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The farmhouse kitchen is quiet. Quiet in the way snow makes everything soft and slow. It’s not the kind of silence that comes from emptiness, it’s the kind that wraps around the windows and presses against the roof, muting the world. Outside, the wind carries flurries past the glass, white dancing across pale skies.
Inside, Kate Bishop stands barefoot on the cold wood floor, holding a bag of tortilla chips like it’s some sacred offering to the god of normalcy. She squints at the spread she’s set up on the kitchen counter. Chips. Salsa. M&Ms. Popcorn. A row of mismatched mugs for hot chocolate. Four board games stacked in the center like some haphazard totem pole of optimism.
“Okay,” she says aloud to no one, rolling her shoulders back. “This is fine. This is good. This is totally going to be chill.”
She’s talking herself down from the slow, creeping realisation that she’s hosting game night with two of the most emotionally repressed, hyper-lethal people she’s ever met. One of whom she’s maybe dating. Sort of. Definitely kissing. But not officially. And the other is Natasha freaking Romanoff, who might genuinely prefer battlefield war to Charades.
Kate exhales, dragging a hand through her hair.
Clint had left that morning, something about a supply run and “getting away before the knives come out.” He’d tossed her a wink, thrown Natasha the keys, and told Yelena not to burn the place down. She hadn’t responded. Just blinked once, slowly, like a cat that was deciding whether or not to kill you in your sleep.
Kate has been alone in the kitchen for twenty minutes now, psyching herself up. She’s layered in a too-big cable knit sweater and leggings with little arrows printed on them, a gift from Clint that she pretends to hate but secretly wears all the time. Her hair is tied up in a messy bun. There’s a marshmallow in her mouth. She chews it absently while staring at the box for Uno, trying to remember if it’s possible to win against two women trained in psychological warfare.
Probably not.
There’s a sound behind her. Soft feet on stairs. She turns just as Yelena pads into the kitchen, dressed in thick socks, gray sweatpants, and a black hoodie that Kate’s pretty sure used to be hers.
Her hair is pulled into a low ponytail, still messy at the ends. She looks like she just woke up, which would track, Yelena had declared this morning “unholy” and disappeared under a blanket like a burrito of rage.
Kate’s heart does the thing. The quiet, traitorous little flutter.
Yelena looks at the spread, then at Kate. Her expression doesn’t change. It rarely does at first glance. But there’s something in her eyes, faint amusement, maybe, or impending doom.
“You are serious about this?” Yelena asks, voice low and still laced with sleep.
Kate lifts her chin. “Obviously.”
Yelena eyes the stack of games like they’re evidence of a crime. She picks up Scrabble, frowns at it, and puts it back down.
“In Red Room,” she says, reaching for an M&M, “we do not play games. We train. We bleed. Sometimes we make fun of trainer until he cries.”
Kate grins. “Yeah, well. Here we cry over Monopoly and throw things. Kind of the same.”
Yelena pops the candy in her mouth and chews slowly. Her eyes stay on Kate.
“This is stupid American tradition,” she mutters, but she takes a seat anyway, curling into the corner of the kitchen bench like a suspicious raccoon deciding whether or not to trust the human offering food.
Kate tries not to stare. Yelena’s cheek is pink where she must’ve been sleeping on it, and her hoodie collar is stretched from where Kate tugs it over her own mouth when she’s cold. It’s doing things to her focus.
Natasha arrives next, as silent as ever, dressed in all black. She looks like she just stepped out of a covert operation and not a ten-minute shower. Hair tied back in a clean, tight braid. Her expression is unreadable as she takes in the scene, then says flatly:
“Uno ends friendships.”
Yelena nods solemnly. “I want to start with that one.”
Kate claps her hands. “Perfect. This is going great already.”
Natasha sighs. It’s long-suffering. She pours herself coffee without asking, then lifts a spare mug toward Yelena, who shakes her head. Kate raises her hand like a dorky kid in class.
“Hot chocolate?”
Natasha arches a brow. “You’re not five.”
Kate shrugs. “It’s for adults too, Nat.”
She gets it herself, adding an obscene amount of marshmallows. Yelena watches this closely, then tilts her head. “You are putting dessert into drink.”
