makestheshot (![[info]](https://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} makestheshot) wrote in ![[info]](https://www.insanejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small} marvel_prep,@ 2011-12-04 20:27:00 |
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| Entry tags: | hawkeye, hawkeye ii |
Log: Breakdown
Characters: Kate Bishop, Clint Barton
NPCs: AAA chick, tow truck dude
Location: middle of nowhere side road between West Hartford, CT & the Stark School
Timeline: 12/04/11 -- early evening
Description: On the way back from dance class, Kate and Clint have some car trouble. Then hell freezes over.
Rating: PG
Although it always bothered her sitting in the backseat when she hired a car, Kate enjoyed it when Clint was driving. She thought it played into that whole rich girl princess illusion he had about her, which, while inaccurate (she thought), did seem to annoy him. And she liked annoying him. (Was it really her fault he could be such an easy mark sometimes?)
Kate was lounging with her legs across the backseat as she watched the countryside roll past the window. Being December, it was colder and a lot of the trees were bare but it was still preferable to looking at her companion's stupid face. People who were jerks should not be good-looking. Seriously! It should be some kind of law or something!
It did annoy Clint that she went and sat in the back - but it also would have annoyed him to have her sitting up front and probably trying to play with the radio or talking or just being Kate. Which was annoying. He had told her (repeatedly) he wasn't her chauffeur, and he wasn't ever going to wear some stupid hat and so on and so on.
Still. He enjoyed driving the car she had rented; it was a nice car (in his opinion Kate might have more money then brains, but she had good taste in cars) and when he was able to ignore Kate in the backseat, he was able to enjoy himself. Well. For brief moments, as he'd go to glance in the rearview mirror and there would be Kate. Taking up the whole backseat.
Looking forward, Clint frowned because that looked like smoke coming up from under the hood of the car. What the - After a quick check to make sure no one was behind them on the road, he hit the breaks (maybe a little harder then he had to ...). "There's smoke." He snapped at Kate, before gently hitting the gas and guiding the car off to the shoulder of the road. Once there he turned the emergency flashers on and started in with the cursing as he got his seatbelt off.
Kate's first hint that something was wrong came when her body went flying into the passenger seat. Her seatbelt restrained her some but didn't stop her head from making contact with the leather headrest. "Ow." She was more surprised than angry, truth be told, because they were kind of in the middle of buttfuck nowhere. Then Clint was being an ass (as usual) but smoke was-- not good. So she kept her mouth shut for once and tried to get a look at the hood.
It took her less than a minute to unbuckle and jump out of the car after it was stopped. She put a bit of distance between herself and the smoking hood because, hey, she'd seen a lot of films where cars blew up and that was not how she planned to go. Especially not at fifteen-- she had way too much to live for! Clint, on the other hand, was more than welcome to do whatever he thought best. (Sure, she didn't want him to die but incur a slight injury? Ehhh.)
"You wanna take a look at what's wrong?" Kate suggested. "I'll call Triple-A." Even though she was underage she had access to her father's account. (He liked to be prepared for anything, particularly after his elder daughter's wedding was crashed by criminals.) She pulled the card out and followed the automated instructions, all while keeping an eye on her companion. They were seriously in the middle of nowhere and it'd be just like him to try to ditch her.
After exiting the car, Clint had moved away from the vehicle for a second, eyeing it warily. It had been such a nice car and now here it was turning on them. He gave a nod when Kate made her suggestion - he couldn't verbally tell her that calling Triple-A was a good idea. He'd have chocked on the words. So he settled for a nod towards her. Then he moved towards the car.
Clint had seen movies were cars went -BOOM- and he really liked a lot of those movies. But the arrogance (and pig headness) of a sixteen year old took over, which is why he was moving over to the hood. Because he was sixteen, there was no way he was going to die because a car exploded. (Being sixteen, Clint also didn't think that 'no way he was going to die because a car exploded' was probably often filed under famous last words.)
Flipping the hood up he took a few hasty steps back as smoke billowed out.
He waved his hand around in front of his face, before backing up to where Kate was.
"Great job on the car rental," he snapped at her. He knew this wasn't her fault, but well - she was there! And now he was stuck here with her.
