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Yelena was no stranger to pain. She welcomed it, sometimes, when she thought she had become so numb she wouldn't even feel it if she brushed her teeth with a pile of broken glass. So she didn't even attempt to pop her right shoulder back into its place after a rogue mercenary had yanked on it and cracked her head against a dirty warehouse floor so hard she saw stars. Her right arm dangled uselessly at her side as she used her good arm to punch the button for the 76th floor.
The Watchtower elevator began its smooth ascent to the top, and Yelena couldn't help but sag to the floor, her aching head lolling back onto the cool metal behind her. Bucky had stepped out on his floor three minutes earlier, warning her to go to the medical wing immediately. He would've taken her himself, but his phone began to ring then, and the stormy look on his face told Yelena it could only be one person on the other end.
Ever since Yelena had been bold enough to suggest that she and the rest of the group owned her now, Valentina had made it her personal mission to make their lives in the public eye a living hell. The only reason Yelena hadn’t slapped the idiotic white streak out of her hair yet was because she had to begrudgingly admit that Valentina was very, very good at her job. In the span of just a few months, the B-vengers had successfully run somewhat of an anti-smear campaign — a redemption arc press tour that had somehow even achieved the Herculean task of making Walker seem likeable. She had reinvented nearly everyone with well-timed interviews and public appearances to great success: Bucky had everyone aged 18-65 who liked men in the palm of his hand, Ava doled out secretive smiles that made you think you were worthy enough to be noticed by her, and Alexei somehow wormed his way into hearts with his booming laugh and his partnership with 7/11’s new Big (Red) Gulp. Yelena, however, was still a work in progress.
It frustrated Valentina to no end that Yelena still garnered suspicious glances and unease whenever she walked into a room. To be fair, she was making absolutely no attempt to endear herself to the general public. After one disastrous benefit dinner that ended with her batons at the throat of a smarmy Congressman who dared to utter Natasha’s name in a childish game of “Fuck, Marry, Kill,” Yelena had decided “public-facing” anything was definitively not for her. The world saw them, saw her sister and her closest friends as nothing more than cartoon characters. People who existed on Wheaties boxes and People magazine’s glossy-print edition of “Earth’s Hottest Heroes.” Commodities for entertainment and amusement until you needed one of them to stop a chunk of nearby building from crushing you to death. The sacrifice, the pain, the emotional torment of shouldering such responsibility in the face of constant threat to life was exhausting enough without Valentina pestering her to shake hands with the Mayor and smile like her life wasn’t still splintering into pieces.
She much preferred the solitude of the Tower on quiet, rainy nights, curling up into the bay window looking out over the Hudson and listening to the rush of wind mixed with traffic, one hand wrapped around a steaming mug of special hot chocolate that Bucky pretended to not restock for her every month, and the other burrowed into Alpine’s soft, warm fur. She savored the opportunity to lose herself in her thoughts and allow her mind to wander the memory trails of childhood and freedom before everything had been taken from her. It had absolutely nothing to do with the tall, comforting presence she could feel at her back most nights, watching her carefully every time she stretched or let out a sigh. Nothing at all.
The elevator doors slid open, a soft female voice announcing their arrival on the 76th floor. Yelena briefly contemplated never leaving the elevator car. She could get Bucky to bring her a blanket, maybe a pillow and she could use the far corner as a make-shift kitchen for her meals. Perfect, she thought, gritting her teeth and using her left arm to haul her pitiful body into an upright position. Fantasizing about living in an elevator like some kind of fucked-up Boxcar kid. She felt a brief, bittersweet pang as she remembered reading those books as a child, Natasha ever-present at her shoulder, but then she went very still, because there was someone in her apartment.
Her hand immediately went to the .32 strapped to her thigh. Drawing it out slowly, she advanced quietly on the slumped over figure on her couch. It was too dark to tell who or what it was, and Yelena felt her heart jackhammering in her chest again, much too soon after coming down from the adrenaline high from their earlier mission.
She rounded the corner, easing the safety off the gun while inching slowly towards the lamp near the kitchen. The figure didn't stir, but wait, were they naked?
In the strained moonlight filtering in from the window, Yelena swore she could see the glimmer of bare skin and...
