Stupid Cupid

Kate had picked her college in Connecticut for more or less the same reason. Except for the journalism. Or the grass-mowing.

Before the Blip, Cooper's favorite show had been Doctor Who, and he had an opinion about this show he'd been catching up on since the Blip Kate hadn't loved, but he explained it well enough.

"So, you hate the show because the Doctor's a woman now?" she asked.

"What, no?" he scoffed. "Of course not. They'd been leaning toward that since the Master became Missy. And Whittaker's great. The Doctor as your wacky aunt who never got married. I just don't like the writing as much."

"What are you talking about? It's all the same."

"No, no, no," Cooper had insisted. "They lost Steven Moffat. He'd been running the show since the Eleventh Doctor and he was great. He finally brought back Gallifrey! And Chris Chirnball blew it all up the first chance he got, made the Doctor the friggin' secret genesis of the Time Lords, but thinks having Captain Jack come back makes everything okay."

Kate didn't really know what he was talking about. She'd only seen a handful of Doctor Who episodes with Gwen, but they had mostly watched ones with that hot Doctor with the chin that wore bow ties while Gwen ranted on and on about David Tennant -- whoever the hell that was. But Cooper, as passionate as he was, wasn't that balls-to-the-wall nuts about it, and she appreciated that.

He was passionate but patient about everything.

"You don't see it?" she remembered him saying when she brought up the subject of Star Wars. "Give him an eye-patch, and Mace Windu looks just like Nick Fury."

"I've only seen the guy in fuzzy pictures," Kate told him, "but I don't really see the resemblance. Friendly piece of advice? Don't go around telling people you think all Black guys look the same..."

"That's not what this is!" he insisted. "I saw him when he came here! They look exactly the same, but he's got that goatee!"

"Coop, you sound crazy," she chuckled. "But people said the same thing when I said Thor's ex-girlfriend looked like Padme Amidala."

"Now that I don't see at all," Cooper said, shaking his head. "Did you read her book? I mean, a lot of it went over my head, but it makes some of the Blip almost make sense."

"Not all of it," Kate told him. Just the introduction while bumming around the campus bookstore. "There's this class back at school that's all about The Foster Theory, but it filled up pretty fast. It's part of the reason I'm thinking about not going back."

Kate had just blurted that out, but she'd been thinking about it long enough, and it seemed like the best idea she'd had since she'd come to the farm. But it was the first time she'd said it out loud. Did that make it real?

That had been one of her favorite nights on the farm... until the worst thing possible happened.

Cooper tried to kiss her.

She saw it coming in time to turn her head so he just got her cheek. Kate only took a second to recognize the irony of Clint Barton's oldest kid missing the mark, but the whole thing was kind of mortifying. Especially since he still managed to get a handful of her left boob before she shoved him back.

"I'm sorry," he apologized immediately. "I just thought that..."

"No, it's-- Well, it's not okay, but it's not a big deal," Kate told him. "I just--I'm sorry, but I just don't think of you like that. I mean, you're exactly the goofy, geeky little brother I've always wanted but never had."

"And you're like the big sister I don't," Cooper insisted.

Kate was confused. "Then why did you just try to kiss me?" She decided to ignore the feel he'd just copped to keep it simple.

"I'm sorry," he said again as he scrambled up and stormed out. It was a little strange, since they'd been in his bedroom and it was two in the morning, but Kate decided to just retreat to her place in the attic and try not to think about where he was going, let alone what just happened.

So, of course, she spent the night obsessing over it instead.

For a little longer than it should have been -- basically since she'd sat a little too long on the wobbly dryer in the Bishop penthouse and discovered that her body was, in fact, a wonderland -- Kate's sex-positive guilty pleasure had been this website called Smuterotica.

It's not like Kate was into trashy romance novels or anything truly embarrassing like that, but when she had the inclination and a room to herself and wanted to really enjoy tickling her pickle, she hopped on this site where people posted steamy sex stories.

Kate Bishop found that self-pleasure, when done right, was much like archery. Sometimes you just had to get off a shot as quick and dirty as you could in the time that you had. Then there were those nice little moments when you could take a beat to draw back your bow to just the right point for the perfect release.

Hell, it was like archery when you got it wrong, too.

