Chapter Text
The purple folder sat, unassuming and perfectly centered, on the desk. Yelena traced the edges with her eyes over and over again, noting the clean and shiny card-stock, as if it had been freshly plucked off an Office Depot shelf mere hours before. For all she knew, it likely had been. Valentina loved acts of subtle psychological sabotage.
“Nothing to say?” Valentina asked, leaning back and crossing her legs at her knees. Her large leather chair creaked. It was a deep burgundy red. Behind her and through her ceiling to floor office windows, the Potomac gleamed a muddy blue-brown. “No questions, comments, concerns?”
Yelena didn’t move to pick up the folder. “Who even uses paper anymore?”
Valentina raised an eyebrow. “Shockingly reticent, even for you.” If she was disappointed by the lack of reaction, and Yelena was quite certain she was, she didn’t show it. “Is this going to be a problem?”
“This could have been an email. Or a phone call.”
Valentina acted as if she hadn’t spoken. “Your familiarity with the Bishop family makes you the perfect candidate for this. Can you imagine if I sent in Walker? Or Alexei?” She mimed an explosion with a chuckle, and rolled her eyes, as if they were two friends sharing an inside joke. “No, no. I want this to be quiet. Undetectable. No violence, unless absolutely necessary. Preferably, the data would be copied and taken without anyone the wiser. I’ll leave the actual methods up to you. Bishop Security took a hit with Eleanor’s untimely arrest. It shouldn’t be too difficult.”
Shouldn’t be too difficult, as if Bishop Security wasn’t the leading pioneer in cybersecurity around the globe. Shouldn’t be too difficult, as if Valentina hadn’t chosen Yelena specifically because she had allowed the one and only Katherine Elizabeth Bishop to live.
Was it a test? Yelena wondered. Was it because Yelena had acted outside of the psychological parameters Valentina had set for her by sparing Kate? Was it retaliation after she had failed to manipulate Yelena into killing Clint Barton?
Valentina often reminded Yelena of a matryoshka, plans nestled within plans, motives within motives.
“Take the damn brief. Read the material. I expect bi-weekly updates.” Valentina pushed the folder forward with one finger, the purple hue contrasting hideously against the red shade of her nails.
“You may be overthinking it.”
Sonya’s voice was soothing against Yelena’s ear as Yelena walked the final few steps from Valentina’s office to her brick townhome. Yelena tilted her head and held the phone between her neck and her shoulder so she could use one hand to juggle the purple brief, the other to slot her keys into the door. It took a few extra fumbles, and she cursed once as she almost dropped her entire key ring.
“Why would she not choose you? You have already performed reconnaissance for Bishop Security and for the Bishop brat. It eliminates most of the prep work.”
“That’s not how she operates.”
“Do her motives change anything? You’ve taken the job, yes?”
Yelena dropped her keys in a bowl on the foyer table and moved into the kitchen. She placed the purple folder down, open, on the counter, and stared at the first page.
Kate Bishop’s passport photo stared back at her, blue eyes twinkling, a small lift to the side of her mouth as if she couldn’t bear to take a photo without smiling, even a government-mandated one.
“Ha, yes, she definitely chose me because of Kate Bishop.”
“So? Do you even need to interact with her to accomplish your task?”
Yelena shook her head, lied, “I don’t know yet.”
Sonya hummed. Yelena could hear her running a faucet in the background. “Do you want to stay with me while you’re here?”
“I still have Natalia’s safe house.”
“Come over for dinner tonight anyway, as soon as your flight lands.” Sonya turned the faucet off and there was a rustle as she moved about what Yelena assumed was her home. “I can help you plan your next steps.”
Yelena’s life over the last eleven months had taken on a rote and sickening pall. Missions from Valentina, her apartment in DC, the ever-rotating bottles of vodka never far out of reach on her kitchen counter. She’d be lying to herself— and she was quite talented at doing so— if she said her heart rate hadn’t picked up as soon as she’d seen that purple folder laying on Valentina’s desk, even before Valentina had said her piece.
Her pulse continued that strange rhythm now as she read and re-read the case briefing between packing and on the ride to the airport. The first four pages were devoted entirely to Kate Bishop, which further cemented Yelena’s certainty that Valentina had other objectives in mind for this mission besides obtaining the Lipovsky data. While Kate was technically important in that she was now acting-CEO of Bishop Security, she had no actual impact on the mission parameters, so why dedicate so much time and space in the brief to someone that Yelena had already researched thoroughly?
It was a message, but in classic Valentina fashion there were too many possible interpretations for Yelena to grasp it.
Yelena firmly believed that the simplest way forward was also the best way forward. She was not like Natasha, for whom showmanship during a mission had been just as important as success. It was because of this, and no other reason, that her first attempt at infiltrating Bishop Security involved a doctored resume, a quick hack of the HR system, a phone call screening with a cybersecurity analyst named Dan, and a very satisfying swipe of Valentina’s credit card to procure a nano mask.
Voíla! An on-premise interview that week, and a safe way to infiltrate Bishop Security with only the slightest chance of stumbling into Kate, who by all accounts rarely worked in-office. Yelena knew that she’d likely only be able to perform preliminary reconnaissance this time around, but hope sprang eternal. Maybe they conducted interviews on the same floor as their top secret data storage.
Yelena arrived half an hour early to Bishop Security wearing the face of a woman named Margaret Fadou. Margaret had been working in international cybersecurity and information systems for thirteen years, fulfilled every job listing requirement, and had several strong references from at least three Bishop Security competitors.
Yelena was escorted to a waiting area on the third floor. A state of the art espresso machine and array of expensive snacks gleamed from a kitchenette in the corner.
She’d only just carefully made her way over to a ceiling vent on the far side of the room to plant her surveillance drones when the door opened, and the universe once again proved that her entire existence was one big cosmic joke.
Kate Bishop walked inside. She pulled up short when she saw Yelena, currently Margaret, standing there. “Oh, hi, sorry if I scared you!”
For a shamefully long moment, Yelena gaped.
“My name’s Kate,” Kate continued. She was wearing a dark blue suit and a pair of brown glasses that, as a future Yelena with a clearer mind would think back on this moment and realize, she didn’t need with her 20/10 vision. Current Yelena was trying to not to focus on how Kate looked and how it made her stomach clench. “Are you new here? I don’t think I’ve seen you around before. Not that I know everyone, of course! But I know most everyone… or at least I try to know everyone.”
“No worries.” Yelena recovered and affected midwestern, friendly and high-pitched. “My name’s Margaret. I’m here to interview for the security analyst position.”
“Oh, wow, that’s exciting! We’ve been trying to fill that one for a while. I hope it goes well. Sorry again for startling you. Usually no one is in here this early in the morning— I like to raid this break room for snacks. They always put the best ones here for some reason.”
“Maybe for interviewees?” Yelena replied dryly before she could stop herself.
Kate laughed. “Good point.” She slid over to the kitchenette and promptly began to grab snack items. “Do you want some?”
