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"How was I supposed to know it was her first kiss?" John declares to anyone who will listen, halfway through his morning protein shake.
"Considering the whole raised in a lab prison thing? Seems like a fairly easy conclusion to come to," Bob shrugs offhandedly, pouring more sugar onto his cereal. It's an ungodly amount that makes John's teeth hurt just by witnessing, but he gave up on pestering him about his diet weeks ago when Yelena had kicked him sharply in the shin from under the table.
Bucky gets up to leave, with a loud scrape of his chair announcing his intentions and no forthcoming excuse.
"What? You can announce my entire divorce, unprovoked in front of everyone, but now you're too good to give relationship advice?" John cares far less about getting said advice from Bucky, who hasn't so much as wooed a lady since the invention of the microwave. But he enjoys the opportunity to poke at him for the rather rude callout.
Bucky rolls his eyes. "Some of us have real problems." He checks his phone display to demonstrate just how disinterested he is, wincing at whatever alerts he's since received, and begins his retreat from this discussion.
"He's still getting hassled by Congressman Gary," Bob explains in a hush of self-awareness that he's being protected by the unresolved hearings that's attributing to his teammate's stress. Unfortunately exposing Valentina's schemes exposes all of them, but the coverup is flimsy at best. Any attempt to explain would lead to more questions, more digging.
And sure, they're all benefiting from playing along with the farce, for now. It beats the alternative of slumping back to his shitty post-divorce apartment, alone and miserable.
Who could blame him for his moment of weakness, really?
"It's all his fault," Ava complains, between dodging swipes from Yelena.
"Obviously," Yelena grunts, not breaking her rhythm of punches. Not a single lands, she doesn't expect any to. Ava's far too controlled in her freshly repaired suit, even with her current kissing crisis.
"He was just-" she flickers away for a moment, avoiding a blow aimed at her shoulder. "There. And I was minding my business, but he kept talking."
"Of course," Yelena agrees. "Talking. I could see how that escalates to making out."
Ava groans far too dramatically, vanishing into iridescence, and then tackles Yelena from behind with enough force to knock them both down. The two scramble for dominance on the gym mats, before Ava gives up and lets Yelena pin her by the shoulders. There's not much of a swell of victory for the blonde, because it's obvious Ava's already moved on from the fight. Her nose is scrunched up in thought.
"You're thinking about him again," Yelena accuses, rolling off her to grab for her water bottle. "Don't do that while I'm touching you. I might catch Walkeritis."
She gets hit with Ava's microfiber towel, and laughs. "Side effects include excess obsessing, delusions of desire, and questionable judgment."
Ava's amused glare turns into a pinched nerve of uncertainty. "Do you think that's how he sees it? A lapse in judgment?"
"He's a man," Yelena points out. "Probably just happy he got some action that isn't his own hand."
"She probably thinks I'm some creep." John sorts through the bucket of mail left for the team. Bills, bills… credit card offer.
"Oh, coupons," Alexei exclaims, waving about the colorful grocery store ad in victory. Bob had introduced him to the concept of extreme couponing recently, and the man had made a very obsessive effort to replicate the discount magic from the videos. But there really was no helping their obscene grocery bill. "And if Ghost girl thought you were creep, she'd have taken out your tongue instead of letting you stick it down her throat."
John isn't sure if he should be comforted by that assessment, or grossed out by the way Alexei so enthusiastically describes it. He shakes it off. "How am I supposed to know if that's what she actually wanted. Or if I was just influencing her with the whole entanglement?"
Alexei slaps him on the back, grinning. "That's how the power of desire works, no? Your radiating masculine passion makes her feel wanted, makes her want you more until you're both acting as one in the carnal-"
"Can we not?" Bucky interrupts, passing back through to pick up his bundle of mail. He has far more than anyone else, stacks of official looking envelopes that make John itch with the memory of responsibility. He doesn't miss it.
"First kiss is great honor, Mr. Walker. In height of my youth, girls would throw themselves for the opportunity, but I knew to stay strong and resist. For I knew that it should be saved for man who could truly cherish it."
John's quiet for a moment, staring at an envelope advertising 0% financing for 3 months on a new vehicle. "Cherish it," John repeats.
"You can't tell me you were planning on hooking up," and the modern lingo still sounds foreign on his tongue, "with a teammate and then acting like nothing happened," Bucky finally weighs in, clearly disapproving. He clearly doesn't want to deal with the fallout.
"Maybe I can pretend as if nothing happened," Ava tries to convince herself, using Mel as a sounding board. Mel looks way too giddy over being looped into the gossip, while Ava peers over some of the brand deal contracts. She never imagined anyone wanting her likeness to advertise energy drinks, of all things.
"Did you not enjoy what happened?" Mel inquires, oh so casually.
