Dear Readers,

After noticing that this fandom has a distinct lack of enough Helen/Bob content (an absolute CRIME), I finally decided to remedy this by compiling all my headcanons for them into a series of oneshots. This first idea came from my realization that while Bob has reading glasses in Incredibles 2, he doesn't have them in the first movie, so naturally I assumed he must've gotten them sometime during the three-month interim between the Omnidroid attack and the Underminer's appearance. This story is just my ridiculous imagining of how that scenario happened. I hope you enjoy!

Best Regards,
Pooka

Soundtrack: "Can't Take My Eyes Off You" by Frankie Valli

Can't Take My Eyes Off You

"Pardon the way that I stare
There's nothing else to compare
The sight of you leaves me weak
There are no words left to speak
But if you feel like I feel
Please let me know that it's real
You're just too good to be true
Can't take my eyes off you…"

"All right, all right, stop! I'll go!"

Three weeks. Three weeks of relentless nagging, day in and day out, with barely any relief. An offhand comment here, a lecture there – if there is one thing to be said about Helen Parr, it's that she is nothing if not persistent.

"Here," the woman in question snips with a scowl, hastily scooping up the phone from the nightstand and shoving the entire apparatus into her husband's unsuspecting arms. "You'd better make an appointment right now before it gets booked up."

Bob Parr resists the temptation to sigh in response. He is well aware that he's pushed his wife's frustration to its furthest limit with his repeated refusals to visit the eye doctor, and anyone with half a brain would know not to provoke her wrath any further.

Even though he really, really doesn't want to go.

They'll probably end up giving him glasses. He hates glasses.

Not that glasses are bad, mind you - Bob certainly doesn't think they are. Glasses are all well and good if you truly need them. But he doesn't need them. So what if he has to squint a little while reading the daily news? It's not like he's going blind or anything.

It's not just the newspaper, Bob! Remember when we were ordering takeout and you could barely read the menu and you had to keep asking Vi to tell you what the options were? Or when you were reading Jack-Jack a bedtime story and had to hold the book half an inch away from your face?

It wasn't half an inch, Bob grumbles inwardly as he reluctantly punches the numbers into the phone's keypad. Lord knows he loves his wife, but honestly she can be a bit much sometimes.

Still, he's learned his lesson from everything that has transpired over the past few months. Now, when Helen Parr insists, Bob Parr obeys.

Most of the time.

Helen twists her wrist to glance once again at the time. It's been about twenty minutes since Bob disappeared into one of the examination rooms; he's sure to be finished any moment now. She shakes her head, remembering her husband's frequent and adamant protests against needing this appointment in the first place. He could be so pigheaded sometimes. She flips a page of the magazine she's reading, once again silently thanking Lucius and Honey for offering to take the kids for the day, giving her and Bob a much-needed break given the stress of recent events. It's enough trouble dealing with three actual children throwing fits over various non-issues without adding her husband to the mix. Honestly, what was the matter with wearing glasses anyway? And merely reading glasses at that? It isn't as if you'll be wearing them all the time, she told him time and time again. But he wouldn't be Bob Parr if he didn't manage to spend every opportunity he could whining about it anyway.

What a big baby, she muses, flipping another page. Still, she ends up chuckling quietly in spite of herself.

Helen's thoughts are interrupted by a sudden creaking sound, and she peers upward to see Bob emerging from the doorway, following the doctor – a Dr….Kent, was it? – back into the waiting room. Her husband's handsome face is contorted into something like a childish pout, and she can only assume this means one thing.

"Glasses?"

He merely flashes a wounded look at her, and she has to stifle the urge to burst out laughing.

He may be a pigheaded, stubborn ass, but he's an adorable one nonetheless. Helen almost feels sorry for him.

"We've got a nice selection of frames right here if you want to try them on while I get this paperwork sorted out," Dr. Kent is saying as he leads Bob to the end of a long wall covered in a various assortment of the very things he does not want to be wearing. "You take a look and I'll be right back," the doctor remarks with a cheerful smile before turning back around and vanishing into the office adjacent to the examination room.

"Do you want some help?" Helen asks, her tone tinged with a slight hint of amusement.

"No, no, I'm fine," Bob mutters crankily as he scans the carefully arranged options on the wall before him.

