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It was a club much like any other club, with loud pounding music and dim lights and filled with people intoxicated on drink and life.
Kate danced, as she always did, with reckless abandon, not a care in the world. And as she danced, she spied, a short distance away, a blonde dancing alone, all by herself.
She wore a clinging dress, and the body showed through in every line and curve. Kate was powerfully fascinated by the paleness of her skin, the abundance of her breasts, her slender waist, her heavy blond hair.
The girl danced like light on water, and Kate could not stop watching. After she had watched for a while with her eyes, her gaze turned to look with all of her, not just her eyes, but her mind. The blonde danced alone, away from the crowd of bodies that pressed together in rapturous orgy, alone and apart. Kate wanted to stop looking, as if the mere act of watching was an invasion of privacy, but found that she could not, because the girl was so beautiful.
The blonde turned, and on her face Kate could see an invitation. Come to me, she seemed to say, and Kate followed, drawn in by the invitation she saw written in her eyes. They moved, parallel to one another, not saying a single word, each dancing to the tune of the beat, joining one another and coming close together.
Their faces, inches from one another. The exhalation of warmth as the blonde’s breath brushed her cheeks.
And then came the kiss.
It started slow, almost accidental. The constant sway of their bodies brought them close together, so achingly close, that the touch of lip on lip was at the end a given conclusion. The blonde’s lips were dry, and so were Kate’s. The faintest of brushes, and then their lips parted again.
Green eyes, deeper than an emerald pool, stared into Kate’s. Inviting her to take the jump into mysterious, unknown waters. An invitation, and a challenge, to chase those elusive lips now curved up into a smile.
A pink tongue licked those lips, and Kate found herself mirroring the motion. The blonde’s tongue came out, sliding against Kate’s lower lip. She felt the strength of an unknown pull inside her, a yearning to leap in.
She plunged in.
Their lips met together again. This time, with evident hunger and intent behind it. Lip to lip, they locked with one another. Kate’s tongue slid out, meeting the blonde’s in her mouth. Tip of tongue swirled over tip of tongue, tasting lipstick and stale cigarettes and the heady intoxicating cocktail of desire for strangeness and the unknown.
The moan built itself up in her throat even before she realized it. It grew, fuelled by a hunger for more. It had been on the surface of her skin like an irritation, but now it had spread into a deeper part of her body. It sank in, and accumulated, and it became the core of fire that waited to be exploded by the passing of time and the rhythm of the dance they had fallen into. Their touching bodies were locked into a sway in which they turned and deformed themselves into new shapes, new arrangements, new designs.
The blonde sucked on her lower lip, and Kate felt something clench inside her – down in the pit of her stomach. Anticipation grew, punctuated by the rapid beating of her heart. Blood rushed through her face, warming her cheeks, a roaring in her ears, drowning out the music of the club.
Her hands moved of their own volition. Reaching for the blonde’s hips, clutching against clothing, questing fingertips finding their way under the hem of the blonde’s top, and moving to touch skin previously hidden from view.
Hers were not the only hands roaming. She felt, rather than saw, the blonde’s firm grip round her back, moving to the curve of her ass. The blonde squeezed, and Kate’s moan grew in her throat – but it was muffled by the kiss. And so she moaned into that kiss, and in that moan made her want and need known to the both of them.
Their bodies pressed together again. She could feel the pounding of the blonde’s heart against her chest, the pillowy feel of breasts resting against her own. Her clothes felt sticky, and she longed to shed them, to leave them in rippled pools at their feet. Her eyes closed, and the music faded into the background. All there was in her world was the blonde in front of her. Her world was consumed by the kiss, stoking the flame of desire.
More, her body cried. More. And so her back arched, pushing more of her against the blonde. She was filled with a deep seated desire to feel more of the blonde.
The titillation almost deprived her of her senses. The elasticity of the blonde’s hands, the variety of rhythms, the change from the hands gripping her ass now moving to touch, with the lightest of touches, to the small of her back. Her hands too had switched – now kneading the back of the blonde’s neck, all of it, from the base to the part with the lightest teasing of hair around it.
The kiss grew frantic, moving in tandem with the grinding of their bodies, as if it had been stretched by invisible, curious hands that wanted to dismember each of their bodies to get to the interior of their hearts. The kiss was flawless, full and roseate. It brought out images of Venus, invoked by the caresses that seemed to fill the hidden recesses of their souls.
Kate wanted more, so much more – to bring out so much more. Her body felt taken by convulsive need. She pursued the kiss with an outreached arm, stretching out as if to pull away the ultimate fruit from a branch, pulling, pulling at that branch to bring down everything into the wildest dance of lip upon lip she had ever known.
Her hands quested upwards, finding the blonde’s breasts. She cupped them, and felt those breasts undulating like waves under her hands, painfully awake, aware, sensitive.
She grew aware of a deadening of the world, a dilation of the whole universe. Everything in that moment seemed smooth and utterly simple, as if she were running downward on a snowy hill on which she could slide with little effort.