“Yes.”
Yelena considers it. “I approve.”
The three of them gather around the kitchen table. It’s still warm from the morning sun, even though clouds have rolled in thick and heavy. The lights overhead cast a soft yellow glow across the room. Outside, the world is blue and white and cold.
Kate sits between them, shuffling the deck. Her pulse is a little too quick, but she likes this. The tension, the possibility, the way Yelena leans into her shoulder when she reaches for the bowl of popcorn. The way Natasha sits with one ankle resting on her opposite knee, a queen already bored of her court but present anyway.
Kate grins.
“This,” she says, fanning the cards out dramatically, “is going to be fun.”
Yelena narrows her eyes. “For who?”
Natasha lifts her coffee. “Not me.”
Kate deals the cards with exaggerated flair.
“Bring it on, assassins.”
The card down is a red seven.
Kate sets it there with a flourish, hands poised dramatically in the air like she’s about to summon thunder.
Yelena narrows her eyes at it. “So. Now… I do what.”
Natasha doesn’t look up from her hand. “You play a red card or another seven.”
Yelena stares at her cards. Then at the pile. Then back at Natasha.
“I do not have either of those.”
“Then you draw a card,” Natasha replies, very calm, sipping her coffee like she isn’t already bracing for impact.
Yelena grumbles something in Russian under her breath, grabs a card from the draw pile with unnecessary aggression, and slaps it face-up onto the discard stack.
It’s blue. It’s an eight. It’s not a match in any world.
“Yelena—no. No,” Natasha says, her voice flattening. “That’s not a valid play.”
Kate blinks. “Wait, yeah. That’s not how—”
“I do not care,” Yelena says, entirely without shame. “It is eight. It is number. I am matching number.”
Natasha exhales like someone just handed her a loaded weapon with the safety off. “It’s not red. It’s not a seven. You can’t just make up the rules.”
“You say number or same,” Yelena shrugs, entirely unfazed. “It is same number.”
“Colour or number,” Natasha corrects, now flipping through Yelena’s cards without asking. “But only if it matches before you draw. Once you draw, you lose your turn.”
Kate watches, wide-eyed, as Yelena doesn’t even flinch at the invasion of card privacy. Natasha pulls the blue eight off the pile and places it back in Yelena’s hand.
“Then what is the point?” Yelena demands, annoyed now. “If I draw, I want to play. This is inefficient.”
“That’s not how the game works.”
“It is stupid game.”
“You’re stupid game.” Kate mutters with a mouthful of M&Ms.
Yelena points at her. “You are losing. You are not allowed to speak Kate Bishop.”
Kate looks down at her cards. Fifteen of them. She’d started with seven. Somehow, every time she thought it was her turn, the entire game had descended into chaos and Yelena had either reversed the order, skipped her turn, or dropped illegal cards with all the confidence of a Vegas dealer. At this point Kate doesn’t know what rules are anymore.
Yelena throws down a wild card. It’s not her turn. Kate’s not even sure how she got that card.
Natasha immediately slaps her hand down on the table. “No! Yelena!”
Russian pours out of her mouth, sharp, fast, clipped, and Kate’s brain stalls trying to follow it. She gets the vibe though. Big sister energy. The kind that’s one part assassin discipline, one part absolute exasperation.
Yelena shoots something back, rolling her eyes and flinging her arms in the air. More Russian, more sarcasm. Natasha responds without missing a beat, sipping her coffee mid-sentence like this is just a normal way of communicating with Yelena.
Kate watches them bicker in Russian while the discard pile grows more cursed by the minute. At some point Yelena grabs a +4 from Natasha’s hand, not even her own cards, and tries to play it.
“Absolutely not,” Natasha snaps, finally switching to English as she snatches the card back. “That’s mine. You’re stealing from my hand now?”
“I am improvising,” Yelena says coolly. “Adapt. Overcome.”
“You sound like Barton.”
“I win, so maybe he is onto something.”
“You didn’t win! You played three illegal cards, skipped two turns, and reversed the order while playing out of turn!”
Yelena shrugs. “Technicality.”
Kate is silently wheezing behind her cards. “This is the best day of my life.”
