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“Yelena, no.” John Walker stood beside her bed, arms crossed, unyielding. The New Avengers had just received a mission that would take them away from the Watchtower for at least two days. But Yelena had also just come down with the mother of all colds, taking her out of commission completely. With half an hour before they were scheduled to take off, Walker ordered her to rest up and recover.
Yelena’s room was dark, curtains drawn, stuffy. She hadn’t cleaned it in a minute; a steadily growing pile of dirty laundry sagged over the edge of a neglected arm chair in one corner. Walker eyed it disapprovingly, but knew better than to chastise Yelena Belova for not being the tidiest person in the world. He couldn’t exactly claim to be the picture of neatness and personal hygiene, though things had gotten better lately.
“Oh, come on, John,” she rasped, “you know I’m the best person for this job.” Her entire body, minus her head, was buried under a thick duvet. Yelena barely turned her head to look at Walker, who pinched the bridge of his nose like he was coming down with a headache.
“First of all, you never call me John unless you’re completely out of it. Second of all, you sound like Joan Rivers with the worst case of laryngitis known to man.”
Yelena fell into a fit of dry chest coughs. “I don’t even know who that is.”
“Right, of course, I keep forgetting you spent the bulk of your Millennial-hood at the Assassination Academy for Young Girls.”
“Yes, and I was trained to endure all kinds of shit you wouldn’t believe. You know, they made us swallow poison several times, just to build up resistance—“
“Yelena,” Walker cut her off brusquely, “I don’t have time to listen to your childhood horror stories. We are leaving in T-minus ten minutes, and you and your disease-ridden body are not going anywhere near that ship. Understood?”
Yelena grimaced and shifted sluggishly under the covers. “Jesus, you sound like my mom.”
“Yeah, well, I’m about five seconds from taking your temperature and banning you from watching TV,” Walker said, turning to leave the room. “Drink your Benadryl and stay in bed. We’ll be back in a couple days.”
“Ugh, fine!” Yelena growled, affecting her most annoying whiny kid voice. Rolling over the side of the bed, she picked up a stray shoe and threw it at the closing door. The minute Walker’s footsteps faded down the hallway, Yelena smiled and sat up, retrieving a walkie from under her pillow. “Widow to Sentry. I repeat, Widow to Sentry. Come in. Over.”
After about ten seconds of silence, Bob Reynolds’s voice crackled through the speaker. “Copy, Widow, this is Sentry hearing you loud and clear. You sound terrible. Over.”
Yelena grinned, lying back down. “I’ve been told. Walker says I sound like someone called Jane Rivers? Over.”
She could hear laughter in his voice when he answered, “Joan Rivers, you sound like Joan Rivers. She was a TV personality with a really gravelly voice. It's kind of the most iconic thing about her, actually….Oh, sorry, over.”
Now Yelena was laughing, despite the sharp ache in her chest. “Bob, could you come up to my room, please? Over.”
“Sure thing! Be right up. Over.”
Yelena switched off her walkie and waited. On a dresser beside the bed, her rescued guinea pig, Cucumber, sat in his crate amongst a luxurious helping of lettuce, blissfully munching to his heart’s content. He stared at her with huge, unblinking, raisin-black eyes. Walker found it creepy, but she thought it was the most adorable thing in the world.
A minute later there was a knock at the door. Bob cleared his throat. “Yelena, can I come in?”
“Yeah, come in Bob.” She sat up slowly as he entered. She was engulfed in a sea of tangled blankets on her king-size bed, the room strewn with discarded this’s-and-thats. Bob almost tripped over a shoe that lay a few feet from the door. “Hi,” she crooned weakly.
“Hey,” said Bob, crouching by the bed. “What’s up?”
Grunting, Yelena rolled onto her side so their faces were a few inches apart. “Bob, can you do something for me?”
“Yeah, of course, anything.” The sincere twinkle in his eyes made Yelena feel like she’d swallowed a moth that was fluttering in her stomach. Bob was the most precious man she’d ever met, and she was pretty sure if there was anyone in the world who could cut straight through her normally cold, hard exterior, it was him.
“It’s very important,” she continued, “I want you to take me to the living room so I can watch TV.”
“We have a living room?”
“Okay, it’s not technically a living room, but it has couches with cup holders and the big television.”