She flicked on the light. Then immediately clicked the safety back on her gun.
Bob was curled up on her sofa, shirtless, under her favorite blanket and with a beat-up copy of Meditations lying dog-eared on his chest. Asleep.
"Jesus, Bob," Yelena sighed.
His eyes blinked open, and he sat up so quickly his Meditations fell to the floor with a resounding smack. A yowling blur of white shot out from underneath the blanket and skittered to the door, no doubt to sniff out her owner and some dinner.
"Yelena, I-," Bob began imploringly, digging around on the couch for something. He didn't even seem to register that Yelena had a gun in her hand and was standing like a Black Widow ready to bite. He finally found what he was looking for -- his favorite blue sweater -- and tugged it unceremoniously over his head, the soft material swallowing up endless lines and curves of leanly muscled chest.
"Lena, I'm...."
He paused.
"What happened to your arm?" he asked, his sleepy blue eyes suddenly sharpening with focus.
"I have a gun pointed at you and that's what you're worried about?" she said, a little incredulously.
"Heard you put the safety back on," he said absentmindedly. Then, she remembered. The Sentry, and all. It was easy to forget that he was virtually unbreakable when she usually saw him speaking to Alpine about the weather being too rainy for a walk. He was standing now, her blanket pooling to the floor. "What happened to your arm?" he asked again, advancing on her. In seconds, he was at her side, brushing his fingers over her suit where her right shoulder was riding low in the socket. Yelena let her eyes flutter, just for a second. She could interrogate him on why he was asleep on her couch in a minute, if he would just keep touching her, grounding her.
"Take this off," he said, in a matter-of-fact tone.
Her eyes widened. "Excuse me?" she spluttered.
"We need to set this," he said firmly, his eyes roving over the rest of her form. "You have a cut on your forehead that needs stitches and-" He stopped, leaning close to her, his ear at her neck, his warmth and familiar scent of mint and sleep caressing her.
"Bob," Yelena said, willing her heartbeat to slow and internally chastising herself for falling victim again to his smell, of all things. "What the hell are you doing?"
"Your blood pressure is low," he said, straightening. "You need fluids, too."
She scoffed as he turned his back to her, picking up his book and her blanket before folding it into a neat square.
"I'm fine," Yelena said, bristling a little at how at ease he sounded ordering her around. "You can, fine -- 'set my arm' or whatever, but this forehead thing will heal on its own and my blood pressure is excellent so you can take your fluids and shove them-"
Bob turned back around, and met her with that warm, dark, blue-eyed stare.
"Yelena," he said softly. "Let me take care of you. Like how you take care of me."
Yelena was suddenly a little bit breathless, then, her stomach and chest warming. She swallowed roughly, and then something very peculiar happened.
"Bob," she said, a little unsteadily. "Did you set my floor to rotating mode?"
Bob, to his credit, looked thoroughly confused. "Did I..what? I didn't even know you could do that."
"And why are there three of you, I-" Yelena started, then promptly shut her mouth as it was rapidly filling with with something hot and liquid. If all her nights of drinking taught her anything, that was definitely not a good sign.
"I'm gonna throw up," she said around a mouthful of spit, and then she was running, desperate to get to the bathroom before she embarrassed herself even more than she already had. She barely made it to the toilet when she fell to the floor, knees cracking against the sleek tile as she emptied her stomach into the bowl, clutching the side of it with her good arm. Over and over she retched, tears of effort and frustration springing to her eyes. She'd never been this sick after a mission, never in her life and she felt terrible and she was so alone, and someone was kneeling behind her, now, scraping their fingers along her neck and lifting her hair out of the way. The cool night air hit the back of her sweat-drenched neck and she very nearly moaned at the relief of it.
