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Despite what that slimy piece of shit of an inner voice might whisper into his ear in the wee hours of the morning, Bob Reynolds is a stubborn person with the occasional bout of confidence here and there. He can be stubbornly confident. Sometimes. When he’s lucid enough to know what he wants, which is admittedly rarer than it should be.
Anyways, Bob and his occasional, rare bouts of stubborn confidence. Nothing wrong with someone being extremely confident, every now and then, right? Most people would consider it a positive trait.
Except, Bob is not most people. With Bob, because that's just who he is and what he does, even confidence takes on a disastrous turn.
Because the things a person like Bob would be stubbornly confident about, are rarely good.
First, it was morphine to numb the pain, and Bob isn’t trying to sound edgy or anything. He seriously needed the stuff after nearly losing his life in a car accident back in middle school. The doctors called it a miracle that he could even stand afterward.
Judging by the sharp glares thrown his way, when the nurse willfully turns her back on the tension suffocating the room, Bob figured his parents didn’t see it as much of a miracle. After months of physical agony, half-hearted care from a resentful mother, and the occasional, fleeting blissful numbness brought on by morphine, Bob had to agree: nothing miraculous came out of that crash. Perhaps the long break from the usual beatings counts as one? Eh, technicalities.
After, it stopped being entirely physical. For a long while, it was meth he needed. He did everything to secure the next fix. Everything. He was stubborn about it, alright. Stubbornly fucked his own life, as he does most things, all for that small period of reprieve, for the temporary relief of not having to think or feel anything. And if they also left him numb to the results of his father's worse moods? An added benefit, really.
Years went by; Bob went places, some less nice than others, mingled with all kinds of people. And then came Malaysia, initially just another aimless stop in a purposeless journey for the good stuff, where Bob saw the flyer. Some medical trial, the details are still fuzzy in his head.
But he does remember some things. Somewhere deep within his drug-addled mind, he knew they wanted expendable people, people nobody would miss, whose disappearances nobody would question, and so despite that, or maybe because of it, he volunteered to be made better, to become something, anything more than nothing.
He would go on to gain God-like powers, or so he heard.
‘The power of a million exploding suns’, or whatever Alexei screamed about in what must be the Russian man’s attempt at cheering Bob up. It didn’t work, not really. Although it did help having some measure of his abilities, even if he still had terrible hand-to-eye coordination, and still bumped into chairs and tables, and embarrassingly enough, Walker, that one time. He also stuttered while ordering dinner for the team, through the fucking phone.
Sometimes Bob felt as if being an awkward doofus was his calling in life.
Most of the time, he doesn’t feel particularly powerful. Or miraculous. Or whatever manipulative bullshit Valentina De-Who-The-Fuck-Cares was spewing at him nearly three months ago. His memory’s still spotty, sue him. Or don’t. You’d probably win.
(He only remembered last month that he sent half of New York City into shame rooms where they relived their worst traumas in surround sound and HD. A full sensory nightmare, like IMAX for guilt and shame. Definitely not the greatest Tuesday for Bob.
He still hasn’t told the team. There’s a high chance they ended that particular nightmare by kicking his ass. He doesn't remember, memory: Swiss cheese edition. But if there was an ass-kicking involved, then it was well-deserved. But he greedily doesn’t wanna have it known that he sorta remembers.
He’s selfish and not ready to poke that hornet’s nest. Not when just remembering that he knocked out The Winter Fucking Soldier with the man’s own metal arm or yeeted Alexei through a skyscraper’s window makes him want to vomit sideways into the nearest potted plant. He’ll circle back to the shame room thing once the novelty wears off. The novelty of recalling the way he looked at the team, and saw something less, something unworthy of his golden and caped attention, wears off. The team. The same group of people, kind enough not to send him to be locked up in some mental hospital for enhanced individuals, choosing instead to let him hang around. Despite him doing jack shit to earn it. That team.)
