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In spite of everything, Christmas was actually amazing.
Of course Christmas had been amazing. Kate was still in awe, more or less, about how exactly her life had changed over the last week and a half. She was now the kind of person who could go up to someone when they said never meet your heroes, and say no, you’re wrong, you should meet them because sometimes your hero ends up being more awesome than you could ever imagine. She had spent most of Christmas Day trying to not openly freak out and to keep most of her excited silent squeals and fist pumps behind Clint’s back. What he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt their best friendship.
It was when Christmas was over that things got slightly less awesome.
To Clint’s credit, he seemed to know exactly what she was thinking. He’d offered multiple times for her to stay - the guest bed was really comfortable, and Lucky only snored a little - until she knew what she was going to do about ‘everything’. ‘Everything’ seemed like a really small word to describe the whole fiasco with what she’d discovered her mom was up to, and the fact she was going to need to go back home and make a lot of decisions, do a lot of very grown up things. ‘Everything’ didn’t cover anything at all.
She knew she couldn’t stay, not really. Kate was many things, but she wasn’t someone who avoided problems. Actually, she’d been told multiple times by multiple people that she could possibly stand to be slightly more of a person who avoided problems instead of wading into every single thing she could stick her nose into. There was too much to do and too many problems to solve. She would have to go back to college soon enough, and she needed things to be just slightly more under control than they were before she left town.
That wasn’t to say she didn’t like the idea that she could call on Clint if she needed him. She very much liked the idea that she could call on Clint if she needed him. She’d even added “AA” to the start of his name in her phone so he was the top of the contacts list when she opened it up, just to make sure the process would always be as fast as it could be.
They agreed that Lucky would stay with Clint. Technically, as far as Kate was concerned, Lucky was under a shared custody arrangement between the two of them. But he had taken to the farm right away, and but for lack of easily accessible pizza, Kate could admit it was probably a better place for him than the middle of New York City. Still, when the time came for her to leave, she was a little torn as to whether she was more upset about saying goodbye to him or to Clint. Maybe it was even. (Then again, she had no secret fears that Lucky would dodge her calls the second she was out of sight, and she wasn’t nearly that sure about Clint… so maybe she would keep Lucky as her number one after all.)
When she got back to New York, it was snowing, that horrible, light sort of snow that wouldn’t come to anything but make everyone feel more cold than they needed to be. And the moment she stepped out of the subway, she realised something that made her feel even colder: she was immediately lonely.
She should have seen that coming, she supposed, as she made her way home. Not to her burned out apartment, but her childhood home, her mom’s home. Technically, she guessed, Jack’s home, though Jack didn’t seem to be there.
Kate had to admit she felt guilty when she thought about Jack. Technically, she supposed, if she was being incredibly honest about it, Jack going to jail was arguably partially her fault. Not entirely, she reasoned, because really it was her mom who knew that he was completely innocent and framed him then sent him to prison, but there was a distinct possibility that that would not have happened if Kate hadn’t told her her suspicions in the first place. Which, again, technically, made it technically Kate’s technical fault. She’d been so incredibly certain that he was a bad guy. And then when she looked back, and again, if she was being incredibly honest, it looked like he was actually just a nice guy who had tried to get to know her and she had reacted like a bit of an asshole.
She’d called him on Christmas Day. Just to say hey. He had sounded genuinely thrilled to hear from her, and said that he had several gifts for her when she was back in town. It hadn’t made her feel any less bad about her part in everything, hearing him even now sincerely wanting to be nice to her. He’d told her about how he had learned everything about LARPing, and was intending on joining the guild. He was so sweetly enthusiastic that Kate wasn’t sure how on earth she’d ever thought he was anything other than possibly the biggest dork that she had ever met. She’d promised that once she was back, they could go out for dinner together. She wasn’t sure what exactly they were to each other; she assumed that he and her mother were officially off. But she wasn’t the sort of person so flush with companionship these days that she would turn him away.
For some reason, she was still surprised that he wasn’t at the house. It didn’t look like he had moved out; his swords were still everywhere. She wondered if he had just felt awkward by himself in the house that was very much the Bishops’. Standing there in the empty, cavernous hall, she felt awkward herself, and she had lived there most of her life.
It was unnervingly, absolutely silent. Kate stomped her feet as she made her way up to her bedroom just to break up the quiet.
She lay on her bed, and lasted approximately two minutes before her cellphone hand began to itch.
She couldn’t call Clint. She had enough self-awareness to know that she needed to wait at least a few hours before she let her neediness shine. He’d been fairly tolerant of her phone call habit so far, but she didn’t want to test it, especially when her needs were less ‘we’ve got to fight bad guys and save some lives’ and more ‘I’m bored’. After a few minutes, she remembered she did technically have friends from college, even if none of them were in the city. She sent a couple of texts asking what they’d been up to the last week, and saying that her life had been ‘CRA-ZY’. She wondered if it was possible to google what the socially acceptable length of time was between giving your friends a leading statement like that and sending a second text telling them all about how you were basically an Avenger now.
After a few more minutes she tried googling exactly that, but got no helpful answers.
Idly, she flipped through her phone contacts. She could call the LARPers, she supposed, but she wasn’t sure whether any of them would really be up for hanging out. She also didn’t know the etiquette for that either: would she need to hang out with them as a collective group? At what point could she awkwardly start to peel off ones that she was feeling more of a vibe with, and hang with them one on one? Was she going to come across as a massive weirdo if she asked them to hang? Would she need to wear a costume? There were too many questions. She would have to play that much more cool, maybe go along and watch one of their… whatever their things were called. Tournaments? Gatherings? Anyway, she was definitely going to do that if Jack was going to participate. That was a better start than cold calling.
And then, she looked at her recent texts, and realised exactly who she wanted to call.
Yelena.
Clint had told her what had happened with Yelena in the end. He’d been reasonably light on the details, which, honestly, Kate was really starting to get used to from him. It had sounded incredibly tough. He’d actually been genuinely emotional when he’d talked about it, and Kate had sat there silently, not sure of what to say. She’d found it hard to get her head around, at first, everything to do with Natasha. She’d spent so long knowing these people as distant superheroes. Watching Clint talk about her, knowing that she had been a real person that he’d really loved, it was a tough concept to truly accept, in a lot of ways. Natasha still didn’t quite feel real to her. Seeing Yelena talk about her, too, had been the same strange feeling. She was glad, obviously, that Yelena hadn’t killed him, and she was glad the two of them had talked. In her expert opinion, Clint was terrible at talking about his feelings and needed to do it much more.
