Christmas in July

Oh, shoot!

"Are we... are we there yet?" Kate asked, bent over, hands on knees and completely puffed out. Kate had her reasons, of course. It wasn't as if she didn't have a pretty decent baseline fitness, she'd just been working pretty damn hard. The unconscious guards left in her wake were testament to that. But her machine of a girlfriend, on the other hand, hadn't broken a sweat. Her breathing was regular, her words not broken by the overwhelming need to inhale as much oxygen as humanly possible, and her face was unflushed.

"No. It says service elevator," Yelena explained, pointing to the sign written in Russian, matter-of-factly.

"Oh...Cool," Kate managed, nodding enthusiastically, in a cover for her complete and utter exhaustion. "Now I see why you're here."

Yelena raised an eyebrow, an eyebrow that told Kate she wasn't a hundred percent sure if she was being serious or not. "To translate for you?" the Russian asked, incredulously. Of course, Kate was joking. A good seventy five percent of the unconscious dudes that lay behind them had been put, rather aggressively, to sleep by the Black Widow, but the brunette wasn't going to give her the satisfaction of admitting it.

"Yeah," Kate said, as she gave the blonde a playful pat on the back and strolled towards the elevator. "You're doing a great job," she smiled goofily, and pressed the elevator call button. Yelena shook her head and sighed for effect, but did an absolutely terrible job of keeping a small but affectionate smile from tugging at the corner of her lips. Kate's heart felt tight, and warm and happy. Apart from the being heinously out of breath thing, this was just how she'd imagined them together. Quipping and flirting and kicking ass. Yep, today was turning out to be pretty perfect.

Yelena pressed herself against the wall on one side of the elevator's entrance dramatically and nodded to Kate to do the same.

Kate frowned. "Why?"

"Because there could be someone in the elevator," Yelena explained, as if it were perfectly obvious. To her credit, it was pretty obvious once she'd explained, but Kate simply shrugged. Seeing Yelena in action so far, had been pretty impressive, and pretty hot to boot, but there was no way Kate was going to let her know that either.

"I just thought you'd wanted to look cool."

"You think I do this to look cool?" Perhaps the affection was gradually being replaced with exasperation. It was one hundred percent worth it.

Kate threw herself against the wall on the opposite of the elevator doors with a flourish. She flicked her hair to gaze, dramatically, at the Russian. "I think you do a lot of things to look cool."

"No, I don't," Yelena said, indignantly.

"You know the thing you do when you jump off a roof?" Kate asked, and she knew that she knew.

"That very practical thing." There was nothing practical about it.

"You think you look cool doing it," Kate insisted, smugly. She was going to win this argument, there was no way in hell Yelena couldn't concede this.

The blonde huffed, Kate was on the brink. "Okay, whatever," Yelena relented. And there it was, a resounding victory for the fighter in the purple corner. "But!" Kate rolled her eyes, there was always a 'but'. "I look very cool doing it which isn't my fault, it is just a by-product of being a very cool person."

"Uh huh. Sure."

With a ding the doors of the elevator pinged open and a moment later a guard stepped out. A stamp to the right knee, a deft shift between standing legs, and a swift kick up and under the chin put the guard down in under two seconds. Yelena stood, stoically over the fallen guard, and raised a solitary eyebrow in Kate's direction.