Archive of Our Own

The first time it happened, Kate Bishop blamed it on extenuating circumstances.

And really, anyone would have agreed. Especially seeing the flames emerging from her upstairs neighbor’s window, licking brightly against the darkening evening sky, now hazy with smoke.

Her neighbors surrounded her, many more than had joined her the last time the fire alarm had erroneously gone off. Kate wondered if they’d all smelled the smoke. Not that she had, at least not knowingly, before she’d grabbed a leash and a Lucky and quickly walked outside from her first-floor apartment. But maybe there was some kind of collective consciousness of smoke.

Leading to the current crowd of neighbors, any of whom would have agreed with her that the circumstances, indeed, were extenuating. Maybe even very stressful.

They would have agreed that Kate had some justification for losing every tiny drop of poise in her body.

It happened extremely fast. Two fire trucks had just pulled up practically right next to Kate, and enough light remained in the sky to clearly see the bustle that surrounded them as soon as they skidded to a halt. Firefighters dropped to the ground, and some began to shoulder gear and seal up protective clothing. Others busied themselves with spreading through the crowd of tenants to talk to people and diagnose the situation.

Kate was anxiously petting Lucky on the head and watching the second group when she heard a commanding voice.

“Do you know if anyone is inside?”

She turned. Beside her was a mass of fire-resistant plastics topped by a head that looked comically small in contrast.

But if anyone could make a mass of plastic look good, it was this woman.

The firefighter held her helmet in one hand and her ax in her other, and she was the most gorgeous woman Kate had ever seen. When their eyes met, Kate saw an unjustified amount of irritation that was undeniably sexy.

Then the firefighter dropped her helmet and bent to pick it up, her protective jacket folding in large, unnatural creases along her torso. Her eyes were even stormier when she straightened.

Gulping, Kate tried desperately to generate any kind of moisture in her mouth. It worked about as well as toast trying to spontaneously produce butter.

“I said, do you know of anyone inside?”

Kate tried again, opening her mouth and willing something more than thin air to valiantly emerge. Something did — an odd sort of squeak. But no words.

The cowards.

Obviously finding Kate to be useless — something for which Kate couldn’t in any way fault her — the firefighter groaned and spun to head closer to the building. The groan then became a string of curses in at least two languages when her ax slipped out of her large plastic mitt and clanged on the ground, awkwardly tripping her as she tried to stride forward.

Kate’s arm reached out, and her foot slid a few inches along the concrete of the sidewalk. Part of her felt relieved that at least some of her reflexes were behaving normally. But she didn’t actually get any chance to help as the woman’s jacket creased again and she reclaimed the ax before quickly standing upright. Without another glance toward Kate, she then rushed off toward the building.

The back of her jacket displayed BELOVA in large yellow letters.

Kate’s arm fell limply back to her side.

“No, I don’t know of anyone in there,” Kate mumbled under her breath, supremely annoyed at the now-robust sound of her own voice. “But over there is the super,” came out next, more decisively, and Lucky pricked up his ears and craned his neck to look at her. She petted him on the head and met his eye. “Maybe it’s for the best, Luckster. Now she can save our home.”

He whined a little at home, and Kate looked back to where home was located just in time to see BELOVA, now with her helmet on, enter the building on the heels of another firefighter. The sight made her even more anxious, and she looked back up at the flames. It seemed like they had grown.

Kate’s poise didn’t ultimately matter. The firefighter’s did.

She hoped that BELOVA would be all right.

Yelena could almost forget the amount of pain she was feeling in the midst of the anger coursing through her body.

Almost.

The drugs hadn’t fully kicked in yet, and her splint was only temporary, so any tiny jostle of her arm caused a fair amount of teeth-grinding agony.

Enough that she wouldn’t physically kick herself. But mentally, all bets were off.

She had never been so clumsy on the job. From the minute she’d gotten off the truck and geared up, something had been off. She’d had butterfingers when speaking to the very attractive yet mute brunette who had possibly been in shock. Her usually-sure feet had stumbled twice up the stairs to the third floor. Her ax strokes hadn’t fallen as precisely as normal when she’d broken into the apartment next to the hot spot where the flames had started to spread. And then…

Then, after she had extinguished the flames, she’d tripped over a short cat tree and landed heavily on the stepstool next to it, upending a beautifully painted porcelain water bowl. It had smashed onto the floor, but unfortunately not loudly enough to cover the sickening crack from her lower arm.

Lying there and trying to breathe through white-hot spikes of pain, Yelena had stared through the smoky haze at the shards of painted roses and fleurs-de-lis strewn across the floor. The bowl remnants had seemed far less pathetic than the shreds of her dignity.

And other than the obvious arm break, she still didn’t know what was wrong with her.

“That’s a good one, Nova. I can almost see the bone. Congrats.”

Startled from her introspection but not from her brooding, Yelena growled wordlessly at the man now standing next to her. She must look terrible if he wasn’t even bothering to stay out of arm’s reach as he called her that stupid name.

He was annoyingly safe, though. Punching him would hurt too much. She’d have to do it later.

“Seriously, though, what the hell happened?” Bucky sat down next to her on the back of the ambulance, still wearing his turnout pants and suspenders. He’d stripped down to a t-shirt on top, though. After sweating. In thirty degree weather.

Such a dumbass.

Then he handed her a stick of double spearmint gum from some hidden pocket, and she took back every mental insult of the last two minutes. Her mouth tasted like death.

Well, maybe not like death, fortunately. Maybe just like broken limb, wherever that rated on the rank-o-meter.

Unwrapping the stick with the fingers of her right hand, Yelena pulled it the rest of the way out with her teeth. “I don’t know. One second I was upright and then there was a lot of gravity.”

“More than usual, you mean?”

“Fuck you.”

Bucky laughed and said, “No, no, I get it. You’re so much closer to the ground.” Yelena thought for a second that he was going to hit her on the shoulder with the back of his hand for emphasis. But he restrained, perhaps out of compassion. Or intermittent survival instinct.

She narrowed her eyes. “Laugh it up, Barnes. You and Sam are the ones who get to train the probie for the next two months.”

“Tell me about it. You’re breaking up the wonder truck. Maybe gravity just wants to piss me off.”

“Get in line. Paperwork is my new future. And paperwork is boring.” Yelena rolled the gum wrapper between her fingers. She wondered when Bruce and Wanda were going to finish up with the few scrapes and cuts that had emerged from the crowd of tenants and come back to the ambulance. The bed behind her was starting to seem like a fabulous idea. As were more serious painkillers.

Ow.

Then the gum wrapper ball fell from her fingers and bounced on the pavement. She glared at it until Bucky picked it up and handed it back to her with a smirk. “Gravity, am I right?”