They were floating in a dark world of flesh, feeling only the soft flesh vibrating, and every touch was a joy. Warmth and want melted everything. The warmth now seemed concentrated between her legs, and it evoked such thoughts…thoughts of bodies rolling on beds, hands fumbling, panties pulled by eager hands, caresses – caresses and pleasure making the bodies curl and undulate, pleasure running over skin like water, swimming against the tide as the wave of sordid joy caught bellies and hips, running up spines and down legs.
The kiss was heart shaking and utterly glorious. It was pure wildness. It was torches in the dark, dizziness in a spin, the singing of a tribal choir. It was the howl of wolves in the dark. It coursed like a river down from the mountains into the plains – all if it like a film in fast motion, the moon waxing and waning, clouds rushing across the sky. Vines grew from the ground so fast they twined up the trees like snakes; seasons passing in the wink of an eye, entire years captured in a single instant Time no longer felt real. The kiss had turned them into statues, changeless and joyous and absolutely indestructible. Duality ceases to exist; they were now one.
“And then she left. Just like that. She just left, without a word.”
“Hmm.”
They were in the lounge – that small little sacred space on every hospital floor, where overworked young doctors congregate, hiding away from specialists, overbearing seniors and family members. Not to mention the fucking patients themselves.
Seriously. Fuck patients. Fuck them and their fucking ailments and their fucking complaints and their fucking questions and their fucking everything.
Dr Kate Bishop, MD, is presently complaining to Dr Peter Parker, who is the best listener in the entire hospital.
“’Hmm’? ‘Hmm’? That doesn’t cut it. What does ‘hmm’ mean, hmm?”
“It just means ‘hmm’,” he replies, not even looking up at his patient notes, because Dr Maria Hill is scary and asks a shit ton of questions about the most innocuous of remarks on patient notes. She runs the floor with an iron fist firmly clutching everyone’s metaphorical balls. No one crosses her.
“I swear to God, Pete…” Kate starts, and she’s about to launch on another tirade, when Peter interrupts her.
“So you met a girl, you dance, you make out. Standard night out in the club stuff,” he says, but of course that’s not enough for Kate.
“There was nothing standard about it. I swear – that kiss. That fucking kiss though. It was…” and she sighs, her eyes distant, as she recalls just how utterly magnificent oh my god I want to die that kiss was.
“You’ve never had a kiss like that. I swear.”
Peter looks up. “What makes you think I haven’t?”.
Kate lifts an eyebrow high enough that it’s in danger of disappearing into her hairline. “Dude, I know you haven’t.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because you were just telling me how dry you’ve been for the past two years and because you haven’t had the balls to ask MJ out yet, and – ”
“Shut up shut up shut up!”
And Kate quietens down, because Dr Michelle Jones has just walked in, completely oblivious that she is, at present, the topic of conversation. Peter sinks even deeper into his notes, as if he hasn’t noticed her entry – as if choirs of angels did not sing a chorus of Alleluia every time she walked into a room he was in.
“I hate my job,” MJ announces, perfunctorily, before sinking into one of the cheap seats that the hospital provides for the lowest of the low, the residents. Even the cockroaches the janitorial staff swears do not live there rank higher, socially, than fucking residents. “I hate this place, I hate Nurse Coulson, and I hate life in general.”
“There, there…” Kate says soothingly, and quietens down the moment MJ shoots her a glare.
“It’s not that I’m not grateful, you know,” she continues. “I’m not complaining at all,” she complains. “But how am I supposed to grow and become better if all they’ve got me treating are minor cuts and bruises?”
Work in the Emergency Room is not as glamorous as it’s made out to be on TV. Not every day is filled with medical drama complex enough to fill an entire episode. There are no massive pileups on the freeway, no building collapses, and the worst thing that Kate has seen this week is a man who twisted his ankle climbing out of the fire escape because “she did not tell me she had a husband, nor did she tell me her husband wrestled bears for a living.”
Said husband had been the one to carry the man, cradled in his arms like a wailing infant, into the ER.
Kate nods. She isn’t really listening, because she’s got other pressing problems – namely recovering from the injury of being left without a name or a number or even a single fucking word of ‘hi’ or ‘goodbye’ after what was possibly the best possible kiss she has ever had in her entire fucking goddamn life. But not listening hasn’t stopped her from learning and mastering the art of tossing nods and grimaces at all the appropriate times in the conversation.
All residents think that their lives are the hardest. All of them swear that they are underpaid and overworked. All think that they have the hands of a surgeon and the mind of a consultant, and each of them is painfully aware that their bank balance is criminally close to zero.
“Preaching to the choir, sister,” Kate says. Her mind makes a mental note that yes, that was in fact the appropriate comment to be inserted at this point of the conversation.
Kate Bishop prides herself at being the Viagra of social discourse.
"I mean, it's not that I think that treating people who have like, eaten the wrong thing isn’t cool," MJ says. “It’s not like it’s not important. But like, they’re just so boring. So standard. So uninteresting. So…eugh.”
“Eugh?”
“That’s right. Eugh. At this rate, I’ll have a PHD in saying ‘it’s all right, you’re not going to die’ before I ever get out of this hellhole.”