Bob arched his brow, looking over at the massive flat-screen that occupied the other end of her room. “You have a big television.”
“No, I know, but Bob,” she emphasized his name, pulling his attention back to her, “the big television in the living room is The Big Television. It’s like a whole wall that’s just a screen, and I never get to watch things on it because it’s always being used for work. They put giant maps on it and stuff. But I’ve always wanted to just watch TV on it.”
Bob laughed, smiled. “Okay, um, what do you wanna watch?”
Yelena thought for a moment. “Something really, really dumb. Something they would never in a thousand years let me watch on that Big Television if they were here. I want to watch Ancient Aliens.”
At this, Bob let out a sharp snort. “Are you serious?”
“Yeah, I’m serious,” Yelena said, unable to control her own laughter. “What, you think it’s too dumb?”
“No, no,” said Bob, scooching closer to her, “I think it sounds fun. Let’s do it.”
“Yeah?” Yelena grinned. “Okay, help me out of this impossibly comfortable bed.”
Bob tried slinging Yelena’s arm over his shoulder, but after a few awkward failed attempts at dragging her from the bed, Yelena said, “Bob…why don’t you just, you know, carry me.”
“Uh…carry you?”
“Yeah, you know. Like, um, what do you call it? Bridal style.”
It was hard to see in the dimness, but Yelena could have sworn his face turned pink for a second. Bob laughed nervously. “Are you…are you sure?”
“Yes, Bob.”
“I…it’s just, you don’t…you usually…”
Yelena rolled her eyes. “Oh my god, what?”
“You never came across as someone who likes to be carried.”
“Why, because I’m a scary assassin lady?”
“Well…yeah.”
Yelena could’t keep from smiling. Why was he so cute? “Bob, it’s okay. Just carry me.”
Swallowing his nerves, Bob crouched again and carefully slid his hands under Yelena as she put trembling arms around his shoulders, clinging to him as tight as she could. He lifted her so easily, as though she were lighter than a feather. He was so warm, she wanted to curl her whole body around him and bury her face in his chest.
“Oh wait, Bob.”
“What?”
“Can you still get sick?”
He paused, like he hadn’t considered this. “I mean, I think the last time I got sick was before the serum, so probably not.” A cheeky little smile turned up the dimpled corners of his lips. Yelena’s heart stuttered in her chest. A nervous giggle rattled in her tarnished throat. She let one hand slide down to rest above his heart, beating slow and steady, as though he were asleep. She couldn’t feel the awesome power coursing through him but she knew it was there. Somehow his body could contain it. The only sign that he was any different from any other man was the heat radiating from his broad shoulders. Well, that, plus everything she knew about him.
She had to admit, it was nice being this close. She wasn’t concerned about how she looked, her ratty shock of platinum hair, her overly baggy pajamas, her lack of makeup. She didn’t usually think about these things, but for some reason, in this moment, she noticed just how little she cared. His arms were firm under her body, unshaking. She wasn’t sure how long they stayed that way, looking at each other, breathing into each other, but he finally cleared his throat and carried her from her bedroom. On the way down to the living room Bob said, “Hey, on the off chance I do catch your cold, we can just quarantine together.”
Yelena smiled, biting her lip. “I’d like that.”
A couple episodes of Ancient Aliens, it turned out, was just too painfully cringe even for the both of them. Bob connected to the internet—spending a lot of time alone at the Watchtower, he’d become remarkably tech savvy—and introduced Yelena to Joan Rivers. She was hooked almost immediately. Bob made them a late breakfast of blueberry pancakes, then lunch a few hours later. He didn't have to ask what she wanted, he knew it was mac and cheese. The tasty boxed stuff he ordered in bulk from the grocery store. He felt like a kid again, sitting cross-legged on the long couch, eating boxed mac and cheese with Yelena, laughing at grown-up shows while the others were out. He knew she needed rest, but, to be honest, it was very hard for him to say no to her.
Most of the time they spent just talking, not even watching the show. Bob turned to face her fully, arms crossed over his torso, empty bowl of macaroni discarded on the floor. Yelena told him about the one time she played hooky by faking a migraine. "My mother got them sometimes, and I was a really observant child," she laughed. "When my parents found out they tried to act mad, but I could tell Alexei was proud of how good a liar I was."