But even as he spoke, Yelena became aware of someone approaching in her peripheral vision. She turned her head to see the pretty brunette from earlier, her golden retriever pulled close to her side by a leash. The woman moved assuredly, but her eyes were wide as she took in the ambulance and the splint on Yelena’s arm.

She still seemed to be struggling to speak, though this time Yelena could look closely enough to see no other signs of shock. She could also look closely enough, as it turned out, to see the woman bite her lip nervously in the silence.

The gum wrapper ball again fell from her fingers, and Yelena loudly cursed, “Дерьмо!”

Both the woman and Bucky looked a little taken aback by her outburst, but while Bucky just peered at her curiously, the woman dropped to one knee to grab the tiny piece of shiny trash. Her dog took the opportunity to press closer to her, snuffling around her head and eventually sticking its nose in her face. When the woman finally got back to her feet, her hair was mussed and her face was a little red, and she held out her hand with the stupid gum wrapper ball sitting atop her palm like a treasured pearl.

“S-sorry,” she finally managed to choke out.

Yelena couldn’t remember being more baffled by an interaction in her life.

Taking the trash pearl, she quickly slipped it into her pocket — ow — before it could cause more consternation. “Thank you.” It came out as more of a question than anything, so she tried again with an actual question for good measure. “Can I do something for you?”

The woman shook her head and chewed on her lip again. Yelena tried not to stare. She was pretty sure she failed, but she was medicated, even if they were not-quite-so serious drugs. In case anyone asked.

“I just…” The woman stopped again, then burst out with, “Thank you. I mean, thank you.” Glancing at Bucky, she amended her short statement. “Both of you. For… the fire…” Then she gestured vaguely back in the direction of the building.

There were too many thoughts in Yelena’s mind for her to sort out, and she had no capacity to try. So she ceded with no grace whatsoever. “Just doing the job. And hopefully you’ll never see us again, right?” She forced a chuckle and carefully leaned back on her good hand, trying to relax the muscles of her left shoulder.

The woman looked disappointed, but she quickly nodded and took a step backward. Pointing to Yelena’s arm, she mumbled out a, “Good luck.” Then she turned, tugging her dog along behind her, and headed a little aimlessly back to where Carol was answering questions.

Yelena watched her go for a few seconds. Until her hand suddenly slid out from under her and she fell onto her back. She impacted on the floor of the ambulance with another flood of blinding white pain from her arm that stole her breath and vaporized her remaining scraps of dignity.

Vaguely, she became aware of Bucky carefully raising her head and putting a sweatshirt under it, although she had no idea where he’d gotten it. He put his hand on the side of her neck, and the heat of it gave her a much-needed positive sensation.

Not moving the hand, he spoke as if nothing had happened. “You know, next time you should sound less angry.”

“Next time?” She was still sucking wind.

“Yeah. Also, ask a few more questions. Like her name. We can’t just call her Gravity.”

The amount of humor in his voice was infuriating. Yelena just groaned back, trying to convey her extreme displeasure.

She hoped the paramedics would come back soon.

In the meantime, maybe she could recover just enough dignity to pass out.

Every time she went outside, Kate looked up at the third floor window and the blackened brick just around it. She figured a periodic glance was probably healthy, either as a reminder of her own mortality or an assurance of her own luck. A fire burned here, and everything could have turned to ash, but it didn’t.

It didn’t.

Two weeks later, the shock of the event had faded a little, and while those ideas still lingered, the damaged exterior mostly told her something else.

Despite all evidence to the contrary, the night of the fire hadn’t been a dream.

Kate had barely been affected by the whole incident — at least physically — apart from three hours standing and walking around in the cold. She lived on the ground floor at the other side of the building, and even the smoke had stayed far away. None of the displaced tenants were people she knew. The greatest inconvenience that she’d been forced to endure was some noise from the recently-begun construction to restore the three damaged apartments.

Despite her distance from the impacts of the fire, though, Kate still couldn’t stop thinking about it.

Lucky glanced up at her with his tongue happily lolling out of his mouth, and she looked down at him and rolled her eyes. “Fine. It’s not the fire, it’s her. You happy now?”

He nosed at a small square of dirt bearing a tiny bush. Kate reflected that he probably was, in fact, happy. And his joy with the world grew even greater as they rounded the final corner of their morning route, leading to a great deal of earnest sniffing and wagging.

When Kate saw the reason for his glee, a large part of her shuddered with anxiety. But an even larger part of her wished she had a tail so she could follow Lucky’s lead.

A blond vision — at first identified as BELOVA in Kate’s mind and in a good number of her dreams before Kate had consciously tried to chill out a little by uncapitalizing her — leaned against the side of a parked car about twenty feet away in an FDNY t-shirt and an oversized flannel button-down. She stared at a clipboard in her hands that held a small stack of paper and some kind of leather-encased badge.

Well, the clipboard in her hand. It was supported from beneath by a large pink cast on the woman’s left arm that stuck out from an unbuttoned shirt sleeve, and every few seconds she wedged the board lengthwise between the cast and her stomach in order to twiddle a pen between her fingers.

Kate gulped, feeling conflicted. On one hand — one of Belova’s hands, specifically — she was dismayed to see that the woman’s injury had been severe enough to require a cast.

On the other Belova hand, a twiddle had never been so attractive.

Then it wasn’t so attractive anymore, since those fingers faltered and the pen slipped through them to tumble onto the concrete. Kate looked up from tracking its descent to see Belova staring at her with some measure of disbelief.

The woman’s lips moved — and yes, Kate noticed, how could she not — as she softly mumbled something that sounded a little like ‘gravity’ before placing the clipboard on the top of the car behind her and bending to pick up the pen. When she straightened again, a familiar annoyance had come to her eyes.

Stopping near Belova and restraining Lucky from jumping all over her, Kate tried to think of something to say. Maybe something compassionate. Or quirky. Or even small talk about the upcoming holidays. A moment later, she tried to say something at all, figuring that her mouth must know how to move. She was pretty sure it had happened on approximately 4.7 million occasions.

You can do it.

Belova then arched her eyebrows at Kate’s silence because apparently Kate really, really could not do it, and damn it was just getting more and more awkward every second and —

The eyes left hers once more as Belova again dropped her pen, and even though she was glaring down at it as if it had mortally offended her first-borne child, Kate was thankful for the reprieve. Something about the incident must have also shifted Kate’s verbal blockage somehow, since when the woman had once again retrieved the pen from the ground — this time placing it on the car on top of the clipboard — she shivered, and Kate finally managed an only-slightly-too-enthusiastic, “You’re cold!”

