Chapter Text
The Watchtower kitchen had gotten considerably louder since the new espresso machine arrived, and Bob liked it. It had buttons for everything: Nine drink types, a steam wand and a small screen that counted the extraction in tenths of a second.
He stood at the counter tamping grounds into the portafilter while the machine hissed under his hands. The espresso came through dark and even. He watched the timer drop to zero and only then remembered to breathe.
"Perfect."
Behind him the common room carried on with the late-afternoon noise of the three people who had stayed in after the last job. Alexei had spread himself across most of the sofa with his boots up on the coffee table, directly on top of the laminated sign asking visitors not to put their boots on the coffee table. Ava had the armchair and a paperback balanced against one knee. John sat at the far end of the sofa, thumb moving.
Bob reached for the milk. He had spent most of the week on latte art and had so far produced one heart that was deformed and one rabbit so unsettling that Alexei had photographed it and sent it to Yelena before Bob could stop him.
Today: a leaf.
He poured slowly, keeping the pitcher low. White spread through the brown. A stem, then the edges, then the small flick at the end that he had gotten wrong eleven times in four days. He straightened and looked down at it.
It was a leaf. Not a good leaf. But a leaf, unmistakably, made on purpose, by him.
He was still grinning when he lifted the mug with both hands, holding it level, and took a careful sip so as not to disturb the surface.
"Jesus." John's voice, from the sofa. Nobody answered him. "Some of this stuff is genuinely deranged. Can’t believe my algorithm keeps feeding me this crap because I keep getting tagged in New Avengers junk."
Ava turned a page. "Then put the phone down. You've been at it for twenty minutes."
"I'm unwinding."
"You're reading comments under fake news. That isn't unwinding." She did not look up. "Get another hobby."
"Like what?"
"Staring out of the window. Sleeping. Reading the romance novels I keep leaving on your side of the bed."
"I'll think about it." John said, which was not a response to anything, and Alexei was already leaning across the sofa toward him.
"What is deranged? Show me."
John turned the phone toward him. For several seconds Alexei said nothing at all, which was unusual enough that Bob glanced over.
"Why are people photographing my умничка outside a bathhouse?"
Bob swallowed wrong and coughed into his hand. That word he used usually referred to Yelena. It was an affectionate nickname he’d learned.
"Apparently this account has been doing it for a while," John said, swiping. "Stalking all of us and whatever Sam's putting together on his own Avengers team. Yelena's just the one they like."
"People like me too. They know me now but they cannot photograph me all the time. Being able to phase in and out of places has been very helpful for me." said Ava dryly, without turning a page.
Her eyes came up over the top of her book and landed on Bob. The mug stayed halfway to his mouth. Then she went back to her page, and Bob looked down into his coffee, where the leaf remained holding its shape.
Bob knew she visited bathhouses. Yelena went to destress; she liked the hot pools and the cold plunges and the silence of a room where nobody could ask her anything. She had complained about the Watchtower showers at length (with the exception of the one in Bob’s room) and usually bathed at home on principle.
So this was not strange to him. Probably.
"There's more," John said. "Different one here."
Alexei frowned at the screen. "Different building."
"Yeah. And this one's another."
Bob turned the mug a quarter turn and did not look over. Different buildings. He looked over. Neither John nor Alexei noticed. Ava did, and held his eye for another half a second before returning to her book.
"She's been photographed at five of these places in the last couple of months," John said.
"She likes visiting different bathhouses." Bob heard his own voice come out flatter than he meant it. "What's interesting about that?"
"Nothing. That's what I'm saying."
"Then why do internet people care?"
John hesitated, and the hesitation had a shape to it. "Well…"
Alexei looked at him with narrowed eyes. "Well what."
"She isn't always leaving alone."
Bob put his mug flat on the counter. The coffee had gone bitter somewhere in the last minute, or he had.
"What does this mean?" Alexei said.
"People walk out of those places with her."
"Friends?"
"Maybe but from what I know about her she doesn't have a ton of those."
"Then why do you say it like that?"
"Like what?"
"Like something is suspicious about this…" Alexei pointed at him with two fingers, the way he pointed at things on television.
John stared at him. Ava lowered her book about two inches. Bob discovered his face had gotten warm and had no idea what to do about it.
"I don’t want to assume the worst about it but the accounts talking about this have been implying…things about her relationships to these multiple people." John said, rubbing a hand over his mouth.
Bob looked at the mug in his hands. He had picked it up again unconsciously.
"Which is why you don't read gossip accounts." Ava sighed.
"I'm aware."
"Evidently not."
"What are they implying about her?"
The room stopped. All three of them turned, and Bob understood immediately that they had somehow been having this conversation as though he were not in it.
"Oh. Hi Bob." John greeted him nervously.
