Chapter Text
It’s still strange to see him lurking in the corner of the rooms they’re in. Yelena sees him pretty often, around the others and in meeting rooms, but most of the time she has to look for him in whatever room they’re presently occupying. It’s not that he’s shy, she thinks as her vision whites over agents in suits at the briefing they’re at, and it’s not that he won’t speak up, especially when he thinks something has to be said. It’s more so that sometimes he’ll say something and everyone will turn to him as if they’re reminded of his presence, as if they had forgotten about his existence.
Yelena has found that she does not like those moments.
The agent giving the briefing is a tall woman in a slim pinstripe pantsuit ostensibly matched with Nike Air Forces. Ex-SHIELD, Yelena’s been told. She’s here on liaison to lead De Fontaine’s operatives on what will be the mission that’s based on the information they went on this most recent mission to collect. They haven’t even had time for a shower. If she’s annoyed by Alexei’s consistent questioning, she’s keeping it well under wraps, and so there’s nothing for Yelena to do but lean against the wall in her own stink and let her eyes wander.
The New Avengers. That’s what they’re being called. Walker’s sitting in the front of the room listening intently to the briefing, albeit with an air around him, like he thinks he could do better. He probably could, is the thing, but only if he wasn’t trying to do it right. Yelena looks at him sitting up front and finds herself wondering, as she often does, how he can still believe in it all. Bucky’s standing right in front of him, leaning on the board right behind the ex-SHIELD employee, his arms crossed over his chest. He looks tired, and a little bored, like this last fight was just another fight in a long line of fights. He looks like he needs a shower. Ava’s sitting in the very back with her chair ajar so you can only see the side of her face. In the harsh fluorescent lighting, she looks like she could disappear. Still, she did shoot a man about to bludgeon Yelena’s skull in while she fought three other guys, so something about the way she’s slouching still feels solid.
Then there’s Bob, straight across from her in the back of the room, in the corner again. His hair is dusty and he’s in this blue sweater and sweatpants riddled with holes from when he stepped in for the mission he wasn’t supposed to be on. He’s looking at the pantsuit-woman, with his hands hanging loose against his sides like he hasn’t got a thing to hide. Yelena had seen him only hours earlier in the vivid coloring of an East Coast sunset, getting shot at by multiple field agents with a diverse variety of arms and numerous rounds of ammunition. He’d refused to standby while they sent in an extraction team - humans he said the minute they stepped into the tower.
Yelena sees him now, looking like he’s about to shift through the wall. His sleeves are frayed, she notices, when he brings up a hand to rub his other wrist, then right at his sternum, fingers pressing right up against it, and then up again, this time to the sharp jut at the very center of his throat. It’s just Bob, she thinks, thinking of what he looked like when she first met him, how he didn’t even know how to hold a gun. Just Bob, she thinks, watching his hand go further up right before she meets his eyes -
Bob, who’s caught her staring at him. Something’s pounding in her ears.
Just Bob, who smiles a bit even though his hand is frozen somewhere on his shoulder. He lets it slide down and hang again, and tilts his head at her, a little questioning, a little embarrassed, but like he’s not sure why he should be. Yelena understands, unwillingly. He blinks, twice, almost like he’s checking in with her, and then he swallows, and Yelena has the good grace to look away.
It’s only later, when the briefing is over and the new assignments have been finalized but not authorized, that they’re free to return to their part of the tower. The adrenaline has faded by that point, and so the thought of a shower just has Yelena feeling lazy. She’ll have to take her suit off, disassemble and clean all her gear, get into bed with the knowledge that tonight is another night where sleep won’t come.
So instead she dawdles around the dark kitchen until everyone has left and ends up debating whether to eat a bowl of Wheaties that Alexei whole-sale purchased or John’s leftover Caesar Salad from two days ago. There’s also the fully stocked bar she’s trying to avoid thinking about, with her favorite brand of Vodka, once her favorite method of inducing sleep.
When she turns to pull a bowl out, there’s a subtle noise to the left of her. Yelena’s gun is out before she registers it.
“Jesus,” Bob says, eyes wide. “I didn’t mean to sneak up on you.”
“You didn’t,” she says, although he kind of did. He’s put his hands up, and the hilarity of that has her coming back to the low-lit kitchen, putting the gun back in the holster.
“Okay,” Bob answers. He puts his hands down again, his tattered sweatshirt still on him. “You okay?”
It takes a second for her to remember she can be honest. She should be honest. “Yeah. No? For a minute there I was just - ”
“Somewhere else.” He finishes for her. The corner of his mouth turns up, just a bit, a little like it hurts. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” she says, and then because she’s trying, “do you want a bowl of Wheaties?”
He blinks again. His hair is dusty, and it’s curling from the sweat of it, right against the top of his forehead.
