A Crazier Than Average Year, A Matt/Nat Story

Will you Come out with me Tonight, 1

Matt, 2012

"Will you come out with me tonight?"

A whisper against his collarbone. Her lips disturb the fine hairs on his throat, her breath sinks into his skin like a balm.

Every night she steps through the open window, she asks.

The open window is a small freedom Matt takes very seriously. After The Incident it's weeks before Foggy eases off his around the clock observation. Matt's so closely watched he's not even making it out for patrol, not that he's in any condition to do so. Even when Foggy's at work Matt's phone chimes every few hours, Foggy, Foggy, Foggy, like clockwork. Matt swipes ignore and dictates back a curt text — I'm fine. Still fine. Aren't you in a meeting?

Early week three, Foggy's mother calls from Ohio and suggests he come for a visit.

"It's been months since we saw you, Franklin," Anna's voice purrs down the phone line.

"Ma, I can't leave right now, OK. I'm needed here."

"You can't hold him hostage forever," she tells him sweetly.

"And what if something happens, what if..."

"You can't live your life waiting for aliens to fall out of the sky. You can die any day of the week Franklin, and so can your mother. Visit."

So Foggy begrudgingly agrees to go. He spends four days in Ohio and on the last day, there's a tap at the living room window. Natasha spills over the sill, her harried kisses and slightly raised body temperature spelling relief. Matt can't say much at first, he wrestles down the impulse to yell, to shout, to curse. He feels strangled by the cloud of her perfume. Bludgeoned by the beating of her heart. Chafed raw by the closeness of her skin. Then she holds him. Throws her arms around him and squeezes, like she's so glad to see him, surprised to find him still here. He hesitates, returns the embrace with vigour.

Matt catches Natasha's heart rate spike when she undresses him. It evens out so quickly, he can't really be sure what it means. She gives no other indication that she's surprised or bothered by the bandages or the new scar. Direct energy weapons are a lot of fun. They hit hard — a small enough surface wound seared hot into the flesh, everything underneath melting together and bubbling to the surface before exploding outwards in a gooey mess of human viscera. Matt was lucky, they told him at the hospital, just grazed. Nerve endings fried so that the most painful parts of the injury were the second and third-degree burns on either side of the three-inch trench seared between his eight and ninth ribs.

There's more to it than the new scar, but Matt is putting a concentrated effort into not thinking about anything else. He isn't ardent to relive the helplessness or the guilt that still rises at the back of his throat when he overhears Foggy's heart beating worry-worry-worry.

Thankfully, Natasha doesn't ask any questions. In return, Matt doesn't mention that all this time she's had Tony Stark and Steve Rogers on speed dial. That her team of 'Avengers' swooped out of the sky just in time to save the day from an invading force of — of all things — aliens from outer space. From Matt's point of view, he's being sensitive for her sake. Of course, not discussing The Incident is also a strategic move for self-preservation. He cannot handle another migraine right now.

When she asks him, "Will you come out with me tonight?" Matt inhales the musk of her perfume and the damp of her breath and kisses her very tenderly on the forehead right over the spot where he can sense the still broken capillaries. The new skin knitting together. The still fading evidence. "Not tonight, 'Tasha."

When she slips into her catsuit and skulks back out the window into the dark, Matt pulls on the mask and goes out on his own.

When Foggy returns from Ohio to find Matt still alive he loosens the reins a little. He starts seeing his girlfriend again. Going out dancing at the club Matt can't stand, going for drinks with college friends and staying out late.