Belova looked at her suspiciously. “Thank you for noticing. As it turns out, no coats fit over this cast.”

Glancing around just to make sure she was still in front of her apartment building, Kate finally managed to string several words together. “You can wait. I mean, inside. If you’re waiting.” Then she smiled and added, “I’m Kate Bishop.”

She had never been so relieved and mortified at the same time.

“Kate Bishop. I will take you up on that. I’m waiting for contractors, but they’re not here yet.” Belova motioned to the window above them. Then she stepped closer and ruffled Lucky’s head, letting him lick at her hand.

Kate looked down at him. His body was practically humming, to the point that Kate would’ve been worried about him combusting except for the lack of concern from the conveniently located firefighter.

Very conveniently located, Kate’s racing heart attested.

Belova shivered again.

Swallowing roughly, Kate tilted her head toward the building in invitation with a quick, “C’mon,” before turning in that direction and pulling out her keys. She tugged Lucky along behind her and quickly opened the locks on the outer, then the inner door, holding them open for Belova to pass.

At the inner door, she fully looked at Belova again to see her hugging her clipboard tightly with both arms. It seemed like oddly nervous body language, but then again, Kate had completely forgotten about the clipboard.

This woman eclipsed clipboards. Especially when she spoke again in that voice.

“Thank you.”

The words didn’t give Kate much information, so after a brief moment of indecision, she said, “I have coffee,” and moved down the hallway to her apartment, hoping that Belova might follow and not just go directly upstairs to avoid such a bumbling idiot.

She regretted even thinking bumbling a second later, when Belova seemed to slip on what must have been a puddle of melted snow on the hallway linoleum and fell into the wall with a loud thump. Kate and Lucky both turned in alarm, but Belova quickly regained her balance and jerkily waved Kate forward, and she complied with some amount of confusion.

Kate didn’t see any water on the floor, and she wondered if clumsiness should be a disqualifying characteristic for a firefighter. Belova didn’t seem particularly graceful.

Which, you know, was totally okay with Kate.

A minute later, they were both standing in Kate’s kitchen while she made coffee. Belova had placed her things carefully down on the counter and was now looking around, focusing mostly on the racks of equipment and buckets of arrows currently interspersed among Christmas decorations.

“Archery, huh? You look like you’re pretty good.” She gestured at the trophies on a shelf against the wall.

“Pays the bills.” Kate thought maybe she could work with three-word sentences and then try to go up from there, no matter how incredibly limiting that seemed.

“Pays the bills?” Belova brought her eyes back to Kate assessingly, and even three words seemed ambitious again. “You must be good. Not a lot of money in archery.”

Instead of saying anything, Kate set a cup of coffee in front of her — the mug proudly proclaiming Bows Before Bros — along with a few sugar packets and a half gallon of milk. Then she went over to the trophy shelf to grab something that wasn’t quite so visible from across the room.

A clattering arose behind her along with a small hiss of pain, and she turned to see Belova staring at her hand as if she’d never seen it before. Her wet hand, which matched a small puddle on the counter around her mug. Kate quickly returned, dropped her cargo on the counter, and tore a few paper towels off a roll.

Are you okay? Do you need some ice? Is there any chance I can suck the coffee off your fingers?

Kate just sighed internally at the things she apparently couldn’t say, whether or not she should. Then, given Belova’s cast, she reached out to surround Belova’s wet hand with the paper towels, gripping it gently between her own.

Their eyes met again, and Kate smiled.

“My name is Yelena,” Belova said after a moment, and she smiled too.

Before Kate could get lost in it, though, Yelena’s phone rang, and her hand jerked from within the paper towels. Kate let go, and Yelena stepped back from the counter, took her phone out of her pocket, and answered it.

The call, obviously from one of the contractors Yelena was meeting, was short, and Kate busied herself by ripping off more paper towels and wiping down the counter. When Yelena hung up, she stood for a second, watching, until her phone thudded gracelessly on top of her clipboard and she uttered an absolutely delicious-sounding curse under her breath.

Inhaling deeply, Yelena put the phone back in her pocket and tucked her clipboard — only slightly moistened by coffee — between her chest and her cast. Then she picked up her pen.

“Thank you for the warmth. And for the opportunity to scald myself outside of work.” She smirked wryly, but Kate thought that the first part was probably genuine.

“Happy to help,” she replied, and her shoulders relaxed. It was the first thing she had said to this woman that had actually sounded normal.

Yelena nodded back. She then turned toward Kate’s front door, reaching down as she went to scratch a hovering Lucky behind the ear with her fingertips. Over her shoulder, she added, “And that is some very fancy jewelery you have there. I may have to look you up, Kate Bishop.”

Her casual air was slightly undercut by the fact that while walking and speaking, she had dropped her pen yet again. With no acknowledgment and no pause, though, she’d smoothly reached into another pocket of her navy cargo pants and pulled out a different pen, leaving the fallen one in the metaphorical dust.

Before Kate could try — and probably fail — to say anything else, Yelena was out the door and it had closed behind her with a loud click. Kate stared at the back of the door. Then she stared at the pen on the floor. Then she looked at Lucky plaintively.

“What the hell just happened?” She slid down the side of the counter to the floor and Lucky came over to nose her at the most ticklish point under her chin. She petted his neck and down his back. “I am fully capable of speaking like a person. Right? I’m doing it right now. With multisyllabic words and everything.” Lucky’s eyebrows twitched in what was definitely some kind of sympathy, and he whined a little before snuffling at her face.

Chuckling, Kate grabbed the sides of his head and touched her forehead to his. “But you’re not the woman of my dreams, Lucky boy. And I guess that makes all the difference.” She thought for a moment more about the last ten minutes. “I wonder if her fingers are made of Teflon.”

With no obvious answer, she clambered to her feet and picked up the pen from where it lay, putting it on the counter next to her silver Olympic medal in a place of pride. Then she made her way farther into the apartment to take a shower.

It wasn’t until several hours later, after daily practice and lunch had come and gone, that Kate realized the pen wasn’t the only thing Yelena had left in her apartment, though it was the only thing she’d left intentionally. On the floor, leaning against the less-visible side of the counter, was Yelena’s badge.

Kate picked it up and looked at the picture, as well as the Yelena Belova next to it in bold type. On a whim, she opened her mouth and tried to say, You are seriously gorgeous, but Yelena’s printed eyes were still looking at her and thus only a tiny squeak came out.

She placed the badge face down on the counter several feet away and glared at it. “This is so embarrassing.” Then she picked it up and considered it once more before making her way to her couch and opening up her laptop.