Natasha finally leans back in her chair, folding her arms. “Fine. If we’re just ignoring the rules, I’m going to draw five and play a full straight.”
Kate perks up. “Wait, can you do that?”
“No,” Yelena says instantly. “You are cheater. But I cheat better.”
Kate sits back, defeated, cards fanning in her lap like a small forest of failure. “I have seventeen cards now. I think I’m the only one playing by the actual rules.”
Natasha smirks. “That’s your first mistake.”
Yelena picks up her entire hand and throws it on the table like she’s slamming down a royal flush. “I am done. I win. This game is idiotic. We should play something fun.”
“Like what?” Kate challenges, shoving her mountain of cards toward the center.
Yelena thinks for a moment. “Knife throwing.”
“No.”
“Pictionary, but with consequences.”
“What does that even mean?” Kate asks, slightly alarmed.
Natasha, who is somehow already organising the deck back into a neat pile, looks at both of them. “We should take a break before one of us ends up duct-taped to the ceiling.”
Yelena looks genuinely intrigued by that idea.
Kate groans and lets her head fall against the table with a thud.
There’s a beat of silence. Then a warm mug is nudged against her arm. She lifts her head just enough to see Natasha sliding her hot chocolate back toward her.
“Drink,” Natasha says. “Regain your strength. The next game might involve actual strategy.”
Yelena leans in close. “You will still lose.”
Kate narrows her eyes, lifts the mug to her lips, and mutters against the rim, “We’ll see about that, hoodie thief.”
Yelena only grins. She leans back in her chair like she owns the room, arms folded, eyes half-lidded and smug.
The wind howls outside, snow dusting the windows.
Inside, three warriors of wildly differing patience levels prepare to ruin each other over board games designed for children.
Kate wouldn’t trade this for the world.
Kate doesn’t know how she ended up standing in the center of Clint’s living room holding a crumpled slip of paper with the words “Titanic”scrawled on it.
She blames the hot chocolate. And the marshmallows. And Yelena’s smug grin as she lounges on the couch like some cute crime goblin who knows exactly how much mayhem she causes.
“Go,” Natasha says, dryly. She’s perched on the armrest like she owns time itself. Her face is unreadable. Her eyes, however, are absolutely ready to judge.
Yelena munches popcorn from a giant metal bowl in her lap, her socked feet thrown carelessly over the arm of the couch. “You have thirty seconds,” she says with mock gravity. “Impress me.”
Kate narrows her eyes. “This is harder than it looks, okay?”
“You are awesome archer,” Yelena deadpans. “Should be good at aiming.”
“I don’t think that metaphor tracks.”
Yelena shrugs. “Ehh.”
Kate points at her. “You’re distracting.”
“I am gift.”
Kate groans and steps into the center of the room, arms spread. She immediately starts sinking in slow motion, one hand outstretched, the other dramatically clawing at the air. It’s not… great.
Natasha watches silently. Yelena frowns.
“Are you melting?” Yelena calls out.
Kate doubles down, clutching her imaginary chest, then freezes stiff with both arms out like she’s holding something.
“Zombie!” Yelena guesses.
Kate flails, pointing at her nose, then miming a giant boat, then dramatically sinking again.
Yelena’s face lights up. “Ah! The boat that breaks!”
“Titanic.” Natasha says, unbothered.
“Yes! Thank you!” Kate gasps, collapsing onto the floor in relief.
Yelena tilts her head. “I like my answer more. Zombie boat sounds better.”
Natasha slides off the armrest, flicks the next slip of paper from the bowl, and hands it to Yelena. “You’re up.”
Yelena pops to her feet like she’s being deployed behind enemy lines. Kate sits up straighter.
It’s not fair, how good Yelena looks when she’s trying not to smile. Hoodie sleeves pushed up. Hair slightly messed from where she’s been running her hands through it. Sharp green eyes, dancing with anticipation. Kate pretends she’s not ridiculously, hopelessly into this.
Yelena reads the paper and stares at it for a long moment.
Natasha raises an eyebrow. “Too hard for you?”
“I am considering options,” Yelena says, which somehow sounds vaguely threatening.
Then she steps into the center of the room and begins… strutting.
