Stupid Cupid

"So, uh, no Valentine's Day plans?" the Boy Two Doors Down asked. "Figured you'd have a boyfriend?" Kate frowned. "Or a girlfriend?" Kate frowned harder. "Somebody special?"

"I hate Valentine's Day," she groaned. Kate was surprised she kept having to explain this. Didn't everybody hate it at least a little?

"Oh, come on," he scoffed.

"What?"

"If you hate Valentine's Day, it's because you actually care about Valentine's Day," he said. "People who don't care don't even know that it's happening."

"People keep bringing it up!"

"Okay, that's fair, my bad," he allowed. "That doesn't really happen to me. I don't have a lot of friends these days."

"Be honest," Kate said. "Have you ever actually had a good Valentine's Day?"

"Of course we--" He stopped himself. "I mean, I had a--" He stopped himself again. "I don't know how to..."

"What is it?" she asked. He was acting so freaky now.

"Nothing," he said, turning to tend to the cocoa. "It was a long time ago.

Like I'm going to let that go, Kate thought as she settled on the couch.

"Thanks," she said when he handed her a mug and sat down as far from her as possible. She took a sip and sighed. "Wow." It was just like Laura made it. "I haven't had cocoa this good since the farm."

"My mom's recipe."

"What's the secret then? Nutmeg? Cinnamon?" Kate had also suspected Special Dark Cocoa, but she wasn't just gonna give that away.

"Cayenne."

"That doesn't make sense."

"That's why it works," he shrugged. "I don't get it either, but it's my favorite."

Kate didn't really care. She was content with her cocoa.

"So, when you say, 'back on the farm,' is that like some CIA reference?" the Boy Two Doors Down asked. "Because there's just something about you that screams spy. I mean, you have some Russian best friend..."

"We're not that close," Kate said. No. Not close at all. "I'm not a spy." No. Not exactly. I just live in a S.H.I.E.L.D safe house right now. "Wait, how do you know she's Russian?"

"Please, the walls here are paper thin," he said. "She was shouting 'I will break you,' for about three hours."

It'd been five, and now Kate wondered what he'd been doing for the two hours he'd missed. Right. He'd been out getting her bagels.

Kate really didn't want to talk about Yelena right then. Yelena was the reason all of this stupidity had happened in the first place. "So tell me about this perfect Valentine's Day you had," she said instead.

"I never said it was perfect," the Boy Two Doors Down insisted.

"But you implied it was good, and I can't believe it."

"It's kind of a strange story," he said. "And long."

"I love long strange stories." And Kate really did. That was just true.

"Is this because you don't want to tell me about the farm?" he asked.

"Absolutely."

He didn't seem to care.

"So I was thirteen," he began...

MISTAKE SIX: The World Forgetting, by the World Forgot

The Boy Two Doors Down's Valentine's Day story wasn't really that long or strange as far as Kate was concerned. But Clint Barton had told her how Bruce Banner had spent two years fighting gladiator brawls in a cosmic garbage dump, so her bar for long, strange stories had risen considerably.

Apparently his foster mother or whatever ran a soup kitchen when he was growing up, so he spent his weekends there when he was a kid, where he met a girl doing her school-mandated community service and they kind of hit it off. The height of this brief little junior-high romance happened to be on Valentine's Day. He took her to see a screening of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind at some arthouse theater in Queens and afterwards, they went to Cold Stone Creamery.

"Bullshit," Kate found herself saying. "Isn't that rated R? How'd you get tickets?"

"Me and my aunt went there a lot," he sighed. "All the guys working the box office had a crush on her. Didn't hide it very well. Even when my uncle came with us. So I kinda got free run of the place through association."

"Ah, using your shady connections to impress the little uptown hottie," Kate smiled. "Such a dangerous bad boy."

"That's exactly what you-- what, you know, she said back then."

"That flick's a little heavy for thirteen."

"But that happens, right?" he shrugged. "There are just some movies you end up seeing when you're way too young for them. And then you see them again when you're older and realize you had no idea what was actually going on..."

"Like Die Hard."

"Exactly like Die Hard."

"But let me guess," Kate sighed. "You watch Eternal Sunshine every Valentine's Day."

"I do indeed," he nodded. "Watched it earlier today. Right after my doomed interview."