Kate explained to the girl that the engine was smoking and no, she didn't know if they were in a safe place because it was the middle of nowhere but she had a companion and gave her the GPS location on her phone. She made a face at Clint as the girl told her it'd be about an hour-- which was more time stuck alone with this a-hole, awesome-- and to call 9-1-1 if the situation turned sour. (With her training, she really wasn't too worried about herself. Clint, she had no idea about. As far as she could tell, he didn't have many skills beyond the whole bow-and-arrow thing.)
After typing the number of their claim on her notepad function, Kate said good-bye to the girl and was once again left alone with Clint. She glared at him and crossed her arms defensively. "Well then we'll just take your car next time." She paused just long enough to make a fake-surprised face. "Oh, wait. You don't have one. So how 'bout you shut up 'cause we're stuck out here for an hour waiting for a tow and I don't want to have to listen to your complaining the whole time." Granted, she was being a teeny bit bitchier than normal but, well, this sucked, and she wasn't going to take the heat for it! How was it her fault the car was defective? He'd been driving! Maybe it was his fault!
Clint gave Kate a dark look (really it was just one more dark look), crossed his arms and walked a few feet away from her. He stood there glaring at the car because he needed to glare at something, and he figured he’d start with the car and then when he was done with that he’d go back to glaring at Kate. Trapped in the middle of nowhere with Kate Bishop, this sucked.
Annoyed, he picked up a rock that he spied lying by the side of the road, and then hurled it into the woods by the side of the road. That done he began looking for a second rock. Rock hurling was pretty lame but at least it was something to do.
Kate sighed. Then she sighed again. And then she realized she really didn't want Clint to reply to her and kept her mouth shut (for a change of pace). Since the car didn't seem to be exploding, she went into the backseat and retrieved her hoodie. It'd been warm in the class, sure, but it was December now and she hadn't trusted Clint not to turn on the air or something just to fuck with her, so-- sweatshirt. It was a red pullover with her old school's name on it and looked fine with her basic black pants and All-Stars. Not that she cared about that. Because she didn't. She just liked to be warm and not an easy target for teasing. Which she was now. (Well, warmer, anyway.)
Despite the fact that the ground was dusty and cold, Kate took a seat. She didn't feel like spending an hour standing. Plus, this allowed her the freedom to pull out her cell phone and begin playing Bejeweled. It was a dorky game, she knew it was, but she liked it, so whatever. Besides, it wasn't like she had a whole lot of options without internet access. (Stupid 4G; it was supposed to be good basically everywhere!) It didn't take long for her tongue to poke out slightly and her focus to be mostly on the game. But just mostly. Because she so didn't trust Clint or this random middle of nowhere place. Obviously.
Chucking rocks into the woods was only fun for so long. It was dark and saying to himself; 'okay I'm going to hit that tree that I can just see' wasn't that entertaining. Because he couldn't see that many trees. Plus, he was running out of rocks ...
After the rock chucking lost its sparkle, he paced around the car a bit. Then he realized he knew jack about cars beyond how to drive them and gave a long suffering sigh.
Shoving his hands into the pocket of his coat (he was starting to get a bit chilly), he walked over to where Kate was and sort of admitted defeat. "What are you doing? Updating your Facebook with all our travel woes? Like omg, trapped on the side of the road, FML." Talking to Kate wasn't fun but he was bored and she was here. And snarking with her might be slightly more entertaining than throwing rocks.
Maybe.
Clint was so annoying. She wasn't talking to him but here he was, ruining her concentration with dumb comments just because he could. Jerk. "Well, I would..." Kate started without looking up. (She'd paused her game but no reason to let Clint know he actually had her attention.) "But there's no wireless here." Her tone went dry and she resisted the urge to roll her eyes as she mimicked his crappy teenage girl imitation. "Eff my life."
Her battery was getting kind of low, though, and Kate had actually been thinking maybe she should put the phone away before Clint spoke. Unfortunately, now that meant interacting with Clint... but if something else did happen, she'd kick herself for being petty instead of smart, so. She suppressed a sigh as she locked the phone and tucked it into her hoodie's pocket.
Then Kate stood up in an effort to stop her companion from hovering over her-- it was annoying and made her feel small and she didn't like that-- but he maintained a few inches on her. Sadly. "I would've offered to share," she commented casually, "but I didn't want to embarrass you." She smirked. "I know how you hate losing, and I'm very good at that, too." And now he couldn't try to prove her wrong, since it was battery saving time. How sad for him.