“Sure,” he says, and then proceeds to slouch against the island and eat the cereal with full focus, looking so much like the least terrifying thing she’s ever seen that Yelena has to focus on her cereal instead.
They eat in something like comfortable silence, although after he’s sent up a few glances at her, Yelena can’t help but roll her eyes and say, “Okay, out with it.”
“Can I ask you something?” He says, finally. His bowl is empty and he puts it on the counter next to her, his spoon clinking against the glass.
“Yeah,” she says, strangely away from herself again, like she’s watching something happen. “You know you can.”
He sighs, small and put-out, and infinitely worried, and that’s what brings her back, has her look at him while he smiles at her all chagrined, like he knows he’s being dramatic, like he can’t believe he’s about to say anything, but he really can’t help it. “Why do you look at me?”
Something’s pounding in her ears again.
“You do look at me,” he says, when she doesn’t respond immediately. He’s nervous, she thinks, and she would maybe find it sweet if she hadn’t started sweating profusely again. “In meetings, and in briefings, and - and even when it’s just the five of us.”
He sighs, and it’s bitter to the sound. There’s something scratchy in his voice when he speaks again. “Did I do something?”
There’s a lot of answers to that question, and not all of them are great. It’s just Bob, who above all, really is her friend. Bob, who almost died. Bob, who shoved her into a ceiling, and almost killed everyone. Bob, who was ready to give it all up just to save some random people he’d met only hours ago. A part of her wants to assuage him, tell him it’s alright. Another part of her knows it’s too late in the night to lie to someone, especially a friend. At the very least, he deserves some measure of the truth, even if she’s not sure what that is.
“It’s complicated,” she finally says, looking up at him.
He stands up straight at that, turning towards her, and here, now, he looks taller than he usually does. The warm lighting has him almost golden again. Yelena finds herself looking over him, this indestructible man who’s standing barefoot in the kitchen. Still covered in dust, still riddled with holes. Oversized sweatshirt usually hanging over him, but now seemingly the perfect fit. There’s a rip the size of a dime right in the middle of his chest, the same spot he was rubbing with his palm during the briefing. Here, now, barely two feet away, Yelena can see exactly where the bullet hit. Exactly where it hit, where it bounced off, where it healed.
She can’t help but touch it, the pads of two fingers fitting over it like a bandage. She hears him take a sharp breath in, has to look him over instead of looking him in the face.
There’s holes all over him. There’s not a scratch on him.
There’s something pounding in her head, and she can feel the barest thunder of his heart under her fingertips. She presses the whole of her palm against his chest and he makes this choked out noise, like she’s punched him. He’s hot to the touch, even through the layer of clothing.
He takes a few slow breaths, and then, abruptly, “Is that the answer?”
She has to look up at him for that. They’re standing so close she can see his eyelashes. For just a moment, she leaves her hand on him and breathes with him.
“It’s true, I do look at you,” she says, finally, smiling just a bit. “It’s hard not to look at you. Or maybe, you’re not that hard to look at. One of those.”
There. She’s said it.
He looks at her with some measure of both surprise and amusement, like there’s an inside joke they’re playing out. His hand hovers over the side of her arm, close enough to curve around her bicep, but not fully there, like he’s waiting for her to say something. When she doesn’t, he lets the back of two fingers come up and trace down her suit to her elbow. The suit’s too thick to feel anything, she knows. She still feels it, almost as if he’s grabbed her. Then he just traces his fingers back up her arm to her shoulder again, light as a feather, and closes his eyes.
“You know how I know you look at me?” He says, sounding like he’s mostly just fighting through the mess and trying to make a joke, trying to make it seem like it’s not a big deal. He’s nervous, but he wants to tell her this regardless, and it’s sweet. It’s sweet on a good day, but from Bob in his shot-up sweater in the warm kitchen in the middle of the night, it brings forth a gut punch of affection that has Yelena almost dizzy.
“How?” she asks, finally, when she understands he’s not going to say anything.
He puts his other hand over hers, right on top of where her palm is still pressed against him. She hasn’t moved, she realizes.
“I know because I’m always looking at you,” he says, his voice soft but his cadence so serious and still that she believes him wholeheartedly. Then he smiles. “And because I know you have better standards than Walker.”
Yelena can’t help it, she snorts. “Well, you’ve got me there.”
He lets his hand fall away and they look at each other as she moves back, her hand her own again, the sliver of skin on his chest peeking out. She leans back against the counter and he shuffles his feet for a second, and the sight of him barefoot now is enough to startle a laugh out of her. In turn, she sees him flush, his hand coming up against the back of his neck, as if of all the things they’ve done or seen, this is what’s getting to him. He laughs too, self-aware and finding it even funnier for it.
It’s the first time she’s heard him laugh.