WHAT: Future Kate pushes inspires present Kate to take a chance with Emily WHERE: Emily's Morningside apartment WHEN: Backdated to Saturday, October 29th WARNINGS: Nah, all sweetness here! STATUS: Complete
Even groggy and confused, Kate recognized her own handwriting on the sheet of notebook paper she’d found taped to the inside of her bedroom door. She’d almost bypassed it, but the thick, all-caps lettering, printed out in purple sharpie (bless, the purple obsession remained) caught her eye as she reached for the doorknob. She pulled it down, stared at it for a few more moments with her heart racing in her chest, and sighed.
Shit, she’d missed a lot.
She’d realized that seconds after waking up, when she reached for her phone and the date displayed was Saturday, October 29th when last she remembered it was the 21st. She’d done enough scrolling to see that she’d fallen victim to the timeslip – she’d aged up ten years to her future self, who seemed to have made herself real comfortable around here in the last week. Her text thread with Emily, in particular, had been filled up near constantly and had even been pinned to the top of the app.
That made the meaning of this note, if it hadn’t been already, crystal clear. And she wanted to – God, she wanted to. Normally, pursuing a pretty girl who she really liked and got along with really well wasn’t a problem for her. She was comfortable in her own skin and was a natural smooth talker. She’d chased after Elsa with no qualms. She’d gone through a string of hook-ups and flings back home while training without running into any trouble.
Emily was different. In a good way, the most amazing way. There was something more intimate about the connection she felt with her, more intense and grounded, and it made her want to dive right in. It also made her a thousand times more afraid she would burn it to the ground. And that ridiculous drunken kiss on the cheek she’d planted on her a couple weeks back didn’t help instill any more confidence in the situation.
It was a rare position for Kate Bishop to be in. Lacking confidence had never been one of her faults, and yet here she was.
She folded the note up into a little square, shoved it into the pocket of the sweatpants she’d woken up wearing, then wandered out of her bedroom toward the kitchen. She greeted both of her sisters with a big grin, a hug each, and a kiss each (one of whom accepted it gracefully, one of whom grumbled as usual). She let them catch her up after she’d poured herself a mug of coffee and sat down in the living room with them. She’d missed pumpkin carving (instant pout), fight club (which Future Kate had very nearly won, unfair!), and a string of weirdly outrageous Halloween-themed issues that had started cropping up. She still had Thor’s Halloween party to look forward to tonight, that was one positive.
But that note was burning a hole in her pocket, and by the time she’d polished off a couple of pieces of toast, she knew her future self was right. She needed to stop messing around, stop waiting and questioning herself, and take a shot. She had never hesitated to go after what she wanted before, there was no way she was going to start now. It would be fine – after all, she never missed.
Half an hour later, showered and dressed with a freshly-delivered box of chocolate croissants in tow, she grabbed the Waypoint down the block to Morningside’s lobby. She decided to take the stairs up to Emily’s apartment, hoping the little burst of exercise would force her heart back into its normal rhythm. She took a deep breath as she raised her hand to knock on the apartment door, biting her bottom lip while she waited.
When the door opened, her mouth immediately formed a crooked little smile at the sight of her. She’d seen her only yesterday, in her memory, but her body felt the missing time even if her mind hadn’t.
“Hi. I’m back.” She held out the bright pink bakery box as an offering. “And I brought croissants.”
Emily chewed on the inside of her cheek as she checked her text messages for about the 50th time since she’d woken up that morning. Since Kate had become affected by the timeslip, Emily had received goodnight and good morning texts every single day without fail. She'd gone to sleep the previous evening to the usual “Goodnight” but hadn’t seen any incoming messages yet this morning. She puffed out her cheeks and blew out a dramatic sigh of air before she tossed her phone unceremoniously onto the couch.
It was probably fine. There weren’t any posts on the network to alert her to any new chaotic threat, so Kate was probably just busy. Or sleeping late. She knew she wasn’t owed anything, but she was surprised by how much she missed the message once it wasn’t there.
She wandered over to the fridge to see about breakfast. She’d been eating it with Kate most days lately, but her stomach was starting to growl and she didn’t want to wait any longer. Halfway to the kitchen, Emily heard the knock at her door. She raised a curious eyebrow and headed over. When she opened the door and saw Kate there, she couldn’t help the grin that warmed up her face. “Hi!”
Had the bakery box not been in between them, Emily probably would have launched forward to hug her. As it was she accepted it gratefully and stepped aside to let Kate join her inside. “Welcome back! And you have amazing timing. I was just thinking about how starving I am.”
“I’d make a joke about Vallo giving me psychic powers, but I don’t really want to tempt it.” Kate followed Emily inside and closed the door behind her. She pulled off her coat – necessary outside with cold weather settling in, less so in here with the heat running – and draped it over the back of an armchair as they headed into the living room.
