i can go anywhere i want (just not home)

"i'm alone"

Okay, so maybe Kate doesn't call and doesn't respond and doesn't really keep in touch.

And maybe it's because she's too busy drinking her disappointment away. She'd never admit that out loud, though. She just knows that when she drinks, she doesn't have to think so much, and everything's so much easier. Except it's also all a lot harder because stairs aren't easy when she's drunk and neither are regular steps and everything is spinning.

At least she doesn't have to think about Yelena, though.

She instead mopes to Taylor Swift songs and cries harder when songs from Lover come on by accident. She maybe also learned how to make paper rings before realizing they were useless and burned them in a candle, but she'd never admit that to anyone.

It's November now and just yesterday, she deflected a call from Clint (or like, six) before picking up and insisting she was too busy to spend Thanksgiving with them. God, it's been two months and she's still being such a loser about this whole thing.

The TV is now playing an old episode of Girl Meets World because Kate is sad and sometimes old TV shows cheer her up, but all she's gotten from it is that straight relationships are stupid.

(And maybe she fully agrees with herself because she had sex with three separate guys over the past two months and they all turned out to be the clingy type.)

What she doesn't expect, though, is to hear her window click open.

Is Yelena here?

"Hello... Kate? You here?" a voice calls out, and she looks over, seeing no one other than Peter fucking Parker standing there. He closes the window and his mask retracts, revealing his wide smile, "You miss me?"

"You're not Yelena," Kate whines, holding her bottle of some alcohol she doesn't care to remember a little closer to her chest.

"I'm not," Peter affirms, bounding down the stairs as his suit retracts completely, leaving him in an MIT hoodie and jeans, "what're you doing? It smells like something died in here."

"Yeah, that was my soul," Kate responds, refocusing back on the TV. She doesn't really want anyone here except for Yelena, but she assumes Yelena's out of town and at the Bartons' farm. That's half the reason she didn't go. The other half is that she's sure it was a pity invite.

How could it not be? She feels bad enough for herself.

"What happened?" Peter sits on the coffee table, fully obstructing Kate's view.

"Peter, move," Kate whines, waving her hand at him.

"No," Peter moves his legs out of the way when Kate gets a swipe at them, "Hey! You haven't called in a month. I'm worried about you, what's wrong?"

"You're sitting in front of the TV, that's what's wrong," Kate retorts, going to take another sip of her mystery alcohol when Peter grabs it out of her hands. She immediately grabs at it and he sticks himself to the ceiling, dangling just out of grasp. "You are so annoying."

"Kate, you literally insisted that you were never drinking again!" Peter says, putting the bottle up on the balcony before jumping down. Kate misses how Yelena would insult him for his poses every time he did that. Kate misses Yelena. Fuck.

"She broke up with me!" Kate exclaims, throwing her head back on the couch dramatically, "and took Fanny, and her stuff, including her hoodie that I really liked to steal," Kate throws her hands over her face, "I'm alone."

"And drunk."

"And drunk," Kate agrees, rolling her eyes when Peter comes over with a couple of pills and water, "I don't want that."

"It'll make you feel better," Peter insists, moving her hand away from her face, "C'mon. We need to get some food in you. And maybe a shower."

"You're ten, stop bossing me around," Kate retorts, chest sinking once she hears back what she said, "I'm sorry, Peter."

"It's fine," Peter opens her palm and puts the pills into it, "Take those. I'll order us some food to soak up however much alcohol you've had and you're going to talk to me. Where is Lucky?"

Kate sits up, face in her hands as she slowly processes everything Peter's said.

"He's at Grills' place," she finally answers, "Been there for like a month."

"Why?" Peter pulls his laptop out of his bag and sits back down on the coffee table, "and take those pills. I'm not above shoving them down your throat."

"What's got you in a mood?" Kate asks, begrudgingly tossing the pills down her throat with the water.

"Nothing," Peter hands her the laptop, expression unchanging, "pick what you want. I'm gonna go use the bathroom. Oh, and Mr. Stark's card is in there, don't worry about paying."

Kate doesn't respond to that, instead putting in her order under the restaurant Peter picked, now far too aware of her head pounding.

Peter comes back a few minutes later with a water bottle in each of his hands, handing one to Kate and sitting down on the couch this time.

"Talk."

"You first," Kate responds, crossing her legs and staring back at him.

"Why me?" Peter replies, folding his hands carefully in his lap, eyes not leaving hers in some kind of staring contest.

"I'm drunk, not stupid," Kate retorts after a second, fiddling with the now-cracked cap of her water bottle, "something's wrong with you, too."

"I'm not drunk," Peter refutes, unmoving, "So you obviously have more problems than I do."

"Fine," Kate huffs, leaning back on the couch and looking to the ceiling, trying to refocus. "Yelena broke up with me."

"When did that happen?" Peter asks as Kate pats around the couch for the TV remote.

"Two months," Kate admits sheepishly, finding the remote now and putting the TV on silent, "We were fighting a lot and then one day I got back home from school and all of her shit was packed."

Kate swallows the lump in her throat, "She told me that she was going to Natasha's for the foreseeable future. She left me and it's been two months of absolute hell ."

"Okay," Peter shifts, obviously mulling over ideas in his head, "You can't keep drinking, though. You have to finish school."

"For what reason?" Kate exclaims, catching herself a little off guard, "My dog is with someone that literally takes better care of him than I can, my ex-girlfriend is probably living her best fucking life ever now that I'm not around, my dad's dead, my mom's in prison, I have no one, Peter!"

"You have me!" Peter yells back, "I'm right here, Kate! I was concerned about you, and I know life sucks. I get it. But you have to keep going because if you can't, what was the point?!"

"I'm all alone!" Kate responds, "You're going to go back to MIT and I'm going to be all alone again! I have to fucking finish school but what am I supposed to do with a goddamn business degree and computer science?! It's bullshit. My life is bullshit, Peter."

"It's not bullshit," Peter shakes his head, "I mean, c'mon, Kate, you at least will have the degrees. And the money your family made has you set for life. And if you're really gonna be Hawkeye, then that's something. You can't just throw your life away because you got broken up with!"

"Says who?!"

"Me!"

Kate doesn't realize until now the grip that she has on her arms, crescent shaped indents from her nails digging so hard into her skin. She desperately wishes for some kind of something to be rushing through her veins (something definitely beginning with a v and ending in odka even though it reminds her too much of Yelena).

But she doesn't have that, nor does she have the will to keep arguing over something that feels too out of her control.

So she bites back a, "Well, that makes one of us."