Stupid Cupid

"'Pretty fun'?"

"Do you really need to hear that I came a few times to feel like a man?"

"Well... it was my first time."

"Right. Forgot about that." Kate was an asshole. "You totally rocked my world." She meant it, but she couldn't tell if he was hurt or angry. She didn't intend for either, which meant it was probably a healthy mix of both. She needed to be better with people. Especially if she was really gonna do this whole L.A. thing. L.A. people were supposed to be touchy, needy people, weren't they? "Can I ask you something?" Kate said.

"Well, at this point, it'd seem extremely rude to say no," he replied.

"Do you think Nick Fury looks like Mace Windu?"

"Word of advice?" The Boy Two Doors Down sighed. "Don't go around telling people you think all Black guys look the same."

"That's what I said!"

They talked for a little bit more after that. Kate told him about L.A. He told her about his last ditch effort to get enrolled at Empire State for some summer courses. They fucked again when Kate went to open the window. She had planned to fuck him again after if he was up for it, but he kind of just went to sleep after that, and eventually, so did she.

When Kate woke up, he wasn't even there. She checked the clock and it was 5:42. He couldn't be trying to get breakfast, right? She vaguely remembered him making some promise of wheat-based flapjacks of some sort before they'd drifted off.

She thought about leaving a note, but decided against it. It's not like he didn't know where to find her.

They'd been quiet enough, right? Kate knew she could get pretty loud when she felt compelled, but the night before, she'd really tried to clamp it down like a 19th century poetess fixing to hide her illicit trysts in her bedchambers from her troubled, genteel parents. And for his part, the Boy Two Doors Down had stuck to the low, shameful whimpers and grunts of a man who feared he was now some kind of sex criminal.

There was no way the Widow had heard them, right?

Kate quietly padded down the hall, slowly inserted her key, and gently eased the door open to the sound of sizzling bacon. Honestly, the smell hit her first, and it wasn't that bad.

"Hey, girlfriend," Yelena beamed. She was cooking on Kate's electric stove. That thing worked?

Kate tensed. "Girlfriend"? Is that what they were now? She had failed to give the Black Widow the standard speech. Had Kate just cheated on her?

"Relax, Kate Bishop," Yelena sighed. "I meant it in the fun Sex and the City way."

It was like the crazy bitch could read Kate's mind. That was a super-power, right? Somebody somewhere had to actually have that.

"You are lucky for three reasons, da?" Yelena said, flipping a blini. "First, shortest walk of shame in history..."

"Sure," Kate consented. Certainly the shortest of her sexual history.

"Second, it sounded like he did whatever you were looking for him to do."

"How do you--?"

"Heard everything."

"How?"

"Nanobite audio-tracking delivered into your system through our saliva when I first kiss you."

"Really?"

Yelena's hard stare lasted maybe five seconds. "No, of course not, podruga," she laughed. "I'd never do that to someone I didn't want to get cancer."

"What?"

"None of that works that long if you want the target healthy. You only do it to someone you want dead. But you generally do that to someone you're hoping to assassinate soon, so the point's moot." Yelena had that actual hurt look on her face again. "Do you still think I want to...?"

"So how did you know?"

"Walls are just so thin here, Kate Bishop," Yelena smiled. She set a plate of arrayed breakfast delicacies on the table. "Third way you're lucky, my scrambled eggs are sensational."

The eggs were only mostly okay. Too cheesy for Kate's taste. She didn't love cheese. The blini, however, were fantastic. Kate had clearly worked up an appetite. She was so busy stuffing her face, she didn't realize Yelena had been packing up until she was standing at the door with her bags.

"I decided to leave you the slow cooker after all, Kate Bishop," she announced. Those hard plastic wheels on her luggage made this terrible, deliberate dark sonic roll on the scuffed hardwood floors.

"You're leaving?"

"I just came for Valentine's, remember?" Yelena said. "Come walk me out?"

The Widow was really leaving? Already?

"So, about you and me..." Kate said as they made their way down the hall to the elevator.

"Maybe you're right, Kate Bishop," Yelena sighed. "Maybe we're not a good fit to be partners. You get so squeamish about killing for a girl who wants to shoot arrows at people. Those tend to do a bit more than hurt."

"Not if you do it right," Kate smirked. "But I actually meant about us, you know, last night?"

