Stupid Cupid

Kate ended up hovering with the door to the roof propped open on her hip as she lit up. It was still frightfully brisk, but she welcomed the shock to the system.

So she stood just at the threshold of the building's rooftop access and smoked this tiny stub of pot -- No, Wakandan-grown cannabis, "primo travka" or whatever --- and watched the snow fall.

Honestly, Kate didn't have a lot of experience here. This was maybe the third time she had smoked weed. With her various qualifying events in the U.S. Open and the upcoming Olympics, drug testing was a concern. And the first two times she'd risked it had resulted in these tiny paranoid anxiety attacks that left her convinced that she wasn't missing out on much. The first time, she thought she was having a heart attack, but she eventually realized it was just anxiety.

The second time had been with that crazy college roommate. There'd been much less anxiety, but that was largely because Kate just laid back and unfocused while Gwen went on and on about how she'd heard somewhere that your dreams were really about versions of yourself in other realities.

Whatever she'd smoked before, it certainly hadn't been Wakandan. Kate didn't feel anxious this time, either. No, she felt calm. And she was realizing something. That lingering thought since she'd left the Bartons was absolutely right:

She needed to move to California!

There had been this moment at the airport, after Clint had left because you can't go to the gate without a boarding pass, when she was just sitting by herself, waiting for her flight. The airline changed the gate on her, so she had to leave, but before she did, she saw that the next flight out of that gate she'd been waiting at for forty-two minutes was now flying out to LAX and she felt this weird impulse...

What if she could just go to L.A. instead?

But Kate shuffled off to her new gate like a dutiful traveler because what choice did she really have, and now here she was, back in the Big Apple.

She could have gone anywhere. Clint had said that, and she'd chosen to come back here? Why? Just because it was home? Everything in New York right now was crazy. Her mom was going to jail. Her mom should go to jail. But she really did not want her mom to go to jail. What was really left for her here? Had Kate come back just to say goodbye?

Okay, maybe there was a little anxiety with Wakandan weed after all, but at least it didn't morph it into some semblance of a cardiac event.

No. Mostly, she just felt all this pent-up post-coital energy she still needed to burn off. What happened with Yelena had been shocking and surprising and satisfying in ways she never expected, but it'd come out of nowhere and had all these sticky strings attached. How had things gone from "Maybe I'll kill you" to "Maybe I'm your new best friend and potential superhero partner" to "Maybe I'll rock your entire sexual world with my mouth and my tits in a way you never saw coming"?

What was going to happen when the sexy ballerina sleeping in Kate's bed woke up? They weren't, like, gonna 69 or something, right? She'd done that once or twice with a dick in the equation, and she hadn't been the biggest fan. What was wrong with taking turns and taking your time? And she actually thought she knew what she was doing when it came to going down on a guy...

"Fuck," Kate sighed to herself. She wasn't ready for that. And she really wasn't ready for a second conversation about being partners. Shit, she wasn't really ready for anything anymore.

So she took the last decent hit she'd likely get and decided to focus on the snow. And the more she focused on the snow, the more certain she felt about the California thing. Because she was so friggin' sick of snow all of a sudden. She wanted sunny stability. She wanted to get as far away from who she'd been without abandoning it all completely.

It seemed suddenly decided. Kate Bishop was going to L.A. Maybe she'd be a TV detective or something. The All-New Hawkeye mixing it up in the City of Angels like some kind of West Coast Avenger. You'd watch six episodes of that on, say, Netflix, right?

She was going to buy a cheap used car with that cash Clint had given her and drive out west next week and burn it out just to get to L.A. Maybe along the way, she'd have wacky small-town adventures while she used what was left of that mad money to fix it up and keep her going. She could even drop in on the Bartons, maybe... assuming the farm was along the way. Hell, assuming the farm was a little out of the way.

If she had her druthers, that used car would be a 1972 Dodge Challenger. That'd flip Clint the fuck out. But, no. That'd be too expensive. Clint hadn't given her that much. No. Maybe a little Volkswagen Beetle. She'd just spray-paint it purple if she had to.

Kate Bishop in a violet VW bug on a haphazard cross-country adventure, helping people along the way like Caine in Kung Fu.

Fuck, that was a whole different season of her life as a streaming series before the one where she was solving wacky mysteries in the Valley or on Venice Beach or something. Maybe Kate should have taken that second creative writing course Professor Heinberg had suggested after all. At the very least, Gwen would have been proud.

