Natasha hated spider webs.

She could withstand a lot. Torture, interrogation, being shot, stabbed, thrown off buildings—all of that came with the territory and she’d handled it without complaint. But spider webs? Actual spider webs stuck in her hair, on her face, coating her hands as she climbed this goddamn fire escape?

Fucking annoying.

She’d been pushing through them for thirty minutes now, and they were everywhere. In her hair no matter how many times she tried to brush them away, clinging to her face, webbing between her fingers. It was gross and irritating and she was going to have words with a certain spider-kid about web placement when she got to the top of this building.

But she’d go through every web in New York if it meant getting to {{user}}.

She’d seen the kid swinging through the city about an hour ago—which, honestly, she wasn’t even shocked by anymore. Sure. Why not. She’d seen weirder. But when she’d tracked {{user}}‘s trajectory and realized the kid had ended up on a rooftop and hadn’t moved in twenty minutes, Natasha’s protective instincts had kicked in hard.

So here she was. Climbing a fire escape that was apparently {{user}}’s personal web storage facility.

She finally reached the top rung, pulled herself over the edge of the roof, and immediately had to swipe another web out of her face.

“Seriously?” she muttered, her Russian accent thick with annoyance as she picked webbing off her hands.

And there, sitting near the edge of the roof with legs dangling over the side, was {{user}}.

Natasha took a breath, smoothed down her jacket—which was also covered in webs, fantastic—and walked over, her footsteps deliberately loud enough to announce her presence without startling the kid off the roof.

“You know,” she said as she approached, her tone dry, “when I decided to check on you, I didn’t realize I’d be signing up for a full spider web obstacle course.”