Kate blinks.
No, not strutting. Posing. One hand on her hip. The other thrown behind her head. She spins, throws an air kiss, then pretends to hold a purse. Her hips are swaying in rhythm.
“Are you—are you being a model?” Kate guesses, leaning forward.
Yelena twirls, then does a dramatic fall backward onto the couch.
“Fashion show?” Kate tries.
Yelena rolls off the couch, crawls forward on her elbows, then dramatically fake-dies, one arm extended toward the ceiling. Her hoodie bunches up and shows her abdomen a little and Kate’s eyes track it like she’s tracking prey.
Natasha chimes in, voice cool and biting: “You look unwell.”
Yelena throws a pillow at her.
Kate is now laughing too hard to guess anything. “Wait—is it… is it Mean Girls?”
Yelena throws her hands in the air. “It is America’s Next Top Model. You are both useless.”
Natasha just blinks. “You’ve never seen that show. They don’t fake die, Yelena.”
“I have internet.”
Kate wipes a tear from her eye. “I—God. That was… something.”
Yelena smirks and sits back down, clearly pleased with herself.
Natasha gets up wordlessly, takes a slip, and sighs. “Okay. Watch and learn.”
She steps into the center and stands completely still.
Then, she lifts her arms out slowly, like wings. She narrows her eyes. Leans forward. Then strikes, sharp and sudden.
“Falcon.” Kate guesses.
“Eagle?” Yelena tries. “Pigeon?”
Natasha shakes her head, does the action again.
Yelena stands like she’s about to run from the room, “small pigeon! Smaller bird? A tiny avian!”
Natasha stops. Pins her with a look. Yelena looks to Kate and shrugs, Kate shrugs back.
Natasha steps again, smoother now. Then spins, lifts her hand in a slow wave, and starts punching the air in graceful rhythm. Legs pointed, on her toes.
“Oh,” Kate says, realising. “It’s Black Swan.”
Natasha nods once and walks off like it was nothing.
Yelena scoffs. “You get movie with cool and sexy dancer, I get fashion model show where women hate each other. Rigged.”
Natasha sits and takes another sip of coffee. “Skill issue.”
Yelena kicks her shin.
Kate sits back, arms wrapped around a throw pillow, and watches the two of them bicker in Russian again. There’s a rhythm to it now. Familiar. Not sharp like earlier. Not biting. Just… comfortable.
Natasha’s tone shifts mid-phrase, firm, but teasing. Yelena rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling behind it. She tosses popcorn into her mouth and deliberately misses one kernel, letting it bounce off her cheek. Natasha mutters something that sounds suspiciously like a fond insult.
Kate leans her head against the edge of the couch and lets herself bask in it. The warmth. The chaos. The weird little family she somehow stumbled into.
Her eyes drift to Yelena again. The way she’s curled up now, blanket over her legs, hoodie pulled half over her hands. She looks relaxed. Safe, even.
Kate doesn’t say it. But she feels it. Right in her chest.
She’d burn down the world to keep that look on Yelena’s face.
By the third round of Charades, Yelena has entered what Kate can only describe as a guessing loop of doom.
It doesn’t matter what Kate or Natasha acts out, Yelena has apparently decided there are only three possible answers to any and all charade clues: Die Hard. Sharknado. “The thing with the cowboy man and the sad girl.”
Which, after five minutes of confusion, turned out to be The Last of Us.
Kate is currently trying to mime Finding Nemo. She’s doing her best fish-swim motion, big exaggerated eyes, then flapping both arms like fins while making little panicked faces.
Yelena squints hard at her.
“Is… boat murder?”
Kate shakes her head.
“Shark attack?” Still no. “It’s Sharknado, you are doing Sharknado, Kate.”
Kate waves a dismissive fin.
“Titanic Two: Fish Revenge?”
Natasha lets out a quiet sigh from the couch. “Yelena. You’re making stuff up.”
Yelena sits upright. “It is sequel. I am sure.”
“It’s Finding Nemo,” Natasha says, reaching for more popcorn. “She’s doing the panic fish thing.”
Kate points furiously at her, nodding, winded from all the swimming.
