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“So…who’s going to tell Yelena?”
Alexei, Ava, Bucky, and Walker gawked at the unsightly yellow couch, its scorched cushions still coughing thin wisps of smoke into the air despite Bucky having emptied half a fire extinguisher onto it seconds earlier just before Ava had asked.
Alexei slowly turned to look at Walker alongside everyone else.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he said, holding up his hands and looking offended. His eyes darted over for support, but no one came to his defense. Bucky stared very intently at the fire extinguisher in his hands, and Alexei suddenly found the blackened coffee table fascinating. “Why does it have to be me?”
Ava crossed her arms, eyeing the yellow couch as another lazy ribbon of smoke curled from one of its cushions. It’s a miracle the water sprinkler didn’t activate and make the entire thing somehow worse.
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said flatly. “Perhaps it was because you threw the Molotov.”
Walker’s jaw unhinged. “I did not throw the Molotov.”
Ava gave him a look. “We literally saw it.”
“Okay,” he amended, “I threw it, but Alexei was the one who told me to!”
The older man gaped at him.
“No! No, I showed you how to light it! I thought you were going to throw it outside, off the terrace,” he protested, jabbing a finger toward the open balcony doors. “At something far away. Not at my daughter’s ugly yellow couch!”
“And the question is also…why did you throw it at her loveseat?” Bucky asked, bewildered.
Walker clicked his tongue loudly.
“In my defense…I thought that thing was indestructible.”
“And why on bloody Earth would you think that?” Ava asked, bewildered.
“What do you mean why? Come on, you seen the thing!” Walker threw both hands toward the smoldering, unidentifiable pile of crisp. “Ava, you spilled tea all over the thing. Alexei fell asleep on it after eating an entire plate of ribs, and Bucky punched the armrest once and barely left a dent!”
Bucky frowned. “That was one time.”
“And it survived all of that,” Walker pressed. “It has survived everything. I figured it was basically indestructible! How was I supposed to know that it couldn’t survive a Molotov cocktail being chucked at it?”
Ava stared at the blackened crater. “Walker, it’s a couch. Not a tank.”
Alexei squinted at the smoking fabric.
“To be fair, it is very ugly. Perhaps ugliness gives it strength.”
The couch gave a faint, pathetic hiss.
Bucky glanced down at the extinguisher. “Apparently not enough strength.”
“Which begs the question…who’s going to tell her when she comes back with Bob?” Ava asked. “It sure as hell isn’t going to be me. You know how attached she is to that dreadful thing? Hauled it back from her old apartment.”
Everyone grimaced.
As much as they all hated that hideous yellow couch, Ava had a point.
When they’d first realized they were going to be living in the Watchtower, none of them had arrived with much more than duffel bags, weapons, and enough emotional baggage to furnish an entire apartment. Yelena, however, had shown up with a rented van and that dreadful, neon yellow loveseat strapped inside.
“I found her outside my old building in the rain,” Yelena had told them solemnly. “Everyone kept walking past her like she was trash. I could not leave her there. She had already been abandoned once. Anyway, meet Sofiya.”
Damn it.
She was going to kill them for murdering Sofiya.
Not quickly, either. Yelena would make it a whole thing. She’d go quiet first, which was always worse, then stare at the remains of her beloved monstrosity until somebody cracked under the pressure.
Walker shifted on his feet and then started to pace. “Okay. You know what? New plan. We replace it before she gets back. And then we’ll just… I don’t know, tell her that it’s always been the same one or something.”
“I beg your pardon? You think we can find that same ugly monstrosity in a furniture store in Manhattan?” Ava inquired, shaking her head. “Let alone recreate all those stains and god knows what else is on there?”
Walker spread his hands.
“You got a better plan?”
“Yeah,” Ava said, nodding. “Blaming you.”
Walker let out one sharp, humorless laugh and pointed at her.
“Ha! You said ‘blaming,’ so you know that means I’m not the only one at fault.”
“I know it means you threw a Molotov cocktail at Yelena’s couch.”
“After Alexei showed me how to light it!”