Plus, she just really liked Yelena, annoying as that was. She might have been the coolest person that Kate had ever met, and that was including both Clint and Lucky.
The problem was that Yelena had used a blocked number. Kate didn’t consider herself a complete expert when it came to such things, but even she was pretty sure that a blocked number wouldn’t be getting her ‘are you up?’ text in return.
Which just meant she had to get a little creative. And lucky for Yelena, Kate was a very creative person. Smiling to herself, pleased with her plan, she made her way to her mother’s study and cracked out her laptop. Her own account was still frozen out, she assumed, but she had a feeling she’d be able to guess her mother’s password. She was fairly certain every adult around her mother’s age used something predictable for their password, even ones who ran a security company.
She was almost disappointed in her mother when she guessed it on her third try. Kate’s name and birthday. For a moment, she felt a little tug in her chest. For everything her mother had done wrong, she knew that she did love her.
As soon as she was in, Kate felt like her mind was going to explode. She’d had plenty of access to most things, but her mother had access to more. She wandered through programs that she’d never seen before until she came across one that gave her real pause. Facial recognition software.
It wasn’t the time to stop to consider the moral repercussions of facial recognition technology when she was just trying to find someone to hang out with for the night. She tucked that little pending ethical crisis away for later. Next problem: she didn’t have a photo of Yelena.
But the Christmas party would have had security footage.
This was going to take longer than she’d expected. She grinned, pleased, and went downstairs to make herself a bowl of popcorn. Sleuthing required snacks. That was a basic tenet of super heroism, she was pretty sure. She returned back upstairs with a bowl full of empty calories, sat at the computer, and got to work.
It didn’t actually take long to extract a usable screen capture from the security footage of the party. In fact, it took her longer to try and work out how exactly Yelena had done her braid than it did to get the screen cap in the first place. Then it was just a matter of uploading it to the facial recognition software, and letting it do its work.
Less than two minutes later, she had an address for what looked like the place Yelena was staying. It was a fairly nice place that was actually only a couple of stops uptown from where Kate was. She wasn’t sure if she was more excited about the idea of actual human companionship or about turning up and proving to Yelena that she wasn’t the only one who could track people down, but either way, she was definitely grinning as she put the popcorn aside and went back into her bedroom to get dressed.
It was still snowing when she left the house, and she was glad for her leather gloves and oversized coat. She felt surprisingly light and buoyant, given everything going on in her life. She could deal with the messes tomorrow. Tonight she just wanted to see another person.
She spent the majority of the subway ride trying to think of an appropriately cool opening line to lead with. And then the majority of the walk from the subway stop to the house trying to calm her head down from panicking about what the hell she was doing. Sure, Yelena had spared Clint’s life, but that didn’t mean that Kate hadn’t been right in the first place about her being a bloodthirsty killer. She absolutely was a bloodthirsty killer, there was no doubt about it. Just because she was a particularly cool one didn’t make her any less of a bloodthirsty killer, and bloodthirsty killers probably weren’t the type of person she should have been hanging out with no matter how lonely she was feeling at home. Bloodthirsty killers, in fact, were the sort of people that she should have made it a habit of avoiding. That sounded like an altogether safer rule of thumb. Actually, if her mom had followed that rule, then she wouldn’t ever have got mixed up in the mob in the first place, and then none of this would have been happening. But then again, if her mom had followed that rule, and never got involved in the mob, then nobody would ever have hired Yelena to go after Clint, and so Kate would never have developed the bloodthirsty killer rule in the first place.
She stood on Yelena’s doorstep and before she could knock, the door swung inward.
Yelena stood there, and to her credit - or Kate’s credit, she thought, more accurately, actually looked confused. “Kate Bishop.”
“So I thought I’d take you up on that drink we talked about,” Kate blurted out, which was none of the seven or eight much cooler sounding opening lines that she’d thought of on the way over.
Without saying anything for a few moments, Yelena just stared at her, before finally giving a small shrug. “Okay, yeah.”
“Okay, yeah, you’ll come out for a drink with me?”
“I’m not doing anything else tonight,” Yelena said in her heavy, accented drawl. “And I want to know how you found me. So we might as well drink while you tell me.”
“Cool,” Kate replied, immediately struggling not to internally cringe about how stupid she sounded. She had no idea why it felt so important for Yelena to think she was at least a little cool, or interesting, or even vaguely competent as a human person. She stood there, awkwardly, while Yelena picked up a coat from just inside the front door. She wasn’t sure why she was surprised that they weren’t going to just hang out at her house. Or not her house, because there way no way she owned it, but the place she was staying. Maybe a weirdly expensive looking Airbnb. Yelena’s expression didn’t change as she came outside and walked down the front steps, only glancing at Kate after a moment. Kate immediately got the hint that she was to start walking with her.
They fell into step, and although the silence was actually comfortable, Kate found herself trying to fill it. “It’s kind of a cool story, how I found you. You see, my mom, she runs this security company-“
“I know what Eleanor Bishop does.”
“Right.” Kate mentally smacked herself in the face. “I mean - of course you do. You’ve made it pretty clear you know everything about us. Anyway, so I hacked into their software, Mr Robot style-“
“Who is that?”
Kate paused. “Who’s what?”
Yelena glanced at her. “Mr Robot. Who is that. You said that like I would know what you are talking about.”
“Oh, it’s… just this TV show from a few years back, it… it doesn’t really matter. Anyway. I hacked into their software, found a photo of you from the Christmas party, your hair looked awesome by the way, uploaded it into facial recognition, and bam.” She pointed to a couple of vantage points on the street, two traffic cameras and a private camera that a house across the street had trained on their front doorstep. “All it was from there was a simple matter of triangulation.”
There was a long silence where Yelena looked at Kate, and Kate unconsciously held herself a little taller. She felt like she was being assessed and judged. She wasn’t sure why it felt quite so important that she passed the test. But eventually Yelena looked ahead of them again. “That’s good work. Impressive.”
“Thanks!” Kate said, immediately realising that she’d sounded too enthusiastic, and trying to dampen down her enthusiasm. She’d been told in the past that it was annoying and off-putting. In fact, when she thought about it, even from her friends over the years she’d endured more than her share of constructive criticism about her personality. She tried not to glance over at Yelena, and failed.
There was just something so effortless about Yelena that Kate, in a million years, couldn’t imagine achieving. She moved through the world with absolute confidence. It wasn’t as if Kate considered herself a person who particularly lacked any kind of confidence, but hers was different. With Yelena it just seemed that she was confident because she knew exactly what she was doing, at all times.