“No, thank you.” Yelena circled to the other side of the room. She tried to make the perfectly curated distance between her and Kate look natural. She hoped Kate would be too distracted by food to notice.
“So what brought you to Bishop Security?” Kate asked. Seemingly finished with her food raid, she was now fiddling with the espresso machine.
Before Yelena could be forced to make small talk, Dan poked his head back in. “Margaret? We’re ready for you. Oh! Miss Bishop. I didn’t see you there. Good morning.”
Kate’s mouth twitched briefly into a frown. If Yelena hadn’t been fixated on her face, she would’ve missed it entirely. “Good morning to you, too, Dan. Good luck and nice to meet you, Margaret! I’m sure you’ll do great.”
Yelena felt both relieved and some other secret second emotion that was definitely not disappointment as she followed Dan from the room.
The interview went well but her surveillance was a bust. Yelena found herself trapped with Dan. The only information she got was her own mental map of the first and third floors.
As far as mission openers went, it was a dismal failure.
“Why are you so determined to avoid her?” Sonya asked. She’d graciously allowed Yelena to vent from her sofa for the last hour.
“I’m not avoiding her,” Yelena replied. “Last time Kate Bishop involved herself, she was a royal pain in my ass. I don’t need a round two.”
Sonya made a skeptical grunt in the back of her throat. “I still say breaking into Bishop’s apartment and seeing if you could gain access through her personal computer would be easier.”
Yelena ignored this, as she had every other suggestion Sonya had made that involved Kate Bishop. Part of the reason for this was an easy answer to Sonya’s questions: Valentina clearly wanted Yelena to involve Kate in some way, which made Yelena determined to avoid doing so out of pure spite.
The other part was more complicated to quantify, and Yelena didn’t want to admit to it even from the confines of her own mind. Regardless, her run-in with Kate Bishop had kick started something dangerous. Mental images of Kate in a suit popped up at increasingly inappropriate times. She found herself deliberating if spiting Valentina was worth avoiding Kate. They’d had a lot of fun together last time, and that had been while Yelena was out of her mind with grief. Kate still owed her that drink.
Yelena was self-aware enough to recognize that she was trading one obsession (Natasha, perhaps alcohol) for another (the mission, Kate Bishop.) She wondered if she’d been born obsessive or if it was a lingering side effect of the Red Room. She’d likely never know.
In order to combat this, Yelena poured herself into the other possible reconnaissance avenues. She was invited back for a panel interview with Bishop Security. In the weeks leading up to that, she used her access of the HR system to obtain a list of all current employees and began drawing up dossiers on board members, senior engineers, and management. She even attempted to gain access to the company systems by hacking them through the guest wifi she’d obtained on her first visit.
Unsurprisingly, their security was too strong for that to work.
“Can you imagine?” Sonya laughed. “If Bishop Security had data protections so weak you could get in through the guest wifi? I’d tell you to sit on that information until they went public so I could buy puts.”
“I don’t think Kate Bishop is selling the company anytime soon.”
“It was a joke, Yelena.”
Yelena spent an unproductive amount of time speculating about why Kate wouldn’t sell Bishop Security. Or, at least, step back and let the board run the show. Kate was already juggling being a full-time student with her vigilantism. Why add CEO on top of that? And as far as Yelena could tell, Kate was as fully committed to being CEO as every other responsibility in her life.
She did not run into Kate on her follow-up visit to Bishop Security for her panel interview. She did manage to plant some drones, which were promptly destroyed by the company’s on-site automated security system. Motion-activated lasers in the vents. They’d upped their game since Kate had come on board, which didn’t bode well for Yelena.
Status?
The text came in on her burner approximately two weeks into her stay in NY. Yelena spent a while staring at her phone screen before responding. Still in-progress. Considering forced entry.
The response came back immediately. Forced entry only as last resort. Ghost preferred.
Yelena pressed the back of her fist to her forehead and breathed deeply. Valentina rarely cared about making a mess. Either this was truly a delicate situation, or Valentina was manipulating her again. She considered if it was worth fucking up on purpose, going in guns a-blazing, but eventually professionalism won out. She still took pride in her work. Besides, she didn’t want to impact Kate too negatively, and blowing up her building certainly qualified as “impacting her too negatively.”
Yelena began to lean into the personnel route. She stalked the board members, cased their homes and families. When none had remote access to Bishop Security or unsecured information lying around, she turned to the senior engineers and managers. Unfortunately for Yelena, the senior employees of Bishop Security took their jobs seriously. None of them had anything work-related saved to their personal devices. She did find a sketch in one desk outlining data security classifications, from declassified and low risk to top secret. At the top of the sketch, the engineer had written ‘Bishop-only???’ and circled it twice.
She ignored this piece of evidence for another two weeks. Bishop Security extended a job offer to Margaret Fadou, contingent on an immediate start date. Yelena felt hopeful that this would be the way forward until she arrived on her first day and discovered that Bishop Security kept employees carefully siloed on their individual projects, and that the ability to access any meaningful data or even the floors where the individual servers were housed would take months of work and a good dose of luck. There was only one person who would have immediate and total access.
“I’m going to have to break into Kate Bishop’s apartment.”
Yelena knew that she’d taken Sonya by surprise, even though Sonya did not react to her sudden appearance beyond shaking her head. Yelena had a key to the front door, but something about sneaking in and popping up behind Sonya made her feel better after running into yet another dead end.
Sonya turned back to washing the dishes. “I still don’t understand why you wasted so much time in the first place. She’s a nepo baby. The weakest link in the security chain.”
“Nepo baby?” Yelena wrinkled her nose.
“Nepotism baby. It’s something the kids say these days.”
Yelena did not have nearly so much confidence in Kate being the weakest link. For all of her naiveté and inexperience, the woman had proven herself skilled and determined. If anything, the fact that Bishop Security was operating at such high efficiency after being rocked by Eleanor Bishop’s crimes hinted at the opposite being true.
Kate no longer resided above Herman's Hearty Slice, and she must have learned a valuable lesson or two since her run in with Yelena because her new address was nowhere to be found.
So Yelena followed her home from work.
It took an obnoxious amount of time to reach Kate’s home. Kate shopped at three separate bodegas, took a detour through a small park to feed pigeons, and stopped to help an old lady cross the street (“so stereotypical,” Yelena scoffed to herself). Kate finally made it to the steps of a nice residential building. She punched a number into a keypad near the door and waved through the window to, presumably, a front desk guard that Yelena couldn’t see. There was a pause then she opened the door and stepped through.
While Yelena didn’t know which floor Kate resided on, she had a hunch. She settled herself on a nearby rooftop to wait, eyes trained on the windows along the top few floors. Some had closed blinds or curtains. If she didn’t discover where Kate Bishop lived tonight, she’d come back tomorrow during the day and check each floor.
For the first time in weeks, Yelena caught a lucky break. She had the perfect viewpoint through one window as Kate pushed through her apartment door and was greeted by her excitable golden retriever. Kate knelt down to receive kisses, wrapping her arms around the wiggling dog. She was wearing a dark purple jumpsuit today that flattered her somehow more than the suit had. Yelena felt her heart rate pick up, and she forced herself through a series of breathing exercises.
