Chapter Text
There’s a tentative hope that comes with knowing Bob’s trying.
A couple of days ago, if you asked him what he liked to do, or what he was good at, he’d have frozen up. Bob’s not good at anything. He doesn’t like anything. He just… sort of… is.
But then he picked up the guitar. And he’s not really good at it, not by a long shot, but it reminded him that maybe he was capable of liking things. Maybe he was capable of wanting to learn.
That tentative hope leads him to piano. To Yelena. She teaches him chords on the piano, and he teaches her to tune the guitar to them.
He doesn’t particularly feel pulled towards piano, but there’s this underlying giddiness to the lessons. Will he like this, too? Will he be good at it? Will he want to learn more?
Bob realizes he really doesn’t know anything about himself at all. He never had a chance to learn.
He tries to learn through piano. He’s not very good, either, but it’s fun because Yelena is there, and she’s good at making anything look like fun.
“You know, there aren’t really any rules to this at all, if you think about it.” Yelena admits to him on the first day of teaching him. Bob had been sneaking around the tower all day, trying to avoid Bucky’s sharp eyes, John’s thundering steps, or Alexei’s booming voice. He feels exhausted.
“No rules.” Bob muses, and he’s aware he sounds unimpressed. Yelena just snorts.
“Yes.” She slides into the seat next to him, and plays something that sounds soft and sweet, “This is a major C chord. The most basic of all. And this—“
She slams her fingers down into a chord that makes Bob cringe away with its wrongness. Her grin is a little smug, “Is an augmented fourth chord.”
“That’s an actual chord?” Bob says through a wince, releasing his shoulders when Yelena finally lets her fingers up from the awful dissonance. Yelena just nods.
“Yup,” She says, and then turns to him, "That's what I mean. Every chord is just a mix of keys together, and any mix of keys can be called a chord. Technically, you can play just about anything and call it music. No rules. Endless possibilities.”
She makes it fun. They make more cacophony than music, most the time, but it’s fine because it doesn't really matter. There’s no expectations.
No rules. Endless possibilities.
Tentative hope. It’s a fragile thing. It’s hanging on by just a thread, and that thread is straining all the way when John shows up in front of Bob’s door on day two of avoiding the super soldiers.
Bob makes it one step out the door early that morning, meaning to sneak down to the kitchen to steal some food before everyone else started crawling out of bed and around the halls. He thinks he’s slick, but apparently not, because John’s waiting outside for him like he knew Bob would be here before Bob did.
John turns to Bob the minute the door creaks open, and Bob hesitates at the sight of the man’s haggard look. He looks like he hadn’t slept at all the night before. His face is scrunched up like he’s chewing something sour and painful.
Bob doesn’t know what he expects John to say. He doesn’t know if he can take it, especially not when his mind is still hazy from sleep and he hasn’t eaten in the last 24 hours. Every part of him wants to turn around and shut the door and go back to sleep.
He turns and catches sight of the guitar, propped up against the foot of his bed, and pauses.
“Bob,” John begins, but--
“Wait.” Bob cuts in. John shuts his mouth.
Bob doesn’t want to shut the door in John’s face. He doesn’t want to run away. But. He can’t have this conversation right now, either.
So, Bob clasps his fingers together, braces himself, and asks, “Can we talk later?”
He doesn’t look at John’s face, afraid of how it will contort in anger or drop in disappointment. There’s a beat of silence, and Bob’s shoulders hike up further to his ears as he thinks of all the ways this could go wrong, how John could get angry, how it could all explode in his face and—
John heaves out a sigh and says, “Okay, yeah, you’re right. Jeez, it’s too early for this. Sorry. I just. Jumped the gun, I guess.”
Bob blinks and looks up at John. The man looks tired, a little sheepish, with a half-smile that doesn’t really reach his eyes but. He doesn’t look angry.
Oh.
“Later.” John says, and then nods, “I— I’ll explain everything properly later. Okay?”
Bob just nods, dumbfounded, and John disappears down the hall.
That was. Easier than he thought.
Learning piano was easier than he thought. Maybe a lot of things are easier than he thinks. The thought fills him with something bright and daring, and he might act a little hastily on it, because when he gets into the elevator after the conversation he skips the kitchen and goes straight down to the training level.
Bob makes it all the way up to the training room doors before he stops.
Stays there.
Then turns and walks away.
…
He’s still stuck. Things are simpler than they seem, but his mind doesn’t seem to want to catch up to that fact, which means he’s not making any progress and he’s still stuck exactly where he started.
