Accidental Text
Pairing: Bob Reynolds x Reader Rating: T Warnings/Tags: Fluff, accidental nudes, bob is having a breakdown. No smut in this one Word Count: ~2,791 Summery: Reader sends Bob a nude by accident and he is being TOTALLY cool about it ( NOT)
Authors Note: This was my first request! Im on a fluff train right now I love soft Bob...also i dont know how to end stories so... sorry
She texted him a lot. That was something she did now….a lot. For a while.
Bob didn't think about it too hard. Thinking about it too hard meant thinking about why she texted him, and why it was more than she texted anyone else (he'd noticed, not that he was going to do anything with that information, but he'd noticed), and why every time his phone buzzed and it was her name his whole chest went warm like a pilot light catching.
So…. He didn't think about it too hard.
Tuesday. Kitchen. Sandwich. He was building something involving turkey and an ambitious amount of mustard when her name lit up his screen. A photo of the sunset from the roof. Then a complaint about Yelena that was mostly exclamation points. Then a link to a golden retriever falling off a dock, no comment attached, because she knew he'd click it and she knew it would fix whatever needed fixing.
(It did.)
He was smiling. Standing in an empty kitchen, smiling at his phone, mustard knife in one hand. He clocked this about himself and moved on.
Does this work? I can't tell if it's too much.
Another photo incoming. She was getting dressed and she was asking him. That was... she wanted to know what he thought. About how she looked. She was standing in front of a mirror somewhere in this building right now, thinking about him while deciding what to wear, and his neck was already warm and she hadn't even sent it yet.
He typed back one-handed. For what?
Three dots.
Just out. Drinks maybe. Is it too much?
He could feel the reply building. Something easy. Something that was almost flirting if you tilted your head, but deniable, always deniable, because that was the game and he was very good at it and very tired of it and… not brave enough to stop.
Her next message came through.
He opened it the way he'd opened every message she'd ever sent. Thumb on the screen, no thought, the same muscle memory as breathing.
It wasn't the outfit. in fact it was… no outfit at all
His brain didn't catch up. There was a gap... half a second, maybe less... where he was just seeing her. Taking in information.
Oh.
Warm light, from the lamp on her desk. Her mirror was filthy which under different circumstances might have been funny or ironic. And she was...
Oh no.
The phone was face-down on the counter. Both of his hands were flat on the granite. The mustard knife was on the floor.
His heart was beating so fast, in a medical context, it would involve someone using the word event.
The phone buzzed against the counter. And again. And again and again and again, her panic arriving in pieces he could feel.
He didn't turn it over. He didn't need to. The texts lit up the edges of the screen, fragments he caught sideways without meaning to.
WAIT
BOB
WRONG PHOTO
OH MY GOD
THAT WASN'T
BOB PLEASE TELL ME YOU DIDN'T OPEN THAT
He looked at the ceiling. The ceiling was fine. The ceiling had never made him feel like his skeleton was trying to leave his body.
He left the kitchen. Didn't clean up the sandwich. Didn't grab the mustard knife. Walked to his room at a speed that he was going to call "brisk" because the alternative was admitting he was fleeing and that's a bit embarrassing.
⋆⁺₊⋆ ☾⋆⁺₊⋆
His room. Door shut. Phone in his hand because somewhere between the kitchen and here his body had made that call for him.
He put it face-down on the nightstand. Sat on the edge of the bed.
Stood up.
Sat back down.
Okay.
He had seen her. Not the way he normally saw her, the way that already made his hands stupid and his thoughts go sideways. Not the across-the-kitchen way. Not the she-just-laughed-and-now-he-couldn't-remember-what-year-it-was way, which was already more than he could handle on a given Tuesday.
He had seen her the way you see someone when there is nothing in the way.
And his brain had... it had just...
He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. His face was still hot. It had been hot since the kitchen. It was possible his face was going to be hot for the rest of his life, maybe he would develop some sort of cool face melting powers… Oh God
The phone buzzed on the nightstand. Her messages were still coming. He could feel the shape of them without looking... the apologies stacking on top of each other, building a tower of mortification he recognized.
I'm so sorry. I was sending you the outfit one and I grabbed the wrong photo. Please delete it. I want to die. Like actually die. Bob are you there?
He needed to reply. She was panicking and it was because of him. Because he hadn't said anything. Because he was sitting on his bed like a malfunctioning appliance instead of being a normal person who could type normal words with his normal hands. Normal…normal…normal
He could do this. He could type a response. Something easy and reassuring. Something that said hey, no big deal, accidents happen, already deleted it, we never have to speak of this again.