Kate loved Eternal Sunshine. She didn't watch it every Valentine's Day or anything crazy, but maybe every other Presidents Day. She wasn't going to tell him that, though. "And I bet you have a huge thing for Kirsten Dunst."

"I don't know about huge..."

"Doesn't have to be huge," Kate told him. "Thick usually gets the job done just fine." He didn't get it. "I'm gonna guess you watched it alone since you said you don't have many friends these days."

"Nope," he shrugged. "Kind of broke up with my girlfriend around Christmas."

So, probably not gay, Kate thought. No, that's just you. "Ah," she observed, pushing that stray strange notion aside. "Hence the grief beard."

"Something like that." He looked away. Toward his bed. Kate noticed this picture on his nightstand. She doubted it was the old girlfriend. Not unless the Boy Two Doors Down had been dating a serious cougar.

Whoa. What if he had been?

"So you only ever watched it with Volunteer Val?" Kate asked.

"Her name wasn't Val, Katie."

"Names aren't important," she insisted. "And don't call me Katie."

"Because names aren't important?"

"But she was your Valentine because she was a volunteer," she explained. "You gotta admit, 'Volunteer Val' is a solid secret identity."

"Why does she need a secret identity?"

"Did you kiss her?"

The Boy Two Doors Down actually blushed. "She kissed me," he said. "That was my first kiss."

"That sounds sweet." Kate couldn't even remember her first kiss. "What happened to her?" she asked. "You never think of looking her up? I love sappy first-love stories that work out."

"Me, too," he sighed. "But when does that ever really happen?"

"You're avoiding the question," she pressed. "What's Val's real name? We could look her up."

"What happened to her secret identity?"

"Oh, nobody really does secret identities anymore," Kate said. "Let's google this chick!"

"Like I've never done that?" he laughed. "This is not... It's not gonna work that way because..." He laughed for a bit longer than Kate thought necessary. "This is so bonkers," he practically wheezed.

"What's so bonkers about it?"

The Boy Two Doors Down just took his time. "Aren't old girlfriends off limits?" he said eventually. "I mean, when..."

"When what?"

"When you're talking to someone new?"

God, he was good. Somebody had raised him right. She really wanted to kiss him right then, but she didn't. "This is different," Kate said instead. "You're talking about first love! On Valentine's Day! And you're talking about first love on Valentine's Day on Valentine's Day!"

"I thought you hated Valentine's Day," he replied. "And it wasn't really first love..."

"Well, of course not!" she sighed with an eye roll. "You said you were, what? Thirteen? Real love happens in your late twenties or early thirties or something. Imaginary first love happens when you're too stupid to know any better, which is why it kind of gets to gut you. That's what Valentine's Day is for. For kids."

He pondered that. "Maybe you're right," he sighed. "Nobody I dated after was quite like that girl, though," the Boy Two Doors Down told her. "She was one of a kind."

Kate didn't know why she found this so sweet. The guy was vaguely pining for some girl he'd known ten years ago or something. But it was like he was pouring that pining into her, somehow.

"So, how did it end?" Kate asked instead.

"Eventually her forty-two hours of school-sponsored community service were up and I never really saw her again," he shrugged. "We exchanged a few texts, but she lived on Park Avenue and I lived in Queens, and at thirteen, that's just an insurmountable distance."

Kate figured he was probably right. She'd grown up on Park Avenue, too, and if she'd met some cute boy who lived in Queens back then, she'd probably lose touch with him just the same. But she wouldn't forget him. Never. That'd be the type of day, the type of guy, that Kate Bishop would judge Valentine's against.

"Yeah, but it isn't insurmountable anymore, is it?" she asked. Because if Kate wouldn't forget, how could that girl? "Everything's different now." She didn't know why she was pushing this so much. Why she was pushing him away. Because it was Valentine's Day? Kate was planning on shooting arrows for a living. How could she not play Cupid? "You could still look her up," she said. "Couldn't you?"

"She wouldn't remember me," he insisted.

"What makes you so sure?"

"Call it a gut feeling?"

"Because of the Blip?"

"Sure," he said. "Because of the Blip."

She decided not to push it any more than she had. She'd been lingering outside of his door for a different reason, after all. She looked up and away, trying to gather her thoughts, and that's when she saw it. There was something like a tightly-woven net up in a corner of the room.

"Is that a hammock?" she asked. It seemed weird if it was. He did have that bed...

