man, i hate this part of texas
After a quarter of an hour of intense anxiety following her effort of writing a message to Yelena, Kate Bishop flung her phone across the room, and- oof oh shit (...a tad too forcefully perhaps). Ensuring it was locked and out of reach until the following morning, Kate decides to take a big ol’ Ambien to help her sleep (I’m not a pill pusher, I’m just a university student with chronic insomnia and a private doctor, m'kay?), knowing full well she otherwise will be far too giddy to even fathom the concept of sleep. It really took it out of the archer to come up with a ‘cool’ and ‘effortless’ text to send to Yelena that didn’t reek of weirdly homoerotic desperation, meaning she needed some well-earned sleep after all that brainpower.
Let it be noted that the message that Kate finally sent to Yelena was: “hi :)”. It took her forty-five fucking minutes to write a text that reads, “hi :)”, AND she took an additional twenty minutes finally hyping herself up enough to send the damn thing.
Before she knows it, the brunette ends up in a completely dreamless zombie-like sleep from her drug-induced stupor. When she wakes the following day, her limbs are feeling a little extra noodle-y, is that a word?, resulting in her making her routine of going to the bathroom and brushing her teeth a tad more laborious and time-consuming than usual. Walking downstairs in her haze, Kate forgets to grab the phone that she discarded in some cursed corner of her room. She instead blearily looks around her flat to check the time and to search for her one-eyed companion, who was mysteriously absent from her bed when she awoke this morning– AFTERNOON? Oh my god how did I sleep until two in the afternoon?! Where is Lucky? DID hE RUN AWAY? Looking at the clock was a mistake, clearly, because now she’s fucking losing it.
Sure, it’s a widely known fact that when in a panicked state, one tends not to think in the most logical manner, nor do they come to sensical conclusions; a prime example being that Kate’s first thought is that Lucky the golden retriever somehow sprouted opposable thumbs overnight, became anthropomorphic, and gained enough sentience and autonomy to simply leave her apartment in the morning whilst his neglectful owner was sleeping. She’s definitely not stupid, if her pending college degree is any evidence in her favour, but she’s certainly a dumb bitch.
Arms thrown up in the air, hair wild with bedhead, and toothbrush hanging out of her mouth, she’s interrupted from her panic to the front door opening and Lucky walking in? And of course, a familiar blonde following closely behind. I literally cannot catch a fucking break.
“Hello again Kate Bishop! I decided to just come check in on you when you did not respond to my texts but then I saw you were still sleeping so Pizza Dog and I went on a lovely walk around the park and–” she spares a glance in the brunette’s direction, “...why are you so dishevelled this morning?” the Russian asks, her voice annunciating the vowels strangely as she voices her question. Kate is caught in utter disbelief at the fucking luck she seems to have because of course Yelena would walk into her apartment looking like a cherub while Kate’s electric toothbrush falls out of her gaping mouth and hits the floor with an almighty thud. Curse that fucking phone still sitting in her room. Lucky runs right over to the toothbrush to investigate and in doing so, completely forgets his supposed allegiance to his owner and fearless rescuer while she continues to flounder.
Without a word, Kate just turns back around and heads up her stairs where, once out of sight of a certain Russian spy, she breaks into a sprint, getting dressed out of her pyjamas, wiping the toothpaste from her mouth, and running a brush through her unruly hair. Within three minutes, the girl had managed to straighten herself up pretty remarkably and decides to return to the living room, where she wouldn’t even be surprised to see Yelena absent and an open window in her wake, per usual. What she finds instead is Yelena leaning back on that comfy ass couch, Lucky’s head in her lap as she offers him head scratches, and attention locked on some baking TV show on Food Network she’s managed to find in the past few minutes.
“Good.. um afternoon, Yelena. I…I hope you had a nice evening. Thanks for taking care of Lucky today…” Kate holds herself up stiffly as she sits awkwardly on the couch the furthest she can be from the intimidatingly cool blonde. Yelena’s lip curls into a teasing smile as she takes in Kate’s clear discomfort and attempt at presenting herself as put together, as if she didn’t just book it up the stairs (leaving her toothbrush behind, RIP fallen soldier ) and throw on the first pair of jeans and graphic t-shirt she could see.
Yelena’s eyes flick down to the brunette’s shirt where she finds another stupid ass design, reminding her of Kate’s archery themed shirt from the day prior. The archer’s new t-shirt has a bird (though Yelena doesn’t have the heart to tell Kate it’s not a hawk, because she almost definitely thought it was) wearing a trench coat and fedora, blending into a line of other similarly-dressed people and captioned with the phrase ‘the birds work for the bourgeoisie’. Yelena can’t decide if she’s planning to burn it at the first opportunity or if she wants to steal it for herself. Kate, thankfully, doesn’t notice the blonde’s appraisal of her outfit due to the fact she’s still sitting stick-straight, feigning rapt attention towards the baking competition show Yelena turned on to pass the time.
