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Clint opens the door to see Katie-Kate standing on his doorstep, furious tears smudging her makeup and blood on her knuckles where she's cradling one hand in the other.
She brushes past him, not waiting for the invite, and he sees she's shaking in the thin, pretty purple dress, earrings sparkling at her ears. It throws him for a loop. He knows what he's looking at. She was on a date. He knows she was going to be on a date.
He opens his mouth for one bad moment, and she jerks her head up, gaze locking on with something mute and accusatory, and he drops it, knowing. He opened his mouth the last time this sort of thing happened to someone he loved (Barton, just call it what it was; it was Bobbi), and he knows that like Bobbi, she handled it.
"He didn't—"
She shakes her head. She sits on the couch. She looks perfect there, strong and bloody and never again.
Clint brings over the first aid kit and sits on the floor as he gently swabs and bandages her knuckles.
Kate studies him from beneath her lashes, and he thinks scattered freckles and shy eyes never looked so far from helpless before in his life.
"Thanks, Hawkeye," she says gently when he's done.
He closes up the first aid kit and does not sit beside her. The last thing she needs is him up in her personal space unasked. "Any time."
Her smile is brief, habit more than real. "I'm—" She doesn't get further.
He lets the word drop, then tells her, "Take the bed."
She sighs and toes off her dressy sandals, as if she always knew she were staying. She says with more sincerity, less guard, "Thanks, Clint."
He smiles and does better than he did with Bobbi. He doesn't ask questions; he doesn't say anything; he just grabs what he needs to sleep on the couch and lets her go.