Archive of Our Own

Bob knew when he woke up that it was not going to be a good day.

It was nothing new. There were many mornings he woke up with a feeling of dread, the sense that every step he took would be a struggle. The worst came when he had a really, really good day—“good” reflecting how he felt and not his actions—and then went to sleep and woke the next feeling like nothing mattered and he’d be better off dead.

That morning, however, it was less an internal sense of dread and more the literal sound of pounding rain outside his window that clued him in. (And it was real rain this time—he checked. If it weren’t, that would have been a whole different kind of bad day.) He’d started to feel it the night before, the barometric pressure dropping, but it didn’t fully hit until he woke up, stretched his arms, and felt a tight, burning pain on his right side.

“You sure you don’t want to stretch with me, Bob?” asked Yelena, her own leg stretched into a half middle split.

“No, I’m fine,” said Bob. He felt fine enough seated on the side of the training room, but one overextended stretch could bench him entirely. “I already stretched earlier.”

Before Sentry, on days like that, he would have just done a whole bunch of meth and waited to forget the pain. Since middle school, he’d always had an out with morphine, meth, or whatever else he could get his hands on, but he couldn’t take that way out anymore and he didn’t want to. Not consciously, at least. But it created a new problem in that, when the bad days happened, he didn’t really know how to handle them. He had no concept of how to cope with the pain in a healthy manner, and it made him twice as irritable as he used to get.

(Not only because there was a part of him itching for meth or morphine or fucking anything but also because Sentry gave him insane healing powers that still couldn’t do anything about his pain because his ancient wounds were technically fully healed, they just weren’t healed the way they should have been.)

So, instead of treating the pain in any sort of way, Bob just went about his day like nothing was wrong. It was easier like that, anyway. He hadn’t told the Thunderbolts about his chronic pain yet and, honestly, he would prefer it if it never came up. He was already a risk, a liability in more ways than an asset, and he didn’t care to add to the list.

“I think they forgot they’re not actually fighting,” mumbled Bucky. He leaned against the wall on the edge of the training mat, his gaze narrowed as John and Ava spared on the mat in front of him.

“In Ava’s defense,” Bob started, his own legs crossed as he leaned to his right, “he was being an asshole to her this morning.”

“I am the last person to defend Walker,” said Yelena, her eyes never leaving the fight, “but I do not think it was that serious. He only commented on the ridiculousness of her reindeer pajamas.”

“The red ones?” Alexei grinned when Yelena nodded. “Lovely, I bought her those!”

Bob chuckled as Yelena rolled her eyes. He twisted to the left to winced as a subtle, burning pain shot through his muscles. He curled in on himself slightly, trying to reduce the amount of pressure on his right side without it being too obvious. If the others knew that he was in pain, they would probably tell him to sit out of training and the last thing he wanted was to sit out of training.

Maybe it sounded ridiculous or unnecessary given how strong his powers were, but Bob really wanted to learn how to fight. His powers were unstable, unpredictable, and on many levels, they scared the hell out of him. Learning how to fight without them both gave him a way to protect himself without using them and made him feel more control when he did.

He needed to train, maybe more than the rest of the team, and he would not walk out mid-session—no matter how badly his side hurt.

Ava kicked out John’s knee and knocked him to the floor with a resounding thud. She smirked and stood over him for a moment, her dark blue shirt soaked with sweat. Once he was sufficiently embarrassed, Ava offered John a hand and, with mutual reluctance, helped him back up to his feet.

“All right, who’s next?” she asked, looking to the rest of the team. “I believe Walker will need a moment to catch his breath after that.”

John snorted and shook his head. “Please, I could go again right now.”

“Then why are you already stepping to the side?”

“Because I don’t want to hog the floor all morning. It’s called being respectful. You could try it once in a while.”

“Says the man who told me my pajama set belongs back in nineteen-eighty-four.”

“I stand corrected,” Yelena muttered.

