Chapter Text
All it took was a knock and Bob calling “Yelena?” before her bedroom door wrenched open. A little out of breath, hair damp from a shower, and in her “I’m not leaving the tower for a week” Hello Kitty sweatpants, she raked her eyes across his frame desperately before relief seemed to seep right into her bones.
“You’re okay?” she asked quietly, the hallway’s dim lighting casting a soft glow on her mussed hair. Bob swallowed, trying to not immediately break eye contact. “Yeah, I’m fine.” It was starting to sound less like a lie whenever Yelena asked him. “Actually, I wanted to, uh, give you something.”
Bob fidgeted regularly with any and all of his sweaters; in the two weeks they had been living together, it became very apparent to the rest of the New Avengers that doing something with his hands helped calm him down and relax his brain. Yelena prided herself on recognizing this behavior first and let him hold her hand, his fingers mindlessly playing with hers, if he needed some skin-deep, grounding comfort. However, she did not recognize this type of fidgeting, like Bob was curling and uncurling his hands around an object in his sweater paws instead of subconsciously fiddling with his clothes.
‘Whatever he wanted to give me,’ Yelena realized, ‘is not something to be taken lightly.’
“Oh? Let me see then.” She beckoned him closer with an outstretched hand, palms cupped expectantly. It was getting harder to look her in the eye, but Bob crept closer anyways and with one last squeeze, he gently dropped the object for her to inspect. A yellow, blue, and black bracelet made of yarn? It was unlike any other piece of jewelry she had ever seen, braided lopsidedly on one side and woven too tightly together on the other. There was no clasp either, only a loop of string held in place with a messy knot.
Yelena turns it over in her hands, running her fingers over the haphazard crosses and stitches of color. She was so, so quiet. ‘Oh God, this is terrifying,’ Bob thought. ‘She never wears bracelets—it was dumb to think she’d like it—she definitely thinks it’s a childish thing to make—’
“Bob,” his head whips up to find her already staring at him with an emotion he can’t quite place, “thank you.”
Oh God, this is even worse.
“Oh, don’t mention it—it's just a couple of loose threads—” Bob ducks his head, he can’t do this— “I mean, they barely even cross over properly and—” he’s wringing his jacket in his hands like it’s due for a wash— “y’know what, I can just take it back, I mean, I can make it better, I’ll be better—”
As he reaches out to take the bracelet, Yelena closes her fist around it protectively and lets her arm fall to her side.
“It is very rude to ask for a gift back, yes? Especially something as remarkable as this...” She glances down at her hand, fumbling for the name of the weaved jewelry.
Bob bites the inside of his cheek and forces the words out before they can melt to acid in his stomach.
“A friendship bracelet. It’s...it’s a friendship bracelet.”
He isn’t looking, but he can feel Yelena’s gaze soften and can imagine her mouth opening a little in surprise. Bob definitely, however, feels the slight touch, featherlight, from her fingers on his forearm, and tries not to flinch at the contact. Yelena starts rubbing his arm lightly, trying to coax him into looking at her again and he is too predictable and too sweethearted for it to not work. When he finally peeks out from the fringe in his eyes, Yelena’s taken out the friendship bracelet from her fist and is partially observing it with a newfound intensity.
“This friendship bracelet really is quite impressive, Bob. You have an eye for the colors. Yellow and black, this makes sense—it goes well together, but the blue is an interesting addition.”
“It matches your eyeliner.” Bob blurts, and Yelena whips her head up to meet his eyes. Being the center of someone’s attention would normally have felt so nauseating, but with her it only pried the words from his mouth faster and faster, a torrent of truth and a comfort knowing that he was being listened to. “That, and it’s also a calmer color that helps balance it out whenever the yellow or black gets too...overpowering.”
Yelena makes a soft noise in the back of her throat in understanding and wraps the bracelet around her wrist, tightening the clasp as far as it would go. Her now free hand slides into his as fluid as water and as easy as breathing.
“Well,” Yelena starts, “I see why you like making these friendship bracelets. Come, show me how you made it.”
“You—you’d really want to make one?” Bob balks at the idea of her, the woman who could probably kill him without even looking, the strongest person he knows, sitting down with him to weave bracelets out of colorful string.
“Of course, you must have one as well.” She states bluntly, just as she’d say that the sky is blue and that Alexi always eats strawberry ice cream straight from the tub.
“Oh no, you don’t have to repay me, honestly—”
“Bob.”
He stops talking in favor of tangling and untangling their fingers together and watching how the bracelet shifted whenever he got close to her wrist.
“I want to make you one, from me, because you are my friend and you deserve it.”
Bob’s fingers still for a moment, taking in her words. Yelena, for her part, gives him a minute to exhale shakily and nod before pushing off her bedroom door and stepping fully into the hallway. Bob, with newfound energy, leads her by their still connected hands towards the Tower’s living room, where he had stashed the rest of his string, and she lets him babble about patterns and colors with a fondness in her eyes for the rest of their walk.