“Hey,” Kate tried, after a while, as they walked. “It was cool of you. To not kill Clint, I mean.”
The look that Yelena gave her then said very clearly that Kate herself wasn’t being particularly cool right now. “I do not think your mother would agree.”
“Right,” Kate agreed. “But… I don’t know how caught up you are. My mom’s kinda in prison now. It was a whole big thing. I mean - you know, you were the one who sent me that video.”
“I know,” Yelena said. There was a pause, as if she was trying to decide how much additional information she gave away. “My employer was the one who called off the hit. Your mother does not have access to any money, she won’t be able to pay.”
For some reason, Kate was struck with an inexplicable urge to ask how much, exactly, her mother had paid to have Clint killed. That part of the whole story was still extremely vague to her. She didn’t understand the motivation, not really. The idea that it would have just been to stop Kate from getting too close to what she was doing seemed flimsy at best, and at worse, made her think that there was something much bigger that her mom still hadn’t been found out for.
It wasn’t a nice feeling.
Yelena continued, “I would not have killed him.” Her voice was oddly quiet, and came across almost… vulnerable. Kate was more than a little surprised. “No, I would not have killed him in the end.”
“Because of Natasha,” Kate supplied.
There was a small micro-second where Yelena actually looked like she flinched, and Kate automatically felt guilty. She knew what it was like to lose a part of your family. It would never heal. She would have reacted the same way if someone had casually mentioned her dad, and for a moment she too was a little lost to melancholy.
“He loved her too,” Yelena said after a moment.
It was true, of course it was true. Kate hadn’t even needed to get to know Clint to know that he loved Natasha. When she was growing up and watching the Avengers, she’d for a while thought that they were married, or at the very least dating. They had always seemed to be paired off, the two without any actual superpowers. During her early teenage crush-on-Hawkeye phase, she’d briefly tried styling her hair like Natasha. Somehow she didn’t want to admit that to Yelena. She had a feeling it wouldn’t exactly endear her.
For a few minutes they walked in silence, though it felt like it was burning something on Kate’s tongue. There was a more pressing issue, though: the wind was whipping through the tall buildings around them, and she was absolutely freezing cold. She glanced at Yelena, who had bare hands, a light jacket, and didn’t look even half as cold as Kate was. “Aren’t you freezing?”
“I’m Russian,” Yelena said, tone dripping with judgment. “This is spring weather.”
“Spring weather. Right.” Kate shook her head.
“Besides,” Yelena continued. “We’re here.” She gestured to a small, brightly lit diner on the corner.
It was gaudy and 1950s Americana themed; neon lights proclaimed that it was open twenty-four hours and served beer. Kate had never seen it before, though it was technically still her neighbourhood. Ever since the blip, odd small businesses were popping up like this. There were also a lot of places that preyed on people’s need for nostalgia these days; people seemed to be longing for a simpler time. She wasn’t really sure what to think. It didn’t really seem like Yelena’s style.
“Look at this place,” Yelena said, her tone bright and happy. Kate glanced over at her, raising an eyebrow. Yelena grinned back at her. “A neon diner? In the middle of houses? It makes no sense. I love it.”
“I mean, it definitely makes no sense, I’ll give you that,” Kate muttered as Yelena walked inside and she followed. Yelena didn’t hold the door for her and it almost hit her in the nose as it closed.
An overly enthusiastic waitress showed them to a booth and Yelena’s oddly cheerful change of mood continued as she opened the menu. “Are you hungry? I’m so hungry. I haven’t eaten since lunch. Look at all of this. Do you like burgers?”
It felt as odd as the strange meal they’d shared at Kate’s apartment, though she knew that logically it really shouldn’t have. Yelena hadn’t killed Clint and, if Kate was being honest, she’d done her a big favour letting her know what her mother was up to. She should have been grateful to her. She was, actually. She couldn’t quite put her finger on why it still felt strange. “Of course I like burgers, they’re awesome,” she said in reply, opening her own menu.
The waitress - dressed in a hoop skirt, sweater and kitten heels - took their orders, and Yelena sat back in the booth to look at Kate. Actually, ‘look at’ wasn’t quite the right term. Stared. She stared at Kate.
It went on so long that Kate started to feel a little paranoid. “Have I got something on my face?”
Yelena laughed. “No, I was just thinking…” She paused. “This is nice. I’m glad you found me.”
Whatever Kate was expecting, she wasn’t expecting sincerity like that. “I wasn’t sure if you’d be alone. Or even still here. I mean, I don’t know what your… killing people schedule is like.”
The mirth disappeared from Yelena’s face, but her gaze never left Kate’s. “You shouldn’t ask about that.”
“Shouldn’t ask, got it,” Kate said, before immediately deciding to ask about it. “But I mean, you know you don’t have to… do that, right?” Remembering they were in public, she dropped her voice to a whisper. “Kill people, I mean.” She gave Yelena a slightly pleading look. “I mean, there are other jobs. You seem like you’d be awesome at anything.”
“Thank you.”
“I mean, I think I’m pretty much in charge of my mom’s company now, I don’t know how that works. But I’m sure I could get you a job.”
At that, the amused look was back. “You’re offering me a job?”
“Not offering so much as…” Kate paused. “Yeah, I mean… okay, yeah. Offering you a job.”
“I haven’t decided what I’m going to do.” Yelena glanced away again.
It reminded Kate, more than anything, of Clint’s story about meeting Natasha. That he’d seen that she wanted out, and so he hadn’t taken the shot. She’d had the same feeling on the roof, when Yelena had shook her head at her, and she was getting the same feeling again now. It made her feel instantly and oddly protective. “Hey,” she said, quickly. “You really don’t have to keep doing that if you don’t want to. I can help you.”
“You? Help me?” Yelena’s tone had a slight edge to it, but they were interrupted by the waitress dropping their beers off.
Kate thanked her, and turned her attention back to Yelena. “Yeah, I mean…” She trailed off, because Yelena - even if she hadn’t explicitly stated it - had a good point. Of the two of them, it did seem like a bit of a stretch that Kate would be the one helping her. She took a deep breath. Honesty was the best policy. “There was a story that Clint told me about Natasha.”
Something shuttered across Yelena’s face, an openness closing. Kate got that. She knew a good defense mechanism when she saw one.
