Chapter Text
There are signs—subtle at first, but unmistakable once you know them—that the Void is stirring.
That’s what they’d started calling it: the Void . Whatever entity had bonded itself to Bob, burrowed into him, wrapped itself around his soul like a parasite, a curse—or something even worse. And Yelena, against all odds, had learned to read its rhythms. Quite conveniently, and inevitably, the more time Bob spent orbiting her like a moon caught in her gravity.
It started small. Innocent. First, just being in the same building—the new Avengers Tower. (Or “Avengerz” ? She still couldn’t tell, since Bucky and Sam hadn’t stopped bickering like an old divorced couple over who should get the copyright. So much for the legendary Captain America and a 100-something-year-old super soldier. In the end, they were just man-children with vibranium.) Yelena personally liked “Thunderbolts,” though she'd sooner die than admit that to Alexei. He’d never let her live it down.
Then Bob moved to the same floor—just to spend more nights watching ridiculous American spy flicks he swore she'd grow to love. Then the same room—so he could bring her water after she woke up screaming, drenched in sweat, haunted by the Red Room , by Anya , by Natasha . Then, finally, the same bed. Because somehow, they learned that if they held hands in their sleep, the nightmares didn’t hurt as much. Didn't last as long.
Yelena doesn’t remember when it started. This thing between them. This closeness that blurred the line between comfort and survival, between companionship and something deeper. She only knows she doesn’t want it to stop. Because she likes being near Bob. Not just near—with him. Entirely .
Next to Alexei, Bob was the only person who truly got her. Understood her without translation. Like she told him the night they first met, fleeing Valentina’s trap by the skin of their teeth, they both carry darkness. The same darkness. A kind of yawning, enticing, inescapable Void .
But the more time she spent with Bob, the less that darkness held appeal. Being near him (and okay, fine, the rest of the team too—though she definitely didn’t have a favorite) made everything feel… less bad, for lack of a better word. (She’d never been good with words, or literature, for that matter. Lethal weapons and 30-story free-falls were more her style.)
She liked when Bob called her “babe,” “baby,” “honey”—the sweet names. She even tolerated the stupid ones he invented to cheer her up after missions went south: “dumpster truck,” “cuddle monster,” or, most recently, “John Wick.” (She would never admit it, but John Wick was actually quite an interesting watch.)
It was also endearing to watch whenever Bob would not-so-subtly try to steal glances at her across the assembly hall during many of their boring ops briefs. (Bucky did try to tell Bob to turn it down once or twice, that he was being distracting, but stopped after he caught him stealing glances for the fifth time that day, with a defiant sigh: “Young love, huh?” ) Or the many times that Bob would sneakily try to hold her hand behind the sofa during the team’s bonding sessions (led by Alexei— “To raise morale!” was what he said the first time it happened). Or that one specific instance when Bob tried to make her favorite for dinner: macaroni and cheese, with half a bottle of hot sauce, eaten straight out of the pot—and nearly burned down the entire kitchen. A very large kitchen. Honestly, Yelena was more impressed than annoyed. Bob was... a man of unique talents.
But the truth—the real, raw truth—is that everything Bob does is beautiful to her. Every clumsy gesture, every quiet glance, every ridiculous nickname. She doesn’t just like him. She’s falling for him. Hard . Faster than she expected. Deeper than she thought possible.
So after three months of dancing around whatever this was—this bond so intense it burned —she asked him. Simply, plainly, quietly : “Will you be my boyfriend?” She asked him in the privacy of their shared bedroom, where the lights were low and the world outside couldn’t reach them; where it was just the two of them, and the unspoken weight of what they were becoming hanging on their shoulders.
Bob short-circuited. Literally. He was hot flush from head to toe for at least 3 days straight, and all Yelena’s efforts of keeping her love life under wraps from the team (and especially from her dad) went out the window. To Yelena’s surprise, Alexei didn’t try to kill Bob. At the unexpected disclosure of Yelena and Bob’s budding romance, Alexei only gave Bob a curt, approving nod, then spent 3 days sulking in his own private bedroom, drinking god-knows how many bottles of neat vodka. Well, better that than having a dead boyfriend, she supposed.
A drunk Alexei was manageable.
A dead Bob? Not so much.
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It had been two months since Yelena and Bob officially started dating, and neither of them had lost a single night’s sleep. Not once.
“It’s probably the new medication Valentina’s doctors gave us,” Bob had said casually, as if peace could be bottled and prescribed. But Yelena knew better. Like hell she’d ever credit Valentina out of everyone for her newfound ability to sleep through the night without jolting awake, knife in hand, heart racing. No—she was sure the reason she’d been able to rest, truly rest, was because of Bob.
But peace , she was learning, was not built to last.
By the fourth month, the quiet comfort they’d found in each other began to tremble, with cracks forming beneath the surface. Yelena started noticing things. Off things. Bob was changing. Slowly. Subtly . And then not so subtly at all.
It began when he started clinging to her—more than usual. The moment she stepped through the door after a mission, before she could even drop her gear, Bob would wrap himself around her from behind, his grip ironclad. Normally, his bear hugs were warm, grounding. Now, they felt desperate. And strange. Bob had always hated the smell of dried blood, the feel of grime crusted into her uniform. He used to send her straight to the shower with a grimace: “Come back when you smell less like a dying donkey.” Now, he wouldn’t let go. Not even as the stench clung to them both. She had to drag him under the water with her, scrubbing blood and dust from her skin while he clung to her like a man lost at sea, afraid to let go of his last lifeline.
Then came the next warning sign: the food.