Yelena had never enjoyed the stakeout portion of her work, but to be a voyeur to Kate Bishop’s life proved embarrassingly riveting. She didn’t let herself put much thought into why she enjoyed monitoring Kate as Kate fumbled through her evening routines: making dinner, walking the dog, tidying around the apartment. She noted when Kate briefly pulled out what looked like a work laptop, filing that away as important for later.
Eventually, Kate stepped out of her bedroom wearing her purple Hawkeye suit, bow slung across her back. She propped open her window and slid out onto the fire escape, making her way up to the top of her building’s roof, which was shorter than the rooftop Yelena resided on.
Yelena watched as Kate performed a series of full body stretches and checked her quiver over, inventorying her various arrows. She stretched a final time, arms pushed high above her head, before accelerating into a run and jumping across the gap to the roof of a neighboring building. She disappeared out of sight only a moment later.
Yelena rose smoothly from her crouched position against the wall surrounding the roof’s edge. Before she could doubt herself or acknowledge the unusual anxiety bubbling in her gut, she shot her grappling line across to Kate’s apartment building.
Kate hadn’t locked her window behind her. Yelena mockingly mimed Kate’s earlier stretches in her hallway landing with a snort. She’d had time to do that, but not to practice basic home safety? Maybe Yelena had overestimated her.
There was the sound of claws on hardwood, and Kate’s one-eyed dog came skittering around the corner, mouth open, tail wagging violently. When he saw it was Yelena instead of Kate, he let out a series of barks. Yelena immediately tossed him a dog treat from one of her many pockets and bent down to pet him.
“You’re a beautiful baby. Yes, you are.”
The dog found this more than acceptable, and he rolled over on his back to demand tummy rubs. Yelena only indulged him for a minute longer. As much as she loved dogs, she had a job to do. She left him chewing on more treats and began her snooping.
The easiest thing to do would be to beeline for Kate’s laptop, but Yelena gave into her baser desires. Kate’s bedroom was spacious. Yelena had expected it to look like an eggplant had thrown up over it, but there were only a few pops of purple among a tasteful arrangement of decor. The walls were covered in vintage signs and posters and a collection of photographs. The photographs followed Kate’s life from childhood, where Eleanor Bishop was conspicuously absent, all the way up to more recent ones of Kate with her friends. There was even a picture of her and Barton.
Yelena sneered at it.
Some articles of clothing littered the floor and a chair in the corner held a load of laundry. Kate had stored a few knick-knacks and other items in her bedside tables, but nothing important beyond Yelena’s personal interest. The same was true of her bathroom, which was far messier than her bedroom. The guest room was clinically impersonal with nothing but furniture and some sheets stowed in the closet.
The office proved the most intriguing. It looked like a paper bomb had gone off inside. Kate had covered the walls with pinned pictures and sticky notes. Yelena recognized a few of the subjects from her own mission briefs. All NYC criminals and their associates. No-one big enough to be a player on the international stage. The only one that gave her pause was Kingpen, but Kate had already survived one run in with the man. Hopefully she wasn’t gunning for another.
Kate’s work laptop sat on her desk. Yelena ignored it in favor of going through the desk drawers. Kate did not have a written list of passwords hidden in any of the compartments, which lowered her odds of gaining access. There were a few physical files on Bishop Security projects, but all of the critical information was carefully redacted.
“Such a pain, Kate Bishop,” Yelena groaned, settling herself in Kate’s cushioned desk chair. From one of her pockets, she pulled out a thumb drive and inserted it into the laptop. It contained two separate executables: one a brute-force password cracker and the other a keyboard and screen recording logger. Both simple programs, but Yelena liked to try simple first. If she could gain a list of Kate’s passwords, it would open up even more doors in the event that she was like her employees, bringing none of their top secret work home from the office.
The thumb drive indicator light flashed yellow. Yelena let it run for twenty more minutes before she pulled it. The brute force cracker hadn’t worked, but she hadn’t expected it to.
Mission accomplished, Yelena made her way downstairs to Kate’s living room and kitchen. She froze on the bottom step of the landing. Kate Bishop sat on her living room couch, body turned towards the stairs. In one hand she held her sword. The other hand was busy petting her dog.
“Yelena, hey,” Kate said.
“Kate Bishop.” Yelena forced herself to continue down the steps, posture relaxed. “Long time, no see.”
“I’m glad it was you,” Kate sighed. “You never know these days.”
The dog detached himself from Kate and bounded over. Yelena kneeled down to give him attention, taking the chance to pull herself together. She was rarely surprised like this. “Glad it was me?”
“You know, breaking into my apartment. I’ve made a few enemies over the last year.” Kate stood and cocked her head to the side. “A lot of enemies, actually. Would you like some water?”
“How do you know I’m not an enemy?” Yelena asked.
Kate sat her sword down on her coffee table. “I mean, you could be. But wouldn’t you have killed me already?”
“I could be waiting for the perfect moment.”
“Is right now not the perfect moment?” Kate frowned. “Is that a no to the water?”
Yelena sighed. “I’ll take a water, thank you.”
She followed Kate to the kitchen, settling herself on a bar stool at the island. Now that the initial shock had passed, Yelena felt an odd sense of relief that she’d finally been forced to interact with Kate. It had been hard, she realized, staying away. Maybe she’d come to regret it later whenever Valentina’s trap slammed shut.
“I also have some mac and cheese. You liked that last time, right? Or maybe not, with all the hot sauce you used.”
“What’s wrong with the hot sauce?”
“There’s nothing wrong, per se. It’s more like you made the mac and cheese a delivery mechanism for the hot sauce.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“You know.” Kate smiled and handed her a glass of water. “It was like you were eating hot sauce with a side of mac and cheese.”
Yelena laughed. “You’re so funny, Kate Bishop. How can hot sauce be the main course?”
“That’s the whole— never mind. I’ll make some anyway. I’m still hungry.”
Yelena studied Kate as she moved through her kitchen, pulling a pot and the boxed macaroni from different cabinets. Now that Yelena had calmed down enough from the shock to pay attention, she noticed there was a distinct tension in Kate’s shoulders and back, a minute tremble in her hands. As if Kate were nervous.
“Do you normally wait in your living room for home intruders to come say hello?” Yelena asked. “That doesn’t seem like a good strategy.”
“Well, at first I thought you might be a friend of mine. He sometimes visits while I’m out working. But he doesn’t go through my bedroom or office, so I realized pretty quickly it couldn’t be him.”
“Oooooh, a boy?” Yelena deflected. Kate Bishop had learned a few things after all. She must have some form of surveillance system throughout her apartment (and it had to be a good one, too, for Yelena not to notice), which meant this whole thing was a bust if Yelena couldn’t come up with a good enough excuse for her snooping.
The tips of Kate’s ears turned a light pink. “Not like that.”