"Wow," said Bob, grinning. She had this captivating way of making everything seem funny, even though he knew about the reality of her childhood, the staged memories. He'd begun to recognize that when she talked about the real ones, she eased into herself more. Seemed more like a normal girl than a trained assassin. It was like her way of marking the territory of her mind where the real riches could be found. He loved the way she smiled when she uncovered them. An intrusive impulse to touch her round cheeks and just hold her there, in this state of happiness that came so rarely for people like them.
"What about you?"
"Me?"
"Yeah, what did you do when you were a kid and you didn't want to go to school?" Yelena pulled her legs up under her, squeezing a pillow in anticipation.
"Um." Bob looked down at his fingers. "Well, you know that, uh, I didn't exactly have the picture-perfect childhood that you did." This was only half a joke, but it made Yelena scoff.
"Yeah, I know," she said, lowering her voice. Her eyes softened as she watched him, waiting.
"I was actually a pretty good student, up until high school. My episodes were less frequent back then, but I felt like I could just push them down, walk them off. Like an inconvenience. I wanted to do well so my dad would be proud of me. But, you know..." He trailed off, looking back at the TV.
Yelena didn't say anything, but moved a little closer.
"Anyways. It wasn't long before I started to get really burned out from all the pressure I was putting on myself. I came up with excuses not to go to school, or pretended to go but then just went somewhere else." Bob rubbed the back of his neck, remembering the solitary bike rides down empty roads lined with thick trees, smoking cigarettes he'd stolen from the gas station. Soon he'd lose his appetite for nicotine and start smoking other things.
Yelena put her hand on his arm, pulling him back. Her tired eyes were gentle, a soft hand curling around his heart. Those big, brown eyes that looked at him with such fathomless compassion over a year ago in the vault. Never pity. She saw enough of herself in him to eliminate any chance of that.
"I wish I knew you back then," she said. He could hear her meaning. So you wouldn't have felt so alone. So I could have had a real friend.
Bob smiled. "Me too."
"Let's watch a movie. Whatever you want to watch."
"Oh," he said, the playful grin coming back, "I have a few ideas."
“Wait, Bob,” Yelena said as the credits rolled, “did you get the idea to walk up the walls in the vault from The Emperor’s New Groove?”
Bob laughed, full-chested, throwing his head back. “It might have been in the back of my mind.”
“And just like in the movie, it almost didn’t work,” she snorted.
“You don’t have to remind me.”
“But you’re so creative, Bob! I’m serious, I wouldn’t have thought of that in a million years. We’d be dead several miles underground right now if it wasn’t for you.”
“We almost were dead several miles underground because of me.”
“Oh, stop.” Yelena took a swig of cold medicine, grimacing from the sour cherry flavor. “We’ve all had really dumb ideas that almost got us killed. At least yours was smart.”
The sun had begun to tuck itself into the city skyline outside the Watchtower’s massive windows. By now, they’d gone through the Shrek movies, the Ice Age movies (Yelena got a big kick out of the acorn-crazed squirrel), and finally ended up watching New Groove, one of Bob’s old favorites.
“I also got a really good leg workout from that, so thanks.”
“I was never a huge ‘leg day’ guy,” Bob said dryly. “Maybe that shoulda been my first clue that the serum fucked me up fundamentally.”
Yelena doubled over, blowing air through her lips as she struggled to contain her cackling. She hadn’t laughed this hard with someone in a while. He may not have seemed like it at first blush, but Bob was one of the most genuinely funny people she’d ever met. He just hid it all under a thin blanket of bashfulness and self-deprecating humor.
When their laughter died down, a weird silence filled the space between them. Not uncomfortable, but decidedly unfamiliar. The lights had dimmed automatically around them to save energy, and Yelena was practically sitting on Bob’s lap at this point. Why was it so easy for her to get close to him? He was so warm. He smelled so nice. The last place she felt this comfortable was her fake childhood home in West Chesapeake Valley, Ohio. This is real, though, she thought, and the thought came from somewhere deep in her belly. From under the stones she carried around inside her, something was growing.