Still, it’s nice knowing he has something to fall back on in case they need him, which is shaping up to be a big fat never. They’re all so skilled, amazing, powerful, and smart.
(Their heartbeats do this jumpy, fluttery thing whenever Alexei brings up The Sentry, and now Bob understands exactly why.)
But you never know, so it’s cool, it’s nice, that there’s something more to him, that he allegedly has these abilities. It helps Bob bury his head in his pillow –too soft, too good– and convince himself that he only looks useless, that if shit were to hit the fan, surely he could help, that he would help.
Until then, he’ll just keep doing his silly little chores on the days he doesn’t spend rotting in bed, waiting for that shit to finally arrive and hit the fan. He can pretend that a clean kitchen –-his room can’t relate– or a restocked fridge –oh, the wonders of online delivery when you don’t have to worry about expenses– benefit the team, that any of those silly things measure up to bruised skin and concussed heads.
Enough diddle-daddle, this is about Bob’s wants because he’s read that they’re very important, and knowing what they are is a big part in self-actualization, which, whoah, big word, look at him go, so many letters. You wouldn’t think him a high school dropout.
(Or you would because he’d just stutter through it if he were to actually say it.)
Anyways, fortunately for Bob, he knows exactly what he wants at the moment.
Unfortunately for Bob, it just so happens to be quite literally unattainable. Bob winces. Or is he unattainable? He wrings his fingers, nodding his head minutely, yeah, ‘he’ sounds better than ‘it’, which feels vaguely objectifying. John Walker isn’t just a nice body and, okay, Bob would love a taste, pretty sure one lick would tick all the boxes in Maslow's pyramid or some shit, it’d certainly make his pyramid happy, if you catch his drift.
But he'd also like to hold the man's hand, and share his “criminally sweet” (Bucky’s words) milkshakes with Walker, and– and maybe listen to him ramble about his stupid guns and high maintenance knives.
Anyway, that's off track. Yeah, let's–let’s circle back to the real issue at hand. Bob wants something, it's a ‘he’. John Walker, “Dollar Store Captain America” (Ava's words), US agent, resident asshole and the only good cook in the team, who, allegedly, makes too much food sometimes and proceeds to share with them so “Alexei doesn't bitch about team spirit or some shit.” (Walker's eloquent wording).
Bob just happens to think the guy's ruggedly handsome, smells so good, and unintentionally hilarious, and an asshole in a way that doesn't hurt Bob, not physically, not in any way Bob has experience bracing for. Not since Walker took to calling him increasingly ridiculous nicknames, like Bobert, Bobs, Bambi, and weirdo. He doesn’t even mind “Bobby” coming from the man anymore.
Most of those nicknames make Bob involuntarily snort. That same undignified snort Bob never quite managed to get rid of, despite being told how strange it is. Walker doesn’t seem to mind it, as he continues with the nicknames whenever the occasion arises. The slightly mean quality to his voice, unchanging.
Walker is a committed guy. If the man decides to do anything, he will give it his all. That includes besting Bucky in sparring, bothering Ava, regularly cooking for the team under some excuse or another, and being an asshole in general. Bob supposes he shouldn't be surprised that the same sense of commitment extends to relationships.
Apparently, Walker's only been with one person in his thirty-six years of life, and that's Olivia, his now ex-wife and mother of his child. They were high school sweethearts, classic rom-com stuff: the jock leader of the sports team and the popular cheerleader girl.
Pining teenagers to boyfriend and girlfriend to married couple, Bob absently thinks that if Walker and Olivia's lives from back then were a movie, pre-Captain America fiasco, Yelena would unironically tear up watching it while Bob rubs her back and stifles a laugh.
Except he's not laughing right now, because if that’s what he’s going up against, then he might as well not try. Because, come on, he’s spent embarrassingly long watching her few public appearances, from before her ex-husband publicly beat a man to death.