“So you realized I wasn’t your friend. And you thought, let’s wait here for whoever it is?”
“Well, you didn’t hurt Lucky.”
“Your dog? That’s the metric you judge home intruders by?”
“I had a hunch, okay?” Kate grimaced. “I had a feeling it wasn’t someone who wanted to hurt me. Besides, none of that matters because— you— what are you even doing here?”
“I was looking for Barton under your mattress.”
“Ha, ha,” Kate drawled. “I already know you let him go. He told me.”
“I changed my mind.”
They stared at each other for a moment. Yelena broke first, smirking at the look on Kate’s face. “Just kidding. I know, I’m hilarious.”
Kate rolled her eyes. Behind her, the water began to boil. “You’re dodging the question.”
“You owe me a drink.”
“Did you find that drink in my office?”
Yelena forced a grin. She rolled her jacket sleeves up, suddenly overly hot in Kate’s warm kitchen, and unzipped the top of her body suit from around her neck to give herself a moment to think, to breathe. She watched Kate’s eyes follow the motion. And wasn’t that interesting? The urge to test the hypothesis was overwhelming. For any other mark it would be a perfect follow-up play, but Kate wasn’t her mark. Yelena didn’t care. She reached up and pulled the hair tie out of her braid, combing her hair with her fingers until it fell in waves past her shoulders.
Kate’s ears turned pinker.
Yelena’s grin became genuine. Something swooped low in her stomach. She pulled her hair back into a loose ponytail. “That’s just Black Widow etiquette, Kate Bishop. We can’t help ourselves. We’re nosey.”
Kate swallowed and turned back to the pot. She poured the box of macaroni in. “Anything catch your eye?
“You’ve got a lot of bad men pinned to your wall.”
“Yeah.” Kate shook her head. “It seems like every time I take one down, I have to put another one up in its place.”
“That is the way of the world. At least it’s good for job security.” Yelena shrugged and ignored the look Kate shot her.
“Very Russian of you.”
“You make that sound like an insult.”
“Because it is.” Kate smiled. “Right, so, technically, according to you, I owe you a drink. Why now, after all this time?”
“Were you not the one who said, ‘Let’s grab a drink’?” Yelena affected an uncanny impersonation of Kate, down to the accent and pitch.
“Stop that, it makes me uncomfortable.”
“What, this?” Yelena said, mimicking Kate again.
“Is that some sort of Black Widow superpower? That’s so weird.” Yelena opened her mouth but Kate beat her to it. “ Fine, fine. I owe you a drink. Please just stop. And answer the question. Stop sounding like me and answer the question.”
“So demanding, Kate. I’m back in the city for work. I thought I’d drop by.”
The timer finally went off. Kate removed the pot from the stove. “What work?”
“If I told you that, I’d have to kill you.”
“That one’s original. Haven’t heard it before.”
Yelena gasped. “Are you mocking my death threats?”
“Maybe.” Kate busied herself mixing the drained noodles with the cheese packet. When she finished, she slid a bowl and a bottle of hot sauce in front of Yelena. “Is that all you had planned for New York? Work and breaking into my apartment?”
“You left the window open, actually. You should probably not do that in the future. And, yes. It was most of it. I haven’t had the time for much else.” Or the interest, now that Natasha was dead and never coming back.
“What? That’s so lame. You can’t come to New York and not do at least a little sightseeing.”
“Excuse me. I’m very cool, actually.”
“I can take you around New York,” Kate said, and Yelena was shocked to find it was earnest. “Maybe we could schedule a day where we hit some of the highlights and then get that drink.”
“I’d like that.” Yelena meant it. Her stomach swooped again. Before she could think better of it, she continued. “But I thought we could grab that drink tonight.”
“Tonight?” Kate looked at Yelena’s combat bodysuit then down to her own Hawkeye outfit. “It’s late. I have work tomorrow. You want to go out looking like this?”
“That is why I’m here. Besides, there’s no reason we can’t drink in.”
“I don’t have any alcohol.”
Yelena scoffed. “How old are you again? How do you not have alcohol in your house?”
“I’m not normally drinking at home alone, thank you.”
“Fine, fine. Just macaroni for tonight then.” Yelena ate hers quickly. The hot sauce was something new, not sriracha like last time. When she finished, Kate gestured for the fork.
“I need to wash it.”
“You still only have one fork? How is that possible? What kind of adult are you?”
“The busy kind. I’m going to get some, okay? I just keep forgetting.”
Yelena took the opportunity to examine Kate as she ate her food. There were a couple of new scars since the last time they’d sat face to face. The bags under her eyes were a dark purple. Yes, Yelena thought. School, Hawkeye duties, and CEO responsibilities had to be too much. How was Kate not collapsing under the weight?
“What? Do I have cheese on my face?” Kate asked, mouth full.
“Yes, right here,” Yelena lied, and, seized by some kind of insanity, leaned forward to swipe Kate’s cheek with her finger. “Got it for you.”
Kate blinked, flustered. “Uh, thanks.”
Yelena stood abruptly. “Thank you for the mac and cheese, Kate Bishop.”
“Wait!” Kate said, scrambling to follow Yelena as she made her way back to the stairs. “When did you want to hang out?”
“I’ll find you and let you know.” Yelena had to get out, had to leave before she did anything else irreversibly stupid. Kate’s presence was suddenly overwhelming, stifling. How had she gone from avoiding Kate Bishop to scheduling time to hang out with her? All of her effort the past few weeks and for what? To fold as soon as she stood in the same room as Kate?
This had been part of the reason she’d avoided Kate so desperately. Because on some level she’d always understood, implicitly, that they clicked. Yelena didn’t know the first thing about herself, but she knew the way she felt and acted around Kate defied logic. It had been that way from the beginning. When Kate had been an obstacle, then a nuisance, then someone that made her laugh, all within the span of 24 hours.
Yelena flung herself out of Kate’s window and fled.
That night she barely slept. Tossing and turning, she tried to meditate, but Kate Bishop kept appearing and reappearing ceaselessly in her thoughts. She featured in fractured parts of Yelena’s dreams, a welcome reprieve from the nightmares, but it still left her sweaty and exhausted in the morning.
Sonya had texted her twice asking about how the previous day had gone. She ignored both of them and got herself ready for work. Margaret couldn’t quit now. She was the long game if nothing else worked out.
It took about two hours before Sonya began texting her with greater ferocity. Yelena finally replied back: At work. Talk later. Then turned off her phone.
She didn’t get a chance to plan for their conversation. Sonya was waiting on her couch when she arrived home.
“Did you kill her?”
“What? No,” Yelena said, shocked. Of all the things she expected from Sonya’s questioning, this was not even on the list.
“Oh.” Yelena’s response must have been stronger than expected because Sonya backed down immediately. “Then why are you acting so weird?”
“How am I acting weird? I said I’d tell you after work! Give me a second to breathe, женщина.” Yelena threw her work bag to the side and went to pour herself a shot of vodka.
