Many thanks to the Hive for looking through this before I posted. All remaining errors are mine!

As always, thanks to everyone here for their continued support and encouragement as I post these things - you guys are the best!

"Shouldn't you be making borscht or something?" Kate asked.

It had been three months since Natasha and Clint had run into each other at one of Stark's parties, three months since they started sleeping together again (they would not call it dating because they were both absolute disasters when it came to dating), and Kate Bishop was somewhat less than pleased with the development.

It hadn't started that way, of course. Kate had welcomed her presence when she'd discovered Natasha at Clint's apartment early one Saturday morning (technically she'd been there for the literal "morning after," even if it didn't feel that way at all).

For a while, everything had been fine. Better than fine really; Natasha and Kate had started running and working out together, and Kate, always a willing pupil, was shaping up to be a damn fine martial artist. Even the little things that normally might get under someone's skin didn't bother her; Natasha had lived with other Avengers long enough that a little waiting for the bathroom on the odd morning that Kate stayed over didn't give her pause.

Kate, however, had started to get weird, for lack of a better term. She'd stopped waiting for Natasha to crawl out of bed to go running, she didn't ask Natasha for tips when they happened to be training together, and, strangest of all, she didn't hang around Clint's apartment as much. Kate wasn't outright mean to her, but there was a wariness behind Kate's eyes, one that grew the longer Natasha stuck around. Natasha couldn't quite pinpoint when it had started, when Kate started treating her like an interloper, but the fact of the matter was that it had happened, and Natasha was at a loss how to stop it.

Take now, for instance, and the borscht comment. It wasn't mean, but it was kind of catty, and that wasn't typically an adjective that really came to mind when she thought of Kate Bishop.

"I'm only a walking stereotype on Mondays," Natasha replied dryly. She tossed in a handful of celery. He wouldn't admit it, but Clint liked the vegetable in his soup, which was something she'd discovered one day long ago, back at the beginning when he'd idolized Stark and she'd been (failing at) playing him for a fool. She stirred the pot slowly, leaning over the top to catch the scent.

Leaning back up, she snapped off another stalk of celery and headed to the sink to rinse the dirt off. Behind her, she heard Kate pour herself another cup of coffee. Natasha could also feel her staring.

She sighed.

"Maybe you should stop trying to bore holes in the back of my head and just out with it."

Kate exhaled audibly, annoyance somehow thick in the little huff of air (a trait she'd probably picked up from Clint). Natasha knew there probably a dozen things on her mind, and that she was likely working out how to put some or all of it into words. Hell, maybe she'd been working on it for three months. Kate didn't say anything though, and ten minutes later when Natasha ladled up a bowl of soup to take upstairs, she was still pretending to read the paper.

Natasha rolled her eyes.

Clint was in the middle of a violent coughing fit when she walked in. She placed the bowl on the table by the bed (though, "table" was a generous moniker for the cinder block and plywood construction), and she sat next to him quietly until he finished.

"Shit," he croaked, leaning into her palm when she touched his brow. He still felt dangerously hot, but she knew better than to try getting him to go see a doctor.

"How are you feeling?" she asked.

"Like I got sucker punched by Pestilence," he said, and then he dissolved briefly into another coughing fit.

Well, he had been sucker punched by Pestilence, so at least he was coherent again. That was a positive change from yesterday.

"I made you soup," she said when he quieted.

He cracked one eye open.

"The kind where you add the water or the one that's already got it?"

"Oh, so you're a man of distinction these days?" she teased, smiling at him. "Neither." She handed him the bowl after he pulled himself upright.

Clint looked down at the contents.

"Holy shit, you made me soup."

Maybe today was just a day for rolling her eyes at people named Hawkeye.

"I did," she said more or less pleasantly.

"I didn't know you could make soup."

She grinned and nudged the spoon closer to him. In addition to the worryingly incomprehensible babble he'd been spouting, he hadn't been able to keep food down for days, not since he got sick. As he took a few bites, she let herself have high hopes for today.

"I only make soup for people I like," she said, pressing a hand to his forehead to check his temperature again, even though she'd done it only moments before.

He grinned at her, his tousled hair and glassy eyes only adding to the endearing picture he made. Her stupid heart leapt in her chest.

"So you like me?" He waggled his eyebrows. "Or do you like me?"

Infant, she thought tenderly. He'd never grow up.

He reinforced her assessment when he added, "You know what would really make me feel better is if you . . ."

She patted his knee and interrupted him before he could really get going. "Keep it in your pants, Barton. We've got company."

"Katie's here?"

She nodded.

"Sorry," he said, his face caught between a cringe and a grimace. "I know she's been acting weird around you lately. I don't know what's gotten into her."