As Yelena took a long drink while her eyes never left Kate’s, Kate continued. “He said that the first time he saw her, he could see she wanted out. And so he didn’t kill her. He helped her.” She paused. “I want to do the same for you.” She realised just how that sounded, like delusions of grandeur, and quickly added, “Not that I think I’m Clint. Or you’re Natasha. I mean, firstly, I wish, except I’d be much better at all the things he sucks at, and secondly, I just like you for you.” She was rambling; she could hear it. “I’m just saying, if you want out, I’ll do anything I can to help.”
Something in that speech seemed to have struck Yelena because she nodded, cool and calm, glancing away for a moment as she drank her beer.
Nervously, Kate took a sip of her own. She’d come across a little strong. That was something she’d been told she did, too.
“I didn’t always do this,” Yelena said, eventually, and put her beer down to look back at Kate.
Kate looked back at her. “What did you do?”
“Not this.”
Well, that didn’t exactly give her much information, but she nodded. “What changed?”
Yelena took a long drink of her beer, never breaking eye contact. “I lost five years of my life.”
Unable to help herself, Kate drew a sharp breath. She’d been one of the ones left behind. She’d seen a lot of arguments online about whether it was harder to be dusted or to stay and she wasn’t entirely sure where she fell on that. She’d been lucky in that her mother had stayed, too. But a few of her friends had gone, and when they’d come back, they’d been fifteen still, in a completely different part of their lives to Kate, who was in a very empty college, trying to get on with her life as best she could. None of those friendships had survived, and she still felt guilty about it. The blip had changed everything, for everybody, whether they stayed or not. “I’m sorry,” she said, feeling hopelessly inadequate.
“And when I came back my sister was dead.”
Of course. Kate hadn’t thought about the timing, but Yelena’s plain statement of fact felt like a knife was being twisted in her gut. She had no real concept of just how disorienting the blip was for people who were dusted; she honestly couldn’t imagine blinking and the world having moved on by five years. And she definitely couldn’t imagine just how much worse it would be if you came back and your family had actually died. There would be no closure, no proper way to mourn. For once in her life, she had absolutely no idea what to say.
“There aren’t a lot of options for people like me,” Yelena said, flat.
Immediately Kate frowned, feeling oddly protective. “That’s not true, look at you. You’re amazing. You are definitely the coolest person I’ve ever met in my life, and I’m including Clint, so you may not know this, but me saying that is kinda a big deal.”
Something amused passed over Yelena’s face again. “You think he’s cool.”
“Yeah.” Kate paused, before adding, “I mean, in a really dorky kind of way, yeah. He’s cool. Did you like his new costume?”
Yelena gave her a look that needed no translation.
Kate was about to launch into an explanation of why, exactly, it was such a big deal that Clint had the new costume, and how it matched Kate’s, and how she was singlehandedly taking care of his branding problem but from the look on Yelena’s face, it wasn’t going to be the most welcome or understood speech and so instead, Kate just nodded. “Okay. Costumes not your thing. Got it.” She grinned, suddenly, bright. “Hey, look! I’m getting to know you.”
“Why’s it so important to you that you get to know me?”
There were a million things that Kate could have answered, then, and she felt her mind flicking over them all in a row before she settled on the sincere response. “I just thought you could use a friend. And I like you.”
Yelena seemed to accept that, nodding and reaching to clink her beer against Kate’s.
Kate grinned at her, and eventually, Yelena smiled back.
Progress.
-
The weather hadn’t got any warmer by the time they left the diner. Yelena had paid while Kate had stood there awkwardly, because she had genuinely forgotten that her mom had frozen her credit cards and was very unlikely to have taken the time to unfreeze them before going to jail. That was something to add to the list of problems for the morning. Kate tightened her coat as they got outside, hurriedly putting her gloves back on.
“You should not be so cold, Kate Bishop,” Yelena admonished her, looking over at her hands as they walked. “You grew up here.”
“Yeah, but I grew up in a house that has heating,” Kate replied, flipping her collar up to try and warm her neck at least a little. “You must have had heating in Russia.”
“I grew up in a facility that turned little girls into trained assassins,” Yelena said, and Kate winced. Though there was something just matter of fact about Yelena’s tone when she talked about it, as if she wasn’t bitter or sad about her past, just accepting. She glanced over at Kate. “But yes. We had heating.”
Startled, Kate laughed, and Yelena looked pleased with herself.
She really did like her, and she couldn’t quite believe how much. It wasn’t as if Kate was particularly bad at getting to know new people. She was actually great at it; she counted that among her many talents. But it wasn’t often that you got to know a new person who you had originally met because your mother had paid them to kill your best friend slash partner slash mentor.
God, Kate’s life had changed in a couple of weeks.
“What will you do?” Yelena asked, as they walked. “Now your mother is in prison.”
“I mean, I am an adult, I can fend for myself,” Kate said, a little defensively.
Yelena glanced at her. “I just had to pay for your dinner.”
“Well if I had my cards I would have paid for yours,” Kate retorted. “I thought of that more as a getting-to-know-me gift from you.”
“A gift because your mother cut off your credit cards.”
Kate paused, at that. “Yeah, technically.”
Yelena laughed. There was something about her laugh that didn’t make Kate feel insecure, though she was clearly laughing at her rather than with her. Instead, there was something about it just made her want to make Yelena laugh again. They walked in silence for half a block, before Kate broke it. “I mean, how are you so cool? The things that have happened to you… I don’t think many people would be as cool as you are about everything.”
“The things that happened to me,” Yelena repeated, as if testing the phrase out. “You mean my childhood. Being a Widow.”
Kate wasn’t intending on putting so fine a point on it, but she nodded. “Yeah.”
“We have a saying in Russia. Life is not a bed of roses.” Yelena shrugged, looking over at her. “Everyone has their stuff, Kate Bishop. That’s just mine.”
It was true, but some people had more stuff than others, she thought. “I’m just saying, if you ever want to talk about it.”
Yelena laughed again. “You are my therapist now?”
“Maybe your friend?”
There was a pause, there, and when Kate looked over, Yelena was actually smiling as she looked ahead. “Yeah. Maybe.”
That was good enough for Kate, and she grinned.
-
When they got back to Yelena’s Airbnb, Kate was surprised to be invited in and stood awkwardly in the front hall, looking around. It was a nice place, reasonably big by New York standards. High ceilings and a staircase directly in front of them that she assumed led up to the bedrooms.
“Don’t stand there being weird,” Yelena said, shrugging her jacket off and walking though to the living room. “Take your coat off. I’ll get us a drink.”
“I’m not being weird,” Kate said, under her breath, “it’s just that this is a very weird night.”