Clint hadn't been wrong when he'd told Kate she had a considerable imagination, and that's why she liked reading porn more than watching it.

Now, some of Smuterotica was garbage. Five-hundred word screeds written by misogynists about sociopaths with 10-inch cocks spraying gallons of spunk between the 42-FFF tatties of some poor dumb girl who just loved telling him what a useless slut she was. Kate knew she wasn't being fair. There was obviously an audience for that kind of thing, but it absolutely wasn't her. At least, not most of the time. If she wanted that, again, she'd just watch porn. But there was a rating system, and once you figured that out, it was easy enough to find the good stuff.

And there was so much good stuff.

That was the beauty of Smuterotica. It had something for everybody, and just so damn much of it. Pages and pages of it categorized into whatever kink you wanted. And in all the years she'd been scrolling the site while gently jilling herself silly, Kate had been surprised by what could get her off. She never expected that lactation would do it for her, but the idea of some guy sucking milk out of her before he shoved his hard cock where it was suddenly needed had been an unexpected favorite during the summer of 2022.

And, of course, there were the celebrity stories. So many Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, and Carol Danvers stories. Ones about just meeting one of the Avengers in a bar, and how great they were in the sack. In the Stark stories, he always just wine-and-dined some thirsty chick, and maybe his repulsor gauntlet had a vibratory setting that was fantastic. Steve Rogers stories were always about taking the virginity of a grown-ass Adonis. And then there were the Ant-Man stories. Kate wasn't surprised. Stark and Rogers were sexy in their own right, but Scott Lang always came off as this affable, approachable cutie. It was kind of tragic that his stories were mostly for size queens, but Kate had found one about him shrinking down for a journey to find a lucky cocktail waitress' g-spot that she'd read more than once.

There weren't a lot of Clint Barton stories. Kate had read one or two out of curiosity once, but despite what you and/or Yelena might think, she'd never really thought of him that way. Both of the stories involved a lot of him using arrows in ways that weren't safe in the least, so she decided never again. There was an audience for this to be sure, but it wasn't her. But she wasn't surprised. It was probably hard to write about Clint because nobody knew anything about him.

Most of the Avengers were just out there. Tony Stark had been all over the tabloids even before he became Iron Man, so it wasn't hard to get a sense of the guy. After half the world died and all was forgiven, Steve Rogers lived more or less out in the open, he just didn't do much. I mean, he did a lot -- he was always out for the support groups and rallies and fundraisers, but he didn't do anything scandalous. Or if he did, nobody knew. Considering he'd been living and working in secret all that time, that wasn't too hard to believe. And Thor? Thor did interviews in magazines. Thor had been in an SNL skit. (Kenan Thompson was hosting, so they'd brought back Diondre Cole. His guests on What's Up with That? were Thor, Orson Scott Card, and Lindsey Buckingham. It was hilarious.) And Scott Lang would do anything. He had written that book. He did remote spots on Kimmel every other month. He made appearances at his local ice cream franchise. "No, I swear I'm an Avenger" had become his unofficial catch phrase. Kate was surprised that it hadn't been the title of his memoir.

Clint, though? Nobody even knew where he lived. He'd disappeared after the Blip. There was a popular theory that he'd blipped and the Avengers were covering it up for some reason.

Kate wasn't that into the celebrity stories anyway. Except for this one Smuterotica author named GhostSpider. He'd written "Cuntamania" -- that Ant-Man story Kate had mentioned before -- and this one about Steve Rogers losing his virginity to a blind girl named Althea during the USO tour in 1943 that honestly could have been sold in bookstores if not for the obvious legal issues.

The celebrity stories weren't Kate's thing, but it wasn't like she could claim she'd never gone down some strange roads. She actually understood why people got into the nonconsent stuff. She wasn't that into the cheating wife stories, but took this odd rueful delight reading the outrageously angry comments about how cheating was wrong and the characters were shame-ridden whores. Didn't these idiots know what they were getting into? How aggressively did you need to miss the whole point?

Then there were the jerks who didn't seem to get that their admittedly unfortunate and unpaid job was to write some sensuous smut to help a girl get off. There was nothing worse than slogging through three pages of incredibly well-written build-up only to read that the sex might happen in the next chapter of their multi-part epic.