If nothing else, the badge in her hand at least gave Kate an excuse — and the information — to find Yelena and see her again. If the verbal constipation would then ease up and let Kate actually speak to her, that would be awesome. If not…

Well, it wasn’t as if Kate couldn’t deal with embarrassment. Usually her mouth got her into trouble in a totally different way, so she’d had a lot of practice. She would just muddle through.

After all, she had a feeling that Yelena might be worth the embarrassment.

Yelena checked her watch and breathed a sigh of relief when she saw that it was finally late enough.

The day had been slow even for the active duty personnel, which was a rarity. Their portion of the city was oddly quiet, especially for so close to the holidays. It probably meant that the night would be hell, but that wasn’t exactly Yelena’s problem right now, no matter how much she wished it was.

Mostly, her problem was that the bored crew around her had been available to do pretty much all of the light duty tasks that she could have managed with one hand, and that meant that she’d had to be an ancillary fire marshal for most of the day.

Very boring.

Yelena’s mind protested that it had been very not boring for about fifteen minutes that morning, but she shut it down. It was now late afternoon and had reached a relatively pleasant temperature for this late in the year. And it was high time for her to take a break.

So she meandered through the engine bay, waving to the mountain that was Drax, who had been relegated to taking inventory and looked extremely grumpy. Stifling a laugh — since, unlike Bucky, she valued her physical well-being — she then stepped outside and hit a button on her phone. As she brought it up to her ear, she started moseying off down the block.

“Don’t you have anything better to do than call and bug the shit out of me?” was her almost-immediate answer.

With a smile, Yelena said, “I don’t think you want me to answer that question right now.”

No matter how much she understood why Natasha had moved away last year, Yelena missed her. The first few months were the worst, since between Yelena’s odd hours and Natasha’s full-time teaching position it was hard to find time to even talk.

But it had become much easier since Nicholas had been born five months ago. First Natasha had taken a few months off, and then she’d managed to finagle working part time, which she found to be somewhat of a godsend and somewhat frustrating. Yelena felt similarly, except without the frustration, since it meant there were so many more hours in the week where she could randomly call Natasha and bug the shit out of her.

“Fine. What, dear сестра, have you been up to in the twenty hours since you last called? And if you say nothing, I’m hanging up right now and not talking to you again until Christmas.”

“Inspecting buildings.” Now that the question had been asked, Yelena wondered why she had called. Nothing had actually happened since last night.

“Maybe you’ll have something to talk about with Steve the next time you visit.”

Smugly, Yelena countered, “He’s the contractor, which means he would have to bow down to me.”

“Not even two weeks in a cast and you’re already beating people into submission.”

Natasha’s voice held a warm smile, and Yelena didn’t know if that’s what prompted her next words, but she cursed it all the same. “I met someone interesting.”

The voice-smile disappeared into suspicion. “Is this a set-up?”

“For you or for me?” Yelena was still reeling from the fact that she’d said anything at all. She turned a corner to head south, unconsciously picking up her pace.

“Who would be setting you up?”

“What would I be setting you up for?”

Now Natasha sounded completely baffled. “To be the butt of a joke.”

“Hah!” Yelena couldn’t stop the derisive cackle that burst from her mouth. “No, that would definitely be me, in this case.”

She could practically see Natasha’s mouth open in confusion. It was a look that Yelena cultivated, and she wanted to savor the mental image. But then the сука hung up on her. Yelena brought the phone away from her ear and stared at it in disbelief until it began to announce a video call, which the two of them never did.

Accepting the call, she now actually did see Natasha with her mouth open in confusion, and it made her feel the teensiest bit better about her mouth running away with her.

“You met someone.” It sounded like a statement, but Natasha’s narrowed eyes held a very clear command.

With what she hoped was a dismissive shrug, Yelena said, “I don’t even know why I mentioned it. It’s not important.”

“Did you meet them this morning?”

“No. I do not know who you’re talking about. I didn’t meet anyone. Let it go.”

“But you saw them again this morning.”

Pit bulls had nothing on Natasha.

Yelena groaned in frustration.

Obviously her subconscious wanted her to talk about this, no matter how much her conscious brain objected, no matter how much it didn’t matter and that there was nothing there. And her subconscious had chosen the best possible ally, since while Yelena loved to bug the shit out of Natasha, Natasha was infinitely better at needling.

So as she turned another corner and squinted against the almost-setting sun, Yelena begrudgingly replied, “I met her at the fire. Where this happened.” She held up her cast to the camera.

For a moment Natasha seemed even more puzzled, asking, “Why is your cast pink? You hate pink.” and Yelena reflected that even pit bulls liked squirrels.

“Lost a bet.”

“Mm.” Natasha’s eyebrows looked focused again. “Did you rescue her?”

“No,” Yelena scoffed, then dourly said, “And I’m not sure it would have been a good idea if I had.”

Bringing the phone closer to her face, Natasha glared at her. “Do not make me come out there, Yelena. I’ll bring Nicky and make you change all of his diapers.”

“Fine.” Yelena pouted, but Natasha’s thin line of a mouth just grew flatter. “The fire was in her building. She was on the street with her dog. I asked her something and she just stared at me. Then later she came up to thank me.”

“Later, like today?”

“Later that night when I was on the not-so-good painkillers. Today I was back at her building to look inside the walls when they tore the burned unit apart.”

Natasha had backed up from the camera again, and she seemed less irritated now that Yelena had actually started talking. Yelena supposed that was a good thing, especially compared to when Natasha was in high school and she was annoyed every time Yelena opened her mouth.

But soon she might start to gloat. That would be even worse.

“So you saw her again?”

“She let me into the building. It was cold.”

“Nothing exactly raising red flags here. So what’s wrong?”

Yelena turned north, blowing out a breath, and she tried to run a hand over her face before remembering — just in time — that the hand had a lot of hard plaster on it. “She barely talks. And I think she’s dangerous.”

“Dangerous?” Natasha laughed. “I’m pretty sure you were the one carrying the ax when you first met.”

“She does have a lot of bows and arrows. But it’s more that I’m dangerous to myself. Around her.”

Bringing the phone closer once more, Natasha spoke with very clear diction. “All of Nicky’s diapers. Stop with the riddles.”

With a sigh, Yelena deflated completely and lowered her voice. “I drop things. I fall down. I can pretend my broken arm had nothing to do with meeting her, but I don’t really know. It’s like I lose control of my body. And she’s only actually said, like, twenty words to me.”

“Wow. She must be pretty hot.”

Yelena pursed her lips and shot Natasha an unimpressed look, and Natasha merely smiled and waited. “You know, I don’t think I miss you anymore.”