Yelena leaned back into the hall. “I heard that.”
“Sorry.” Kate hung her coat up, took her boots off, and followed Yelena through, right into the kitchen.
Yelena then took a bottle of vodka out of the freezer and poured them each a glass, holding hers up to clink Kate’s.
“Aren’t we meant to actually say a toast?” Kate asked. “To new friendships, or something like that.”
“You don’t have to say a toast,” Yelena said. “Sometimes you can just drink.”
“Yeah, but this feels like a toast occasion.” Kate paused. “To… finding out that the bloodthirsty assassin chasing after your best friend is actually kind of cool.” She held her drink up again, and after a moment - and not without a roll of her eyes, Yelena tapped her glass against it. Kate grinned at the win, and took a sip that felt like it was going to burn the lining of her mouth, throat, and probably stomach. She tried to not cough or choke and keep it very cool, and by the way Yelena rolled her eyes again, she had a feeling she had decidedly not done a great job. Vodka was not her drink.
“So, you did not answer me when I asked before.” Yelena watched Kate, leaning back against the bench, her glass in her hand. “What happens next? Are you an Avenger now?”
There was an inflection on the word Avenger that sounded almost mocking, and it reminded Kate of the dinner at her apartment again. It felt like a minefield that she was about to try and tiptoe through. “I don’t… think so?” she said, unintentionally ending it like a question. “I mean… no. I’m not a superhero, I’m not… like Clint. I’m just going to try and help out when I can.” She paused, her glass almost at her lips, because it suddenly occurred to her that she actually didn’t know the answer to the question of what happened next, and for all a great job she’d been doing of mentally putting things on a list to be dealt with by future Kate, they were starting to add up. She took another sip. It didn’t go down any more smoothly, though Yelena was drinking it just fine. She held it up. “Is there a trick to this, or…?”
“Always so funny,” Yelena said, tilting her head and watching her. Again, Kate was struck by the distinct sensation that she was being assessed. “Do you have a boyfriend?”
“Wow,” Kate said, automatically, her eyes a little wide. “You are direct.”
Yelena shrugged and took another sip of her vodka. “It is not an offensive question. I never found any information about who you were dating.”
Kate wasn’t sure why the question felt so awkward, or why she felt like her cheeks were a little hot. “Uh, no, no boyfriend,” she said, finally. “Or girlfriend. No, uh… I mean, you know, I’ve been busy. There’s school, and then the whole thing with mom, and I mean, I’m on a lot of teams so my spare time is pretty much… not spare, you know?” There was a smirk on Yelena’s face, and Kate stopped herself with a small laugh. “I could have just said no.”
“Yes, but that was much more funny.” Yelena smiled at her. “I like you. Truly, I’m glad you came here tonight.”
Kate couldn’t help but smile back at her, a little touched by the sincerity, an odd feeling in her gut. She was glad as well. It may have started out as something that ended up being a cross between desperation for company and light espionage, but now it felt like something else. “You know,” she said, after a few moments, “If you wanted to stick around New York, I think… that would be pretty cool.”
Yelena laughed. “You want me to stay in New York? What will I do? Work for Bishop Security?”
“I didn’t mean…” Kate trailed off, because she wasn’t actually sure what she meant. “I just meant I like hanging out with you too, and I don’t want you to… not that I’m telling you what to do, obviously you’re a grown woman, you can do whatever you want and you don’t need permission from me. I just thought-“
“You talk so much,” Yelena said, though she was smiling and it softened her words a little.
“Yeah, I… I’ve been told.” Kate swallowed, hard, and made an effort not to add anything else to that sentence.
After a moment, Yelena put her glass down, and walked around the bench until she was beside Kate, glancing up at her. Kate wasn’t particularly sure what was happening, but Yelena reached for the glass in her hand too, and set it down. She was watching Kate carefully, apparently looking for something, and Kate felt increasingly awkward. Yelena was standing awfully close. For a moment she wondered, admittedly irrationally, if Yelena was looking for some kind of weak spot, maybe a pulsing vein, just in case she later had to kill her. After all, Kate had no idea how the assassin-for-hire business worked. Did it mean that she had to always keep an eye out for the person she thought would be her next target? And in that case, why would she be assuming it was Kate? Or was it incredibly obvious it was Kate? Her mother had hired her before, and Kate was the one to put her in prison. Could her mom really be hell bent enough on vengeance to re-hire Yelena to come after Kate instead? And if so, that meant that Kate had signed her own death warrant coming here tonight, just because she was feeling a little down and lonely.
“And you think so much,” Yelena added.
Kate was about to ask where on earth she got that idea, when Yelena reached up, cupped her hand on the side of Kate’s jaw, and kissed her.
Whoa. Wow. Kate felt something explode in her head, and it took her a moment to realise she was doing that incredibly amateur move of kissing someone with her eyes open. She closed them and kissed her back, trying to shut her brain off from thinking altogether.
It wasn’t particularly possible to completely shut it off, because she could not believe what was happening. She was kissing Yelena. Who a week ago she was just learning about, by way of her trying to kill her and Clint. Who two weeks ago she had no idea existed. And whose lips were surprisingly soft, for all the hardness of the rest of her body.
Maybe she wasn’t trying to kill her after all. In fact, when Kate thought about it, really thought back to the conversations they’d had that night… maybe she really had just been trying to get to know her. She reached a hand out to settle on Yelena’s hip, if only because she really had no actual idea of where to put it.
They parted, just a little, and Kate opened her eyes again. When she spoke, she dropped her voice to a whisper. “What was that?”
“I thought I could stop you from thinking,” Yelena replied, altogether too matter of fact for someone who was talking about the fact they’d just kissed. Especially given that kiss had, Kate was fairly sure, been up there at the top of a theoretical ‘best kisses Kate Bishop has ever experienced’ list.
“I mean, mission accomplished,” Kate replied, before realising that sounded horribly dorky, and trying instead to grin. “Sorry. I mean. It’s just. Wow. I didn’t see that coming.”
Yelena frowned, tilting her head and stepping back, just half a step. Kate reached her hand back toward her hip, a little surprised. “But you asked me for a drink.”
“Yeah, I mean… I did,” Kate agreed. “But I didn’t mean it - not that I don’t! - I mean - I didn’t really think. I mean, you want to?”
Yelena just stared at her.
“Right,” Kate said. “Of course you want to. You were just the one who kissed me, not the other way around, so there’s no reason why I should even be. I mean.”
“Are you going to stop talking and kiss me again?”
