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I wanna take you somewhere so you know I care
but it's so cold and I don't know where.
You felt the familiar, anxious twist in your stomach as you walked past the common room of the New Avengers Tower.
Bob was in there again. From the hallway, you saw him pacing by the floor-to-ceiling windows, his reflection a blurred silhouette against the iron-gray December sky over Manhattan. He’d pull his phone out, stare at it, then shove it back into his pocket, running a hand through his hair.
You knew that look. It was the same one you wore when your own mind was a trapped bird, beating its wings against a cage of "what-ifs." Your anxiety, a constant, low hum in your veins, wasn’t just for you.
You overthought everyone’s problems, a habit of "jumping to conclusions" and "catastrophizing" that you’d read about online.
Was he worried about a mission? Was the Void stirring? Did someone say something to upset him? The questions looped, unanswered.
What you didn’t know was that the storm in Bob Reynolds’s mind was about you. He’d had a thing for you for months—a fragile, hopeful feeling that battled with the intense fear of abandonment that was a hallmark of his borderline personality disorder. The idea of you rejecting him felt like a physical void. Yet, the impulsive part of him, another facet of his condition, desperately wanted to act.
He wanted to take you somewhere, anywhere, to show you he cared. But his thoughts stuttered and tripped, just like his speech sometimes would. It’s so cold, he thought, watching the first flurries of snow blur the city. And I d-don’t know where.
The gloomy December weather felt like a mirror of his internal chaos, the wide mood swings from hope to despair, the feeling of emptiness when you weren't around. Every potential plan, a fancy dinner, a quiet café, seemed to crumble in his hands. Too loud, too crowded, too boring, too much. What if you hated it? What if you said no?
The simple wish to connect was tangled in a web of cognitive distortions you’d both understand too well.
I brought you daffodils in a pretty string,
but they won't flower like they did last spring.
The knock on your doorframe three days later was so soft you almost didn’t hear it over the rain pattering against the window.
You looked up from the mission report you were crouched over—had you written enough? Did it sound competent or utterly naive?—and there he was.
Bob filled your doorway, a man of immense, quiet power looking profoundly fragile. In his hands was a bunch of daffodil bulbs, their papery brown skins hiding the potential for gold.
They were tied together with a simple, elegant white silk ribbon. The contrast was striking: the promise of spring held in the hands of a man braving a winter downpour, both outside and within.
Your breath caught. That anxious, overthinking part of your brain, always scanning for threats, went utterly silent for a beat.
In its place, something warm and bright flickered to life, a small, defiant flame against the gloom. You saw the effort. You saw the thought. Anyone could buy cut flowers from a bodega; this was different. This was a hope planted for the future.
“H-hi,” he managed, his voice a low rumble that stumbled on the first hurdle. He shifted his weight, his gaze flicking from your eyes to the bulbs in his hands and back to the floor.
The stutter wasn’t just nerves; it was the traffic jam of his thoughts, the emotional intensity of the moment making it harder to find the clear path from his mind to his mouth.
“I, um… I w-wanted to… to ask you s-something.” He held the bundle out, a peace offering. “I b-brought you these.”
You took them gently, your fingers brushing against his.
They were cool from the outside air. “Bob, they’re… they’re beautiful. Thank you.” You meant it. You were already mentally planning a pot, the best spot by your window for sunlight.
A ghost of a smile touched his lips, but the familiar shadow of self-doubt followed it. He gestured vaguely at the bulbs.
“They’re, uh… they’re just bulbs. Right now. You have to p-plant them. And it’s… it’s not really the s-season.”
He took a shaky breath, the words coming in a rush as if he had to get them out before his courage failed. “They probably w-won’t flower like they d-do in the spring. Not for a m-m-while, anyway. Might not… might not work at all. I just… I th-thought…”
He trailed off, the vulnerability in his eyes so raw it made your own anxiety hum in sympathy. You understood this language perfectly.
This wasn’t just about horticulture. This was a metaphor offered from the heart of a man who knew his own seasons were unpredictable, whose inner landscape could shift from sunshine to storm in an instant.
He was giving you potential, not a guarantee. He was acknowledging the gloom but offering a promise of color anyway.
He finally looked straight at you, his gaze steadying. “I w-wanted to know… if you’d like to g-get dinner. With me. Somewhere. I’m still… still figuring out where.”
