Before school the next day- patrol had gone fairly well the night before, mostly muggings and an attempted break-in- Peter met Katya at the gate, armed with two bodega bagels and two cups of coffee, as had become something of a habit. Now that Katya lived all the way upstate, Happy had to drive her the stretch each morning,which meant waking up super early- she'd never complained about it, but the graciousness in her grin every time he handed her her breakfast spoke volumes.

"You know you don't have to do this," she said, like she did every morning, gratefully taking the warm coffees from him as he dug through the paper bag. He handed her one of the still-warm wads of tinfoil from the bag, trading it with her for his coffee in her other hand.

"I know." He shrugged back, like he did every morning. But he wanted to.

"Thanks," She told him, knocking her shoulder with his, as they walked into the school. Ned had to be around somewhere.

They still hadn't had the talk, which confused Peter more each day in that he didn't understand why he wasn't more confused. They'd never directly discussed the kiss- two kisses, technically- on the night of Homecoming after their fight with the Vulture, and they'd kissed since then, though mostly playfully, which also went undiscussed. Sometimes they held hands, sometimes they didn't, but even if school, training, and patrol weren't enough, they spent almost every second of their free time together. In the few moments when Peter was alone, and he'd think about it, it struck him as weird- isn't this sort of stuff supposed to be like, a big deal? She'd not only been his first kiss, but he'd never been so intimate- emotionally or physically, not counting the training part- with anyone before in his life. So wasn't she his girlfriend,technically? But that word didn't fit right, it didn't nearly begin to cover what they were, so he felt weird referring to her that way in his mind. Shouldn't they at least talk about it?

But the progression of their relationship had been so fluid, and so natural, and the second Katya walked into whatever room he was in those thoughts would go flying out the window, because at the end of the day, the labels weren't important. Were they? And it wasn't like he would try to bring it up and Katya would change the subject-, they just always had something else to talk about, or do. Or even just sitting in silence together whilst they did their homework for the few subjects they didn't share, all seemed much more pressing and important than trying to figure out a socially acceptable label for their relationship. Because ultimately, weren't labels just for other people's benefit anyway?

They found Ned near his locker, who, once he closed it,turned to them, already grinning widely. Peter smiled at his friend's excitement, but waited for him to explain himself.

"I got it."He said, almost ominously.

"Got what?" Katya asked, her mouth full of bagel.

"I got-" he clapped a hand on her shoulder, as if knighting her, before doing the same to Peter. "The Millenium Falcon."

"Dude!" Peter cried, his nerves flooding with excitement. "That's like-"

"5,197 pieces." Ned announced proudly. "I know!"

Katya's face lit up once she'd clocked what they were talking about. "You mean Lego?!"

Ned beamed. "Yes, Katya, I mean Lego!"

Peter punched Ned in the arm. "How did you do that?!" The set was notoriously expensive. Ned shrugged.

"I've been saving up for a bit, and my Grandma sent me some super early birthday money. If you've got time today between your, you know,internship-" he lowered his voice at his attempt of being inconspicuous, which,being Ned,wasn't very successful, but no one was listening anyway. "I can bring it over and we can start."

"Lego!" Katya cheered. Peter grinned. Yesterday she'd been pinning him to a mat, barking out orders like a drill sergeant, and she was getting excited over plastic bricks. Although it's not like he could say anything- he was doing the same. She glanced at him, her eyes speaking volumes in asking him about patrol, and he sent her a look back, answering wordlessly. They could work on the piece for a little while and patrol after. Things usually got stickier after dark, anyway.

"Hell yeah," Peter told Ned, clasping him on the back as the three began to walk to class. "Can't wait."

— —-

So that's where they found themselves, after school, tucked away in Peter's room with a veritable army of Lego pieces spread across the floor, the blueprints spread out between them. "Okay, so, Katya, I"m going to need you to collect all these pieces-" he gestured to a portion of the blueprints, "-and get them into a pile, and Peter, you can grab these-" he gestured to another portion of the blue prints, "And I'll start the mainframe."