That was about a clear a cue as Kate could imagine and she nodded, obedient, stepping back toward her. This time she was the one to reach up and cup Yelena’s neck, bowing her head to kiss her. She remembered to close her eyes this time.
The kiss was sweet, surprisingly so, and she gently pushed her tongue forward, parting Yelena’s lips slightly and meeting her there. She hadn’t been lying, in all her rambling; it had been a while since she’d kissed someone, and definitely much longer since she’d dated someone. College was fun for a few experiments with friends, but she hadn’t done anything more serious. Not that this was serious, though god, the kissing was nice.
She really was trying to not let her mind run away on her, though. She let her thumb stroke across the skin of Yelena’s neck, gently brushing over where her hair began. It was down and loose, falling over the back of Kate’s hand, and she liked the sensation. Yelena’s hands moved to her hips and brought her in closer, their bodies suddenly pressed close together as they kissed. Yelena moved a hand up to the back of Kate’s neck and they paused, resting their foreheads together, Kate having to fight to keep a huge grin from splitting her face.
“You’re good at this,” Yelena said in the same matter-of-fact tone she reported everything else she knew about Kate.
Kate couldn’t stop the grin, at that. “I mean, I have kissed people before.”
“You’re meant to say I’m good at this too.”
“You are!” Kate almost jumped back a little, wide-eyed. “You’re great at this! I mean, on a scale of first kisses I’ve ever had -“ she paused, as she took in the smirk playing across Yelena’s face. “Oh, you’re making fun of me. Okay, sure. Never mind.” But then she couldn’t help herself and she leaned in to kiss her again, bringing her hand back to caress over Yelena’s jaw, her fingers greedy for the contact.
This really wasn’t where she’d imagined the night going.
Part of her wanted to ask a million questions. She wanted to know how many times Yelena had done this before, whether she’d been with a girl before; she realised she had absolutely no idea what Yelena’s sexuality would be given that she’d spent a sum total of no more than two hours in her company before and that was including when they’d been fighting each other. Actually, really, if she was listing out things she knew about Yelena versus things she didn’t know about Yelena, the list was alarmingly slanted toward the latter. Almost as badly slanted as the list of things Kate knew about Yelena versus things Yelena knew about Kate.
But then Yelena’s hand was moving under her shirt and settling on the skin of her waist and all of Kate’s thoughts cut off, focused instead on the heat of her touch. Her fingertips were weirdly delicate given that she had hands that had literally killed people. (Though, Kate realised, the same could be said about her after the last week. File that under things she would delegate to future Kate to cope with. Future Kate and an expensive therapist.)
“Should we…” Kate started, a little muffled against Yelena’s lips, because she wasn’t particularly willing to move away even an inch, “I mean, do you want to move this…”
There was no way to finish that without sounding like a total predator weirdo, she realised. She had a feeling that Yelena realised it too, as she stopped kissing her for a moment and looked at her. “What?”
Though Kate was at least eighty percent sure Yelena was making fun of her, and wasn’t actually genuinely confused about what he was asking, she bit her lip a little. “I just thought maybe we could go sit. While we do this. Not that this isn’t great. It is. Just.”
“You want to go somewhere more comfortable,” Yelena supplied with a grin.
“It sounded better in my head.”
“Come.” Yelena took her hand, and Kate felt a flutter in her stomach that was definitely not unpleasant. Yelena led her through to the living room and onto the couch. It was white with a strawberry coloured throw over it, and it struck her as kind of impractical for a rental. But she wasn’t thinking about that for long because as she sat, Yelena shifted over to kiss her, gently pushing Kate down until her head was on the armrest. Kate was semi-awkwardly positioned in a twist with her feet still on the floor but she brought both hands up to cup Yelena’s jaw again, holding her there. Yelena’s hand moved under Kate’s shirt again, just resting there.
Kate was about to say something when they parted slightly again, but Yelena’s hair was tumbling down over her face and for a moment she forgot how to speak as she gently tucked it back behind an ear, staring at her. She couldn’t believe this was happening. She actually couldn’t really believe that Yelena was even interested in being her friend, let alone something like this.
“You’re staring at me,” Yelena said.
Kate blinked. “Well, you’re beautiful,” she answered before she could catch herself.
That earned her a very broad grin from Yelena, and Kate braced herself for the tease. After a few moments, though, she realised that it was actually just sincere: she was just taking the compliment. Kate smiled as well, a little more tender, stroking her hand over Yelena’s cheek. She wondered who the last person was to call her beautiful. She had a feeling it may have been a while.
“You’re not so bad yourself, Kate Bishop,” Yelena said, and ran her thumb over Kate’s lower lip before she sat up, pulling her shirt off and discarding it over the back of the couch.
This time, Kate couldn’t help herself. “Oh, wow.” It wasn’t like she hadn’t realised that Yelena was in shape, but she was amazing looking under her clothes. Her arm muscles were beautifully defined, gorgeous curves of biceps and triceps. Her stomach was smooth, and for some reason, Kate was surprised to see the lace on the top of the cups of her light blue bra. She reached up, not quite hesitant but ready for her hand to be smacked away, to run her fingers over the delicate material.
“You like it?” Yelena asked, glancing down and grinning. “I went shopping yesterday. I love American stores.”
“I like it,” Kate agreed, letting her hand trace down Yelena’s front before curving around to the small of her back, tugging at her a little, so she would come down and meet her in another kiss. This time, Yelena melted down against her, resting more of her weight on Kate. There was something comforting about it, the feel of another person right there, entwined with her, continuing to kiss her. All her earlier thoughts about her loneliness were gone. Actually, more or less all of her earlier thoughts were gone, period.
Kate ran her hand up Yelena’s back, smoothing over her skin, inching under her bra clasp and working at it with two fingers.
“Hey!” Yelena exclaimed, sitting up, though Kate was fairly sure the exclamation was mock-outrage, as opposed to real, still-might-low-key-try-to-kill-you-later outrage. “That is not fair. I am not getting naked while you are still fully dressed.”
“Oh my god,” Kate said, quickly, more than a little mortified. “I’m so sorry. I just thought - I mean, we were in the moment, and so I thought-“
“Wait, you think I am offended?” Yelena laughed, and this time she threw her head back as she did so, the laughter rippling right through her body. Kate just watched her, resisting the urge to reach out and stroke her throat. “Oh, you really are so funny. I have no problem with my body. I want to see yours.” She gestured down at Kate with one hand.
