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“I still do not understand why you are making me take the subway, Kate Bishop,” Yelena said as she lengthened her stride to get a half step ahead of Kate on the busy sidewalk, turning towards her to catch her eyes directly as they bustled towards the subway station. “You are the big fancy CEO with the car service now, no? Why am I not sipping a mimosa in the backseat of an SUV right now?” Yelena raised her eyebrows seriously at Kate as the younger girl rolled her eyes, grinning against Yelena’s chastisement.
“Yelena, we can’t take the car service on our tourist day!” Kate emphasized, “We have to get the real New York experience, we must become one with the city!” She ripped her hands out of the pockets of her long coat as she said it, gesticulating widely as if the city were all around them, rather than the rather unimpressive and frankly quite smelly subway entrance they had begun descending. She almost smacked an old lady in her exuberance and cringed apologetically.
Despite her complaints, Yelena was at least glad to get off the street, the early morning wind blowing a bit harder than she expected today. She had thought she dressed warmly enough, black crop top and her new favorite green pants, complete with many pockets of all sizes, covered by her long black wool coat. But as a gust swirled down the subway opening and slithered its way through the cracks in her coat, chilling her midriff, she wished for about thirty percent more shirt. Or maybe a scarf would have sufficed to keep her warm. She never realized before how much heat her long hair truly held in until it was gone, shorn up to her chin in a way that she knew was very cool.
Kate was doing better with the weather, seemingly unaffected by the temperature as she handed Yelena her subway ticket and led her through the turnstile. She adjusted her gray checked coat over her soft looking purple knit sweater and light wash jeans as she reiterated their plan for the day: empire state building, Rockefeller center, complete with ice skating, and a trip to the highline. It felt ambitious to Yelena to fit all that in one day, plus at least two stops for food, knowing Kate, but the younger woman was confident, so Yelena decided to trust Kate’s judgement on this one.
“If we were really being tourists,” Yelena said as they waited for their train to arrive, shuffling close on the crowded platform, bored looking commuters pressing in on all sides, “We would at least be taking an Uber,” she said with a quiet huff.
Kate acquiesced with a dip of her shoulder and a tilt of her head, looking up briefly in faux thoughtfulness, “True,” she said, refocusing on Yelena then, standing directly in front of her. “Buuuut,” she hedged, directing the full weight of her smile down on Yelena, “tourists in Ubers also get stuck in hours of traffic, and I don’t trust you not to get out in the middle of the street and start slashing tires.”
Yelena heard the telltale screech of train brakes as she directed her most scandalized look at Kate as she replied, “You are so rude, Kate Bishop, always accusing me of breaking things. Besides, it is like you don’t know me at all. Obviously, I would just borrow a motorcycle. Much faster, very cool.”
“And by borrow you mean-“
“I would steal it.”
“-steal it, yeah that tracks. Well, lucky for you our chariot has arrived.” Kate said as she turned, stepping to the side to allow Yelena to enter the arriving train first, following close behind.
Yelena entered the car with the throng of New Yorkers who were clearly tiredly making their way to work, rather than the most over-planned tourist day of all time. She took one look at the old, stained seats and decided she would stand, opting to grab the vertical pole near the train doors. Kate stepped up behind her, grabbing onto the pole just above where Yelena’s own hand rested. Yelena turned to briefly look over her shoulder at Kate, who just smiled at her serenely.
Just as the doors were about to close, a harried looking man in an ill-fitting suit shoved his way on to the train. Stumbling through the door, his briefcase swung out in Yelena’s direction briefly. Kate reacted, reaching out to place her free hand on Yelena’s hip, drawing her back an inch until she collided with Kate’s front, ostensibly to keep her from being hit by the wayward bag.
Yelena tensed. She fought, fast and rough, against her instincts to fight the hands that held her before forcing herself to freeze. Not any hands. Kate’s hands. Kate’s calloused fingertips digging gently into the curve of her hip over her coat.
Yelena didn’t move, even as Kate dropped the hand down to hang loosely by Yelena’s side.
She inhaled. Held it. Exhaled.
Slowly, painstakingly, she forced herself to meet the gentle pressure of Kate’s chest pressed to her upper back, the tender feeling of connecting to Kate’s hip. Settling, body and mind.
The man with the briefcase was none the wiser to the shift he had caused, sliding with an embarrassed shuffle into the closest seat.
The thing was, it was a move, Kate pulling her like that. That bag was no where near actually colliding with Yelena. And more than that, there was obviously no world where she couldn’t have avoided any collision under the power of her reflexes alone, so. A move. And what’s more, Kate definitely knew that Yelena knew it was a move, which was infinitely more annoying. Because that meant that Kate knew she was allowed to pull moves with Yelena, and that was. Well it was something.
Yelena sighed.
Maybe it didn’t have to matter that it was a move, and Yelena knew it, and she knew that Kate knew it. Maybe she could be the kind of person moves worked on, if she let them. And she had been letting them, was the thing. A hand in the crook of her arm as they walked. A palm against her lower back as Kate reached over her to get the glasses Yelena had been straining for off the top shelf, fingertips digging in surely more than what was necessary for balance alone. Cold toes under her legs on movie nights. Were those all moves? Would Kate make different moves, if Yelena finally moved back?
She wanted to. She’d thought about it so many times in her mind. About grabbing the tentative hand tucked into her elbow to lace fingers together as they walked down the street, about pressing back into the warm hands that were somehow always finding her but never pushing. She wanted to be that person. Yelena didn’t want to deny herself things after a lifetime spent of them being denied for her.
The train bumped and swayed, and Yelena felt every miniscule shift. A bigger bump brought the return of Kate’s steadying hand, now just fingertips gently pressing into the soft muscle of Yelena’s outer thigh. No, she didn’t want to be the one to deny herself this. For one delirious moment, she imagined herself turning in Kate’s grasp. She thought of pressing her face into the soft skin of Kate’s neck and breathing her in. Of turning her back to the people on the subway car that she was still subtly watching, on alert even then.
She wasn’t ready to be that person. Not fully, not yet. But she was ready to try. To move, just a little. Starting slowly and then all at once Yelena dropped her head backwards, resting it heavily on Kate’s strong shoulder and closing her eyes. She felt more than heard Kate take a breath at the action, still for a moment before she pressed herself more fully against Yelena. Kate slid her hand down on the subway pole until her pinky rested on Yelena’s closed fist, the full length of her arm connecting and covering Yelena’s. Kate’s coat gapped open on that side due to her raised arm, and it enveloped Yelena until she felt surrounded by her completely. Maybe she wasn’t ready for everything, but this was a person who she wanted to be. Someone who could rest. Someone who could close her eyes and trust someone else to watch her back. Or, front, as it were.
They stayed like that for a few long minutes, just breathing together. To others, Yelena might have just looked like a tired commuter trying to rest before the start of the day. They had no way of knowing just what she was giving in that moment.
And of course, that’s why Kate had to ruin it.
“Our stop.” She whispered in Yelena’s ear, far too soft and much too confident, her sure smile bleeding into her words.
Cocky.
Yelena straightened and drove her elbow into Kate’s ribs, hard.
Taking advantage of her smaller frame, she slipped out of Kate’s grasp and through the throng of people, leaving the wheezing archer behind as she exited the subway car. She got a few steps away before turning to watch Kate shove and stumble her way out of the rapidly closing doors at the last second. Kate found Yelena’s eyes as she straightened up, the widest and most annoyingly knowing grin splitting her face, her eyes shining, as she made to follow Yelena to the station exit.
Yelena quickly turned heel, striding away from Kate and tamping down on what would be a matching expression, when she was ready to let it.