Stupid Cupid

It's not like Kate's hair was exactly the same either. She'd gone with Laura Barton to see her kindly Midwestern stylist for a shampoo where Kate also lost a few inches.

"Don't worry, Kate Bishop," the Black Widow replied, plowing past her into the apartment. "I brought groceries. I know how you love your spartan existence."

"I, like, just got here."

"You've been here for more than a week," Yelena corrected, placing eggs, deli meats and cheeses into Kate's empty refrigerator. She had bread and fruit, too. There was milk and orange juice. And boxed mac and cheese. "Plenty of time to shop, make actual food... You know, adult?"

"I hate adulting."

"Generation B," Yelena sighed. "The Blipped and the Not." She was already almost done unpacking the bags. "Wonder what nickname they'll actually settle on..." The Black Widow's idea of groceries also involved a stunning amount of alcohol. Beer, tequila, vodka...

"I like the new hair," Kate told her. She had to say something.

"I thought I'd look like Veronica Mars," Yelena frowned. "Instead, I look like a... a..."

"Sexy ballerina?" Kate suggested.

"I was going to say 'boy'." There was this sly smirk on her face.

"So, what exactly is happening right now?" Kate asked.

"It's my second time in New York," Yelena declared. "This time for fun, not business, and when I think of fun, I think of you, Kate Bishop."

"You're still doing that thing where you say my whole name just to show that you know it."

"Honestly, now I just like saying the whole thing because that's part of the fun," Yelena admitted. "Kate Bishop. Sounds like a TV detective."

"Great potential career advice," Kate nodded. "Is it a waste of time to ask how you found me?"

"Please, Kate Bishop," Yelena intoned with a roll of the eyes. "S.H.I.E.L.D. safe houses are about as secure as a cardboard box in the Bronx."

"Because S.H.I.E.L.D. isn't a thing anymore."

Yelena looked shocked.

"S.H.I.E.L.D. is still so totally a thing!" she insisted, agog. "Agent Philip Coulson runs a small splinter cell of rogue zealots armed with Nick Fury's secret caches of wonderful toys! They march on as if the Blip didn't happen! Coulson had his brain put into a killer robot body! They travel in time!"

"You sound insane," Kate frowned.

"I swear, it's all true!"

"That's not what Clint says."

"Clint Barton knows shit," Yelena scoffed. "Who are you going to listen to? Broken-down has-been Avenger, or a woman at the center of the Black Widow intelligence network?"

Kate gave it a moment. "You want me to believe they travel in time?" she asked.

"And space, da!"

"You still sound insane, but I'll reserve judgment," she decided. "Though, again, I'm still wondering about the plan here..."

"You and me are going to have an authentic New York City Valentine's Day like Sex and the City!" Yelena announced.

"You can just say New York," Kate told her. "And I hate Valentine's Day."

"Oh, who hates Valentine's Day?" Yelena asked with a groan. "You have to try that hard to be jaded and cool, Kate Bishop?"

Kate actually took offense at that. She was the opposite of cynical. Kate was all about heart-on-your-sleeve sincerity. She just hated Valentine's Day. "I have my reasons," she assured Yelena. She couldn't remember them just then, but Kate had her reasons. "Can I ask what your idea of an authentic New York Valentine's Day like Sex and the City involves?"

"You shall see."

That sounded ominous. Yelena still had this satisfied grin that terrified Kate just a little bit more than it thrilled her. She hated how much she liked this woman. The Widow was just so confident and comfortable in her own skin. Kate played like she was, but she wasn't. Not really. Not anymore. Not like Yelena.

Kate lied about needing to pee and ran to the bathroom to call the Bartons immediately, feeling awful. She felt like she'd been ambushed way too early, and it was an hour earlier on the farm.

"If she wanted you dead, you'd be dead already," Clint told her with a yawn.

"Yeah, I know," Kate replied. "She's always been very clear on that. So, what do I do? I thought you and Yelena left things in a good place."

"I'm still alive," Clint said. "That's absolutely as good as it gets in these situations."

"Maybe take her for her word," Laura suggested. "Yelena's never really tried to hurt you. Sometimes spies come in out of the cold. Maybe she just wants a friend."

"You think?" Kate asked.

"I hope," Laura replied. "And why not? You're kind of great, Kate. But be careful."

So that was the plan. Take the Black Widow for her word and be careful.

Kate was pretty sure she was gonna die.

"What happened to your little pizza doggy?" Yelena asked Kate when she came out of her super-secret phone call.

"I left Lucky at the farm," she told the Russian. "City life had been ruff on him, you know?"