Alexei scoffed. “I showed you because you asked! I did not know you would throw it inside like an American action hero with no regard for furniture!”
Bucky finally set the fire extinguisher down and pinched his nose.
“For what it’s worth, I think replacing it is impossible.”
Walker looked at him hopefully. “But?”
“But,” Bucky continued, “I think it’s worth a try in gaslighting her.”
Two hours later—and with the help of three super soldiers, a rental van Ava had been forced to book at the last minute, and far too many arguments in the middle of a Manhattan furniture warehouse—they were back.
The new loveseat sat in the common room overlooking the terrace, right next to Bob’s seat.
Except there’s a problem.
A major one at that.
It was modern, sleek, and upholstered in a lush forest-green velvet that looked expensive enough to make the old neon-yellow disaster seem like a cursed thrift-store relic. And that leads to the next problem—
It also looked absolutely nothing like Yelena’s old couch, right down to even the color.
Walker stood with his hands on his hips, breathing hard despite the fact that none of them technically needed to. “See? This is good. This is an upgrade! As a matter of fact, I think she’ll be thanking us for doing her a favor.”
Ava stared at him for a beat and then back at the couch. “How did you somehow persuade me to go along with it? Despite it being a different color altogether?”
Walker shrugged, looking far too pleased with himself. “The guy at the store was good at his job. And come on, you have to admit this color goes way better in here than that old radioactive-yellow nightmare. We all hated it.”
“It was very sore on the eyes,” Alexei reluctantly admitted.
“See?” Walker maintained.
The team looked between the green velvet loveseat and the charred remains of Yelena’s original couch, whose ashes were swept beneath a tarp by the terrace doors, where it would live the rest of its day there…
Until the wind blew it all away.
“Even if it does, that’s not the point,” Ava grumbled, squinting her eyes at the new furniture.
“It’s absolutely the point,” Walker argued. “This one matches the view, the floors, Bob’s chair—”
“That’s what sold me,” Bucky muttered.
“Exactly! And it doesn’t look like it was dragged out of a dumpster during a chemical spill.”
“Right,” Ava stated with a sigh, hands firmly on her hips as she nodded at the couch. “And who’s going to explain why her beloved abandoned-rain-soaked-lonely-orphan couch suddenly got a complete personality transplant then?”
“Maybe Lena will forget the ugly thing when she sees the beauty!”
Somehow, they all highly doubted it, but running on equal parts desperation and delusion, they had no choice but to hope Alexei was right. They were all still thinking about what to put in their will when suddenly, Alexei threw himself onto the green cushions and Ava’s eyes widened in horror.
“Get up before you ruin it, you piece of log!”
Walker snapped his fingers. “Wait—no. That’s the point!”
Alexei blinked at him from the cushions. “What point?”
“If it looks like we’ve already been using it,” Walker continued, “maybe she won’t question it. It’ll feel normal!”
“That is not how normal works,” Ava refuted.
Before Walker could defend his logic, the elevator chimed from down the hall.
Every one of them froze like a deer in front of bright headlights.
The silence that followed felt far louder than the faint city noise drifting in from the terrace. Ava’s gaze darted to the green loveseat, then to the suspicious tarp-covered pile by the doors. Bucky looked toward the hallway. Alexei’s mouth fell open.
They had been counting on more time—time to invent a believable explanation, time to agree on who was at fault, time to get rid of the ashes before Yelena saw them. Apparently, time had other plans as always when it came to them.
Walker grabbed Alexei by the arm and hauled him upright. “Act natural.”
Then, in what was perhaps the least natural decision anyone had made that evening, Walker promptly dropped onto the green loveseat and stretched out across it like he’d owned it for months.
Ava stared at him in disbelief.
“Are you taking the piss? You’re going to draw more attention to it! I’m surrounded by idiots!”
Walker lifted his head from the cushions. “I’m blending in.”
Ava could feel an oncoming headache that was going to make her regret ever deciding to stay rather than phasing and disappearing the first chance she got. “You’re lounging on a brand-new green couch in the exact spot where Yelena’s yellow one was two hours ago.”