There’s a comfortable silence for a few moments where they’re both watching some fool try to make ice cream in thirty minutes, but it’s broken by loud criticisms of both women commenting on the contestant’s idiocy at the same time. Again, Kate’s mouth moves well before her brain has had time to process as she blurts, “why do you smell like gas? What is that, diesel?”.
“Silly Katie! It’s Jet A fuel!”
Kate looks shellshocked to say the least. “Why in the fuck would I know that?”
“Did you not know this when you learned to fly?”
“As in FLY A PLANE?”
“Mhm yes, this is what I just said Kate Bishop”
“Yelena I think you are wildly overestimating the training I got from Clint…”
“Oh do not worry Hawkess, I only joke! But yes it is Jet A fuel”
Yelena then turns her attention back to the TV and the buffoon trying to save his creme anglaise that obviously did not turn into ice cream; meanwhile Kate looks like a fish out of water, continually opening and closing her mouth while she waits for the blonde to elaborate on literally ANY part of the dialogue they just exchanged.
“...why? Do I even want to know why?” she adds with exasperation, hoping to finally understand why Yelena is making her apartment smell like an active runway.
The Russian turns to her with clear exasperation on her face, “because I was flying a plane, Kate Bishop. Are you sure your concussion did not cause brain damage?”.
“What! Yelena that’s not what I meant… I mean--” That’s it. I’m done asking questions. I give up.
“I just tease you, Kate Bishop. You are so easy to get risen out of!”
“Get a rise out of?” Kate asks to clarify. At this point, if she didn’t know any better, she’d think that the blonde kept messing up her idioms just to spite the archer. Wait nevermind, she could totally be doing that just to bother me…
“Yes,” Yelena takes a small breath after shooting Kate a small grin at her correction, “I just got back from an evening trip to rescue a widow, hence the scrapes on my arm.”
Kate looks confused for a second before she drags her eyes down from the hazel she’s been entrapped by thus far, to find that there are indeed several small, fresh scratches on Yelena’s arm, as well as one that appears to be much deeper and thankfully professionally sewn up.
“Oh my god! Yelena, are- are you okay!? How did this happen? Where did you go!?”
“Kate Bishop, you insult me so. I am way too talented to get seriously injured. I am fine, please relax a bit. The widow put up a little fight but nothing the greatest child assassin in the world couldn’t handle…” M'kay so we’re gonna table the ‘greatest child assassin’ comment for another time, but we are definitely circling back to that… “...so it was just a quick in and out trip to DC and I even had time to suture the one cut that nicked my artery.”
Everytime the archer thinks that this conversation can’t take another unhinged pivot, she’s thrown for a loop by Yelena. She doesn’t even know where to start this time and to be completely honest, she doesn’t think she’ll get much of an answer if she asks for any sort of clarification so instead she asks, “did you at least get to see the Washington Monument while you were there?”
Yelena jumps a little in her seat and does this excited flappy thing with her hands as she prepares to tell Kate about her trip (thatlasted for less than twelve hours? Was she literally just there for the night? Did she even sleep?). “I did get to see it! I actually went up to the top with the widow I was with!”
Can you even go to the top of the Washington Monument in the dead of night? “How? Wasn’t the elevator inside and the whole visitors’ centre closed?” she can’t help but ask.
“Obviously,” Yelena states as if Kate was the one spouting insane shit during this conversation, “we went up the side of it during our little fight. Kind of like that spider-boy did a few years ago! You know the spider-boy, right? He seems like a nice kid. You both are baby Avengers and remind me of golden retriever puppies like Lucky”.
Kate doesn’t even dignify this with a response and instead seizes the remote from the assassin’s bandaged hand and flips the channel to the national news where, sure enough, she finds the anchors talking about two women in black tactical suits scaling the Washington Monument at three o’clock in the morning. In classic American fashion, the newspeople are speculating that this could be some act of terrorism and if so, it was almost definitely orchestrated by the Kremlin. Those pesky Russians.
The archer’s well and truly lost the plot at this point, so she just starts cackling. She’s laughing harder than she’s ever laughed before, heaving her whole body with convulsions of the giggles as she starts to tear up from the effort of continuing to laugh. Yelena looks on at her like she’s witnessing someone have a full-blown psychotic break (but she may or may not be chuckling along with the archer as well), and the brunette finally, after minutes of fighting the urge to break down laughing again, manages to pull herself together. Kinda.
“Well. I mean… The–” she’s broken down into another fit of giggles and wipes the steady stream of tears from her eyes before she forces herself to take a deep breath before trying again, “well I mean, technically speaking… the news wasn’t totally wrong. I mean, it was the Russians behind the Washington Monument debacle...”.
“Okay okay, Little Hawk, you have your laugh” the assassin attempts to sound exasperated, but she can’t fight the grin that’s slowly breaking out across her previously stoic face as Kate makes eye contact with her, and she’s now staring into teary baby blues filled with genuine mirth. It truly is a testament to their newfound friendship that the women spend the next ten minutes repeatedly breaking into hysterics every time they make even the briefest eye contact and maybe to the careful eye, they’ve ended up with lighter hearts, abdomens aching from the laughter, and sitting just a touch closer to one another.