Oh, and she had been doing so well at not letting this mix of emotions boil over, but that reaction and reply tips her into overflow for a minute. The urge to retreat is gone completely, though, and all at once, instead Yelena stays leaning into the touch, closes her eyes and sucks in a few deep breaths, fights back some control.

She's alright with the lapse, once she's mostly through it, those are not small statements even if the words themselves are simple, and she is not sorry for the weight she gives them. She does, instinctively, hate the wobble she knows is going to be in her voice when she speaks again, but not enough to wait it out or put in the effort necessary to overpower it. It's fine. "Neither are you. I understand why you felt safest in solitude then, but I intend to - earn you feeling just as safe with me. You will not be put and left in a room like that again, not while I am breathing."

That was. Also a lot. Yelena exhales again. "I like what I get, for liking you, and you do not know the half of what I would probably let you get away with."