“You adore me, and I give the best hugs.”

Damn her. “Yes, she’s hot, but mostly sort of adorable. And…” Yelena thought about it, then added, “She’s kind.”

It was an important thing to know about a person, and for some reason she wanted Natasha to know it, too.

There was now only a hint of a smile at the corners of Natasha’s mouth, but the look she gave Yelena was the best three-thousand-mile-away hug ever, and Yelena finally admitted to herself that she had wanted to talk. Deep in her unsettled bones, she’d needed this look, just as much as she’d needed to hear Natasha’s next words.

“Your body will settle, Yelena. Just, if you see her again, don’t write it off, okay? It’s been a really long time since you’ve even mentioned anyone, much less talked about anyone like this.”

“Okay,” Yelena murmured, knowing it was true. Her job had been her life for almost a decade, and she’d been fairly oblivious to anything outside of it.

“Now I gotta ask,” Natasha said in a different tone of voice as Yelena turned the last corner to head back to the engines. “What’s this about bows and arrows?”

Yelena shrugged nonchalantly. “She may have had a silver medal from Paris this year.”

“Yelena, are you shitting me? Are you talking about Kate Bishop? Clint wouldn’t shut up about her, she’s his favorite mentee or something, and he made me watch all of her matches. She’s definitely hot, so you weren’t wrong about that. But the barely talking is weird, since Clint said that she would always talk him under…”

As Natasha enthusiastically rambled on in the background, Yelena stopped listening to her. Something else demanded her attention — a something else in the shape of Sam Wilson who was poking his head out of the engine bay and mugging at her in an extremely disconcerting fashion.

“Hey, Nova,” he finally yelled down the street. “Gravity’s here!”

Yelena promptly felt her phone slip from her fingers.

Fortunately, she managed to soften its fall with a well-placed extension of her leg, and it met the ground with only a small clatter as opposed to splintering glass. When she picked it up, Natasha looked up at her with concern. “You okay?”

Yelena blinked at her for a moment. “Yes, but I better hang up on you. Otherwise I might accidentally break my phone.”

A grin shot across Natasha’s face. “Wait, is she there? You gotta let me —”

“Я тебя люблю, старшая сестра.”

Yelena ended the call and slipped her phone securely — she hoped — into her pocket. Then she allowed herself about ten seconds to breathe before she made her way toward the open bay door.

She wondered if the buzzing in her chest was more nervousness about seeing Kate or anxiety about potential injury. Maybe it didn’t exactly matter, at least for as long as she associated one with the other.

It didn’t occur to her until later that she never bothered to wonder why Kate was there.

When Yelena crossed the threshold of the garage, she saw Kate in conversation with an animated Bucky. And for a brief second, she noticed that Kate was talking, and she seemed to even be talking in reasonable sentences.

Then Yelena tripped over air, only barely managing to stay upright. By the time she straightened again, Kate was eying her worriedly, Bucky was looking at her with shark-like glee, Sam was staring at the floor and trying not to laugh, and Drax was peering at all of them in complete befuddlement.

“How ya doing there, champ?” Bucky’s voice was far too loud and far too happy, and Yelena fantasized about actually using her cast to beat him into submission.

Instead she chose to ignore him and turned deliberately toward Kate. “Are we now the ones providing shelter from the cold?”

Wordlessly, Kate shook her head and held up Yelena’s badge in explanation, and Yelena realized that she hadn’t even noticed it was gone. She smiled, which in turn led to Kate saying, “Can’t use it. I mean, I can’t. But you… can…” She trailed off faintly toward the end and looked briefly out the garage door to the street as if planning an escape route.

Taking the badge from her hand, Yelena promptly dropped it. But at this point, she had actually expected the reflex, and it didn’t seem nearly so difficult as it had this morning to just pick the badge up and slip it into a pocket as if nothing had happened.

“You know, Kate, around here everyone gets a nickname.” Bucky’s restrained laughter made him sound like he’d inhaled helium, but he gamely continued. “You want to know yours?”

Yelena figured it was only gentlemanly of her to shove her cast into his diaphragm. He obviously needed a bit of a reset to get his breathing back to normal.

The blow had the added — and completely unintentional, of course — advantage of shutting him up, and as he gasped and coughed she said, “Thank you for returning the badge, Kate Bishop. Can I show you around?”

It was a metaphorical extended hand. A hand that might have said, Your obligation is over, but you’re welcome to stay anyway. A hand that might have said, This is my world, if you’re interested. A hand that might have said, I think I see you and you see me, even though neither of us is who we seem.

Whatever the hand said to Kate, she stopped looking for an exit and smiled. “Sounds great.”

For the next ten minutes, Yelena led Kate around the facility, through the office and kitchen and bunk areas above the engine bay and then back to the ground floor and the various rooms and piles of equipment. As they walked, she kept up a one-sided conversation of anecdotes and descriptions. Kate did ask questions here and there, and she never seemed uninterested, though as often as not Yelena could feel that she was the object of Kate’s scrutiny.

She couldn’t say she really minded.

When the two of them had circled back around to the engine bay, Yelena began to talk about different types of rescue gear. But even though Kate peered intently at the equipment, she asked something totally different.

“What’s your nickname?”

Yelena sighed in aggravation, but both Bucky and Sam were nearby, and they would never let the question go unanswered. “First of all, I hate it, so don’t use it or I might punch you.” She glanced up and Kate seemed unperturbed and still curious. So Yelena sighed again. “Nova. These idiots like that it rhymes with my last name. But they also think it fits my personality.”

“Thar she blows,” Bucky crowed, and Yelena glared at him, again pondering why his survival instinct was so damn finicky.

“Makes sense.” When Yelena turned her glare at Kate, she actually saw the woman gulp before she quickly backtracked. “Not that,” she said, waving vaguely in Bucky’s direction. Then she swallowed again. “But… novas are colorful. Beautiful.”

Don’t write it off, Natasha had said. And in everything she did, Kate was making it really hard to argue with that.

Yelena just kinda wished they’d been somewhere else. Several cat calls echoed around the garage, and Drax — apparently no longer befuddled, on this topic at least — let out a deafening whoop.

She was about to turn and unleash some artistic language toward her crew when she saw Kate shake her head, and while she was grinning a bit self-consciously, she held her head high.

“Sorry about the Neanderthals,” Yelena said loudly and with what she thought was appropriate menace.

Kate just shook her head again. “Worth it,” she murmured, and Yelena reflected that it was a very good thing that she’d been standing flat on two feet on a pitted concrete surface.

Because if any of those hadn’t been true, she knew that she would have fallen hard.

“I’m serious Greer, this is really bad, and I don’t know what to do.”