Peter stirs, a look of intense concentration on his face, like he’s hanging on to her every word. He probably is, Kate thinks sourly. The candle he holds for MJ could outshine the fucking sun. At this rate it’s not even a candle any more – it’s a fucking spotlight, and he’s focused it directly on Michelle Jones’ face.
The look of utterly rapt adoration on his face is his signature look, every time the other woman comes into the picture.
“A good rapport with the patient is crucial, though,” he says. MJ doesn’t have to roll her eyes – Kate does it for her.
“Of course it’s important. What is important-er…” she raises an eyebrow, daring either one of the two to even start at pointing out her egregious murder of the English language, “…is learning other things. Like stitching wounds. Suturing. All we get on our floor are the boring cases.” She pauses, for dramatic effect.
“It’s because Dr Fury hates us.”
They pause, for now was the appropriate time to recall their first day – the all important Orientation Day – when three bright eyed and innocent residents who were carpooling in Peter’s shitty old car somehow managed to rear end Dr Nick Fury’s brand new definitely not a midlife crisis purchase sports convertible, right in the fucking hospital parking lot.
“So let me get this straight…”
They straighten instantly, because Dr Clint Barton, consultant on duty, has just entered, and everyone knows that low level lifeforms must immediately shudder to attention the moment someone higher in the universal pecking order comes along.
“You think,” he says, “that Dr Fury has somehow managed to arrange for all the boring cases to come to your floor, on your shift, in defiance of every causal rule that runs this planet?”
MJ and Peter remain still in stony faced silence, but he isn’t looking at them. He’s looking at Kate, who is doing her best impression of I wonder whether IKEA carries this table because it is the fucking ultimate design in table-ship and maybe if I stare at this long enough he will go away and not shout at me.
He keeps on staring though. She can feel his eyes – hawk eyes – staring through her overly thick skull. She can’t avoid it forever. Man up, Bishop. Grow a pair. So that you can give that pair to Maria Hill to squeeze harder, while Nick Fury laughs his fucking head off like the fucking vindictive maniac that he is.
She lifts her head up, willing herself not to wilt in fear and trepidation.
He grins. “I have good news for you, Bishop.” He’s carrying a chart, held close to his chest. He’s one of the coolest consultants in the hospital – solid, dependable, unflappable, with a wry sense of humor and nerves of steel for when Dr Maria Hill is in one of her moods. Sometimes he takes Kate on his rounds. She thinks that he’s taking her under his wing. His little protégé - she’s taken to calling herself Hawkeye 2.0 when she thinks that no one’s listening in on her private thoughts.
“Good news?” she manages to squeak out.
“Good news,” he affirms. “I think.”
“You think?”
“Got a new case for you.”
“A new case? An interesting case?” Her face lights up. “Something that doesn’t involve a kid falling down and an overly concerned mom convinced that the kid’s gonna grow up lame for life?”
“Well…” he pauses, glancing at the chart, which he still hasn’t shown her – and that should probably tell her something because why wouldn’t he have shown it to her right away, right? “It’s interesting, all right.”
Kate stands up, the misery of jilted love forgotten. “Let’s do this! Where’s the patient?”
“12th Floor. Room 2.”
The 12th Floor is not your conventional floor. It’s the special floor, designated for persons of interests. Very usually, for persons of interests to those who wore blue and drove cars with flashing lights and whose lives sometimes mattered and sometimes did not, depending on which news broadcaster you followed and which side of the political aisle you were on.
The chart says minor laceration. It also has that special code – Code Grey – for combative person. Someone’s actually written Code Silver – which meant combative person with weapon – but Clint’s scratched it out.
Kate hopes it’s Nurse Coulson’s weird sense of humor at play.
There’s a distinct lack of uniformed officers stationed outside the door when she makes her way over to it. That could mean that the police officer was already inside, forcibly holding the patient/dangerous maniac down so that she, Kate Bishop, could offer some medical help and hopefully leave with all her fingers intact.
She sighs, wishing for some of the balls that Maria Hill undoubtedly keeps in the drawer of her desk, beside the collection of deadly weapons she probably has. She steels herself, opening the door and readying herself for the sight of a huge person with GANG SIGN tattooed on his forehead or –
Huh.
Huh?
Huh.
It’s her. The girl. Not just any girl. The girl. The fucking girl. That girl. That fucking girl. That one. That girl.
That girl.
Currently handcuffed to the bed, with a split lip and a black eye and a massive bandage on one arm that is currently resting on a chest – the same chest that Kate’s hands were busy squeezing just the other night.
She’s staring at Kate as if Kate were somehow personally responsible for her current predicament, like Kate’s the one who has stabbed her in the arm and handcuffed her to the hospital bed. Which is probably not a stretch considering just how fucking mad Kate was at being left hanging after that fucking kiss, but Kate’s pretty sure that she hasn’t manifested that hard and that the universe doesn’t give a flying fuck what sordid fantasies a jilted Kate Bishop has imagined in her head.
That girl.
Kate’s aware that she’s staring. Like, staring staring. With her mouth open, her jaw hanging low enough for a boy and his pet monkey to waltz in and steal whatever treasure happens to be in the pit of her stomach and sing songs about flying carpets or whatever.