Bucky looked at the terrace doors, then back at Walker. “She’s right. Get up.”
The sound of approaching footsteps echoed from the hallway.
Alexei whispered, panicked, “Maybe we say couch was always green?”
Ava rounded on him. “That is somehow even worse. Just don’t say anything at all!”
The massive A logo at the far end of the common room began to rotate with a low mechanical hum. Everyone went rigid, like they were ready to face—as Yelena liked to call it—a “big potato” level problem.
The doors slid apart, and Bob stepped through first, balancing an alarming number of pizza boxes against his chest, a box of beer and soda beneath and two bags on top filled with all sorts of chip varieties.
“Hey,” he greeted them casually. “We’re back with dinner!”
Yelena followed a beat later; her attention fixed on her phone as she typed something out.
Every person in the room adopted an expression of pure, painstakingly innocent nonchalance.
Bucky straightened beside the terrace doors with one hand shoved into his pocket while the other subtly nudged the fire extinguisher beneath the newly bought couch. Alexei stood too still beside the new loveseat, smiling in a way that looked less friendly and more like he’d been caught smuggling something through customs. Ava crossed her arms and tried to look irritated rather than terrified.
Walker, meanwhile, decided to approach them head-on.
“Hey, y’all!” he called, far too brightly. “Back already?”
Ava nearly smacked him.
Y’all?
Since when did John Walker say y’all?
He sounded like a man attempting to impersonate himself after watching a terrible movie about normal people. Bob stopped halfway into the room. His eyebrows pulled together as he looked from Walker to the others.
No one missed the way his eyes swept over the couch for a second only.
“Uh…y’all?” he repeated.
“Yeah, you know…you all. Never heard of it before, man?” he asked, chuckling humorlessly.
Bob blinked. “I’ve heard of it.”
“Great,” Walker said quickly. “Then we’re all caught up.”
Behind Bob, Yelena finally looked up from her phone.
“I’m going to shower and call it a night,” she grumbled as Bob laid a kiss at the top of her temples just before she stepped around him and the stack of pizza boxes. “You people can fight over toppings like children without me.”
“I’ll be up soon,” Bob chimed in.
Walker watched Yelena disappear toward their living quarters, then exhaled through his nose before turning back to Bob. “What crawled up her ass? No offense, Bob. And, uh… I guess Alexei.”
Alexei, who had already relieved Bob of half the pizza boxes, glanced over his shoulder. “What?”
“Never mind,” Walker muttered, rolling his eyes.
Once food is involved, he should have known the Red Guardian wouldn’t be paying attention. Alexei shrugged and carried the boxes toward the kitchen counter, where he immediately began opening them and stuffing his mouth full.
Disgusting.
Bob’s expression softened as he looked down the hallway Yelena had taken.
“Valentina called while we were having dinner. Said there was an emergency she needed Yelena to handle, so…” He gave a small, helpless shrug. “Yeah. I told her I didn’t mind at all but…she hates being pulled away when we finally have a quiet night to ourselves.”
Thank fuck Yelena didn’t notice her beloved couch was destroyed.
They’re all certain it would have been the final nail in the coffin.
“Bob?” Yelena’s voice called from farther down the hall.
“Coming, Lena!” Bob called back. “Anyway, figured I’d get pizza for… y’all. Have a good night.”
“Night,” Ava said quickly.
“Good night, Bob,” Bucky added.
“Night-night,” Alexei called around a mouthful of crust.
Walker offered an overly cheerful wave. “Night.”
Bob smiled uncertainly, then headed after Yelena.
The second he was out of earshot, Ava whipped around to face Walker.
“Holy shit. I can’t believe it worked.”
Walker’s smug grin returned instantly. “What did I say?”
Bucky glanced at the new couch. “I think it’s only a matter of time before Yelena realizes it.”
“Not if we keep gaslighting them,” Walker said, entirely too confident.
Ava’s mouth fell open. “You cannot just—”
“Oh, wait.”
Bob’s voice cut through the room, and everyone stiffened, turning to him as he came back and stopped at the hallway entrance. Slowly, he turned back around, his eyes narrowing at the common room.
