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“Kate Bishop, for a superhero you are shockingly easy to find.”
Kate groans, and does not turn around to meet her assailant.
“Must you follow me?” she deadpans, her starbucks hot chocolate gripped tightly in her right hand. Her left hand remains free. If she could just find a safe place to put her drink down—she won’t just discard it, she payed like six dollars, okay—she could- do nothing. Considering she left her bow and arrows at home like a very stupid person would do, and she doesn’t think hand-to-hand combat would go particularly well for her, even with her years of training.
“It is not following if we were already in the same place.” Kate somehow does not believe the voice, and finally spins on her heel to face her, nose turned up in the air.
“You said I’m shockingly easy to find, implying you were looking for me.” Yelena seems to be stumped for a moment, her thinking face highly exaggerated. Kate considers how long a slightly-but-not-really hot chocolate thrown in her face would distract Yelena. Probably not very long and Yelena, though shorter than her, can be very fast when she needs to be. Kate stays where she is.
“Well, I wanted to hang out, Kate Bishop. I know I technically tried to kill your friend Clint Barton a lot of times. And your mom technically hired me to kill him. And I kind of ruined your Christmas but think about the good times! Remember the macaroni and cheese?” Yelena seems to think of this time fondly, and her lips turn into a genuine smile.
Kate’s stay firmly in a frown. “You broke into my apartment, ate my food, vaguely threatened me and not-so-vaguely threatened Clint; then jumped out of my window.”
“Hmm, yes,” Yelena says, but Kate has a feeling she is hardly listening. “But I could tell you were amused by me. So it wasn’t all bad.” Yelena reaches up—Kate flinches away instinctually—and flicks her forehead. “Don’t frown. Wrinkles.” She gestures vaguely at Kate’s face.
“I was not amu- “
“Oh, look at the lights, Kate Bishop!” Without Kate’s knowledge, the sun had sunk further in the sky and the Christmas lights were lit up all around them. New York City has its flaws, but it truly is a beautiful sight. Kate’s chest constricts at the thought of her mother spending Christmas in a prison cell. Kate will spend Christmas alone.
Kate and Yelena stand side by side, heads tilted up to look at the lights strung in the trees and connected between buildings and looped through fences and gates. It’s amazing and wonderful and breathtaking and her heart should feel full at the sight but all she feels is-
“Are you crying?” Kate’s head whips towards the voice, hand flying up to wipe away any tears that betrayed her and rolled down her face, but Yelena isn’t looking at her. Her eyes shine with the immense brightness surrounding them as her head stays firmly up, like she’s giving Kate her privacy or something. Kate scoffs at the act, and kicks at the snow crowding her feet. Yelena is a trained assassin who was hired to kill Clint, she’s not her friend; Yelena doesn’t care.
“No,” Kate replies futilely, tears still stubbornly prodding at her eyelids, threatening to spill over. Yelena’s hand twitches where it is firmly at her side. Kate doesn’t think the professional killer is going to rub her back in comfort, or wipe her tears away with gentle hands, but it’s a nice thought that maybe Yelena wants to. She doesn’t, but it’s nice anyway.
“Okay.” Yelena just accepts her lie at face value, and maybe it makes Kate not feel so jaded and miserable for just a second, but that’s the most she’s had for days, since her mother’s arrest. Since Clint left to go back to his family. Kate looks at Yelena, the person —not Yelena, the murderer—and she sees the greens and reds of Christmas coloring her pretty face, and it is not an unappealing sight—in an open minded, objective way, of course.
“What are you doing right now?” Kate asks, her usual optimistic self peeking out just the tiniest bit.
“I am here with you,” Yelena says, and her accent is more pronounced here, like she’s letting her guard down. Kate wants to trust her, for whatever odd reason her brain can conjure up.
“Come with me,” Kate finally decides, downing the rest of her cold hot chocolate before throwing it away. Kate has just enough time to see the confused, yet hopeful, look on the blonde’s face before she turns around and starts walking. She’s not wholly confident that Yelena will follow her and after a couple of agonizing seconds of silence, she concludes she will be making her trek home alone. But then–footsteps. Footsteps that can’t be silenced because of the crunch of snow under feet, and Kate grins, marching onwards and her companion following behind. Like soldiers marching to battle–but actually nothing like that at all, really. Like two friends–dare she say it–going to hang out like normal people do; no war involved at all.
