Work Text:
“All I’m saying is that Stef is totally into you.”
Kate rolled her eyes as she climbed onto the city bus, her friend Chris following closely after her. “Why does that even matter?”
“Because she’s a hot chick and you like hot chicks?”
They continued towards the back of the bus and a newspaper caught Kate’s eye. The headline article was about how Hawkeye had broken up a human trafficking ring. Kate sat in the row in front of the person who was reading the newspaper. She was allowed to be a little vain.
“I don’t get why that matters,” Kate said to Chris as he sat next to her.
“I swear, you are like the inverse of a Useless Lesbian,” he said. “Nega-useless. So un-distracted by pretty girls that you circle back around to being useless from the other end.”
“Do you have a point?”
“My point is that if the power hadn’t gone out when it did, Stef was probably going to try and jump your bones after group.” Chris sighed dramatically. “And yet, here you sit. Alone. Un-sapphified. Like a Useless Lesbian.”
Kate gave him a half-hearted shove. “Stef isn’t even my type.”
“Then what is your type?”
“I would also like to know, Kate Bishop,” a contralto voice with a thick Russian accent purred from behind the newspaper, causing Kate and Chris to twist in their seats to look at the seats behind them. The paper lowered to reveal a young woman with blonde hair.
“Yelena,” Kate growled, “what a…coincidence.”
“Is it? You always take the M21 bus when your group lets out,” Yelena said with a frown.
“I normally take the 5 o’clock bus.”
Yelena shrugged. “4:30 was more convenient for me.”
Kate’s eyes narrowed. “What do you want?”
“I require company tonight,” Yelena said firmly. “A cocktail party. You will wear a dress.”
“I don’t have a cocktail dress.”
Yelena grinned. “You do now.” She lifted a garment bag from the seat next to her and passed it over Kate’s seat back. “It should go with those boots I got you. The ones with the custom inseam.”
Yelena had previously gifted Kate a pair of combat boots. Ones that were specifically designed so the wearer could move in them as if they were normal combat boots, but gave the outward appearance of stylish and impractical footwear. They even had ceramic blades hidden in the inseam so that Kate would always be armed when she wore them. Kate had never told Yelena her shoe size or given her any details about her shoe preferences. And yet, the boots fit perfectly.
Kate sighed and took the garment bag. “Do you need me to bring anything else?”
“Your usual gear,” Yelena said, still grinning.
So, her collapsible bow, a few arrows (with mostly normal heads and a few trick ones), some throwing knives, a set of lockpicks, a medkit (with sutures and disinfectant), and a small make-up compact. Kate didn’t say anything else and just glared at Yelena.
“I will pick you up at 7.” Yelena patted her on the head (over Kate’s protest) and smoothly stood to step off the bus.
Kate tracked Yelana’s movements until the bus started moving again before she felt comfortable relaxing and turning back to look at Chris. “What?”
Chris’s jaw was practically on the floor as he stared at Kate with wide eyes. “Woah,” he said. “I think I get it now. She hits like a freight train.”
Kate’s eyes narrowed. “What do you get?”
“Why you’re ignoring Stef.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Please,” he said with a limp-wristed wave. “I just watched you get bowled over by the Queen of Sapphos.”
They continued to banter until Kate got off the bus at her apartment. Kate in denial that her relationship with Yelena was anything more than work colleagues and Chris absolutely refusing to believe her.
A week later, they were grabbing drinks with a larger group of friends. Stef happened to be among them and seized an excuse to reach across Kate to grab a drink, her breasts lightly brushing Kate’s arm. She frowned slightly when Kate didn’t react, but Chris just laughed.
“I don’t think you’ve got a chance, honey,” he said.
The whole group looked at him in confusion, but especially Kate and Stef. Their confused looks just made him laugh harder.
“I met Kate’s girlfriend,” he said. When Kate protested he just waved her off and said, “or your Domme, whatever. That girl on the bus.”
Kate blinked at him and hissed, “Yelena is not a Dominatrix.”
“She sure acted like one.”
“She did not.”