“Nat and Yelena caught me up,” she told her, sitting down on the couch. She’d been here enough that she knew it wouldn’t be a problem if she made herself comfortable. She had never been the awkward type, anyway, not in that respect. “Future Kate, huh? Was she prettier than me?”
Just a joke, of course, delivered with a smile and a playful flip of her long, brown hair. She had a list of silly insecurities a mile long, but her looks (along with her archery and swordsmanship skills) weren’t anywhere on it.
While Kate made herself at home on the couch, Emily proceeded over to the kitchenette with the pastry box. The croissants made their way onto plates before Emily fished two mugs out of the cupboard. At Kate’s comment, she looked up and good-naturedly rolled her eyes. “I don’t know about that, but she did almost win at Fight Club. So you don’t remember anything?”
Emily had made several assumptions about where their relationship was headed based on Future Kate’s behavior toward her, but if Kate didn’t remember anything, what should she do? Should they talk about it? Ignore it? Would it put weird pressure on them and ruin everything? She could feel tension building slightly between her shoulders. “Uh, coffee, tea, or juice?”
“No, don’t remember. But I heard about Fight Club.” Kate sighed dramatically. “I haven’t signed up in months, figures the one time I do, she takes over and kicks ass.” She was half-proud, half-offended by it, really. She hadn’t been able to place in Fight Club even once when she’d first started signing up months ago, but her future self showed up and got as far as runner-up.
It was rude. Downright rude.
“Juice sounds good.” She realized, belatedly, she probably should have followed after her into the kitchen and gotten her own damn drink, so she stood up and crossed the room to offer her hands out for the plates. “Here, I’ll take those,” she offered. “Sorry, my head’s still a little scrambled from waking up a week after I last remember going to bed.”
Emily could empathize with Kate’s dramatics. If her future self showed up and won a swim meet or something, she was sure she would feel just the same. She found herself smiling stupidly in Kate’s direction. “I’m sure you’ll be kicking ass in no time.”
She turned to the fridge to grab the juice, and when she turned back, Kate was heading in her direction. “Thanks,” she smiled. “And you don’t have to be sorry. I think missing a week of your life because your future self took your place is a perfectly reasonable reason to be a little out of it.” As the sentence hung in the air, Emily’s face scrunched slightly. Sometimes she still had trouble believing she could actually say things like that in earnest. “Yeah, saying things like that is never going to feel right. I don’t care what Future You says.”
Kate laughed. “Yeah, it’s always going to be weird,” she agreed, returning to the living room and setting their plates down on the coffee table. “I’m probably a little more at ease about it because back home was…wild in and of itself.”
Superheroes, aliens, genocidal robots – take your pick and you’d find it back in her universe. Emily, for all intents and purposes, seemed to have come from someplace where most of that, if not all of it, wasn’t happening, and things were baseline human and normal. She had barely been here one entire month; this was a big freaking shift.
“I saw she was talking to you a lot while she was here,” she mentioned, settling back down on the couch. They had been talking quite a bit themselves before her future self’s takeover, but the increase was huge.
Emily took a moment to fill both of the mugs with orange juice before she returned the carton to the fridge and came to join Kate on the couch. “Yeah, I guess we have been talking a lot.” Hands now free, Emily tucked her hair behind her ears. She still felt a little nervous and jittery and wasn’t sure if she should tell Kate her suspicions about them. “I think…” She stared, then paused, re-thinking it. After the moment of hesitation, she decided to hell with it. “I think, I mean, based on some of the things she said, I think we must be pretty close in the future, and she’s used to talking to me a lot.”
“Yeah, that sounds right,” Kate agreed. It felt right, too. It was a little odd to think they really hadn’t known each other this long with the intensity of what she felt for her. She’d assumed it was just a crush at first, but it was already deeper than that. It felt fast, but then, ‘Kate’ and ‘slow’ were never two words that had been said in the same sentence.
She took a drink from her mug before reaching into her pocket and pulling out the note. She’d brought it with her, worried that just this would happen – she’d come in here gung-ho to say what she was feeling and thinking, and then she talked around it because nerves. This forced her out of that zone and back into being direct.
“She left this behind,” she revealed, holding it between her middle finger and forefinger, extended so Emily could take it. “It’s not much, but…it doesn’t leave much room for doubt about how close we are, in the future.”
Emily’s eyebrows knit together slightly as she gently took the note. She didn’t have the best track record with mysterious correspondence, but at least they knew where this one was coming from. She unfolded it and read it quickly. It was only 5 words, so it only took a moment, but Emily read it a few times over, just to be safe. Her smile grew bit by bit each time she read the words again. “I guess not.”
Vallo may have given Emily more anxiety than A and Uber A combined, but in the midst of all of that had been Kate. Kate who was kind, and funny, and brave. Kate who made her feel safe, even in the midst of death loops and time travel. Emily’s stomach felt like it was in her throat, but she figured that they couldn’t get any clearer than a literal sign from the future. She leaned in quickly and pulled Kate into a kiss.