It’s actually one of the only things he's done using the –brand new, what the fuck– phone Yelena gave him a few weeks ago, when the team started officially going on missions. Besides texting Yelena when she's away, and googling what guinea pigs like to eat. Although Cucumber would eat anything, honestly.
Back on track, where were we? Eh... Oh. Yeah. Olivia. Olivia looks sweet, fiery, and confident. Bob can see why it worked out for them as long as it did. He can imagine it, the way she matched Walker’s spit.
And Bob, well, he’s Bob. A vessel for filth, rot and a huge sprinkle of shame, none of Olivia's shiny, squeaky clean nature. He loves self-flagellating as much as the next guy, but let’s not, um, get into it too much. Yeah.
Let’s just say he almost burst out crying the first time he had a home-cooked meal at the Watchtower, about two weeks after the Void, after Walker had, in his exact words to Yelena, “had enough of the shitty take-out”.
The guy magnanimously cooked for them, Bob supposed it’s only natural they express their gratitude, even Ava put a truce to whatever squabble they were having at the time to mutter a muffled ‘thank you’, full mouth and all, to Walker’s chagrin. Of course, Walker ignored the words in favor of haughtily lecturing her about “proper manners, ever heard of them?”
It was the first and last time she thanked Walker, Bob notes with amusement.
He regretfully didn’t get to enjoy that particular brawl.
(“By far their most entertaining fight, honestly,” Yelena would reflect a week later, sighing wistfully. Every now and then, Bob is reminded that they’re a weird bunch.)
Back then, Bob was fighting tears after hitting a mental wall thinking of the last time he’d had a home-cooked meal, something warm but not from some kind of shelter. So he just kept his head down, incredibly grateful for the long messy strands of hair hiding his face, and blinked repeatedly at the perfect and warm plate of spaghetti bolognese in front of him. It was growing increasingly blurry by the second. Huh.
When it was his turn to say something–because they’re a silly bunch who always try to include him in their shenanigans–he just aggressively nodded, head still bowed, and shoveled more of the food down his throat like a savage.
He'd stuffed his mouth with food, which prompted everyone to laugh –Well, almost everyone. Bob isn’t sure he’s ever seen Bucky let out as much as a chuckle–. They must've thought him famished. Bob didn’t mind at the time.
He still doesn’t. Bob knows mean chuckles and condescending sneers and ‘Jeez, you’d do anything for some meth right now, wouldn’t you, kid?’ laughs, and this wasn’t one of them. He doesn’t understand what it was, but it sure as hell wasn’t mean-spirited.
He loves them so much. He could go on sappy internal tangents about it if he weren’t still on the fence about whether telepathy is part of Ava’s schtick or not. He doesn’t want her to mock gag in his face the same way she does to Yelena whenever the blonde suggests “opening up.”
He'd die for them. Or kill for them, it all depends on how his day's going, really.
But that’s besides the point, the real embarrassment of the Spaghetti Incident is how it adds to the undoubtedly long roster of ‘Walker catching Bob doing weird shit’. Another occasion for the man to reflect on and think, damn, what a weirdo. A klutz.
If Walker thinks about him at all, that is. When Bob isn’t skulking around the team, or bumping into tables or the man’s back like a moron.
Man, sobriety sucks, Bob thinks with a huff. The clumsiness may have been a long-time companion of his, born of a decaying sense of awareness and a general dissociative state to cope with… well, life. But now it's the awareness that burns. Coupled with a crush the size of the cravings he used to get at 3 am, and hoo boy, the result is not cool, not fun.
“Not fun at all, I’m telling you,” he mumbles, receiving a blank stare in return. Cucumber continues demolishing his third apple slice like it's his last meal. Bob blinks back at the guinea pig, remembers the horrible Spaghetti Incident for the second time in under an hour, and groans softly in mortification.
“At least it’s cute when you do it,” he acquiesces after a moment, holding Cucumber closer to his chest. “Do you want another slice?” he murmurs, not waiting for a reply before he reaches for the knife on the table, because Yelena’s guinea pig never refuses food. Like owner, like pet, eh? “I’ll just–”
“Hey man, you good?”