"Hi. I've been standing here the whole time."
"Yeah."
"You spoke to me. About the milk. Minutes ago."
"I know. I know." John looked at Ava, then at Alexei, and Bob hated that, hated the little conference happening as if he wasn’t there. "We’re just gossiping, Bob. Do you–"
"What was it that they were implying about her?" Bob interrupted.
"Eh…Probably nothing."
"It didn't sound like nothing." Bob's fingers had tightened around the ceramic. He noticed and made them stop, “Just tell me what you’re looking at”.
John sighed and looked at his phone instead of at Bob. "There are pictures of your secret girlfriend leaving these bathhouses with people. Mostly men."
Mostly men.
Bob looked at the far cabinet. Yelena had a life that had nothing to do with him, and he knew that. She could talk to whoever she liked. She had contacts and her own social network. She had years of people Bob had never met and probably never would.
None of it meant anything.
He told himself that twice, and then found that the telling had not gone all the way down.
"How many?"
"Bob." Ava's voice had gone careful.
"How many?"
"I don't know. There’s a lot." John counted his fingers. "Different days, different places. That's all it is."
The leaf trembled on the surface of the latte, and Bob looked at his hand and found it shaking.
Different days. Different men. Different buildings. Possibly months of it?
And she had never once mentioned any of it.
His brain started doing the thing Dr Worth kept pinpointing in their Thursday sessions: Jumping to conclusions based on limited knowledge. Filling the gaps with whatever was nearest. Building a bridge out of two shaky planks and standing on it.
Perhaps she hadn't told him because she knew he'd react exactly like this. Maybe she didn't want him knowing who she met. Maybe she'd wanted one part of her week that he wasn't attached to, and maybe that was fair, and maybe it wasn't about fairness at all, maybe —
Stop. Breathe. She wouldn't. He shut his eyes for a second. He trusted her. She had never given him a reason not to, and the whole thing between them ran on honest communication, because guessing had never once worked for either of them and they had both learned that the hard way.
A handful of photographs wasn’t evidence of her doing something she shouldn't in their relationship. It should not be making him feel like this. It should not be making him feel anything at all —
CRACK
The ceramic in his hands broke.
Coffee went across the counter and down his shirt and onto the floor, and pieces of the mug skittered off in four directions, and one wedge of it opened the fleshy part of his palm on the way out.
Everyone moved at once. John was off the sofa. Alexei stood fast enough to shove the coffee table a foot across the rug. Ava's book vanished into the side of the chair.
"Hey. You alright?"
Bob looked at his hand. Two clean lines across the palm, bright against pale skin, stinging in a distant academic way. Gold moved under the skin like light under water and the bleeding stopped before John got to him.
"Thanks. It's already closing."
"Yeah, I can see that." John took his wrist anyway and turned it toward the light. "I meant emotionally."
Bob gazed up at him. John did not appear to have noticed himself asking, which was somehow the most reassuring part of it.
"I don't know," Bob said. "Bummed out. But I finally got the shape right."
John produced a flat "What?"
"The leaf I was doing on my drink...until I broke the mug" He looked past John's shoulder at the floor, where the coffee was spreading between the shards in a slow brown map and the leaf was gone entirely. "I liked the mug too."
He eased his hand out of John's grip. The cuts were pink lines now, and going. He crouched and reached for the nearest shard.
Ava said, "Don't."
John caught his shoulder. "Seriously?"
"My hand's fine. The pieces can't hurt me."
"That isn't what I was referring to and you know it."
“I am fine.” Bob protested.
"You crushed a mug with your bare hands."
Bob's ears went hot. "I didn't crush it."
Three people looked at him. He looked at the eight pieces of it on the floor.
"Fine. I crushed it." Bob admitted with a groan.
Alexei came back with a towel and a dustpan. "Sit. Back on your heels. There."
"No, I can help."
"You have small pieces in the tread of your shoe and you will walk them across the floor."
"They can't really —"
"Robert. Please.”
Bob took a deep breath and ultimately conceded, sat back on his heels and let them do it. Alexei worked the towel across the tiles in long efficient sweeps, humming something tuneless. Ava crouched and collected the larger shards into her palm, one at a time, without hurrying. Embarrassment settled across Bob's shoulders and stayed there like a hand.
"I'm sorry."
"You don't have to be." John said, sitting next to him.
"I broke a mug."
"We own nine mugs."
"I made everyone upset."
"Perks of the job. Always expect the unexpected. Like Ambushes from the shadows." He said it sarcastically enough that Alexei laughed.
Ava dropped a shard into the bin. John tilted his head to look at something.
"Hey, there’s a shard still on your right hand."
Bob turned that palm over. A bead of red had welled up where a chip of ceramic had been sitting under the skin, and was now being pushed back out of it as the tissue closed.