Yelena frowns. “He is not finding Nemo. Nemo is fish.”
“Yes. He’s lost. It’s the dad who’s finding him.”
Yelena leans back slowly, scowling. “Misleading title.”
Kate drops to the floor, panting. “I’m going to have an aneurysm. I hope you know that.”
“Your fish was confusing.” Yelena mutters.
“My fish was excellent,” Kate gasps. “I was method acting.”
Natasha arches a brow. “It looked like you were choking.”
Kate waves her off and points to Yelena. “Whatever. It’s our turn together now. Team Bishop-Belova, let’s go.”
Yelena brightens instantly. “We do team acting now?”
“We do team acting now.” Kate says with a nod.
They draw a new slip from the bowl, and Kate reads it, eyebrows raising. Then she shows it to Yelena, who snorts.
“Of course.”
“What?” Thats Natasha, deadpanned.
Yelena grins. “You will see.”
Natasha eyes them warily as they stand side-by-side in the middle of the living room.
Kate nods at Yelena. “You lead.”
Yelena steps forward dramatically. She throws both arms wide, head tilted back like she’s staring at the sky. Kate moves in beside her, pretending to sob, clinging to her arm.
Natasha tilts her head. “Some sort of war movie?”
Yelena picks Kate up by the waist, startling her, and spins her around. Kate lets out a shriek that ends in a laugh. It’s not graceful, but it’s… committed.
Yelena sets her down and immediately falls to her knees in the snow-angel position on the carpet, arms raised toward the ceiling.
“Is this Titanic again?” Natasha asks, a note of concern creeping into her voice.
Kate is trying so hard not to laugh she nearly chokes. “She did that already!”
Yelena stands up, looks at Kate, and without warning, grabs her face in both hands and kissesher.
Full-on.
No hesitation. No lead-up. Just a decisive, dramatic, cinematic kiss. Her arms move to lock around Kate’s waist and she lifts her clean off the floor again, mouth pressed hot and confident to Kate’s, like it’s the most natural way to win a game.
Kate’s brain stutters. Her limbs forget what gravity is. She lets out a muffled noise against Yelena’s mouth, hands fisting in hoodie fabric as her feet dangle.
Yelena’s mouth is hot and soft and she kisses so good, Kate is always taken off guard by the skill of it.
Yelena holds her there a moment longer, until Natasha groans audibly.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Natasha mutters, throwing her head back. “The Notebook.”
Yelena doesn’t break the kiss.
She just slowly raises one hand, thumb up. Still easily holding Kate with her other arm.
Kate can’t breathe from laughter and attraction and whatever chemical reaction is happening in her chest. She’s not sure what she’s blushing from, the kiss, the fact that she’s still being held in the air, or the utterly deadpan sound of Natasha’s voice cutting through it all.
Natasha leans back against the couch, lifts the popcorn bowl, and says with the weariness of a woman who has lived too long, “Are you done?”
Yelena finally lowers Kate, slowly, like she’s enjoying the dramatics, and shrugs. “We win.”
Kate blinks up at her. “That wasn’t in the rules.”
“It worked,” Yelena replies simply, and then, because she’s apparently a menace, leans in and kisses Kate again, softer this time. Less chaos. More… something else.
Kate melts into it, arms slipping up around Yelena’s neck before she remembers they’re not alone.
Natasha makes a noise. A noise that is equal parts I’m too old for this, get a room, and I might actually commit murder.
Kate pulls back, breathless and flushed, turning halfway toward Natasha. “It was for the clue!”
Natasha throws a popcorn kernel at her. “That’s not what The Notebook is about.”
Yelena grins. “I have not seen it. But there is rain. And lifting. And kissing. I am correct, no?”
Kate breathes out so hard in what’s half a laugh and half her attraction squeezing her lungs, that she has to sit down on the carpet.
Natasha points at the near empty charade bowl. “We’re done. If I see either of you try to mime Twilight, I’m walking into traffic.”
“Wait—” Kate says, wiping her eyes, “that’s next.”
Yelena leans down into her side and whispers, “I am the vampire.”
Kate grins. “That’s hot.”
Natasha groans again and walks into the kitchen.