Bob startles, turning around to glance behind the couch, fruit knife in hand, to which Walker slowly raises his hands in mock surrender, snorting. Cucumber lets out a loud squeak, which sounds suspiciously like a laugh, a mean one (see? Bob knows the difference). The brunet puts the knife down with a clunk.
“Hey, yeah, I’m-I’m good,” living with sneaky ex-mercenaries and agents of the government with steps lighter than feather sucks ass sometimes, Bob decided, clearing his throat, “Just, um, feeding this little guy,” he lifts the guinea pig in demonstration, as if it would be unclear who he's talking about otherwise. Jesus, Bob is stupid.
“And verbal encouragement helps him digest better, or what?” asks Walker, because Walker is a dick, and Bob wants to climb him like a tree.
Walker moves closer, oblivious to the filth circling in Bob's brain, and leans against the couch, hand reaching towards Cucumber, who is now lowered into Bob’s lap, petting its head.
Every aspect of this situation falls perfectly in line with Bob's luck. Of course, the one time Walker decides to grace the resident pet with a modicum of affection, the man must lean incredibly close into Bob's personal space to do so. Act normal, act normal, act normal, he chants internally.
“Yelena’s always talking to him,” He starts lamely. That's a perfectly normal thing to say, right? The other man hums, and Bob feels even stupider, somehow. “I thought doing it would help with her absence,” Bob omits how the deal is mutually beneficial, how it makes him feel better, too.
Or, well, not necessarily better, but at least he doesn’t have to think about Yelena dying in a ditch somewhere, alone, while he sits here, uselessly twiddling his thumbs like the purposeless waste of oxygen that he is.
“Right,” deadpans Walker, and Bob wants to die even more so than usual, but he settles for chuckling nervously, the man is so close, “Yeah…”
With another hum, Walker straightens up, fingers idly tapping on the back of the couch, he looks sleepy and Bob assumes he’s either about to crash, or just finished napping.
Right, he and Bucky came back from a mission today, both whole and alive, breathing. He’s in awe of the man’s ability to still function after what must’ve been another grueling mission under Valentina’s shitty command. Yet another one where their best asset is busy petsetting a rodent and doing fuck all.
Bob wonders what Walker’s even here for now, when he looks so dead on his feet.
“Does he also eat Yelena’s clothes?”
“Yeah, don’t know about that,” Bob replies automatically, distracted, “does he?”
“Bob.”
“Yeah?”
“Look down, man.”
“Oh”, the younger man drags his gaze away, glancing down at Cucumber, who has successfully chewed through his right sleeve. Yelena owes him a hoodie now, though Bob’s worn his fair share of torn clothes. It’s the principle of the matter. “Shit.”
He hears a snort behind him– distant, but unmistakable. Walker has retreated, and Bob refuses to look back, unwilling to make the moment any more mortifying than it needs to be. Silently, he slices the last of the apple and places it in Cucumber’s cage, then gently sets the guinea pig inside. The animal must've sensed he's on real thin ice, because he doesn't let out a peep.
Bob goes through the motions like a functional person would. After moving Cucumber to Yelena’s room and setting him in the huge indoor cage to roam freely, Bob takes the elevator, goes into his own bedroom, grabs the nearest pillow, and groans into it.
☀☽
Despite what that slimy piece of shit of an inner voice might whisper into his ear in the wee hours of the morning, Bob Reynolds is a stubborn person with the occasional bout of confidence here and there. He can be stubbornly confident. Sometimes.
This just happens to be one of those times. Bob has an unrequited crush on a straight man who undoubtedly thinks of him as the team’s clumsy, incompetent timebomb. But no amount of repeating this fact to himself makes the crush go away.
He needs to understand how the crush came to be in the first place.