Sonya followed, demanding her own glass with a hand gesture. “It’s after work. Now talk.”
“I was able to put a keylogger on her work laptop. The password generator didn’t have enough time to work.”
“You didn’t find anything else?”
“Not related to the Lipovsky data, no. She’s doing some sort of NYC underbelly Hawkeye work though. It’s all over her office.”
They took the shot together. Yelena immediately poured herself another one and downed that, too.
“So why are you so spooked?” Sonya asked, this time a touch more gently.
“She caught me going through her place.” Yelena relayed most of the story, leaving out whole chunks of the conversation for reasons she couldn’t explain to herself, especially when the things they had spoken about had been so benign. “She offered to take me out around New York.”
Sonya was silent for a long moment. “This is a good thing, yes? Kate’s credentials are the key to getting that data.”
Yelena shrugged. “Maybe.”
“If she keeps you close, that gives you more opportunities to find a way in. Does she want to be friends?”
“Looks like it,” Yelena said with forced nonchalance. All Black Widows were extensively trained in reading human body language and microexpressions. It was an imperfect art, as human beings were typically complex creatures, but Yelena felt confident in assessing how Kate Bishop felt about her.
Sonya seemed to be choosing her words carefully. “I know you didn’t want to get her involved for whatever reason, but the cat’s out of the bag. She knows you’re skulking around. It’s more suspicious if you disappear.”
“I know,” Yelena groaned. She fidgeted with the vodka bottle. Another shot wouldn’t hurt, right? “I don’t skulk. I sneak.”
“That’s the play, then? Befriend Kate Bishop and find a way to get her access to the data?”
Yelena took the third shot. She felt queasy. “I suppose it is now.”
It was not the safest of plays. Not for Yelena’s sanity. It took Yelena another week and a half to work up the courage to go after Kate Bishop again. She’d spotted her at Bishop Security a few times as Margaret but kept her distance. There had been no other leads, no other way to reach the security clearance or credentials she needed. She’d managed to put together an organization chart, highlighting other feasible targets, but the ‘Bishop-only???’ note haunted that particular avenue. Although it was difficult to confirm, she felt confident that Eleanor Bishop had a top level clearance for herself that had passed on to Kate. Even if the data Yelena needed wasn’t at that level, it would be the easiest way to obtain it. A digital skeleton key.
The virus Yelena had put on Kate’s computer only bore a single fruit: the password she used to log in to the laptop. Shortly after, Kate had wiped her computer, rendering the virus useless. Yelena didn’t know if this was a habit she engaged in frequently or if it had been because she’d caught Yelena in her office. Either way, it forced her to call up Mason for the first time in years. She needed something stronger to get through Bishop Security protections in the event that nothing else worked. Subtlety and Valentina be damned.
Yelena planned her next meeting with Kate Bishop as meticulously as any other mission she’d ever undertaken. An anxiety she was unaccustomed to consumed most of her waking hours whenever she thought about it, but she’d be lying if she didn’t admit that there was some excitement there, too.
Saturday morning rolled around as it always inevitably did with the endless march of time. Yelena would’ve rather died than admit to anyone, especially Sonya, the amount of effort she spent getting ready or that she had chosen an outfit she thought Kate would like. Something told her that Sonya would see right through her, even if she insisted it was for the mission. She left her hair down, remembering the expression on Kate’s face as she had dropped it from the braid. Finally, unable to stall any further without ruining her plans, she struck out for Kate’s place.
Kate was still sleeping when she arrived. Yelena settled softly in Kate’s bedroom chair in the corner, failing to fully suppress her childish glee at being able to get the jump on Kate this time. She was 0-2 in that department since the start of this trip, which was unacceptable.
It didn’t take long for Kate to wake up. She groaned and turned over, eyes opening blearily. They met Yelena’s.
“Yelena!” Kate yelped, rolling out of bed and pulling all of the blankets with her. Her body seemed torn on how to respond, one hand yanking the comforter up to cover herself, the other reaching for a knife sitting on her bedside table.
“Are you going to stab me, Kate Bishop?” Yelena leaned forward further in the chair, amused.
Kate gaped like a fish, mouth opening and closing wordlessly. “No. No, just— oh my god.” She put the knife back down and allowed the comforter to fall, then ran a hand through her disheveled black hair. “You can’t do that.”
“Do what?” Yelena asked, fighting valiantly to keep her eyes trained on Kate’s face instead of her long bare legs.
“Watch people sleep!”
“I don’t watch people sleep.”
“You were just now!”
“I was watching you sleep.”
Kate stared at her. “How is that different?”
“You are one person and ‘people’ is a plural noun.”
Kate mumbled something Yelena didn’t catch. She rubbed her eyes. “Can you, uh, give me a minute? To get myself together? I feel like I’m in some sort of fever dream right now.”
“Of course,” Yelena said smugly. This interaction more than made up for the last two times Kate had caught her off guard.
There was a pause. Kate said, “Could you maybe wait downstairs?”
“So sensitive, Kate,” Yelena said, but she ducked out of Kate’s room without a fight and went downstairs to give attention to Lucky, who she had left chewing on a large Kong peanut butter toy.
Yelena took the opportunity to go through Kate’s living room and kitchen since her last attempt had been interrupted. Purple was much more prominent here than it had been in Kate’s bedroom. Or maybe it seemed that way because the couch was a dark purple velvet number that Yelena had somehow missed, focused as she had been last time on Kate. The downstairs was almost entirely open concept, with a long wall of windows that the orange rays of dawn sunlight were beginning to shine through.
In one corner, Kate had set up what looked like a workshop space. Kate’s bow and a few arrows were laying on a workbench, partially disassembled. Another simpler bow was propped on a stand, prominently displayed along with a shelf full of archery trophies and ribbons. Yelena lingered there, looking at the tiny photos of Kate on the top spot of multiple podiums, various prizes held over her head. Her face beamed up at Yelena with a grin that Yelena had never once seen Kate replicate in real life.
But then again, why would Yelena have seen it? Yelena had crash landed in Kate’s life at the worst possible time, armed with death threats, murder attempts against her idol, and the truth about her mother’s betrayal. Who Kate had been in these photographs, and in the ones upstairs, was not who she was now.
Yelena had been, and still was, nothing but another person’s weapon aimed at Kate Bishop. The thought made Yelena ache and she forced it away.
In the other corner, tucked next to the kitchen, was a tiny, makeshift gym. The floor there was covered in a foam mat. A heavy punching bag hung from the ceiling next to a bench and a rack of weights. Yelena gave the punching bag a couple of half-hearted blows.
“Do you ever box?” Kate called from the top of the stairs. She’d finished getting ready. She was wearing a purple plaid button up and dark-washed jeans. Her hair was pulled up in a ponytail. Yelena watched her covered legs as they descended the steps and briefly regretted not staying upstairs a bit longer.
Yelena let out a short laugh. “Why would I box, Kate Bishop? It is fake combat. I was trained to kill.”
“Very dark. Very sinister. Very international assassin of you.”
