Bob met you in the library. Therapy said the reading sessions might help. Less noise in his head. Less of it. And he didn’t mind. Books were quiet. Predictable. Safe.

You weren’t.

You were fast- faster than anyone he’d ever seen with a book. And God, you were beautiful. Distractingly so. The kind of beauty that made him swallow and his blood boil uncomfortably. He noticed it the second you looked up to smile at him.

He wasn’t supposed to notice. Not like that (hadn't noticed a girl like that in years). Not when he had something like the Void stitched inside his skin. But he was still a man, even if something else lived behind his eyes.

You were 24. Just landed your first real job. Whole life ahead of you. You’d asked him for a sticky note one day- just to mark your page. That’s how it started. A soft voice, a smile, shared silence between sentences. You didn’t have schizophrenia like him- didn’t know what it felt like to question whether the thoughts were yours. But the depression? The spirals? The ways you dealt with them that maybe weren’t healthy, but kept you alive? Yeah. You understood that part.

He usually only talked about that stuff with Yelena. She had a way of listening like an older sister, no judgment, just that hard-earned kind of empathy. The team… they were family. Flawed. Damaged. Trying. But you? You were something else entirely.

The way you smiled at him across a table. The soft, accidental brushes of hands. The late coffee talks that weren’t really about therapy anymore. You called them "meetups." Bob didn’t correct you. He liked the word. Liked you.

He helped you move a couch once. You said thank you, and he- God help him- hugged you. Actually hugged you first. You blushed. He noticed. Later, you kissed his cheek. He fumbled his curls like a teenager, heart jackhammering in his chest.

He never mentioned you to the team. Didn’t want to. Called you “Library Girl” when they pried. They didn’t know about the meetups, the smiles, or how normal he felt around you. They didn’t know you had no idea who he really was. Not Robert Reynolds, not Sentry, and definitely not the thing he tried not to be. You didn’t know about the Void. The New Avengers. The dark, sky-tearing spectacle of what he once was.

And he wanted to keep it that way.

Because around you, he was just Bob. Not a god. Not a threat. Just a man with a book. A man with maybe, just maybe, something worth holding onto.

And the team? Yeah. They noticed. How he wasn’t holed up in the Tower anymore. How he smiled more. Walked lighter. They didn’t ask. Not directly. But they knew something had changed.