☀☽
Turns out, he is shit at poker. This is unfortunate news for Bob, who, prior to Project Sentry and life at the Watchtower, had somehow tricked himself into thinking that he was great at poker, usually bleeding junkies dry at the card table.
He’s starting to believe his wins were because he was so shitfaced he could hear colors. It probably helped that other players were just as, if not more, inebriated.
There is no other explanation for how abysmally shitty he is at poker now. A new low, even for him, he thinks, as Ava smugly rakes in her winnings like a Bond villain in gym shorts.
(She can go short periods of time without her suit and looks lighter for it. Bob is glad.)
Apparently, he has a terrible poker face. Not even just bad, catastrophic. His eye twitches when he gets a decent hand. He hums tunelessly when he’s bluffing. He accidentally started tapping “Call Me Maybe” with his foot during a crucial round, then tried to play it off like it was Morse code. No one bought it, of course. Least of all Yelena, who watched him the way a hawk watches a limping squirrel.
Ava raises him again, and Bob, sweating like a liar in church, tries to lean back casually and knocks over his chair instead. Smooth. Real smooth. If his poker game were a car, it would be on fire, rolling backward into a ravine (been there, done that.)
He folds. Again.
“Are you always as twitchy,” Ava says, not even looking up from her stack of chips, “or is that just your bluff face?”
“Terrible bluff face if so, solnyshko!” Alexei hollers.
Bob considers flipping the table, because even Bucky, the same guy he'd exchanged a total of three sentences with up to that point outside of their therapy and medication talks, is shooting him a vaguely amused stare.
Instead, he mutters something about “saving his strategy for later,” and mentally adds poker to the ever-growing list of things he is objectively, irrevocably, terrible at. Right between “impressing Walker in anything” and “microwaving leftovers without forgetting them and going to bed.”
The rest of that game night, on his end, is spent sulking, professionally. He keeps his face carefully blank, devoid of all the ‘fuck you guys, everyone on this table has been a spy of sort at some point in their lives, with incredible sneaky spy skills, so this is all extremely unfair’ thoughts currently encompassing his very being.
All is good, he supposes, because he gets to lean back on the couch and watch the five others tear into each other, oh, and he eats their snacks while they’re so concentrated on the game you’d think their lives depend on it.
Maybe some weird spy code of honor does, some unspoken rule in their world; Never lose in poker or something equally as absurd.
Folding early also comes with the benefit of staring at Walker with no risk of getting caught. The man is too busy keeping a blank face and, Jesus Christ. Walker is exceptionally good at keeping a blank face. Why’s Bob only noticing it now? And why is it kind of hot?
Bob’s questionable taste in men aside, Walker is exceptional at keeping up the unphased man act. Good hand or bad hand, you can’t spot any difference. Bob is suddenly reminded that John Walker is the only New Avengers (ugh,) member with any sort of PR training, (Bob doesn’t think whatever Bucky had to learn prior to World War II counts. Or worse, Alexei in Russia. He prefers not to dwell on the latter for the sake of his remaining sanity) not that it helped in the long run, but still.
Great skillset in poker.
Not to say that the stoicism shtick is the only effective one in that table right now. Oh no, Bob thinks dryly, biting into his third granola bar of the night (He’s not hungry anymore, wasn’t hungry in the first place. It’s the principle of the thing), that table is witnessing all sorts of tactics.
Effective tactics, Bob concedes begrudgingly. Psychological warfare. Strategic planning. Bucky’s usual stare. Incredibly dangerous stuff.
He lets them do their thing (terrorize each other into folding) and goes back to observing the back of Walker’s head.
His nape is full of moles. Bob kinda wants to poke at them until Walker snaps and bites his finger.
All in all, you know, not creepy at all. Standard observation in Bob’s bids to try and remember when in hell did he develop a crush on the guy.
Because, to Bob, it seemed that one day he woke up, groggy and still rubbing the sleep from his eyes, and decided to head out for a glass of water to remedy his sore throat, only to glance at Walker cleaning his gun in the communal room, and think ‘oh shit’.