“I am an international assassin.”
“How could I forget?” Kate yawned broadly, showing all of her teeth. “Want some coffee?”
Yelena nodded and followed Kate over to the kitchen. “I got you a present,” she said, pushing the box she had left waiting earlier forward across the counter top.
“A present?” Kate asked, brow furrowing. “What for? You didn’t need to get me anything.”
Yelena could not tell the truth, which was one part because she had been overcome with the compulsion to do something nice for Kate and another part because of the guilt she felt about involving Kate in her schemes. “To make you an adult.”
“Weird way to say that but okay. I am an adult, thank you. I have the birth certificate and everything to prove it.” Kate pulled a knife from a sheathe behind her back and sliced open the cardboard packaging. “Yelena… did you get me an IKEA cutlery set?”
“It’s called Tillagd. Silly name, right?” They hadn’t had it in purple. Or any set in purple, actually.
“That’s…” Kate trailed off. “That’s really sweet of you.”
Yelena shifted, chest uncomfortably tight. Her mind flashed to when she had stood in the IKEA kitchen section, staring down at the cutlery table, agonizing over whether it was crazy to buy Kate a gift. As if it wasn’t already crazy to even be standing there. “It’s just silverware, Kate. I did it so we could both eat food at the same time, like normal people do.”
“Right.” Kate peered at Yelena then at the box which she gripped between both hands. “Right. Well, thank you. For making me into a respectable adult. Now we can both have spoons for our coffee!”
“A luxury, to be sure,” Yelena said dryly and was rewarded by Kate’s chuckle. She was relieved the moment had passed quickly.
“Not that I’m not happy to see you. Because I am.” Kate pulled down two mugs from a cabinet and pressed some buttons on her fancy coffee maker. It looked suspiciously similar to the Bishop Security coffee machines that dotted the break rooms on every floor. “But what are you doing here?”
Yelena hoisted herself up onto the counter. “I came to give you your gift, obviously.”
“That’s what you showed up at the crack of dawn for? To give me cutlery?”
“The early worm survives the bird. Besides, is gift-giving not important enough?” Yelena leaned back on her hands. She tilted her head and watched as Kate’s eyes followed the slope of her neck to her chin and down her hair as it flowed over her shoulders. Whatever Kate had been about to say died in her throat. Yelena smirked. “But, no, you’re right. You said you’d show me around and I am free today.”
“You want to go out? Today? Now?”
“Yes, Kate. That is what I said.” It was a gamble, Yelena knew. Kate could have plans. Kate likely did have plans. But Yelena could not have scheduled this the normal way, ahead of time. She would have chickened out. She’d barely managed to motivate herself to leave her apartment this morning. Even now, she hovered between a muted terror at the idea of Kate saying yes and a stabbing disappointment at the idea of her saying no. It would be scarier if she weren’t already so used to not knowing her own mind. “I have an itinerary put together.”
“An itinerary?”
Yelena pulled a folded piece of paper from her pocket. “I did research on the ‘must-see New York City destinations.’” Yelena slipped into an exaggerated Californian accent and couldn’t help but smile when Kate’s nose scrunched up in response. She offered Kate the piece of paper.
Kate opened it and began to read. “Some of these are classics,” she murmured, tracing with a finger. “I’m not a snob about it. You should see all the iconic spots, even if they’re tourist nightmares… Yelena.”
“What?”
“Did you know half of these spots are Sex and the City related? Some of them are literally just filming locations.”
“I said I did the research.”
“Are you a… fan?”
“Yes. Why? Is there something wrong with that?”
“No, no. Not at all. Didn’t realize that was a part of the super secret spy curriculum.”
“It wasn’t,” Yelena said. “It was a desperate attempt to regain some level of normalcy after being forced to be a child assassin and then subsequently brainwashed for twenty or so years.”
Kate flushed bright red, eyes going comically wide. “Oh— oh my god, I’m so sorry. That’s… that’s— I wasn’t trying to give you a hard time—“
Trap sufficiently sprung, Yelena slid off the countertop. “Take me out, Kate Bishop, and I’ll forgive you.”
It quickly became apparent, by stop three of Yelena’s whirlwind New York City tour, that she’d underestimated how much time they would spend on each landmark on her itinerary. This was not, despite her best efforts, a mission with carefully metered out stop and start times.
This was Kate, tripping over herself to tell Yelena stories about her adventures growing up as a New York native, like how she’d visited the Empire State Building only once, as a kid, with her dad, and nearly fallen off the top when she’d climbed over the safety barrier. This was Kate, making her stop and try every food cart they stumbled across even though Yelena had planned in meal breaks because Kate wanted Yelena “to try the real stuff anyway.” This was Kate, dragging her to a massive warehouse converted into a thrift market all the while declaring, “I know you’ll love it, they have the coolest stuff.”
This was Kate, and she’d known it would be Kate, and it was why she’d been both excited and reluctant to do this. She was on a mission, Kate was a mark, and yet she was genuinely having fun for the first time in a long, long time.
The thrift market did have the coolest stuff. She ended up finding a button front romper made up of different squares of fabric like a patchwork quilt, covered in pockets, that she loved desperately as soon as she laid eyes on it. She also added three new rings and a set of earrings to her increasingly eclectic collection.
They were on the final warehouse floor when Kate discovered a pair of decorative dueling sabers hidden behind a partially rotten armoire and tossed one to Yelena. “En garde,” she declared, and slid into a practiced stance between two rickety tables filled with baubles.
Yelena caught the saber, dropping her bag of new keepsakes on the ground as she did so. “Kate Bishop, are you crazy? We’re going to break everything. And I’m not paying for it.”
“You’re a Black Widow. And I’m the number one collegiate fencer in the country. I think we can pretend-duel and not break anything.”
Yelena raised an eyebrow. “Last time we broke possibly every piece of equipment on the 11th floor of your office. And some of the windows, too.”
“Yeah, sure, but we weren’t pretend-dueling then.”
“Speak for yourself.”
“Hey ,” Kate said in mock outrage. She gave her saber a dramatic flourish and grinned. It was unbearably attractive. “Are you afraid you might lose to me at something? Is that it? The Yelena… last name unknown… scared of little ol’ Kate Bishop?”
“You’re hilarious,” Yelena drawled.
“Come on, Yelena. Live a little. If we break anything, I’ll pay for it.”
They ended up breaking a lot of things. Yelena stood smugly to the side, basking in her victory and the memory of Kate’s flushed cheeks with Yelena’s saber tip pressed to her throat, as Kate swiped her credit card several times at the booth till. The owner’s glare could have melted steel. It certainly made Kate wilt. She’d kept up a running litany of apologies since the “pretend-duel” had ended in disaster, and she wasn’t slowing down now.
Yelena slipped the decorative sabers, severely damaged, inside of her shopping bag next to the romper, and refused to think about why.
“You’ve improved,” she told Kate later, once they’d made their way out of the market and to the nearest subway station.