“All right, all right, that’s enough.” Bucky stood abruptly and crossed his arms as he surveyed the team in front of him. Bob tried to shrink down as he had all morning, but he knew the second Bucky’s eyes landed on him, it was over. “Let’s get Bob in there, he hasn’t sparred anyone yet today. Who else wants to go?”

A sharp pain stabbed at Bob’s side when he tried to stand. He caught himself just before he fell back down, Yelena’s hand suddenly on his arm. She looked up at him, silently asked if he was okay, and he smiled and nodded. If she tried to press for details, he would just say that his leg had fallen asleep. No one could argue with that.

“I’ll go,” said Yelena. She jumped to her feet with far less difficulty, her gaze fixed on Bob. “Tired of sitting here.”

Yelena was both Bob’s favorite and least favorite person to spar with. She tended to go easy on him unless he explicitly asked her not to. Sometimes he was grateful for it because he wasn’t feeling his best but sometimes he felt perfectly fine, and he wanted to go all in, and her natural inclination wasn’t to do that. Which was weird because she beat the hell out of everyone else but maybe Bob still seemed too fragile to her somehow.

They went back and forth for several minutes. Yelena started off with a few light punches to get them started and then it turned into serious sparring—kicking, punching, and blocking like they were in a real battle and not on the world’s squishiest mat. Both Bucky and Walker shouted corrections at Bob about his stance, his form, and he took the advice the best that he could. In a real battle, adrenaline helped him defend himself, but that might not always be enough. Technique mattered and he wanted to learn it.

“Come on, Bob.” Yelena waved her fingers, encouraging him to get closer. “Hit me as hard as you can.”

“I don’t know how hard I can hit you,” Bob confessed, “and I’m honestly not really comfortable trying to find out.”

“Technique, then,” said Bucky from the sidelines. “Watch your thumbs.”

Bob nodded and did as he was told. He remembered a lot of technique, he just couldn’t reliably execute it all. The more he practiced, the better he got, but he had a long way to go before he would be able to match the others one-for-one without relying on Sentry for strength. If they were in some kind of actual karate class, the rest of the team would all be black belts and Bob would still be hovering somewhere around green.

(And though it bothered him, the disparity did make sense considering they all spent their lives training their asses off to survive while he spent most of his life as a suicidal addict who didn’t want to survive.)

Because of all that, it wasn’t surprising that Bob’s reflexes were not as fast as Yelena’s roundhouse kick. The actual impact didn’t really hurt. Bob was incredibly strong, stronger than he was even used to, and his body took the blow like it was nothing. The way he belatedly twisted his side to block her, however, made it feel like someone lit a match beneath his skin and set his nerves on fire.

“Bob?”

“I’m fine,” said Bob, the second Yelena stopped and leaned down at his side. He fell to his knees after the impact, his left side unable to carry the weight that his right side had dropped. He took a deep, shaking breath and looked up to meet Yelena’s gaze, his sweaty bangs half in the way. “I’m okay.”

“I’m so sorry.” Yelena placed a hand on his shoulder, and he shrugged it off as kindly as he could. “Did I hurt you?”

“No, I just told you I’m fine.” He heard his tone and winced. At least he was self-aware. Sometimes, he could be awful to everyone and not even realize until days later when the depression hit and it all came back in a flood of shame. “It just— it knocked the wind out of me a little.”

“Okay.”

Yelena offered him the same hand to help him stand and he accepted it, both because he appreciated her and because he felt like his ribs had clicked out of place and he couldn’t put them back on his own. Which was ridiculous because he knew that everything inside there was fine and healed and had been for well over a decade.

Their fingers touched as Yelena’s hand wrapped fully around Bob’s, her skin warm outside her fingerless gloves. Then he blinked and

pushed them out of it. He ripped away from Yelena and quickly stumbled back, tripping over his own feet as guilt pounded in his chest. Yelena stared at him, eyes wide. She didn’t look angry but like she’d seen a ghost.