Yelena rolled those beautiful blue eyes. "I told you, don't be an unhinged Hallmark woman, Kate Bishop," she instructed before hugging Kate tightly. "A fling can just be a fling." Yelena stepped back toward the elevator, glancing over at the door of the Boy Two Doors Down. "But a fling can always be a fling again."

Kate looked at the door, then at the elevator. The Boy Two Doors Down could wait. Hawkeye needed to talk to her partner first.

Kate knew all these people who were terrified of getting their arm cut off by an elevator door, but she'd never been one of them. She was a true-blue New Yorker. She just believed. Besides, the things that had thrown her whole life into chaos had never been so mundane. It was sudden explosions. It was texted videos of her mother colluding with once convicted heads of organized crime now working post-Blip appeals. Russians who looked like sexy ballerinas. So she just jabbed her arm into the closing doors of the elevator before Yelena could leave.

"I'm gonna move to L.A.," Kate told the Widow when the doors reopened to reveal the blonde's surprised face. Those beautiful big blue eyes. "Just in case there's any authentic American Spring Break things you ever want to do..." Yelena smiled that dazzling smile. "With me."

"I can maybe come up with some things, Kate Bishop," she mused. "But American Spring Break is more of a Florida or Mexico thing."

"Not if we make up our own things."

"Okay," Yelena said. "If I'm not too busy."

"Of course."

"Hell, maybe because I am too busy."

"See you then, girlfriend."

After getting so much wrong, Kate was pretty sure this was the one thing she got right.

THE END

Hey, quackheads! Been a while. Sorry for the long absence, especially since I doubt this was the story you were expecting, but if/when/as I do finish the "When Spidey Met" Saga, I doubt that will meet your expectations either.

I still hope you liked this one. It was supposed to be a quick-and-dirty palate cleanser since I've been out of the game for so long, but I ended up slaving over this stupidity since Tommy met Tobey and Andy! I wanted to submit this for the 2022 Valentine's Day contest until I remembered you can't profit from fan fiction. So I was going to file off the serial numbers Fifty-Shades style... Well, actually more like Peter David's Fallen Angel. Or really Warren Ellis' "You Know My Name." I had this clever way to do it: That Boy Two Doors Down thing, but with everybody! Yelena's just "the Russian," Clint's "the Old Man," etc. No one would have liked it. Least of all me. Because then I'd have to strip out all the MCU Easter eggs. Though I suppose I could have kept Gwen if I was careful. And that would have probably only made this a third as long...

Okay. Maybe some people would have liked that. Whatever. Didn't do that.

I decided to stay the course and just write my big MCU adventure. My big MCU adventure that all happens in one building. And it turned into a mess because I wanted to try something new. Sticking with one universe. Sticking with one person's perspective. Sticking with any weirdness that popped up from Marvel movies and Disney+ nonsense -- Kate's favorite pajama top was going to be a Led Zeppelin sweatshirt until She-Hulk kinda did the same thing, but it started out as a Stark Expo 2010 gag -- so that this could feel like a real MCU thing, just with sex.

And I wanted to write a decent lesbian sex scene. Somebody noted that I kind of pussed out on the Squirrel Girl/Victoria Hand love scene in "When Spidey Met Oracle," and they were totally right, so I wanted to make good this time. Did I?

It's really up to you to decide if I succeeded or not in any of this. And I always believe the haters more than the praisers. Because they're usually right. I write continuity porn better than I write actual porn.

Honestly, I don't really love the complete self-indulgence of talking about the work. The work should speak for itself. I'm only doing it now because, again, I want this one to feel like a MCU thing, so this is the end credits.

This is you sitting in your seat with an unpleasantly full bladder while a bunch of crap you don't care about scrolls by in black and white, waiting for one last sexy nugget of content.

So, if you stuck through this, you've earned yourself a post-credit scene...

Kate thought she'd left all the stupidity behind when she escaped from New York, but it was now very well possible that the worst of it had followed her out west. So here she was in her new favorite sleep shirt -- a silly little T that read "Don't Trust Atoms, They Make Up Everything" -- squatting over the toilet in her trailer on Venice Beach.

She'd assumed she was done with the dumb mistakes. She really did. She was really surprising herself. How else can your entire life get decided in three minutes?

But her surprise itself might have been the dopiest thing of all.

