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Yelena had her best days when her tea had long gotten cold. She had her best days when her hoodies ran a bit too big and when her makeup grew stale and when she took off her golden rings they mixed with silver. She had her best days when she fell asleep next to someone else, soothed by her rhythmic breathing and the flickering TV she always forgot to turn off.
Yelena had her best days when she stayed.
Her host made it easy, because despite visits often coming unannounced, they never felt so. Yelena would knock, the door would swing open, and just past the threshold would be a smile and a knowing look and open arms to fall into.
"I was just about to make dinner," Kate would often say, leading her in with a gentle tug on a bruised hand. "Lucky I have enough for two."
She always had enough for two.
Kate always had room— a seat a the table, a spot on the couch that she would pat in invitation. She had spare parts— a jacket, a toothbrush, an umbrella on a rainy afternoon. Yelena blended seamlessly into the fabric of Kate's everyday life, wearing her clothes, sharing her meals and all of her time.
Sometimes, while wrapped in one one Kate's blankets, drinking out of one of her mugs, watching one of her favorite old movies, Yelena would feel briefly intrusive, out of place. How could she take so much, offering only herself in return?
"I owe you," Yelena told her once, throwing on one of Kate's t-shirts after a shower. "My tab would reach all the way to Moscow."
"Are you kidding?" Kate didn't look up from the dishes she dutifully washed. "What's mine is yours."
Yelena knew she meant it, but if she ever doubted, all she had to do was look around, see the patched hole in her borrowed hoodie, Lucky's many sweaters and overflowing buckets of treats, the admittedly surprising vitality of her houseplants, and she would realize this is just what the archer did.
She cared for things.
Here, nestled in the heart of a sleepless city, Yelena found a home built with thought, painted with intention, furnished with the smell of coffee and cinnamon buns in the morning. Here, with her, Yelena knew she was cared for as well.
Once, Kate bought a clock at a flea market— a busted old thing that made a terribly shrill screech at random intervals. The craftsmanship was gorgeous, old wood and fine metals, but it was loud, annoying, inconvenient. None of that bothered Kate, though, as she saw only the bones below, rewiring the clock until it beeped on time.
"You make a habit of collecting little broken things," Yelena noted, poking at the ticking hands.
"Not broken anymore," Kate replied.
Yelena often watched the time tick, tick, tick away on this little clock, shocked at how slow her days were now, confused as to why they still were not long enough.
Her life up until the last several years had been a flash, a series of sedations and missions and training and more missions until one day she woke up and she was twenty five. In the years since she was freed, her life had not exactly been leisurely, hopping from one mission to the next, though this time on a righteous path rather than one of destruction.
Isolated from all of that was the loft. It was a sanctuary— slow mornings and lazy greetings, Kate pulling her in for one last kiss before starting breakfast, goading her into just one more episode before bed. It was hearing the morning rush; it was seeing them go home from the window, Kate's arm loosely around her waist and a drink in hand.
Yelena had never valued her time before her, never laid awake, eyes heavy but fighting for one last look into the oceans breaking before her. She had to stay awake, though, as when Kate finally drifted off, hand resting limply on Yelena's waist, she looked so beautiful that Yelena could hardly breathe.
Night after night Yelena found herself pulled in, convinced without words to linger. Kate was the moon and she was the tide. Kate was a graciously extended hand and she was just a girl, tripping and falling into things she could not fathom.
Thus, Kate never had to try very hard to get her to stay. A look that lingered too long or a glance to the time on her repaired clock bleeding into morning would do it most days, though Kate would have done absolutely anything. She would've been anything, been anyone Yelena needed, but surprising to the archer, Yelena only wanted her.
"It's getting late," Kate would drawl, tired but refusing to sleep until she ensured she would be making breakfast for two.
"It is," Yelena would reply, lips quirking into a small smile.
"I'm making French toast in the morning," the archer offered, as if Yelena needed any excuse beyond the ruffled hair and scratchy voice Kate always woke with.
"Oh?" Said the blonde, taking a sip of lukewarm tea. "I suppose I have to stay, then."
The staying was simple, it was like breathing. Kate had built a home brick by brick and welcomed Yelena in as if it was hers. Coming back to New York was like riding a bike, except she had never learned how and Kate taught her that too. Coming back was like meeting an old friend or hearing a beloved song for the first time in years. It was like a warm shower after a day in the snow.
The hard part was leaving.
They couldn't make excuses forever; Yelena had Widow business, Kate had Hawkeye business and Bishop business and sometimes even school.
So, they would part wordlessly, with Yelena simply slinging on her coat with a heavier air than usual. Kate would walk her out, open her cab door, give a chaste kiss and a small wave. No goodbyes— what was the use?
In the space between, across those seemingly eternal chasms that stretched between them like a trembling tightrope, they somehow grew closer, because every time Yelena went away, it gave her a chance to come back. It gave her the opportunity to choose again.
Again, that crooked smile. Again, those blue eyes sparking with mischief and longing and so much want that Yelena swore she reach out and touch it. Kate, again.
The choice was really nonexistent. How could Yelena ever choose anything but the archer that picked her like she was a rose?
Kate never treated her like the danger she was, no, Kate treated her like a person. The dumbness was endearing, though it felt mean to think. It just always shocked Yelena that Kate could allow herself to drift to sleep first or turn her back as she cooked.