Bob walked back over to where the others were seated and grabbed his water bottle from the bench. He needed to play dumb so the others wouldn’t realize what happened, so they wouldn’t have to talk about it if Yelena didn’t want to. His dark gray sweatshirt was almost as sticky as his hair from the sweat, his feet slippery from the dripped-on mat. Bob took a quick sip from his water bottle and made a slightly exaggerated face as he shook it side to side.

“I’m going to go refill this real quick,” he said, even though it was only half empty. “Bucky and Alexei, I think it’s time for the grandpa match, right?”

Bob ran out of the room before Bucky and Alexei could snap back at his joke. He headed up the stairs, his left hand holding his water bottle as his right hand gripped his side. As he made his way past the next few floors, he continued to remind himself that he was not injured. It was not a bruise or a break, it was just a little extra pressure on his nerves that happened to hurt like a motherfucker.

Rather than refill his water bottle or go to the kitchen at all, Bob went into the bathroom. Not because he needed to use it but because he wanted something from the medicine cabinet. He didn’t even know what. Just… something. Whatever happened to be in there. Preferably the strongest “whatever happened to be in there.”

He pulled the mirror away from the cabinet before he could linger on his own reflection and stared at the bottles behind it. Unsurprisingly, they were not what his subconscious really wanted. Out of all the miscellaneous containers, the only painkillers were a bottle of ibuprofen.

That was it.

Ibuprofen.

It really shouldn’t have irritated him that there wasn’t anything stronger, but it did. He’d been forcibly clean for long enough that he shouldn’t have been itching as bad as he was, shouldn’t have been mad like he got when he used everything on a bender and woke up with nothing left, but he was. Because he didn’t want ibuprofen.

He wanted morphine.

He wanted meth.

He wanted something that would take away his physical pain and the mental anguish and ibuprofen wouldn’t do that. Bob set his water bottle on the edge of the sink then turned it on, splashed his face with cold water. Reminded himself that he was clean, that he was doing well, that he just had to make it through one shitty, rainy day and the inflammation and pressure and hopefully cravings would all go away.

(The guilt of accidentally forcing Yelena to relive a horrible memory wouldn’t go away but maybe that was just something he would have to face another time.)

Bob turned off the sink, dried his hands and his face, and grabbed the bottle of ibuprofen. That was all he needed, he told himself as he took a deep breath. Just a couple pills would help the inflammation go down and then he would feel better. He spun the lid off the bottle and out of the way, held his hand out to catch the pills when he poured them, and then jumped and threw them all over the floor when someone knocked on the open door.

“Hey.” Yelena’s voice was soft, concerned. Bob smiled and mumbled a ‘hey’ in response as he knelt on the floor, ignoring the pain in his side as he gathered the pills. Yelena knelt beside him, picked up a few herself, then set them down in a pile. Her hand made Bob jump again when it landed on his cheek as a gentle, grounding touch. He twisted away, afraid of dragging her into the Void again. “Where does it hurt?”

“Nowhere, I’m fine.” What a stupid thing to say. Bob literally dropped an entire bottle of ibuprofen on the floor and still denied being in pain. “I don’t need your help right now.”

“Okay.” She lowered her hand, gave his shoulder a gentle squeeze, and picked up a few more pills. Bob looked away from her as he did the same and she didn’t fight for his gaze. It was probably hard for her to look at him without feeling angry about what he’d made her relive. “I know that you are hurting, Bob. We could all tell. We know what it looks like to have pain and ignore it.”

It wasn’t what he expected her to say but somehow it made him feel worse. How selfish of him to not even consider that they might have pain too. How weak of him to be so affected by his when everyone else pushed through theirs. He was worthless. He’d always been worthless. He would always be worthless.

Fuck, he wanted meth.

“And I know you only make us see things when the Void is pulling you down.”

“I’m fine,” Bob repeated forcefully. If there was one thing he hated, it was the team asking a thousand times whether he was okay when he already said that he was. It didn’t matter whether it was warranted or if he was lying. He was used to no one giving a shit. He was comfortable when no one gave a shit. “I’m sorry I made you relive that, okay? I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.” Yelena didn’t sound okay. “I know you did not mean to do it, and it’s really not the worst I could have seen.”