Well, Kate realised, she did have a point. She quickly sat up, nodding. “Yeah, of course, sure.” She reached for the bottom of her shirt, peeling it off. She wasn’t particularly self-conscious about her body, either: she didn’t look like Yelena, not by a long shot, and she had a lot of bruises from the past week, but she thought she looked reasonably good all things considered.
By the small smile on Yelena’s face, it looked like she thought so, too. Kate’s bra unclasped at the front and Yelena reached for it, opening it and shrugging it off Kate’s shoulders before she brought her hands up to cup her breasts, gently running her hands down to Kate’s waist again. Without saying a word - because for once she could actually tell that this wasn’t the time - Kate reached again for the clasp on Yelena’s bra, and this time she let her undo it.
Yelena’s breasts were beautiful; of course they were. Kate tried not to let some stupidly excited expression rush across her face and reached instead to gently caress across Yelena’s chest with one hand, shifting her weight to press a kiss to Yelena’s collarbone, then down to her breasts. After a moment she took one of her nipples in her mouth and gently bit at it.
From the hand of Yelena’s that moved up to gather Kate’s ponytail in her hand, she had a feeling she liked it. After a moment, as Yelena moved her other hand back to her breast and gently swiped over her nipple with her thumb, Kate came back up to capture her mouth again, letting her eyes close, just losing herself to the sensations. Her skin felt as if it were on fire; she could practically feel the ridges of Yelena’s fingerprints, and she wondered, somewhere in the back of her mind, how this was where the night had ended up.
Gently, Yelena backed her back on the couch again, though this time at least she managed to get more of her lower back on the cushions and get a little more comfortable. Yelena pulled back enough to meet her eyes, and there was something sincere there, something that made Kate feel, for a moment, like she was the only person in the world. Yelena cupped her cheek. “If you want to stop, we can stop.”
“I don’t want to stop,” Kate said, almost before Yelena got to the end of her sentence. “What made you think I want to stop?”
“I don’t know,” Yelena replied, tracing a hand down and around the outline of one of Kate’s breasts. “I am just saying, that’s fine.”
“Do you want to stop? Because I definitely don’t want to stop. Green light. Full steam ahead.” Kate decided she was going to stop talking before she absolutely changed Yelena’s mind about whether or not she did, in fact, want to stop.
“Still talking so much,” Yelena said with a grin and a shake of her head.
Kate mimed zipping her mouth shut.
Yelena let her hand move further south, across Kate’s stomach, just a soft feather-touch that made Kate want to raise her hips, made her want to chase the contact. As she kissed her again, Yelena moved her hand down to unbutton Kate’s pants, and slipped her hand inside her underwear.
Unable to help herself, Kate whimpered a little into Yelena’s mouth as she raised her hips. It had been a while. She was already wet; she had been, she knew, since they’d got to the couch, and all of a sudden she couldn’t concentrate on a thing but Yelena’s hand. It was simultaneously firm and gentle, and Kate let her thighs part as Yelena pushed a finger inside her. She could feel her nail scraping against her and she couldn’t stop herself from making another small noise, raising her chin as she kissed Yelena again.
There was no way either of them would break this with talking, not now: Kate was just too focused on the sensation of Yelena inside her. It was amazing how such a comparatively minor thing was making her feel. Yelena curled her finger and Kate broke their kiss enough to let her head fall back and her chest arch up.
Before long, a second finger joined the first. There was a small sharp pain but it didn’t last as she relaxed, encouraged by the butt of Yelena’s hand gently pressing against her. It felt amazing. It felt unbelievable. She lifted her hips again to try and encourage Yelena to go as deep as she could, and brought a hand up to touch at any part of Yelena she could, stroking her neck, the base of her skull, letting her hair fall through her fingers. She kissed her again.
It felt like time slipped away from them, even though Kate knew that was a cliche. Nothing really mattered outside of the two of them. Yelena was inside her - which was one of the single most crazy things that had happened to her in a recent string of incredibly crazy things, and she couldn’t even believe it. Her body was alight with the sensation, sensitive all over, biting at her lip as Yelena ducked her head to kiss at her throat and her hair spilled over Kate’s collarbone.
She could feel her toes curling as Yelena scissored her fingers, stretching her, once again gently scraping inside her. It took everything she had not to scream out; she settled for reaching her hands out to run through Yelena’s hair, over her breasts, tweaking at her nipples, trying to draw her closer. She knew that she would orgasm but she was at that beautiful precipice of being close but not there, her body tingling in anticipation, everything firing on all cylinders. She nudged Yelena, wanting to chase the edge.
When Yelena glanced at her she was sweaty and her eyes were a little lidded, and if Kate was honest, it was one of the sexiest things she’d seen in a very long time.
“My turn,” Kate said, and her voice sounded ragged even to her own ears. “Let me.”
Yelena smiled without saying anything and gently drew her fingers out of Kate. Kate could practically feel them still there, phantoms, stroking her outside and inside, and she could feel the insides of her thighs sweet and sticky. She pushed her pants and underwear off completely, watching Yelena as they both sat up.
For her part, Yelena didn’t take her eyes off Kate as she undid her jeans and slipped out of them, and underwear that matched her bra. Kate’s underwear didn’t match, not today, and she was briefly self-conscious before realising they were both entirely naked, on a couch, in an apartment that did not technically belong to either of them and there were probably a good dozen things to think were a concern before she got anywhere near her mismatched underwear.
Unsurprisingly, Yelena looked even better completely naked. It was Kate’s turn to straighten up, then, still with that beautiful feeling of being so close running through her limbs, hot and tingling. She lay a hand between Yelena’s breasts to encourage her to lay down on her back, and she positioned herself between her legs to lean forward and kiss down her stomach.
Watching her, Yelena moved one leg to the back of the couch. Kate took a moment to kiss her inner thigh, running her hand along the smooth edge of the muscle on the outside of it before she settled her weight back a little and dropped her head between Yelena’s legs.
She could hear Yelena say something as she moved forward and ran her tongue over her, but what exactly it was was completely lost on her. Yelena was wet, too, she was unsurprised to discover, and she tasted sweet. Unique. Like something Kate wasn’t going to forget in a hurry. She could feel her powerful thighs either side of her head and she gently ran her tongue over every part of Yelena she could reach, before she pushed her tongue into her.
It had been a long time since she’d done this; for a time, her mother had sent her to an all girl’s boarding school and they had experimented with each other. Kate had by then known she was interested in both boys and girls and so potentially took the experimenting a little more seriously than most of the others. But though she’d had the odd girlfriend in the five years, dating then was fraught with complications and drama and so it had been longer than she cared to admit since she’d done this, exactly. She pushed her tongue in as far as she could and felt Yelena’s hand move to the top of her head, encouraging.