“What’s the matter? Never seen a cut before?” the girl says, rudely. She has an accent. Like a Russian fucking accent, spoken in a low voice that Kate Bishop should not be finding fucking sexy because the overall effect of a Russian woman handcuffed to a bed should not be fucking sexy, porn fantasies notwithstanding, but fucking scary.
“I…uh…”
The girl…no…the scary Russian woman who is probably an assassin or something raises an eyebrow at this distinctly non impressive response from Dr Kate Bishop.
“Are you new? Are you even doctor?”
“Hey – rude! I am a doctor. I’ve got a stethoscope and a badge and everything.” She holds the stethoscope up, as if to emphasize that she, Kate Bishop, was in fact a doctor.
“Really? You are doctor?” The woman does not sound at all impressed.
“I am doctor. I mean – I’m a doctor. Yes.”
The blonde continues to stare at her. Kate feels as though she’s being assessed. Her mind conjures up an image of the blonde suddenly breaking free of her restraints, vaulting off the bed before catching Kate by the arm and twisting it back, holding a blade or other sharp object of choice to her neck in a hostage taking – definitely Code Silver – as she makes a desperate bid for freedom.
She should not be finding that image so fucking hot.
“Do you work with Nurse Forehead?”
“Nurse Forehead?”
“You know. The one with the big forehead and the weird smile.”
“Big forehead – oh, you mean Nurse Coulson?”
“I do not know the name. Is he the one with airfield sized forehead?”
“I…uh…I guess so?”
“You do not sound sure.”
“I’m not…”
“But you sure you are doctor?”
“I…what is even happening right now?”
“You are staring at me, and not doing the things that doctors do in hospitals when they meet patients. Are you sure you are doctor?”
“I’m a doctor,” Kate snaps. “And I don’t know who the nurse with the big forehead is, but he should have told you to put pressure on the wound.” She pauses, feeling a sudden need to defend the hospital and its staff. “He did tell you to put pressure on the wound, right?”
“He said some words, but I think he was afraid of me.”
“I wonder why,” Kate says dryly, eyeing the handcuff meaningfully, and the blonde raises her eyebrow again.
“So…”
“Yes?”
“You are doctor…” The blonde is speaking slowly now, like Kate is a child.
“I am…” Kate responds in kind. Two can play this game, she thinks.
“And you do in fact see me on this bed?”
“I do. With the handcuffs, even.”
“And you see the hand, yes?”
“Yes?”
“The hand with the bandage and the blood that is currently pouring out of it?”
“What – oh, fuck!” And Kate realizes that no, she should not be staring at the girl who kissed her like she’s never been kissed before and who obviously did not remember her at all, and should in fact be treating the very dangerous patient who was also in danger of bleeding out on the bed.
Check the cut check the cut check her out no fuck you Kate check the cut .
“May I?” she asks, keeping her voice as level as she could.
The girl obliges without a snarky remark, offering the bandaged hand. Kate undresses the bandage – a rudimentary field bandage.
“It’s not too deep,” she says, holding the hand, willing her mind not to go to where that hand has been – right there on my ass, squeezing my ass, while we were making out oh fuck you Kate get over it she doesn’t even remember you.
“You probably won’t even need stitches. Just gotta clean the wound and apply a fresh bandage.”
“You are telling me this like you expect me to do it.”
This fucking bitch .
Kate does not let her annoyance show, because bedside manner, Kate Bishop, but she does press her lips together to make sure that none of the words she wants to say inadvertently escapes her mouth. And then there is the ever present danger of this obviously deranged maniac pulling a knife out and cutting one or more of her fingers off. Or stabbing her in the eye. Or cutting her fingers off and stabbing her in the eye with one or more of her own fingers.
Kate glances at the woman, the round faced blonde who cannot be older than she is, whose lips were, just over 24 hours ago were pressed against Kate Bishop’s and are now presently curved in an amused smirk as if Kate’s obvious discomfort was hilarious to her.
Or maybe she’s imagining stabbing Kate in the eye.
“You do not have to be scared, Kate Bishop.”
“How do you know my name?”
“It is on your badge,” the girl replies absently, and for once she doesn’t sound like the Queen of Hell, even if that does nothing to soothe Kate Bishop’s poor nerves or alleviate the tension she feels, being here, alone, in a room with a woman who has sucked her face and possibly murdered someone all in the span of twenty four hours.
Just do your job. You care for your patients. She’s a patient. Care for her and then get the fuck out of here and never complain about boring cases ever again because you never want to come up here and deal with scary people ever again .
Kate exhales, and inhales again. Calm thoughts, Bishop. Calm thoughts.
“Are you on any medication?”
The girl leans back on the bed, glancing up at the ceiling, not even looking at Kate. “No.”
“Are you allergic to anything?”
“Posers.”
Kate looks up, and there’s a playful smile on the blonde’s lips. “I cannot stand them,” the blonde adds.
She’s probably stabbed someone. And she’s in pain. And she’s handcuffed to a bed. And she’s probably looking at ten to fifteen years in a supermax prison. Do not attempt to bring up the kiss. Do nothing. Treat her, get up, and leave .