Helen returns her attention to the magazine, figuring she'll give her husband some space to act like a grumpy five-year-old for the time being. He'll get over himself soon enough.

Several minutes of silence pass, broken only by the murmurs of the other occupants in the room, of which there aren't many. It is Saturday morning, after all, and people would much rather be doing far more enjoyable things with their time than spending it at the doctor's office. She and Bob definitely would be, if he hadn't been such a crybaby about the whole situation and postponed the inevitable until the very last second. But that's neither here nor there now. At least he finally gave in. Contrary to popular belief, ruthless hounding did, in fact, have its benefits.

"Hey, honey?"

Helen lifts her eyes once more upon hearing her husband's voice. His back is still turned to her, but he appears to be fiddling with a set of frames and peering skeptically at his reflection in one of the wall-mounted mirrors.

"Yes?"

"What do you think about these?"

At that, Bob spins around to face her, and she nearly chokes on air.

Oh.

Helen blinks – hard – once, twice, maybe three times, but for some godforsaken reason she can't seem to clear her head. Or to breathe properly for that matter. Her brain has short-circuited and all she can do is stare dumbly at her husband as time seems to freeze in place, leaving her helpless as she attempts to process the sight before her.

He's wearing glasses.

That in itself isn't a surprise. Bob came here to have his eyes examined, and he's obviously supposed to be wearing glasses. But what is a surprise is how unexpectedly…good…he looks wearing them. Not that he doesn't always look good. It's just…well. She can't really explain it. The frames are nothing fancy, just a simple rectangular, black-rimmed set – a fairly common style, really – but by god does he look incredible in them, no pun intended. There's a million adjectives she could dredge up from her mental dictionary to describe his current appearance, but somehow none of them seem adequate. Distinguished, handsome, dashing…dare she say sexy, even? She catches her bottom lip between her teeth without realizing, her stomach jolting with sudden urgency.

"Well?"

Helen blinks yet again and comes to, awkwardly clearing her throat. She desperately hopes Bob can't see the flush in her cheeks – her face is practically on fire. "Huh?" she croaks, breaking out of her trance. "Uhh…give me a minute. Let me just…get a good look."

A very good look. Hell, she could look at him like this all day.

"So do you like them or not?"

A barely audible squeak wrenches its way from her throat before she finally replies. "Ye—" cough "— yes, sweetie. They're very...nice."

Helen beams at her husband in approval, praying in earnest that her exaggeratedly saccharine expression is enough to cover for her flustered reaction. Truth be told, she's practically dying from her vantage point, and she feels like repeatedly slapping herself for behaving like an idiotic schoolgirl with a crush. They're just glasses, Helen mentally hisses with all the vehement condescension she can muster. You're not thirteen. Get over yourself.

She's fighting a losing battle, though, because the minute Bob removes the frames from his face, her heart plummets in disappointment.

For god's sake, Helen Parr, get a grip.

Thankfully, it's at this precise moment that Dr. Kent chooses to return to the waiting room, lifting the burden of focus off Helen and shifting it back to more practical matters. She breathes a sigh of relief as Bob hands off the frame to the doctor and scrawls his name hastily on a few more forms. Within a matter of minutes, they're all finished for the day and finally heading out to the car.

The glasses will be ready in a week. Thank god – she needs some time to compose herself after today's embarrassment. What she'll do once her husband actually has them in his possession, however, is another matter entirely. Helen doesn't want to think about that just yet. She's had enough mortification for one day, and judging by the agitation seeping into her limbs at the mere thought of the…incident…she's almost certain she's in desperate need of a drink despite the fact that it's only 10 A.M. For now all she can do is lean back against the car seat and shut her eyes with a tiny exhale, wishing that her stupidly adolescent feelings will just evaporate into the air surrounding her as if they never existed at all.

"Well, Mr. Parr, it looks like you're a bit farsighted. You'll be needing some reading glasses."

Great. He knew it. He just knew it.

It's just before 10 A.M. on Saturday morning – far too early to be up on the weekend for Bob's liking – and here he is, sitting in an examination chair, having just had the absolute pleasure of wasting the last twenty minutes of his life reading row after senseless row of obnoxious little letters. And now he's being told the one piece of information he's been dreading to hear all week.

