There’s a couple that lived above Nat that moved out just before October and Natasha doesn’t really make it her business to know shit about her neighbors but they were those kind of people that leave pies at your door and ask to borrow your sugar.
The girl who moves in after them is blonde and tiny. She’s got an angry set to her mouth that seems forced, like she’d be better at smiling but she won’t let herself. The first time they see each other, Natasha is coming home from another one of Clint’s fuck-ups, his dried blood dotting the bottom of her jacket. She’s been up for about thirty hours, which isn’t a stretch for her, but sleep is definitely calling her name. The girl is standing in the elevator and Natasha’s fine with waiting for the next one but one of her small hands shoots out anyway to keep it open.
“In, in- hurry.” she says, obviously being careful not to slur. Natasha takes her time.
“You’re Russian.” Natasha says because it’s true.
“I’m drunk.” the girl confesses, tilting her head while they wait.
“Of course you are. You’re Russian.” she laughs delightedly and Natasha thinks ‘I was right about that mouth’.
“I’m Yelena.“
“Natalia."
"I like that name. Had a little cousin named Natalia.” They’re both quiet for a moment and then the door is opening to Nat’s floor.
“Goodnight, Yelena."
"Goodnight, Natalia. Try not to come home covered in blood anymore.” She bites her bottom lip to hold in a laugh and Natasha freezes as the doors close in her face.
-
The season changes. Winter rolls in. The days run shorter and Natasha is 98% sure her new neighbor is a spy. Yelena comes into their building at odd hours, carrying what looks like heaps of Christmas regalia but is probably some sort of front for illegal weapons or technology to bug Natasha with. Perhaps a bomb to blow up their entire building.
“We...are in the middle of December.” Tony says. “I know it’s crazy but go with me here. Have you considered the possibility that she might just be really into Christmas?”
“She’s Russian.”
“Russians don’t celebrate Christmas now?? Has anyone ever told you that you are extremely paranoid?"
Natasha doesn’t usually make a habit of hanging out with Tony but Steve called a team meeting so here she is. She sends him a withering look just as Sam and Steve shoulder into the room together.
"Alright. Enough chit-chat. We’ve got a situation.”
Natasha drops any thoughts of her cute, possibly deadly neighbor. This is work.
-
She gets back in the middle of the day, staggering into the elevator because the time change from Johannesburg to London to New York is a bitch. Her ribs still ache from the arrow that was lodged in it a few hours ago. She’s woozy as she presses the button to her floor. She has a few seconds to realize that her vision isn’t the way it should be. Poison.
Just before Natasha blacks out she thinks viciously that they are never going back to Wakanda again.
-
She wakes up in her apartment, on her couch. There’s an ice pack on her forehead and the unmistakeable smell of rassoljnik coming from her kitchen. Yelena is there when she gets up to investigate, dicing potatoes on her counter. Her hair hangs in perfect curls. The knife looks at home in her hands.
“You’re lucky I am the one that found you.” She says before Natasha can speak. “Passed out in your own drool.”
“I don’t drool” Natasha says and walks over to sniff at the stove. There’s a pot boiling and it smells good. “You shouldn’t have bothered."
This is all surreal. Maybe she is still asleep, working through the poison. Anyone else would’ve died, she knows, but the Red Room practiced heavy mithridatism and as a consequence, Natasha is immune to most poisons.
Yelena shrugs, twirls the knife between her fingers.
"How many people can say that they’ve found the Black Widow unconscious in their elevator?‘
Natasha is on her in one breath, knocking the knife out her hand only for a second because Yelena is fast- fast only in the way another красный паук can be. She catches the knife before it falls past her hip and even though Natasha’s got her pinned against the floor, Yelena makes a show of burying the knife in the wall a few feet away.
Natasha doesn’t let her focus stray even an inch, but she can hear the thunk of it.
"What do they want from me?” It’s too easy to slip back into Russian. For the first time in years, Natasha feels high-strung and reckless- capable of anything. anything to be free of them.
“They want you dead. They sent me.” Yelena tells her. she doesn’t try to escape Natasha’s hold. Her throat swells gently under Natasha’s fingers.
“What do you want, then?"
Yelena takes a moment, like she’s thinking. Her eyes go far away for a moment. She's very warm under Natasha.
"I think” she starts, exhaling under Natasha, softening like she has to force herself. “that i want to eat soup with you, traitor."
The pot shakes on the stove, bubbles pushing at the top violently.
-
Yelena is here to kill her. Natasha was right. Yelena won’t kill her. Natasha was wrong.
Yelena will, however, fold herself up even smaller on Natasha’s couch and wait up for her after missions, hair tied up and eyes red with sleep deprivation.
She stares at the Christmas tree she forced into Natasha’s apartment, at the lights she decorated it with proudly while Natasha had watched in amusement and confusion.
"You already let yourself in” Natasha sighs when she comes home for the third time to find Yelena balled up in sweatpants on her sofa. “Why don’t you ever just sleep, malyutka?”
“I don’t need to.” she says like Natasha is particularly stupid. “And you are not much older than me, traitor."
She always says that word so oddly, as if she can’t decide whether Natasha really is one or if the red room was wrong in at least one thing.
"Come.” Natasha sits next to her, pats her lap and waits for Yelena to drop her head down on it. “Sleep, немного паук.”
Yelena only glares at her for a moment, but then she listens. She’s knocked out in seconds, Natasha patting her hair gently. She doesn’t know why she is so fond of someone so dangerous. Someone who could expose her in the worst way. Yelena is a product of the Red Room, still cleaving her own head open and taking out the parts that aren’t her. She isn’t stable. She’s a liability. A dangerous one.