“What’s up?” Walker asked, hoping he couldn’t hear how fast his heart was thumping.
“I thought something looked off.”
Alexei looked up from the kitchen counter, a slice of pizza halfway to his mouth.
“What are you talking about, Bob?”
Bob chuckled under his breath and walked toward the green loveseat.
“Really? I’m not dumb,” he mused as Walker sat up straighter. Ava felt her stomach drop alongside Alexei and Bucky when Bob reached the couch…then continued to pick up the throw blanket that had been left draped across his usual spot.
He folded it once, neatly, and placed it back over the arm of the green velvet loveseat.
“There, that’s much better,” Bob said, satisfied. The room remained dead silent, and it was suspicious enough that he glanced back at each of them, brows knitting together. “What? Is everything okay?”
Walker’s smile looked painful. “Nothing, man. Yeah, uh…everything’s fine.”
Bob held Walker’s gaze for another second, clearly unconvinced, but eventually just smiled.
“Okay,” he said slowly. “If you say so.”
“Yep,” Walker answered, popping the little ‘p’ at the end that somehow made him look more guilty. Thankfully, Bob didn’t notice as he brushed past them toward the hallway, humming quietly to himself as he went. Ava let out the breath she’d been holding.
Walker sank into the common room’s shared couch, looking victorious.
Alexei reached for another slice of pizza.
Then Bob stopped.
He turned around one last time, his expression almost apologetic.
“For the record,” he said, “I didn’t like the yellow couch that much.”
The room fell silent once more while Walker’s mouth dropped open. Ava stared at Bob in open horror. Bucky went completely still, and even Alexei lowered his pizza slice. Bob gave them a small, knowing smile before continuing down the hallway.
The second he disappeared around the corner, Ava slowly turned to the others.
“Oh, we are so dead.”
For a week straight, the rest of the team was waiting for the other boot to drop.
Every time Yelena entered the common room, conversation died immediately.
Walker would sit up too fast from wherever he was lounging, Ava would suddenly find something very important to do on her phone, and Bucky would stare at the wall with the strained focus of someone waiting for it to explode. Alexei would start scouring the fridge for something to feed to his daughter.
But it seemed Bob never said a word to Yelena about it.
And if he did? She never said a word.
As a matter of fact, it seemed that she never even noticed the new furniture.
She walked past it on Monday morning with a cup of coffee in one hand and a scowl aimed at her phone. On Tuesday, she dropped a jacket over the back of the newly bought loveseat without looking. Wednesday night, she sat on the edge of it while complaining to the team—and nobody breathed until she stood again.
By Thursday, Walker had started to believe they might actually get away with it.
“See?” he whispered smugly as Yelena disappeared down the hall to grab her laptop. “What did I tell you? She doesn’t even notice it with how nicely it blended in with the rest of the furniture. Shit, we should have done this earlier.”
Ava gave him a flat look.
“Or she noticed the moment she walked in and is waiting until she can ruin your life properly.”
Walker’s smile faded.
From the kitchen, Alexei looked up from his bowl of cereal. “This is very Yelena thing to do.”
Bucky nodded once. “Yeah.”
By the time Friday rolled around, the entire team had already started to forget about the incident until the four of them came back from a gruesome field mission and found Yelena staring at the green furniture with her arms folded, head tilted slightly to one side.
The four of them stopped dead in the doorway.
Walker still had dried blood on the side of his jaw. Ava’s hair was damp with sweat and rain. Bucky’s metal hand hung stiffly at his side, while Alexei had somehow acquired a tear across the shoulder of his uniform.
None of it mattered because she was looking at the couch.
“Oh, no,” Ava breathed.
Walker’s eyes widened. “Nobody say anything, especially you, Alexei.”
“I was not going to say anything,” Alexei whispered.
“You always say something,” Bucky muttered.
Yelena crouched in front of the couch and began feeling around beneath the seat cushions.
Walker looked faint. “She knows.”
“She definitely knows,” Ava muttered.
Bucky’s jaw tightened. “Just let her find out. We can’t keep doing this.”