Kate was pretty sure that while Gwen might not be insane, she was probably on the spectrum or something. Because Gwen was always talking about life like it was this TV show she'd fallen into, and the one time Kate brought it up with her, Gwen's response had been, "So, you think I'm like Abed from Community?"

"I have no idea what that even means," Kate sighed.

"Cool, cool, cool."

But it's not like you got to pick your roommates that first year. Why Kate had stuck with Gwen the next was beyond her. Sure, she was a little off, but she was funny and loyal, didn't get in Kate's face when she left a bit of a mess on her side of the dorm, and was one hell of a wingwoman. So what if she was a little obsessed with TV? It was a golden age of television, after all. The drunken assertions that Gwen felt like she was just an unlikely supporting character in a fanfic about Kate's life as a TV show tangentially connected to a sprawling cinematic universe based on comic books were a little extra, but that only happened when Gwen got particularly plastered, so maybe four times in their time together. Yes, that was absurd, but not the most absurd thing about Gwendolyn Poole.

The obsession with pink for a girl over the age of eleven was the most absurd thing about Gwendolyn Poole.

The second thing Kate realized on the rooftop was that there was a pair of tracks leading out of the building, but not one leading back. That didn't make sense. Not unless someone was out on the roof right now.

See? Those innate detective skills were already leading her in bold new directions.

"Hello?" she called out, but she got nothing. Then the paranoia gripped her, fuzzy slippers be damned. She walked out onto the roof to follow the tracks.

She and Clint had spent a few days and nights out in the woods tracking animal prints in the snow. He'd even had the kids run around out there a few hours before the last few of these Clint Classes to see if she could tell who had left which trails, even if they were wearing someone else's shoes, how old the tracks were, who was running, who was limping, who had double-backed to confuse her, that sort of thing.

Kate was never going to be able to mentally recreate a fight in her mind palace based on the scuff marks on a dusty road or anything so uncanny, but she could follow this trail easy. Snow was her whole thing.

They weren't fresh, as they'd been filled in by the snowfall, but they just led to the edge of the roof. She checked over the ledge, but if someone had leapt off the roof to their grisly death because of goddamn Valentine's Day or something, there was absolutely no evidence.

Maybe Kate wasn't as good at this as she thought. It's not like she'd aced those particular Clint Classes. When she asked him how she did, his response had been, "Better than I thought but I did not have high expectations."

Kate burned through the last bit of usable ganja, then flicked it over the ledge.

Don't worry. Kate wasn't an idiot. She'd propped the door open with the same brick she always used for practice, so this wasn't going to be the farcefully comic mistake where she locked herself on the roof in the middle of a blizzard or some bullshit.

No, this was gonna be a different mistake.

After stripping off her sodden slippers, as she made her way back to her apartment, she lingered outside the apartment of the Boy Two Doors Down.

Honestly, though, how was that even a mistake? She didn't knock. She thought about it again, but didn't.

Those Clint Classes had, of course, covered other subjects. Like how to tell if someone was actually in a place. Maybe her tracking wasn't quite up to snuff, but Kate was fairly confident about her observations on the inscrutable guy who lived on her floor at least. The Boy Two Doors Down kept the strangest hours. He was actually almost never home, and she never seemed to hear him leave. And he was always alone. He never had visitors.

It was one of the reasons she'd entertained the possibility that Yelena's little joke about him secretly working for the Department of Damage Control wasn't totally off-base.

But Kate was fairly confident he was in there right then. And there was this unbelievably stupid favor she wanted to ask him that she was pretty sure was the biggest mistake she could possibly make. Kate eventually decided it was time to do smarter things with her life. She was just turning to walk on to her place when his door suddenly opened.

"Oh, uh, hey, Kate," she heard. "You looking for me?"

At first, she thought she'd picked the wrong apartment -- another dumb mistake -- because she didn't recognize him at first.

"You, um, you shaved the beard," she noted. "Got a haircut."

"Thought it'd be good for the next job interview," he told her, absentmindedly scratching his chin. "And honestly, growing the stubble was kind of a grief thing," he admitted. "Probably why it was coming in so patchy and uneven."

