Chapter 1
Kate’s mouth was dry in an instant. It had lost all concept of moisture when the scent of citrus and vanilla that had engulfed her just a few hours prior pressed against her senses in a wave so visceral that she pressed her nose close to the fabric of her collar and inhaled. She’d been careful enough, her own pine fragrance and sweat all the lingered.
Kate frowned and wiped the dampness away from her forehead, glancing around the second-floor gym. She’d pulled her headphones down, letting the base of an obscure rock song vibrate against the increase pulse in her throat. The steady sounds of weights and measured breaths eased her rising anxieties.
It was normal, she knew, to catch stray scents of the woman you lived with. Their toothbrushes mingled, adjacent to one another in a glass jar at the edge of Kate’s sink. The archer was sure that she wore a pair of socks that were not hers, and she had swallowed down an egg that was cooked in a way that she could not master on her own, salted to perfection.
Pulling in a tepid breath of the citrus orange and soothing vanilla was normal. Just not in the Avengers compound, and certainly not while she tried to regulate her breath on a bow flex. It had hit her out of nowhere and uncomfortably so.
An awkward, yet stern, clearing of the throat pulled her from her racing thoughts. She startles, whips her head up at a dizzying speed. In front of her is a hulking figure dressed in black. It took a few moments to register him as Director Nick Fury. Her posture had a Pavlovian response, breath stilling.
Kate rushed to stand “Sir,”
“Agent Bishop,”
She had been the only one paying attention. At a fault, she was the first to recognize that he was about to command the room. He did just that with two solid, and loud claps. The gym stilled within moments. Other agents, recruits, had laid down weights and turned off machines. They circled the man in a half-moon, hands tucked, and jaws clenched.
Kate balanced rising panic. A low tide that pushed and pulled. Her skin was buzzing, heart thrumming the same muted word over and over again. She had begged for proper training after two years with Clint and had spent the last three years receiving it. She was an agent with a badge.
Kate trusted her gut and her gut was telling her that the air in this room was familiar. Not in the sense that she spent hours in this very room every morning. But in the sense that the air shifted in a way that was so known to her.
“Agents,” He sobered the energy in the room instantly “I’m sorry for interrupting your routine. But your usual instructor has been called away on some last-minute field work so I’ve had to pull some strings.”
Strings that required his presence did not bode well. It boded the exact opposite. She felt the gears in her back tightening ever so slightly until she was rim-rod like her mother had taught her. Ever so perfect in any event. That smell. Sure, it was plausible for any higher-level agent to take over their training, but it was even more plausible for-
“Yelena Belova will be stepping in for the foreseeable future.” Director Fury gave a proud, almost unidentifiable smile, scanning the shocked faces of the agents. “She is not directly associated with the agency. A contracted associate. She has decades worth of field work under her belt.”
Kate swore that his eye found her, but didn’t allow her own gaze to linger. Yelena’s scent clung to him from their brief interaction. A handshake, a conversation or a tour of the Avengers compound. She was careful. Too careful to scrub any trace of the Widow from her skin.
“I expect the upmost respect from each and every one of you. If I hear any different I will not hesitate to cut you from the program, and from this business entirely. Though, Miss Belova will do much worse.”
Damn right.
Kate had to bite back a scoff. Swallow it like a bitter pill. She had not kept her distaste for some of her fellow agents back behind her own walls. Not all of them were kind. A select few held a certain distaste for her. Though, she fought tooth and nail for the proper training that she craved.
She couldn’t shake the ‘rich kid’ façade. They saw her as weak. A prodigy that had skipped most of the hard work and had only gotten in because Hawkeye willed it so. She was stronger, more-skilled, and yet- they looked down on her. It was petty, leaked with venom. Reminded her too much of the teasing that was harbored in high school.
Kate tried to ignore the teasing and the biting words that surrounded her presence, prove herself based on her skills and her skills alone like she had done with Clint. Push through the rocky start. But it had done nothing to curb the insults and the icy looks. The harder punches and the isolations.
She’d curl up in Yelena’s lap, the woman carding her fingers through her hair, whispering raspy Russian that would rumble through her chest and settle her into a quiet haze. That orange scent enough to relax her. Her nose warm after a long day in the New York weather.
Of course, she’d offer to straighten them out. To march down to the Avengers compound and scare sense into the agents that gave Kate a hard time. The archer would curl close to the widow and kiss freckles from the smoothness of her skin before moving down the expanse of her jaw.
It was easy to fluster her, distract her from the task at hand and spread the blush that rose so willingly. “That’s very valiant of you, but I think it’ll make things worse.”
“mm” She would purr, tilting her head to give Kate more access “It would shut them up, though.”
Shut them up, it would. One look and the agents would quiet. One subtle touch to the small of the Kate’s back at an event and the context of the tension between them would evaporate. Kate didn’t’ go out of her way to show up at Christmas parties, or events that weren’t required these past four years. She’d much rather spend it at home in her shared apartment with their dogs.
This would complicate things.
They were sharing a space outside of their home. Outside of conjoined hands, and Clint’s farmhouse. Outside of soft embraces, candlelight dinners, and expeditions across oceans to spend summers at the farm where Meliana had retired.
“Dismissed.” Fury had cleared the rigidity of the room as quickly as he had called attention to it. The agents in her class relaxed their shoulders as he turned on his booted heel and stopped out of the gym. The compression door breathing out a sigh of relief.
The second he was out of earshot, a lanky ammunitions expert coated in a vicus layer of sweat took a daring stretch towards her. A cocky smile on his lips. “Bishop, don’t you know her?”
“Yeah, that reckless holiday escapade you pulled as a rookie back in 21’ brought you pretty close huh?” Agent Sterling nudged Parks.