Yelena kisses Kate’s cheek, soft this time, and flops down beside her on the floor.
Kate’s heart is still hammering, her lips tingling, her body buzzing with amusement and affection and something much warmer, deeper. She leans her head against Yelena’s shoulder.
“I love game night.” she whispers.
Yelena hums. “Even when you lose.”
“I didn’t lose. I got kissed.”
Yelena smirks. “Then we both won.”
It starts, like all truly dangerous things do, with a throwaway suggestion.
Yelena is sprawled across the armchair like it personally offended her, legs thrown over one side, her head hanging upside down off the other. Natasha is curled with military neatness at one end of the couch, legs tucked under her, phone in hand but clearly watching. Kate’s perched on the floor again, back against the arm chair near Yelena, empty mug in her hands, cheeks still pink from the recent kisspocalypse.
The room is dim now. A single lamp glows gold in the corner. The snow’s thick outside, falling slow and steady. Everything feels… soft. Warm. Like they’ve dropped into a moment outside time.
Yelena sits up suddenly, like a raccoon sensing mischief.
“Truth or Dare.” she announces.
Kate blinks. “Wow. That escalated fast.”
Natasha doesn’t look up. “No.”
“Yes.” Yelena counters.
Kate raises her eyebrows. “What, are we in middle school now?”
“I did not go to middle school,” Yelena says, pointing dramatically. “I went to assassin school. Very different. There were no parties. Or games. Or kissing for fun. Just lots of trauma and killing.”
She turns pointedly to Kate then. “Until now.”
Kate feels her brain short-circuit slightly. “Right. Of course. Um. Noted.”
Yelena smirks. “So. We play.”
Natasha exhales slowly. “Fine. But no dares that involve knives, seduction, or property damage.”
Yelena leans into Kate’s side, stage-whispers, “She is only saying that because I dared her to kiss a Russian informant once.”
Kate’s eyes widen. “Did she do it?”
Natasha looks at them both, deadpan. “We got the intel, didn’t we?”
Kate has to put her mug down or risk dropping it.
“Okay,” Yelena says, clapping once loud. “Kate. Truth or dare?”
Kate considers. She should play it safe. She knows that. But Yelena’s looking at her like a cat who’s already knocked the vase off the shelf.
“Dare.”
Yelena’s grin turns wolfish.
“I dare you,” she says, slowly, “to steal Natasha’s socks.”
There’s a pause.
“What?” Natasha says.
Kate laughs. “Right now?”
Yelena nods solemnly. “She is always wearing socks. Even inside. Even when it is hot. It is suspicious.”
Natasha narrows her eyes. “Because I like having warm feet.”
“Because you are hiding something.”
“I’m hiding my hatred for this game.” Natasha mutters.
“No, no you’re not.” Yelena says with doubt.
Kate’s already crawling across the floor. “C’mon, Nat. Hand ‘em over.”
Natasha kicks lightly at her. “You’re worse than Barton.”
Kate dodges, grabs one ankle, and tugs, revealing, to absolutely no surprise, a perfectly black sock slipping off and a perfectly normal foot under it.
Yelena gasps like someone’s been assassinated in the drawing room.
“She has toes!”
“She’s human after all.” Kate confirms.
Natasha groans, pulls the blanket tighter around herself, and mumbles something in Russian.
“My turn,” Kate says, returning with the sock like it’s a trophy and tossing it at Yelena.
Yelena bats it away and Kate taps her chin in fake-serious thought. She looks at Yelena. “Truth or dare?”
Yelena pretends to think, maybe mocking Kate, then says, “Dare.”
Kate doesn’t even hesitate. “Tell me what your actual favourite movie is.”
Yelena scowls. “That is truth.”
“It’s a dare to admit something emotionally vulnerable.”
Yelena crosses her arms. “Fine. It is Mamma Mia!.”
There is a beat of stunned silence.
Kate stares. Natasha snorts.
Yelena shrugs. “It is fun. There is singing. And explosions of emotion. Also Pierce Brosnan sounds like goat. Very healing. Plus I have not seen many movies, this one Kate shows me!”
Kate breaks into laughter soft and fond.
Yelena just looks smug. “It is Natasha’s turn now. Truth or dare?”