He admitted it with a frustrated wince, a man who could shatter concrete but was stymied by restaurant reviews. “But I’d… I’d really like to t-try. With you.”
The question hung in the air between you, as delicate as the papery skin on the daffodil bulbs. Your mind, always so quick to spin scenarios, didn’t leap to a catastrophic end.
Instead, it focused on the man before you: shy, stuttering, brave, holding out a string-tied promise in the middle of December. You cradled the bulbs close, the white ribbon soft against your skin.
And I wanna kiss you, make you feel alright,
I'm just so tired to share my nights
You'd been dating for a while. Long enough for the newness to wear a comfortable groove, for his stutter to smooth into an easier rhythm when it was just the two of them in the quiet of your room. It was in one of these quiet moments, tangled together on your sofa after a movie, that the atmosphere shifted.
It started with a look, held a second too long. Then his hand, brushing a strand of hair from your cheek, lingered. The kiss wasn’t planned; it was a slow, inevitable convergence.
It was soft at first, a gentle confirmation, but then his arm tightened around you, pulling you closer, and yours wound around his neck. The gentleness melted into something deeper, more urgent, a building heat that made your thoughts dissolve into pure sensation.
His lips moved to your jaw, then the sensitive spot below your ear, and a shaky breath escaped you.
It felt so good it almost scared you.
And then, it did scare you. A clear, bright alarm sounded in your chest, cutting through the haze. Not yet. You gently pressed a hand to his chest, creating the smallest space between you.
He stopped instantly, his breath coming in warm, unsteady puffs against your skin. He didn’t pull away, just rested his forehead against your temple with a quiet, shuddering sigh.
“Okay,” he breathed, the word thick with understanding, not frustration.
You both sat in the charged silence for a moment, the only sound your mingled breathing. “I’m sorry,” you whispered. “I want to. I just… I’m not ready. It doesn’t feel right yet.”
He finally leaned back to look at you, his eyes dark but clear. “Don’t be sorry,” he said, his voice low. He took a deep, composing breath. “I was… I was gonna say the same thing.”
You blinked. “You were?”
He gave a single, slow nod, running a hand through his hair. “When I was getting help… for the addiction… my therapist and I, we did a lot of work on this. On… impulses. And using… people… as a fix.” The admission was stark, but his gaze held yours, steady.
“There’s research. For people with my history… jumping into physical intimacy too fast, it… it can get tangled up with the fear of abandonment. It can become a way to try and secure someone, instead of just being with them. I don’t… I don’t ever want to do that to you. I don’t want that for us.”
His words didn’t feel clinical; they felt like the most careful form of protection. He was using what he’d learned to build a fence, not a wall, around what you were creating.
The relief was a physical wave, loosening the tight coil of anxiety in your stomach. You hadn’t ruined anything. You’d met him in the middle of a shared hesitation. “So… we’re on the same page?” you asked, a tentative smile touching your lips.
A real, answering smile broke over his face, softening the intense lines of it. He reached out, his thumb tracing the line of your cheekbone where his lips had just been. “We’re on the same page,” he confirmed, his voice sure. He pulled you back into him, this time letting your head rest on his shoulder, his arms simply holding you. The earlier heat had banked into a lasting, glowing warmth. “We’ve got time.”
I wanna cry and I wanna love,
but all my tears have been used up.
You lie perfectly still in the dark, listening to the deep, even rhythm of Bob’s breathing beside you. The rise and fall of his chest is a quiet metronome in the Tower's nighttime hum. He’s here, solid and real, asleep and trusting.
And the realization hits you with the force of a physical blow, stealing the air from your lungs.
I’m in love with him.
It isn't a sweet, gentle realization. It’s a terrifying, all-consuming tide that floods every corner of your being. Your anxiety, your constant companion, immediately seizes it and twists.
This isn't just fondness or a deep like. This is the kind of love that has roots. The kind that could uproot you.
You want to cry from the sheer, overwhelming weight of it.
You want to wrap this feeling around you both and never let go. But you feel numb, hollowed out by the intensity.
Your mind, the master overthinker, races ahead, painting landscapes of potential heartbreak with brutal efficiency. What if you're too much? What if your anxiety becomes a burden his own fragile stability can't bear? What if he sees the depth of this and pulls away, terrified of such a claim on him?
You’ve spent so many nights crying over smaller, imagined losses. Now, faced with the most real and precious thing you’ve ever held, your tears feel spent.
