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There are days when she wakes up, and for a moment, wonders where she is.
And then she turns to her side, and sees Kate sleeping beside her. The brunette snores – she denies it, but she does. Yelena teases her about it sometimes, enjoying the look of outrage at any suggestion that she makes any sort of sound in her sleep.
“You sound just like my mama’s pigs,” she says. “Maybe it has something to do with how you eat.”
Kate Bishop, who is at present busy stuffing her mouth with Chinese takeout, looks utterly offended. “I do not! You take that back!” A piece of sweet and sour pork drops from the grip of her chopsticks, and rolls on the table, in between them.
“I think what they say is true,” the blonde says, with mock seriousness.
“What is that?” The brunette’s eyebrows are lifted, suspiciously.
“You are what you eat.”
She ducks, as Kate throws a fried wonton at her face. It falls to the floor, where Lucky ducks in to clean it up.
When she looks at Kate, she pauses, and takes stock of her life.
It does not take long – for many years, she did not have a life of her own. She did not belong to herself. She was a weapon, a tool, a pawn to be moved at the whims and fancy of powerful men with scant regard for anything but their own ambitions and desires.
And then she had woken up – and found herself lost in the currents of circumstance. When she thought she had found some purchase – when she had been reunited with Natasha and Melina and Alexei – she found herself lost once again, this time to the misguided ambitions of the mad Titan, Thanos.
She had returned to a world so different from the one she left. A world in chaos. No Natasha. No more. Any chance of reconnection had been lost. Her one tether to life gone, just like that.
Alexei and Melina had tried to help, but there had been too much ground to cover. Still, they had tried, and were trying still.
And Yelena Belova tried to carve a place for herself in a world full of chaos. Working for Valentina, doing what she knew best, trying to find a foothold in a world that did not seem to have a place for her.
Then she had met Kate.
She wondered, in moments like this – the space between night and the emergence of dawn – whether this was real. For too long, she did not know what was real and what was not.
Kate stirs beside her, the bedsprings shifting as she moved. Her hand reaches out, and brushes Yelena’s side. The arm rests there, and the fingers hold on to her. An unconscious movement, yet movement nonetheless.
Kate’s fingers do not just hold her. They clutch, and in that moment, Yelena cannot help but reach out, to entwine her fingers with Kate’s. The brunette doesn’t wake – she barely stirs – but there is an answering grip as Yelena holds on to her.
Yelena studies the brunette. She sees the peace on her face, tranquil and calm. She commits every curve, every inch of skin, to memory.
As always, once she holds Kate’s hand, the brunette pulls her in. The pull is firm, insistent. Yelena does not resist. She leans in, presses her body against Kate’s. The other woman shifts, creating space for Yelena. Yelena turns her back to Kate, feels her chest press against her back, and pulls Kate’s hand down to her chest. There is an answering tug, as Kate’s arm wraps tightly around her.
“What do you mean, I am the little spoon?”
“It’s spooning, Yelena.”
“Why is it called spooning?”
Kate looked dumbfounded. “I don’t know. They just do. Maybe it’s how they arrange spoons – you know? On the side, by size. Bigger spoon on the outside, little spoon on the inside.” She grins triumphantly at the explanation, which Yelena knows she has just made up on the spot.
Yelena shakes her head. “Kate Bishop, when we met, you only had one fork. You are in no way qualified to talk about cutlery.”
For far too long, Yelena Belova felt out of place in the world. Now, nestled in Kate’s arms, she feels as though she’s found her place.
Love is not intangible.
Love is home.
There are times when Kate wakes up at night, and for a moment, feels the full force of everything she’s lost.
For far too long, her life has had a sense of order to it. Orphaned at a young age, raised by a single mother. Raised in wealth and privilege, but always with a sense that all was not right – she had buried any semblance of doubt in sports and academics.
And then her world had been ripped apart again – her mother exposed as a criminal – her life upended as all that she once knew turned out to be a lie.
Losing that – losing her mother, her life, her everything – had ripped a gaping wound in her. Clint and Laura had helped, a little, but the wound of losing everything in a matter of days was too large to fill over a Christmas visit.
And then, there was Yelena.
The blonde has a tendency of hogging the covers. She doesn’t just drape herself with them – she cocoons inside, burrowing in deep, drawing them around her. Kate’s taller, and always wakes up at moments like this with cold toes.
Fortunately, she has developed a sure-fire technique to recover.
“You always do that thing.”
“What thing?” Kate Bishop has perfected the look of angelic innocence, and deploys it even when she knows it is not deceiving anyone.
“That thing where you push your toes into me at night. You think you are so sneaky, Kate Bishop. But I know it is you. You are stealing the warmness of my body.”
“You are pretty warm,” Kate says, and Yelena points to her triumphantly, as if she has won a hard fought admission from her. “Probably because you steal the covers. All the covers.”
“I do not!”
“You do. You’re a cover hog.”
There is a pause as Yelena frantically googles what the word ‘hog’ means. She gasps. “Kate Bishop, did you just call me a pig?”
Kate smiles beatifically at Yelena’s scowl.
She always takes a moment to regard the sleeping woman beside her. Blonde hair frames a full face, usually so expressive, yet in the dark of the night, so very calm.
In the chaos of her life, Yelena gives her much needed stillness. Where Kate is usually frantic, Yelena is slower, more meticulous. She asks questions, and gives Kate pause. Reminds her that sometimes a more measured response to circumstances is necessary.
Yelena is her calm. And in the tempest that is her life, Kate needs that. Relies on it – relies on the certainty that Yelena is just there.
Life is funny that way – the woman tasked by her mother to kill her mentor has turned into the rock that Kate did not know she needed, who now sleeps beside Kate.
Yelena refuses to sleep with actual pjs. She goes to bed in an oversized shirt and shorts – which would explain why she invariably hogs the covers. Yet this comes with an obvious weakness – all Kate has to do is to curl her feet up, and slide her toes against Yelena’s legs.
The blonde will grunt, and a hand will slide down to shove the offending feet away, freeing up the covers for Kate to reclaim.
Kate Bishop has lost so much in such a short time. And yet, with Yelena, she has found something else to fill that hole of what was gone. Something new, something to explore, something to look forward to every day.
Every moment spent together a journey of discovery. Taking her further away from the pain of what she has lost, to a future where there are better things to be found.
Love is not a bandage to cover wounds.
Love is the strength to wear the scars.
Yelena generally wakes up before the alarm goes off. Kate wakes up shortly after, drawn to consciousness by the way the other woman leans into her.
Sometimes Kate is the first to wake up. Yelena isn’t far behind, alerted by the way the brunette exhales against her neck.
They always wake up in the same way – Yelena nestled into Kate, whose arms are wrapped tightly around her waist.
As always, Yelena will turn around. Their eyes will meet, and both will stare into each other’s faces. Sometimes one will doze off, followed by the other. Usually they’ll just lie there, as the world around them stirs, lingering in this moment of calm.
It’s becoming something of a morning ritual – lying there, taking each other’s presence in. It’s almost contemplative.
“Hey...” Kate will say, her voice hoarse with sleep.
Yelena will smile in response. Sometimes, she’ll reach out, and tuck an unruly strand of hair behind Kate’s ear.
“Why do you do that?” Kate asked, once.
“So that I can see you better,” Yelena replied.
It is almost religious, how out of the unreal shadows of the night, they both come back to the real life they knew, holding on to each other in greeting of the day. Night was gone, and their eyes had opened in the morning upon a world in which things have fresh shapes and colors, a world in which the past had little bearing upon the present.
“Did you sleep well?”
“I did.” Because I slept with you.