Greer continued to laugh, causing a slight squeak as she vibrated against the red vinyl of the booth seat.

She showed no sign of slowing down, either, and Kate slumped and crossed her arms over her chest, temporarily abandoning her pancakes in favor of dramatic emphasis. “You’re fired as my best friend.”

“But you are serious, right? You really can’t talk to her?” Greer hadn’t exactly stopped laughing, but now it came in hiccuping bursts that let her speak in between.

“Sometimes. The rest of the time only in very small words.” Kate returned to her pancakes grumpily, shoveling down a few bites. It was unfortunate. The pancakes had cinnamon and bananas and pecans, and they were worthy of savoring, but Kate wasn’t in a savoring mood.

“I just can’t imagine it. I mean, I can’t possibly count the number of times I’ve told you to shut up over the last eight years.”

Huffing a laugh, Kate smiled wryly. “It’s one of your favorite phrases. Which is really annoying.” Then she paused and considered. “Though honestly, I’d love to hear Yelena tell me to shut up.”

“TMI, Kate.” Another giggle escaped.

“You’re an ass.”

Greer shrugged unapologetically. “I basically haven’t left my desk in December, and Christmas is still days away. I need entertainment. And this is, by far, the funniest thing that has come my way all week. I mean, sometimes you’re a total nerd, but I never thought there could be someone who would totally kill your game.”

Sitting back in her seat, Kate dropped her fork and rubbed her hands over her face. She left them over her eyes as she said, “The worst part is that I don’t even care.”

“About her?”

That would be so much easier, Kate reflected. She dropped her hands and met Greer’s eyes. “About my game. Or the game, or whatever. I… I want to know more about her.”

The fact was surprising and true, but it also fell short. Because what Kate actually wanted was to just exist somewhere in Yelena’s vicinity. It had been four days since their two friendly interactions, and though they had been brief, Kate could feel her skin thrumming with anticipation. Not for anything specific, since there had been no parting exchange of plans or phone numbers. More like cosmic anticipation for when the two of them would collide again in space and time.

And if that anticipation got too strong and no collisions occurred, Kate figured she could make one. After all, she did know where Yelena worked.

When she looked up from her musings, she saw that Greer had sobered and was staring at her. Kate shifted uncomfortably. Then Greer said, “I think you have it wrong. I think you gotta play the game.”

“What?”

Putting her elbows on the table and steepling her fingers, Greer smiled again, but this time with more warmth. “This is going to sound more crass than I really mean it, but maybe your mouth doesn’t want to talk with her.”

Kate snorted and nodded. “I can completely confirm that. But we’ve literally spent a half hour in each other’s presence. I don’t want to be a jerk. And I do want to actually talk to her.”

“Then don’t be a jerk. Make do until it seems natural to kiss her. At least, if she’s into you.”

“She seemed happy to see me.” At least, Kate thought so. Yelena wouldn’t have invited her on a tour of the station otherwise. And there had been a moment during that invitation that Yelena’s eyes had… opened. That was the only way Kate could describe it. Like a sincere welcome had swirled amid the green and gold and Kate only needed to follow.

And that one was a no-brainer.

“There you go,” Greer stated as if the matter had been completely settled. “Now pay for my omelette, woman, and let’s go shopping. Presents wait for no firefighters.”

“Maybe.” Kate stood and put on her coat, heading toward the register at the front of the diner. As Greer caught up with her, though, Kate leaned closer. “But if fate happens to throw her in my direction today, I’m dropping you like a hot potato.”

“Thank you for formally recognizing my hotness.”

“Merry Christmas.”

Fate did not, in fact, present Yelena Belova during what turned out to be an epically long bout of Christmas shopping, but Kate wasn’t particularly surprised. It was a lot to ask of one omnipotent force during the holiday season, after all.

So much, in fact, that Kate was downright shocked when she saw that fate had only delayed a few hours.

Lucky had been particularly obnoxious when going to the dog park that evening. He had flipped back and forth between pulling her arm practically out of its socket in his rushing down the street and sniffing idly at interesting areas of the sidewalk until she’d needed to drag him along. When she finally let him through the outer gate to the dog run, she’d reached a state of complete exasperation.

“It’s like you don’t want walks. You gotta know that annoyed humans give more boring walks.” He panted up at her with a blissfully blank expression, and Kate sighed and opened the inner gate. “Go see your friends. They can help you run off your delinquency.”

As usual, her eyes tracked the dogs first. There were, indeed, a few familiar snouts in the mix, and Kate expected Lucky to go straight for one of them. But instead, he canted off to the right, passing an unknown Akita. And then, to Kate’s complete surprise, he trotted up to the person leaning against the fence nearby.

Well, the person who had been leaning on the fence, but who was now bending to pick up a leash that had fallen from her hand.

Kate had a few seconds to adjust to the resurgence of butterflies in her stomach and humming along the surface of her skin, since while she was bent over, Yelena was taking the opportunity to thoroughly scratch behind Lucky’s ears. He wagged happily — again making Kate oddly jealous of his tail — until the Akita came up next to him and growled.

“Fanny, no. He’s a friend. His name is…” Yelena raised her questioning eyes to Kate.

Who realized that her feet had led her very close without her even realizing it. She licked her lips and croakily managed to say, “Lucky.”

Yelena nodded and pointedly stroked both dogs on the head, looking back down at them. “Lucky. And this is Fanny.”

Not sure if Yelena was talking to Lucky or to her, Kate stayed silent. It was, as usual, none too hard to do.

As if an alarm had sounded, both dogs then bounded away, and though Fanny still growled at Lucky, the sound held less menace and more playfulness. Kate wasn’t normally one to draw comparisons between people and their dogs, but she couldn’t help but think back to the night of the fire, and a chuckle bubbled up from her chest.

Turning back to Yelena, she saw that the leash was on the ground again, now kicked back out of the way against the fence, and Yelena’s good hand was half-tucked into the pocket of her jeans. She had apparently also reached a compromise with a coat, wearing something that swallowed her but seemed to accommodate her cast.

Their eyes smiled at each other, and Kate relaxed enough to gesture back at the dogs with her chin and say, “They’re us.”

“Maybe. Though I’m pretty sure I don’t growl.”

“You sure?”

Kate hadn’t meant to say it, and she definitely hadn’t meant it to sound as suggestive as it now did in her ears, but Yelena’s eyes only became warmer.

“Not at strangers, at least. I guess you’ll have to wait and see.”

With any other person, the implication would have made Kate’s heart race and her palms sweat. It would have sent her brain careening off to future possibilities. It would have had her stepping closer to Yelena with nothing approaching subtlety.

