m wrong,” Nat began, “but, heightened senses, right?”
Natasha seemed to take Matt’s following silence as an agreement and carried on, “I’m guessing it’s all of them?”
He nodded, unsure as to where exactly she was leading him but easily able to predict the following question, “How did it happen?”
“When this,” he gestured around his eyes, “happened, I woke up in hospital and everything was dialed up. I could hear people crying floors above me, smell the chemicals that scattered the room and taste old blood in the air. I’m guessing it was the chemicals that got into my eyes, but I can’t be sure.”
“Must have been difficult to deal with.”
He hesitated before giving his answer, aware that lying wouldn’t help his situation, “It was manageable for a while, but everything became too much for a while at the orphanage.”
“How did you get it under control?”
“Practice,” he answered easily.
It wasn’t a lie and omitting a few details couldn’t hurt anyone. Natasha didn’t push the line of questioning any further, however this had the opposite effect of reassuring him. He had expected her to at least try and pry out more information on that topic and her leaving it alone made him feel like he should expect the questioning to arise at some point in the future. Then again, if that point wasn’t in some random diner, it could be worse.
“How good are these senses, then?” Nat asked, casually moving the conversation on.
“Fairly.”
“Any chance I get a demonstration?”
Matt cocked his head, deciding that giving her a small idea wasn’t an awful idea, and allowed his senses to spread out across the diner as they had done before. He returned to the young man sitting at the counter, soaking in the details before recounting them to Nat.
“The man at the counter. He’s nervous. Probably worried about a job interview that he’s about to go to. He won’t get it in the state he’s in, too much nervous energy and there’s sweat beading his forehead. The man with two children; he can barely afford to eat out like this. He’s only bought food for his children and none for himself, even though he’s hungry, and it’s not like he doesn’t want to eat. He keeps staring at the food other people have.”
“I’m impressed,” Nat told him, “Some senses they are. You hurt your knuckles on the tree outside the house, didn’t you?”
The sudden change in topic caught Matt completely off guard, and his reaction must have been enough to convince Nat it was true, with her hair grazing across her shoulder as she nodded to herself. She was reading him very accurately and it was sending warning signals shooting down his muscles as they screamed for him to move.
Stick had also seen right through him. A weak boy who killed his father then needed someone to hold his hand afterwards. ‘Pussy,’ came Stick’s familiar voice.
He hated the thought that Nat saw through him in the same way. That she saw the truth. He needed to move conversation away from himself, onto her. Show her that he could see through her too.
“I’m sure you don’t need me to answer that, Miss Romanoff.”
It didn’t elicit the reaction he had hoped for, and yet there was a small spike in her heartbeat as he uttered her last name. He enjoyed that moment. She wasn’t the only one who knew secrets. He knew plenty.
“Clint wanted to tell you after I’d left,” she explained.
He was glad she didn’t deny it.
“Tell me I was living with 2 Avengers?”
“Yes,” she replied.
“Did he think it wasn’t an important thing to know before?” Matt questioned, anger beginning to rise; anger he hadn’t known was there.
“This is something you need to talk about with him, not me.”
“Yeah, maybe I should.”
Nat took a moment to reply after that, clearly considering her words.
“Get in the car, we are going back. Let’s have that talk.”
That wasn’t quite what he had wanted her to say. But it was too late to back down now. His anger was simmering away in his chest, and he needed to take it out somewhere before his mind turned to the past and his fists once again collided with someone. Shouting was the easier option in that moment.