"No wireless; we really are in the back of beyond." Clint slumped a little bit and looked over at Kate, watching as she put her phone away. Well there went any kind of idea of taking her phone and hurling it into the woods. Which he really wouldn't have done because he wasn't that much of a jerk.
"Oh please, I don't care about games found on a phone, I have better things to spend my time on; maybe if you spent more time on archery and less on the phone, you could beat me at that." He looked down at her (okay it was just a few inches down, but still) and smirked.
Kate rolled her eyes but, inside, she seethed at the low blow. (He won one thing once and just could not let it go! And, no, she didn't see any irony in being irritated by this.) "As if I have to practice to be kick ass at cell phone games-- please. Logic games are easy."
Crossing her arms, Kate tilted her head a bit and let her gaze sweep over Clint in a considering sort of way. "And I'll gladly rematch you anytime, anywhere. Given my proclivity to be better than you at things, I'm beginning to suspect your victory was a fluke." There. Bet that put a bee in his oversized bonnet. Because, seriously, the way he talked about archer you'd think he invented the freaking sport!
He was going to make a crack about cell phone games being so easy, so what was the point, and then get into simple mind and simple pleasures - but his comeback got derailed. Because Kate said that his archery victory was a fluke. Which it very much was not.
Clint had sunk too many hours into archery practice for him to even consider that his winning had been a fluke. So, yes, Clint was sort of seeing red at the moment.
"I think what was a fluke was you getting into this school." That was mean; if anyone was there because of a fluke, Clint figured it was him. "Oh no, wait, that's right you have all these other skills, which I've never seen. Beyond being good at easy cell phone games and quarters."
He smirked at her and worked on looking smug.
Kate laughed-- loudly. (And not in that too loud way that people did when they were trying to cover up insecurity. She meant it!) "Please. I could wipe the floor with you so easily..." She shook her head, smirking because she was sure it was true. "But I don't perform parlor tricks. You're gonna have to do better than baiting me to get a show."
Then she lifted her brows, an idea occurring to her. "Unless... that was a challenge?" Kate wasn't into senseless fighting-- really. But Clint was pretty much begging for it with all his stupid comments and, well, she was kind of bored here. (Bantering was nice and all but how great could it be when she knew she so outclassed her opponent? Answer: not very.)
While there was a part of Clint that thought getting into some sort of Fight Club moment out here on the side of the road would be just fine, the majority of Clint's brain flagged that as a bad idea. A very bad idea.
"Oh, I'm sure you could." Clint's tone implied that he wasn't sure of that at all. He might not have been the scrapper that his brother was and Barney might have always won when the two boys got physical, but Clint was confidant he knew how to fight. Take down Danny or that other martial arts kid? No. But Kate? Sure. Except ...
"But I'm not going to fight you. I don’t hit girls - and you're close enough to one of those to count.”
He didn't hit girls. Unless it was like team training or something like that - but fighting just to fight with a girl? Uh, that was a no.
Shaking her head, Kate rolled her eyes for what felt like the dozenth time. Such a dumb excuse. And besides-- "It's not as if you'd actually be able to land a hit, anyway," she pointed out reasonably. "But, I mean, if you're scared, well... I guess I understand. It'd be a big blow to that chauvinist ego of yours to have a girl kick your ass."
Kate grinned again. "Here, I'll make it easier on you: all you have to do is try to tag me. I'll keep it purely defensive." She leaned toward Clint. "C'mon, you know you wanna. Don't be such a wuss. Just do it already." Surprisingly, there was only a hint of a taunt in her voice. She didn't think too hard about why that might be.
"It's not being a chauvinist - oh, I know what the word means - it's being polite." Clint snapped back at her. He was really re-thinking his whole not hitting girls thing and really maybe Kate didn't count as a girl. She counted as a pest. A really, seriously annoying pest who was almost as good as him at the one thing he felt confidant doing and was possibly better at him at most other things.
"But I don't think you deserve polite." He was leaning towards her, and thinking that yeah, he was going to hit her, when his brain pointed out that Kate was a girl. Not a pest but a girl.
And.
Well.
Maybe Colleen had been onto something about that fine line. Because Clint didn't take a swing at Kate, he kissed her.
It hadn't been planed, oh lord it had not been planed, it was just one of those heat of the movement impulsive things. Kind of thing he was always doing - and kind of thing that typically blew up in his face. (And the kind of thing that when he had a chance to think about it after he typically regretted.)