"You're okay," Bob murmured. "You're okay, sweetheart," he repeated as he began rubbing soothing circles on her back, over her suit. "Must have caught a virus or something. Poor thing," and it made Yelena want to cry even harder, how gently he was speaking to her. She didn't deserve his tenderness, didn't deserve his care, not from him, not from anyone, not after everything she'd done. The red in her ledger. But selfishly, she stayed there, hugging the toilet and letting Bob hold her hair back as she retched again, her throat and eyes burning. She let him flush the toilet and ease her up from the floor. She let him lead her to the sink and she let him turn on the faucet, cupping his right hand to gather some water and bringing it to her mouth once, twice, three times, so she could rinse the acid and bile from her throat. She let him cup more water in his hand, washing her face and neck free of the dirt and grime caking her skin, and cleaning the dried blood out of the cut in her forehead that, Yelena could now see, was much more of a gash as opposed to a cut.
He patted her face dry with a towel he snagged off the nearby rack, and tipped her chin up so he could meet her eyes.
"That's a little better, yeah?" he said, searching her face.
Yelena nodded numbly, and she sniffed, tilting her head to her right. "Arm," she said. She couldn't be bothered with using full sentences just yet.
"Right," Bob said. "Gotta get you up on the counter," and God, he had to stop saying things like that in that low voice. Yelena hadn't been quite able to place what exactly it was about that voice that made her stomach burn, but she realized it now. It was competence - the sure way he just knew what to do, and how to do it.
He grasped her hips with both hands, lifting her like she weighed nothing and setting her down on the edge of the bathroom counter. Show-off, she thought. He could probably do that with one hand if he wanted to. He stepped between her legs and suddenly she was too aware of how close he was standing, their noses mere centimeters apart. She hated (loved) how broad and tall he was and how he seemed to block out everything around her when he stood this close. Sometimes, she pretended there was a forcefield around him, and as soon as she got a certain distance away, as soon as she got within two inches of a certain spot on his shoulder, nothing else mattered. It was like a little bubble, just her and him.
He gingerly unzipped her suit, uncovering the mass of bruises and the swollen mess of skin that was her right shoulder. His eyes were hard.
"Bob," she murmured, reaching up her free hand to graze his jaw where it was pulled taut.
"Yeah, Lena," he grit out, not looking up from her injury.
"I broke his nose, and then his arm. Then tied him up to a radiator. That then caught on fire."
He let out a slow breath through his nose, then looked up at her. Yelena swore she saw a crackle of gold woven into the waves of navy blue.
"Good," his voice low, and that was that. "Ready? It might hurt a little, when I do it. But I'll let you know when and how I'm going to move your arm so, no surprises," he explained, gripping her arm.
Yelena nodded. She'd had different bones and joints set before, nothing this major, but the principle of it should be the same, she thought.
"Looks like an anterior dislocation," he muttered under his breath, then lifted her right hand to rest on his opposite left shoulder.
"Motherfucker," she hissed, white-hot pain lancing up her arm, setting her nerve endings on fire.
"I'm sorry, honey. I'm so sorry, hang on," Bob rasped, the endearment once again slipping out between his apologetic words like he'd said it a hundred times before. And that made Yelena want to cry more. 'Honey' and 'sweetheart' were reserved for nice girls who worked jobs at UNICEF and immigration lawyers and doctors who helped people. Not her. Not the one who took apart the people who needed to get stitched back up.
"You with me? Just a little more," Bob said, holding her hand on his shoulder.
"Yeah," Yelena said, clearing her throat. "Bob, wait. You-you're shaking," she said, feeling a slight tremor juddering through him.
"Just.. take a deep breath," he said, ignoring her. And then, he talked her through it. The way he pushed her shoulder back, stabilizing it with another hand on her back, rotating the limb inward and guiding her joint smoothly back into the socket with a soft pop.
"Ow," was all Yelena could say as she waited for her head to stop ringing, and Bob laughed a little then, a bright, brassy sound.
"You did so well," he said, glancing his fingers over her newly joined shoulder and then, lighter, over her collarbone.
She paused, then went for it.
"What's wrong? How do you know how to do that?" she asked, cautious.
His eyes darkened, and his brow furrowed. He retreated back into himself a little, back into his mind, back into his prison.
"Sorry," she said quickly. "I'm sorry, you don't -- it's okay," she stuttered, suddenly desperate to get him laughing again, to get that darkness out of his eyes.
