Fall Into Me

Chapter Two

Dinner had been rather revealing. No longer were my “captors” just Barton and Romanov but now Clint and Natasha. We had Chinese delivered to us and sat around drinking beer, eating and getting to know each other.

The first thing I noticed was that the two of them knew each other well. It was eerie how they could all but finish the others sentence or could look at each other and smile, as if there was this unspoken understanding between them. It must be nice to be that close to someone, that you trust them so implicitly. I guessed that they were more than work associates with how close they seemed.

I was almost finished eating when Natasha looked at me.

“Stark talks pretty highly of you, he thinks a lot of you to ask us to step in.”

“I guess so,” I agreed, “Pepper and I were friends before I became friends with Tony. She introduced us obviously but I don’t think Tony expected to meet someone who gave him shit back. I never was really impressed with who he was or anything. I’ve been around rich wealthy snobbish men all my life but Tony, he’s a decent guy beneath all the bullshit.”

Tasha smiled and looked down.

“Is that how you met Steve?”

I had a feeling that question was going to come up sooner or later.

“Yeah, it wasn't planned, I came over to drop off something for Pepper while Steve was there and Tony introduced us. It was all of five minutes but then when I got home I got a text from Steve asking me out to dinner. He was cute and I said yes. We went out for about two months.”

“So why'd you dump him?” Barton asked with a mouthful of rice. I turned and frowned at him at about the same time a cellphone rang. I watched Natasha pull hers from her side and put it to her ear. She stood and walked away from us.

“Sooooo.. why'd you dump him?” He just wasn't going to let it go.

“I didn't dump him! I just told him I wasn't ...into him. I mean he's a great guy and.....Oh hell I dumped him”

He grinned and laid his fork down.

“So tell me about your boss, anything we should know about him, anything that could help us out?”

“This whole Halestone deal was odd from the get go. It’s some mine down in South Africa and some mineral that they never said by name or anything. Harkiss bought the land out from under some other company with the help of a loan from someone. He paid the loan back but whoever they were, they wanted in on whatever is in this mine or cave or whatever it is. Well then things started happening at the cave site, weird shit. Some of the workers died, some disappeared and others, they changed.”

“Okay, wanna explain that?”

“Some went nuts. Personalities changed, some became polar opposites of what they were before, and others....well they'd be like, I dunno... super human, like umm... Steve.”

He smirked and shook his head.

“So they started to get abilities they never had before, lovely.” He seemed upset by that, looking down at his food, shaking his head. I guess I couldn't really blame him, it freaked me out too. I poked at my rice with a fork then looked over at him.

“How bad is this, really?”

He lifted his head and our gazes locked.

“You're safe.”

“That isn't what I asked Clint,”

We stared at each other for a few seconds before he licked his lips and drew in a breath.