“I would hope so,” Kate muttered. “Not that it mattered.” She peered up at the glowing electronic sign overhead to check the number of minutes they had left to wait, impatiently tapping her foot on the concrete platform. “But thanks.”
“Aw, Бедненькая. Not used to losing, I bet.”
Kate shrugged. “I’ve gotten more used to it lately.”
Before Yelena could respond, their train came roaring into the station. The doors slid open. Yelena followed Kate inside after the initial crowd rushed out, and they took up residence in a back corner. Yelena noted with annoyance that she was forced to hold the vertical pole while Kate could easily reach the top one with her height.
Kate pulled the wrinkled itinerary from her pocket, one hand still grasping the top rail loosely. She didn’t seem to notice how close they stood together, or that it made her loom over Yelena in a way that was embarrassingly distracting. “We still have time to visit some of the Sex and the City spots, but we’ll have to do the rest another day. Maybe even over multiple days, honestly, if you want to do it all. How long are you in town for?”
Yelena pushed a lock of hair behind her ear. “That depends on things outside of my control. But I can make time for you, Kate Bishop. I want to do it all.”
Later, they dropped back in at Kate’s to leave their purchases and to check in on Lucky before heading to dinner and drinks. Dinner was a delicious Cuban place that lived up to Kate’s hype.
“It’s a surprise,” Kate said, when Yelena asked where they were going for the drinks. She’d turned around to walk backwards and look at Yelena, hands stuffed in her pockets, the wind tangling her hair in her face. “It’s only two blocks from here.”
“I’m not the biggest fan of surprises.” Yelena was overwhelmed by how much she wished she could capture Kate’s likeness in this moment, but she couldn’t bring herself to raise her phone to take a photo.
“I have a feeling you’ll like this one. And if you don’t, we can leave.”
The surprise turned out to be an old western themed pop-up bar. They were forced to check their coats at a booth near the front door and in exchange were handed two leather cowboy hats.
“These don’t have lice, do they?” Yelena asked, examining the inside closely.
Kate pulled hers on without hesitation. “They clean them. But if you don’t believe me you can smell the alcohol spray.”
“Or that could just be from people spilling their drinks,” Yelena grumbled, but she tugged the hat on anyway.
Kate grinned. “You’re adorable.”
“I could kill you in 37 different ways before you even drew your next breath.”
“But you won’t,” Kate said.
Yelena scowled.
The venue was a sprawling maze of rooms in a shotgun layout. The first space was an open floor with a bar on the far side and booths around the edges. Kate led the way to the bar, smoothly sliding around groups of men and women, all also wearing cowboy hats.
The bartenders were fully decked out in jeans, assless chaps, rawhide vests, and hats. Some even sported lassos. One of them, a blond man with some rugged stubble and a prop piece of hay sticking out of his mouth, brightened as soon as he laid eyes on Kate. His fake southern accent was atrocious. “Well, I’ll be. Miss Kate Bishop. The gunslinger, herself.”
Kate glanced to make sure that Yelena had joined her before leaning over the bar. “Hey, Matthew. How’s it going?”
“Oh, you know. Same as usual. The Saturday caps contest has been a bit more competitive with you out of the picture. Oliver’ll be devastated.”
“It’s good for his ego to lose every now and again.”
Yelena scoffed at that. Kate ignored her.
The bartender paused to take an order from a woman to their left then turned back to Kate. “Where have you been lately?”
Kate shrugged. “Work’s been really busy. I’ve been too tired for anything else. You know how it is.”
While the bartender focused on mixing their neighbor’s drink, Kate turned her attention back on Yelena. “What do you want?”
“Something with vodka.”
Kate laughed. “Come on. That’s so stereotypical.”
“What? I’m Russian. I like vodka.”
“Right, sure, but vodka doesn’t make for a fun cocktail.”
“Then give it to me straight. I am not picky.”
“Would you be willing to try something else?”
With the look Kate was giving her, Yelena would be willing to try almost anything. Instead of doing something stupid like saying that, she nodded. “Yes, but get me the vodka, too.”
They slid into a free booth with two margaritas and two extra shots of vodka later, Kate insisting that Yelena not take the shot alone. Yelena didn’t have the heart to explain that she would likely need at least three shots for every drink of Kate’s to match her in intoxication level with the amount of recreational home drinking she had been engaging in recently. She could easily imagine the worried and disappointed expression on Kate’s face, and the thought made her insides burn with shame.
Instead, she clinked her glass against Kate’s, their eyes making unceasing contact across the table as they poured the shot back.
“I hate vodka,” Kate said, grimacing.
“You should’ve abstained then.” Yelena’s thigh vibrated. She slid her phone out of her pocket and glanced down, hoping it was Sonya. It was not.
Status?
She typed quickly. Unchanged. She had been deeply unwilling to inform Valentina that she’d made contact with Kate Bishop, but she knew Valentina’s game. While Yelena was good enough to keep her individual movements hidden, Kate Bishop was high profile. Valentina had likely been having them watched the entire day.
Anxiety pressed down over Yelena. She hadn’t even attempted to broach the topic of work with Kate yet. The opportunity hadn’t presented itself, and, if she were being truthful, she hadn’t wanted to make the opportunity present itself.
“I didn’t think you were the type to text,” Kate remarked.
Yelena put her phone away. “I have friends, Kate.”
“I didn’t say that. I said I didn’t think you were the type to text. Especially considering every time we’ve met, instead of asking for my number, it’s been you breaking into my apartment or, you know, you trying to kill my friends.”
“Don’t be so dramatic. I was only trying to kill Barton. And letting myself into your apartment to say hi is a much cooler way to communicate than texting.” Yelena took a sip of her margarita, and then, after enjoying it so much, took another, bigger one. It burned just right. “Wow, this is really good! What did you call this? A ‘spicy marg?’”
Kate smiled at her affectionately. “Do you dance?” Then, like the dork she was, she tipped her hat. “Ma'am?”
Yelena stopped guzzling her drink to raise an eyebrow. She had been trained extensively in all of the most popular types of dance styles in the world and several of their subtypes, as had all Black Widows. But it was a sore subject. “Yes. Why?”
“How about line dancing?”
Yelena blinked. “What?”
As if on cue, the overhead lights dimmed. Whoops went up from the crowd and everyone began to sort themselves into rough lines. From speakers around the room, the twangs of country music stirred.
“Line dancing?” Yelena parroted, her words immediately swallowed up by the rising volume of music.
As soon as they had drained the last dregs of jalapeño-spiked tequila from their glasses, Kate pulled Yelena by both hands onto the dance floor. They settled among the swaying bodies, quickly finding the side to side rhythm to avoid being run over even if they weren’t dancing the steps yet.
Yelena grasped Kate’s arms. “Are you going to show me what to do, Kate Bishop?”
Kate grinned down at her. “Just follow my lead.”
It didn’t take long for Yelena to get the hang of line dancing, even though Kate wasn’t the best teacher. It was a simple set of steps. Yelena realized that some of the more advanced dancers in the crowd added complexity to the dance for fun and began to copy them. Kate, bless her, was not one of these more advanced dancers, although what she lacked in skill she made up for with enthusiasm. They danced for a while, giggling and cheering each other on, only stopping to get more drinks.
