Three Times Valentines ¦ Kate x Yelena

Year One

Kate Bishop had never understood why Valentine's had to fall so early in the year. She could hardly grasp the necessity of a day like that at all, let alone in the middle of cold February. The days around Christmas were always full of joy and the new year brought about new hope and ambitions. Then there was Valentine's, ever ready to crush her to death.

The first Valentine's since joining the Young Avengers, she spent all of the fourteenth staking out the streets, waiting for a crime she could fight. There were a few robberies, sure, but hardly anything of note. Nothing Avenger-worthy. Most of the night, she found herself sitting around in full gear, watching couples make out, break up, and make up again. The cycle of love. What a joke.

She wasn't sure whether it was the idea of Valentine's that bothered her or simply the idea of spending the day alone. She wondered if she should care. She had never dated seriously before and realised that perhaps, she was falling behind. Her friend, Kamala, a mere teenager, had proudly talked about her Valentine's plans. Sure, it was just an innocent trip to some dress-up gig, one her LARP friends attended too from time to time, but she didn't like the idea of lacking the kind of experience someone much younger had.

Devoid of exciting crime and disgusted by her loneliness, she told herself that next year, she wouldn't be sitting around by herself on Valentine's. If she couldn't meet someone naturally–being a Young Avenger didn't leave much room for coffee shop meet-cutes–at least she would try her luck on a dating app. Surely, she thought to herself, it couldn't be that hard?

Meeting someone online had been easy enough. In only a five-mile radius, there were enough profiles that popped up, of which there were just enough that swiped right on her too. With that, the easy part was over. Most guys turned her off with their cheesy pick-up lines and the few women she had dared to swipe never actually responded to her. Eventually, one person was left, someone she clicked with as much as was humanly possible when knowing each other for just under twenty-four hours. They agreed to meet up at a pizzeria on the outskirts of New York, one of the few interesting places that could book them in last minute. Her match had given Kate the honours of picking a place and she wondered if it had been intentional. He had sounded surprised when she texted him an address, but it wasn't easy to read someone's tone over text so who knew? She didn't particularly care about the hassle, so long as she had a nice place to eat.

This was how she came to be sitting at an overpriced pizza restaurant on Valentine's Eve. As she waited for her match to arrive, she kept fumbling with her little black dress. She wanted to go back home and change into something more comfortable but it was too late for that now. Besides, the internet had promised her that her date would lay one eye on her and swoon, which had to indicate a good first date. Still, she longed after her comfortable pyjamas, or at least a nice jacket to cover up with, especially in this cold February weather. She wondered how much she would be able to "flaunt her femininity", as the blogs called it. It would be hard to flaunt anything if she had to spend the entire evening stressing about her breasts potentially slipping out of the tight garment. It didn't help that she was wearing a necklace with an arrow charm pointing right down at them. She felt as though she had set herself up for failure.

By the time her date sat down in front of her, at least twenty minutes late although she had stopped counting, all she could focus on was the necklace itching her chest and her eyelids growing heavy with eyeshadow. Every time she moved her legs, a whiff of her cinnamon perfume shot straight into her nostrils. Maybe she shouldn't have applied it to every single pulse point. Maybe the internet meant "Pick one or two places, not your entire body, you idiot!" It was all too much but she tried her best to focus on her date. He looked nice enough: a simple guy with a neatly trimmed moustache that clearly needed to grow thicker with age–it wasn't particularly impressive. His outfit was much more comfortable than Kate's and she fantasized about them trading clothes for the rest of the evening.