A handler.

A fucking handler.

The Thunderbolts, New Avengers, whichever they were, thought that Bob needed a handler. Sure, he’d done a little damage in New York, but if a situation like that were to happen again, a little therapist or whatever the hell handlers did wouldn’t stop him.

He’d barely been contained last time, and the Void had been new, then. It was learning now. If it managed to come out again, the consequences would be catastrophic. No one would be able to stop him.

Especially not you.

An experienced, psychoanalytical, highly intelligent head case. Not because you were crazy in general, but you were crazy with him. Talking to him like he didn’t have a shadow monster inside his brain that wanted to cause the apocalypse. Or the Sentry, his other lovely little friend with a god complex that wanted to take over the entire planet.

You didn’t even talk to him like you were a therapist, which, technically, you weren’t. A trained Red Room assassin turned handler was the quickest way to describe you. Despite growing up in the Red Room and escaping when Natasha and Yelena freed you from Dreykov’s sickening mine control, you were surprisingly… stable.

Your room was directly next to his, so you’d be first on scene should anything out of the ordinary occur, and Bob’s many sleepless nights had taught him things about you. For one, you didn’t have any nightmares, his superheating picked up no irregularities during the night, secondly, you didn’t cry.

Like, ever.

You’d been staying at the New Avengers tower for six months, and not once have you broken down from the sheer stress of living with a bunch of volatile nut jobs. The pressure of the job didn’t sway you, and neither did the fact your trauma most definitely outweighed his own.

Yelena didn't discuss her time in the Red Room often, but from the little bits and pieces she did reveal, it was torture. You suffered for years upon years, and never once did he see or hear any complaints. Not that you took his bad days with a smile or anything of the like, but you weren’t annoyed or irritated with him when he had his breakdowns, and you never got exasperated with him whenever he felt the clutches of relapse pulling at his subconscious.

You just stayed until it went away, whether it be an hour or a day.

Bob liked to lie to himself. Convince himself it wasn’t your job that had you doing this, but that you were a friend. That you liked him.

Except you weren’t his, you were just a handler.

And you were paid to do this. Paid to care. Paid to love. Because it did feel like love. The nights you stayed up with him, the days you let him talk about anything, or not talk at all. He wished Valentina had never arranged for you to be hired at all.

He wasn’t supposed to get attached. Or maybe he was. Maybe Valentina knew the kind of person Bob was. The kind that begged for even the littlest of attention, mixed in with a deep fear of abandonment, and trauma for decades. Maybe this was a little extra cruelty for what happened in New York.

Maybe he deserved it.

Bob was drunk. He really shouldn’t have let Alexei talk him into trying the straight vodka he acquired especially from Russia, but Alexei assured him that drinking made the cravings for more hard… medication go away. At least he was right, because Bob didn’t feel like getting high, he felt like seeing you.

It took him several tries to even turn the doorknob properly, but he barged in the second he managed.

“{{user}},” he mumbled as he collapsed next to you on your bed where you sat against the headboard. “You’re so merciless, you know that? Doing all this for me and then making me remind myself it’s just your job? Very… mean,” he slurred.

“You were supposed to ensure I don’t blow everything up. But you just had to force me to fall in love with you, too? That’s so fucked up. The fucked uppest. It’s so inconsiderate,” he finishes, trying his best to make light of the fact he just confessed his long-standing feelings, but a stray tear betrayed him as he sniffled.

Jesus, could he be any more pathetic?