The two of them egged each other on with a goading annoyance. They were shit at combat but enjoyed blowing things up. Short with tempers but could rile anyone on the team until something exploded in a flurry of ash and flame. Most of the time it was Kate that was their target, the rest of their small class watching with edged smiles.
She kept quiet always. Breathed through the jaunts. This was never meant to be her permanent arrangement, a means to an end that would carry her to those that she wanted to be around. Sterling and Parks were meant for one another in the lab.
Kate glowered at them, reached for the towel she had draped over the equipment she was using. Parks grasped it first and dragged it across his gummy expression. “I asked you a question, Bishop.”
Agent Kitt, a woman who had the slightest bit of neutrality towards Kate gave her a look of pity that only seemed to stir the aggravation within her. She stared into the childish gaze of Parks, wishing she could wipe the grin off his face with an open-handed slap.
Kate let out a huff and moved to push past the two men. They steeled themselves and their acrid scent filled her lungs. Sterling crossed his arms over his chest. She glowered at him. “Move.”
“Fa-la-la-la-la forget it.”
“Grow the hell up.”
Kitt shook her head, spoke softly “Let her through, Sterling. It’s getting late.”
His shoulders fall slightly, but the shit-eating grin on his face doesn’t falter. He steps to the side and let’s Kate walk towards the very doors that Fury had just exited from. She doesn’t make it far before the two men bubble into a cruel laughter that burns against her skin like acid.
Parks says loud enough for Kate to hear. “Word has it Belova only let her live out of pity because it was Christmas. I didn’t know a Widow was capable of something like that. Should have spared us and let her die.”
Kate felt the pinpricks at the back of her eyes and the lump form in her throat against her will. It angered her that things like this affected her. It was unfair, cruel in it’s own right. They were just words. Horrible words that deep down, she figured she deserved sometimes.
She made it halfway down the hall before she used the heels of her hands to wipe the traitorous tears away. The made it the other half before cold fingers wrapped around her wrist and pulled her into a supply closet that was filled with a chemical scent.
Kate made an embarrassing sound of shock in the back of her throat, an attempt to thrash when her back was slammed softly into the cool wood of the supply closet door. Her head was cradled by a hand that was equally as cold.
It took a moment for her mind to catch up with her surroundings. Yelena took over her senses, her hands always cold and her breath always warm against her throat. Three blinks later and the darkness gave way to the worried expression of her girlfriend.
Very perceptive, this one, wiping away her tears in a matter of seconds. “Oh, Malen'kiy yastreb, I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“You didn’t,”
She melted into Yelena, moved her hands from the girls shoulders to her collarbone, splaying them out, checking to see if she were real. She hadn’t realized how much she needed her. More tears had slipped down her cheeks that were burning with embarrassment.
Despite her towering height, Yelena cradled her as she fell forward. Letting Kate fall into her arms, tuck herself into her neck as if she belonged there. A puzzle piece that was sweaty and snotty and oh, so tired.
“You should have killed me.” Kate eventually whimpered.
“What?” Yelena pulled back in the darkness, a little crinkle in between her brows, the green of her eyes still vibrant and sharp, thumbs smoothing over the heat on Kate’s complexion. “Kate Bishop the chemicals in here are barely enough to tamp down bacteria, I doubt they can make quick work of you.”
They earned a watery chuckle, her forehead pressed against Yelena’s as she closed her eyes. They’d been through this before. It took Kate a few moments to gather her thoughts, to slow her heart. Yelena never pushed. Sometimes the thoughts rushed past her so quickly they were overwhelming and made little sense.
Kate gripped into the lapels of Yelena’s coat to ground herself. “Parks and Sterling… regular jackasses. Fury announced that you were taking over our training.”
“Ah, he’s fast. We just signed the contract. I was hoping to tell you first.”
Yelena’s hands went to her waist to steady her, a gentle squeeze. Kate wasn’t mad, would never be. She opened her eyes and met a worried expression that had already been searching hers for some solace. She was such a mess, one that Yelena had spent so much time cleaning up and vice versa.
She sighs, leaning back against the door. The action is stuffy, making her feel heady and light. “I try to tune them out, you know? It’s easy. But sometimes they really dig their heels in, Yel. Twist that knife.”
“What did they say to you?” She grits her teeth, softness switching to a hard anger in a shuttered breath.
“It doesn’t matter it-“
“Certainly does,” Yelena soothes, pressing forward, her lips close to Kate’s but not quite touching, she nips lightly as a way to silence her partner in a light warning. “You are distressed, are you not?”
Kate makes a small noise before recounting the very fresh lashing she had endured in the gym. She watched Yelena’s expression darken. It was alluring, almost, the way that the Widow’s expression could change in a subtle way from soft, to serpentine. Kate could feel her pulse quicken.
“I can handle this very swiftly,” and then she smiles almost wickedly, squeezing Kate’s hips in a grounding gesture. “So could you.”
“As an instructor, you really should be setting an example.”
“Yes, but as a contracted instructor I could get very creative with their demise.”
Kate chuckled in a watery mess. It was going to be a long semester. Her time as an academy recruit was drawing to a close, and so was her tortuous stint as a punching bag for Parks and Sterling.
She wipes away any lingering tears, giving Yelena a small smile that almost reaches her eyes. “Are there any non-violent benefits that come with dating the teacher?”
Yelena chuckles in a beautiful exhale, shaking her head. Her cheeks flush a brilliant red, even in the dull darkness of the supply closet they’re crammed into. Kate can still fluster her in a clumsy sort of way after all these years together. It’s a feat. It’s fantastic.
“Maybe, Kate Bishop.” Yelena shrugs, nudging their noses together. “There might be some extra credit.”