Now, Bob is no stranger to living in a perpetual state of confusion, or even blank spots in his memory. The latter often causes the former. Bob used to spend hours reorienting himself, mentally going through where he last remembers being and where he currently is and who he is with and what were they doing to him and–
Anyways. He hasn’t had any cravings since waking up in that metallic box, puking his guts out in the midst of a very intense assassins convention. Safe to say the fuzziness in this instance is not drugs related.
He doesn’t remember developing any sort of feelings for the man. Sure, he has eyes and Walker is conventionally attractive until he opens his mouth, however, the only feelings he had for the man all throughout their turbulent ascent from the vault were a confusing mix of ‘I hope I don’t piss this asshole off’, and ‘I wanna piss this asshole off’.
(And if, then, both desires stem from the fact that Walker has an explosive personality, packs a heavy punch, carries multiple guns on his person, and seems annoyed at Bob’s every inhale and exhale… Well, taste is subjective or something.)
Moving on, Bob doesn’t think he can handle another bag of chips or granola bar, spite or not. Staring also isn’t doing much to refresh his memories, it never has.
He reckons whatever clicked inside of him towards Walker must’ve occurred in the blank period between playing doll to Val’s puppet show and waking up in Manhattan, limbs entangled with the others, brain hazy but strangely quiet. There’s no other explanation to the whole Walker debacle. He’s encountered his fair share of “straight” douchebags and dudebros. He has even blew or gotten fucked by the more delusional ones for money.
Something else happened, and it keeps niggling at the back of Bob’s faulty mind.
The brunet sighs and resigns himself to leaning his head on the back of the couch. You don’t need to watch to know Yelena is going to win.
The bag of snacks, once firmly in Bob’s grasp, quivers subtly in his right hand. With a sharp toss, he flings it into the empty space to his left, as if it had scorched him.
Out of everything the Sentry Project bestowed upon Bob –or took from him, it’s a matter of perspective– he finds it hilarious that the hand tremors remain untouched by any experiment or serum.
His hoax of an enhanced existence might have spared him the worst of going cold turkey, but just enough effects were left behind, tenacious and recurrent, in case he ever started to forget who he truly is.
At his core, Bob Reynolds is an anxiety-riddled vessel. No matter the enhanced physique, Bob’s soul will forever stay intertwined with all the withdrawals and substances he has known since the age of fourteen.
A rotten, mangled amalgamation of fickle emotions and shameful needs no amount of exploding suns or terrible dye jobs could hope to fix.
As has become routine in the last three months, the shakes subside after a couple of minutes, leaving behind an exhausted and troubled Bob. Each occasional tremor conjures enough self-deprecating fodder to fuel three of his weekly sessions with Dr. Raynor.
Pain flares up at the back of Bob’s neck, like it’s been doing for the past month or so. He’s learned to clench his teeth through it.
He finally relinquishes his death grip on the offending appendage. The random daily bout of nape pain is also over, so Bob relaxes his jaw, left hand reaching slowly to touch the area in confusion.
It almost feels like being electrocuted. Which should be impossible, The Sentry is invincible, if Alexei’s attempts at encouragement are to be believed, right?
Leave it to Bob to fail at being what an entire fancy-but-shady-human-experiment was supposed to make him. (Good, this way it'll be easier to put you down if you act out.)
A few minutes pass in that same spot. Bob, it seems, is starting to doze off. The floor to ceiling windows reveal a busy city engulfed in the last rays of gentle light; it's the evening of a day spent loafing around and losing poker for Bob, but his eyes feel heavy nonetheless.
Bob distantly thinks he should be concerned with how frequently he has been falling asleep, just about anywhere, in all positions. It has been the case since his stint as a shadowy supervillain.
Then again, he's had worse urges in the past, a dozen naps or so shouldn't be a cause of concern, he rationalizes.
(Or so he hopes, ‘cause you never know with him. A bundle of joy and surprises, he is. The gift that keeps on giving).
