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Bob had never thought much about glasses.
They were just glasses.
Little frames perched on people’s noses, worn by plenty of people nowadays to see better. Growing up in Florida, just a smidge under half the class in his middle school had worn them. Some kids had round ones, some had thick plastic frames in bright colors, and one boy he had long forgotten the name of had worn transition lenses that turned dark outside and insisted they made him look like a spy.
And if you compared glasses to the technology and the things that he had been introduced to after becoming the unofficial official member of the New Avengers, they were practically prehistoric.
Bucky had a metal arm that could probably crush a car. It had enough strength to tear through steel, enough precision to field-strip a gun in seconds, and enough sensors that he could apparently feel differences in temperature through the metal fingers.
Then there was Ava, who could phase through walls without making a sound. Her suit had stabilizers that kept her physical body tethered to the world, and her weapon skills were second to none.
Walker had the shield.
Sure, it was bent into a taco shell and was not exactly the same material as the current Captain America’s, but it was still useful and strong. It had taken hits that would have shattered normal riot shields and protected the others.
Alexei had his Red Guardian suit.
Alexei had explained its capabilities three separate times, each version more impressive than the last. It could withstand gunfire. It could regulate temperature. It had reinforced gauntlets. It had, according to Alexei, “the most handsome Soviet engineering ever made.”
Finally, Yelena had Widow Bites.
They were compact shock weapons fitted around her wrists, sleek and deadly and capable of sending blue electrical bursts snapping through the air. Bob had seen her use them to take down an enemy without actually using her gun. She had dropped three-armed men in less than ten seconds, then complained that one of them had stepped on her boot.
And the kicker?
None of them wore glasses.
So Bob did not understand why he had stopped in the doorway of the team briefing room like someone had hit pause on him. Yelena sat at the long table, one boot hooked over the opposite knee. There was a tablet in one hand, and the other was preoccupied with several packets perched on her nose.
A pair of thin black glasses balanced on her nose.
It was enough to make him stare and almost rub his eyes to confirm what he was seeing.
Almost.
At first, she didn’t look up.
Why would she, when it was close to three in the morning?
The only reason why he was up was that he had woken to the sound of the rain pattering outside, and then he couldn’t fall asleep shortly after that. Because the roof always leaked when he was locked in the attic whenever his parents fought.
And the sound had, to this very day, made him too anxious to sleep.
Now, he quietly watched over Yelena.
Her brows were drawn together as she scrolled through whatever file Mel had sent on behalf of Val. The glasses rested low enough that he could see her eyes above them when she glanced at the screen while clicking her tongue, annoyed.
She looked different but not unrecognizable.
No, of course, Bob knew her.
He knew the soft and rounded oval shape and the pale little scar just under her chin. He knew the way she tapped her thumb against things when she was impatient. He knew she liked her coffee sweet and that she always, always stole the good blankets from the common room.
But the glasses made something in his brain stutter.
Truthfully, he had no idea how long he had been staring at him until finally, Yelena lifted her gaze, her forest-green eyes meeting his through the clear lenses of her spectacles. And then, with horrifying slowness, she pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose.
Bob’s entire body went hot for reasons he was not emotionally equipped to unpack.
“Hi, Bob,” she greeted him with a small smile as she reached for her cup of chamomile tea, which Bob knew—because he had watched the entire exchange from the kitchen doorway—had been stolen directly from Ava’s hands a few hours earlier. “Couldn’t sleep?”
He swallowed. “Uh…”
Yelena blinked at him, tilting her head slightly. “Are you okay?”
“You wear glasses,” he stated, dumbfounded.
For a second, her expression stayed blank.
Then she huffed out a laugh, quiet and warm.
“Mhm. Yes, I do,” she said, one brow arching. “Very observant of you.”
Bob’s face burned, realizing how that sounded. “S-since when?”
Yelena glanced down at the document again, nudging the glasses higher with one finger as she let out a reluctant sigh. “Since I realized I was squinting at tiny words every night and getting headaches from them.”
“Oh.”
“I am not getting younger, Bob,” she added, far too casually.
He stared at her. “You’re not old.”
Her expression softened, just a little. “That is sweet. Also, very incorrect.”
“I didn’t mean—” He rubbed the back of his neck and gingerly took a step inside. “I just meant you don’t seem like you need glasses.”