–
“Your house is so beautiful, Kate Bishop,” Yelena says in awe, and though she’s lived in this house for years, grown up in it, she has to agree all the same. It’s decorated to the nines, of course, her mother–and Jack–no stranger to flaunting their wealth when necessary. Kate imagines Christmas with them, like intended. Waking up to presents under the tree, a fire roaring pleasantly, hot chocolate and stockings and candy canes and family and- Kate stops herself. She can’t imagine her mother ever thought Kate would be wrapped up in Avengers business, let alone be partially responsible for her arrest. Her own daughter, watching as she’s led away in handcuffs. She can’t imagine her mother ever forgiving her.
“Thank you, Yelena… I don’t know your last name but imagine I said it.”
“Belova. I did not know trees this big could fit into a house .” Yelena seems so mesmerized, so open in her child-like wonder. Kate can’t stop watching her–at this display of true human emotion from a woman she previously thought had none. Yelena jumps when the lights strung around the branches suddenly light up with startling clarity, and she claps happily at Kate when she sees Kate flipped the switch on for her. They sit in front of the tree for a long time, Kate steadfastly ignoring the presents sitting under it. She doesn’t even know if she should open them. It feels wrong, somehow, tearing apart what her mother so painstakingly wrapped. Yelena doesn’t share the same sentiment, and she picks up all the ones addressed to Kate–almost all of them, Kate notices dimly–and shakes them close to her ear, like she can hear what they are. Kate lets her. It feels nice, seeing that Christmas joy that feels so lost to her now it might as well have never existed.
It is Christmas Eve, and she is sitting in her mother’s abandoned house with an assassin that tried to kill her and her friend/partner/mentor whatever . She’s sitting in this empty house with the strange blonde woman that broke into her badly burned apartment and ate her macaroni and cheese and made fun of her one fork and lack of cutlery. Kate wants to laugh, or cry, or scream, but instead she explains the importance of every single ornament on the tree to an intently listening Yelena, who seems to hang off of her every word. Like what she’s saying is important, not explaining that she made that one in first grade with clay after a frog she saw in a creek that day. Yelena laughs at all the stories, and is giddy with anticipation for the next one when there’s a lull in conversation. Kate can’t help but give her what she wants.
“Yelena?” she asks later, when the talk finally dies down into nothing and they’ve both settled into lying on their sides, their heads resting in one hand while the other sits in between them, almost touching but not quite. Yelena hums, her eyes closed but blinking open when Kate addresses her. “Why are you here?”
“Hm? Because I want to be.” Yelena hums after she says it, and it occurs to Kate that the blonde does not skate around truths when need be. She’s here with Kate because she wants to be. Kate is here with her because she wants to be.
“We should..” Kate pauses, not sure where her train of thought is leading her to finish that sentence. “We should sleep,” she finally decides on, begrudgingly pushing herself up onto her feet. Yelena looks at her from below, all sleepy eyed and pouty bottom lip. Kate tries not to feel like her world is tilting on its axis when she wants to bend down and brush the blonde hair hanging in Yelena’s face behind her ear. Yelena stands also, and it occurs to Kate very suddenly how short really is.
She snorts, and feels a giggle bubble up in her throat. Yelena looks properly offended when the burst of laughter escapes her and it makes her laugh harder.
“Kate Bishop, why are you laughing at me?” and the way she says it all business like it’s supposed to intimidate her or something just makes it all worse. Kate sniffs and tries to contain herself.
“It’s just—you’re so small.” Kate’s giggles erupt anew at her own words, and Yelena scoffs, arms folded in front of her like a petulant child. The lights were flipped off long ago, and Kate has to strain to really see her face in the darkness. Yelena seems to be trying to hold back a grin of her own, and Kate feels affection grip her so intensely for a second that it makes her ache with it. She’s known this woman days and already she feels so strongly towards her. Just a couple hours ago she thought Yelena was an unfeeling machine. She should feel wary of this. Instead it seems to fit, somehow.
“I’ll have you know my stature benefits me greatly in my job.” Yelena says it with her nose turned up in the air. The fire is now the smallest ember in the fireplace and Kate can see the shiver Yelena is trying so hard to suppress.