After a rocky start, things in La La Land had almost been working. Kate should have realized she needed some kind of license to work as a private investigator in California. She'd interned for her mom at Bishop Security long enough to know that some kind of certification was required in most of these matters -- "citizen's arrest" didn't get you nearly as far as TV shows made it seem. It wasn't an excuse to break into places, even if you absolutely knew your client's neighbor was a Skrull.

Kate had lucked out, though. When LAPD had finally had enough with her and actually locked her up for a night, while her actual lawyers wouldn't even take her call -- apparently Hogarth & Associates were too busy sucking up the last of the Bishop Estate on her mom's case to help her out -- Goodman, Lieber, Kurtzberg & Holliway had taken her case pro bono as long as she was willing to do them a favor.

And just like that, Kate had a gig as an in-house investigator while they helped her get her P.I. license.

Kate had met a lot of people since she'd made the big move, but she hadn't really made any friends yet. Nobody she wanted to hang out with. Or maybe just nobody who wanted to hang out with her for the right reasons.

So she'd been looking forward to brunch with Jen Walters.

Kate had only worked a few cases for GLK&H in between the smaller stuff she was still discreetly doing paid favors for folks in need, but she'd gotten in over her head on that last one with the West Coast Maggia, so it was nice that the sensational She-Hulk had been around to bail her out.

"I have this little Sunday ritual," the Jade Giantess had said after Kate had basically begged her to be her new BFF. "Brunch at this great little bistro in North Hollywood. I usually do it alone because nobody wants to go to the Valley, but--"

"I'm there," Kate said. "Sounds like fun."

"Tastes even better," Jen assured her. "One thing, though, I only go there as me. So if this is about hanging out with some other almost-Avenger..."

"Who gives a fuck about She-Hulk?" Kate scoffed. "I want to hang out with you, Jen."

Kate desperately needed a friend in L.A. A friend in L.A. who could keep her in steady work would be the cherry on the top on a Southern California sundae. So she needed to keep it casual. She needed to ease into things. She needed not to Kate all over Jennifer Walters. She needed to ask about her. Learn who she was. Be a real friend.

"I think I fucked an Inhuman," Kate blurted out the second the waiter had brought them the food.

"Uh, that's a lot to digest before the French toast," Jen said. "Are you alright?"

"Do you think I could be getting powers from this?"

"What powers?" Jen asked. "Why do you need powers?"

"I don't need them, but that's how it happened with you, right?" Kate said. "You and the Hulk exchanged fluids and then you got all--"

"Ew, gross, no," Jen interrupted. "Me and my cousin did not 'exchange fluids,' okay?"

"You know what I mean," Kate winced. "That's how these things happen. Maybe his radioactive stuff messed me up."

"That's not how those things happen," Jen sighed. "The number of Inhuman sexual suits that I... That's not how those things happen."

"Well, it's got to be something," Kate said. "I'm always tired, there's all this heartburn, and I'm peeing all the time..."

"None of that sounds like superpowers," Jen told her. "That sounds like the opposite of superpowers."

"So maybe I'm sick?" Kate shuddered. "Maybe I've got this Inhuman virus or something..."

"Maybe you're pregnant," Jen suggested.

Kate almost spit out her mimosa.

"What? No way," she insisted.

"Well, it's clear that you've been sexually active."

"Yeah, but not since I got out here."

"But before that?"

"Obviously a little," Kate admitted. Maybe more than a little. "But we always used condoms." Except maybe that one time when Yelena was there.

"And you're on the pill, right?"

"Of course I'm on the pill!" Kate said. Although she might have run out right after she got to New York and it took longer than it should have to refill her prescription.

"Well, neither of that is a hundred percent, you know," Jen shrugged. "And if we're talking about radioactive sperm..."

"Stop teasing me."

"You brought it up," Jen laughed. "Just think about it seriously, Kate. When was your last period?"

"Well, if this is April," Kate thought out loud, "and I left New York in February..."

Okay. Things had been crazy. Kate had been in the middle of a move and a spiritual road trip of internal discovery with wacky adventures along the way, and then she was starting a new business and the days kind of blurred together, but in the middle of all that, Aunt Flo must have been making those monthly visits, hadn't she?

She felt this cold brick in her gut. Shit. What if that wasn't just some imaginary brick?

Kate should have been speechless, but three words just bubbled up out of her:

"What the fuck?"

HAWKEYE WILL RETURN