That didn’t make him feel better. The guiltier he felt, the more he wanted drugs. The more he wanted drugs, the shorter his temper got. Yelena didn’t deserve to be on the receiving end of it. “Can you just leave me alone for a minute, please?”

“Are you sure that you are—?”

“Jesus, Yelena!” They both dropped the pills they were holding, Bob as he threw his hands up in frustration and Yelena as she startled at his outburst. “I just fucking told you that I’m fine!”

“Okay,” said Yelena. “I’m sorry.”

She was sorry. Bob was the one who screamed at her for trying to help and made her relive one of the most painful moments of her life and she was sorry. If he could have punched himself, he would have.

Yelena stood up, then stopped in the doorway and stared at Bob as if she intended to speak again. She ended up saying nothing before she left, and he was grateful. If she kept pushing him, he would either snap and talk about his feelings which he really, really didn’t want to do or he would yell at her again and he didn’t want to do that either.

It took less than a minute to gather the rest of the pills but close to ten for Bob to stand up. He nearly tossed the bottle into the trash but stopped and slipped two pills into his mouth first. He wouldn’t admit it to anyone on the team, but he’d done a thousand drugs off a thousand surfaces infinitely more disgusting than the Thunderbolts’ bathroom floor. There was no germ that scared him.

He washed the pills down with his still half-empty water bottle as he went back downstairs. When he reentered the training room, John was kicking the punching bag, Bucky barking commands at his side. Based on the way Ava and Yelena laughed, Bob figured he must have missed something entertaining leading up to that. He nearly asked but suddenly felt like he was intruding, like he didn’t deserve to joke with Yelena after everything he’d done.

Soon enough, they moved on, and Bob threw himself into the rest of the training. When someone wanted a volunteer, he volunteered. When Bucky took him aside to work on his technique, he punched the bag until his tendons felt like they would snap. He was determined to prove the team wrong, to prove himself wrong, to work through the pain because the pain wasn’t real, he wasn’t injured, it was just old trauma holding him back.

It wasn’t real.

That was what he told himself when John asked one more person to spar him before they called it a day. Yelena looked at him with such concern when he volunteered that it made him want to spar even more, just to make a point that he could do it. Just to prove to her that when he said he was fine, he was fine, and he could take any hit they threw at him.

“You sure?” asked John tauntingly. He cracked his knuckles, a cocky expression on his face. “I’m kind of on a roll right now. You might not want a piece of this.”

“Would it kill you to not be a dick for five minutes?” Bob rolled his eyes and rose to his feet, ignoring the tingling pain as he pulled on his side. The comment wasn’t personal; John would have said it to anyone. Bob knew that and it pissed him off anyway. “You know I could make another taco out of your spine.”

John threw his hands in the air defensively. “Just a joke, Bob.”

“No one’s laughing.”

Bob threw the first punch. It burned like hell when he fully extended, when he ducked and rolled, when he stretched his leg to unsuccessfully take out John’s and the muscles in his side pulled and he almost thought that he snapped one but he didn’t because it wasn’t real. He wasn’t injured. It was just scar tissue and inflammation. It was better, even, because he took the ibuprofen and it made the swelling go down.

(It was also worse because he took the ibuprofen without eating and it irritated his stomach and he felt just a little bit nauseous but that was really the least of his problems.)

Bob sparred like he never had before. He didn’t hold back, gave John every bit of power he had to spare. Sweat dripped off his forehead, soaked into his sweatshirt, and he ignored every drop. Bob expertly dodged John’s double punches, kicked out his knee, and pinned him to the ground with a punch pulled one inch from his face.

His side burned from his ribs to his shoulder, and his chest pounded as he struggled to catch his breath more from the adrenaline than the exertion. For a moment, he stood in the middle of the room, an unpleasant feeling in his stomach, his bangs stuck to his forehead, unable to return the proud smile John gave him from the floor. It hurt too much. His tendons, his muscles, his bones. Bob forced himself to inhale but couldn’t hold the breath.