Okay, maybe there was one thing worse. After Gwen had "borrowed" her laptop -- Kate initially wondered how she'd hacked her password until she realized "ClintB@rtonH@wkeye" wasn't exactly as impenetrable as she first assumed -- and had gone through Kate's browser history, she'd squealed about being into the same site. But Gwen's big suggestion had been this one story that went on and on and on. Like she wanted to go through forty-two pages of some nerd's masturbatory fantasies. The ego on that schmuck...

The real surprise to her had been the taboo. It was surprisingly popular, and Kate hit up those stories more than she liked. Not the daddy-daughter stuff like you might assume based on what Yelena had clearly established as her issue... No, Kate was kind of into the older brother teaching his sister sex kind of thing. And that secret fantasy seemed relatively guilt-free. Kate didn't have an older brother, after all. She was totally fantasizing about a guy who didn't exist.

So, if Kate was a boy, she could totally see how an older sister kink could be your thing. And if some older girl suddenly showed up in your secluded farmhouse and was getting treated like a member of the family...? Kate had read at least nine different versions of that story over the years, and it had practically been dropped in Cooper Barton's lap, so to speak. Kate didn't think she was drop-dead gorgeous or anything, but she was probably just hot enough. She should have known better, it's just that she didn't get asked out a lot. Guys tended to be intimidated by her for reasons she never understood. She was delightful!

Plus, looking back on it now, her nipples had probably been hard the whole time she'd been playing COD that night with Cooper. But for completely different reasons than they had been with Yelena and were right then with the Boy Two Doors Down. That farmhouse was just so goddamn cold at night! It was the whole reason she'd found Thor's sweatshirt in the first place.

So, yes, Kate got how Cooper Barton could have gotten the wrong idea. And she could even appreciate that absolute guts it must have taken to make the woefully misguided pass that he had. None of that made it remotely her fault.

If she'd made any kind of mistake there, it was that Kate should have told the Bartons when it happened, but she didn't want to embarrass Coop. And she should have probably put on a bra, but The Night of the Video Game had been this spur-of-the-moment kind of thing. She hadn't told the Bartons the next morning because she'd chalked it up to crazy teenage hormones. Nobody needed to shame the kid. And afterwards, things had been fine. He didn't chat her up as much as he used to, so she spent a little more time on LEGO projects with Nate and death-ray eyes from Lila, but that was to be expected.

She didn't really think about it until one of her pairs of panties went missing.

Kate had packed fairly quickly when Clint had invited her to the farm for Christmas. She hadn't expected to spend as much time there as she eventually did, so she'd only packed a week's worth of underwear. So she noticed when the Wednesday pair of violent violet hipsters went missing. She'd assumed it'd been a mix-up because Laura insisted on doing her laundry, and Kate chose not to fight her because her clothes always came back so nice and fluffy, but after another week when they hadn't showed up, Kate had brought it up with the lady of the house.

Never tell a former Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. turned housewife that there's a mystery to solve if you're only vaguely curious. That's the lesson Kate learned. But she didn't consider that a mistake either.

Her panties were recovered twenty-three minutes later. The fact that they were never returned told Kate everything she needed to know.

The next day, Clint put her on a plane back to New York. For her own good. It was hard not to feel like she had been banished.

But she'd read the introduction of Jane Foster's book. She'd read how Thor had been exiled by Odin to Earth to teach him humility. Kate tried to see it like that. She'd come back to New York to figure out how to be a better Hawkeye.

Again, that crap with Cooper hadn't been a mistake. Kate hadn't led him on. She was sure of that. He was a kid. But it was impossible not to think about all of that now while she sat with the Boy Two Doors Down. But this was totally different. The Boy Two Doors Down, as young as he looked, couldn't actually be a boy. He had his own apartment and everything.

And she'd dangled that sex carrot out there, which seemed to charge every word out of either of their mouths.

"What did you like about her?" Kate asked him.

"Who?" he asked. "Michelle? I mean, she was great. Honestly, we didn't even really break up. I just--"

"No, not the ex-girlfriend," Kate sighed. Because he'd been right. Old girlfriends were off limits. She didn't care about the girl who'd been dumb enough to let him go. She wanted to know about the one she assumed hadn't had a choice. "What did you like about Volunteer Val?"