"Whoops," he said, and picked the chip free. The line sealed behind it.
"That is revolting," John appeared as if he was gonna barf although he’d probably seen much worse as a War Veteran.
"Sorry."
"Stop that."
"Sor —" Bob caught it. "Right."
Alexei stood with the damp towel over his shoulder. "It is done."
There was one last splinter of white sat glittering under the lip of the cabinet in the distance. Bob decided not to mention it and to get it later, with a broom.
He got up. His shirt was going to stain. His gaze went to John's phone, dark now, face down on the arm of the sofa, and stayed there long enough that everyone saw it.
"What kind of people was she with?" Bob asked again. He hated feeling like a broken record at this point.
"Bob, I don't think —"
"You said probably nothing. I heard you." He rubbed the healed heel of his hand against his trousers. "So can I see?"
John looked at Ava, who shrugged, and at Alexei, who gave him a small nod. He unlocked it and held it out.
"Okay."
The account titled @scrwb4ll had a blue check and a profile picture of a stylised mask. Three photographs under the first post.
Yelena going into a building. Yelena coming out of it with her hair still heavy with water. Yelena at the curb beside an older man with a beard, who appeared to be doing all of the talking. Her hands were in her coat pockets. They were standing a normal distance apart.
He swiped. Different neighbourhood, different frontage, a younger man this time, holding the door. Swipe. A woman with black hair in a ponytail and a purple tracksuit, walking beside her with a bow and arrow in hand.
Bob stopped on that one. She was a little younger than Yelena, probably. He had never seen her before in his life. Bob stared at it a second longer than the others before moving on.
"You said men."
"I said mostly men."
"That's a woman."
"Yes, Bob. That is a woman."
He swiped again. Another man, another street. Then a set of three where Yelena was completely alone, coat buttoned and walking fast.
The comments were worse than the pictures. People speculating with total confidence. Many disgusting variations of the same joke about what they would like to do to her body. And under one post, a long branching argument between strangers about what Yelena's type of person was, and then about whether she had one at all, and then about her sexuality.
Bob grimaced and scrolled past it fast, and something in him went tight and cold that was not jealousy. He was one of about three people alive who knew the answer to that question.
"This account’s been doing a thread of every place she's been and some of us too like I said, Mapping them." John explained.
Bob's head came up. "They're tracking us?"
"Yeah. It's genuinely creepy."
"We should get security on it. Or HR, if we want it done slowly and badly." Ava snarked.
"Security it is." Bob answered immediately. That bothered him considerably more than any of the rest of it, and it was a relief to find one thing he could feel straightforwardly about.
He went back through the photographs. Most of them showed nothing whatsoever. People going into buildings. People coming out. A car door. A car leaving. One shot was so blurred that he stopped and zoomed in on the pale smear of hair.
"This one isn't even her!"
Ava leaned in. "You’re right."
"Then why post it?"
"Because it's blonde and it's close enough for engagement."
Bob nodded slowly. That did seem to be the operating principle.
John reached over. "You should see the latest post. This is only the middle."
Bob hit the button that scrolled all the way up, and stopped.
It was a collection of screenshots of images from the Daily Bugle Twitter. A figure in red and blue with the big white lenses, and underneath it in LARGE TEXT:
<BLACK WIDOW SPOTTED WITH SPIDER-MAN. ARE THEY DATING?>
There were a total of ten photographs in the post. That was a lot more than the other ones.He pinched the first one larger.
"Why is Yelena at a bathhouse with Spider-Man?" Bob asked bluntly.
"No idea. Your guess is as good as mine."
Bob knew about Spider-Man roughly the way he knew about the weather in other cities. A local Vigilante. Popular with the New Yorkers, loathed by certain media outlets like the Daily Bugle for reasons Bob had never bothered to look into. He had not been outside enough to run into him.
And here she was on a wet pavement beside him, hair pushed behind one ear, a long coat over what was clearly swimwear. Spider-Man was in full costume.
Alexei leaned over Bob's shoulder, and made a poor attempt at lightening the mood, "Perhaps spider was washed out of the water spout. Like the song."
"He does not live like an actual spider," John said.
"You don't know his habits."
"He lives in Queens."
Alexei's eyebrows went up with genuine respect. "You know where Spider-Man lives?"
"No. It's a rumour, it's a whole —"
Their conversation drowned out as Bob retreated into his head.
Yelena knew Spider-Man. Why did Yelena know Spider-Man. Was this ten photographs of one month, or ten photographs of something that had been happening considerably longer and had only recently gotten sloppy?
He went back through eight months of conversation looking for the smallest mention of it.
Nothing before. Nothing after.
He did not like how fast his thoughts ran ahead of the available facts. He was aware of doing it while he did it, which Dr Worth said was progress and which felt like watching a car roll downhill from inside the car.