His thumbs hovered over the keyboard.
The problem was that he… hadn't deleted it.
The problem was that his thumb was already on the screen, already opening it, before the responsible part of his brain could file an objection.
Don't.
He looked.
She was sitting on her bed, legs folded under her, her weight settled back on her heels. The light was warm and low and it caught the curve of her waist, the soft dip where it met her hip, the way her stomach rounded just slightly below her navel. Soft. Everything about her was soft. The fullness of her thighs pressed together, the way her breasts sat heavy and natural without anything holding them, the slope of her shoulders where the light ran out and her skin disappeared into shadow. Fuck shes so beautiful
She wasn't posing. That was the part that was going to kill him. She was just looking at herself. Her chin was tilted up, her lips barely parted, her eyes on her own reflection with an expression he had never once seen on her face. Not for him. Not for anyone in any room he'd been in. Like she had caught herself in a private moment and captured it. So soft and very naked and…. Dont Look…
Bob's mouth was dry. His hands were shaking. He could feel his pulse in places that had no business having a pulse right now, and he was very aware, that he was hard. From a photo. On his phone. That she hadn't even meant to send him.
He closed it. Pressed his palms into his eyes so hard he saw colors. Maybe if he pressed hard enough he could erase the image from his brain. Dont want to erase it
She took that photo for herself. Not for him. She'd been alone and she'd felt good and she'd wanted proof. And she'd been texting him. About an outfit. Because what he thought mattered enough to ask. Both of those things lived in the same phone and neither of them had anything to do with each other except that they were both her and she was...
perfect
He wasn't sorry. He felt a lot of things right now... panicked, overwhelmed, hot in the face, something big and unnamed living behind his ribs... but sorry was not in there. He'd looked and he'd looked again and the worst part, the part that the cold voice in him would use later, was that given the chance he'd look again.
He did not know what to do with that.
He picked the phone up. Put it down. Picked it up again.
He started typing.
He typed no worries and stared at it.
No worries. Like she'd bumped into him in a hallway. Like she'd accidentally taken his coffee. No worries. Two words so aggressively casual they were practically wearing sunglasses.
He deleted it. Tried again.
Hey. Don't worry about it. Seriously. These things happen
These things happen. To who? To who did these things happen? In what universe was he drawing on a wealth of experience where beautiful women accidentally sent him photos that should be hung in museums? These things happen. He was going to throw his phone into the sun.
Delete.
Haha no big deal! Already forgot about it 👍
The exclamation point alone was a felony. The thumbs up was a war crime. And "already forgot about it" was the most transparent lie he had ever constructed, which was saying something, because he'd once told Bucky his chili was "amazing" before purposefully knocking the pot over for everyones sake.
Delete. Delete. Delete.
He went with: Hey. It's okay. Don't worry about it. Happens to the best of us
Sent it. Read it back. Wanted to die. Happens to the best of us. What did that even mean? What was he referencing? His extensive history of accidentally sending nudes? The time he didn't do that because he had never done that because he had never in his life...
She was typing.
Oh my god Bob I'm SO sorry. I was trying to send you the outfit pic and I grabbed the wrong one from my camera roll. I'm literally going to move to another country. I'm going to learn Portuguese and start a new life and never look anyone in the eye again
Something in his chest loosened. She was funny when she was panicking. It got him every single time.
You don't have to learn Portuguese
I'm already looking up flights
I hear the language isn't that hard actually
Bob…I'm serious I'm so embarrassed I could die
He typed back too fast, the way he always did when she was spiraling and he needed her to stop. Hey. Seriously. It's fine. I'm not weird about it. You're fine.
He was so weird about it. He had never been more weird about anything in his life.
You swear?
I swear
You deleted it?
His thumb stopped moving.
The cursor blinked. He watched it blink. It blinked like it had all the time in the world, like this wasn't a yes-or-no question that was going to determine the entire trajectory of his evening and possibly his life.
Yeah, he typed. And then sat there. Looking at the word. Not pressing send.
Because he still hadn't.
He switched to his photos. The image was still there, in his recently saved, sitting between a screenshot of a recipe Ava had sent him and a blurry photo of a pigeon he'd taken for no reason.
Her. The warm light on her skin. The soft curve of her stomach, the fullness of her thighs. That expression. The one that wasn't for him.