God, this was amazing.
As she moved her tongue inside her, in and out, playing around before she pushed it back in, she could feel that lazy heat still running right through her limbs, right from the tip of her head where Yelena had her hand to the tips of her still-curled toes. It really wasn’t going to take long. She opened her eyes enough to try and glance up at Yelena and could see she was watching her, too. As Kate pushed her tongue in particularly far she saw her draw a sharp breath and drop her head back.
It had been long enough that she knew her jaw was likely to cramp if she stayed there too long and so she shifted her weight, staying between Yelena’s thighs and replacing her tongue with her hand, tracing a line up Yelena’s front with her tongue as she pushed a finger into her. She started to move it around as she rubbed her thumb over her, and at the same time kissed across one of her breasts.
“You’re so good at this,” Yelena said, and her tone was breathy, her accent heavier than normal.
Kate just smiled against her skin as she pushed a second finger in, feeling her own orgasm draw ever closer. She moved up to kiss at Yelena’s throat, her jaw, across her cheekbones before Yelena grabbed her by the ponytail and brought their mouths together again. Kate couldn’t help but smile again as they kissed. It was messier now; a little more frantic, their teeth and tongues clashing as they moved in time with her fingers inside Yelena.
Yelena brought her hand up to start playing with Kate’s breasts, a little rougher now, her hand swiping over her.
When Kate orgasmed it was when Yelena had caught her nipple in a bite that softened into a kiss, and she felt like every last nerve ending in her body was sparking up at once. In the easy afterglow, still with two fingers inside Yelena, Kate just watched her, simultaneously in awe of her as a person and in disbelief that they were doing this.
Soon, Yelena brought her hand down to join Kate’s, to touch her as she touched Yelena, and not long after that she was arching up, her hips bucking to try and draw Kate in even more. She could feel the climax and kept her fingers where they were, stroking, her thumb swiping over her again as she eventually pulled her hand back and brought it up to lick it clean, collapsing, a little, her weight half on top of Yelena.
Without missing a beat, Yelena brought her back into a kiss, and Kate couldn’t help but smile. It felt like they were both riding a wave of pleasure, chasing something so perfect and easy, and even in the aftermath she felt liquid, as if she wouldn’t be able to get up and walk if she tried.
The mood softened, a little, settling, though their legs were entwined and Kate felt no particular need to either talk or to move away.
“That was…” Yelena trailed off, and Kate got it. There weren’t really many words for what that was. She just watched her, and eventually Yelena added, “Not what I expected when you asked me for a drink.”
Kate grinned at her. “I thought you said that is what you thought the drink was.”
“Well, sure. I thought you wanted to kiss me,” Yelena admitted. “But that I did not expect.” She grinned at her, and close up, Kate couldn’t quite believe she’d never realised how gorgeous she was. She had a particular way of scrunching her nose when she really smiled that Kate thought, in a very reasonable and unbiased way, may genuinely have been the cutest thing she had ever seen. “I thought you said I was bloodthirsty.”
Kate paused. “People can be more than one thing.”
“True.” Yelena nodded, bringing her hand back up to Kate’s hair again, and gently tugging it free of her ponytail. “That is true.”
Once again, there were a thousand different things that Kate could have said, or asked. But for now she still felt that sweet, hazy sensation that always followed sex for her, and it was hard to want to break that. So instead she settled with her head on Yelena’s shoulder, and after a moment, Yelena rested her hand at the back of Kate’s head.
They stayed like that, settled, for a long while, Kate’s hand idly playing over Yelena’s bare breast, and Yelena’s hand playing in Kate’s long hair.
Eventually, Yelena’s hand moved down to Kate’s body, playing over bruises. They were mostly healed, now; they had gone through the entire spectrum of colour along the way. “These are mine?” she asked, eventually.
“I don’t know,” Kate said, honestly. “It’s kinda… hard to tell. It’s been a big week. There’s options.”
“It’s been a big week,” Yelena agreed. “You must be like… oh my god… I’m sleeping with the enemy.”
“You’re not the enemy,” Kate corrected, though it was with a grin as she looked up at her. “And technically we haven’t done any sleeping.”
“You can sleep here if you want,” she said. “But not here. Upstairs. In the bed. I have done enough of sleeping on couches or floors, and besides, you’ve got to feel this bed, it’s like… completely cool, so big? And so high? You feel like you’re too far off the ground.”
If Kate didn’t know better, she would have started to think that Yelena was a little dorky, too. She smiled, sincere, looking at her. Right now, tucked together like this, she couldn’t imagine the idea of going home to the cavernous, empty house. “I’d like that.”
Yelena turned her head and pressed her lips to the top of Kate’s hair.
There were, as always, a million things that Kate wanted to say. She wanted to really talk to Yelena, even more than they had that night. She wanted to revisit the subject of whether or not she could make a career change. She wanted to talk to her about Natasha and let her talk, listen, to try and help her knit over a wound that was obviously still fresh. But this wasn’t the time. She had a feeling this wouldn’t be her only chance. She smiled at the thought, bringing her hand up again to dance over Yelena’s breast, watching as the nipple hardened. “When did you say you were leaving New York again?”
“I don’t know,” Yelena said, and Kate could practically hear the smile in her voice without looking up. “I still have so much to do. I haven’t seen the Statue of Liberty yet, I want to see a Broadway show, maybe Bubba Gump? The shrimp?” Kate glanced at her and saw that she was right, there was a broad grin on her face, teasing. “Maybe I will stick for a while.”
“Maybe that would be cool,” Kate agreed, unable to quite keep from grinning back.
They stayed locked like that for a moment, Kate feeling a tell-tale tingle from head to toe. She really did like her.
Yelena tugged at a lock of her hear. “Come. Let’s go upstairs. I mean it, you really have to see this bed. You’re gonna go back to your house and be like, oh, man, my bed is not as good as that other one, and it’s going to ruin your life.”
With a laugh, Kate got to her feet, gathering their mixed-up clothes together in a pile. “Then I better make the most of tonight.”
“You better,” Yelena said, getting up and reaching for Kate’s hand. She spilled half the clothes, but took it. “But maybe you won’t find out what it’s like to sleep there.”
Unable to take her eyes off her, Kate followed as Yelena led her out.
In spite of everything, it turned out life was still pretty amazing.