He took a step back,

turned away from John,

and promptly threw up.

There were hands on him the moment he stopped heaving, clinging to him protectively, pulling him back from the mess of water and ibuprofen. Sometimes it was a good thing that he skipped breakfast. Yelena’s arms wrapped around Bob’s shoulders and lowered him to the floor. She rested her chin on his shoulder as he covered his eyes with the palms of his hands. His entire body shook, and he could no longer tell if he was sweating or sobbing.

It should not have been a big deal that they all stayed, that they all helped him, but it was for Bob. Because it wasn’t the first time he’d thrown up from being in pain, far from it, but it was the first time anyone stayed with him when he did. The first time anyone showed him compassion and understanding instead of berating him, kicking him, or yelling at him for making a mess. He kept waiting for someone to tell him to stop being a little bitch and clean it up, but no one did.

No one said a word for a long time, actually. Yelena clung to Bob as he shook furiously, rocked him back and forth the tiniest bit not because he was a child but because he needed to regulate, to stop shaking. The pressure was nice, like she held his body in place where it felt like it was pulling apart. John knelt on the opposite side of Bob, set one hand on his knee, and pulled back when he got no response. Bob wanted to tell him it was okay, thanks for checking on him, but no words would come out.

“Bob.” Bucky was the next to approach him, his voice compassionate but serious. “Can you tell me what happened?”

“I’m sorry,” choked out Bob, because it felt like he was thirteen and his dad was going to beat him because he was having panic attacks from the morphine withdrawals. “I fuck everything up.”

“No, you don’t,” said Ava from several steps back. “Come out of that dark place, please.”

“Did you get hurt?” asked Bucky, diving back to the important questions. He was probably worried that Bob would fall into the Void. If he could catch his breath, Bob would reassure him that he wouldn’t. “We want to help you, but we don’t know what happened.”

“I don’t need your help!” Bob shouted with the last of the air in his lungs, the combination of anxiety, guilt, and agitation taking over his mouth. “Just fucking leave me alone!”

“Give him a moment,” snapped Yelena. She waved Bucky and the others away and clung to Bob a little tighter as she rested her forehead on his shoulder. She understood him too well. When he told them to leave him alone, he did not mean he wanted her to let go. “It’s all right, Bob. You can take your time.”

And he needed that time. Every heavy breath pulled on his ribs, ensuring the burning sensation couldn’t subside. Ava brought him his water bottle, and his hands shook so badly he could barely bring it to his mouth for a sip. The aggressive combination of pain and anxiety was overwhelming. He shifted, trying to relieve some of the internal pressure on his ribs, and Yelena adjusted with him.

She was always too nice to Bob. It didn’t matter if he was having a “good” day or a “bad” day (and, really, they were all just bad days in their own way). It didn’t matter if he insulted everyone because he believed he was a god or if he berated himself because he wished he was dead. Yelena was always there for him. She always forgave him, always supported him, no matter how shitty he acted or felt.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, so quietly only Yelena could hear. It was hard to explain that he didn’t yell because he was angry, he yelled because he was anxious and he was hurting. “I’m not mad. I’m sorry.”

“I know.” Yelena squeezed him a little tighter. “It’s okay.”

They stayed in that position as Bob waited for his stomach to settle, waited for his hands to stop shaking and his side to stop aching. He kept his eyes closed, his palms over them and his fingers curled around his bangs. He heard Alexei announce that he’d procured a mop, smelled the aggressive scent of pine as he or someone else cleaned the floor. He wanted to help but felt that if he moved, the pain would come back just as intensely and make him throw up again.

At some point, John offered a body shield as a pillow and Bob accepted the opportunity to lay down. He squeezed his right side with one hand as he lowered himself to the thick cushion. He kept his eyes shut, afraid of experiencing vertigo if he opened them. He could feel Yelena’s presence behind his legs, hear the others moving around the room, but he couldn’t tell what their whispers were saying.

