How'd You Get This Number? // mamaspider

18 - mamaspider

I squint at him suspiciously. "Great..." I trail off. "What's Nat doing?"

"SO, NICE WEATHER WE'RE HAVING..." Clint screeches at, like, two times the volume he was at before. I quickly wince and cover my ears. Clint notices my pained reaction, "Oh, I'm sorry—"

"You're good." I sigh and drop my hands. "Just the senses."

"Yeah..." Clint's lips purse into a tight line.

"So, Nat told me you originally got my number because you took her phone?" I laugh, pointing to the drivers seat to symbolize Nat. Clint nods in response. "Then, how did you know Nat had been messaging me? Like, how did you know to check her phone?" I ask amusedly, half-expecting him to beat around the bush for an answer.

"Well, one day, I noticed how she just randomly started texting someone. I had no idea who it was, but I could tell how much she enjoyed talking to them." He laughs, looking off in reminiscence. "Her entire energy went back to what it used to be. I missed it. So naturally, I had to meet the person who gave that back to her." He gestures to me with a kind smile.

"What was she like before I met her?" I bunch my eyebrows at him, my curiosity stronger than my focus on the current situation.

"Well, she used to be full of life. Well, full of life in a deadly, scary, give-me-that-look-again-and-I'll-kill-you-with-nothing-but-a-pinky-finger kind of way." We laugh at that. "Then over time, everything just became too much for her." Clint pauses, seemingly mulling over what to share before he does. "Nat gets lonely a lot of the time; she doesn't really have a family here." Another thoughtful pause.

Clint takes a deep breath then continues, "We used to have so much fun together. Messing with people, silly string fights, target practice...then she just gave up." I can see a few tears start to pool in his emerald green eyes. In fact, the image brings a few to mine as well. "Once she got that random text from you, I heard her laugh from down the hall, like before. I missed her laugh..." Clint stares off at the ground.

"Anyways—wow, I've gone off on a tangent." He laughs, blinking the tears away. "If she finds out I told you any of this, I'm a dead man, so please just keep this between us for my sake." He chuckles lightly, pointing from himself to me and back again.

I raise my palms into the air, a warm, satisfied smile plastered on my face. "My lips are sealed."

Nat comes walking down the steps, the door to the apartment complex shutting behind her. Immediately, Clint tries to distract me again, but nothing can deter from the look on Nat's face when she marches up to the car.

__Nat's POV__

I walk up to the apartment door, huffing quietly before I go to knock.

Don't kill the aunt, don't kill the aunt...

The hollow sound of my knuckles against the wooden door echoes down the hall. A second later the door swings open—there stands a woman, the amount of hope in her eyes not matching her appearance whatsoever. Her hair is a mess, and the disgustingly bright jumper she has on makes me want to throw her in a firepit—

No, Nat. You promised Peter.

"You're not..." The woman (who I assume to be May, Peter's Aunt) trails off, the hope in her eyes puttering out. The woman reeks of alcohol, and her complexion looks pale and clammy. "Hello."

"Hello, my name is Natasha Romanoff. I'm here to talk to you about your nephew, Peter." The hope returns to her eyes at my words.

"Is he okay?" May asks, her voice pleading.