Glasses. Ugh.

He supposes maybe he's overreacting to the news. But if he is to be honest with himself, Bob has never liked the idea of consistently wearing anything on his face aside from his hero mask. Glasses are an inconvenience and an annoyance – they slip off your nose, the lenses are always getting smudged and in constant need of wiping, and the frames really just don't suit his face at all. Sunglasses are one thing, but actual glasses? He's going to look like a total idiot. He's grateful that at least he won't have to wear them all the time, assuming they even manage to stay on his face any time he looks down.

After some more prattling on about lenses and prescriptions, Dr. Kent – a strikingly handsome young man with slicked-back dark hair who happens himself to be sporting a pair of black-rimmed spectacles – leads Bob back into the waiting room. He briefly catches his wife's gaze as she looks up from the magazine draped over her crossed legs.

"Glasses?" she inquires, the barest trace of a smirk twitching at the edge of her lips.

Bob says nothing in response and simply shoots her what he hopes is a glare icy enough to freeze over the South Pacific. But the smirk tugs her mouth upward just a smidgen, and he knows he's failed. Hell, he probably looks more like a child who's just dropped his ice cream cone on the pavement. Pathetic.

Helen is never going to let him live this down.

Dr. Kent, meanwhile, is waving his hand at the neatly-arranged frames adorning the surface of the wall. He then says something about paperwork and promptly disappears into his office, leaving Bob to stare forlornly at the vast array of offending items leering down at him. From their little plastic perches they seem almost as if they are silently mocking him, and for a moment Bob is overcome with the sudden urge to punch the wall and send the whole lot of them clattering to the floor in pieces.

But, rather reluctantly, he swallows his pride and carefully begins inspecting each pair.

"Do you want some help?" Helen queries from behind him, and he can hear the contained laughter straining against her words.

"No, no, I'm fine," Bob replies tersely. The last thing he needs right now is to see that same laughter dancing in his wife's eyes as he repeatedly humiliates himself by trying these stupid things on. Groaning inwardly, he zones in on a tortoiseshell pair and gently lifts it off the stand before sliding them onto his face.

As expected, he looks absolutely ridiculous.

On to the next pair.

Bob spends what seems like the next hour agonizing over every pair of glasses, scrutinizing his appearance in the mirror before deciding he still looks like a complete doofus and moving on to the next set. He's at his wit's end when he finally lays eyes on a promising option – a rectangular set of frames with black rims similar to the pair Dr. Kent owns. Hoping that these glasses will finally suit him – or at the very least look decent enough for him to wear without his wife collapsing into a fit of giggles at the sight of him – he takes the frames into his hands and warily settles them onto the bridge of his nose.

Well. These aren't so bad.

They're not good, of course. But they are slightly better than everything else he's tried on so far. He figures he might as well ask for Helen's opinion. Maybe, just maybe, she won't actually laugh at him.

"Hey, honey?"

"Yes?"

Here it is. The moment of truth. He draws in a deep breath. "What do you think about these?"

Bob turns around before he has the chance to chicken out.

What happens next, however, is the furthest from anything he could have ever expected to come of this scenario.

Helen is staring at him. And not in an analytical way. No, instead of sizing up his current appearance like she should be doing, she seems practically frozen in place like a deer in headlights, gawking. She blinks her amber eyes deliberately several times before ultimately returning to her stupor, leaving Bob utterly dumbfounded. For a moment he wonders if he should go over and give her a tiny shake to make sure she's all right.

But then it happens.

It's a quick, subtle movement. Anyone else wouldn't have thought much of it. But the minute he sees it, Bob Parr knows exactly what it means, and all of a sudden everything about this dreaded situation is turned completely on its head.

She's biting her lip.

There are only three precise circumstances in which Helen Parr bites ever bites her lip, and after fifteen years of marriage, Bob is more than distinctly familiar with each of them. One, she does it when she's excited about something. Two, when she's flustered or embarrassed. And three, for lack of a better way of putting it, when she's…turned on.

Judging by the context of the current state of affairs and by the way Helen is apparently unable to tear her gaze away from her husband's face, Bob can conclude only one thing.

It's definitely option number three.

Suddenly, the idea of wearing glasses doesn't seem like such a bad thing anymore.