All that's left is this raw, aching love and the silent, screaming fear that lives right beside it.
You watch the faint city light trace the line of his shoulder. The urge to wake him, to confess this enormity, is a physical ache. But you stay silent, cradling this terrifying, beautiful truth alone in the dark, loving him so deeply it hurts.
And if somebody hurts you, I wanna fight,
but my hand's been broken one too many times
The mission had gone to hell. A new, enhanced syndicate was using seismic tech in the old subway tunnels, and their leader was stronger than intel suggested.
You saw the opening. While Bob traded earth-shattering blows with the enemy at the tunnel's mouth, you flanked, your energy blasts precise, chipping away at the man's defenses. It was working. Until it wasn't.
Distracted by your assault, he took a direct hit from Bob that sent him staggering back—right into your path. With a roar of fury, he whirled, not on Bob, but on you. His amplified fist, crackling with kinetic energy, came down like a piston.
"NO!" Bob's scream tore through the concrete dust.
He moved with a speed that blurred reality, placing himself between the blow and you. There was a sickening CRACK, not of concrete, but of bone and vibranium-weave reinforcement shattering. Quake's fist connected with Bob's raised, defending forearm.
You heard the gasp that punched out of him, saw the immediate, wrong-angled bend in his wrist.
But the force wasn't stopped. It transferred, a seismic wave of pure concussive energy that blew past his broken guard and slammed into you like a freight train.
The world went white, then black, then into a ringing, pain-filled haze. The last thing you saw before the darkness took you was Bob's face, pale with agony not from his own shattered arm, but from seeing you fall.
---
The sterile white light of the Avengers infirmary stung your eyes. Every part of you felt heavy, bruised, and tethered by IV lines. A deep, throbbing ache radiated from your ribs. Fractured, the medic had said. Severe internal bruising. Concussion.
And then you saw him.
Bob sat rigidly in a chair pulled too far from your bed, as if he didn't deserve to be closer. His right hand and forearm were encased in a sleek blue immobilizer cast. He was staring at it, not at you, his face a mask of hollow devastation.
"Bobby?" your voice was a rasp.
He flinched. His eyes, when they finally met yours, were red-rimmed oceans of shame. "Don't," he whispered, the stutter back in full force, carved by guilt. "D-don't try to talk."
He looked back at the cast. "I wasn't strong enough."
This wasn't the logical analysis of a teammate.
This was the visceral, personal failure of a man whose deepest terror had just been realized: that he would be the cause of pain for someone he loved.
He had failed, therefore he was a failure. The proof was in your hospital bed and the cast on his arm.
"Bob," you said again, firmer, pushing past the pain. You moved your uninjured hand slightly on the sheet, a clear invitation.
He stared at it like it was a lifeline he was forbidden to touch. It took a full minute of silent struggle before he slowly, carefully, reached out with his left hand. His fingers, trembling slightly, brushed against yours.
The connection was a circuit closing. "You put yourself in the way," you whispered. "Your broken hand… is why I'm alive to have bruised ribs."
A single, hot tear tracked through the grime still on his cheek. He didn't believe you yet. But he didn't let go of your hand. He held on, clinging to the proof that you were still here, even as he blamed himself for the reason you were in that bed.
So I'll use my voice, I'll be so fucking rude,
words, they always win, but I know I'll lose.
A stupid board game in the common room, a truce declared between missions.
You were trying, you really were, but your mind was a live wire. Every dice roll felt like a judgment, every turn a potential for misstep. You were overthinking the rules, the strategy, the casual chatter—parsing it all for hidden barbs.
John Walker, ever the earnest tactician even in play, leaned over the map. "Your move, (Y/N). You've been holding up the game for five minutes. Just… commit to something." His tone wasn't malicious, just blunt, a soldier's impatience. But the words, "commit to something," landed like a physical blow.
To him, it was about the game. To you, it was a spotlight on every anxiety you'd ever had—your indecision on missions, your fear of making the wrong call, the constant feeling that you were the weak link, hesitating while real heroes acted.
Your throat closed.
The room seemed to tilt.
You didn't see Bob's knuckles go white where they rested on the table. You didn't notice the way his gaze, previously soft and unfocused on the game, sharpened into a blade. You just stared at your plastic game piece, feeling impossibly small.
Then Bob's voice cut through the quiet, low and colder than you'd ever heard it. "Back off, Walker."