This was the thing that sucked about Clint. (Well, one of many, really.) He only had a couple of inches on her-- three at the most-- but somehow managed to tower over her whenever he came really close. Kate had noticed it before, while they were dancing. It'd annoyed her then, too, and almost made her want to wear heels just to spite him.
Although, she really wasn't sure why she was noticing it again now but whatever. It sucked. Especially because Clint was probably trying to be intimidating and using your size to do that was such a lame tactic. Kate really shouldn't have said she'd only act defensively; there was a lot of pent up irritation inside of her.
And, see, she was paying attention. (You didn't tell someone to take a swing at you, then not be on the lookout for it. That'd be beyond stupid.) So Kate did not know how it was that Clint caught her off-guard. Because she was paying attention. But she was still surprised when he threw his lips at her and not his fist.
For a moment, Kate stood frozen. Then she reached for his chest-- to push him away, right?-- except somehow she just ended up grabbing his shirt and tugging him closer to her. And her eyes had closed at some point and she was kissing him back and what the hell was going on here? This was just wrong! They did not do this!
Okay, so Kate was pretty sure she was having an out of body experience or something because this was... yeah. So not her. It was crazy. It was insanity. It was nonsensical because she seriously hated this guy! (Except she didn't think of any of this in the moment. In the moment there was just hate and confusion
When he got caught up in the heat of the moment Clint's brain tended to just turn off, and Clint just did things. Typically these things involved slamming doors, throwing punches, kicking Barney in the shins or shooting out the tires of his aunt and uncles car. Randomly kissing some girl he did not like and had been serious contemplating taking a swing at? Well that was new.
It wasn't all that bad either. Kate wasn't bad at this - and as soon as that thought registered, the fact that he was kissing Kate (or rather they were kissing since both parties were involved in this) registered. Clint pushed away. Because oh good god no.
"What the hell are you doing?" Sure, it was he who had started things but Clint wasn't good at accepting blame. "What the -!" He backed up from Kate, walking back as quick as he could, this was so not cool. So. Not. Cool.
The moment Clint pushed away, Kate released his shirt and all the things she hadn't been thinking in the moment came crashing down onto her. (Oh God, oh God, oh God! What had they done? Why had they done it? Shit!) And she immediately went on the defense because it was comfortably familiar-- them being adversarial, that was.
"What am I doing? What the hell were you doing?" Kate shot back, running a hand through her hair in agitation. (Although, she wasn't sure if she was more agitated by the strange turn of events or her reaction to them.) "You-- you kissed me! What the hell, Barton?" And, even though she meant it to sound accusatory, it came out more confused and questioning than anything else.
Clint had no idea - no idea at all why he had kissed her. Things had been so much simpler back at home. Okay things had been simpler back at home before the blow up with Barney. But before that things had made sense. He was good at archery, he flirted with girls he liked, and he sure as hell didn’t kiss girls he didn’t like. This school had messed up everything.
(It wasn’t his fault. It was the schools. Of course.)
Kate’s tone didn’t register with him because he was trying to sort out why he had kissed her, and how he felt and -
He decided to go the typical Clint route. Don’t talk about it. Ignore it. And maybe it won’t have happened; and maybe everything will just return to the status quo.
“I don’t know but forget it. Forget this. This never happened!”
Forget it? Well, that seemed easier than dealing with it, so-- "Fine. So not a problem." Kate crossed her arms and tried to appear nonchalant. "It's already forgotten." (Except that it wasn't, not really. And she had a feeling her journal would be hearing quite a bit about this for days to come. Because she was a girl and a fifteen year old one at that, and she was going to obsess. She just was.)
"You just-- stand over there," Kate instructed, pointing toward the front end of the car. "Silently. And I'll be over here." She gestured toward the back end. "Also not talking. Until the tow truck gets here." Because talking seemed counterproductive to the pretending it didn't happen (even if she wasn't going to be able to do that in her own head) and damned if Clint was going to get to her any more than he already had.
While Clint wanted to argue with Kate, he also wanted to put distance between them. He didn’t want to look at her or talk to her or think about her. But as he took his place by the front end of the car (not because she told him but because it was a nice, good distance from her), he kept thinking about it. Going over it in his head - how had it happened? They had been fighting and why on earth had he kissed her?