Alexei made the sign of the cross over his chest. “Goodbye, everybody. It has been an honor.”
Yelena shoved one cushion aside. Then another. Her brow furrowed in concentration as she reached deeper into the seam between the cushions. For one agonizing second, nobody moved, confused of what was going on—
Then her face lit up.
“Aha!”
She pulled her phone from beneath the seat cushion and held it up.
“Uh…Yelena? What are you doing?” Ava finally summoned the courage to ask.
Yelena snorted, rolling her eyes, and then held out her tablet. “What does it look like I’m doing? Finding my tablet. This is why I like this couch. It eats my things, but it always gives them back at the end.”
The room went completely still.
“Uh…” Walker trailed off, didn’t even know how to reply to that.
Yelena glanced between their stricken faces. “What?”
Walker blinked rapidly. “Nothing. Yeah. That makes total sense.”
Yelena gave him an odd look, then tucked her tablet under her arms.
“Well, I am going to shower. Do not eat all the good snacks this time.”
The second she disappeared around the corner, Walker’s knees nearly gave out.
Ava grabbed the back of the new loveseat to steady herself. “I cannot believe that worked.”
Bucky stared after Yelena. “It didn’t work.”
“It absolutely worked,” Walker whispered.
“No,” Bucky said, turning toward the green couch. “She just hasn’t noticed yet.”
At this point, they all prayed that by the time she did notice, the whole thing would be so far behind them that Yelena would have bigger, more immediate reasons to be furious—and, ideally, someone else to blame.
A month passed, and eventually, the incident became something no one mentioned.
The scorched remains of Yelena’s favorite couch had been disposed of under the cover of night. The green velvet replacement had settled into the common room so naturally that it no longer looked new, especially after Alexei spilled borscht on one cushion and Walker left a faint boot mark on the armrest.
Even Ava and Bucky had stopped glaring at it every time they walked by.
Most importantly, Yelena had never brought it up.
So the team let themselves forget that they had accidentally reduced her beloved, hideous, threadbare, memory-filled yellow loveseat to ash. They forgot the smoke alarm. The fire extinguisher powder. The frantic furniture-store trip. The tarp by the terrace doors.
They forgot the Molotov cocktail.
Until one quiet Sunday afternoon, when Yelena walked into the common room with Cucumber bundled like a small spoiled brat in her arms—
And stopped right in front of the forest-green loveseat.
Yelena stood there for a lengthy moment, silent and still. It was long enough that the team started to sweat, especially when she clicked her tongue, crossing her arms while she slowly turned to face the room.
“Something’s different,” she affirmed.
Across the common room, the team shifted almost in unison.
“What do you mean?” Walker asked, the first to recover in finding his voice.
“The couch,” Yelena slipped.
“What? What couch?” he asked.
“The one I’m looking at,” she stated.
“Oh, that couch? Lena, it’s been here forever,” Alexei answered, laughing nervously even though he was starting to sweat profusely. “Always look sophisticated and beautiful and…like expensive cucumbers!”
Everyone turned to stare at him while Yelena raised one eyebrow. “Really?”
Yelena’s gaze slid back to the couch; her expression remained unreadable.
Ava lasted approximately three seconds.
“Okay, fine,” she snapped, throwing both hands into the air. “We got a new couch when you weren’t looking, all right? The yellow one caught fire, and it was Walker’s fault if you need to know who to tase.”
Walker stared at her. “What? Oh, fuck you. It was not all on me!”
“And Alexei,” Ava added immediately.
Alexei jerked upright, eyes wide. “Ghost?”
“There,” Ava said, pointing between them. “Those two.”
Walker rounded on her. “Way to crack under pressure.”
“Oh, fuck off,” Ava shot back. “I knew you or Alexei were going to confess eventually and somehow blame it on me if I didn’t say something first. You’re just upset that I was faster than you both.”
Bucky lifted a hand from his place at the kitchen island.
“For the record, I had no part in starting it.”
Walker’s eyes went wide. “Are you all seriously throwing me under the damn bus?”
“You threw the Molotov,” Ava reminded him.