But in this case, Kate just found herself smiling and leaning on the fence next to Yelena. She felt nothing less than settled.

And her mouth, for once, opened easily. “I really like the idea of not being a stranger.”

Yelena’s grin lit up the night around them, and Kate didn’t think she would have been able to say anything more. But she also didn’t want to.

After a few minutes of watching the dogs in a peaceful quiet, it began to snow small, soft flakes. Yelena burrowed farther into the coat wrapped around her shoulders — a red that clashed heavily with her cast — and spoke again. “Fanny and I have come here the last few nights. It’s a nice park. But I was beginning to think we were going to have drop by your apartment to invite you.”

“You’re welcome anytime,” Kate said in a rush, and Yelena smiled at her again, causing even more heat to spread through her torso. Then the smile turned sly, and Kate had to stop herself from staring at the lips that made it.

“Speaking of your apartment, I wanted to talk about that shiny necklace of yours. And how the world is small.”

Yelena paused, possibly for effect, but Kate took it as an opportunity to voice her confusion. “Those are connected?”

“In this case. My sister’s best friend is Clint Barton.”

There were a variety of things that Kate could have said to that, if her tongue had been completely under her control. There were a number of them that she probably could have said anyway even though it wasn’t.

What actually came out of her mouth was a breathless laugh, then a vehement, “Fate is weird.”

Yelena turned to peer at her carefully, and enough snowflakes had gathered in her hair to make it sparkle. “That’s an interesting way to put it. Don’t you think you’re getting ahead of yourself?”

“The Christmas party.” Way to be vague, Bishop. Kate really wished that talking might start to get easier soon. For several reasons.

Blinking, Yelena now just looked confused. “And that’s getting ahead of me. I thought we were talking about archers.”

“A Christmas party. At my place. Seven o’clock Saturday.” Kate deliberately took a deep breath before she added, “Will you come?”

Yelena considered her, and Kate felt herself flush up her neck and into her cheeks. The increasingly large snowflakes did little to mitigate it. But she kept her gaze steady, and she tried to keep it open, to let welcome shine through along with whatever desire Yelena might want to see. To ask her to follow.

And Yelena did. “Yes.” She reached across her body to place her hand on Kate’s arm just above her elbow, squeezing gently.

The gesture settled Kate again, and she raised her hand to cover Yelena’s, which was cold enough that Kate could feel it through her sweatshirt.

She was too late, though. The initial movement had unbalanced Yelena just enough that one of her feet slipped across the damp dirt and her butt slid off of the fence rail. She didn’t exactly fall down to the ground, but she did sort of crumple, and the end result was much the same.

Immediately, Kate crouched in front of her, unwittingly bearing the brunt of Yelena’s furrowed eyebrows and the noticeable downturn to her mouth. She ignored them in favor of asking, “Are you okay?”

Yelena had no chance to answer, though, and Kate had no chance to help, since three dogs immediately descended in order to render their own assistance. Soon Yelena was barely visible among great puffs of fur, and Kate staggered her way to her feet, a well-placed tail almost knocking her over on the way up.

At first she couldn’t even tell who the third dog was, though after a few seconds she placed him as a regular playmate of Lucky’s. After a, “Sit!” that was apparently limp enough to have no effect whatsoever on any of them, Kate then waded through the masses of muscle and fur to give Yelena a reprieve, reaching her hands down into available gaps.

Yelena grasped one, and Kate pulled her to her feet with a distinct lack of grace. But when she saw Yelena’s face, she promptly forgot.

Forgot what had happened. Forgot all of her speech difficulties. Forgot her own name, probably.

Because Yelena was laughing. Deep belly laughs from within a red face, surrounded by hair that might have gone through a tornado and was rapidly collecting snowflakes. She was real, and she was beautiful, and without any thought whatsoever Kate raised her hand to brush her fingertips across Yelena’s jaw.

With a start, Yelena stopped laughing. But fortunately for Kate’s pounding heart, her smile remained, and she reached up to take Kate’s hand, then leaned in to kiss Kate’s cheek.

“Thank you for saving my life, Kate Bishop. You should be a firefighter.”

Her lips quirked up on one side, and Kate nodded in return. She would have thought it would be worthless to even try to say anything back, but she then heard words leave her mouth. “Not clumsy enough.”

Immediately, she wanted to hide, preferably in a very deep hole, but Yelena actually guffawed again at the words. And she was still smiling as she spoke again.

“You know, it will be a very interesting party. You hosting in three-word sentences. And me either very thirsty or wearing my drink. Or both. I hope we actually make it until Christmas.”

Kate flushed again at Yelena’s frank stating of her current verbal handicap. She’d known it had been obvious, but part of her had hoped maybe — by some miracle — it actually hadn’t.

Oddly, though, Yelena had also opened the door for questions about something Kate had wondered often over the last few days, so she chose to focus on that.

“How have you survived?”

“Survived you?” Yelena’s eyebrows had shot up, and her tone had a teasing lilt, even as she let Kate’s hand go and stepped around her to go pick up Fanny’s leash. She quickly looped the leash around her wrist in a long coil. Snow twinkled on her eyelashes.

“Me?” Kate blinked at her. “No, life. With your job. The last ten years.”

With no pause, Yelena brought her fingers up to her mouth and whistled over to where Fanny had once again run off. The dog came bounding over, Lucky in tow, and Yelena bent to attach the leash to her collar.

When Yelena looked at Kate again, her gaze held fondness and exasperation, and Kate suddenly knew that she had missed something, and that she was about to be embarrassed yet again. As if to punctuate it, Yelena transferred the leash to her cast arm and came up to pat Kate on the cheek.

“Kate Bishop, I have the surest hands on my truck, and I always have. I’m only clumsy around you.”

She let her smile linger as long as her fingers before she moved away, leading Fanny out of the dog run. Then she flashed a final look over her shoulder and headed off into the snowy night.

Kate raised her hand to her own cheek to hold onto the residual warmth. It was only then that she knew a large grin had spread across her face.

What a ride.

There was now no further question in her mind. Yelena Belova was a woman worth any embarrassment that could possibly come Kate’s way.

And apparently she felt the same about Kate.

Making sure that the tote bag was firmly slung over her shoulder, Yelena knocked on the door and tried to quell the nerves in her stomach.

The woman who opened the door wasn’t Kate. In fact, none of the five people in the general vicinity of the entrance was Kate, which seemed extremely disappointing. They all had friendly smiles, though, and as she slipped through the door, Yelena did her best to return the smiles in kind.