That wasn't why it was coming in patchy, but she let it go. Without the scruff, he was just clearly so young now. Kate had first pegged him for early twenties at least. Now she was wondering if he'd even made it to the big 2-0 yet. "First beard, huh?"

"That obvious?"

"It was cute in that what-the-fuck-is-he-thinking sort of way."

He visibly perked up at her use of the C-word, but somehow didn't say anything. She liked that. Kate had a shy one here.

"It looks really nice," she told him. "I myself just shaved." That earned her a quirk of the eye. "I don't know why I said that," she admitted. Why had she told him that? Was Wakandan weed like some kind of truth serum? No. That was stupid. She was just keyed up.

"Are you okay?" he asked her.

"Not really," she sighed. "You?"

He thought about it. Kate could tell he was thinking about it. "I don't know..." he said. "Always been a 'fake it till you make' it kind of guy."

"Purple light in the canyons," she heard Dean Martin softly singing behind him. "That's where I long to be..."

"Is that Rio Bravo?" Kate asked.

He looked back into his place. "I think it's True Grit," he said. "Always heard that's the best of those really old John Wayne movies."

"No, that's definitely Rio Bravo," Kate informed him. "My dad always liked Rio Bravo more than True Grit. In that one, The Duke gets to kiss the girl."

"I did not know that."

"There are a few pop-culture references I actually know about," she shrugged. She wasn't sure why she'd said that either. He didn't know about that.

"It was just on when I woke up," he explained like he needed to make excuses. "I was watching M*A*S*H before the--before I passed out. I know that show's just super old, but the woman who raised me had this crazy thing for Alan Alda, so I kind of grew up on it."

"Can I come in?"

He looked back into his apartment again, panicked. "Uh, sure..." he said eventually, stepping back to let her through. Why did the Boy Two Doors Down always seem so on edge around her? It was definitely more than the fidgety energy of somebody who liked you but wasn't sure if you liked them back. It was like he had some big terrible secret or something.

The fact that she had clearly caught him in his pj's -- one of his funnier ironic shirts ("Don't Trust Atoms, They Make Up Everything") and a pair of boxers -- probably didn't help. At least Kate didn't have to feel underdressed. Shit, she wasn't even wearing panties right then.

"I still don't have cable, but I found a digital antenna I was able to fix," he explained as she turned to the flat-screen mounted to his wall, where Dean Martin as Dude was crooning "My Rifle, My Pony, and Me." "I was worried I'd have to rebuild the coaxial cable, but I just had to clean the contacts and replace the balun."

"If I understood any of that, I'm sure I'd be impressed," Kate dutifully nodded. She wasn't looking for the Boy Two Doors Down's brain or handy skills. She was looking for...

What was Kate looking for?

"It's always weird going into another apartment that has the same layout as yours," she said. "Everything's the same, but completely different." Somehow, he had even less furnishing than the S.H.I.E.L.D. safe house. No kitchen or coffee tables for starters, just a desk by the window and a beat-up brown leather couch that he'd set up on the other side of the room than her own. He had a bed with a shabby little nightstand off to the side. The TV was the nicest thing in the place. Kate realized just how elitist that thought made her seem. "It's like being on another planet." His bed wasn't as big as hers, either. "Can you even imagine?"

"Kind of," he said, stepping into a pair of pink Hello Kitty pajama pants he'd pulled out of a drawer. Kate assumed there was a story behind that, but got distracted when she noticed this ugly purple bruise on his thigh.

"What happened?" she asked. "Get in a fight?"

"No," he chuckled nervously. "Of course not, I was just--"

"Relax," Kate laughed. "I'm kidding. You don't strike me as much of a scrapper."

"Oh, I can handle myself," he mock-assured. He wasn't crazy defensive about it. That said so much. He might be shy, but he was still somehow so sure of himself. "I'm a regular street tough when I gotta be."

"Who the hell says 'street tough' if they're not auditioning for Broadway?"

"Fair," he nodded. "That's one job I haven't considered."

"So you don't think you're going to end up my friendly neighborhood barista at the Daily Grind?"

"I don't love my odds," he sighed. "There was this blond guy who interviewed right before me. The manager seemed smitten. Maybe if I were blond..." Kate smiled. What kind of guy ever said something like that? "Ever been at a job interview where it was obvious they just don't want to hire you?"