He looked where she was. "Uh, yeah, yes, uh, absolutely," he stuttered. "That's definitely just a hammock."

"I had sex in a hammock once," she sighed. "Summer before junior year in Martha's Vineyard. It was kind of awful actually."

"Wuh-why--?"

"It was the only place we thought was convenient at the time, and I thought it'd be fun, but it just wasn't. But you know what? You learn just as much from bad sex that you do from good..."

He didn't say anything for a bit, so she looked back at him. "What?"

"I... I was just trying to ask why that would come up."

Kate didn't have a good answer for that. Not one she was ready to share yet. She was trying to convince herself that Widow's Kiss really wasn't actually truth serum. It was just really dank weed. All this nervous stupidity was completely her own.

"Wait, do you want to have sex with me?" he asked.

"Maybe?"

MISTAKE SEVEN: Chatty Kathy

Kate never should have told him she was maybe gonna fuck him. That's why she'd even thought of coming over here, but after she'd said that, things were just awkward.

His eyes went agog when she explained her reason for seeing him. "Are, uh... Is that a good idea?" he asked her.

Of course it's a good idea, she wanted to say, but she couldn't. "Probably not," she admitted. Because deep down, she knew it really and truly wasn't.

She noticed he'd been trying for these sly looks at her chest, and when she glanced down, she figured out why. It looked like she was smuggling grapes. Her nipples had tightened, poking lewdly through her favorite sweatshirt.

Kate less than casually took down her hair, flipping her long black locks over her shoulder in an attempt to cover her tightened buds. It seemed to work. The eye contact was much sturdier now. Her nipples weren't any less hard, though.

"My uncle loved Guns 'N Roses," he said. "'Dr. Feelgood' was his workout jam."

"That's not..." No. Kate didn't want to get sidetracked. "Never mind."

"So about us, you know, having sex?" he started to blather. "I mean--"

"Calm down," she said. "I said maybe."

"Okay...?"

She didn't blame him for feeling lost since her little erotic confession. She felt lost herself. Kate knew she wanted to do this, but she was having second thoughts. It felt like it was too late now. Kate had never been a cocktease.

Well, except maybe the one time.

She'd never even put a guy in the friend zone or whatever misogynistic crap the incels say. If a guy was upfront about his feelings, wasn't in a relationship with someone else, agreed to glove up and understood that she wasn't going to be his girlfriend, Kate was down to give it a whirl.

What was that one thing Clint Barton had said to the press after the Chitauri Invasion? "You're gonna miss each and every shot you can't be bothered to take"?

It didn't happen that often. And nine times out of ten, she just ended up blowing the guy once and never hearing from them again.

Okay, more like four times out of seven. Yeah, Yelena. She knew how a fling worked.

Truth be told, Kate wanted to fuck the Boy Two Doors Down in a way she couldn't explain. And she didn't think it was about the weed or her recent bisexual awakening. She'd been subtly planning this for days. Way before Yelena had shown up out of the blue. Was it the wounded puppy thing? Was she really that easy?

It wasn't the Valentine's Day thing. It wasn't. Absolutely not. If anything, the holiday was almost ruining things.

All of this made Kate think about the last time she'd been alone with a boy, which was odd, because that situation, while oddly similar, couldn't have been more different.

That crap with Cooper Barton wasn't a mistake because it hadn't been Kate's fault in any way, shape or form. But she didn't completely blame him either. Not really. Not anymore. Hell, with the distance of time and several hundred miles, she even kind of got why it happened.

When she first showed up on the farm, Kate hadn't really known what to expect. Clint had kept going on and on during their first case together, talking about how he had to get back to his family, and she realized once they got there that she'd never really had the faintest idea what he was talking about.

Ever since her dad had died, Kate's idea of family had been this terribly static version of her and her mom trapped in their grief and distracting themselves from it any way they could. Kate threw herself into the archery and unbeknownst to her, her mom threw herself into a criminal conspiracy with the head of organized crime on the Eastern Seaboard. It's why Kate had been so pissed when Jack Duquesne was suddenly going to be her new stepfather. At the time, it seemed like that was going to fuck everything up.

Now she wished that Jack was the worst thing that could have happened to them. Mostly because she'd come to realize he was a pretty decent guy who could teach her a thing or two about swordsmanship. They'd actually hooked up since she'd returned to New York.