“After Alexei showed me how to light it!”
“I showed you because you asked!” Alexei protested. “I did not think you would throw it at Lena’s ugly yellow couch. Inside the apartment. Like insane American action man! It was supposed to be outside! Outside!”
“I thought it was indestructible! You guys—”
Suddenly, Yelena began to laugh, and everyone immediately stopped arguing.
Walker squinted his eyes at her in confusion. Ava’s accusatory finger slowly lowered. Bucky’s expression shifted from resignation to confusion, while Alexei squinted at his daughter as though trying to determine whether she had finally lost her mind.
And all the while, Yelena pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead, shaking her head.
“Uh…everything okay?”
They all turned to see Bob walking towards them, a book in his hand as he took everything in.
“Oh, it’s nothing Bob,” she said at last, breathless, “And by the way, I knew.”
Walker blinked. “You—what?”
“I knew,” Yelena repeated, looking almost delighted by their horror. “Since the first day.”
Ava stared at her. “You knew the entire time?”
“Of course I knew.” Yelena gestured toward the forest-green loveseat. “My couch was bright yellow! This is green. You all thought I would not notice the horrible smoke smell as soon as we came in?”
Alexei looked offended on everyone's behalf. “But you sat on it.”
“Yes, so?” Yelena said patiently. “What else am I supposed to sit on? The floor?”
Bucky frowned. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
Yelena’s smile sharpened as she tilted her head to the side. “What do you mean why? Because watching all of you panic every time I came into the room was much more entertaining. Very amusing, actually.”
“But…didn’t you like it?” Alexei asked, sounding genuinely wounded.
Yelena blinked at him. “What?”
“The original couch we accidentally set on fire,” Ava clarified, gesturing sharply at the green velvet loveseat. “You told us you found it outside your old apartment in the rain and kept it because you felt bad for it.”
Yelena’s brows drew together. “Did I?”
Bucky looked at her. “Yeah. You even named it. Sofiya.”
Yelena’s expression shifted as though she were searching through old memories. Then her face brightened as she snapped her fingers, falling onto the couch and settling Cucumber down next to her.
“Oh. Yes. It is sort of ringing a bell now.” She waved a hand. “I made it up.”
For a beat, nobody spoke.
Then, all at once: “What?”
Yelena shrugged. “Yeah. I stole it from Kate Bishop’s apartment because I thought it was funny. There was no sentimental value. It was very ugly, and I took it because I wanted it to be an eyesore for everyone.”
Walker stared at her, visibly struggling to catch up. “You—wait. What?”
“She was out of town,” Yelena continued, entirely unbothered while gently petting the top of the guinea pig’s head. “And she has many things. I thought she would not miss one ugly couch. She did notice, by the way.”
“You stole someone’s couch,” Ava repeated slowly.
“Borrowed,” Yelena corrected. “For a very long time. Now it’s gone. Oh well.”
Alexei pressed a hand to his chest. “Lena. Your poor father was preparing to die.”
“I know,” Yelena said, smiling.
Walker pointed toward the green loveseat.
“So we risked getting murdered for a couch you stole as a joke?”
“You did not risk getting murdered,” Yelena said, crossing her legs. “Maybe a little punched..." she trailed off and then sighed. "Okay, I lied. And tased. And probably stabbed, but not to death."
Bucky’s mouth twitched.
Yelena ran a hand over the green velvet armrest, inspecting it with far more approval than any of them had expected. “But you all did a good job picking this color. I like it. Very soft and comfortable. It’s nice, right, Bob?”
Bob, who had been standing quietly, was startled. “Uh—yeah? Yeah. It looks great.”
Ava stared at Yelena. “So you…knew and decided to just…continue playing stupid?”
“Mm.” Yelena’s smile turned smug. “Wasn’t it fun?”
“No,” Alexei said immediately. “It was very stressful, Lena!"
“Good.” Yelena patted the cushion once. “Maybe it will teach all of you a lesson.”
Walker crossed his arms. “What lesson is that?”
Yelena looked at each of them, smiling widely.
“Don’t think you can get away with anything when it comes to me.”