There was no hesitation on Kate’s part once Emily took the initiative and pulled her in. Relief washed over her, easing nervous tension she’d barely even registered she was carrying. And once their lips slotted together, the rest of her body knew what to do. Her arms instinctively wound around Emily’s back, fingers knotting gently in her shirt, and she pressed in close, pouring weeks of wanting into that mouth against her own.
“I really,” she breathed out, breaking the kiss just enough to let out words, “really like you. In case that wasn’t clear.” She grinned, playful and a little sly, one hand lifting to cup Emily’s chin and pull her back in for another kiss before she could reply.
It felt like a flurry of movement. Kate tugged her closer and Emily immediately shifted herself to comply. Lips, hands, warm skin, and her heartbeat thudding loudly in her ears. It was all a little dizzying, but Emily didn’t stop. She hadn’t felt anything like this in years, and now that she had it, she never wanted it to stop.
Her dark hair fell across her eyes as Kate pulled back, and Emily took the moment to catch her breath. She didn’t have the chance to respond, but it wasn’t really necessary anyway. She closed her eyes and lost herself in the kiss. Kate had said they were happy in the future. In this moment, Emily didn’t doubt it for a second.
Eventually, the need for air to breathe was stronger than the need to keep their lips glued together, no matter the way it made her heart race and warmth burst from the pit of her belly up and through the rest of her body. Kate gently broke the kiss again, but she stayed close, fingers tracing down the line of Emily’s jaw. She was so beautiful, so strong in the face of what had to feel like fever dream after fever dream stacking one on top of the other.
“Wish we hadn’t waited so long to do that,” she murmured, a smile that couldn’t be described as anything other than giddy curling her lips. She was definitely riding a happy high right now. “Thanks for taking the initiative for me. Super hot.”
Less than twenty minutes ago, Emily had been starving and now the thought of moving away from Kate long enough to grab a croissant wasn’t even on her radar. Nothing was, really, beyond drinking in Kate’s features. She grinned and settled in more comfortably next to her. “For the record, I’ll be happy to take the initiative in kissing you any time. I am so glad future you left that note. I really really like you too.”
“How could you not?” Again, a joke, followed by the cheesiest of cocky grins before she dipped her head to kiss her again, briefer and softer this time. She didn’t want to stop, and she didn’t feel like she needed to. This wasn’t like her relationship with Elsa. She didn’t have to broach everything so slowly and carefully; the attraction was mutually there, had been there basically from the start, and she didn’t feel hesitant in the slightest anymore.
“I’m glad future me left the note, too.” Her hand lifted to stroke Emily’s hair back behind her ear. “Just promise you’ll tell me if it’s ever too much, alright? Because now that we’re here, I’m ready to dive right in, but I don’t ever want to scare you away.”
Emily dropped her eyes closed and leaned into the kiss. Her hand made its way to Kate’s neck and she trailed her thumb lightly across the collarbone. She left it there even after the kiss ended.
The impulse to agree to dive right in was strong, but Emily had enough sense to actually stop and think about it for a moment. (A feat all in itself, as being this close to Kate was not helpful for thinking.) Her life had been upside down for years now. She’d lost her dad, she’d lost Paige, she’d dropped out of school, and that was even before Charlotte had died and Uber A had come after them. Not to mention the whole “Magically Displaced to another universe” part. It was extreme by almost any standard, and Emily didn’t want to mess anything up by jumping into something too quickly. Still, it was hard to ignore the sense of peace and security that she had when she was with Kate. Emily breathed in deeply. “I promise. But for right now, I think this is just the right amount.”
Kate nodded and took a breath. “Yeah, I think so, too,” she agreed. They could work their way toward more, if that was how things were meant to be. The future her older self had brought to them was one of an infinite amount (and she could practically hear Dr. Strange intoning those exact words in her head). It seemed like a good one, but they had a long way to go to get there, and she was happy to pace herself, for both of their sakes. They still had so much they didn’t know about each other, and she wanted to learn every bit of it.
“I don’t want to stop kissing you, but we should eat.” She leaned forward and trailed a couple of quick kisses across Emily’s jaw, sidestepping her mouth for the moment so she wouldn’t let that overflow of desire consume her too quickly again. “I missed you, I wanna hear everything.”
Heartily in agreement with Kate, Emily’s stomach chose that exact moment to growl softly and she gave an embarrassed laugh in response. “I guess I can’t really argue with that.” She shifted herself on the couch so she was sitting close to Kate, but dutifully reached forward and grabbed a plate off the coffee table. She placed it in her lap and tore a piece of croissant off to pop into her mouth. If Kate wanted to hear everything, Emily would make sure she got exactly that.