“Well, apparently my eyes disagree.” She tipped her head toward the screen. “They’re reading glasses. Only for close-up things. Bucky says if I keep pretending I can read tiny print in bad lighting, I will make it worse.”
“Bucky said that?”
Yelena’s mouth twitched. “I know. He kind of fits a brooding hen, no?”
Bob let out a small laugh as he lowered himself into the chair across from her. The room was mostly dark except for one light, its yellow light catching on the rims of her glasses, and he realized it wasn’t black but a dark green that made her eyes seem so much more vivid.
“He actually took away my phone once,” Bob admitted. “Doom-scrolling.”
“I would too,” she chuckled, placing the tablet and packet onto the table.
“What are you reading, anyway?”
“Val nonsense.” Her nose scrunched. “Mel sent me a file with over sixty pages of it.”
“Sixty?”
“Sixty,” Yelena repeated grimly. “And somehow it is all very important but also says nothing.”
“That sounds…impressive.”
“It is evil, actually.” She clicked her tongue and flicked her finger down the tablet again, scowling. “I think she pays someone to make simple things sound complicated on purpose to torment me. But let’s not raise my blood pressure at night thinking about that vile woman. You okay, Bob?”
Bob smiled gently. “Yeah. I couldn’t sleep.”
“Is it nightmares?”
The word came softer than the rest, and Bob caught the worry beneath it immediately. He knew she was asking because she was worried about him from the bottom of her heart. Because nightmares could be detrimental now with his…powers.
Sometimes he woke with that cold, empty pull already spreading through him, dragging him somewhere deep and dark and distant. Somewhere no one could follow and where he thinks it might be best to end it all because he’s not worth it.
It had happened before.
And Yelena had been there the entire time even though he told her over and over again that she didn’t need to stay with him. Yet stubbornly, she’d refuse because, as she reminded him, she promised that they stuck together from now on.
His chest tightened, and he shook his head.
“No,” he answered. “No nightmares. Just one of those nights.”
Yelena nodded, her mouth pulling into a sympathetic line. “Very annoying, yes?”
“Very.” He glanced down at his hands, then back at her. “But… at least I have good company.”
For a moment, she simply looked at him. The concern in her expression eased into something that always made his heart thump wildly. Then she pushed her glasses back up her nose and turned toward the tablet with a determined little sigh.
“Let me wrap up the rest,” Yelena affirmed, tapping the screen, “and maybe we can go down for more tea. And midnight snack. And something to watch until we’re tired enough to call it the night?”
Bob perked up despite himself at the thought of spending a few more quiet hours with her—just the two of them, tucked away in the common room with the TV while the rest of their team slept.
“Let me guess, mac and cheese?”
Yelena’s smile widened. “Is there a better midnight snack that will make you full enough to be drowsy? It’s the best food there is, I swear. Oh, I think there is also leftover grenki that Alexei made during lunch.”
“Sure,” Bob said, trying not to sound as pleased as he felt. “I can wait.”
“Good.” She reached for her tea again, taking a sip before narrowing her eyes at her task in front of her. “Because if I do not finish this tonight, Bucky will spend all of tomorrow hovering over my shoulder and asking if I have done it yet.”
“That does sound like a headache.”
The only response he got was her snorting.
He nodded, determined to give her the quiet she needed, so he excused himself to retrieve the book he had been reading earlier before sleep had abandoned him—something he’d left face-down on the arm of the couch, a thriller with a bent corner marking his page which Walker recommended—and opened it in his lap.
For a while, he tried.
He really, really tried to read.
As a matter of fact, he read the same paragraph three times, then four.
And then by the fifth, he knew he was in trouble.
Across from him, Yelena scrolled through the report with the kind of fierce concentration that made a little crease appear between her brows. Every so often, she clicked her tongue under her breath or paused to type something into the margin. The overhead light cast a soft pool of light over her, catching on the clear rims of her glasses whenever she moved.
When Bob realized he had been staring, he swiftly stared down at his book.
Then, inevitably, back up.
It was just glasses. A simple thing. A practical thing. They did not change who she was. She was still Yelena: sharp-eyed, witty, impatient, and made everything so much brighter without even trying. Always complaining even though she’d always get things done at the end of the day and always acting like she didn’t care nearly as much as she did.
