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*
There's something wrong.
At least with his hands all tied together. Bob's fingertips getting numbed out.
Groaning, Bob rocks forward and shakes his head woozily. Feels like a sedation drug. Feels familiar. He doesn't have a great deal of memories left of the 'medical study' in Kuala Lumpur... but Bob remembers the woolly-mouth dryness. How colors and shapes vibrate. The typical bullshit.
(Who planned this? A contendent of the O.X.E. Group? Stealing any assets remaining for blackmail and targeting others?)
He attempts to pull the restraints on him. Break them. Weaken them a little.
Yeah, nothing.
(Zip-ties? Zip-ties. Not even very strong ones... and still, it feels like both of his wrists chafe stingingly raw.)
It's a room similar to the vault, Bob notices. Wherever he's been left alone. Different metal-like walls.
For a moment, a dark and looming shadow falls over him.
Bob's pulse quickens.
No... I'm stronger than you...
"Hi," Yelena breathes, offering a grin, kneeling down at Bob's side and lowering a Widow-baton.
The relief makes him woozier.
"Hey," Bob replies in a murmur, unaware of how he adoringly gazes over Yelena's profile. She's like light. Fulfilling. "You came to get me?"
"I told you before, didn't I, Bob? We stick together from now on."
She frees him, quickly unholstering and holstering a combat knife. The expertly sharpened blade nearly nicks Bob's pinky finger. "Walker and Ava are outside," Yelena adds. "Don't worry—I made them learn my secret whistle on the comms. That is when we're in the clear to leave here."
Yelena tugs on his arm, helping a wide-eyed Bob stand up, before Bob's legs give.
The drugged sense of heaviness overcomes him.
"Whoa, Bob... Bob?"
Frowning, Bob manages to keep himself from collapsing while fisting into the material of Yelena's uniform-vest. He wonders what's in those pocket this time. Probably Warheads. Yelena loves Warheads. One of her hands grip underneath Bob's elbow, and the other goes his middle, steadying.
"Sorry. I'm not very good at this, am I," Bob mutters, laughing out of humiliation.
Up close to her, he definitely smells Yelena's sour-sweet candy on an exhale. The insides of her lips tinted blue-raspberry.
"Oh, navskidku, I wouldn't say that," Yelena quips, her accent thicker when she's in a good mood. (But also when Yelena is in bad mood, Bob has discovered. Like while she's back on the vodka.) "You make a very good kidnapping victim. So quiet and cooperative. I barely found the right room."
At the look of amusement on Yelena's face, Bob finds his lips twitching apart. It's her there, Yelena's name, unspoken.
He resists brushing knuckles across the scatter of half-healed cuts along Yelena's jaw.
Instead, Yelena eagerly hugs him while they still have the time to. Their cheeks pushing up. Bob appreciates it more than he can tell her. Leaning out, she examines the red and rubbed-raw flesh on Bob's wrists. Yelena tuts, mumbling a bunch of Russian words that Bob swears to learn.
"...are you doing okay?" Yelena says in English this time, meeting his stare.
"I've probably had it worse." Bob then mumbles, offering a quiet smile, "You know... between a meth addiction and sweating my ass off in a chicken suit." He rarely gets an opportunity to joke about the past, as horrific as everything got, and it is worth seeing Yelena's eyes crinkling.
Maybe that is why Bob doesn't pay attention to metal-wall disappearing behind him. Or to the bead of laser-green flickering over Yelena's rib-cage.
With a THP THHP! of gunfire, Bob realizes she...
She...
Yelena lurches in place before crumbling limp onto the ground. Right at Bob's feet. Unable to get out a single noise while writhing in pain. The whites of her eyes rolling, exposed. Bob immediately throws himself over her, yelling hoarsely, shielding what he can of Yelena's body lying out.
As soon as Bob hears footsteps, he reacts, turning sideways and violently extending a hand. Losing an ounce of the self-control Bob fought for.
The masked operative, the one who shot Yelena, hollers, flung from the room midair by an invisible, powerful force. Almost every bone shatters upon impact. Organs rupture. Blood spews. When three more operatives appear, weapons raised, Bob goes for Yelena's 19 that fell. He fires at them. There's no more sedation drugs affecting him, Bob knows that much. No more heaviness. Tapping into Sentry's powers detoxifies Bob.
Clumsily firing again, Bob hits between the armored neck-padding of one operative. They die slowly, veins ruptured.
In the glaring red alarm-lights, the other two fire on Bob.
Bullets bounce uselessly.
Realizing this, one of the two left signals urgently to their teammate. To Bob's astonishment, both run.
Through the flurry of emotions welling... causing Bob to shudder... it is panic and fear, fear of what could have happened to Yelena, overriding.