No, not "hooked up" hooked up. Don't be gross.

Jack had treated her to brunch at Tavern on the Green. They had a nice chat while avoiding any talk of Kate's mom and made noncommittal plans for a sparring match sometime soon.

Kate knew even then there was a very good chance she'd never see Jack again. But she was glad they'd left things on the best possible terms. She'd been kind of a bitch to him for reasons that someone had recently revealed to her weren't as endearing as she once thought. Apparently, undying loyalty to her late father was some kind of character flaw. Kate was still struggling to see how that was possible.

But back on Christmas Day, once she got to the farm, Kate got a real sense of family. But with that real sense of family, she also got a sense of true family drama.

Nate was the youngest, and he was a delight. But kids always are when they're that age. Sure, the LEGO shit gets a little tiresome after a while, but at some point, you just get this appreciation for the great amount of joy they get from the smallest things, and you wish you still felt that way. The LEGO Movie... That stupid and delightful LEGO Movie, was a hit for a reason, damn it. And he forced you into his favorite joke -- "Knock, knock." "Who's there?" "Two arrows." -- at least six times a day. At first, the delight he got from this was amusing, then it was tedious, then you felt cynical and it almost seemed profound, then you found the tiny joy in it, then it almost made you want to punt his LEGOs into the kitchen. Eventually, it morphed into white noise.

Lila acted nice enough, but it slowly became clear to Kate that the girl kind of hated her for being the new chick on her turf. And older, too. The fact that Clint said Kate could be the new Hawkeye might have pissed Lila off in ways he'd never have seen coming. Typical mean-girl shit sprinkled with a need for paternal approval Kate was all too familiar with. But Lila dealt with it all so passive aggressively you'd barely notice. That chick was gonna do great in high school.

Honestly, Cooper had been her favorite. He was smart, but shy, which meant that when he opened up, he became this whole different person. He taught her how to make a decent chicken casserole. She gave him some pointers for when he started college next year. They'd go for walk out in the snow. He got all her jokes and vice versa. Hell, if he hadn't blipped, they would have almost been the same age.

About three weeks after New Year's, they'd spent a night playing Call of Duty: 1945 on his PS5 in co-op mode. The game was hysterically historically inaccurate. Obviously, the invasion of Italy hadn't happened nearly as early as they made it seem, but more importantly, Thor hadn't been there to help Captain America capture the Space Stone, and Loki certainly wasn't secretly supporting Johann Schmidt in the background so he could be the secret Final Boss Battle after you beat the Red Skull.

None of that made it any less fun. Kate and Coop beat the whole story in record time, and they'd talked the whole time. First of all, Kate was shocked to learn that Hawkeye wasn't his favorite Avenger. Cooper Barton loved Steve Rogers.

"He was just so cool to me when he stayed with us that one time," he'd said. "The nicest guy. I want to be like that. Dad can be a little standoffish."

"I've noticed," she acknowledged.

When Kate was growing up, all the boys her age were into Iron Man and Thor more than Captain America because those guys had the flashy powers. Or they were into the Hulk because they just wanted to see the world smashed. Or Black Widow because they were just discovering their hormones and she was smoking hot. Cap was more for everyone's dad. Because maybe being into Captain America spoke to a certain level of jingoistic entitlement that had nothing to do with the man himself as much as the fact he literally wore the flag of a country that had become seriously divided as a costume. Then he became a war criminal, which made him the guy to be into if you wanted to piss off your parents.

Hawkeye didn't really come up, which is why Kate thought Clint needed more brand recognition and she got into some unnecessary recess fights in middle school.

Looking back on it now, Kate realized everybody didn't have the same issues with their fathers. But Cooper didn't really want to talk about the Avengers, despite the fact they were playing an Avengers-based game, and she didn't blame him. She got the sense that he'd gotten a little too much of that in his life. So they talked about other things. About almost everything.

Okay, so mostly they talked about pop culture. Maybe Kate should have asked him about girls or something, but she wasn't sure if that was appropriate or not in her self-appointed role as unofficially adopted big sis. Honestly, she was at a point in her life where the immediate icebreaker was either "What's your major?" or "What are you gonna do after graduation?"

Cooper really wanted to go to the University of Missouri. Apparently, they had a great journalism program and it was close enough to home that he could visit when he wanted, but not so close he had to mow the back forty every weekend.