Natasha tucks her closer.
-
Natasha’s landlord, an old lady named Irina, keeps leaving mistletoe in the elevator. Everyone is getting sick of it, especially her. Clint comes over once, sees the little plant hanging and Natasha slaps the back of his head before he can even open his mouth to say something stupid.
Yelena loves it.
She tells Natasha that she has never done this, but she likes the idea. She’s enamored with silly things like this, Natasha notices. If Nat runs out of candy canes in her apartment, Yelena will fuss and replace them immediately. if one Christmas light is not working, she will replace every strand on the tree.
She rarely sleeps in her own place anymore. Natasha thinks she hates it in there, feels lonely.
“What do you do for fun?” Natasha asks her one morning and Yelena looks confused for a moment, like she’s struggling to understand. Then she clears her throat.
“I like to look at the lights sometimes. At night. I walk around this neighborhood. People put them outside their houses. I like that-” She cuts herself off, like Natasha will scoff at her and tell her not to bother with silly things.
“Okay.” Nat says. “We’ll go later."
-
They go later. Yelena brings three bottles of vodka and no glasses. Natalia smiles at her. They finish two bottles in front of a lawn that looks like the north pole.
"Natashenka,” Yelena says as they walk back to their apartments together. She doesn't wobble in her sky-high, thin heels and it's almost an art. “I think i would like a kiss.”
She points to the mistletoe at the entrance of the building. Fucking Irina.
“You are drunk, malyushka.”
Yelena shrugs but doesn’t argue. “alright.”
-
Clint finds out, the nosy shit- which means all of the avengers find out. Natasha hates having coworkers, sometimes. One moment she’s asleep and the next, Clint is being choked on the floor of her bedroom, Yelena’s small body wrapped around him like the spider she is.
“Yelena stop!” Natasha shouts and though her grip loosens, she doesn’t let up entirely. Clint wheezes, flailing. His long legs kick out and he catches the nightstand. Yelena's Christmas In New York! snowglobe tumbles and shatters on the wood flooring. She has him in a chokehold that would have probably snapped his neck in a matter of seconds.
“убийца. He came to kill you. He had a knife.” Yelena hisses. Natasha gets out of the bed, taps Yelena’s arm where it’s still wrapped around Clint’s throat.
“Let go. Now.”
Yelena listens, kicking him away and scowling in the dark. Natasha goes to turn on the lights while Clint coughs and swears, starting up already.
“Can we discuss-”
“It’s only Clint.” Natasha sighs. Yelena doesn’t soften, arms still folded against her chest. She’s comically short next to Clint, barefoot, her pajamas barely wrinkled.
Ho, Ho, Ho! her top proclaims. Natasha stifles the urge to pull her into her arms.
“Only- thanks.” Clint rolls his eyes. Natasha ignores him.
“He works with me.”
“Yes, yes.” Yelena looks annoyed now. “Clint Barton. Hawkeye. Born August 4th, 1979. Social security num-”
“ALRight, I think we got it, thanks.” He turns to Natasha and gestures in a what the actual fuck kind of way that she guesses is a little reasonable.
“Are we all just- collecting Russian assassins now?! You and Steve should form a club."
Natasha rolls her eyes.
"He came in through the window.” Yelena says, like she had no other option than to kill him. She seems unconvinced that he isn't a threat.
“He came in through the window because he’s an idiot.” she yawns.
“Go back to sleep, little spider. Everything is fine.” Natasha adds in Russian.
Yelena stares between them for a moment, looking unsure. Natasha nods firmly and she relents, dropping her arms and heading back to the bed while Natasha bullies Clint out into the living room.
“It’s two a.m., Barton. What do you want?"
"Well, partner, answers would be nice-”
“Not now, Clint.”
“But-”
“Tomorrow. Don’t tell the team, Barton. I mean it. Goodnight." Natasha smiles. "You can go back out the way you came in."
Clint groans about shitty footholds on apartment building piping and possible head injuries while shows himself out.
Slipping back into bed with Yelena is easier than it should be. She’s curled up in the ball she normally sleeps in, one hand hanging out, instinctively. Natasha knows that, used to sleep like that for years. It becomes second nature, being chained to the bedpost at night.
Yelena isn’t asleep, probably still winding down from the excitement.
Natasha slips in behind her and knows that Yelena’s back is a sign of trust. She folds up against it lightly, tucking around her. Yelena’s toes only reach Natasha’s ankles when she stretches out. Absurdly, it makes Natasha want to giggle against her hair.
"He’s gone. The others will probably know soon.” She says instead, breath stirring the hair on the back of Yelena’s neck. She shrugs. Her back is still tense so Natasha adds "and i’m the only one who kills people in this apartment from now on, любимая”
Natasha can feel the ghost of a laugh rushing out of her.
For a moment they are quiet.
“You know,” Yelena starts as Natasha is getting drowsy again. “you never gave me my kiss, traitor.“
Natasha thinks it shouldn’t be so exciting to be called that these days.
"You were drunk.”
“I’m not drunk now.”
“No. You’re not.” Natasha carefully helps her turn and their faces are so close.
“There’s no mistletoe, here.” She doesn’t know why she’s whispering.
“Yes well, Irina has probably put more up somewhere.” Yelena sounds impatient and it makes her smile.
“I suppose you’re right, немного паук.”
When they kiss, Natasha has to tip her head down and Yelena tastes like sleep and the candy canes she keeps stocking in Nat’s apartment.