He wanted to stop thinking about it. He really did, but he couldn’t. Crossing his arms he looked up at the sky and wondered if some of the people with the mind powers over at Xavier’s could like … pluck this memory from his head. Then of course they’d know and no one was going to know. Because nothing had happened. Yup. Nothing.
Clint couldn’t stop thinking about it! It was like stuck in instant replay on his head. Over. And over.
The whole not talking thing be damned, he was going to reiterate that this was never to be spoke of again, when he saw headlights coming towards them.
“It’s the tow truck.” Clint said that before he was certain but, sure enough, as the headlights got closer it was indeed the tow. “Thank god.”
Kate took a seat, wrapped her arms around her knees and rested her forehead on her arms. Then she started obsessing. She really tried not to-- she mentally ran through her homework assignments, tried to rank her favorite films, quietly hummed some of her favorite songs-- but nothing worked. It always inevitably came back to Clint and what'd happened and how she hadn't pushed him away until she thought she was going insane. Or was maybe already full crazy given the kissing.
So when Clint broke the silence she'd thought she wanted, Kate was surprisingly grateful. (Not that she'd be telling him that anytime soon.) She looked up and saw the headlights, sighing in relief. "About time." It was a grumble that came out as more of a mumble. Right. So she was still off balance. Well, no sense in letting Clint know that; she pushed herself off the ground and dusted off the back of her pants.
Kate moved to stand nearer to Clint-- but not too close. She pulled the AAA card from her wallet and approached the man when he hopped down. "Hi, I'm Kate. I called in the breakdown." They exchanged brief pleasantries and she pointed to the problem engine, which had ceased smoking a while back. (Not that anyone thought starting up the car again was a good idea without first having it checked out.)
The man, Karl, pointed his flashlight and poked around a bit before announcing it broken. "I can take you back to the rental agency and they can set you up with a new car."
"Actually," Kate smiled in a way she knew to be charming (even if it was basically dark out; she figured the headlights illuminated them well enough for the message to be received), "we're done using the car. We just need to get back to our school. It's between here and the rental agency, right on the way..." She shrugged. "Or we can call and ask someone to pick us up, if that's not kosher." But she really hoped it was because she wanted to get the hell away from Clint just as soon as humanly possible.
Clint was really hoping that it was okay - he couldn't imagine being stuck out here waiting for a ride, or worse having to go back to the rental agency, and then back to the school. But, to his relief, the tow truck driver gave a nod of his head and motioned to his truck.
"Sure, go on and get yourselves situated."
Karl asked some questions about the school, that Clint muttered answers to as he situated himself in the truck. The truck just wasn't that big - which mean while he was working as hard as he could to be as far away from Kate as he could ... he was still too close to her. God. This was going to be the longest drive ever.
Kate smiled, relieved. "Thank you, Karl," she told him in a tone that expressed her gratitude. It was a sharp contrast to the attitude she'd been shoving Clint's way but equally deserved (in her opinion). And, as thanks for his fine behavior, she decided to let her companion field all the questions from Karl. It was the very least that jerk deserved (again, in her opinion).
Of course, once Kate moved away from the men folk, new unpleasantness occurred to her-- she was about to be stuffed into way-too-small cab of a truck with the large Karl and Clint. Ugh, Clint. Clint, who she did not want to be near, at all. So, yeah. The trade off for spending less time together was probably not worth the close quarters. But, since Kate didn't think Karl would be cool with one of them (Clint) riding in the car being towed, she just sucked it up and hopped in.
At first, Kate tried to hang in the middle as best she could. Because Karl was a stranger but Clint was Clint. The thing was, there was a stick shift in the middle and she kind of needed to steer clear of that, so Karl could, you know, drive. So that forced her closer to Clint, which did not make her happy. "Do you mind?" she hissed to him, her arms wrapped around each other to make herself as small as possible.
The cab of the truck was very small, and then it got smaller when they got in and all got settled. Kate was pressing into him, and asking him if he minded? He didn’t bother answering her, just focused on trying to ignore her, and stare out the window of the truck. Of course she was like … shoved right next to him, and pressed right into his arm, which was making ignoring her really hard.
He leaned forward a bit, and pulled his arm away from hers as much as he could - but there really wasn’t anyplace to put it. Except maybe rest it back on the seat, behind Kate, but that would seem like he was putting his arm around her which would just have been - no. It would have been too horrible to contemplate.