He also wasn’t sure who set the heating pad on his side, but he was grateful. Whatever felt stuck inside him finally started to loosen as the pressure slowly eased. He set one hand on top of the heating pad to hold it in place and focused on Yelena’s breathing behind him rather than footsteps, whispers, and the sound of the door opening and shutting when everyone inevitably left him behind.

Except they didn’t.

Yelena was still behind him and at least one other person was near the bench on the other side of the room, tidying up what was left behind. Even though he was irritated and in pain and miserable to be around, they didn’t leave his side. A loud clap of thunder echoed from outside and he flinched, reminded of the sound of the car crumpling, of his ribs cracking beneath the weight of the damaged door.

Yelena set her hand on Bob’s ankle reassuringly as John said from the other side of the room, “You good, Bob?”

“Fine,” he said. His triggers were a part of his life. He didn’t need to be comforted about every one. “I still kicked your ass.”

“Yeah.” John’s arrogant scoff sounded like it should have been followed up with a comeback claiming he’d let Bob off easy. Instead, John said, “You really did. Nice work, Bobby.”

The sound of fabric shuffling pierced the quiet as John presumably collected towels and jackets that had been discarded throughout the training session. Yelena kept her hand on Bob’s ankle as he reminded himself to take deep breaths regardless of the stabbing pains in his side. Another long moment of silence passed before the same man interrupted it again.

“When did you break your ribs?”

Of course, John knew exactly what the source of Bob’s pain was. He must have seen a thousand injuries in the military, a thousand men all pushing themselves to perform at their best despite how much they suffered for it. Bob hesitated, his instinct to dodge the question. Instead, he opened his eyes and found where John stood on the other side of the room, his expression unclear.

“In middle school,” said Bob. His right hand pressed the heating pad against his side as his left rested beneath his head. He could tell by the way John’s gaze twitched what he assumed, and he didn’t like it. “Car accident.”

“Gets bad when it rains?” Bob nodded and winced at the dizziness. “My knee does too. From the military. Not as bad as your ribs, I think.”

“Well, you probably took care of it right.” He glanced at where Yelena sat beside his feet, her gaze fixed on the floor as she listened to his story. “I couldn’t go to all my doctor’s appointments because my dad was still beating me and I was on so much morphine that I couldn’t feel it at all whenever I reinjured myself, so. I don’t think I really healed the way I should have. Just enough for Sentry to not fix it, I guess.”

John inhaled slowly, his fists clenched. Yelena said nothing but her own fingers squeezed Bob like he might slip away. “Have I ever told you I really want to beat the shit out of your dad?”

“Yeah. I’d join you but I really don’t want to go back to Florida.”

“Don’t blame you. Florida is easily one of the worst states. Glad I’m not from there.”

“Aren’t you from Ohio?”

“No, I’m not, and I know you know that,” said John as he threw a towel down in feigned annoyance. “Don’t push it, Bob. I’m trying really hard to be nice to you right now.”

“You say one wrong word and I will kick your ass, Walker,” said Yelena, her tone hollow.

Bob smirked. “Save some for me.”

“Hey, I said I’m being nice.” John rolled his eyes and grabbed the towel from the floor. “You want me to bring you anything while you’re down there?”

“Yeah,” he started, matching John’s sarcastic tone, “you got any meth?”

The comment didn’t land the way Bob expected it to. Or maybe it landed exactly the way he expected and that was why he said it. Whatever the case, the humor left John’s eyes as Yelena’s grip on Bob’s ankle tightened protectively. She slid closer to his head, her eyes filled with compassion and concern. Bob looked away, back toward the side of the room where John stuffed the towels into a basket.

Yelena’s gaze burned into Bob’s skin as she stared at him, either deciding what to say or holding her tongue. Probably because she wanted to ask whether he was okay and he’d already yelled at her for that. Bob wanted to reassure her but couldn’t think of how to do so without telling an obvious lie. Thankfully, Yelena finally spoke first, her words compassionate but not demanding.

