Chapter Text
Yelena was always a cuddly kid, if her Dad is to be believed. She was always asking for hugs, hanging off of her family’s arms like a little monkey. That’s what happens when a child who once lived completely without affection is suddenly thrust into a situation where she has unrestricted access to it. It’s a beautiful freedom, a breathless run towards those that you love most.
It used to be an issue, actually. Yelena would hug just about anyone if she thought they needed it. She spread her love without restriction, she thought everyone deserved to have a piece of her shining light. But that sort of thing tends to make people nervous, especially at the height of the stranger danger campaigns, and not everyone wants to be hugged. Melina had tried to talk to her about it, but Yelena hadn’t truly understood. Language like ‘respecting boundaries’ just wasn’t in the public consciousness then, especially for a six year old. All she knew was that Mommy and Daddy were upset that she hugged her new friend at the park, and that she would have to wait until she knew the person much better to give them hugs.
It seemed unfair to Yelena at the time. Why did it matter how long she knew someone, as long as they were nice?
That instinct was quickly stamped out in the Red Room. There were no friends there, no affection. There was only fear, and a determination to survive. And then when the chemicals came….there was nothing but orders.
It’s been just over five years of freedom for Yelena, and she’s started to adjust. She’s not a naive little girl on the playground anymore, but she still finds herself aching for that touch. The squeeze of an arm, the press of a forehead to her own. She wants to give it out, too. She’s less scared of it now. Before…
She’d been to a club once. It seemed to be what all the girls her age were doing, and she wanted to have fun. So she found an outfit all her own, with pockets and zippers and glitter. She’d left half of her hair down, but spent an hour taming the rest with beautiful little braids. She felt like a mermaid, or a princess. A mermaid princess. Her makeup was sparkly but sharp; enticing the way the Red Room taught her but so uniquely Yelena she didn’t mind. She got drunk, and she screamed to the music and jumped up and down. And when the song changed, and people started to press against her, she didn’t mind at first. It was new and exciting, how real girls spent their Saturday nights. The heat, the movement of other bodies against her own was a strange new frontier she wanted to explore.
Then things got a little more handsy. It didn’t feel like one person, it felt like the whole crowd had converged on her, they were all touching her. And they weren’t friendly. They were hungry. Their slimy hands pulled at her, caressed her, claimed her and prodded at her like a piece of meat. Suddenly there were hundreds of hands on her, all at once– gripping her waist, tracing her neck, cupping her breasts, squeezing her thighs, fingering her pussy. They were the ghosts of all the marks and even teachers she’d had in the Red Room, hands of people who were just hungry, greedy to take and take and take all Yelena had, more than she had. Men and women who were so clinical in their assessment of her, like she were a prize heifer ready to be bred. All they wanted was to hold and squeeze and reach for more.
She broke three people’s hands and two noses that night. She doesn’t even remember what set her off so badly. Did someone really grab her like that? Had she just been overreacting? She’s pretty sure she wasn’t. Pretty sure that someone in that crowd deserved her punch. But she doesn’t really know.
That incident stuck with Yelena for a while. She was more abrasive with people. She wore more layers and stayed home instead of going out to get drunk. But eventually, things calmed down. She could touch the woman who owned the bodega down the block and always saved the last box of orange dreamsicles just for her. Yelena gave her fistbumps and touched her shoulder sometimes, when she was extra grateful for the dreamsicles. And once she ran to help up a man who crashed his bicycle hard on the concrete outside her apartment. She helped him up and poked his ribs and told him the cut on his hand didn’t need stitches but that he should keep it clean and use butterfly bandages.
She’d slowly started to realize she didn’t want a boyfriend, or even a girlfriend. She wanted friends, she knew that, she wanted family. But beyond that? It felt off. Hungry. The idea was nice, but she’d never felt that way about anyone. Even scrolling on dating apps felt pointless. There was no zing, not even a tiny hint of attraction, no reason to reach out and ‘give them a chance’. Maybe she was fucked in the head. Maybe everything the Red Room did, the surgeries and the chemicals and the honeypot missions, maybe they broke her. But honestly? If that meant Yelena was broken, she didn’t want to be fixed. She would stick with her new, few friends, and her family. They were everything to her.