Okay, perhaps Bob is lying to himself. Perhaps, all the brooding and sulking and tremors aren’t a result of losing some silly poker game. He’s having a shit day, one he wishes would end right this instance.
His thoughts are all over the place, even more so than usual. He tried to read earlier since it usually helps quiet his mind, but by that point Yelena came to drag him into their ‘game night’, and he gave up on the endeavor entirely.
“Stop sulking. ‘S not a good look on you.”
Bob slowly turns his head, frowning slightly at Walker, or rather the back of Walker’s head. Bob was so out of it he hadn’t even noticed the man joining him on the couch.
Walker is turned away, rummaging through the bag holding the (surviving) snacks. Unknowingly allowing the brunet a perfect view of those moles.
“I thought you were doing well, what happened?” His voice takes on that ‘little shit’ quality that has yet to be fully beaten out of him (or fucked out of you when you were particularly desperate for some money, for a fix, because that’s all you’re worth, isn’t it? you pathetic piece of–) though many have tried. It’s a quality he can’t seem to dampen next to the man.
Seeming to finally find what he’s looking for, Walker turns back to face Bob.
“Oh you know,” Walker’s voice is muffled as he pulls the chocolate bar’s package open with his teeth, Bob averts his eyes, (you’re gonna make him uncomfortable, you’re too fucking weird, stop–) “Thought I’d keep you company after that miserable performance of yours.”
I can think of a few ways you can cheer me up, is what Bob’s foul mind supplies. He banishes the thought, because Bob likes having his teeth just fine. And also because that’s an easily banishable thought. God knows he doesn’t get many of those.
“That’s a funny way to say Yelena beat your ass.”
Walker takes a bite and sniffs indignantly, “Yelena beat my ass.”
The man seems to have accepted his defeat with dignity, so Bob resolves not to make fun of him. Too much.
“Guess the nonchalant act can only carry you so far,” Bob throws out the comment with the straightest face he can muster. Goading Walker is an art and Bob is good with a brush.
(It’s true, one of his middle school teachers complimented him once and he never forgot. It was art class. Some picky memory he has, because he remembers thinking she was a nice lady, albeit the sort of teachers who think they can recreate the ‘Freedom Writers’ with every troubled kid. He wonders if she was surprised when he dropped out, or just disappointed, because the signs were always there.)
“Do you really want us to discuss our individual strategies back on that table, Bobert? Think carefully before answering.”
Bob resists the urge to snort (Ugly, undignified, nobody wants to hear it). He glances back at Walker in response. Who knew petulant chewing was a thing? The other man can be such a child sometimes.
“Fair.”
With that, both men turn their attention back to the quiet chaos of that table. But shutting up next to Walker isn’t his forte, “Now the two losers get to watch,”
The man rolls his eyes so hard it’s a wonder they don’t fall off and roll to where Ava is stretching out her legs. Which, see? A child, “Jesus, Bob, I might’ve lost too but don’t put me on your level. You and I are far from being on the same caliber,”
“Losing is losing, asshole,”
“No it isn’t,”
“It so is,”
“It so isn’t,”
“You’re such a sore loser, Walker,”
“Fuck you,”
Oh, I wish, “Eat shit.”
“These taste so stale they might as well be shit,” Walker frowns down at his half finished candy bar then looks left towards Bob, nodding to the bag beside him, “Want one?”
Bob doesn’t shudder, but it’s a close thing, “Anymore of those and I’ll burst.”
Walker grunts, “Junk or not, god knows you don’t eat enough. Take one,” the plastic bag lands with frightening accuracy on Bob’s lap, he stares at it and it reminds him of the earlier tremors.
Handing it back with a soft push, mindful to prevent skin from gazing skin, Bob answers with a low tone, hoping not to offend the man, “No, I’m-I’m good,”
Walker frowns regardless. Shit.
“‘Want anything in particular?”