He stared at it for three seconds. Four. Five.
He deleted it.
It felt like pulling out something that had only just started growing roots, and his chest ached in a way that was completely disproportionate to what had actually happened, which was deleting a photo from his phone, which people did every day, all the time, without feeling like they'd given something back they weren't finished holding.
He sent the yeah.
Thank you, she replied. Can we just... pretend this didn't happen?
And there it was.
The thing that was worse than the photo. Worse than the panic, worse than the guilt, worse than the little commentary in the back of his skull. She wanted him to pretend. She wanted to put this back in the box where it was before, the easy, deniable, just friends who text a lot box, and he was supposed to help her close the lid.
Pretend this didn't happen.
He couldn't. He could delete the photo and he could swear he'd deleted it and he could type yeah of course and send a laughing emoji and go back to being the version of himself that functioned. But he could not un-know what she looked like when she was alone and felt good about being alive. That was in him now. Underneath the panic, in the place where the jokes ran out and there was just the want. The big, stupid, undeniable want that he had been folding into smaller and smaller shapes for months so it would fit inside the deniable box.
It didn't fit anymore.
He put the phone down. Picked it up. Put it down.
Picked it up.
Yeah, he typed. Of course. Already forgotten.
He sent it. Read it back. He hated it.
He put the phone on the nightstand. Stared at the ceiling. The ceiling looked back, unhelpful as ever.
Something was building in his chest. Steady…rising…
He sat with it for thirty seconds. A minute.
He put his shoes on.
He didn't remember the walk. Hallway, stairs, another hallway. His shoes were on and then he was standing in front of her door before he had the chance to talk himself out of it.
His hand was raised to knock.
He could still leave. He could turn around, go back to his room, text her something funny in the morning, and they could both pretend that the last hour hadn't cracked something open that was never going to close on its own. He could do that. He was good at that. He had been doing that for months.
He knocked.
Silence. Then footsteps, soft and quick.
The door opened.
She'd changed. Oversized shirt, sleep shorts, her hair pushed back like she'd been running her hands through it. Her eyes were red in a way that could've been crying or could've been the specific exhaustion of wanting to disappear and not being able to. She looked at him, and whatever crossed her face was too fast for him to catch.
"Bob?" Quiet. Confused. A little afraid, like she wasn't sure which version of this conversation he was here to have.
He opened his mouth. Nothing came out.
All the way here. All the way down the hallway with something building in his chest that felt like the truth, and now he was standing in front of her with his hands at his sides and absolutely nothing to offer except the fact that he'd shown up. That he'd chosen to be here instead of somewhere easier. That the phone in his pocket was empty but the image was still in him, warm and close, and he didn't want to pretend.
"I cant forget," he said. Quiet. To the doorframe, not to her. "I tried. I can't."
She stared at him. He made himself look at her.
Whatever was on his face, she saw it. All of it. The want and the guilt and the terrified, no-jokes-left thing underneath both of them. Her hand tightened on the edge of the door.
Her lips parted. She didn't say anything.
He didn't say anything else.
The hallway was very quiet.
She stepped back. Opened the door wider.
He went in.
The door clicked shut behind him.
Her room was dim. One lamp. She'd wrapped her arms around herself, standing in the middle of the floor like she didn't know what to do with her own body, and he recognized that, because he didn't know what to do with his either.
"You weren't supposed to see it," she said.
"I know."
"It wasn't for you. It wasn't for anyone. I just..."
"I know." He looked at the lamp. Made himself look at her instead. "That's the part I can't forget."
Her arms tightened.
"You looked..." He stopped. Started over. "You looked like you'd caught yourself being happy. Just you, by yourself, happy. And I deleted it. I swear I deleted it. But I couldn't delete that I saw it, and I didn't want to lie to you about that. I've been lying about a lot of... adjacent stuff. For months. I'm very tired."
Silence.
"Months?" she said.
"So many months."
Something in her face came loose. Not the mortification. Underneath it. And there it was... the expression from the photo, or the beginning of it, aimed at him this time.
She laughed then. Wet and sudden, like it got out before she could check it. Then she crossed the room and put her forehead against his chest, and his arms went around her without checking with him first.
"Maybe we just stop pretending then," she said into his shirt.
"Okay." A breath. "Okay."
They stood there. Behind his rib cage, the pilot light had ignited. It wasn't going out. TagList: @my-name-is-baby