Natasha rather suspected she did, but she thought maybe now wasn't the best time to have that conversation with Clint. It might make for some revelations between them, ones they really weren't ready for yet. How did you tell someone that you were tired of pretending that he didn't mean everything to you? How did you tell someone that you were ready for more?

For now, on the off chance that he was still seeing stars behind his eyelids, she didn't tell him.

"She's very protective of you," she replied.

Clint snorted, then sipped from his spoon. "Good lord, this shit is awesome, Tash. I need to get sick more often."

"First time's free to get you hooked," she said. "It's all condensed from here on out."

He kept grinning at her between spoonfuls.

Kate was still downstairs when Natasha returned. She'd hoped that Kate would have taken the opportunity to leave without comment, but apparently not. Clint was still pretty sick, even if he was through the worst of it, but Natasha got the feeling that Kate would be sticking around for the duration.

"How's he feeling?" Kate asked, putting the paper down on the counter. She'd barely moved since Natasha saw her last.

"Better," she said simply because she wasn't sure Kate really wanted to hear the part about how he was better enough to proposition her for sex.

Kate nodded and was reaching for the newspaper again when Natasha suddenly decided that enough was enough. She cut to the chase.

"I'm not going to hurt him," she said bluntly. Kate didn't have much to say about that, so Natasha added, "I'm not just messing around with him."

Kate narrowed her eyes. "This time," she said flatly, and Natasha forced herself not to wince. She'd had a feeling that this in particular was what Kate had against her, and the accusation was fair, if inaccurate. With most people, that would be enough; she would let the misapprehension stand. But Kate? Well, Kate liked Clint and Clint liked Kate, and if Natasha were being perfectly honest, she liked Kate, too. Hell, she liked Kate more because she was willing to stick up for her friend even in the face of someone who could kill her in half a dozen different ways with the wooden spoon sitting between them on the counter.

All of which led to one conclusion - she was going to have to discuss her feelings with Kate.

Shit.

Choosing her words carefully, Natasha said, "I wasn't before, you know."

Kate blinked. "What? When you led him on and tricked him into a life of crime? Or later, when you dumped him and broke his heart? He was going to ask you to marry him, in case you didn't know."

She'd known. Of course she'd known. She'd seen him buy the damn thing, seen him agonize over it for weeks on end. He'd actually asked her, for fuck's sake, and she'd put off answering in a desperate attempt to buy time. She'd promised him she'd think about it though, really consider the offer, and when she'd realized what she wanted to say in reply, she'd frightened herself so badly that she'd spent the next several years running away from everything.

She'd wanted to say yes.

Kate didn't need to know that, but she needed to know enough that maybe she'd loosen up a little, so that they could stand to be in the same room again.

"I knew," Natasha replied at last.

Kate scoffed, clearly not expecting that response, but trying to cover it up anyway. The girl was one hell of a lot like Clint. No wonder she liked her.

Kate took a deep breath. "If you knew, then why would you . . . ?"

Natasha busied herself at the sink for the next part, because even if she hadn't said it to Clint, not in years, Kate needed to know. That didn't mean Natasha had to face her for it.

"Because I've been in love with him since I met him," she said quietly.

She'd been thinking about that a lot lately, thinking about when that insidious emotion had wormed its way inside of her and taken root in her atrophied heart. It hadn't taken long for her to realize that she couldn't remember a time when she didn't feel this way about Clint, when he didn't twist up her stomach or give her butterflies or whatever stupid metaphor English-speakers preferred to describe that abominable emotion.

"But that's been . . ." Kate said, wide-eyed. Natasha knew how she felt.

She nodded. "You know what I do, what our lives are like, Kate. You exactly how we spend our days, and you know the kind of people we are. It's why you don't like me with Clint; you think something's going to happen. You aren't even wrong. There isn't any room for love when dealing with supervillians and impossible odds."

She turned to face Kate, finding her standing dumbstruck.

Now that she'd gotten started, Natasha found that she couldn't stop, and she plowed ahead. "You aren't wrong because you know what's happened every time he's tried to start . . ." She made a vague motion with one hand. "Whenever people like us try this, it ends in disaster."

"If you really believe that, then why are you here now? Why even try?"

Natasha leaned forward heavily. "Because I'm weak."

Kate laughed. "Weak? You?"

She shrugged. It was true, had always been true, probably would always be true. What did it matter if someone else knew it? "He makes me weak. And stupid."

"He does that," Kate said, and Natasha could see that she'd won her over, that whatever snit Kate had been in about her relationship with Clint was passed. She was glad they were done with this conversation because there were other things to say, but Clint probably deserved to hear them first. Especially more about that whole love thing.

Natasha nodded. "He really does."

"So, um," Kate said. "Do you think you could show me how to do that Vulcan arm pinching thing you do? The one you used to drop Pestilence the other day? Because I can think of at least eight people I want to try that on."

Natasha laughed. Today was going to be a good day.