"Oh god, no," Bob says frantically, checking her over. The tears forming in his eyes make it much more difficult. "I..."
I need her... ...
After another heart-pounding and confusing moment, patting down, he doesn't feel any trace of wet blood gushing out. Not even a hole in Yelena's uniform. Bob gawks, open-mouthed, as Yelena regains a breath from the ground, moaning it out, "cuh-lear...!" to signal.
Bob's jaw clenches until the muscles ache.
She needs him.
Nodding repeatedly, Bob carefully situates his arms around her, lifting Yelena's weight. He carries her, Yelena's head falling from Bob's shoulder.
*
Robert, the hero!
It used to be incredibly unkind words. Always to him.
Bucky congratulated him in a gentle arm-clap, Bucky's cybernetic fingers squeezing down. While Yelena was 'out of commission' for forty-eight hours, hospitalized, Bucky led everyone in and out of the Watchtower. Even Alexei, Yelena's 'father' supposedly, followed all of Bucky's orders.
(Sitting outside of the med-bay, waiting alone to hear about Yelena's condition... Bob monitors himself. Against Sentry or Void, dreading.)
*
By morning, things seem... normal.
As normal as Bob's life would turn out, he imagines.
Walker, the asshole, tries to cheer Bob up. For once. Walker shares his cactus berry juice he personally distills and stores in the Watchtower's fancy-looking fridge, encouraging more than a few friendly sips out of Bob. He encourages Bob to also watch Dr. Phil reruns with him on YouTube.
(Everyone's been less of an asshole to each other. Even Bob—thumbs-upping while drinking, staying patient while listening to Walker babble.)
Bob eventually wanders up the various upper levels of the Watchtower, thoughtlessly twisting a Rubik's cube in his hands. Something like a comfort object, a security blanket, a tactile grounding mechanism... if Bob wanted to get psychological about it, but more importantly: a gift from Yelena.
Yelena...
Suddenly, Bob hears her. Off-key humming. The tune of a Don McLean song... coming from one of the larger and open-spaced bathrooms...
He peeks from around the doorway.
In a mirror's reflection, Yelena studies herself with a 'NEW AVENGERZ' sweatshirt raised up with one hand. She hums again inattentively, taking a drink from a flute of sparkling red grape juice before belching quietly. Strands of Yelena's blonde hair combed flat and dripping from a bath.
Yelena's fingers rake over her nipple exposed to the air conditioning. She's soft curves. Pinkish. Pretty.
Bob gulps, knowing he should... back away and leave. Yeah.
His feet don't.
A part of him, Bob's brain, feels disconnected from the accidental voyeurism. Like he's there and not there. Yelena checks any bruising on her rib-cage, as it deepens over time. She shifts a pretty, definitely-very-naked breast, checking for how the bruising injury looks underneath.
When Yelena's thumb prods over her hardening nipple, Bob gulps again. Inside of oversized flannel-pants, his cock stiffens.
Oh...
No longer humming out loud, Yelena's lips smack.
Reflected, her eyes dart in Bob's direction.
OH...
He quivers and drops his Rubik's cube, turning against the outside wall to hide. Bob grinds both palm-heels against his face. She saw—she saw him. Heart pounding loud enough to drown out everything else, Bob doesn't notice when Yelena joins him in the dimly lit corridor. Not at first.
"Bob?" Yelena whispers, reaching for Bob's arm and stopping when he flinches away.
(Touch is... complicated. Never grew up with it. Bob did learn to control his powers involving touching people recently. So... small victories.)
"No, n-nno." He gulps out, muffling, "I-I'm sorr—"
"I know you are. Look at me, Bob."
For some reason that Bob can't understand, Yelena doesn't sound mad at him.
She coaxes Bob to lower his hands, taking in Bob's pitiful expression while Yelena's own expression seems worried.
(Worried? Worried... for him?)
The small, scabbing cuts on Yelena's jaw more than half-healed.
"You need to understand something—but first, take deep breath," Yelena instructs, mimicking one. And as soon as Bob does, she touches around Bob's wrist. Yelena guides his large, loosened fingers to press up firmly against her sweatshirt-clothed breast. Bob's eyes widen impossibly open.
"See? It's just flesh, Bob."
Grinning, Yelena presses on Bob's own chest through his nightshirt. Both of Yelena's hands shifting in place.
Bob lets out an involuntary noise between a scoff and chuckle.
It's just flesh...
He doesn't move his fingers, considering how warm and safe she feels to him. Like light dancing underneath Yelena's flesh. "But it's you," Bob insists, his voice softening. He watches, becoming breathless with anticipation, as Yelena's grin fades from that roguish playfulness.
It's just...
A thrilling sensation settles in Bob's gut.