"Can't say that I have," Kate admitted. "Not yet at least." And that was true. The only thing close to a job Kate had worked other than working for her mom at Bishop Security was some volunteer stuff at a homeless shelter back in middle school, and they took anybody. "What about pizza delivery? There's Joe's. That's right next to Frichtman's.

"Somebody told me that's a bad idea."

"So, what's the dream job?" Kate asked. "If you could do anything in the world, what would it be?"

He smiled in the weirdest way. Almost like it was an old question she'd asked him before. And while Kate wasn't sure why she felt she could read him so easily, she certainly wasn't sure why she liked that smile so much.

"I'd kill to get this internship at the Baxter Foundation," he said, "but I don't have the transcripts."

"But that's not really a job," Kate told him. "Nobody pays interns."

"The Baxter Foundation does," he sighed. "They're focused on the future and not squeezing as much as they can out of unpaid labor."

"Why don't you have the transcripts?" Kate asked. "Is it Blip stuff?"

"Something like that."

She felt like it was time for a subject change. "You got anything to drink?"

"I think I have some tea," he told her.

"Nothing stronger?"

"I'm, uh, not quite old enough to buy alcohol," he told her. "Wait, does that mean you are? You didn't get blipped?"

"I thought you were a fan," Kate said. "Shouldn't you know that?" Suddenly, her hackles were up.

"Slipped my mind?" he said. "It's not like I was obsessed with you or something. Just seems like everyone I know got blipped. Like, everybody."

"Tea's fine," she decided. It wasn't like Kate really needed her mind altered much more. It had just seemed like the thing to say at the time. "But I'll be judging the quality. I mean, maybe there's a reason you didn't get that job at the coffee shop."

"Too soon," the Boy Two Doors Down said, digging through his kitchen cabinet for tea bags.

She wasn't sure if it was the Widow's Kiss, but Kate chose not to stress about anything anymore. She decided to trust the Boy Two Doors Down. If this guy ended up being a secret agent or some super-psycho out to kill her, she was just fine with it at this point. Just another wacky Kate Bishop adventure. Besides, if he ended up being more than she could handle, Yelena would probably come in out of nowhere and save her, right? That's just how things worked in her strange new world.

"Earl Grey okay?" he asked.

"As long as it's hot," she smirked. "That mean you're a Trekkie, too? I'm surprised. You have that Palpatine LEGO so prominently displayed."

"Nobody should have to choose," he said. He turned toward her then. "I am embarrassed to say that I do not have tea," he admitted. "But I can make you the best cocoa in the world."

"Sounds great," she lied. Kate didn't really need cocoa -- especially if she was going to have to pretend it was the best cocoa in the world, but she could tell that he needed to make her cocoa for some reason.

"Now, while I don't think you should have to choose unless you have, like, some financial stake or something..." He was digging through his spice cabinet. "I bet space is more like the Wars than the Trek."

"You do, huh?"

"Oh, yeah," he nodded, heating the milk. "Marauders as far as the stars can see. Constant fighting and explosions. There's no law or order out in space..."

"Just a bunch of hot, horny space girls who all want you, right?"

"That sounds more like Star Trek," he said. "Didn't you see A Pal to All Planets?"

"That Star-Boy documentary?" Kate chuckled. "Pass."

"Star-Lord."

"Pretty sure it's Star-Boy," Kate assured him. "And I have it on pretty good authority that most of the stuff they tell us about the Avengers is crap."

That got his attention. "Still an Avengers fan?"

"What do you mean 'still'?" she asked.

"Uh, I just mean a lot of people kind of blame them for most of what's happened," he said.

"Yeah, I've got an aunt with one of those 'Thanos Was Right' mugs," Kate sighed. "That's got to be uber-offensive to someone like you, right?"

"Why 'someone like me'?" he asked. Now he sounded defensive. Why did he suddenly seem so suspicious of her? He was the potential psycho, right?

"Well, Thanos kind of killed you, didn't he?" Kate said.

He mumbled something then, but she clearly hadn't heard him right, because it didn't make any sense for him to say, "Didn't hurt as much as when he pinned me..." Maybe Kate needed to avoid drugs all together in the future.

She decided not to ask him. Because she was actually making one of the worst social faux pas of the current era: Don't talk about the Blip with people who'd blipped unless they brought it up. She was about to change the subject entirely when he did it for her.