Chapter Text
Kate trails behind Yelena, pushing their slightly overfilled cart like it’s the most natural thing in the world. They’ve somehow made it halfway through the grocery store without anything catching on fire, being weaponized, or ending in a full-on wrestling match.
Progress.
She pauses when she sees Yelena crouched like a sniper, tapping watermelons with deadly focus.
“What are you doing?” Kate asks, half amused, half charmed, leaning lazily on the handle of the cart. The day is turning out to be, normal.
She’s never had normal.
Yelena doesn’t even glance up. “Checking for ripeness. You have to listen to the sound.” She taps it and Kate smirks. “You look like you’re interrogating it. What did it ever do to you?”
Yelena stands, holding up her chosen melon like a trophy. “This one is innocent. For now.”
Kate cocks her head. “Should I be concerned that you’ve developed a vendetta against fruit?”
Yelena flashes her a grin. “Only if the avocados act suspicious again.”
Moments later, Kate stands in front of the avocado display, holding one delicately in her palm like it’s a sacred relic.
“This one feels perfect. Not too firm, not too soft.” Yelena sidesteps her and grabs another one. “That one is lying to you.”
Kate turns, scandalized. “Excuse me?”
“I can tell. That one will betray you. You’ll cut into it, and it will be brown inside.”
“Wow,” Kate says. “You sound like me talking about my last relationship.”
Yelena smirks. “Which is why you should trust me now.”
“Oh no, we’re not blaming my dating history for this. This avocado is my redemption arc.”
They end up buying both avocados. And betting a back massage on whose pick is better. Stakes are sacred.
They move on, Kate stands proudly with a neon-colored cereal box in hand. “This. This is the best cereal ever made.”
Yelena looks at it like it’s a box of poison. “It’s pure sugar Kate, pure sugar.”
“Says the woman who eats pickled herring on toast and considers it breakfast.”
“Protein and omega-3s,” Yelena replies, snatching a box of plain oatmeal like it’s her emotional support grain.
Kate holds the cereal box out of reach as Yelena lunges. “You’re just mad because you know I’m right.”
An old woman walks by, giving them a scandalized look as Yelena hisses something vaguely threatening in Russian.
Kate waves. “Hi! Just married!” She even goes as far as planting a kiss on Yelena’s cheek and Yelena growls. “I hate you.”
Kate winks and laughs. “No, you don’t.”
Later, when Kate isn’t looking, Yelena sneaks the sugary cereal into the cart like a gremlin. When Kate finds it at checkout, she raises an eyebrow, says nothing, and puts a second box beside it.
The biggest problem is when they reach the snack aisle like two generals preparing for battle.
“Okay,” Kate says, staring at the sea of chips. “We pick one.”
“No,” Yelena says, immediately reaching for two bags. “We pick both.”
“We are trying to be mature.”
“Being mature means making good choices. These are good choices.”
Kate sighs. “You’re impossible.”
Yelena steps closer, raising a brow. “Say that again, but slower.”
Kate chokes on a laugh. “If I do, you’re going to make it weird.”
“Too late.”
They settle for four bags of chips, “for diplomacy,” and Kate mutters something about snack-based world domination. Yelena promises she’ll “eat responsibly,” which they both know is a lie.
At the checkout line, Kate rests her elbows on the cart, looking at Yelena with mock adoration.
“We did it. Look at us. Married. Grocery shopping. Arguing about cereal like a real couple.”
Yelena tilts her head. “I liked it better when we were interrogating watermelons.”
Kate chuckles. “You know, sometimes I think we’d make a good real couple.”
Yelena turns to her, expression unreadable for a second too long. Kate clears her throat. Her blush overpowers the tomato on the cart. “I mean, like, hypothetically. Because we work well together. Not, you know, because—”
“Kate.”
The cashier looks at them with a soft expression on her face, and Kate freezes. For a moment she forgot about their rouse. “You talk too much.”
She kisses her forehead and the cashier swoons at them.
And scratch that, Kate blushes more than she should.
Back at the safehouse, Kate unlocks the door, juggling the keys and trying to hold a single bag like a normal human.
Yelena opens the trunk.
Kate watches, wide-eyed, as Yelena starts loading up. Every single bag—paper, plastic, canvas, a rogue baguette—gets looped onto her arms like she’s training for an Olympic-level grocery-carrying event.
“Yelena, you don’t have to—”
Yelena cuts her off. “One trip.”
Kate raises an eyebrow. “Is this… a pride thing?”
Yelena, bags already weighing down her shoulders like the sins of her past, locks eyes with her. “It is principle.”
She walks past Kate, no, glides, like an absolute menace, bags threatening to cut off circulation to her biceps.
Kate watches, slack-jawed. “That’s… kind of hot.”
Yelena pauses, smirking over her shoulder.
Kate swallows. “I mean… logistically impressive. Efficient. You’re very efficient.”
Yelena kicks the door closed behind her. “Kate Bishop, are you-.”
Kate throws her hands up, before Yelena could tease her more she interrupts her. “That was at least twelve bags. I’m just impressed.” And not turned on, no, no.
Who is she kidding.
Yelena drops everything onto the counter, flexes one arm dramatically, and deadpans, “You like these guns.”
Kate pretends to swoon.
Yelena catches her mid-fake faint with one arm, holding her steady.
Kate laughs, breathless. “Shut up.”
In a quiet kitchen filled with snacks, soft laughter, and more sexual tension than any grocery trip deserves, Kate realizes something she probably shouldn’t.
She might actually be in love.
And the worst part?
It doesn’t feel fake at all.