“Do you want to talk about anything, Bob?”

Talk about what? He didn’t want to explain why he was craving the meth. That would involve recounting half his life story about how the car accident destroyed any chances he had left. About how his injuries were so bad that his doctors gave him almost limitless access to morphine and he abused it because as much as he fucking despised it, he was his mother’s son. About how his dad continued to beat him and his injuries couldn’t heal so he used even more morphine to cope.

(And then that, of course, would spiral into how he got so fucking high at thirteen years old that he barely made it to high school, dropped out as soon as he did, got kicked out, and spent the next several years homeless because he prioritized drugs over everything else his money could buy because it was the only thing that could make his pain go away.)

So, no. Bob did not want to talk about anything. It was stuff that would probably come up eventually, stuff that maybe some of them already knew—Valentina knew, he knew that, and he really, really hated it—but he wasn’t ready to unpack it all himself yet.

“I would rather just lay here for a bit, if that’s okay,” said Bob quietly.

“Can I lay with you?” asked Yelena.

“You don’t have to.”

“I want to.”

That was still strange to him. As hard as he tried, Bob couldn’t fully wrap his mind around someone wanting to spend time with him. He had no concept of true friendship, of unconditional love. He accepted Yelena’s feelings but couldn’t grasp why she had them, why she would want to stay with him after everything that he’d done.

“You’ll miss lunch,” Bob told her, hoping she would realize there were things out there more important than him.

“Bucky and Alexei won’t be back for a while. And the noodle place isn’t that good anyway.”

So that was where they went. It was hard to believe that anyone would say no to noodles, but he couldn’t argue anymore. “Or we could get some coffee.”

“You want coffee?” Bob nodded and Yelena turned over her shoulder. “Walker, go get us some coffee.”

“I’m not your servant,” John deadpanned.

“Then why are you cleaning up our mess? Go get us coffee. You know what we order.”

“Why me? Ava is sitting right there.”

Bob turned his head. She was still right there, just outside of his peripheral vision. She made a face. “Don’t drag me into this.”

“Fine, whatever.” John grabbed two water bottles and trudged toward the door. “But just so you know, I’m only going because I already offered to get something for Bob.”

John huffed as he stomped out of the training room. Yelena folded her hands together and placed them under her head as a pillow as she laid down in front of Bob. For a few seconds, they laughed together, but the moment quickly passed. They laid in silence, Yelena staring at Bob and Bob staring at the floor like if he willed it hard enough, it might swallow him whole.

“Do your ribs feel better?” asked Yelena.

“Yeah.” Bob almost left it at that. Then he glanced up, caught a glimpse of Yelena’s genuinely concerned gaze, and folded. “I think I’m just not used to it,” he admitted. “Like I said, they gave me morphine right away and I was on that for years. Then when I couldn’t get that anymore I just took whatever else I could get. It probably sounds really fucked up to say but I’ve never really had to just… feel the pain before.”

“You didn’t realize it was so bad.”

“Right. And I think Sentry has pretty much— it’s basically negated all my physical withdrawal symptoms but stuff like this, it just— it makes me want to smoke something or snort something or, shit, just go back to the pills.”

“I could never fall back on drugs,” said Ava, and suddenly Bob felt twice as pathetic. Suddenly all he could hear was his dad berating him for turning out just like his mother. Except Ava’s intentions were nowhere near his interpretation. “I tried them, a lot of them, but they never worked. They don’t make anything for the kind of pain I had. That’s why I tried so many other things. Can I lay with you two?”

Yelena looked at Bob and Bob nodded awkwardly. He tried not to let his feelings show on his face, knowing he had once again misunderstood someone’s good intentions. Ava laid down between Bob and Yelena and set her phone on her stomach. She looked straight to the ceiling, seemingly lost in her own thoughts.

“Did you give me the heating pad?” asked Bob.