Natasha sets her phone down and sighs. “Truth.”
Yelena tilts her head, thoughtful.
Then: “What did you think of Kate when you first met her?”
Kate blinks. “Wait, what—”
Natasha lifts her chin slowly. “Honestly?”
Kate nods warily.
Natasha looks at her with something that almost, almost, softens. Then she says, flatly, “Too confident. Too loud. Terrible taste in pizza. Dangerous idealism. But…”
She pauses. Yelena raises an eyebrow. Kate holds her breath.
Natasha finishes, “Smart. Surprisingly observant. And brave in ways that annoy me.”
Kate tries not to smile too hard. “So… you like me.”
“Don’t push it.”
Yelena’s arm winds around Kate’s waist without ceremony, tugging her up and close. Kate doesn’t resist. The chair is warm. The blanket’s slipped onto the floor. The lamp hums softly.
Yelena leans into Kate’s ear. “Truth or dare.”
Kate turns to her, grinning. “Dare.”
Yelena eyes her with that familiar glint. “Kiss me. But do it like it is the end of dramatic movie.”
Kate pretends to consider. “Which movie?”
“Surprise me.”
Kate takes a breath, heart racing, not just from nerves, but from how seen she feels in this moment. Like Yelena knows she’ll turn anything into a spectacle. Like she wants her to. Like that’s part of the charm.
So she stands, pulls Yelena up with her, and sweeps an arm behind her back. Their faces are close, grinning, breath mingling.
Yelena raises a single brow.
Kate says softly, “If we’re doing the ending of a dramatic movie…”
And then she kisses her. Bold. Deep. Pulling her in with both hands. Yelena melts into it, grabbing fistfuls of Kate’s sweater and kissing her back like she has something to prove.
Kate lifts her, off the ground, a little unsteady but committed. Yelena gasps into her mouth, laughing against her teeth.
“Okay,” Natasha says dryly from the couch. “That’s enough of The Notebook reenactment for one night.”
Kate breaks the kiss, flushed and breathless, and says, “That was the Titanic.”
Yelena, still held in Kate’s arms, says dreamily, “It was Mamma Mia!”
Natasha groans and pulls the blanket over her head. Both exasperated and amused, though Kate knows she’d never admit to the last part.
Kate laughs again, and this time, it doesn’t stop for a while.
Kate should’ve known better.
She really should have. After Uno, Charades, Truth or Dare, and one very cinematic makeout session mid-game, suggesting Scrabble felt like a safe bet. A quieter close to the evening. Something that didn’t involve dares or flying body parts.
She was wrong.
So very, so very wrong.
“This is not a real word,” Yelena grumbles, scowling at her letter tiles like they’ve personally insulted her. She turns to Kate, jabs a finger at her rack. “Is flerb word?”
Kate bites back a laugh. “Uh… no. Not unless you’re in a Dr. Seuss book.”
Yelena throws her head back dramatically. “English is chaos. I hate it.”
Natasha doesn’t look up from her tiles. “It’s not chaos. You just refuse to learn it properly.”
“I do learn,” Yelena says, offended. “I learn that rules change every five minutes and ‘knee’ is spelled with a ‘K’ for no reason.”
“She has a point,” Kate offers. “The ‘K’ is kind of redundant.”
Natasha calmly lays down her word. Vexing. Triple word score. “You’re just mad I’m winning.”
Kate gapes. “You had the X? Of course you had the X.”
Yelena narrows her eyes at the board. “I will beat you. I will spell better than you.”
“You spelled ‘toe’ with two W’s last round.” Natasha says, reaching for popcorn.
“It was creative interpretation. A joke.”
It wasn’t.
Kate tries to help. She leans toward Yelena, lowering her voice. “Okay, look—if you move that ‘T’ over here, and use your ‘A’ and ‘R,’ you can make ‘start.’”
Yelena frowns at her letters.
Then frowns harder.
“I do not have an ‘R.’”
Kate blinks. “You… don’t? What’s this then?”
She points.
Yelena shrugs. “That is ‘P.’”
“That’s an ‘R’!”
“It looks like angry man with long neck.”
Kate dissolves into giggles. “How are you a spy?”