But after the blip, she didn’t have anything.
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The New Avengers make it better. Living with Bob, Ava, John, Bucky, and Alexei brings the light back into her life. She can hug her Daddy whenever she pleases, or ruffle Bob’s hair, or cook with John, or spar with Bucky, or paint Ava’s nails at any and all hours of the day. They’re all losers, anti-social tragedies, a group of hopeless delinquents. But they’re hers. They have dinner each night, and they fight over stupid shit, and they make a game out of making Bucky watch all the movies he’s missed. Yelena feels more open and more loved and more seen than she has in a long time. Ever, actually.
But thoughts keep creeping in. Of the hunger. She doesn’t think, she won’t believe that her teammates are like that. Despite everything they’ve done, she knows they wouldn’t do that. But they’re only human. And she’s…..well, her perspective is a bit different than a regular human. Is she being too much? A few months into living together, it was like the floodgates opened. She wanted to greet them with hugs every morning, and sling an arm over their shoulder and climb onto their backs. But Yelena’s not a little girl anymore, she can’t afford to be too much. She doesn’t want to lead them on, only to tell them that she can’t be that for them, that she’ll never be that for them; she doesn’t do romance, or sex, or anything. Or, even worse, what if she makes them uncomfortable? What if she’s the one being hungry, what if she is taking too much? She knows she’ll never have to worry about leading Alexei on, but what if she became too clingy? What if she was being weird and he left again because she was too much of a chore?
“Yelena, you’re a big girl now” Melina had said. “You have to know not to hug everyone you meet.”
Shame and fear curls in Yelena’s gut like a poison. She still hasn’t even learned that lesson, and she was six years old back then. She has to cut back on the whole touching thing. What they have is good, the best thing she’s ever had, and Yelena cannot afford to fuck it up.
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“YELENA!! YELENA!!”
Yelena groans. Her head is pounding. What’s with all the yelling?
“Oh, thank god.” says a voice above her. John? “Thank god.”
She feels someone brush her hair out of her face and winces. She’s probably bleeding.
“Shit, okay. Let’s get you outta here, huh? Fight’s over.”
It is John. He looks like shit, covered in sweat, dirt, and grime. But she probably looks shittier, considering the way she feels. John reaches under her knees and lifts her up, cradling her close to his chest.
“I’m not a baby, you know,” she says, groaning. Walker ignores her, but she doesn’t blame him. She knows she couldn’t walk right now if she tried. What happened?
Yelena looks around the scene. The daylight hurts like a bitch, but she has to know what happened. It comes back in pieces. They’re in the freaking Bronx, because they were helping Dr. Strange. Some dark witch escaped from a cursed vase or something, and decided the best thing to do was to go ape shit. It was a short fight, but towards the tail end Yelena had been thrown against a building, and earned a big fat headache for her trouble.
John speaks up, jostling her from her thoughts. “The others just finished up, they’re heading back to the jet. How you feeling?” he asks.
“Well, my head hurts.”
John huffs a laugh. “Nothing else?”
“Sensitive to light, a little tired. Normal horrible concussion symptoms.” Yelena would really like to shove her face in John’s chest to hide from the light, but that’s probably not a good idea. Being carried bridal style in public is embarrassing enough.
“Good. I thought I saw the witch’s magic hit you, but maybe it just pushed you back. You don’t think you’re gonna turn into a frog or anything, are you? Any desire to ribbit?”
Yelena shakes her head, which woah, bad idea, why does she forget that every time she gets a concussion? Don’t make yourself nauseous, it’s like rule number one. She closes her eyes and tried to breathe deep, steadying herself. John would never let her hear the end of it if she threw up on his suit. “We get her?” she asks, once she feels like she won’t hurl.
“Yeah, we got her.” John sounds like he’s smiling, the bastard. “Let’s get back home. You want mac n’ cheese for dinner?” he asks.
Yelena cracks open one eye to look mischievously up at him. “If I ever answer no to that question, you’ll know I’ve been cursed.”
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If Yelena’s being honest, it starts as soon as John sets her down in the jet's med-bay. He steps away for just a moment to grab an alcohol pad for her head, and a jolt of fear runs through her so strong she flinches. He hates me. she thinks. He’s angry that he has to patch me up. He knows I’m not being as good a leader as I can be.