Ava glanced at Bob and nodded. “That was one of the most helpful things for me, at least in localized areas. Of course, I usually set it so hot it actually burned the pain away. Or maybe it just felt like that. It was more likely just distracting.”

Bob hesitated before he took his right hand off the heating pad and allowed it to slip slightly. He reached for his left sleeve and pushed it up just enough to reveal the spot he wanted without exposing everything he still wanted to hide. He held his arm toward Ava, and she furrowed her brow as her gaze set on the jagged red scar.

“What’s that?”

“That’s where I, uh—” Bob peeked at Yelena, suddenly self-conscious, but her expression was blank. He had to trust she would not judge him. “I used to burn myself too. Not always to distract from the pain. Well, unless you count… yeah. Sorry.” He pulled his sleeve back down over his hand. “I don’t know why I showed you that. It’s not the same at all. Sorry.”

“That’s all right,” said Ava gently. “You can show us stuff. It’s not a competition.” She nudged his arm with her shoulder. “I understand on that level too.”

“And me,” Yelena added, and Bob almost cried because no one had ever responded to his scars—any of his scars—with anything but disgust or judgment. “I think we have all been there, in our own ways.”

“It’s weird that there were so many times that I wanted to hurt,” started Bob as he set his hand back on the heating pad, “and now I just want it to stop.”

“It’s a control thing,” Ava mused. “At least, that’s what it was for me. I hated—hate—the chronic pain but I didn’t hate what I could control with my heating pad. It’s like taking power back somehow.”

In an admittedly fucked-up way, it made sense. As a child, Bob hated it when his father beat him. He hated it when he felt the lingering pain from the car accident. But he was horrifyingly addicted to inflicting pain upon himself. If he was going to be hurt anyway, at least he could be the one to determine where and how.

“Anyway, this conversation is depressing me,” said Ava, and Bob nearly apologized before he realized she intended it sarcastically. She lifted her phone and tapped around on the screen. “What’s something that you like, Bob?”

For some reason, he couldn’t think of anything. The first thing that came to mind was what they sent John for. “Coffee?”

“All right.” She tapped her phone a few more times. “Are you sure coffee is good for you, Bob?”

“Depends on the day.” Yelena answered faster than Bob could, and it was no surprise that she was right. “Sometimes it agitates him. I think it will be good for him today.”

“Oh, I see.” Bob almost asked what Ava saw, how she interpreted what Yelena said, but she continued before he could decide how to phrase it. “So, when I’m having a terribly painful day, I find that sometimes I just don’t want to move. At all. But if I don’t even want to move my head, I’m going to just sit and hurt and overthink everything. That’s what you were doing when we were quiet, right?”

“Yeah,” mumbled Bob, “pretty much.”

“Right, so what I’ve found are very helpful for me—and you don’t have to agree, we don’t have to do this—podcasts. You don’t have to move, you don’t have to look at anything, you just lay there and listen. I’ve just found a four-point-eight-star wholesome podcast all about brewing coffee. Would you like to listen with me?”

What Bob really wanted was to ignore the pain, to be strong, but the smile on Yelena’s face reminded him he didn’t have to be. “Yeah, okay.”

So, Bob stayed there with Ava and Yelena, absorbing the podcast with his eyes closed until John returned with their coffee and Alexei and Bucky brought them noodles. He tried to tell them to go up to the common area to eat, that he was too nauseous for more than his coffee, but they didn’t listen. They stayed and then they were all listening to a podcast about coffee and Bob couldn’t help but laugh at how utterly stupid the whole thing was.

Five—no, six—superheroes, lying on the floor of the training room, slurping up shitty noodles and Canadian coffee, listening to some random guy explain the origins of latte art.

He didn’t realize he’d forgotten the pain until he woke up after an hour and found that someone had draped a blanket over him. That everyone was still there. That the podcast was still playing.

Bob slid his eyes shut again. The Thunderbolts’ banter was more soothing than the podcast itself.