"Bob."
At some point, the convo between him and Alexei had stopped and John had a hand extended to him. "For what it's worth, pictures don't always tell you what happened."
Bob handed the phone back. The jealousy had not gone anywhere. He had rather hoped it would leave once the reasoning was finished, and instead it sat where it was, burning low, with embarrassment on top of it now like a lid.
"I feel stupid."
"Why?" Alexei said.
"Because my first thought was..." He rubbed the back of his neck and could not get to the end of the sentence.
"That she was cheating on you," Ava guessed. "It's on your face. You hide your feelings considerably worse than you think you do."
"For about a second."
"Pretty reasonable second," said John, “If there were five photo sets of my partner leaving five separate bathhouses with assorted mystery people, and then Spider-Man turned up in frame, I'd have follow-up questions. Anyone would."
"Especially the spider." Alexei spoke gravely.
Bob found his eyes going to the bin.
"I don't want to be that kind of boyfriend."
"Which kind?"
"Jealous. Angry. Controlling. I was about seconds off it." Bob shook his head.
"You did none of those things." Alexei said.
"I destroyed a mug."
"The mug was innocent casualty."
"That does not make me feel better”.
John took his phone back off the counter. "Feeling something isn't the same as doing something about it. You felt it, you asked three questions, you got an answer. That's the whole job."
Ava blinked at him. "Did you just give emotional advice?"
"No."
"That was emotional advice."
"It was basic advice."
Bob smiled at that and he could swear John was blushing…and it lasted until the numbers came back. Five places. Two months. Often enough that strangers could spy on her.
"I trust her."
"We know," Ava said.
"She can meet whoever she wants. She doesn't owe me a schedule. I know all of that." He stopped. "I just wish she'd told me."
Nobody filled the silence, which he appreciated.
Yelena had a life that ran independently of him, and Bob liked it that way. She did not orbit him and had never asked him to orbit her. Some afternoons she went out for six hours purely to be a person nobody could locate, and Bob understood that better than most people alive. There were days he could not stand another voice in the room. Days when someone he loved sitting beside him felt like a palm pressed flat on his sternum.
He was not confused about privacy.
But there was an entire routine here, weeks of it, and he had found out about it because John got bored and scrolled. That landed somewhere jealousy did not reach.
Alexei watched his face for a while and then said, "Ask her."
"Just ask."
"Yes."
"What if it sounds like an accusation?"
"Then say it is not one. Use the words. You are permitted." He shrugged with his whole upper body. "My daughter would rather have a clumsy question than none."
"Tell her what happened," Ava said. "All of it."
Bob glanced at the bin. "Maybe not all of it."
John snorted. "You're telling her about the mug."
"Why?"
"Because otherwise Alexei tells her about the mug."
Bob's phone buzzed against his hip. He got it out.
[Yelena: Back around 8. Are we still doing dinner or are you going to chicken out]
He looked at that for longer than the message required.
[Bob: we're doing it. I've been practicing]
[Yelena: Practicing?]
[Bob: Alexei showed me how to make Pelmeni on Sunday]
[Yelena: So I am eating Alexei's food?]
[Bob: you're eating MY version of the food. Made with some of his help]
[Yelena: Sounds Good]
He was still looking at the screen when his thumbs went to the keyboard on their own.
Do you know Spider-Man? Too abrupt.
Why do you keep going to bathhouses? Considerably worse.
John showed me photographs of you with several men and I broke a mug with my hands. No.
He locked the phone. This needed a room, and a face, and however long it took. More than that, he wished to hear her version before his own brain finished writing one for her, because his brain was fast and confident and frequently wrong.
John was watching him. "So you're gonna talk to her during dinner?"
"Yep."
"Good."
A beat. "Do me a favour," Bob said. "Don't send me the posts."
"Wasn't going to."
"Or her."
The pause went on slightly too long.
Bob turned his head. "John."
"She should know she's got a stalker. That's not gossip, that's a safety thing." John held up the phone. "I'm sending her the account and nothing else."
Bob thought about it and found that he agreed. "Yeah. Okay. Just that one."
Alexei wandered back toward the sofa and reclaimed his end of it. "I still find the spider suspicious."
"Please don't say that to Yelena."
"I will ask her directly."
"Alexei."
"What? I am a curious man."
Bob looked at John, who spread his hands. "You're on your own, buddy."
"You need me to stop him?” Ava questioned.
Alexei dashed across the room. "You cannot silence the truth."
Bob laughed. The jealousy had not gone. Neither had the questions, all of which he could still list in order. But they had stopped feeling like something happening to him and started feeling like something he was going to do, later, out loud, with her.
He checked the clock. It was twenty past four.
He should prepare for dinner soon.