"Ruff, very funny," Yelena smiled. "You're always so funny, Kate Bishop. Did you say hi to Lucky when you called the Bartons just now?"

Kate decided to pretend that she knew Yelena would have known she called them. "Didn't come up."

"I know, Kate Bishop," Yelena sighed. She was pouring vodka and vermouth into a cocktail shaker full of ice. "I heard just about everything. The walls here are so thin."

"Yeah, but--"

Kate was interrupted by the sound of shaking ice. Yelena did the full thirty seconds prescribed for the proper preparation of a martini. "We said we'd have a drink at Christmas, but we didn't, so we're long overdue," the Widow said. She plunked two cocktail glasses on Kate's kitchen counter. Where the fuck had those come from?

"Seems a little late, doesn't it?" Kate yawned. "Or maybe entirely too early?"

"Oof," Yelena sighed, pouring. "Such a Charlotte."

Kate drank the martini. Hell, she deserved it at this point. If it was poisoned, that didn't make it any less fantastic. "You mix a fine drink, girlfriend," she admitted.

"They trained us in everything in the Red Room," Yelena replied.

Kate eventually realized that letting Yelena in wasn't the mistake. She'd never really had any choice about that, did she? Yelena was a force of nature. She was coming in no matter what.

No, Kate's mistake was letting Yelena answer the next knock on her door.

That happened about four martinis later. Five hours by standard measures of time.

"You pace yourself," Yelena was saying right before it happened. "That's how you get what you need. Be the one who can take it the longest."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"The fine art of tennis."

There was this ancient first-generation Wii in the apartment that inexplicably worked. Apparently, that's how S.H.I.E.L.D. agents whiled away their time in the Early Aughts. Kate and Yelena had been playing tennis since Yelena had found it.

"Always wanted to try this," the Widow explained as she forced Kate to plug everything in the right way. "I was deep in my training when these came out, but Natasha and I loved Mario Kart on the Super Nintendo back when we lived in Ohio."

Kate suspected Yelena could have figured out how to set it up for herself. They trained them in everything at the Red Room, right? A.V. seemed like a no-brainer. No, the Widow was trying to manipulate her into playing, and it worked. And Kate couldn't blame her. Who really wanted to play Wii alone?

They'd been virtually volleying for five hours because Yelena couldn't beat Kate, wouldn't stop until she did, and Kate wasn't the type to just let someone win. Kate was honestly surprised by the number of nights she'd spent doing game nights with legit superheroes, but this was a little different than playing Parcheesi with the Bartons.

"I will break you, Kate Bishop," Yelena declared after her most recent loss. It sounded like this hilarious cliché with the accent, so Kate couldn't help but smile every time she said it.

"I know I shouldn't say this because it's reductive and I'm still not sure you don't want to kill me, but the whole 'deadly pixie with subtle moose-and-squirrel linguistics' thing is way too cute sometimes."

"What is 'moose-and-squirrel'?" Yelena actually did the air-quotes.

"It's a Bullwinkle thing I guess?" God, now Kate had question marks at the end of her declarative sentences.

"'Bullwinkle'? Like 'bamboozle'? Are you trying to trick me, Kate Bishop?"

The way Yelena said it had none of the anger Kate might have expected, nor did she maintain the dispassionate poker-face of an emotionless sleeper agent. It almost seemed like actual hurt.

"No, no, no, not 'bamboozle'," Kate insisted. "Bullwinkle. It's this old cartoon from the 60s, okay? Back when America didn't trust the Russians, unlike now when, you know..."

"America has so much trust in the Russians."

"Yes," Kate said. "Exactly that. Honestly, there's a bunch of stuff I say sometimes that I'm just guessing at with context from other things."

"Kate Bishop, we must watch this cartoon immediately."

And they probably would have found some way to do just that if not for that damn knock on the door. Yelena was moving to answer before Kate could say anything.

"Hey, Ka-- Oh."

Shit. It was the Boy Two Doors Down. This was new. Sure, they'd had a couple of chats on the elevator and that time in the laundry room, but she still barely knew the guy. He'd never knocked on her door before any more than she'd ever knocked on his. This was an escalation, and the goddamn Black Widow was in the middle of it!

"Well, hello there," Yelena said in this flat, plain American accent.

"Do I have the right place?" He was holding a paper sack from Frichtman's Bagels, this delightful local shop around the corner. Kate loved their BLT on an everything bagel.

"You're looking for Katie, right?" It was like Yelena was a whole different person. "She's right inside."

Kate was up and at the door. She did not want him in here. Not with Yelena at the same time. She couldn't say why. Maybe because Kate was all gross and sweaty from her personal virtual Wimbledon. She had changed out of her comfy pajamas and was wearing a sports bra and yoga pants.