Bob had never been a big eater, but he was predictable. Reliable , one might even say. He never turned down a slice of New York-style pizza from Joe’s, just like she never refused a pot of her homemade mac and cheese (and an accommodating bottle of trusty hot sauce). But when she invited him to a quiet dinner in bed—a glass of red wine for him, a bottle of Russian vodka for her—he didn’t even look at her. He just mumbled something and collapsed into bed, skipping the meal altogether.
And it didn’t stop there. Bob began spending more and more time in bed—alone, sleeping. Hours slipped by. Days blurred together. If he wasn’t waiting at the door like a loyal puppy eager for his mistress to return from a mission, Yelena would come home to find him curled beneath the sheets, limbs tangled and twisted, as if he were trying to vanish into the mattress itself.
Don’t misunderstand —Yelena was happy Bob could finally rest. God knew how many nights he’d sat up, sleepless, waiting for her to return from missions either alive, or in a body bag. She wanted him to sleep. To heal. But this? Sixteen hours a day? This wasn’t healing.
This was retreat .
The few times he was awake, he barely spoke. He just held her in silence—arms locked around her as they lay on the bed—or buried his face in her soft stomach while the team sat nearby, watching whatever new American action film he’d queued up.
No words. No smiles. Just a long, endless exhale of someone who had stopped trying to stay awake.
And Yelena—deadly, defiant, stubborn Yelena—felt something she hadn’t felt in a long time: fear .
Something was happening to Bob. And it was happening fast .
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All hell broke loose the first night Bob met the Void again in his dreams—eight months into their relationship.
Yelena had always known it was only a matter of time before the darkness came crawling back, but she hadn’t expected it to come roaring with such fury. That night, the Void's grasp on Bob was so merciless, so suffocating, it took her the entire night just to wake him. He thrashed, he clawed, he whimpered words in a language only nightmares understood. Yelena screamed his name until her throat burned raw, shook his shoulders until her arms ached, slapped him across the face—not out of anger, but desperation .
Meanwhile, the rest of the team was in full crisis mode. Ava and Alexei boiled water, laid out towels, and snacks, like soldiers bracing for a medical emergency. Bucky and John locked down the perimeter, weapons loaded, expecting a full-scale Void breach. Because with Bob, you never really knew— he himself was the breach.
And this... this wasn’t a one-time event. The nightmares returned the next night. And the next. For an entire month, Bob would slip into sleep like a man walking into a battlefield, and every night Yelena would lie beside him, clutching his hand like a lifeline, whispering, “Just tonight, please, let him rest.”
But the Void never listened.
Still, Yelena—stubborn, relentless, terrifying in her own right—refused to sit back and watch him unravel. If she couldn’t stop the nightmares, then she would soften the landing.
First, she tried classical music. Those old vinyls Bucky kept tucked away like relics: Debussy, Vaughan Williams, Elgar, the list goes on; she even dusted off a record player just to make it feel legit. It was excruciating. Bob squirmed like a restless child, and Yelena—who worshipped hard drums and screaming guitars—nearly lost her mind. They both lasted exactly six minutes into Elgar before Bob grunted, “If I hear one more lonely cello, I’m going to lose what’s left of my sanity.”
Next, she tried warm baths. She’d read in some supposedly credible research study that they helped reduce night terrors. But coaxing a tired, exhausted Bob into a tub was like convincing a cat to skydive.
Ever since his depressive spiral began, Bob had become a skittish thing. Still beautiful in her eyes— always beautiful—but fragile, like he was made of bruised glass. He wouldn’t go near mirrors. Every time he caught his reflection, it was another self-inflicted wound. “I look like a monster,” he’d whisper, voice hollow. “My face… the bags under my eyes… I look dead, Lena.” And then the spiral would start—gasping, pacing, the slow descent into a panic attack until he crumbled into her arms, sobbing.
Alexei found them like that once, clutching each other as dawn rose, red-eyed and trembling. He didn’t say anything—just gave a look that said everything and disappeared down the hallway, shoulders heavy with helplessness.
Out of options, Yelena even went to Valentina, practically begging for anyone—a psychologist, a counselor, a goddamn dream exorcist if one existed. But none of them lasted. The severity of Bob’s trauma either broke them... or sent them running.
And so Yelena kept digging, deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole. Trying anything, everything. Most things didn’t work. Some made it worse. A few even triggered her nightmares.
But there was one thing—one last resort Yelena had avoided out of guilt. It felt too raw, too intimate, like taking advantage of Bob’s fragility. But when she brought it up, Bob didn’t hesitate. He was... enthusiastic. Giddy , even, in his own tired, crooked way.
“It can’t be worse than Elgar,” he joked.
And god, it worked. It worked !
That first time, Bob clung to her like a lifeline, like she was the last anchor tying him to the world. Yelena had meant to be careful, slow, comforting. But the way Bob responded—with reverence, with desperation , with awe —it lit something in her. Something fierce. Something... sacred .
Afterwards, they lay tangled in sweat and sheets and silence, his breath steady for the first time in weeks. When she tried to get up, he tugged her back down, buried his face into her chest, murmuring, “Again tomorrow?” , smiling, like a boy with a secret.
Yelena didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, or scream into a pillow. Of course this was the one remedy that worked. Of course it had to be this.
Bob had found a coping mechanism in fucking her to exhaustion. And she, traitorously , had found herself enjoying it—more than she should’ve, perhaps.
They’d done this before, casually, messily, like two people learning how to love without a blueprint. But now it felt different. Now it had weight. Purpose . Power .
And though she never said it out loud, every time she climbed on top of him, every time she helped him chase peace through pleasure, she whispered the same promise in her head:
If I can’t fight the Void for you, I’ll fuck it out of you.
And somehow, that was enough—for now.