But somehow, they made her look different.
Softer, maybe?
Not weaker—God, never that. Just quieter around the edges. More ordinary in a way that made his chest ache, like he had been handed some small, private glimpse of her that nobody else got to see.
He couldn’t stop staring.
Yelena pushed the glasses up her nose again, frowning at a section of text. The motion was absentminded, practiced enough to suggest she had been wearing them longer than he realized.
Bob’s eyes dropped guiltily for heaven knows how many times to the page before she could catch him. Yet no matter how hard he tried, the words blurred together almost immediately, and he found himself looking back.
Even after living together for almost a year, there’s still so much to learn about Yelena.
When she finally finished—Bob considered himself lucky that he hadn’t been caught gawking at her yet again for what was probably the hundredth time tonight—she stretched with a tired exhale and carefully slipped the glasses from her face.
“There,” she said. “Nonsense defeated. Let’s eat. That was so long, I was starving.”
She folded the spectacles and placed them on top of the packet, neat and deliberate. Without them, she looked immediately more familiar—more like the Yelena that Bob knew. And yet, somehow, that did not help.
Because all he could see was her with them.
The faint reflection of the screen over her lenses. The way she had looked up at him through them beforehand, green eyes steady and soft. The absentminded push at the bridge of her nose. The delicate frames resting there as if they had always belonged to her.
It had been such a small thing.
An ordinary thing.
But it stayed with him anyway, lodged somewhere behind his ribs and burning bright in the back of his mind for the rest of the night, no matter how many times he tried to bury the thought beneath easier, safer things.
The next time Bob found himself standing awkwardly alongside his teammates beneath the blinding lights of a press conference—new Avengers, apparently, meant cameras and questions and people shouting over one another—he couldn’t help looking at Yelena.
She stood a few feet away, composed as ever, answering a reporter’s question with a flat sort of politeness that made Ava cough into her arm to mask the snort and Walker duck his head, his mouth twitching as he pretended to adjust the cuff of his sleeve.
All the while, Bucky looked ready to take the microphone away from the reporter—or possibly Yelena—before either of them made the situation worse. Alexei, as usual, was trying to chime in with unnecessary comments that only riled up the crowd further.
Bob should have been listening.
Instead, he noticed the faintest sheen over the curve of Yelena’s eyes. It was nearly invisible, the kind of detail nobody else in the room could possibly have caught beneath the camera flashes and stage lights.
But he could.
His powers had changed what he could see.
Sometimes it was useful. Sometimes it was too much.
This time, it made him blink.
Contacts.
Yelena wore contact lenses?
He stared harder and realized that Yelena was, indeed, wearing contact lenses.
For one embarrassing, unhelpful second, his mind went completely blank.
Contacts.
She had glasses. She wore contacts. She had apparently been walking around with both options available to her this entire time, and he had known absolutely nothing about it. The realization kept circling itself, refusing to settle into anything reasonable.
Yelena shifted slightly as another question came from the crowd, and Bob forced his eyes away before someone noticed. He fixed his attention on the nearest camera instead, trying to look like a normal person who had not just discovered an entirely new, deeply distracting fact about her.
It did not work very well.
By the time the moderator announced the end of the press conference, Bob felt wrung out.
Why? Well, he wouldn’t even be able to answer you that.
“Thank you, everyone, for your time in coming out today,” the woman said over the growing noise of the room. “Mr. Barnes and Ms. Belova will remain for a few final questions. The rest of the team will be escorted out.”
Bucky’s shoulders dropped with visible resignation.
Yelena, somehow, only looked mildly inconvenienced.
Bob followed Ava, Walker, and Alexei toward the steps at the side of the stage. Alexei was still waving at the crowd like they had come specifically to see him, while Ava muttered something about needing food before she committed a crime, while Walker snickered at that.
As for Bob? He made it halfway down the stairs before he looked back.
Yelena was already turning toward another reporter, her expression sharp and unreadable beneath the bright lights. Even from the edge of the stage, she carried herself with the steady, unshakable confidence of someone born to lead, even if she would probably deny it the second anyone said so aloud.
Just as her eyes caught the flash of a camera, Bob couldn’t help but think about her contacts.
She wore contacts.