“Hey, feel free to put your arm around your gal there.” Karl the truck driver had noticed Clint trying to re-arrange himself.
“She’s not my gal.” Clint pulled his arm back, fine it could be shoved there next to Kate. That was fine. That was great. “She’s - we just go to school together.”
Karl didn’t seem flapped by this, just gave a shrug of his shoulders, seeming to say ‘whatever you say kid.’
Clint wished he could open the truck door and throw himself from the moving truck. That would be less painful then this ride.
The quickness with which Clint replied to Karl might've hurt Kate's feelings if she cared. But she didn't, so whatever. It was fine. Everything was fine. Except being crammed together and uncomfortable and still thinking about the kiss. Which sucked. Shit, she needed to distract herself. She needed some space. She needed-- to make things normal again. And what better way to do that then to mock Clint?
Kate smiled all innocent-like. (It wasn't a very good impression, truth be told, but she hadn't been truly innocent for a long while now.) "Yeah, we're just classmates. Oh and dance partners. Clint here loves to dance." She was sort of trying to imply something with her tone but wasn't sure it came across. Not that it really mattered; she was pretty sure just bringing up the dancing would irritate him, so. Yeah. Mission accomplished.
Karl gave a nod of his head - if he was thinking that the interaction between Clint and Kate seemed a bit strained or off, he wasn't commenting. "Oh, you two dance? What kind of dance?"
"Swing." Clint ground that out between his teeth. Seriously. He was seconds away from asking for the truck to be pulled over, and saying that he'd walk to the school.
"Oh, so I should watch for you two on that show? The dancing one?"
"No." Clint glanced around the interior of the trucks cab, looking for something, anything that he could possibly use to annoy Kate with. "Can we turn the radio on? Kate, she loves ..." he tried to think of music that was polarizing. "Country music." Okay, maybe he was just going to punish himself here, but whatever.
Kate smiled smugly at the tone Clint's voice took on as he answered Karl. God, he sounded unhappy. It filled her with irrational glee. So she continued to let him be the one to field the answers-- mostly because he seemed to detest it so and it was a decent distraction. (It occurred to her that being so obnoxious to someone she'd just kissed [or who just kissed her] was kind of a weird reaction, even with the whole this-never-happened decision. She pretended not to notice.)
"Oh yeah, I love to jam to country," Kate agreed in a dry tone. "But not as much as Clint here enjoys Top Forty pop. You should see his room." She dropped her voice conspiratorially. "Covered in Lady Gaga posters." (In actuality she'd never seen Clint's room but whatever.) She grinned at Karl. "But we'd be happy to listen to whatever you like." Because it never hurt to be gracious when someone was doing you a favor.
He really could not fathom what had possessed him to kiss her at all. She was such an annoying brat. Clint of course wasn’t able to admit to himself that he was egging her on in a way, it was all Kate just being a brat as far as he was concerned.
“Yeah you should put on what you want, but really Kate. We listened to my music on the way to dance class, only fair that we listen to yours now.”
Karl seemed not to notice the tension or whatever it was. He just gave a good natured shrug and turned the radio on to some sort of oldies station. As in swing music old. Clint inwardly groaned, was there no escape from swing music tonight? None? And as he wondered that he got an even more upsetting realization -
Swing classes were not over.
He was going to have to drive back out there with Kate. In the car. He was going to have to dance with her again. Fuck.
He stewed for the rest of the ride, thinking that maybe he could somehow sprain an ankle between now and the next swing class. When they got to Stark’s he muttered a thanks to Karl, and then took off. Kate had called the driver; let her deal with everything else. He needed to get back to his Non Covered In Lady Gaga Posters room and forget this night ever happened.
Kate should've been glad for the reprieve provided by the music except that now she had more time to think about the kiss and the dance lessons that she'd forced on him but was too proud to back out of and, well, that sucked. But she wasn't going to complain, wasn't going to let on, wasn't going to be bothered by being stuffed next to Clint. (Easier said than done.)
At least he made a run for it as soon as they got back to the Stark school. "Don't mind him-- we're pretty sure he was raised in a barn." Kate and Karl settled up with relative ease and soon she was sliding out of the truck. "Well, thanks again for the ride." He nodded. And with a wave, she was out the door and marching toward the dorms. The upside of being back was finally getting away from Clint. The downside was her brain's renewed rumination. Because that? Sucked.