Katya nodded seriously, and quickly began to sort through the lego horde. Peter did the same, careful to set them aside in a designated area- so many of these pieces were so small, it was a wonder the carpet didn't swallow them up- and they worked like that for a while, Ned regaling to Katya the significance of the Millenium Falcon in the Star Wars universe.

"I've never actually seen any of them," Katya finally admitted. She'd never said as much, but Peter thought her ignorance was obvious. Ned's eyes almost bugged out of his head.

"You've never-?!" He looked over to Peter incredulously as if it were his fault. "We have to fix that." Ned stood, and turned to where he'd dumped his backpack on Peter's bottom bunk, somehow gracefully managing to avoid knocking over any of the pieces. He pulled out his laptop and opened it, beginning to type furiously once it'd unlocked. "We've got to fix that right now-"

"There's six original movies." Peter told Katya over the blueprints between them, "not counting the newer ones, so…" he set aside a few he found that were pertinent to his pile. "I hope you know what you got yourself into." Katya said nothing, but beamed.

Suddenly her phone, which she'd left over on the side of the floor, lit up with a buzz, notifying her of a text message. Peter couldn't see what it said from where he was, only that the language was definitely not English- the characters looked Cyrillic. She glanced over at her phone to read the message and her face darkened, but she continued to work on her portion of the pieces. She glanced over at Peter, who sent her a look back to ask if everything was okay. She furrowed her brows in response- she clearly wasn't sure.

"Okay, so the first thing we need to do is decide what order to watch them in," Ned announced from behind his laptop screen. "They came out as a trilogy and then there's a prequel trilogy, and personally I'd suggest watching them in chronological order, so prequels first then original trilogy, but if you think you can keep up we can-" he was cut off by Katya's phone buzzing, a sustained vibration that meant it was ringing. She frowned and made to answer it.

"Ra videt vas snova." she answered in Russian, her voice suddenly taking on a much more serious tone than Peter'd ever heard her use. She glanced at him and then around the room, as if looking for a place to take the call. Before he could give her a suggestion, she went into the attached bathroom and closed the door behind her. It was muffled, but he could still hear her speaking- but it was all in Russian, so he couldn't understand a word.

"I've never heard her speak Russian before-" Ned said, still tapping away on his keys. "Like she told me she did but I've never heard it. It's kind of cool."

Outside of pauchok and the few words she'd taught him, and the occasional grumbling to herself or exclamation, Peter'd never heard it either and something twisted in his chest. Definitely cool but also…was he finding it attractive? He couldn't tell, but the seriousness in her voice concerned him more than anything.

Most of her answers were short , and mostly in a professional tone of voice, before there was a prolonged pause…which she answered in a much smaller voice, her tone almost…tender? But also unsure. She began rambling for a bit before seemingly getting cut off, and then went back to her professional voice. But she closed the conversation in a more familiar tone,tinged with almost a longing that Peter could feel in his own stomach. Whoever she was talking to was clearly a close relationship, despite the professional tone.

She ended the call, mumbling to herself a bit before finally letting herself out of the bathroom. "Sorry," she told the room unnecessarily, "I had to take that." She planted herself back into her respective pile of legos and continued to sort,wordlessly. Peter reached across the blueprints to give her hand a squeeze.

"Everything okay?" His tone,which he'd wanted to keep light, betrayed his concern. She nodded.

"Apparently I have a PO box to visit later." she informed him, "I'll know more from there."

Peter's chest tightened with worry at her clipped tone, but was cut off from saying anything by Ned announcing. "I'm downloading them now, and we can start with number one chronologically if you're okay with that." He phrased it like a choice, but it clearly wasn't. Katya smiled into her lego pile.

"Sounds good to me, but you're the expert." She laughed, but it was a bit hollow. She was clearly distracted.