The team was ushered through a side corridor and into the breakroom, where the event staff had laid out the usual post-conference spread: bottled water, coffee, tea, little sandwiches, fruit, pastries, and enough crackers and cheese to feed a much larger group.
Though then again, when you had three super soldiers on the team and one who used energy to phase to and from at will, enough food was a very flexible concept.
Bob drifted toward the table on instinct soon after the rest of his team practically ravaged it, snatching up the few remaining crackers, slices of cheese, and a small cluster of grapes before occupying the two tables.
He made himself a small plate with crackers, sliced cheddar, and a handful of green grapes, then turned and, before he could talk himself out of it, sat beside Ava at one of the tables. Across the room, Walker had apparently said something to Alexei that made him bark out a laugh. Alexei then slapped him enthusiastically between the shoulder blades, hard enough to jostle Walker’s drink.
Yeah, Bob wasn’t sitting next to them, but also, he had a mission.
For a moment, he picked at the edge of a cracker and then decided to push through the strange knot in his stomach and get it over with.
“H-hey, Ava?”
Ava glanced over while chewing a mini sandwich. “Yeah? What’s up?”
“Did you ever, um…” He swallowed, feeling his ears burning red. “Did you ever notice Yelena wears glasses?”
Ava paused.
“Glasses?” Her brow furrowed. “Yelena wears glasses?”
Shit.
“N-nevermind,” he stammered. ‘Forget—”
“No, wait.” Ava set down her sandwich to show her undivided attention. Somehow, that only seemed to make him more nervous as she tilted her head to the side curiously. “Since when does Yelena wear glasses?”
“I didn’t realize she did either,” Bob asserted, tapping a small nibble of his cracker. “The other night, I couldn’t sleep, and I bumped into her reading on her tablet. She had glasses on and…she also was wearing contacts today.”
“Huh.” Ava leaned back in her chair, considering that. “Well. We’re not exactly getting younger.”
Bob looked at her carefully. “Do you wear glasses?”
“No.”
“Oh.”
Before Ava could elaborate—or maybe even ask why he was asking in the first place—Walker dropped into the chair opposite them with a plate piled high with miniature sandwiches and just about everything else imaginable besides fruits.
Bob spared a glance and realized Alexei had gone to get his second plate. It seemed he took the opportunity to claim the last open seat before Alexei could return and launch into another loud explanation of the nutritional value of everything on his plate.
“What’re we talking about?” he asked.
Ava immediately grabbed a couple of chips and threw them at him.
“God, you are unbelievably nosy.”
Walker didn’t even bat an eye, plucking one and popping it into his mouth. “And yet, you keep having conversations in my vicinity like you want me to join in. If you ask me, that feels like a you problem. So spill.”
Ava rolled her eyes. “Apparently, Yelena wears glasses.”
Walker stopped mid-chew.
Then his gaze slid, very slowly, toward Bob.
“Oh,” he said, grin spreading. “We’re talking about Bob’s crush.”
Bob dropped his entire cracker onto his lap. “What—w-what are you talking about?”
“What do you mean what do I mean?” Walker quipped.
“I—I don’t have a crush!”
“Girlfriend then?” Walker took another bite of his sandwich, entirely unconvinced. Then he turned toward Alexei, who was still standing at the refreshment table with a coffee the size of his head. “Hey, Alexei! Is your daughter a four-eyes?”
Bob promptly paled in horror, especially when Alexei looked over, visibly confused.
“Who?”
“Yelena, who else?” Walker snickered, as though it were obvious. “She a four-eyes freak?”
Alexei’s face immediately darkened. “My daughter is no freak!”
Walker held up a hand. “No, no, it’s a saying in America! Does she wear glasses?”
Alexei blinked, and then his expression smoothed out.
“Ah. Sometimes,” he answered, taking another sip from his coffee after returning to his seat. “Only reading glasses, I think. Tiny little things. She says she does not need them, but then she squints like an angry kitten at her paperwork. My Lena is adorable no matter what!”
“More like an adorably repulsive gremlin,” Walker mumbled.
Ava only rolled her eyes before turning to Bob, smiling slowly.
“So, I guess your Lena does.”