The archer treated her like she was harmless, docile, rather than the snarling dog she saw herself as. Kate never shied away from her thorns, her cauliflower ears, the scar under her eye and what she had done to earn it. It almost made Yelena angry— why aren't you afraid of me?
Of course, Yelena was never really mad, but in awe, disbelief, confusion, that someone like Kate could love someone like her.
Someone like her. That phrase used to mean killer. Assassin, Widow, soldier, spy. But what, who, was she now?
Yelena hesitated in asking Kate this question, imaging she would get either annoying responses like 'a woman' or soul crushingly sappy ones like 'reformed'.
But one day, curious and never feeling like she had to hold her tongue around Kate, Yelena did ask.
She was met with a puzzled glance as Kate repeated, "Who are you?"
"Who do you think I am?" Yelena reiterated. "What am I now?"
"I don't know. You're Yelena. And that's, like, pretty much the best thing you can be in my opinion."
Kate Bishop was disarmingly soft and had an alarming habit of invading the blonde's every waking thought. When Yelena found herself in New York she allowed herself the luxury of preoccupation, but when she prowled around Oslo, Montreal, Cairo, the same could not be said.
Still, it was not always a hinderance.
On previous missions, Yelena's psyche had been marked with a pronounced restlessness, the lurking anxiety of where she would sleep that night, what strange place she would jet off to next. In those days the only certainty was the gun on her hip and the deep hunger and the even deeper gashes in the canyons of her knuckles.
Now, oddly, she had something else.
For the first time in her life, Yelena found herself thinking often of home, a foreign little word that made her physically stop in her tracks the first time she'd thought of it. For a while it tasted bitter on her tongue, like it surely was not meant for her, but over time it sweetened like a strawberry in spring.
Home was no longer a concept for her, but a space. It was no longer an abstraction, but a person. And it wasn't a distraction as she feared, but a balm.
No longer did she tend to wounds alone, biting at tape and reaching futilely around to her back. Now, her injuries were met with unflinching gentleness, with meticulously placed bandages and empathetic winces. Kate saw the blood on her teeth and still kissed her; she saw the weight on her shoulders and still held her.
Now, after grueling missions, Yelena could stagger home, spend a few blissful months in New York, and leave again with some other piece of Kate with her.
It was after an assignment in Boston that Yelena concluded Kate's hands had warmed everything they'd ever touched. It was December when she stumbled back to the loft, fingers numb from the cold as she rapped on the door once more.
Pounding footsteps sounded before the door nearly swung off its hinges. Kate stood still for a second as she always did when Yelena returned like this, breathless in the wake of her beauty and the little snowflakes that currently dusted the top of her head.
"It's snowing out?" Kate asked, ushering her in.
"Clearly," Yelena replied, looking up through her lashes as Kate grabbed her upper arm. "Hi."
"Hi." Kate stooped down, kissing her in greeting. "How was your trip? I missed you."
Focused, the archer gently brushed the flakes away while Yelena stood enraptured, inching closer to her as if she were a blazing fire. She may as well have been, as her gazes always seared, her eyes always lit things aflame, and most of all she was warm.
She was warmth and she was light, an ember on which Yelena could lay her hands, her head, her troubles on without fear of being burned.
Kate's temperance juxtaposed Yelena's intensity— she loved hard and she knew it. Everything and everyone she'd ever loved had slipped through her fingers, fallen through the cracks, so this time Yelena clung desperately to it, knuckles white and nails breaking.
Every time Yelena held her archer's hands she feared she would crush them, leave angry claw marks when they parted. Yelena never did, though, and her own gentleness surprised her. Perhaps that was something she learned from Kate as well.
"You know how to make bread?" Kate inquired from the kitchen one nondescript Sunday. Her hair was half up out of her face, blue henley sleeves rolled up to her elbows.
Yelena, who lazed on the couch with a book and Lucky's head resting on her thigh, replied, "No, do you?"
"Sometimes."
Yelena hummed, sitting up to watch her with intrigue. "What are you doing now?"
Kate patted the slab of dough, wiping her brow and smearing flour on her forehead. "I have to knead it. Could use some help."
"Oh," Yelena said, already halfway to her, "I'll send Lucky in."
The archer kissed her as soon as she was close enough. "One day I'll show you step by step, but I think this good for now."
Stepping up to the counter, Yelena poked at the doughy glob, unsure. Kate came behind her, resting her chin briefly atop her head, planting a kiss, then refocusing. Her arms came around either side of Yelena, head above the blonde's shoulder.
At first Yelena could not focus on the task at hand, too distracted by strong forearms covered in flour, the way her hands flexed as they dug in.
"Pay attention," Kate joked, knee nudging the back of her thigh.
"I am. You are just kneading."
"Mhm," Kate said lowly. "But this is a tough one. We may be here a while."
That was fine by Yelena. She leaned comfortably back, occasionally helping Kate fold the dough over. Mostly, though, she watched, hazel eyes glazed as Kate did what she always did.
Before her sat something tough, something unwieldy and dense, but when Kate put her hands on it, it softened. The difficult became easy, made so by someone with the diligence and patience to persist.
Eventually, with the bread molded by its sculptor, it went into the oven. Kate washed her hands and still Yelena watched her. Briefly the blonde looked down at herself, at her stolen purple sweater and wearing a perfume Kate bought her.
She never thought she would have the time nor the desire to make bread on a rainy Sunday in New York City, but here she was. She never though she would share her bed, share her secrets or her fears. She never thought she could be so... soft.
Kate Bishop was making her soft. But she never minded.