More than disappointment in himself, or the fear of staying stagnant, is awe at the fact that the happiness he feels seeing the guitar and the misery he feels standing in front of the training room can coexist.
He always described himself as some,,, fucked-up rollercoaster of emotions. He knew what it was like to be high on life one moment, and then at the very bottom of a mountain the next. But those two things were always different. The good felt the best it could ever be, and then the bad came it felt like the good was never even there.
Now. Now it feels like both, at the same time. He doesn’t understand it. He’s going forwards then backwards and both at the same time and all it does is make him feel like—
“Shit.” Yelena curses for the third time later that night, slamming her fingers into the piano then leaning away. Bob picks at the hem of his shirt, eyeing her nervously.
Yelena’s on edge on day two of teaching him how to play chords. He could sense it the moment she walked into the room, the way he always sensed these sort of things. By looking too closely. Clocking the way she smiled a little tighter than usual, the way her eyes flirted across the room to every exit in sight before taking her seat at the piano, and the way her fingers moved more stiffly than usual.
She’s agitated, though he doesn’t know why. It makes him nervous, but not for the usual reasons agitated people make him nervous. He’s nervous because he doesn’t know how to fix it.
“—supposed to play these two, together,” Yelena is saying, and Bob tunes back in as she puts both her hands down into position, “And then, in succession…”
She presses down, and Bob watches as her eyebrow twitches. Her fingers move deftly over the next two chords, but each one that plays has her jaw tightening, and when she goes to play the fourth, her fingers falter and she presses the wrong keys. Bob watches as she flinches, and then shuts her eyes with clear building frustration in her jaw.
“кусок дерьма,” she curses under her breath, and then another string of words that Bob doesn’t understand. Considering he’s been doing his best to learn what casual Russian he could, his lack of understanding probably meant it was also another long line of expletives.
A seam comes loose on his sleeve from where his fingers are working dents into his clothes, so he braces himself and asks, “You, uh.”
Well. That’s not actually a question. Points for trying.
Yelena seems to get it, though, as she opens her eyes and sighs a little, “Sorry, Bob.” She pushes away from the piano a little, and he notices the tips of her fingers are trembling, just a little, “It’s just… an off day.”
“Off day?” Bob asks, fixated on her hands. She pulls away from the piano, clasping the fingers together, and Bob looks back at her face,
“Just…” She pauses, working her jaw for a moment, and then redirects, “You know how, some days, you’ll will play guitar and everything comes together? Your fingers and your heart and everything all just align, and everything you play sounds like gold?”
Bob does. He nods a little.
Yelena nods as well, eyes staring at the piano, “It can feel like you’ve broken through, like you just get it. But then, you got to sleep, and the next day, you pick up the guitar and it just… doesn’t sound right. You can’t play it like you did yesterday. You are still fine, but it still feels like you’ve gone backwards, and now, you have to relearn everything you thought you’d gotten just yesterday.”
Bob nods again, more slowly this time. He does remember that. He remembers how some days, he’d try playing a song he had played almost perfectly the day before, and it would come all wrong. Like his fingers had just forgotten how to do it.
“I don’t get it. I just had it,” Bob remembers telling someone. Their face is hazy in his memories, but their smile has gaps, and is warmer than most things he remembers, “Why won’t my fingers play?”
“That’s just the game, kid,” The man had responded, “Some days you’re gonna be great, and some days you’ll just be shit. Learning ain’t as linear as they say on TV.”
“So, what do I do to fix it?”
“You don’t fix anything.” The man has pushed the guitar back into Bob’s grip, firm and steady, “You practice until failure just feels like an extra step on the staircase up.”
“Yeah,” Bob replies to Yelena, then eyes her shaking hands again. The bags under her eyes. The slightly haunted look on her face. He suddenly has a feeling this isn’t about guitars or pianos at all. “Is that what’s happening to you? Right now?”
Yelena stares at the piano for another moment, before she nods, looking away, “Yeah. I guess. Something like that.”
Bob thinks back to what she said, about a past full of piano and precision and lessons.
He picks another hole into his sleeve before he offers, “You can teach me to crochet?”
The incredulous, yet slightly amused look Yelena sends him at that is worth the next hour of absolute yarn fuckery. Bob doesn’t hate it, though. Yelena makes anything look like fun.
And later, when he goes to his room and curls under the blankets, he thinks about how some days, Yelena doesn’t want to play piano. Some days, she can’t face it. And he doesn’t think she’s weak for that at all.
Some days are worse than others.
Learning ain’t linear.
—————
Maybe it’s that thought that keeps him from bolting the moment Ava finds him stealing food from the kitchen at three a.m. the next night.