What the fuck? Yelena takes a deep breath and tries to calm down. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. It’s been a while since her thoughts have been like that. She tries to think through them logically. John is an asshole. If he hated her she would know. If he was mad he would yell, drop her off with some paramedics or even just leave her to deal with the head wound herself. And…he would also tell her what she could do to be a better leader. He’s not the kinda guy who watches you mess up just for the fun of it. She knows that. Desperate, Yelena has the strangest urge to reach out for another hug, but shoves it down. She’s being ridiculous.
By the time John finishes patching her up and Yelena’s changed into her civvies, they’re ready for takeoff. It’s a criminally short flight– if the jet wasn’t completely carbon-neutral they’d have to barricade the tower for environmentalists. Bob is on the tarmac, waiting for them like he always does. His face drops the minute he sees her.
“You okay?” he asks. God, is that puppy-dog eye thing on purpose?
“Grade 2 concussion,” says Ava, before Yelena can get a word out. “She’ll be fine.”
Bucky doesn’t even look up from his phone as he passes by. “No video games, just rest. Don’t make your nausea worse, Belova.”
“I know how to handle a simple concussion, Barnes!” Yelena winces. Yelling wasn’t a great idea either.
Alexei comes from behind and shakes her shoulders lovingly. “Of course you do, умная девочка” he says, planting a sloppy kiss to the top of her head. It makes her feel good but she pretends to be annoyed and pushes him off. But that just makes her head hurt much worse and she winces.
Bob smiles, slinging an arm around her shoulder, and the pain fades slightly. She just needs to rest, maybe pop a couple of painkillers. “Come on,” he says. “You can probably do a puzzle, right?”
When they’d moved into the tower, Mel gave each of them a shiny black credit card and told them to go crazy. But before anyone had the chance to go shopping, she sent some things up for them: pantry staples, drinks, a few books, magazines, and several jigsaw puzzles. Things you’d find in a fancy waiting room, or maybe an air bnb. They ignored most of it, but Bob and Yelena had latched onto the puzzles. Well really, Bob latched onto the puzzles. Yelena liked the idea of them, but they were a lesson in patience for her. She liked sitting in the quiet with Bob though. Talking about silly things, about their lives before. She was good at sorting the pieces by color or pattern, but Bob was the one who saw how they fit together. Yelena liked the easy ones, mostly because they didn’t tend to sit out on the coffee table for days and nag at her for not completing them. So Bob pulls an easy one from the shelf and guides her to the couch. It’s one of her favorites, a family of cartoon mice all around their little underground house. She sits close to Bob and presses their knees together as they sort out the pieces.
She can hear John and Ava clattering around in the kitchen, Bucky rifling through his records, and Alexei typing up the start of the mission report. Maybe it’s the concussion, but it all brings slight tears to her eyes. Yelena blinks them away without letting them fall, and leans more heavily into Bob’s side. She’s home.
They actually finish the puzzle just before John tells them dinner is ready, so Bob takes her hand and they walk to the table together. Maybe he can tell she’s feeling more clingy than normal, or maybe the hand-holding is for his benefit. Either way, she doesn’t have the capacity to over think it now. She just wants to dig in; dinner looks delicious.
Almost as soon as she lets go of Bob’s hand though, Yelena feels a pit open in her gut. He’s disappointed in me. He doesn’t want me around anymore. She flinches.
“You okay?” Bob asks.
“Yeah, yeah. Just fine.” She shakes her hand out, suddenly aware of a deep ache there. Was it hurting before? “Burned my hand on the dish” she lies.
“Oof. Sorry. Not your day, huh?”
Yelena laughs. No, apparently it isn’t her day. She’s had paranoia like this before, thoughts of self-doubt, but never like this, never so aggressive. And it’s been so long since the last time it happened, too. Is it the concussion?
Yelena tries not to think about it. The rest of dinner goes great. As much as she hates to admit it, John is a great cook, so everything is delicious. Her hand stops hurting only a few minutes in. She probably just hit it in the fight and didn’t notice for a while, that happens sometimes.