"So she gets to call you Katie?" he said.

"No, she does not." Kate glared at Yelena, who couldn't seem more amused. Ugh. She turned back to The Boy Two Doors Down. "So, um, what's up?"

"Had an interesting morning," he said. "The folks at the bagel place were grateful, though. Gave me a bunch." She could tell he was trying hard not to give her the once over in her skimpy, sweaty attire. "Thought I'd share. And honestly, I don't have that many friends right now." He finally relented, his eyes flicking up and down once. "Or any friends, really."

"You... You are a very generous gentleman," Yelena said, snatching the bag from him.

"I try," he said, eyeing the blonde with confusion.

"No, you succeed," she assured him. Yelena sniffed the bag dramatically. "Authentic New York City bagels."

"You can just say New York," the Boy Two Doors Down told her before turning toward Kate. "So, who's your--?"

"That all that brings you by?" Kate asked, cutting him off. She wasn't going to make introductions if she didn't have to.

"You, uh, asked about the Disney+ password?" he said.

And she had. She remembered that now. It'd been that last time she'd run into him in the laundry room. He'd just been finishing up when she came in. He had a solid amount of ironic T-shirts. Kate suspected they'd get along just fine. Desperate to make some small talk about anything other than the weather, she'd mentioned that she'd loved Ahsoka when she saw him folding one with the Millennium Falcon.

"Still haven't seen it," he said. "But it's on my list."

"How haven't you seen it?" she asked. "It was amazing! Back when Clone Wars was on, Ahsoka Tano was the reason I took up fencing."

"I wasn't around when Ahsoka came out," he told her.

"You weren't around?" she laughed. "What? Were you under a rock?" Then it hit her. "Wait. Did you--?"

"Yeah."

He'd blipped.

"Sorry," she said. "It's barely been a year, but it's like I totally forget it happened sometimes."

"It's okay," he said. "I almost forget, too."

Kate felt like such a jerk. She should have just shut up, but that wasn't her style. She had to say something to fix this. "I want to rewatch it, but I don't have Disney+ anymore," she said.

He graciously picked up on this. "I have account access, but I don't have a TV for it," he told her. "I mean, I have a TV, a pretty nice one actually, but I kind of salvaged it, and the HDMI ports are shot..."

"Maybe we can figure something out," Kate suggested.

"Yeah," he smiled. "That sounds nice."

And it did. When she first got to the safe house with its TV/VCR combo set, she'd splurged on a new flat-screen with some of that cash Clint had given her. It wasn't until she'd wrestled it out of the cab and schlepped it up to her new hole-in-the-wall that she realized that you actually needed a credit card or something to get streaming services. Hell, she wasn't sure why the place still had Wi-Fi. Or why J.L. Fitz-Simmons still got a subscription from Scientific American delivered every month.

So after starting her wash, Kate had left him to tend to his unmentionables and what-have-yous, figuring she'd planted a seed, but now he was here and so was Yelena and she wished she hadn't.

Kate took the little pink post-it he had offered.

"HulkHogan101966," she read.

"I think that login ID works for everything from Paramount+ to HBOMax," he told her. "Hulu, Mojovision... I think Pornhub if you're interested." Yelena laughed at that. This light, not-Russian giggle. "That joke might have been funnier if your friend wasn't right here," he acknowledged. "I realize that now."

"But you just wrote down 'password,'" Kate said. "What's the password?"

"The password is 'password.'"

"Really?"

"I didn't pick it," he shrugged. "The dude's old, but he can afford it. And he's a great guy. Wouldn't mind giving a nice girl a few nights of Netflix to chill."

"It's 'Netflix and chill'," Kate smirked. "You know what that means, right?"

"I assume it means watching 'Orange is the New Black' with a nice Pinot Noir?" he said. "That's still a show, right? I never really watched it because of the mature themes."

"Such a sweet, sweet innocent boy," Yelena sighed. She was stifling a chuckle.

"Thank you so much," Kate said. "For this and the bagels. It's just we're in the middle of---"

"Nothing too important," Yelena smiled. "If you'd like to join us for Sex and the City and frozen margaritas..."

"Really appreciate that, but I actually got a job interview," he said. "The Daily Grind. It's this coffee shop. Not sure it's a great fit, but you gotta roll up the sleeves at some point, right?"

"Sounds promising," Kate ventured.

"Here's hoping, but I gotta get ready and I'm running late," he said. "See you around?"

"Most likely," she nodded. "Especially if you keep checking the roof sometimes for no discernible reason."