She didn’t know she’d do it before she did it. His eyes were so beautiful. Shining with a light he didn’t know he had. She had to touch his face, thumb his lips. She had to kiss him. It was happening whether she wanted it to or not. And she definitely wanted it to. The kiss was barely anything, a brush of open mouths against each other. For her, it felt like the most over-the-top, dramatic thing she could have done, catalyzing a flame at the base of her spine that spread upwards and downwards all at once. She wanted, she needed more of him. He could probably taste the disgusting Benadryl on the inside of her lips, but he didn’t seem to care. He gathered her into his unbelievably strong arms, shifting so she could wrap herself around him more comfortably.
When they parted, they both smiled like little kids, pressing their foreheads together, taking each other in. Bob never once took his eyes off her. Those paradoxically bright, dark blue eyes.
“Yelena...hi.”
She giggled. "Hey."
“Can I kiss you again?”
“Only if you’re sure you won’t get sick.”
“I have never been more sure of anything in my life,” he said, grinning from ear to ear as he leaned back in.
Bob pressed his mouth against hers eagerly, hungrily. Absorbing the heavy way she breathed, the warmth of her being so close, the little sounds that escaped from her chest, sounds he never heard her make before, that had him chasing her further down, pushing further in, to which she responded enthusiastically. Yelena molded herself into the curves of him, threading her fingers through his hair like a haphazard work of crochet.
For a split second, she thought of her sister. For no particular reason. How deeply she loved her, how badly she missed her. And the love was different from the way she felt about Bob, but they filled her up the same, completed a part of her she hadn’t known was missing.
They were beginning to lose themselves in the kiss, hands going everywhere that could be reached, slipping in and out of t-shirts, holding onto waists and thighs for dear life. Through sheer force of will, Bob pulled his lips away from hers, panting, Yelena gasping for him, faces flushed.
“Are you okay?” she said, concern in her voice. She held his face in her hands, drawing errant strands of hair away like curtains.
“Never been better,” he said, mildly surprised at how husky his voice sounded. “I just needed to ask how you’re feeling. What you…I mean, how much you’re up for right now.”
He felt her breathy laugh against his parted lips and wanted so, so badly to kiss her again. “I’ll be honest with you, Bob, I wouldn’t be much fun in bed with how disgusting I feel right now.”
“Yeah,” Bob sighed. “All that wheezing would probably be a buzz kill.” Yelena smacked him playfully, hard enough to elicit a small “Ow” from Earth’s mightiest hero.
“Hey, no,” Bob said quickly, tucking a wisp of hair behind her ear, “I’m totally fine, whatever you want. We can kiss, or we can just sit here and watch movies until we fall asleep. Whatever you want, I’m down for.”
Yelena smiled, the exact same way she’d smiled at him in the vault. Her gorgeous round cheeks pushing up into the corners of her almond-brown eyes, squeezing out the light she kept so well hidden. The gentle upward slope of her nose, the fullness of her lips. “I think we should kiss one more time, really test this theory that you can’t get sick.”
Just as they were leaning in again, an all-too familiar voice came blaring out of the darkness. “YELENA.”
For a single, heart-gripping moment, they both thought the team had returned earlier than expected and jumped out of each other’s arms. As soon as they looked up and saw John Walker’s ginormous face glaring at them from the Big TV screen, a different horrible feeling set in.
“Walker, what the fuck?”
“What the hell are you two doing?”
“Uhhh…” Bob looked frantically at Yelena. “We were just, um—“
“Wait,” Yelena cut him off, saving him from having to come up with a highly improbable excuse. “John, how are you broadcasting from this screen?”
“There’s a setting on all of our pads that allows us to connect to any screen in the Watchtower. What, you didn’t know that?” Even in the weirdest circumstances, he still found a way to be smug about something. “Anyway, that’s besides the point.”
“Which is?”
“Cut the shit, Yelena, I knew you’d be up trying to watch TV on the big screen despite my explicit orders that you rest and recover.”
“This isn’t the army, Walker, I don’t have to follow your orders.”
“You would if you were here.”
“Yeah, and who’s fault is it that I’m not?” Yelena folded her arms petulantly. Bob stifled a laugh at how childish she looked right now.
“You and your cold! Besides, I knew you were bullshitting me from the start about wanting to go.”
“Who the hell are you screaming at now, John?” A second massive face appeared beside Walker’s. “Oh my gosh, Yelena, hey! You and Bob look so tiny,” said Ava Starr, more up-beat than usual. Having been locked up in labs most of her life, being flown around the world and lauded as a hero was starting to bring her out of her shell.