Line dancing eventually gave way to normal dancing. Yelena pressed up against Kate and let herself forget. Forget herself, forget the past, forget the mission. Forget everything except the moment, and Kate Bishop, and how gorgeous she was, and how good she felt, and how the look in her eyes made Yelena shiver all over with heavy anticipation.
Kate’s hands were on her waist. Yelena let them stay there. Her head fell back and she was looking up, up at Kate, sharing the same breathing space. Kate was panting, moving in time with the music, a smirk on her lips as she leaned closer.
A complicated knot of emotions rose suddenly in Yelena’s chest. As a Black Widow, she’d been trained in the art of seduction, but that had not been her specialty. No, thankfully, she had been the single most skilled combatant the Red Room had ever produced. Her specialty had been murder. While she was beautiful, there was nothing singular about that in the Red Room. All Black Widows were selected to be beautiful. She’d never wanted a mark before, but then again, most of her marks had been targets to assassinate. Did it not make her job getting the Bishop credentials easier to want Kate Bishop when Kate Bishop so obviously wanted her back? To at least enjoy herself in the process?
The train of thought made her stomach curdle. She stepped away. “Bathroom,” she said loudly, in Kate’s ear. “I’ll be right back.”
Instead of going to the bathroom, she went to the bar and ordered herself three more shots in rapid succession. She took them without even blinking, ignoring the bartender’s muttered, “do you just want half the handle? Jesus.” Would it be such a bad thing to use this mutual attraction to her advantage? But… her mind, always so unhelpful, supplied her with the vivid memory of her childhood home in Ohio, of the Christmas tree, of the photographs on the wall, so similar to Kate’s bedroom, of an entire pretend life.
Yelena sighed, angry at herself, and turned around. Unbidden, her eyes sought out Kate on the dance floor, and she froze.
Another woman was touching Kate’s arm. Smiling at Kate, laughing at something she was saying.
Something ugly roared to life in Yelena’s chest. Before her clouded head could conjure up further thoughts, she was moving across the dance floor. Kate saw her coming. Of course she did. They were constantly locked in each other’s orbit. They had been from the beginning.
Kate’s whole face lit up. “Yel-”
Yelena couldn’t hear the start of her name over the pounding of the music. She could only see it. It didn’t matter, not when she immediately grabbed the cowboy hat chin strap to pull Kate down and cover Kate’s mouth with her own.
Kate hesitated for only a moment before she pulled Yelena to her chest, folding both arms around Yelena and sinking into the kiss.
Yelena lost herself in Kate, in the warm press of her mouth and the hot slide of her tongue. In the strength of her fingers, grasping at Yelena’s hips as if Yelena would disappear if Kate loosened her grip for one second. Out of the corner of one cracked-open eye, Yelena watched as the woman that had been talking to Kate walked away. She grinned into the kiss, and wrapped her arms around Kate’s neck to draw her closer.
“Cheeky,” Kate murmured against her mouth. “She was just being friendly.”
Yelena didn’t deign to respond to that. Instead, she redoubled her efforts to break Kate Bishop down just as badly as Kate destroyed her simply by existing near her, sliding her whole body against Kate’s in time to the music. Kate seemed to take it as a challenge, pulling back to nip at Yelena’s lips, her throat, before moving to suck her earlobe into her mouth.
Yelena groaned, head dropping back to give Kate more access to her neck. The alcohol had finally started to work. Or, maybe, she was just drunk on Kate Bishop.
Heat built between them until Yelena couldn’t take it anymore. She was seconds away from shoving Kate’s hands down her pants right there on that very public dance floor. “Take me home, Kate,” she gasped, pushing Kate back.
Kate’s head bobbed rapidly, knocking her already askew hat off to hang only by its string. “Yeah– yeah. Yes, let’s go.”
They stumbled from the bar, unable to fully separate from each other. They exchanged their hats for their coats, and exited into the brisk New York City night.
The cool air helped slap some sense back into Yelena, but only barely. It was difficult to maintain that sense when Kate tugged her into another kiss right outside the bar, and then again only a block later against a brick alley wall, and then again right before the steps leading to her apartment door.
Kate broke the kiss. “Yelena.”
“Yeah?” Yelena said breathlessly, blinking herself back to what felt like full consciousness for the first time since she’d begun striding towards Kate and that woman at the bar.
“Is this what you want?” Kate asked, and there was something curiously somber in her tone.
Yelena stared up at Kate, searching her face. Kate was flushed. Her lips were swollen. “You’re drunk.”
Kate shook her head. “Don’t dodge my question.”
“I’m not.” Yelena could feel reality– cruel, hateful reality– seeping back in around her with Kate’s question. “I do. I do want you.”
“But…?” Kate asked, seemingly hearing the unspoken continuation.
Yelena couldn’t tell the truth. Not tonight. Probably not ever. “You’re too drunk, Kate Bishop. I want you to remember it when you touch me.” Yelena held out her hand. “Give me your phone.”
Kate huffed. “You can’t just say shit like that.” Kate reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone.
Yelena smiled. “Open it first, silly.”
“You don’t already have my passcode?”
“No, I don’t.”
“I don’t believe that, but okay.” Kate pressed her thumb to her phone screen and it opened. “Here.”
Yelena entered her burner number before she could second guess herself. “So we can properly plan our next date.”
“Date?” Kate asked hopefully.
“You have to take me out to see the rest of my spots, Kate Bishop. And, maybe, if you’re very good, we can continue what we started this evening.”
Kate stared at her. “If I’m good?”
Yelena smirked. She stretched up on her tiptoes to kiss Kate one last time. Kate cradled Yelena’s head with her hands, pressing them together in a way that was far sweeter than all of their previous kisses.
“Goodnight, Yelena. Get home safe,” Kate said when Yelena broke away.
“Sweet dreams, Kate.” Yelena gave a little wave. She watched as Kate punched in her door code and disappeared inside. Then, she went home.
Home, which was really Natasha’s home, Natasha’s apartment. Natalia, a specter that had never stopped haunting her. A sister that hadn’t been a sister. A childhood that hadn’t been a childhood. Parents that hadn’t been parents. Her entire life had been a lie, and then stolen from her. Just when she’d gotten something real, it had been taken from her again.
Now, a friend that might have been a friend was a mission parameter. A lover that might have been a lover was a mark. But did she have a choice? Had she ever once in her life had a choice? What good would it do her to deny herself this little moment of happiness, of joy, of pleasure, even if it had an ulterior motive, when surely she was never going to have any other option? She was as trapped now as she had ever been.
Another drink, this time whiskey. An entire bottle, gone. Why not more? It helped fill the void. Her reflection stared back at her from the broken bathroom mirror. Red eyes. Yellow skin. Bruised flesh.
So Yelena made her choice.
She was going to seduce Kate Bishop.