“I’m going to check your eye now.”
The blonde doesn’t respond, and Kate waits. The cardinal rule to avoiding a malpractice suit is to always ask for consent from the patient. The blonde glances at her, and sighs before she nods.
“Not too bad. The swelling will reduce in a few days. I’ll prescribe some anti inflammatory pills, and antibiotics just in case of infection.”
The blonde does not respond once again. Her face has taken on a distant look, and Kate cannot help but feel a little hurt at the fact that she’s being ignored for like the second time since they’ve met.
This fucking bitch .
“Any loss of feeling in the hand?” she asks, and it comes out a little more curtly than she intended it to be.
“No. I can still do this…” the blonde clenches and unclenches her hand. “So you do not have to be concerned, Kate Bishop…” There’s a pause – the sort of inviting pause that just promises more words to come – inviting enough for Kate to momentarily look up to see a knowing look on the blonde’s face.
“…I can still squeeze your ass with my hand.”
This fucking bitch!
For the second time that night, Kate’s jaw has dropped. “You remember me.”
“You are not forgettable, Kate Bishop.”
Kate should not be grinning at that. And she’s pretty sure that there’s a section in the employee handbook about blushing at potential hardened criminals whose face she had been making out with just a night ago.
“You thought I forgot.” Kate wonders whether perpetual amusement is the blonde’s signature look. She can see the playfulness dancing in the other woman’s eyes.
“I…”
“That is why you were mad earlier. You thought I forgot.”
Kate is almost certain that this blonde is a mind reader. She is definitely certain that her face is flaming red right now.
She is however spared from having to answer to that, at the approaching sound of conversation.
“I mean it, Clint. I owe you. We owe you. A lot.”
“Least I could do.”
The blonde’s face twists into something that mirrors discomfort. She stiffens, almost unconsciously, on the bed. Kate can sense the tension radiating from the woman.
She turns around. Clint has entered the room, followed by an incredibly beautiful woman with crimson red hair, who pauses at the door, her eyes fixed firmly on the blonde, whose face shifts everywhere, looking at everything else but the newcomer.
The tall redhead sighs, and leans against the doorframe. “Yelena.”
“Natasha.” Was that guilt in the blonde’s voice?
Clint catches Kate’s eye. “Everything all right here?”
“I’m…almost done?” She phrases it as a question, because something is obviously up. Clint glances at the blonde, a practised eye sweeping at the freshly applied bandage. He nods, and then jerks his head at Kate. Get up, get out.
She gets the message immediately. Wordlessly, she stands. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees the blonde’s hand twitch, as if the girl was fighting off a sudden urge to hold on to Kate’s hand.
“This is…Dr Kate Bishop. She’s the attending…”
“It’s nice to meet you,” the tall woman – Natasha – says, but she doesn’t even look at Kate. Her attention is fixed directly on the blonde. Kate’s not the greatest in reading facial expressions, but she can tell from the way this Natasha was looking at the blonde – Yelena – that she obviously cared for her.
Absurdly, idiotically, she feels her heart sink in her chest.
“Let’s give them some privacy.” Clint steps aside. Mutely, without even looking at Yelena, Kate troops out, Clint closing the door behind her.
It’s a hardwood door, which muffles the conversation going on inside, but not so much because the tall redhead is in full voice. Kate’s ears strain to listen, and gives up – the tall supermodel looking woman is yelling in Russian.
From what she can tell, the blonde is giving as good as she gets.
Clint gives her a sheepish grin. “Family, huh?”
“What?” She gives him her patented Kate Bishop blink, which conveyed all at once her utter lack of understanding at the situation. “What’s going on, Clint?” Not Dr Barton. Clint. Tonight’s been weird enough – she’s earned Clint.
He sighs.
“It’s complicated. Not sure it’s my place.”
“You know her?”
“No, not her. I know Natasha. We’re…friends, I guess.”
“Friends?” Kate can’t keep the shock from her voice. Clint’s married – she’s met Laura, and they’ve got kids.
“What?” His eyes widen. “Not like that, Kate. Geez.”
“Like what, then?”
“Natasha’s a friend. Not a friend. An actual friend.”
“Right.”
“Yes, Kate. Right is right. She’s just a friend.”
“And the patient…”
“Yelena…”
“She’s…?”
“Not my friend. I’m not even sure I’ve met her – I might have, maybe, but you meet so many people, you know, and – ”
“No, Clint, I don’t know. What the hell is going on?”
“Kinda insubordinate of you, Kate.”
She bites her lip, and lowers her eyes immediately, as befits a low rung inconsequential resident. He takes pity on her.
“Do the names Alexei Shostakov or Melina Vostokoff ring a bell to you?”
“Are they supposed to?”
“They would if you paid attention during Orientation.”
“For the last time, it wasn’t like I wasn’t paying attention on the road, okay? Pete was talking and we were looking for a spot and then Dr Fury’s car – ”
Clint sighs – the long suffering sigh of a man who has heard this story before, both from the guilty party and the irate, very angry and very very very scary doctor who managed the hospital.