"I mean, I did," Ava admits. "It felt good. Better than I expected, I guess. Never really understood what the big deal was about. The concept of ingesting somebody else's saliva is offputting."
Mel nods along, doodling on her notepad to look less invested in this than she was. "I was feeling a bit of a spark, between you two. All the heated arguments over inconsequential things, like the seating arrangements at the charity dinner and mission assignments."
"He just always gets under my skin," Ava defends.
"Clearly," Mel smirks knowingly.
"Ugh," Ava gives up on trying to read the paragraph that's bogged down in deliberately confusing legalese. "I thought I'd have better taste than this. Why couldn't I be into somebody like-" she comes up completely blank.
"So you never had any crushes before?" Mel asks, putting down her pen. It's rare that she gets the opportunity to have real girl talk instead of controversies, conspiracies, and their corresponding cover ups.
"No. Never bothered to entertain the thought," Ava frowns. "Didn't really fit into my lifestyle, you know?"
"Trust me, getting mixed up with the wrong sort of guy isn't worth it," Mel agrees. "And generally it's advised against dating your coworkers."
"We're not dating," Ava insists, wondering if this is going to wind her up in more trouble now that she's confessed so much to her boss's assistant. "I don't even know how to date. And he… he's had a whole high school romance, marriage, a KID. And then an entire divorce, before I've ever-"
"What if I ask her out on a date?" John muses aloud, to his audience of Bob who is focused on his video game.
"Yeah, you should do that," Bob answers, in that overly agreeable way that suggests he isn't paying attention at all.
"But what if she says no," John second guesses, beginning to pace in front of the tv.
Bob leans one way, then the other, as his view is blocked, and then hits the pause button. "That'd be the smart choice, wouldn't it?"
John looks at him, betrayed. "You're supposed to be my hype man, right now."
"Do you actually want to date her?" Bob asks, because it feels important to address. "Or are you just trying to go through the motions of what you think you're supposed to do to regain a semblance of a normal life and you're looking to replace what you lost with the closest thing available?" He pauses. "That's the sort of thing my therapist has been asking me." Which takes a lot of the heat out of John's stare.
He keeps his arms crossed, though. "I actually like her," John confirms with conviction. "And not as a replacement. She's not at all the type I thought I'd be attracted to."
"Maybe don't tell her that."
"She's not traditional," John continues, undeterred. "Not the kind of the woman you come home to, but the one that's beside you in battle."
"The one that's beside you right now," Bob points out.
John looks over, confused, and nearly jumps out of his skin.
"Hi."
"Hi." He doesn't ask how much of that she had heard, all the words jumbled up in his throat anyway.
"We should probably talk," Ava suggests. "And leave Bob to his Roblox."
She pulls John out into the nearby hallway, fingers wrapped tightly around his wrist. He follows because he always will, into anything. But this is the most uncertain he's been, about how it's going to turn out.
"I've done a lot of thinking," she begins. Perhaps as an explanation for why she's avoided crossing paths with him most of the day. As if he hadn't been doing the same.
"Me too."
There's a reflexive insult there, at the tip of her tongue, that Ava bites down. "Yesterday really wasn't how I was ever planning it to go. Because I was never… really planning to engage in anything like that at all."
John's shoulders immediately slump. "Oh." That's it, isn't it.
"But I guess that's the problem with me. Never allowing myself to try new things. Telling myself that I wouldn't be any good at it, that I'd just end up hurt or hurting somebody else. That when we were… stuck together. In close proximity like that. I…" Usually she's so good at stringing together words, but she's studying his face for reaction to each one. "I never wanted anything like that before, so strongly, that I lost control."
She realizes she's still gripping at his wrist, and goes to pull away, when John catches her hand is his own. Her fleeting molecules shift in and out of tangibility before settling, solid and real, in his grasp.
"Fine, it wasn't quite how I intended it to go either. If I had known it was your first time-"
"No, I didn't want you to take it easy on me," Ava protests, thinking he would have held back. Been far more delicate than she wanted with it.
"No, I mean I would have at least asked you on a proper date, first."
"I thought I wasn't the kind of traditional woman you do all that for." So she did hear a bit more of that conversation than John hoped, but he supposes it saves him the trouble of having to figure out how to express that sentiment more tactfully later.
"That's not exactly how I meant that," John protests, just as Ava grabs a handful of the front of his shirt and pulls him down into a decisive kiss. It shuts them both up for a good moment, prevents words from getting tangled into the meaning they're trying to convey.
"Take me on a date," Ava mumbles against his lips, not bothering to pull back. His nose bumps against hers as he shifts the angle, and her fist twists the fabric taught around his collar. "Show me how all this is done."
"Yes, please. Take this elsewhere. And leave the rest of us out of this," Bucky gestures to where they're blocking his path in the hallway.