Bob’s brain, unhelpfully, supplied the image immediately, and he turned even pinker. It still didn’t explain the contact lenses, though. But after Walker’s grin and Ava’s knowing smile, he was far too embarrassed to ask another question.
It was a mystery, and if there was one thing about Bob, it was that he was terrible at letting questions go unanswered. For the past few days, he couldn’t help but notice that it was not often that Yelena wore contacts.
And when she didn’t, she had no difficulty reading the tiny text on mission briefings projected across the conference room or scanning the small print on restaurant menu boards from halfway across the room.
It only made the whole thing more confusing.
They ended up in the common room one evening, Yelena stretched along the couch with her head resting against Bob’s lap. At her quiet request, his fingers moved through her hair in slow, careful strokes, smoothing through the strands and occasionally catching on the soft ends near her shoulder.
Bob honestly had no idea how that particular arrangement had started.
Months ago, it had been some compromise when both stumbled into each other wandering around the Watchtower at night when neither could sleep. Yelena suggested watching something, and somehow, she had ended up half-curled against him while he played with her hair.
Neither of them had commented on it afterward.
The next week, it happened again.
Now, it was normal.
Or as normal as anything could be with their team.
It always earned knowing looks from Ava and Walker, the kind that made Bob’s ears go hot immediately. He had no idea whether Yelena noticed them or chose to ignore them. Once, Walker had made some comment Bob had been too flustered to process fully, and Yelena had thrown her baton at him without even lifting her head from his lap.
Walker had ducked just in time.
Alexei, meanwhile, seemed entirely unaware of the implications.
The one time he had joined them in the common room, he had squinted at Yelena draped against Bob and said, with genuine offense, “Lena, why you lean on Bob? Your father is right here!”
Yelena had lifted one leg and planted her foot squarely on his thigh.
That seemed to placate her father enough.
“So…what are we watching today?” Bob asked, staring down as Yelena flicked through the endless catalog of options. Even with her attention on the screen, he found himself wondering whether she had tucked her glasses away somewhere nearby.
Did she have spare spectacles around the Watchtower?
“Oh, I forgot about this. I watched this when I was little!”
Bob had looked at the screen, then at the very prominent R rating displayed beneath the title.
“You…watched this as a kid?”
She nodded, sitting up and reaching for another piece of her taco.
“Mm, Natasha loved scary movies and would make us watch at night when we thought Alexei and Melina were asleep. She said it was very important cultural education. All it ended up with is me crawling into her bed to sleep at night. Why? Do you not like scary movies?”
Bob did not, technically, like scary movies.
He didn’t like the jump scares, or the awful music that warned you something terrible was about to happen, or the way they stayed lodged in his thoughts long after the credits rolled. He especially didn’t like watching people make choices that any reasonable person would know were bad.
But Yelena was looking at him with that small, expectant tilt to her head.
She had mentioned Natasha so casually, like the memory was something warm she could still hold in her hands. And this movie—this ridiculous, R-rated horror movie—had been part of that.
Something she had loved when she was younger.
“I’m fine with it,” he said, a little too quickly.
Yelena’s face brightened. “Great. We watch that, then!”
Before he could reconsider, she selected it and settled with leaning snugly against the side of his body now, apparently perfectly content to spend the next two hours terrifying him. He practically succumbed to such a fate, slowly weaving his fingers through her hair as she hated and then…
An idea slowly began to form.
“I’m actually going to get a seltzer before the movie starts. Do you want anything, Lena?”
Yelena hummed, considering it.
“Yeah. A beer is good.” She held up one finger. “That is my one for the week. Very sad.”
Bob smiled a little as he pushed himself up. “You’re doing pretty good, though.”
Yelena glanced at him, her expression going briefly soft before she scoffed.
“Obviously.” Then she looked down at her plate. “Oh, and hot sauce. These tacos are not even spicy.”
He chuckled. “Right. Hot sauce.”
The kitchen lights were off, but Bob didn’t need them. He found the seltzer with ease, then Yelena’s beer, and finally the hot sauce in the door of the refrigerator. The bottle was about half full.
He stared at it for a moment.
Then, before he could overthink it, he stepped back into the doorway and threw it.
Not at her.
God, no, never at her.
Just above and to the side of her head, high enough that if she missed it, it would sail harmlessly past her. With one quick, effortless movement, she plucked the bottle from the air, fingers closing around it neatly before her eyes snapped over to him, brows furrowed.