“They’re on the board of trustees for this hospital. Hell, they are the board of trustees. They own this hospital.”
“Right…”
“And Natasha’s their daughter…”
“Oh…”
“And so is Yelena.”
“Ohhhhh.” Absurdly, idiotically, she felt a slight lift in her chest. “Wait, what?”
Clint glances at the window at the two Russian women who were shouting at each other. “And when the cops brought Yelena in, the staff buzzed me and I buzzed Natasha. Thought I’d give her a heads up, you know?”
“And Natasha’s her sister. Like, they’re sisters.” Kate has in fact heard him the first time, but it does not hurt to have confirmation of the fact, just to be sure, for the patient history section of the form, you know, and absolutely definitely one hundred percent not because there’s no fucking way she can ever compete with the tall statuesque model that was Natasha.
“Yeah. So Natasha and I are friends...just friends…” he adds with a meaningful look at Kate, who nods, suitably chastised. “And when Yelena got brought in, I called her. Always good to have friends in high places, you know?”
“What did she get brought in for? Like…”
“The handcuffs?”
“Yeah.”
Clint pressed his lips together. “I’m not sure.”
“You’re not sure?”
“Yes, Kate. I’m not sure.”
“And you expect me to just take that as your answer?”
“Yes. Because you work for me. She’s a patient. She came in. You treated her. That’s the job. And that reminds me - the cops will want to get her statement.”
Yep. Great . Natasha may be her sister, but Yelena’s in for assault, probably. Like criminal assault. Kate Bishop, MD, has been sucking face with a violent criminal who is going to be locked up for life, probably, thus ending any potential for more face sucking in the future.
You really know how to pick em, Bishop .
“Dr Bishop?”
“Hmm?” She looks up, and right there, in front of her, there’s a cop. Blue uniform, badge, gun, the works.
Kate can’t help it. She immediately feels guilty, and her mind runs to the stack of unpaid speeding tickets she’s stashed in the glove box, in the hopes that they would magically disappear to Narnia or something.
Out of sight, out of mind, right?
“Yes?” It comes out as a squeak. Her eyes fall on the handcuffs on his belt. Did they arrest people for unpaid speeding tickets? Could she afford a lawyer? What would she even say? Yes, your honor, I was caught speeding multiple times, but on each and every one of those times, I was totally rushing to the hospital to save a patient’s life and not because I was late.
“My name is Officer Grills.”
I’m not a bad person, I swear. It’s just a few tickets. Okay, so maybe twelve…fine…fourteen is not a few, but I was gonna pay it. I swear I was. Please don’t send me to jail .
“Yes?” She clears her throat. Squeaking was something the rats in the basement did, no matter what the janitorial staff swore.
“I was told that you were the attending doctor for a Miss Yelena Belova?”
Yelena Belova . “Y-yeah?”
“It’s just that…” The cop looks vaguely embarrassed to be having this conversation with her. “We can’t find her.”
“You can’t – what?”
“We cannot locate Miss Belova at this present moment, ma’am.”
“Oh! You’re here for her?”
“Why else would we be here?”
Kate Bishop is one of those people who, upon discovery that they were not in trouble, would immediately forget any dislike of law enforcement and fall head over heels in an attempt to be completely useful I am a productive member of society, officer, as you can see. Always happy to assist the law.
“She’s right…here?”
The door swung open. The bed lay empty, save for a pair of handcuffs.
“Like I said, Dr Bishop. We can’t seem to locate her at present.”
“I had nothing to do with this. I swear! I left her, right here! I didn’t help her escape, okay? I’m innocent! I wouldn’t even know how to open handcuffs! Like, there was this time back in college – you know…college…and Chavez and I were experimenting, ‘cause it’s college, right, and you’re supposed to be doing that…and she got handcuffs and we were gonna try and use them…and I’m shutting up now, because I know that you’re not interested in hearing about that,” she said, as he gave her the patented stare of the policeman – the kind that said ‘I know you are guilty of something, so why don’t you just keep talking so that I can figure out what I can arrest you for’.
“Right…” Officer Grills knew that he should not have pissed off Commissioner Wilson, because how many times has he tried to make detective and yet he’s still here, a beat cop, talking so slightly insane doctors.
“And that is the last time I am ever going up to that floor. Ever.”
It’s lunch, and work is finally fucking over, and they’re free to leave the hellhole that is the hospital, to go back to their sad little shared apartment so that Kate can watch Peter pine over MJ while MJ bitches about the fact that her rotation is so fucked up.
“Cool story, bro,” MJ says, and she’s saying that ironically, because she’s genuinely interested, though that is only because it is the only interesting thing that has happened to them in the past two weeks.
“I can’t believe you lost the girl, Kate,” Peter grins. “She was right there, handcuffed and everything, and you still couldn’t get her.”
“Are you sure that you want to talk about not getting girls who are right there, Parker?” she asks, eyebrow lifted in challenge. Cross me, Parker. I dare you.
“No,” he mumbles, and stares at his sandwich contritely.