He freezes with a plate full of whatever random shit was left over in the fridge when Ava phases in with a flash of blue light and pauses at the sight of him. Whatever the plate could hold is being held. A little bit of everything they have is on that plate. He is starving.
Ava seems to get that much, raising an incredulous eyebrow at the plate, and a sarcastic, “Hungry?”
Funny how quickly Bob’s appetite disappears at the word. His shoulders tense a bit, and he goes to set the plate down, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to…”
He trails off, not sure where he was going with that. Sorry for stealing their food? Sorry for hoarding it like a starving teenager?
Bob considers bolting. All he needs is a quick excuse and he’d make himself scarce. Ava hardly gave chase, probably because she knew what it felt like to want to disappear from an uncomfortable situation.
But, Bob pauses. He thinks about Yelena’s shaking hands, and dares to look at Ava’s face.
What he finds is not the irritation he expected, or the mockery he dreaded, but a quiet look of contemplation at Bob’s heavy plate.
“Are you eating all of that?” Ava asks, and if it were anyone else, Bob might think the crude question was some sort of dig at him and his eating habits. However, from Ava, it sounded like a genuine question. Like she just wanted to know.
So, Bob takes another risk, and answers honestly, “… No.”
Ava looks up at him, then, and even though her expression is blank, something seems to click in her eyes.
She takes a beat, and then moves towards the cupboards. Bob watches, a little tense, as she begins pulling out bags of chips and random bars, piling them in her arms until they’re practically toppling over.
He’s more than a little puzzled by the time she turns back to him with her famously impassive expression and says, “Alright. Where are we stashing these, then?”
Bob blinks slowly, “Uh.” Great. Two for two on intelligent responses today.
Ava doesn’t even try to understand what that means, just raises a pointed brow, “Well?”
And that’s how they somehow end up in Bob’s room, closet door open, Bob standing behind and cheeing the end of his nail as Ava sorts all the snacks she’d brought up into the boxes like she’s playing a particularly important game of Tetris.
She hasn’t really said anything. Bob realized she wanted to see where he hoarded food when things got… weird… and he almost felt like he had to show her.
Not that she needed to see it. He was sure if he’d denied it she would’ve just shrugged and left. But for some reason… it felt important. He brought her to the room, and tried not to shake as he revealed his great shame, hidden in his closet as a box holding a singular oatmeal bar he swiped after breakfast two weeks ago.
Ava had said a total of absolutely nothing as she immediately got to work with filling it. It wasn’t even a big box. She brought too much. Bob was… really confused.
Wasn’t this bad? Wasn’t this a bad thing? Ava was acting like it was normal. Was this normal?
“I can hear you thinking.” Ava murmurs, and her voice makes Bob nearly jump out of his skin. She doesn’t turn around, just snorts softly, trying futilely to shove another bag of SunChips into the box already full to the brim.
“I…” Bob starts, not even sure where to begin. He’d run through a hundred different outcomes from someone finding his stupid food box he barely even used, but none of them was… this.
“I don’t use it.” Bob says, suddenly feeling the need to defend himself. He bites on his nail, speaks through his teeth, “Just. Dunno. Have it.”
“Okay.” Ava says, sounding bored. She stared at the last bag of chips in her hand and the box that actually looks like it might explode.
The response makes Bob inexplainably restless, “Seriously. I barely use it.”
“Barely, or don’t?” Ava asks, and Bob stills.
“I— uh, I,” He tries, rational thought fleeting, but before he can spiral Ava turns back to him with a look equal parts exasperated and slightly apologetic.
“Relax. That wasn’t a dig.” She says, and Bob’s stuttered heart evens out. She shrugs, and looks back at it, “I’d say you barely use it because there’s hardly anything in it to use.”
She turns back to the box, and begins pushing things to the side of the bursting-box, trying to make space for the last bag, “That, however, is about to change.”
She’s practically wrestling the thing. Bob tries to remain anxious, but the sight is honestly so bizarre he feels like he might be having an out of body experience. Ava, the sort of very intimidating secret agent person, is sitting crossed on his carpet, trying to shove half a pantry into a small cardboard box made for shoes.
A short, half laugh punches it’s way out of Bob before he’s able to clamp it down. Ava pauses, turns to him, and Bob holds his fingers over his mouth as if that will do anything to keep the grin off his face.
“Oh?” Ava says, a dry smile tugging at the end of her lips, “Is this funny to you, now?”
“No.” Bob says. Looks at her again. Bites his lip. Admits, “A little.”