All the while, Bob stood where he was, with a beer in one hand and the seltzer tucked in his arm, suddenly very aware of what he had just done as she tilted her head shortly after. “What was that, Bob?”
“I—I just was, uh…” He swallowed. “Testing your agility?”
God, what was wrong with him?
She’s not blind!
Even if her vision wasn’t exactly 20/20, she could probably still catch it.
It would just be blurry, you idiot!
Yelena stared at him.
Then she looked down at the hot sauce in her hand, back up at him.
“You threw a condiment at me to test my agility.”
“Not at you,” Bob said quickly. “Near you. Sort of.”
“You are very lucky that Kate Bishop had done that before,” she huffed, unscrewing the cap and drowning her tacos in a frankly alarming amount of hot sauce. “Now come on, I need my couch potato buddy, and you’re missing the fun part coming!”
Bob hurried back to the couch before she could say anything else, handing over her beer and settling into his place beside her. She immediately curled back against him as if the interruption had never happened, her shoulder warm against his ribs while the movie’s opening scene flickered across the screen.
Needless to say, she got the last laugh.
Not only had Bob’s ridiculous little test solved absolutely nothing about her vision, but he spent most of the movie too distracted by the weight of her against him—and by the occasional glimpse of her eyes in the blue television light—to follow what was happening properly.
The film did, however, give him something else to think about.
Because for the next two weeks, he found himself at her door after dark, knocking softly and asking if she wanted company. And each time, she’d laugh and open it wider for him, only for him to gawk at her in glasses.
Growing up, Bob had always had episodes for as long as he could remember.
There were highs where he’d feel powerful, like he could do anything, like the world had finally opened up and made room for him. Then there were the deep lows, when even getting out of bed felt impossible and the world seemed to shrink around him until there was no room to breathe.
Shortly after that, his memory went blank, and he wouldn’t remember what happened.
When he came to, the first thing Bob registered was the steady beep of a monitor.
The second was the antiseptic smell that told him he was at medbay, which was never a good sign. Not for someone who couldn’t be hurt, who could survive things that should have killed him, who had power enough to level a city on his worst day.
It only met one thing, and his stomach immediately turned as he tried to remember.
He quickly pushed himself upright, needed to find—
A hand pressed gently against his shoulder, easing him back down before he could manage more than a few inches.
“No. No, Bob. Stay.”
He turned his head, and that’s when he saw Yelena. She was sitting beside the bed in the hard plastic chair, still in her tactical uniform. Soot darkened her hair, and there were faint scratches along one cheek and near her jaw. Her glasses sat low on her nose, the lenses catching the dim blue glow of the monitors.
“What…what happened?” His voice came out rough.
Yelena’s expression didn’t change as she let out a soft sigh. “The Void got out.”
Bob winced, staring at the ceiling. “How bad?”
“Not as bad as it could have been.” Her voice was firm now, almost stern. “And nothing compared to the people you saved when that building collapsed. You helped minimize the casualties by a lot.”
His throat worked around the words. “And…the others?”
“Asleep. Or pretending to be asleep but probably hovering somewhere nearby until you wake up.” A faint smile touched her mouth. “Bucky is somewhere wandering around the halls. He said he is only checking the equipment, but he had come to check it six times.”
Bob let out a breath that almost became a laugh.
Then his eyes caught on her glasses again.
“You’re…” He blinked slowly. “You’re wearing glasses.”
For a second, Yelena looked caught off guard. Then she gave a quiet, disbelieving laugh. “Well, it is four in the morning, Bob. Anyone would need optical assistance to monitor you. I told you I’m not getting younger, you know.”
Only then did Bob really take her in: the soot in her hair, the way she still smelled of smoke and sweat, the circles under her eyes, but more importantly, her uniform was tattered around the edges.
“You’re hurt.”
“Small-potato stuff,” she dismissed, though she shifted in her chair like something ached. “The med team already looked at me and the others. We’re all fine, Bob. Really, we’ve all dealt with worse before.”
Somehow, that doesn’t make him feel any better, and he worked on swallowing and focusing on something other than blaming himself. “I…your glasses. They’re not the same glasses as before, Lena.”
Yelena tilted her head. “Really?”