That’s what I thought , Kate thinks smugly. She stares at her plate, and breathes out a long suffering sigh. “I will never…ever…say that life is boring ever again. Ever. The universe has heard me, and has conspired to teach me a lesson. Lesson learned, universe.”
“Did you ask who it was she assaulted?”
“No, I did not, because I am so done. So, so done.”
“But what if it’s like a really cool story, though? Maybe she’s stabbed like another really rich one percenter, because the guy tried to pull a Weinstein on her.”
“Somehow I don’t think that’s what happened.”
“Because you didn’t ask, Kate!” MJ’s in the wrong career. She should have been a reporter or something. “You should have asked!” Kate feels vaguely insulted at how disappointed MJ is at her failure to ask.
“Maybe…”
“What, Peter?”
“Maybe it was a drunken altercation?”
“A drunken altercation? When the hell did you start using words like drunken altercation? Who uses words like drunken altercation in a conversation?”
“It’s a phrase! A real phrase!”
“On print, Peter. That’s what they would use in police reports. Not when people are talking to one another.”
“What would you call it then?” He sounds mildly injured.
“Something normal. A bar fight. That’s how normal people speak.”
“It was not.”
Three heads turn. One jaw, belonging to a Bishop, Kate, drops. For like the third time. She wonders whether she should just get it sewn shut.
Yelena Belova, escaped convict, is standing by their table.
“Kate Bishop. Hiiiiiiii.” She waves a bandaged arm in the air. Uninvited, she sits on the empty chair, and without having the decency of asking, reaches out to take one of Kate’s fries.
Kate stares. There’s nothing else that she can do. There’s nothing else that can actually be done, other than stare at fucking Yelena Belova calmly eating a fucking fry while sitting at their fucking table like it was the most normal fucking thing in the world.
Peter and MJ stare at Kate, and then at Yelena, and then at Kate again. The proverbial penny drops in their head, as does the other shoe.
Huh.
Huh?
Huh.
Yelena picks up a plastic fork, which Kate has been half heartedly using to eat her salad, and gives it a pitying look. “This is not cutlery, Kate Bishop.” Despite the utter insanity of the situation, Kate feels completely judged.
“It was not…what?” It’s Peter, of all people, who recovers first.
“What?”
“You said ‘it was not’.” MJ pipes up, her brain deciding to join the conversation.
“Oh. Yes. That. It was not a bar fight.” The way Yelena speaks, you’d think it was the most normal thing in the world, as if they weren’t discussing the felony for which she would most certainly be charged with and thrown into jail, with the key melted into iron and turned into another lock to make sure the damned bars of her cell are never ever opened again.
“So what was it?” MJ, Kate decides, is entirely too happy at the appearance of an escaped and definitely highly dangerous convict at their table, calmly and without any sense of shame whatsoever stealing another fry from Kate’s plate.
“Someone tried to steal my bag,” the highly dangerous Russian munched happily on another one of Kate’s rapidly disappearing fries. “He will not be making that mistake again.”
The way she said it, with such studied casualness to describe an act of self defense, was so fucking hot.
“Someone…tried to…steal…your bag?” This was Kate’s first contribution to the conversation. From the look on Yelena’s face, it was distinctly unimpressive.
“Yes. He came up from behind of me and pulled it, and then I fell.” She pointed to the bruise on her eye and the cut on her lip. “I even cut my hand on a broken bottle. New York is so disgusting. So dirty. So many bottles everywhere.” She lifted the bandaged arm, again, an indictment to New York public sanitation. “And then he ran. So I chased him.”
“Hang on. Hang onnnn. You got all that…from the fall?”
“Yes.” The blonde looked puzzled. “Did you think he caused this?” She lifted the bandaged arm again.
“Well, yes!” MJ was positively breathless now, and Kate felt an irrational stab of jealousy.
“Oh. That would not be possible.”
“Why?” Even Peter sounded out of breath. I need new friends, Kate thought.
“He had gun. If he had hurt me, it would not be cut. It would be gunshot.”
“Hang on. Let me get this straight. You got robbed…”
“Yes.”
“By a man with a gun.”
“Yes.”
“And hurt.”
“Yes.”
“And you chased him?”
“Yes.”
“The man with the gun. You chased the man with the gun.”
“Of course.” Yelena looked vaguely insulted. “He stole my bag. It was expensive bag. Present from my daddy. I made him buy it for me as a surprise.”
“And then?” Kate was vaguely annoyed at just how breathless she sounded.
“I hit him. On head. He fell, and then some other people came, and this big man sat on him, and then the police came and arrested him.”
The three of them stared at Yelena, who shamelessly stole another fry.
“Dude…” MJ looked so incredibly impressed that Kate felt herself moving closer to Yelena without even realizing that she was doing precisely that. “That is so bad ass.”
Yelena looked surprised at their reactions. She shrugged. “I am Russian.”
“Then why did the cops handcuff you?”
Yelena looked positively affronted. “You think the police handcuffed me?”
“Who the fuck else would it have been?”
“Barton.” She said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
“WHAT?” All three of them said it, all at once, like a synchronized team of talking parrots.