“Hey. I’m Greer,” said the woman who had opened the door. She was dressed in an oversized green sweater with a large reindeer face covering the entire front, and to her credit, she owned it. “I’m pretty sure I know all of Kate’s friends, which means you must be Yelena.”

“My reputation precedes me, I see.”

“You could say that.”

There was a predatory look in Greer’s eyes that somehow reminded Yelena of Bucky, and it wasn’t entirely comforting. But she tried not to dwell on it. Instead, she held out her bag and the bottles within. “Can you take these, please? I don’t want them to break.”

Apparently not all of her reputation had preceded her, since Greer looked perplexed. “Why would they break?”

“Believe me, something probably will tonight,” Yelena assured her. “I would just rather it not be glass.”

Based on the look on Greer’s face, that did not appear to be a convincing argument, but it didn’t end up mattering. From slightly behind Yelena, a hand came over to securely grab the top of the tote. When Yelena spun to find the source of the attached green-clad arm, her upper body teetered a little off-balance, but another hand steadied her by gripping her shoulder.

Kate smiled down at her, and as always it was a really nice smile. Tonight, though, Yelena’s eyes immediately left it to instead scan slowly down Kate’s body, taking in the almost-iridescent green collared shirt tucked into tight black jeans with a red leather belt. The look was positively delicious, and when Yelena sucked in a breath, she noticed a spicy perfume that matched it perfectly.

With a smirk, Yelena let her eyes return to Kate’s face. “You really clean up for your friends, don’t you, Kate Bishop?”

“I try.” Kate’s flush almost matched her belt. She released Yelena’s shoulder to point a thumb in the direction of the kitchen and held up the bag. “I’ll just… kitchen.” Then she retreated.

Yelena wasn’t sure whether to follow her or not, so she looked over her shoulder at Greer, who had been watching them closely with a wide grin.

“Thank you so much for coming. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Kate speechless. This is going to be fun.”

“It’s pretty cute,” Yelena admitted, not quite clear what to do with the display of glee. “But it does kind of restrict topics of conversation.” She took her large coat off and stepped over to a row of hooks on the wall to hang it up. Greer followed.

“I have a theory which I’m not allowed to tell you because of Kately reasons. I can say that I don’t think the talking issue is a permanent state.”

Yelena tilted her head curiously. “You seem pretty invested in this.”

The grin on Greer’s face faded, but it was replaced by warmth. “I’m invested in her. And I’m choosing to believe that something that affects her like this could be a really good thing.” Before Yelena could respond, Greer looked over Yelena’s shoulder and raised her voice. “Plus I haven’t had such good blackmail material for ages.”

“You’re fired, remember?” Kate again walked up behind her, and although Greer’s signal meant that Yelena probably wouldn’t have tripped over her own feet this time, she still didn’t mind the warm hand reclaiming her shoulder. Especially now that her shoulder was bare.

“I’m pretty sure I was laughing too hard to hear that,” Greer smugly replied.

“Still true.” Then Kate’s focus shifted to Yelena, made clear by a squeeze on her shoulder. “Wanna sit?”

Executing a half-turn, Yelena glanced up at Kate, who seemed to be unabashedly taking in the spectacle of Yelena’s sleeveless blouse. “Do you have hosting duties right now?” Kate looked up at Yelena’s face with slightly glazed eyes and shook her head. “Then yes, let’s sit.”

With a smile, Kate nodded, and they headed toward the couch, ignoring the softly giggling Greer behind them.

There ended up being only one seat on the couch amid a circle of six of friends, and Kate stared pointedly at Yelena until she took it. Kate then lowered herself to the floor, and the group’s animated discussion resumed and expanded to include them.

Kate’s friends were genuinely nice, and they welcomed Yelena with open arms and lots of questions. For a while, she found herself talking much more than she’d expected. About Fanny, about firefighting, about fires. At one point someone asked her to list all of the fire hazards in Kate’s apartment, including the real Christmas tree decked out with lights and bows, and while the actual list wasn’t particularly interesting, Yelena enjoyed the recognition of her expertise.

Eventually, though, the conversation moved on. Most of the people present knew each other through archery or through college, and they began to reminisce or to talk about technical details.

When that happened, Yelena found it hard to concentrate on the discussion. And her gaze kept returning to Kate.

Kate lounged casually with one leg flat to the ground and the other one bent, its raised knee supporting Kate’s elbow. She watched everyone intently as they spoke, but she watched Yelena most of all, and their eyes often met unapologetically. When Kate did contribute to the conversation, it wasn’t extensively, and there were times that she fumbled her words, but she took everything in stride and with good humor.

Compared to all of their previous interactions, Kate was so incredibly assured tonight. She had presence, and Yelena felt present in her company.

Her body felt present in Kate’s company.

An hour after Yelena had sat down, there was a lull in the chatter, and most of the people around the circle chose to get up for more snacks and more beverages. Kate rose to her feet, too, probably to see if anyone needed anything that she could provide.

Before Kate could wander over to the kitchen, though, Yelena stepped over to her and grasped her hand. Without a word, she led Kate to the only hallway in the apartment, then around a corner so that the main room was no longer visible.

Kate didn’t try to speak as Yelena backed her up against the wall. Not with her vocal cords, at least. But her eyes spoke volumes, and when Yelena pulled Kate’s head down to kiss her, Kate’s lips said everything Yelena wanted to hear.

The kiss turned into two, then three, then four. At first they roughly explored each other’s mouths, following the pace of their racing hearts, speaking of nothing but desire. Soon, though, Kate slowed them down and Yelena followed, caressing Kate’s lips with her own until they were just together. Grounded in one another.

Settled.

Finally, Yelena pulled away, but not far, and she breathed into Kate’s neck.

“You didn’t trip when you dragged me down the hallway,” Kate murmured in her ear, and Yelena smiled in a way she knew Kate could feel.

“You just said about ten words in a row.”

A tiny laugh. “Look at us go.”

Yelena pulled even farther back so that she could see Kate’s face, which was beaming beautifully. “I like you, Kate Bishop.”

“I kinda got that. And in case it wasn’t obvious, I like you, too.” No hitches. No hesitations. Just as many words as Kate needed.

The absurdity of it all made Yelena laugh, and it only increased when someone starting up a rousing round of carols in the other room. She poked Kate in the side.

“You’re never going to shut up now, are you?”

Drawing her in close, Kate circled her arms tightly around Yelena’s waist and sighed happily. “I think you might have some leverage. But more importantly, do you think this means you’ll stop with the bodily injury?”

Yelena brought her good hand above Kate’s shoulder to look at it. Then she wove her fingers into Kate’s hair and brought her mouth up to Kate’s ear, smiling.

“I think you should stick around to make sure.”