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The first time Yelena runs her hands through Kate’s hair, she doesn’t realize what she’s started. She soon figures it out, though.
It’s an accident, almost. It’s an accident the same way every touch, every lingering look, is an accident - just long enough to hint at meaning something, just short enough to be denied without too much trouble. It’s easiest that way. Plausible deniability and all that.
In those early months, Yelena walks on eggshells around Kate. Usually so confident in herself, rarely ever stopping to think before setting her mind to a task, Yelena now finds herself uncertain. She’s had a lot of practice walking through this world alone, never doubting her own footsteps, because she never had the chance to. Doubt is failure, and failure is death.
Until now. Now, she wavers on a wire. She is just as afraid to fall as she is to keep walking and make it to the other side. She still doesn’t know which one she wants.
She thinks it’s because Kate Bishop is different. Sure, she’s clever and passionate and hilarious and, okay, yes, it helps that she’s beautiful too. But that isn’t what sets her apart from anyone Yelena has known before. What makes Kate different is that she doesn’t want anything. She expects nothing from Yelena, even when she should, even when she has every right to. All she wants is Yelena’s company, never pushing for more. She lets Yelena come and go as she needs to, even when the hurt shows plainly in the deep pools of her eyes, some part of her understanding intuitively that Yelena needs the space to come back to her.
There was a time when Yelena tried to resist, fighting back as if her life depended on it. Her mind and heart railed against the possibility of anything more than this life she had come to know. Fate would not, could not taunt her with this, after all this time. If there was one thing she had learned by now, it was that wanting what she couldn’t have was a waste of time that would only hurt her in the end. Yelena Belova did not deal in hypotheticals, in tantalizing what-ifs. The idea that Kate Bishop could love her was the cruelest illusion. It crept in when Yelena tried to banish it, taking root in some dark corner of herself, driving her out of her own mind with its whisperings. Fear sent her away, before something stronger and more patient drew her back. The leaving grew harder and harder, less and less frequent, with more and more time spent with Kate in between. One day, without knowing it, Yelena returned for the last time, never to leave again.
“I knew you’d come back,” Kate said, twining their fingers together.
“You did?” Yelena couldn’t hide her surprise. She hardly even knew it herself. She just stared at Kate’s hand in hers.
“Of course.”
It’s strange and unfamiliar. It seems to Yelena like everyone wants something from her. They always have. Papa, he wants a lot of things: first, to be spared the burden of raising her in the first place; next, a child to be proud of, to make all those years of tedium worth it in the end; and finally, twenty years too late, he wants her forgiveness. Mama, she wants the perfect daughter and the perfect experiment in one person, as if they could ever be one and the same. Valentina, of course, wants a weapon to aim wherever she pleases, to command as her own. Really, she is no different from those men who had made Yelena into this machine in the first place; she wears a different face, but the dark gleam in her eyes is all too familiar. Even Natasha, in her own way, expects Yelena to be the same perfect little sister she used to be. There was a time when Yelena wanted that, too. Sometimes she still does.
But nothing is the same anymore. By now, after years and years of wishing, she knows she can never go back to the way things used to be. For the first time, she thinks she might not want to.
Kate Bishop might have something to do with that.
Yes, things are so different now that Yelena can hardly recognize her own life. She isn’t quite sure how Kate Bishop went from an enemy, to a mild inconvenience, to the woman whose bed she’s lying in right now. Part of her doesn’t want to remember. It seems to her that Kate just happened to her that day on the rooftop, and everything that followed after was inevitable. This morning, when Yelena looks down at Kate’s serene sleeping face, it feels that way.
Kate’s hair is a mess, as it always is. She stubbornly refuses to tie it up when she sleeps, despite Yelena’s protests at waking up with someone else’s hair all over her own pillow, which is far from a pleasant experience. Now, it’s fanned out around her head, a twisted black halo around the full moon of her sleeping face. Again, Yelena is grateful that she’s an early riser, because she doesn’t think she could ever tire of waking up before Kate and getting to see her like this, impossibly still in sleep as she never is in waking. There’s a fire in Kate that drives her every minute of every day, burning so hot and fast that Yelena can hardly keep up some days. But for now, that bonfire has faded to glowing embers, giving Yelena a chance to bask in her warmth.
Kate looks peaceful for all of ten seconds. Then, she snorts and twists in her sleep, and the brief illusion of elegance is shattered. Her mouth gapes open, strands of dark hair falling across her lips.
Ew. Yelena wrinkles her nose. Without thinking, she reaches out to brush it out of Kate’s mouth, aiming only to save Kate from whatever awful thing happens to people who accidentally eat their own hair in their sleep. Another point in Yelena’s favour that she could bring up later. But there’s no functional purpose to the way Yelena keeps going and tucks the dark waves behind Kate’s ear, hesitating just a moment too long as her eyes linger on Kate’s face. Her fingertips brush against Kate’s cheekbone.
Those blue eyes snap open. Yelena’s first instinct is to snatch her hand away, make a snarky comment about Kate’s snoring getting out of control, and to go make them breakfast. It’s a routine familiar to both of them. But today, something stays Yelena’s hand. Instead, she smiles and stays where she is.
“Good morning,” she murmurs. As her hand sweeps up the brush back the unruly mane one more time, Kate’s eyes flutter shut again and an incoherent groan slips from her lips. Her head lolls and she leans against Yelena’s hand.
“What?” Yelena asks. Kate is always hard to understand in the mornings.
“Do that again,” Kate mutters.
Yelena is still perplexed. Do what? With a great huff, Kate all but flings herself into Yelena, resting her head in Yelena’s lap. Stubbornly refusing to move or even open her eyes, she stays that way until slowly, very slowly, Yelena gets the message. The first stroke of her hand is hesitant, almost trembling, but the great sigh that escapes from Kate’s lips is the only sign she needs. A slow smile spreads across Yelena’s face as she runs her fingers carefully through the dark waves and Kate turns to putty in her lap.
“Look at you. Is this all it takes to defeat the world’s greatest archer?” Yelena teases. “You should be careful, Kate Bishop. What if your enemies find out?”
“Shut up,” Kate retorts, in a way that makes it sound a lot like I love you.
They spend the better part of an hour like that, Yelena propped up on her mountain of pillows, Kate curled towards her. As Yelena strokes her hair in a gentle rhythm, she melts as if she’s trying to become a part of Yelena. Her breathing slows and every hard line of her body softens and relaxes. A few times, Yelena is sure that Kate has drifted off to sleep again. Her arm is starting to get tired, and she takes the opportunity to stretch out her sore fingers. But when she pauses for even a few seconds, Kate lets out a whine so pitiful that a lance of guilt pierces Yelena. She immediately switches to the other hand and continues on. Any prick of irritation burns away like mist in the morning as Kate sighs happily and flings a lazy arm across Yelena’s lap. The touch sends a trickle of reassuring warmth down Yelena’s spine to her stomach.
Yelena has to contort herself to bend down and press a lazy kiss to the top of Kate’s head, but she pulls it off. The archer stirs faintly. Her lips curve into the barest hint of a smile, and somehow it’s more radiant than her usual open-mouthed, bright-eyed grin. A long, low hum starts in Kate’s chest, working its way into Yelena’s heart.
When Kate’s eyes eventually drift open, they shine like faraway stars, pinpricks of blue light standing out from the black vastness of infinity. Yelena can’t look away. She doesn’t want to.
“You’re going to use this against me, aren’t you?” Kate mumbles.
Yelena smiles. “Definitely.”