“You vill vear dis dress for me, Kate Bishop,” he said in a poor imitation of Yelena’s accent.
“That’s not what she said.”
“And I’m pretty sure she implied that she caused the power outage last week as a power move.”
“Shut up.”
“Did you at least look good in the dress?”
“SHUT!”
At that moment, Kate was horrified to discover that she had left her phone face up on the table. She was horrified at this discovery because that was the exact moment that she received a text from Yelena.
Blonde Сука: “You looked great last week, too bad the dress got all torn up at the end of the night.”
This was accompanied by a pair of photos. Both of them were of Kate wearing the sparkling purple dress that Yelena got for her.
One was of Kate standing with one leg forward, clutching her purse in front of her and staring off into the distance. Her hair was down in soft waves and framed her elegant makeup nicely. The photo was perfectly framed to both show her face and how bringing that leg forward caused the dress to cling tightly to her ass.
The second photo was taken from behind and just showed her upper body. In it, Kate had one hand reaching towards something out of frame while the other hand pulled her hair together in a way that showed off the backless nature of the dress. The combination of gestures and framing did an excellent job of highlighting the natural musculature of her back. Trapezius and deltoids taught but not scrunched. Rhomboids asserting themselves but not bulging. Her lats flaring ever so slightly.
Kate of course knew the context for both photos. In the first one, she was scanning the security system of the building they had just entered and had settled into a fighting stance so she could throw one of the knives in her purse if needed. The second photo was from just after she and Yelena had been made so Kate was pulling her hair into a quick ponytail for fighting and reaching for a circuit breaker to kill the lights because the two women were better trained at fighting in the dark than any opponents they were likely to face.
Kate let out a squawk (though she would later deny it) and lunged for her phone. But she was too late. Chris grabbed the phone first and showed off the text and pictures to the group. Kate managed to snag the phone back, but not before one more text came through.
Blonde Сука: “I do have a photo from after the dress tearing, but you might not want your friends to see it.”
The entire group howled with laughter, even Stef who seemed a bit miffed.
“I will kill you all,” hissed Kate before shooting a text to Yelana that just said, “Stop spying.”
On the other side of the bar, sat an unassuming woman. Her makeup made her look about 10 years older than she was and changed the contours of her face just enough to be unrecognizable. The wig with black hair peppered with just a little bit of grey did a lot to complete the picture.
Yelena smirked softly into her vodka before replying to Kate’s text with “I am a spy, therefore everything I do is spying.”
She then looked back at the third photo she had saved from that night. The first two photos were carefully selected to capture the aspects Yelena enjoyed looking at in Kate (her practical skills) while also being reasonable as a “normal person” sexy photo so Yelena could use them for teasing. The third photo was different.
In this photo, Kate’s left hand was tightly gripping a man’s lapel to press him against a wall while her right hand held a knife at his throat. She had her left leg forward to brace the man’s weight against her knee so that his feet were completely off the ground. A psychological intimidation tactic that Yelena had taught her. The bottom of Kate’s dress had been torn open by a knife slash that left just a hint of a red mark on her right leg that was planted on the ground. Not enough to bleed, but enough to be a noticeable wound. It just happened to line up perfectly so as to highlight the powerful quad muscles that were tensed with bearing the weight of two people on one leg.
Kate’s face was bloody. Both from tiny droplets of spattered blood from the wounds she had caused, and from a small trail from a single drop of blood from the corner of Kate’s mouth. Kate hadn’t even noticed her mouth was bleeding until Yelena had gently wiped the trail off of her chin. Under Kate’s arm, the jagged line of her flexed serratus muscle emerged from underneath her lats before gently merging with the hinted side of her breast. Just enough of a glimpse to tease at what was hiding underneath the glistening purple fabric of what was left of her dress.
It wasn’t a photo that Yelena would ever let anyone else see. If Kate wanted to pretend to be a normal college student with her friends, Yelena couldn’t bear to take that away from her. But, Yelena would keep this photo for herself. Maybe even frame it and put it on her bedside table. It was always fun to embarrass Kate when Yelena managed to drag her to bed.