"No," he said, looking at the tiled floor. "It's um...you know. When he would throw her around a little too hard some days, I was the only one who was around to help. The first time it happened she was so afraid to go to the hospital, afraid they would ask too many questions so I..um. I looked up a video on how to reduce a shoulder and somehow was able to do it. On her," he said, voice flat. "The thing is, the first time it dislocates the more likely it is to happen again so I-" he stopped, his hands white-knuckling the bathroom counter. "I had to keep doing it," he said. "Over and fucking over."
His voice broke a little, and suddenly she was crying again. Not from sadness, but from sheer anger. She was angry at his father, angry at the fact that he had just been a little boy, angry that he never got to be a kid.
"You were just a child," she wavered. "A child."
He looked up at her then, her breath catching at the devastation written plainly on the lines of his face.
"So were you."
And then she was embracing him, probably getting snot on his favorite sweater but she couldn't find it in herself to care, because she had already thrown up three times in front of him and his arms were wound so tightly around her she couldn't tell where he ended and where she began. They stayed like that for minutes, or maybe it was hours. Yelena's head was still swimming and his left hand on her right hip was so not helping.
"Lena," Bob said, voice muffled by her hair. "Gotta let me close up the forehead."
So she waited as he retrieved a suture kit from the medical suite, gripped his hand as he injected lidocaine into the sides of her wound so she wouldn't feel the needle ("just a pinch and a burn Lena, sorry"), and tried not to look at the tiny white scar above his lip as he worked on closing the ends of her skin together.
"You're staring," he said, smiling as he deftly maneuvered the needle driver with one hand.
"I am not," Yelena countered, aiming a weak kick at the back of his knee. He dodged it, naturally.
He finished with her forehead and led her out of the bathroom with her hand in his, and she was secretly grateful he didn't offer to carry her because she wasn't sure she would've been able to let go of him if he had. Bob sweet-talked her into eating a bowl of leftover mac and cheese, and cajoled her into drinking two entire bottles of blue Gatorade (jokes on him, blue was her favorite flavor, but she wanted to hear him beg, just a little.)
They stood in her darkened bedroom after, her belly full and her mind slowing by the minute. She was still in her suit, but she was so tired. All she wanted to do was face-plant into her pillows and not get up until next Wednesday. All she had to do was just look at him, and he was already moving to her dresser, opening the third drawer where her pajamas were. He pulled out a pair of shorts and then froze, his back stiff.
"What is it?" Yelena asked, sleep softening the edges of her words.
"This is one of my sweaters," Bob said. His voice was rough.
Shit.
"Oh, yeah," she said, quietly slapping her hand to her forehead, then severely regretting that decision about one second later as her palm landed directly on her fresh stitches. "I meant to give that back, you left it here a few days ago so I...took the liberty of washing it. For you. So I could give it back," she finished lamely. "You can take it back."
"No" he said quickly, then straightened. "I mean, no. You have it. Here."
He walked over to her, and suddenly she was in that forcefield again, that damned spot on his shoulder trapping them in a private space just for the two of them. He helped her out of the suit, then her grimy white tank top came off next. His eyes never strayed from hers.
"Arms up, honey."
They went up.
And his sweater eased down over her shoulders, enveloping her in warmth and softness and mint and him.
Then he was kneeling in front of her, one leg of her pajama shorts pulled open for her to step into. One hand on his broad shoulder, and she was stepping in, right leg, then left leg, his thumbs skimming the sides of her legs as he stood, snapping the waistband lightly against her hipbones.
She wasn't sure exactly how it happened, but somehow she got from standing in front of him to horizontal in her bed, the covers wrapping her up in a cocoon, just the way she liked it.
Bob was there, sitting on the edge of the bed with his torso tilted forward. Like he was about to get up and leave.
"Don't," Yelena said, simply.
He smiled.
"I'm not."
He continued leaning forward and toed off his shoes, before getting up and rounding the bed to the other side. Lifting the covers, he slid in next to her, pulling her into his chest. They had been in this position countless times, yet this time, she was the one who needed it more.
"Bob," she said, halfway to unconsciousness already.
"Mmm."
"All these pet names you have for me now. Honey. Sweetheart. You need one too."
"Yeah?"
She paused. Thinking was so hard when his arms were warm around her and the pillow was soft against her cheek.
"Angel."