The room froze. Walker blinked, taken aback. "Whoa, Bob, it's just a game. I was just saying—"
"I know exactly what you were saying," Bob interrupted, the stutter completely absent, replaced by a terrifying, flat clarity.
His eyes were locked on Walker, a defensive fury burning in them you'd only ever seen directed at enemies. "You think you're being helpful? You're just being fucking rude. She can take all the time she needs. Your opinion on her pace isn't required."
The air left the room. Yelena exchanged a here we go look with Bucky. Ava looked at her shoes. Walker’s face flushed with a mixture of anger and genuine confusion. "Man, I didn't mean anything by it. You're completely overreacting."
"That's enough, both of you," Yelena said, her voice leaving no room for argument, her tone edged with clear disapproval aimed at Bob. "Walker, watch your phrasing. Bob, stand down. It's just a game."
Bob’s jaw clenched. He’d used his voice, been deliberately, protectively rude. And as he’d known he would, he’d lost.
He’d broken the team’s fragile peace, become the problem, the unstable one lashing out again. Words always won, and his had just painted him as the villain.
He pushed back from the table without another word, the chair scraping loudly, and walked out.
The game disbanded in a cloud of awkward tension. Later, you found him on the balcony, gripping the railing, staring into the night. The anger was gone, replaced by a weary shame.
"You didn't have to do that," you said softly, joining him.
He didn't look at you. "Yes, I did." He turned. The raw emotion in his eyes wasn't regret. It was defiance. "Let them be. He hurt you. I saw it. I don't care if I lose every game night for the rest of my life. I won't just sit there while someone does that."
And I'd sing a song that'd be just ours,
but I sang 'em all to another heart
The storm had been brewing in Bob for days. You’d learned the signs—the restless, aimless energy that replaced his usual quiet calm, the sharp edge in his tone when the world was too loud, the way his eyes would go distant, fixed on some internal horizon of old pain.
The symptoms he worked so hard to manage were rising like a tide, and he was struggling to keep his head above the churning water.
You, attuned to every shift in his weather, had been tiptoeing around him. Making his favorite tea, keeping the lights low, giving him space.
But your own anxiety was a constant, sympathetic hum, whispering that his distance was your fault, that you’d done something wrong.
It broke on the fourth evening. You asked a simple question about next week’s mission roster, and he snapped.
“Can you just not for five minutes?” His voice was a whip-crack in the quiet of your shared space.
He wasn’t even looking at you, his back turned as he stared out the window. “I can’t think with you hovering. I just need some quiet.”
The words landed like a physical blow. Your overthinking mind, ever the eager prosecutor, immediately presented evidence:
You are a burden.
You are too much.
He is tired of you.
A hot sting pricked behind your eyes, but a deeper instinct—one forged from understanding his illness, not just your own hurt—held you still.
You didn’t flee. You didn’t fire back. You took a slow, shaky breath, wrapped your arms around your own middle, and simply said, “Okay.” Then you sat down on the far end of the sofa, pulling a blanket over your legs, and stayed.
A silent, stubborn presence in the room.
The silence stretched, thick and tense. You could see the rigid line of his shoulders, the fight in him. The fight against the void, against the old impulses, against the part of him that wanted to push until you left, just to confirm his deepest fear.
Slowly, the fight seemed to drain from him. His shoulders slumped. He turned, and the look on his face shattered you. It wasn’t anger. It was a profound, weary shame.
“I… I’m sorry,” he choked out, the stutter thick with emotion.
He sank into the armchair opposite you, burying his face in his unbroken hand. “I didn’t mean that. Any of it."
The hurt you’d felt melted, replaced by a fierce, aching protectiveness. You unfolded from the sofa, crossed the space, and knelt in front of his chair. Gently, you pried his hand away from his face and held it between both of yours.
A broken sound escaped him, and he pulled you into him, his face buried in your shoulder. He held on like you were the only solid thing in a shifting world. You held him back, your own anxiety quieted by the purpose of being his anchor.
And I wanna cry, I wanna learn to love,
but all my tears have been used up.
The Tower was silent, a rare, deep quiet that seemed to hum in the walls. You were curled against Bob's side, one hand fisted loosely in his shirt, your head a perfect weight on his chest.
You'd been like this all evening—quiet, a little clingy, seeking his presence like a touchstone after a long, overstimulating week. He'd simply pulled you onto the couch and let you stay there, his good hand tracing slow, idle patterns on your back until your breathing evened out into sleep.