“Well, when you find out how to defy the laws of physics for this box, let me know.” Ava rolls her eyes, though she turns her head as if to hide the grin playing on her face.
Bob snickers a little to himself as she continues to struggle. After a moment, though, it teeters off, and he twists his thumbs together.
Tentatively, he asks, “You’re not…” he doesn’t know what he means to be at the end of that. Angry? Disappointed? Unimpressed?
Ava seems to hear it, though, as she asks, “Do I look like I am?”
Bob observes her. Shakes his head, “… No.”
There’s another question in that, but Ava doesn’t answer it immediately. Only once she’s tried a few more times, does she sigh and set the box down, dropping the bag of chips in her lap.
She turns her head back towards Bob, glancing at him, before looking away. She clears her throat, throat bobbing twice, before she says, “I had one, too.”
Bob stares at her, and she rolls her eyes, pointing at the box. Bob’s eyes widen, but before he can say anything even more stupid, she speaks.
“Food was a commodity. Priority one was always missions, and you’d never know when you got to eat,” Ava’s words are quiet in the night, but each fall heavy on Bob’s ears, “I guess, when I got out, I got in the habit of taking all I could get. I’d hoarde every little thing like I was getting ready for some sort of apocalypse. It was stup—“
She pauses as her eyes meet Bob’s, and amends, “Not stupid. It was… necessary. I suppose. It helped ease…. Whatever I felt here.” She rubbed a palm against the center of her chest, as if she was easing heartburn.
But Bob gets it. He feels it, too, every now and then, when things get bad and he spends a day wondering if he can go get food. He knows he can, but he’s worried anyways. What if he goes down to get something and he’s met with anger? What if it results in less food in the future? What if, what if, what if?
“I know you guys wouldn’t…” Bob says, twisting his thumbs. He tried to find the right words, “Stop me. Or anything like that. You’re good. You’re all— good.”
Ava nods slowly, “Knowing isn’t the problem though, is it?”
No. It isn’t. It’s… habit. It’s a consequence.
“I should be over it.” He mumbles, mostly to himself, but Ava shrugs.
“Over it or not, keep it stocked.” She pats the box again, “At least, on the days your brain decides to get itself all twisted, you don’t have to starve, too.”
That… makes sense, actually. Bob is a little awed at how easy she makes it sound.
“We all have our quirks. Be glad you aren’t John,” She turns back to the box, “His involves a lot more punching shit and making a mess.”
It’s muttered under her breath, but Bob can hear the tinge of fondness in her voice. He suddenly feels a warmth blooming in his chest at the sight of her, still eyeing the bag in her hands like she’s about to go for round two with the box. Here, in the middle of the night, trying to help Bob, in her own way.
Bob steps forward. “I think I figured out what to do with it.”
Ava blinks, turns back to him, “Oh?”
Bob slides up next to her and opens a palm. She hands him the bag and he nods.
He opens it, and sits down next to her. Her face abruptly goes unimpressed, but Bob just pops a chip in his mouth and grins, offering the bag to her.
“Cheeky.” She intones, but she picks out a chip of her own.
Bob laughs, and thinks, maybe healing ain’t linear, either.
————
If he’s being honest, Bob doesn’t really want to hate himself. That’s got to count for something, right?
It’s like the guitar. He forgot how it felt like to be happy, playing that instrument. He forgot how it felt to be excited to learn something new. How it felt to share that with people. He’d forgotten how it felt to smile so hard his cheeks hurt every time he looked down at that rough, scratched up wood, and thought this is mine.
He thinks he could love that part of himself. That part of himself that can feel such happiness over what little he had. He thinks he could even come to admire that man, despite everything he’s done and all the ways he was wrong. When he’d had that guitar, he had felt like he was daring to carve a space for himself in the world. Maybe he didn’t have to be right, he just had to be.
Yelena didn’t seem to care whether he was good or not, at guitar or piano or anything. She smiled whenever she saw him. She sat next to him at dinner because she could. He brings nothing to the table, full of this bountiful feast, and yet nobody bats an eye when he eats.
Because it’s not about the food, or the guitar, or anything like that. It’s just about him. And they like him. He wonders who they see when they look at him, who he is.
Bob wanted to get to know that man. He wants a chance to learn who he is. Maybe, even come to love him. Was that unfair? Was that asking too much?
I think. Bob’s mind is gentle, I deserve that much.
I deserve to try.
Bob takes that thought, holds it. Eventually, he goes to find John himself.
When John opens the door, he’s a little tense. Awkward, maybe. But Bob smiles, and John smiles back, and there’s too much relief in it to be anything but genuine.
I deserve to try.