“I believe you,” Kate says, and means it. She wants to tell Yelena how she has single handedly saved what was sure to be a miserable Christmas for her. She wants to tell her that she’s felt so alone lately it tears at her all the time and that, aside from Pizza Dog—who is probably blissfully snoozing in her bed right about now—she has had no one. And now she suddenly has Yelena here with her and that means so much, so much, and she wants to tell her everything. She wants-
“You can take my bed if you’d like.” If you’d like , Kate mimics herself. God, she sounds stupid sometimes.
Yelena seems to agree, if her face is anything to go by. “I would like to share it with you.” Kate chokes on nothing and splutters for a second completely embarrassingly before Yelena continues. “Isn’t that what American girls do at sleepovers?” she questions, and it takes Kate a moment to register that it isn’t rhetorical, Yelena is genuinely asking her.
“Well, yes, but-“ Kate tries to explain that while that might be true, they are grown women, not teenage girls, and grown women who are decidedly not together like that sleep in two separate beds, but Yelena cuts her off quickly before any of this can be said.
“Great! I will take the right side. It is my favorite.” Kate tries to protest, but suddenly Yelena is gesturing for her to lead the way, and then they are brushing their teeth together side by side in Kate’s ridiculously oversized bathroom, and then they are changing into pajamas—Kate tries not to burst into another laughing fit all over again when Yelena has to roll the bottom of Kate’s pajama pants on her at least four times—and then they are laying in bed together, just like that.
Pizza Dog lays at their feet, sprawled out on his back. Kate tries so very hard not to move, lest she accidentally touch Yelena. They are so close Kate can feel the fabric of her own t-shirt on Yelena graze against her arm every time she shifts just barely. They don’t need to be this close, of course—Kate’s bed is plenty big enough for the three of them with room for two more—but Kate slid into bed first and then Yelena followed shortly after, immediately closing the distance between them. Kate didn’t have the heart to tell her to move, either.
Yelena’s breathing evens out, and Kate thinks she must be asleep. Kate grins at the little snores that escape the blonde next to her. She relaxes, and her eyes finally close.
“Kate?” Yelena whispers next to her, making Kate jump at the sudden noise. Wasn’t she asleep five seconds ago? God, Yelena confounds her.
“Yeah?” Kate whispers back, and it’s funny, because there’s no reason to whisper at all really.
“Thank you.” And then the snoring starts up again. Kate blinks, and her face turns red, and then she rolls onto her side, hiding herself in her pillow before eventually falling asleep herself. There are better ways to spend Christmas Eve, surely, but as Kate drifts off, her mind floating pleasantly between sleep and awake, she thinks hers might be the best.
—
The next morning, Christmas morning, Kate makes them breakfast. It honestly astounds her that Yelena stayed , but she doesn’t voice it. She thinks Yelena knows, anyway. Kate lets her tear into her Christmas presents, choosing the ones she wants and putting them into a pile next to her. Kate suspects it should feel wrong, giving gifts meant for her to somebody else, but it doesn’t feel that way when Yelena beams at her.
“You should not feed your dog pizza, Kate Bishop,” Yelena exclaims exasperatedly when Kate feeds Pizza Dog his breakfast.
“His name is Pizza Dog. I think that’s exactly what I should feed him.” She sticks her tongue out at the blonde, steadfastly maintaining eye contact as Pizza Dog snatches an entire slice of pepperoni pizza out of her hand.
Yelena tsks, and busies herself with her new gifts. A comfortable silence lulls between them, and Kate thinks the subject is dropped.
She is proven wrong when, a minute later, Yelena thrusts her chest out proudly and says, “I feed my Fanny—that is my dog’s na-“
She doesn’t get to finish as Kate guffaws, clutching her stomach in her fit of breathless giggles. Yelena scoffs and rolls her eyes at her, muttering “mature” under her breath as Kate can’t seem to get ahold of herself.
Kate doesn’t quite know what’s happening when Yelena suddenly leans in close to her, and then her laughter catches in her throat when Yelena presses their lips together. Oh.
Yelena is kissing her. Kate is kissing Yelena back. This is totally chill and fine. It’s decidedly not chill and fine when Yelena sinks her teeth into her bottom lip and pulls just the tiniest bit.
“That was for laughing at my dog,” Yelena whispers into her mouth. Kate is definitely not listening, laser focused on the spit making Yelena’s lips glisten.
“Sorry,” Kate deadpans, then captures the blonde’s lips in her own again. There have been better Christmases, surely, but as Yelena cups her cheeks and tilts her head to lick at Kate’s top lip, Kate is sure hers is the best.