And now, in the dark, Bob lay awake, pinned by a revelation.
He was in love with you.
The thought didn't arrive with fireworks. It didn't startle him. It simply was, a truth so fundamental it felt like realizing gravity existed. It settled into his bones, vast and terrifying.
He looked down at the crown of your head, at the way your body trusted his completely in sleep. The whole evening replayed in his mind with new clarity.
Your quiet hadn't been a burden; it had been a peace he'd sunk into. Your need to be close hadn't been a demand; it had been an anchor. You had, without a single word of strategy, calmed him. The restless, churning static that was his constant companion, the fear that sat just below his ribs—it had gone quiet. Simply because you were there.
And the more staggering realization: he had done the same for you. He'd seen the subtle tension leave your shoulders. He'd felt the exact moment your anxious, spiraling thoughts had gentled into the rhythm of his heartbeat.
You didn't just calm the storm in him; you trusted him to calm the storm in you.
He had spent so long learning how to survive himself, he didn't know how to *love* like this. Not quietly, not safely. Not without the old, desperate hunger tainting it.
So he did the only thing he could. He held you a little tighter, careful not to wake you. He pressed a silent, lingering kiss into your hair, a vow made to the dark. He would learn. He would learn to love you with the quiet steadiness you'd shown him, even if he had to teach his scarred heart how to beat in this new, gentle rhythm.
---
And even though all your tears had been used up on another love—the anxious, draining love you’d given to your own fears, to the catastrophes that never happened, to the endless work of holding yourself together—something new was growing in the space they left behind.
It grew not in grand declarations, but in the quiet economy of your shared life.
You both knew the truth that hovered, unspoken, in the space between your hearts. The words I love you felt too vast, too heavy with history.
For Bob, they were tied to a fear of engulfment and abandonment, to a past where love was a demand or a transaction.
For you, they felt like a final, terrifying commitment of your overthinking heart, a pledge that could be catastrophically broken. So, you spoke a different language.
You spoke it in the small, stubborn acts of seeing each other.
It was you, noticing the specific way his jaw tightened on bad days, and silently placing his favorite chipped blue mug of tea beside him without a word.
It was him, remembering that the fluorescent buzz of the common kitchen made your skin crawl, and showing up at your door with two plates of food he’d quietly made in the empty, silent mess hall at an off-hour.
It was his broken hand, still in its cast, clumsily attempting to braid your hair before a mission because he’d seen you fumbling with pins, stressed.
It was you, after he’d snapped from the pressure and hidden away in shame, simply going to find him and sitting with your back against the same door, a silent testament that you were still there, that his storm hadn’t blown you away.
It was the way he began to speak for you in group settings when your anxiety tied your tongue, not with overbearing force, but with a simple, “What Y/N means is…” giving you a bridge.
It was the way you, in turn, became his external compass when his own emotional dysregulation made the world a confusing blur, calmly saying, “I think you’re feeling a lot right now. That guy isn’t worth your anger. Let’s go for a walk.”
Your love lived in the infirmary, where you’d trace the edges of his cast while he watched over your bruised ribs.
It lived on the balcony where he’d defend you and bear the team’s frustration, and you’d find him later to stand in solidarity, not in pity.
It was in the worn spot on the couch where you’d fit together, your quiet presence a balm for his inner chaos, his solid stillness a shelter for your racing mind.
All your tears had been used up. There were none left for the old, lonely loves—the love for the person you thought you had to be, the love he’d poured into the bottomless void of his addiction. That was a different love, a costly one.
This was another love entirely.
This love was dry-eyed and clear-sighted. It was built not on the frantic need to be filled, but on the conscious, daily choice to show up.
It was in the laundry he’d fold because you hated the task, and the grocery list you’d write in large, clear print because his medication made his eyes blurry in the mornings.
It was the blanket he’d drape over you when you fell asleep reading, and the way you’d gently wake him from a nightmare not with a shout, but with a hand on his chest and a steady, “You’re here. You’re with me.”
One day, perhaps, the words would come.
They would be whispered in the dark, or stumbled through with a soft stutter, or said so easily it would surprise you both.
But for now, in the cold gloom that had first brought you a bundle of dormant daffodils, your language was enough.
It was a poetry written in shared silence, in defended glances, in mended wounds and small, steadfast acts of peace. It was the quiet, resilient love that grew after all other tears were spent.