Honestly? No. Bob has a finicky relationship with food that he’s successfully kept under wraps for three months by occasionally holing himself up in his bedroom.
One meal a day is often enough to get him through a day, sometimes even that is unnecessary. More Sentry shit or leftovers from a little over a decade of his body having to make peace with the scarcity of whatever food he could get his hands on? Who knows, Bob certainly doesn’t.
“No,” Bob attempts a smile, is sure it comes off more as a grimace, “I’m good.”
Walker huffs, “Suit yourself, man.”
The man seems strangely petulant. Bob shrugs it up to the same ego Walker dives into anything with. Bob refusing his offer must sting. Shit shit shit shit–
“You let me know if you think of something, though, alright?”
Bob turns his head to the side sharply, so sharply the pain in his neck flares up briefly before vanishing again. Walker is facing resolutely forward, as if Alexei shouting while Ava and Yelena have a staredown and Bucky looks bored out of his mind all constitue the most interesting sight in the world, and not just how every other Tuesday plays out at the Watchtower.
He swallows, “Yeah…” He’d love to, if his stomach would just play nice for one fucking day, “I will. Thank you.”
Walker shrugs dismissively and these are the moments that throw Bob for a loop the most. Because maybe, just maybe, Bob is wrong for once. Maybe, for once, that bleak filter he deploys to every situation that matters, the way only a person who’d been hurt before or hurt his own share of people, would, is no longer needed. Maybe he doesn’t need that barrier to seperate him from his surroundings anymore, perhaps he’d only been using it as an excuse to be a coward and–
“Wouldn’t want a hungry Sentry around, would we?” With that, Walker finally turns towards him with one of his trademark smirks. Except, whereas those usually inspire a frankly embarrassing kind of heat in Bob, particularly his lower regions, this one makes his blood run cold.
Bob blinks. Once, twice, thrice. Looks away from Walker’s face, recalibrates. Forces a chuckle out, “Yeah, man, of course–” He wipes under his eyes with a hand that has gone right back to shaking, like a few minutes ago. Back to zero, Bobby.
Nervously chuckling, Bob gets up, summoning all his wits, which makes the attempt at humor even more pathetic, “You know what you also wouldn’t want around? a sleep-deprived Sentry,” He turns to the others, still seated at the table, “Night guys.”
They absentmindedly answer back. Well, except for Alexei, the man as loud as ever. Bob barely even flinches around him anymore. He purposely avoids Yelena’s eyes before returning his gaze to Walker, “Night, Walker.”
He doesn’t stay enough to hear the man’s answer, the annoying tingling feeling in his neck is back, so are the tremors. He hates this. He’s such a fucking idiot.
Of course the man checks on him to avoid another Manhattan blackout. Bob knew to some capacity how the other man must think of him, a ticking timebomb. A disaster waiting to happen. He knew.
So why the fuck does it still sting? Why is it, that he never learns how to properly take a hit, physical or otherwise, no matter how many hits he's been dealt in life? He keeps bracing himself, bracing and bracing and bracing. For what? He never knows. What he does know, however, is the second he'll even entertain the idea of dropping his guards, opening his eyes and lowering his raised hands, the rug will be pulled from underneath him. Everytime.
Bob checks on Cucumber before heading to his bedroom. He likes to think both of them share a camaraderie of sorts. Both rescued by Yelena in some capacity, both involved in unethical experimentation that took place in that Malaysian lab.
Also, he’s as useful as that rodent when it comes to actually being part of this ‘team’, so.
Bob can be stubbornly confident at times, and it is with stubborn confidence that night that he reaffirms his initial plan, and decides he needs to find out the exact mechanisms of his crush on Walker, so he can nip it in the bud.
Bob tosses and turns for three hours before finally falling asleep. The nightmare awaiting him follow a familiar format by now.
What he sees, as has been the case for the past few weeks, is the shame room of some poor New Yorker from The Void Incident, whose only fault was existing in the same general vicinity as Bob at the time.