“The reading ones. These are different.”
She paused, then answered quietly, “They’re hyperopic glasses.”
Bob frowned, tired enough that the thought slipped out before he could stop it.
“You also wear contacts.”
Yelena’s brows rose. “And how did you know that?”
He could tell that this wasn’t where Yelena had expected the conversation to go or where she thought it should go, not after everything that had happened. But he was tired. Tired in the deep, aching way that made the thought of revisiting the missing hours feel impossible. The Void, the damage, and finding out all by morning- he couldn’t look at any of it yet.
So instead, he focused on the small, ordinary mystery in front of him:
Her glasses, her contacts, the familiar shape of her face behind unfamiliar lenses.
“I noticed a few weeks ago,” he admitted. “When you all had to talk to reporters.”
She stared at him for a moment, then shook her head with a soft huff.
“Bob, you noticed that I’m wearing contact lenses?”
He looked down at the thin blanket over his lap. “I notice things about you and…it’s very cute.”
“Cute?” Yelena repeated, sounding almost offended. “Excuse you?”
Bob’s face went hot, and it was probably the first time—from her reaction—that someone had meant it from the very bottom of their heart and meant it. Which is crazy. He also knows that he’s standing, but there’s no going back on it now.
“Yeah. You’re…cute in glasses, Lena.”
“Is it cute that I can put a throwing knife through the center of a target from across the room?”
“Very much,” he chuckled and then slowly pushed himself up. Her expression shifted at once when she realized what he was doing. Her hand came out, ready to press him gently back against the pillows.
“Bob, no. You should—”
But he reached for her before she could finish.
His palm cupped the side of her face, careful against the faint scratches on her cheek. She went still beneath his touch, green eyes wide behind her glasses just as his thumb brushed the lower edge of one lens. Slowly, giving her every chance to pull away, he leaned closer until there was barely any space left between them.
“Can I?” he whispered.
For a moment, Yelena only stared at him.
Then she huffed, rolling her eyes as though he had asked the most ridiculous question imaginable. “You are my boyfriend, aren’t you?”
The words landed somewhere warm and breathless in his chest.
He didn’t think he could ever get tired of hearing them.
Then he closed the distance.
Yelena sighed into the kiss, one hand curling into the front of his shirt as she leaned into him. She tasted faintly of tea and something sweet, and his heart lurched hard enough that the monitor beside him immediately betrayed him with a faster, sharper rhythm.
He kissed her again anyway.
Somewhere between one breath and the next, he tugged her gently closer, until she was perched carefully in his lap, her arms sliding around his shoulders. Except the monitor sped up again, so he broke away long enough to rip the thing off him.
Yelena’s mouth twitched. “Bob.”
“It’s being really loud,” he muttered.
“It is doing its job.”
“I don’t like its job, and I'm feeling better after kissing you, I swear."
Needless to say, she gave him a look that said she believed exactly none of that. Still, she reached up, fingers hooking beneath the arm of her glasses as if to take them off so that they could continue.
But the next moment, he caught her wrist gently, making her still.
Then her eyes flicked from his hand to his face, and a slow, mischievous smile spread across her mouth.
“Oh,” she said. “Oh.”
Bob immediately regretted everything. “Lena—”
“You have a glasses thing, huh?” she mused.
His entire face went hot. “Lena—”
“You do,” she said, laughing now. “You have a glasses thing.”
“In my defense,” he said, trying very hard to sound reasonable, but he knew no matter what, she wasn’t going to be letting this go anytime soon. He had been caught red-handed, and now, he had to face the consequences. “I didn’t until I saw them on you.”
That stopped her.
For a brief moment, Yelena just looked at him, the teasing softening around the edges. Then she shook her head, a quiet laugh slipping out. “Bob…what am I going to do with you? You are so very hopeless, like a cute little puppy.”
“I don’t see you complaining,” he managed.
“Not at all,” Yelena said immediately as she shifted closer in his lap, one hand settling against his chest. “Now, if you are really feeling better and you actually mean it…maybe we should take a shower together, and I can keep the glasses o—”
She didn’t get to finish.
He was on his feet in an instant, lifting her easily into his arms despite her startled noise. Only then did she laugh, looping her arms around his neck while he carried her toward the medbay door.