"Of course you want to know about her," he smiled. She could tell this seemed funny to him for some reason. "Why?" he asked.

"Because at that age, what you liked about her is probably what she liked about you," she told him. "So, what did you like about her?"

"Well, she was really into Emily Dickinson," he said.

"Ugh," Kate rolled her eyes. "I went through a phase like that. Thought it made me so deep. I'm a little embarrassed about it now. What else?"

"She was just confident, you know? She could make friends with anyone." Yeesh. "The clients at the shelter loved her."

"A real uptown do-gooder type, huh?" Kate hoped she hid the eye-roll well.

"Honestly, we were both really into the Avengers back then."

"Of course she was," Kate smiled. "Who wasn't? Especially if you were a kid who actually lived in New York back then."

"Queens counts as New York," the Boy Two Doors Down insisted.

She ignored him.

"My place got blown up a bit during the Battle for New York," Kate told him. "Not just a bit... My dad died."

"I know," was his response, which surprised her, but then she remembered he was some kind of weird Kate Bishop fan. She'd told that story in so many interviews. She actually wished she hadn't brought it up.

"Dad's not the point," she said. "I looked out this gaping hole in my home and saw this guy with a bow and arrow leaping off of a building, then swinging off..."

"I always loved that story," he mused, mostly to himself.

"Something like that happens? It changes you. You want to be that guy. You want to swing off into adventure."

"Did something like that happen to you?"

"Happened to all of us," he shrugged. "But when you get knocked down, you get back up."

Kate laughed.

"What?" he asked her.

"You just like to make these little declarations, don't you?" she said. "'When you get knocked down, you get back up.' 'Nobody should have to choose.' 'You gotta roll up the sleeves at some point.'"

"I don't make declarations," The Boy Two Doors Down declared.

"I bet you have some weird credo you live by."

"I do not," he said. "Of course I don't."

"What is it?"

It took him a while to admit it, but once he did, she laughed again. "That's the corniest fucking thing I've ever heard."

But that's when Kate knew she was ready to bang him.

MISTAKE EIGHT: Back to Life

It wasn't like she had to be nervous. Kate had definitely done this before. The stuff with Yelena had been new and different because she was a girl, but this should have been old hat, right down to it being with a guy she barely knew. Hell, she'd at least had a few conversations with the Boy Two Doors Down. Despite the silly nickname she'd given him, she even knew his name, as ridiculously fake as it sounded. So, what was she waiting for? Kate just leaned in and kissed him.

She had never been afraid to make the first move. And it was a good thing that she wasn't waiting for him to do so, because she was fairly certain she would have been waiting all night. The Boy Two Doors Down clearly wasn't a make-the-first-move kind of guy. Any other dude would have been running his hands up and down her legs at this point, but he wasn't like that. It was weird when a guy didn't start to disappoint immediately.

Maybe that's what was bothering her. Guys who weren't all hot to make the first move usually had a reason. Did he have some weird, creepy reason?

Once she kissed him, though, he was thankfully into it. Kate was pretty sure he got a lock of her hair in his mouth at first, but he didn't seem to care. Kate loved the feeling of his fingers through her long thick raven rivulets as he pulled her close. The Boy Two Doors Down just made out with her for the longest time. Kate wasn't watching the clock or anything, but it seemed like ten minutes of them just kissing. Which wasn't bad. He was a surprisingly great kisser. And it was funny, because Kate kind of missed the days when that was all a guy really wanted. When they took the time. He just took it so slow. But even Yelena had pulled her panties off within the first five minutes of whatever had practically just happened with her.

It wasn't until Kate finally just dropped her hand on the lump in his lap that the dam of lust finally broke. She'd barely gotten some sense of the girth she'd be dealing with when his hands were sliding up under her shirt to grasp her breasts.

Kate wasn't all that surprised he was gentle. Cooper had gotten two rough honka-honkas before she'd pushed him away, and Yelena had twisted her nipples out of spite, but the Boy Two Doors Down was more of a caresser. His thumbs seemed to stick to her tips as they brushed her hardened, pebble-like buds, and Kate sighed at the sensation.

"I really do want to have sex with you," she told him then, pushing him down on his sofa and sitting on his lap. He pinched those pointy nipples just right. "That's -- Ah! -- That's okay, right?"