Wow, Rude (Steve/Kate)
Kate was born with hi. written in very precise script on the back of her calf.
It’s kind of the bane of her existence.
.
Kate knows she’s not the only one in the world with a mark like this; she feels a kinship with them, these strangers. She makes a point to tell everyone who introduces themselves with a hi that their soulmate is going to be really pissed at them when they finally meet.
She hopes someone has told her soulmate this.
.
Kate’s mark is weird.
For most of her life, it’s been this sort of fuzzy, greyed out color—doctors check it, her father calls in specialists—
Nobody can figure it out.
And one day, she’s sparring with Clint and her calf cramps up, it burns—and when it stops hurting, it’s—blue.
It’s a little anti-climactic, truth be told.
…
“I asked Steve to spar with you,” Clint tells Kate when she comes to visit him at the Tower. His arm is in a sling and he’s got a walking cast on his left foot and probably a broken nose.
“Steve who?”
“Rogers? Captain America?”
“Clint,” Kate stares at him. “Are you saying I have to fight with Captain America? Oh, my god. You’re the best friend in the history of ever.”
“I aim to please,” Clint shrugs with a shy smile.
And Kate laughs, because that's the deal: to always laugh at each other’s bad arrow jokes.
..
When she gets to the mostly-empty gym level—Sam Wilson and Bucky Barnes stay calm Kate are sparring in the corner—or maybe it’s foreplay, it’s kind of hard to tell from this angle.
“This is a communal area, Falcon!” she hollers.
“We’re fighting!” he hollers back.
“Pretty sure I’ve seen porn that starts like that!”
Sam falls silent while his soulmate shakes with laughter.
“Can you send it to me?” Barnes calls.
“Are you trying to tell me Tony Stark doesn’t have streaming porn? I don’t know if I’m disappointed or impressed.”
“I know you’re not just here to talk about porn,” Sam finally stands, pulling Barnes up with him.
“Shows what you know,” Kate retorts. “Actually, Clint arranged for me to have the opportunity to throw Captain America over my shoulder. I’m super pumped.” She bounces on the balls of her feet, shimmying a little with excitement because tossing guys three times her size over her shoulder is one of her top five favorite activities. “Where is he, anyway?”
“Stevie!” Barnes shouts over her head. “It’s that dame Clint was talking to you about.”
Dame? Kate mouths at Sam.
Just go with it, he mouths back.
“What dame?” Captain America jogs over to them, gives her a once-over. “Hi.”
Kate rolls her eyes and Sam smothers a laugh with his hand.
“I really hope you don’t say that to everyone you meet for the first time, because if you do I just want to let you know that your soulmate is going to think you’re an asshole.”
Barnes starts to laugh.
Captain Rogers stares at her.
Barnes and Sam are falling on each other, they’re laughing so hard.
Oh.
Shit.
“Well, I guess I’m sorry I made such a poor first impression,” Steve Rogers, Captain fucking America is looking at her with bright blue eyes that might be laughing a little at her and are really intense and wow she is not prepared for this in any way, shape or form.
“Could I see?” Steve Rogers her soulmate asks her, something soft in his eyes.
“Um,” Kate says. She fully intends to say sure and roll her pant leg up. What she actually does is back away from him with what she assumes is a pretty good impression of a deer in headlights until she turns and bolts, up the climbing rope and into the nearest air duct before any of the three men can even really react.
..
“Clint!” Kate hisses. “Clint!” she kicks a grate off and drops into his room.
“Katie?”
“Clint, I just told Captain America that his soulmate is going to think he’s an asshole. Do you know who his soulmate is, Clint? Do you?”
“Nobody does. He hasn’t met them.”
“It’s me. It’s me, Clint! My soulmate is Steve Rogers and I just called him an asshole, fuck—“
“Katie,” Clint grabs her shoulder with his good hand, shakes her. “Isn’t that the point of you saying that shit to people who say hi to you? So that your soulmate would know how unhappy you were with having hi as your soulmark?”
“Clint, he’s a World War Two veteran who was frozen for decades he doesn’t need me calling him an asshole! He’s got enough shit in his life without that! Oh, fuck, he has asshole as part of his soulmark, Clint, I defaced a national treasure. Can I go to jail for that?”
“Kate,” Clint shakes her again. “Take a deep breath, okay?”
There’s a knock at Clint’s door, and he gives her shoulder an encouraging rub before going to answer the knock. “It’s going to be fine.”
“Clint, no,” she hisses. “What if it’s him? Don’t do it!”
Clint ignores her. “Hello, Captain.”
“Hawkeye—did your partner stop by, perchance? She, um—“
“Yeah, she told me. She’s hiding behind the couch—(“Traitor!” Kate hisses) so I’m just gonna clear out. Yeah.”
Clint ducks under Steve’s arm and then they’re alone in Clint’s apartment.
“So,” Steve rocks back a little on his heels, head ducked down. If he had pockets, Kate would bet that his hands would be shoved in them.
“Sorry I freaked out on you,” the words are stilted as she says them, jerking out of her in sharp bursts. “And I’m sorry I called you an asshole.”
“Hey,” Steve grins up at her. “At least I knew there’d be no question as to if I’d met you or not.”
“I guess there’s that,” Kate nods. “Oh, um,” she reaches down and tugs up the leg of her pants, doing a turn-hop-leg lift and she’s glad Steve’s quick enough to catch her ankle. He runs his thumb over the word.
“Hey, at least you got some punctuation.” He presses his thumb into hi. a little harder before lowering her foot to the floor.
“I hear you’re an artist,” Kate turns around. “I always thought maybe once I met my soulmate I would get some stuff added around it, you know. Tattoos?”
“You would want—to put my art—on your body?” he looks a little thunderstruck, though Kate can’t tell if it’s in a good way or a bad way.
“Maybe, it’s just something I’d played around with doing.”
Steve steps around her and—drops to his knees, wow, that’s a great height for him—and rucks her pants up past her knee so he can see her Mark again.
“Wish I had my sketchbook,” he says, half to himself, tracing lines over her leg. “Could do arrows, or feathers? Maybe some stars—no hard lines, nah, something free-form—“
“Steve,” Kate cranes her head over her shoulder to try and get a look at him. “You’ll have plenty of time to ogle my legs later. My turn.”
“Oh. Of course, sorry,” he draws his hand back, allowing Kate to turn and face him.
“So where’s yours?” she asks. “That’s a lot of words.”
Steve stands and pulls his shirt off in one fluid motion that’s actually pretty sexy, revealing acres of chiseled muscles, holy lord how is he even real.
“Wow. That’s pretty,” Kate can’t help say. “But I don’t see any words?”
He smirks at her as he turns and Kate sees her jaggedy handwriting swooping from his neck to his hip.
“Well,” she finally says. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think you’re an asshole anymore.”
“I’m touched,” his tone is dry, and a Kate looks up at him, she thinks, yeah. This might work.