Yelena and Bob waved awkwardly at the screen.
“How are you feeling?”
“You know what, Ava? I’m feeling much better now that I’m seeing your face instead of just Walker’s.” The two women cracked up at that. John rolled his eyes for about the millionth time. “How’s the mission going?”
“Oh my god, it’s so boring. You’re lucky you got to stay behind. But at least the weather’s nice. Have you two been snogging, why is Bob’s hair so messy?”
“Jesus Christ,” John pinched his nose again, which was his default setting, apparently.
“Alexei, get in here, it’s Yelena and Bob!” Ava summoned Yelena’s father from another room.
“Oh, God.” She sunk down into the couch, smothering herself with the pillow.
“YELENA!” Alexei’s thick Russian accent boomed from the speakers before he was even on screen. The camera jostled violently for a second, then the screen was filled from end to end with Alexei Shostakov’s grizzled, ridiculous smile, showing off all of his gold teeth. “How are you feeling, Um-nichka? You look so red in face, are you coming down with flu?”
Yelena and Bob glanced at each other. They were quite red, particularly in the mouth area. Bob’s hair looked like a hurricane had gone through it, not her fingers. She had to bite her lip hard to keep from laughing.
“And BOB! Big Bob, you look so tiny down there. I remember when Lena was so small I could pick her up and throw her in the air with one hand, she used to love that! Little Lena.”
Now Yelena was pinching the bridge of her nose.
“Alexei, don’t hog the screen. Bucky wants to see her, too.”
“Oh, this just keeps getting better,” Yelena muttered.
“Ava, it’s fine,” came Bucky’s sleep-deprived voice from somewhere in the background, “I don’t have to—" The camera jostled again, and then there was Bucky, standing in a corner with his arms crossed as Ava held the pad up to his face. He sighed wearily. “Hey, Yelena. How are you, um…doing?”
She leaned forward and presented a weak thumbs-up. “Doing good, boss!”
“Okay, well…just take it easy, drink lots of fluids. For the love of God, do what Walker asked and go back to sleep.”
“We were just about to before you guys called!”
“I guarantee you she’s been sitting in front of that screen since we left!” John piped up off screen.
“Alright, Walker, calm down.”
Alexei slid into frame beside Bucky. “Yelena,” he said in his most obnoxious stern dad voice, “you heard the bosses, go to sleep little one.”
“OH MY GOD, Dad!” Yelena pressed her fingers into her eyes like she was trying to smush her whole face in.
“Come on, guys, it’s her vacation,” said Ava, turning the pad back around to face her, “give it a rest.”
“I WISH SHE WOULD!” shouted John.
Ava scoffed. “Anyways, Yelena, we all hope you feel better soon, and I personally hope you’re enjoying your downtime, no matter how annoying Walker’s being about it.”
Yelena smiled, starting to relax again. “Thanks, Ava.”
“And Bob,” Ava smiled mischievously, “you take good care of her, okay?”
Bob blushed, somehow turning redder than he already was. “I…will certainly do my best.”
“Okay, BYE-BYE NOW!” Yelena grabbed the control stick and slammed her finger down on the power button. Ava’s face winked out of existence.
After about five seconds of silence, the only thing they could do was laugh hysterically, rolling over and clutching their sides.
“I didn’t think it’d take them less than a day to find out about us.”
“After that call I’m fairly sure Ava’s known from the start.”
“D’you think your dad knows?”
“Most likely. You heard the way he was telling me to go back to bed, it was disgusting!”
Bob looked confused. “Disgusting that he said it, or disgusting that we—"
“Shhh,” Yelena silenced him with a finger to his lips. Then she straddled his hips so their faces were a hair’s breadth apart. Stroking his hair, snaking her fingers up and down his chest. “You think too much sometimes.”
Bob wrapped his sturdy arms around her body. “I know.”
Tugging at his t-shirt, Yelena pulled him back in for a tender kiss, the heat between their lips promising more to come.
They fell asleep together not long after. Yelena, wrapped up in an itchy blanket, lay her head on his shoulder and was soon snoring softly. Bob stayed awake for a few minutes before succumbing to the lullaby of her slightly congested breathing, letting his cheek rest on top of her head. They fit together like a puzzle piece. So lucky to have found each other amidst all the other broken pieces.