"Right," he smiled. "Bye."

Kate closed the door and took a breath.

"You like him," Yelena said in a little sing-song.

"Like who?"

The Widow wasn't having any of it. "Boy next door."

"He lives two doors down."

"So, you obviously know who I mean, Kate Bishop," Yelena said. She was back to the heavy Russian accent. "You like the boy two doors down."

"I don't like anybody right now," Kate insisted. "Besides, I'm gonna move any day now."

"Kate Bishop, you sound like you're in one of those Hallmark holiday movies about an unhinged woman having a nervous breakdown that leads to a wholly unlikely marriage," the Widow sighed. "This boy two doors down does not have to be forever. What's wrong with a fling?"

"Please," Kate begged, "don't project your weird Sex and the City shit on me. I know how a fling works. I just haven't flung in a while."

"He looked like a perfect gentleman," Yelena replied. "Beard doesn't suit him, but he's cute in a scruffy way."

"Well, if you're calling dibs..."

"Trust me, Kate Bishop, I have no use for a gentle man tonight," the Russian told her. "Besides, he's probably an undercover agent from the Department of Damage Control sent here to keep tabs on you."

"You really think so?"

Yelena laughed that brassy laugh of hers. "No, Kate Bishop, no," she chortled. "That's the type of thing that'd be true if this was a Hallmark holiday movie. A reason for you to be mad at him in the third act. But this is real life, and you are so not important to anybody that high up."

Kate let that go, but Yelena was right. In the world of Hallmark holiday movies where casual sex simply didn't exist, the Boy Two Doors down would have to have some terrible secret she initially couldn't get over. Or he'd have to be a childhood sweetheart or something, but that clearly wasn't the case.

As it so happened, Kate had a certain guilty-pleasure love for those very movies. It wasn't her fault. Her college roommate had been obsessed with them. The Hallmark Channel basically started playing them on repeat starting in October, and every time Kate came back to her dorm room, the chick was watching one. It was kind of hard not to get sucked in. Yes, they were all the same. Yes, they were unrealistic and kind of stupid, but who wanted stories to play out the way they did in the real world? In the real world, aliens blew up your home and killed your father. In the real world, half of everyone you knew had just disappeared in a puff of smoke. So what was wrong with a little saccharine sweetness in a cold, dark world? Sure, Kate could have gone without all of the messy baking scenes, watching grownups have silly snowball fights, or the very idea that anybody actually hung mistletoe in their houses in this day and age, but she still liked them, despite the unrealistically puritanical stance everybody had about sex in these flicks.

Her roommate had explained it best when Kate had bitched about it once. "These movies are the version of how you met your boyfriend that you'd tell your grandma," Gwen had said. "You leave out the part where you got in a fight because he hooked up with an ex before you DTR'd, and tell her that you saw him platonically hugging a girl instead."

That actually made sense at the time.

There was something else that was bothering Kate about this last bit of drama between Yelena and the Boy Two Doors Down. "So, if you can speak this perfect colloquial English, why the whole moose-and-squirrel accent?"

"You mean why don't I talk like an average American girl-next-door the way Natasha did?" Yelena asked like a girl from Cleveland, batting those dazzling baby blue eyes.

"Well, yeah..."

"I'm not afraid to be who I am, Kate Bishop," she shrugged, back to that almost goofy Russian patois.

"Can't argue with that."

Thankfully, the introduction of baked breakfast goods brought a blissful end to the Widow/Hawkeye Wii Winter Games. Unfortunately, it broached a tenderer topic. The Russian was warming those bagels in a toaster oven she must have brought with her. Was that a safe-housewarming gift or the first sign she was trying to move in?

"Exactly how long are you planning to stay here, Yelena?" Kate asked her.

"How long are you planning to stay here, Kate Bishop?" she asked in return, looking her dead in the eye as she cream-cheesed a jalapeno and cheddar bagel. "Shouldn't you be back in school?"

"No, I got that covered," Kate said. "I'm just here to square some things away with my mom's lawyers. After that I'm..."

Kate had no idea how to finish that sentence.

Her first meeting with her mother's lawyers hadn't gone great. Associates at Hogarth, Chao & Benowitz had bailed Kate out of a lot of her silly adolescent hijinks before she got her act a little bit more together. Franky Nelson had been her favorite, but she had an affinity for dorks, and he kept telling her not to call him Franky, which is exactly why she did it. But she wasn't dealing with Franky -- who apparently hadn't come along when the partnership drastically changed during those college years when she was making trouble in other jurisdictions -- so she was just dealing with the higher-ups at Hogarth & Associates that were handling her mother's murder case.