Helen herself doesn't seem to notice her own action, but he decides on the spot that he won't call attention to it just yet. After all these weeks of nagging, he figures he deserves some sort of payback, however small. He'll milk this for all its worth until she eventually cracks under pressure.

"Well?"

He finally breaks the silence, curious to see if this rattles her enough for her discomfort to be visibly noticeable. He's not disappointed. Helen's eyelids flutter nervously and she clears her throat in haste, unmistakably attempting to conceal her reaction from just seconds prior. "Huh? Uhh…give me a minute. Let me just…get a good look."

She tilts her head just slightly, and for a moment Bob relishes the satisfaction of seeing his wife glow with singular appreciation for his new appearance.

"So do you like them or not?" He bites back the impulse to smirk. He of course already knows the answer.

She squeaks, probably thinking he doesn't notice, and then answers. "Y-yes, sweetie," she responds with a small cough. "They're very...nice."

Helen flashes him a broad smile, the kind of smile that takes effort to maintain, the kind of smile Dash sometimes uses to try to feign innocence after spouting an obvious lie. There's no use in her pretending, though. Bob has her right in the palm of his hand, and he knows it.

For once, he's actually won.

Much to Bob's delight, he receives a call the next Friday – a day early – that his new pair of glasses is ready for pick-up. Instead of teasing and repeatedly bombarding her husband with I-told-you-so's, Helen has been rather quiet about the matter for the past week, thankfully relieving Bob of the need to fake any disgruntlement on his part. He's not all that surprised at his wife's uncharacteristic silence, however, given her episode at the optometrist's office. Normally Bob would immediately leap at the opportunity to poke a little fun at his wife's expense, especially since she's done the same to him on a number of occasions, but acting quite so soon would ruin the plan. Yes, he has a plan. It's a relatively simple plan, but a plan nonetheless, and it demands that he keep his mouth shut for just enough time for Helen to think he's forgotten – or, better yet - never at all noticed her behavior the Saturday prior.

The element of surprise is key.

Bob debuts the glasses to the family after dinner, and they are met with a varied response from the kids, ranging from Dash's bluntly skeptical "I dunno, they look kinda weird, Dad" to Violet's nonchalant shrug of approval. The most notable reaction is from Jack-Jack, who causes quite a stir by forcibly snatching the pair from his father's face and mistaking the item for a chew toy. After several minutes of shrieking intermixed with the older siblings' hysterical howls of laughter, Helen manages to rescue the frames from the baby's jaws and return them to her husband, who inwardly breathes a sigh of relief that his new lenses escaped without a scratch. Not long after that it's time for bed, and once the kids are settled in their room in the motel suite, it's finally time for Bob to put his plan into action.

He's settled comfortably on the living area couch, watching TV as Helen rifles through one of the few boxes of belongings they managed to salvage from their house after the explosion. After a careful glance in her direction, Bob picks up the remote and turns off the television set before leaning back and lounging against the sofa cushions, arms outstretched.

Showtime.

"Hey, Helen?" he remarks casually, making the best effort he can to maintain a neutral expression.

"Yeah?" She doesn't look up from her rummaging. "What is it?"

"Is my copy of Treasure Island in there? I kind of want to read it again."

She lets out a sardonic snort before replying. "Again? Haven't you already read that—I don't know—at least two hundred times?" Helen turns her head then and fixes her gaze on Bob, quirking an eyebrow in amusement.

"It was two hundred and one times, actually," he answers with a playful wink.

She rolls her eyes in response before returning her attention to the box.

"I'll check," Helen says as she continues to sort through the myriad of items. "Not sure it's in—oh what do you know. Here it is!"

Helen extracts the weathered volume from its place beneath a tangle of old sheets and crosses the room to hand it to Bob, who smiles appreciatively as she approaches. The edges of the pages are slightly singed, but other than loose binding and scuffs on the cover from years and years of enthusiastic re-reads, the copy is miraculously intact.

He reaches out to take the book from her grasp, but not before purposefully drawing the new pair of glasses out from its place in his robe pocket.

"Thanks, sweetie," Bob says innocently, placing the book in his lap momentarily to unfold the frames and place them on his face.

In that split second, he swears he can hear her gulp.