It doesn’t happen every night, but whenever the team needs a little pick-me-up they watch movies together. Apparently Bucky has decided tonight is one of those nights, so he corrals everyone into the living room and hands Yelena a huge binder, the one they’ve filled with blu-ray discs.
“Pick a movie you can listen to.” he says.
“Listen to?”
Bucky waves a blindfold, one of those soft masks for crazy people who want to sleep as unaware as possible. “Concussed people don’t watch movies, short-stack.” he says.
Yelena scowls. So they all watch a movie, and she just gets to listen in? This is such bullshit.
Eventually, she picks The Rescuers, something she used to love as a kid, and that she hopes the others enjoy too. No one complains or makes fun of her choice, probably because they know she’s not feeling great. Bucky refuses to even turn the tv on until she’s put on the stupid blindfold, so she gets settled pretty quickly. Ava takes the corner of the couch and rests her feet on Yelena’s thighs. John sits next to her with an arm cradling Yelena’s shoulder, and Bob lays his head in John’s lap and spreads the rest of his lanky body across the couch. Bucky gets the loveseat to himself, and Alexei takes the recliner–which means he’ll probably be snoring forty minutes in, but whatever.
Listening to a movie, Yelena learns, is much different than watching one. She gets bored of sitting up pretty quickly. She’s battered and bruised, and there are warm, cuddly bodies right next to her. So she lets her head fall against John’s chest. Then she adjusts her legs underneath her and pulls Ava’s legs into her lap more fully. Then she curls–
“Stop moving!” says John, jostling her shoulder playfully. “Do you have ants in your pants? Seriously? Here, just–”
Gently, John pushes her to lay down in his lap. She hears a gust of breath, and Bob presses his head to hers briefly. Walker seriously has a superhero on each thigh right now. What a life they lead. “Hi Yelena,” says Bob.
“Hi Bob. How’s the weather down here?”
“Not half bad.”
“Quiet you two. Ok, Ava, do you want to-”
Ava hums, and Yelena feels her climb across the couch and smush behind her. She digs her legs underneath Yelena’s thighs, but otherwise seems to settle in well. She’s probably leaning against John, but she’s got her arms draped around Yelena.
“There we go.” says John. He runs his fingers through Yelena’s hair, then she hears him do the same to Bob. “My god.”
Yelena smiles, teasing. “He’s grumpy”
“Very.” says Bob.
“Shh!”
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Yelena will attest that she didn’t fall asleep during the movie, but it was a close thing. She just doesn’t want to get up when the credits roll, is all. It’s been a long day, and their couch is really comfy.
“Come on Lena,” says Ava. She rubs her thumb back and forth across Yelena’s shoulder. “You should take your next round of painkillers and go to bed.”
Yelena groans. That’s a good idea, but she’d really rather stay here. Maybe she’d trap John and Ava here forever. The only one she couldn’t account for was Bob, but he would be easy enough to convince. Just stay here and cuddle guys, come on, it’ll be fun.
But she’s not a little girl anymore. She can’t pretend to be asleep so someone will carry her to bed, and she can’t stay out on the couch all night. She sits up, taking off the blindfold and blinking in the dim light. Just as John and Ava stand and stretch out their limbs, Bob sighs dramatically and flings his head into her lap. He’s got a nasty case of bed head, it looks like John was playing with his hair the whole movie.
Yelena smiles down at him. “Did you enjoy the movie?”
“Yep,” says Bob. He yawns, smushing his nose into her stomach softly..
“Nope! Up, up!” Ava yells. “Everyone else is in bed, Yelena, and I am tired!”
Bob laughs and sits up, allowing Yelena to stand. But the moment she does, she gasps in pain. Her head, back, neck, and thighs all ache like she’s been hit by a truck. Holy shit. Could she really be that sore just from today’s fight?
“Woah, are you alright?” asks Ava.
Yelena glances up at the others, nodding. “I’m fine. Nothing a little tiger balm won’t fix, I didn’t realize I was this sore.” They think I’m pathetic she thinks. All she wants to do is fling herself into their arms again. She feels oddly cold without their warmth. What is going on?
“Well you should take some more painkillers for your head, they’ll help with that too” says John. Yes, painkillers. Painkillers, and a nice hot shower to help with the chill. Then she’ll be back to normal.