“I threaten in Russian,” Yelena says proudly. “And with knives. Much easier than spelling.”
Natasha finally glances up. “For God’s sake, Yelena! Just make a word.”
Yelena pouts, grabs her tiles, and slams them down.
BLOBZ.
Kate chokes. “That’s not a word!”
“It is now!” Yelena declares, arms crossed.
Natasha leans forward slowly. “That is not a valid move. You’re making up language.”
“It is expressive.”
“It is gibberish.”
“You are gibberish, Natasha!”
Natasha stands. “I will revoke your game privileges.”
“You’re not my mother!”
“I should be, with how often I have to correct you.”
“I am a genius, Natasha. In Russian scrabble I would win!”
Natasha’s brow twitches. “Your spelling in English sucks.”
Yelena gasps, full offense. Then, with all the petty drama of a telenovela villain, she flips the Scrabble board.
Tiles scatter in a satisfying clatter-clatter-clack, flying in all directions.
Natasha stares down at the mess. Deadpan. Unimpressed. Slow to rise, like a storm gathering on the horizon.
Then she says, very quietly, “You’re cleaning that up.”
Yelena picks up a pillow and hurls it at Natasha’s head.
Natasha catches it one-handed without blinking.
A beat.
She throws it back like a grenade.
Yelena ducks. It nails Kate in the face with a loud fwump.
Kate topples sideways with a yelp, laughing even as she goes down. “I’m an innocent bystander, Nat!”
“You picked the game.” Natasha mutters.
Chaos explodes.
Yelena lunges for the Uno pile. “I will throw Draw Fours!”
Kate shrieks. “I knew those would come back to haunt me!”
Natasha grabs a couch cushion and advances like a soldier going to war. “Put the cards down, Yelena.”
“You’ll never catch me, grandma!”
Natasha whacks the cushion full force against the side of Yelena’s head, making Yelena laugh low and genuine and cracking a smile on Natasha’s face also.
Kate’s still wheezing with laughter, arms covering her head to avoid stray pillows, tiles raining around her like confetti. She tries to help. Really, she does, but watching Natasha and Yelena wrestle across the carpet, locked in sibling carnage, is too funny. Yelena tosses a letter tile like a dart, and somehow, impossibly, it lands inNatasha’s mouth.
Natasha rears back, spits it out with surgical precision.
“Yelena!”
“Accident!”
“You aimed.”
“Still accident!”
Natasha grabs her ankle and begins to drag her bodily across the floor like a sack of potatoes. “You’re banned from vowels.”
“I was born without vowels! All babies are! They can’t speak, Natasha!”
“You just admitted you’re a baby!”
“That’s...no, I did not.”
Kate is doubled over, clutching her stomach, trying to say something but reduced to hiccupping wheezes. Yelena’s arms flail toward her like a drowning swimmer. “Kate Bishop! Save me!”
Kate crawls forward on her elbows. “I can’t—I’m—I’m dying—”
She reaches out dramatically, and Yelena grabs her hand like they’re reenacting Romeo and Juliet or something equally as dramatic and heartbreaking.
Just as Natasha raises a cushion to deliver the final blow, Yelena’s ankle still clutched, a throat clears.
They freeze.
All three of them turn toward the front hall.
Clint and Laura stand in the doorway, coats still half-buttoned, boots dripping half grey snow, both of them watching with deep amusement.
Clint folds his arms. “So… how’s game night?”
No one speaks.
A lone Scrabble tile clinks to the floor between them. Maybe another from Natasha’s mouth.
Kate, still pinned under a scatter of Uno cards and a rogue pillow, lifts her hand weakly. “Y’know. Peaceful.”
Laura grins. “Looks it.”
Yelena pushes herself upright, disheveled, triumphant, covered in letters. Ripping her ankle out of Natasha’s grip. “I won.”
Natasha, expression unreadable, picks a tile off her shoulder and flicks it at Yelena’s forehead. “You’re grounded.”
Kate wheezes. “Can I come too?”
Clint shakes his head. “You’re all grounded.”
The storm outside howls.
But inside, it’s warmth, laughter, and the sweet, sharp chaos of something like family.