Yelena shrugged. “The policeman brought me to hospital. Barton said he would call Natasha. I said no, do not call my sister, because I would be in so much trouble because she would nag me so much, and I do not want to be nagged by her because it would not just be her, you see. She would tell mama, and then I would be nagged by mama, which is so annoying because mama does not just nag about one thing, she nags about all the things, even the things that have not yet happened. It is so annoying. So when Barton said that he would call Natasha, I tried to leave. Then he and Nurse Forehead handcuffed me to the bed.”
Peter and MJ had gone off, purportedly on a grocery run. Kate Bishop knew this for a lie, because groceries meant ramen due to their criminally low bank accounts and capitalistically high rent, and the fact that they had just restocked their supply of ramen last week.
Leaving Kate and Yelena alone, the latter inviting herself to walk Kate home.
They walked in silence, side by side. Kate glanced sideways at Yelena, who kept her gaze steadfastly forward. Yelena glanced sideways at Kate, who kept her gaze steadfastly forward.
Kate Bishop has never really been comfortable in silence. She’s always felt a need to fill it.
“So…”
“Yes?”
What to say, what to say. “What are you doing later?”
“I need to go to the police station. They want me to do the line up thing.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. It is where they take several people, including the – ”
“I know what a line up is, Yelena,” Kate snapped.
“Then why did you ask?”
“I didn’t.”
“I thought you did.”
“Well I didn’t. There’s no need to mansplain it to me.” If that came out a little short, that was intentional. Because Kate was, once again, preoccupied with the memory of a kiss shared, and broken, by the sudden disappearance of Yelena Belova.
She glanced sideways at Yelena, who kept her gaze steadfastly forward. Yelena glanced sideways at her, who kept her gaze steadfastly forward.
Kate stopped. “This is stupid.”
“What is?”
“This.” She gestured at the space between them, and then stared directly at Yelena, who honest to God actually flinched.
“You left.”
“Yes.”
“The other night. At the club. You left.”
“Yes.” That was guilt in Yelena’s voice. Kate’s heard it before. She knows how it sounds. “Why’d you leave?”
“You want to do this here?”
“I’d like to, yeah.”
“Right here? In the open?”
“Yeah. Right fucking here. I’m not taking another fucking step forward until you tell me why you fucking left after the best fucking kiss I’ve ever had in my entire life.”
Yelena bit her lip, and Kate felt a rush flow through her. Focus, Bishop. She kept her face as still as possible, eyebrow cocked, refusing to move until she got her fucking answer.
No answer was forthcoming.
“Fine. I’m done. I’m out.”
“No, wait, please…”
“Tell me, then.”
“It…it is hard, Kate Bishop.”
“What’s hard is trying to understand why you left, Yelena.”
“I…”
“Yeah?”
“I was scared.” The words, when it came out, was said in such a small voice that Kate thought she had imagined them.
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“I don’t think I did, because I thought I heard you say you were scared.”
“I was.”
“You?” Kate can’t keep the disbelief out of her voice. “You just fucking chased an armed robber because he stole your fucking bag. Don’t give me this ‘scared’ bullshit, okay?”
“That?” Yelena scoffed, shaking her head. “That was easy. But this…you….”
“What? Me what?”
“You. This. That kiss. That was fucking terrifying, Kate Bishop.”
“I…” Kate was, for once in her life, at a loss for words. “I don’t understand.”
She watched as Yelena ran her hands through her hair, almost irritably. The blonde looked almost in pain.
“That night…I was just dancing alone. And it was all right, because I do not mind being alone, most of the time. But then I saw you. You were watching me. And I do not know why, but suddenly, at that moment, I wanted to meet you. It was like, inside my head, I wanted to go over and say hello, my name is Yelena, but of course I am not so good at that. I am not brave like you that way, Kate Bishop. I am not brave at all, in so many ways.”
The words looked as though they had been strangled out of her throat. Kate could see the hesitance and indecision on the blonde’s face. “And just like that, you came and started to dance with me. So I started to dance, with you, because that is what you do in the club, yes?”
“Yeah.” Kate wants to ask so much more, but something tells her that now’s not the time to ask. Now’s the time to listen.
“And then we kissed. And…”
“Yeah?”
“And it was scary. How…the kiss was. It was like I was out of control. Like…I was not myself. Not any more. It was like fire. It consumed me. I…” She paused, and kicked one of the bottles on the curb.
“There is a Russian saying, Kate Bishop. Не заставляй меня целовать, и ты не заставишь меня грешить . It means…do not make me kiss you, and you will not make me sin.” There are tears in her eyes, and that’s when Kate fucking knows.
“Oh.”
“Yes.”
“But why…why…now?” She does not know how to finish the question. She does not even know how to ask the question.
“Because…I have never felt a kiss like that before, Kate Bishop. It was everything and anything all at once. It was all of the things, Kate Bishop. All of the things. And it made me think…”
“Of what?”
“Another saying.”
“Yeah?”
“Тварь ли я дрожащая или имею право?”
“And what does that mean?”
“Maybe you search on Google and find out, Kate Bishop.”
“Type it for me then.”
Yelena did.