Yelena steps nearer, her hazel-green eyes roaming him.
It's...
Bob decides to not run. There's nothing to run from to begin with. He watches and waits, Bob's pectorals hitching under the easy intimacy of Yelena's hands still lingering. "If I kiss you," Yelena says matter-of-factly, and Bob hopes to every god she means it... "Will you let me?"
Nodding shyly, but starting to smile, Bob mouths "please," and accepts the warm weight of her.
Lips press even more gently than hands on bodies. At first, then—
It's less of a kiss than curiously mapping each other, skin-to-skin, breath-to-breath.
Yelena opens herself to the desire. Without hesitation. She slow-licks where Bob's mouth meets hers, but the pressure grows more insistent. He tries to appease it, relocking their lips. Hissing out air against Yelena's lightly bruised chin and nose nudging. Opening himself back.
He moves off of Yelena's breast... and the hot, rigid nipple Bob needs to forget about quickly... wrapping her in an embrace.
One of Yelena's hands respond by lifting and digging possessively into Bob's snarling curls.
(It's been longer than Bob can remember clearly. Since Bob kissed a woman or a man. Or anyone. Probably happened during the last meth-trip.)
"Bob?"
Distracted by the constant pleasure-pain of his hair being pulled, winding in Yelena's ungloved fingers, Bob hums out a "mmhm?". He hadn't even noticed they weren't kissing anymore. Nothing... nothing that they could offer him as 'the Golden Guardian of Good' could compare to her.
"Unfortunately I overthink. Especially the moments I shouldn't," Yelena admits, her kiss-swollen mouth frowning. "What I am trying to say is—"
—"mm?"—
"—I haven't thanked you yet for saving me."
"That mmm-makes two of us?"
At Bob's wistful look, aimed at her, Yelena huffs out something Russian and good-naturedly thumps his nightshirt. "You. must. stop. being. cute." Yelena complains under her breath, immediately grinning as another kiss presses and Bob's fingertips needfully drag down Yelena's lower back.
She untangles from Bob's hair and yanks her sweatshirt over her head. The fleecy material inside-out.
Yelena's wet, blond hair tousled.
They both back up against another corridor-wall, Bob's grip on her waistband, Yelena's tongue sliding deeply in him when they kiss again. Tasting like the sparkling red grape juice. Now completely crowded to the wall, by Yelena, Bob groans loudly on her mouth. His cock stiffens again.
Needing friction, Bob impulsively grips her in, their hips thrusting.
"Kayf!—oh my god!" Yelena laugh-moans. Her verbal expression of joy, pleasure, burns right into the center of everything. Everything important to Bob. She grinds him, bruised and bare-chested... and so, so beautiful... one of Yelena's hands flit to the obvious and massive bulge straining against his flannel-pants. Taking it as permission, how desperately Bob's hips grind up against her, Yelena strokes his erection inside.
Her softness combined with Yelena's finger-calluses rubbing up and down Bob's length throbbing—it's almost enough to want to cum right there.
Bob reaches for her, feeling the same hot throbbing between Yelena's legs parting. Her want.
"Yelena..."
Within the barrier of clothing, Bob's hand shoved in, he touches her. Yelena's vaginal-folds up against him. Moisture clings. Bob feverishly imagines how slick, how nice it would be to kiss her down there... Bob's mouth sucking and savoring each aroused clenching of Yelena's body...
Then, Bob's mouth going up to her naked nipples when she's finished...
I need her... ...
Sweating, Bob groans out incoherently.
The edges of his irises meld into a dangerous shade of gold.
"Something's wrong. You're burning up." Cradling Bob's face, no longer stroking him off, Yelena examines Bob in their dimly lit surroundings.
He shakes his head, almost shaking Yelena off. "I—"
"Deep breath, Bob. Like before," Yelena offhandedly says, her Russian accent thick, "except I won't put your hand on my tits this time. I promise."
A small, smiling laugh pants out of him.
She examines Bob's eyes darkening to normal, Yelena's shoulders eventually relaxing. (On some level, Bob takes that as a good sign.)
"You know what I think?" Yelena drawls, lightening the tension, "Getting fucked by superpowers would be a really cool way to die actually..."
Bob grunts, feeling her hands wandering. "I wouldn't... I wouldn't let them hurt you."
"Ah, but! But then you would let your alter-egos fuck me, is that right?"
Yelena looks much too pleased with herself, as Bob's grip returns to knuckle her pajama-waistband.
"Not before us, Yelena," he rasps.
The light in her brightens.
Bob will do whatever it takes to hold onto her, to live inside of Yelena's warmth. Even if it means destroying parts of himself.
"Good," Yelena says solemnly, her mouth covering Bob's. "That is what I like to hear..."
*