Success.

He lifts his gaze to meet Helen's once more, and it takes all his superhuman strength not to lose control at the sight of her. She looks far more composed than she had at the optometrist's, but her bottom lip is adorably caught between her teeth again, and a rosy blush is coloring her cheeks with the slightest tinge of pink. Not to mention her wide amber eyes look breathtakingly exquisite from this angle, the dim lamplight reflecting gently off her irises and making them glow with a soft golden hue. Her visage is one most tantalizing things Bob has ever laid eyes upon, and for a moment he wants nothing more than to drop the act and yank her into his lap before she can walk away.

But he stands his ground – the game must go on for just a teensy bit longer. Three weeks of nagging is quite a bit of time, and he deserves retribution.

Helen releases her bottom lip, once again seemingly unaware of her action, and smiles weakly at her husband before turning around and resuming her previous activity.

Bob lets a few moments of silence pass between them as he flips through the pages of his book, pretending to read. He can sense Helen inwardly squirming from all the way across the room, and he grins smugly to himself, peeking at her small frame over the rims of his glasses. She's furiously raking her fingers through her auburn hair in frustration as she scans the boxes lined against the wall, but something about her stance tells him that her search for…whatever she's looking for isn't the only source of her distress. She seems distracted. Very distracted.

"What are you looking for, anyway?"

Helen jumps, startled, at the sound of Bob's voice, but refuses to turn around and face him. "I-I'm trying to find that baby blue sweater you got me that one Christmas. I don't know why I just thought of it, but I really like that sweater and I could've sworn it was one of the things that made it out okay…"

"Why don't you give it a rest and look for it tomorrow?" he responds matter-of-factly, still observing her from atop the edge of his lenses.

Helen's fingers clench in her hair as she lets out an exhausted huff. "Well I got started and now I don't want to stop until I find it, y'know…"

"Want me to help you look?"

"NO! I mean…no, it's okay…I'll find it eventually."

His chest swells in satisfaction at her sudden outburst, and then he quietly returns his focus to the book, this time allowing himself to actually read a few pages before deciding it's finally time to push the envelope.

"You know," Bob starts slowly, once again peering at his wife over the edge of the book cover, "you were biting your lip."

She freezes.

"Just now," he clarifies, unable to help the smirk gradually spreading across his lips. "But you were doing it back at the eye doctor's too."

A hush falls over the two momentarily before Helen audibly inhales and mutters a response.

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"I don't know," Bob continues slyly. "You tell me."

"There's nothing to tell," she replies through gritted teeth. She's rooted to the spot, her hand still clutching a fistful of hair, her back still facing him.

"I see," Bob remarks with a controlled sense of calm. "But if that's so…then why are you avoiding looking at me?"

"What?! I'm not avoiding anything."

"Then why won't you turn around?"

"You want me to turn around? Fine! I'll turn around if you stop being so…ugh!" Helen's hand comes flying out of her hair in exasperation as she finally whips round to face her husband. "Happy?"

He quashes the compulsion to burst out laughing at the way her cute little nose is scrunched up in anger like a petulant child's. "Thing is," Bob continues, restraining the chortle bubbling up from his chest, "I can't see a damn thing in these glasses unless it's right in front of me."

She purses her lips and clenches her hands into fists at her sides with an irritated grunt, but reluctantly stomps over to him anyway. "Can you see me now?" she growls, raising her fists to settle them on her hips.

He glances up at her, grinning madly as he picks the book up off his lap and sets it beside him on the couch. "Not quite. You'll have to get a bit closer."

She crosses her arms in defiance. "I think I'm close enough."

"Well I'm telling you that you're not."

"Well you are just going to have to deal with it."

"Oh really?" Bob replies, quirking an eyebrow. Swift as lightning, his large hands shoot forward from his sides and grab her around the waist, dragging her down into his lap as she squeaks in surprise.

"Now that's much better."

And before Helen has the chance to react, he tugs her forward and crashes his lips against hers.

She squirms in his arms for a mere second before retaliating, grabbing the labels of his robe and forcefully pushing his body against the back of the couch with a heated snarl. She then hooks her knees around his hips, unwilling to grant him victory so easily, and lifts her hands to claw at his hair as he hisses into her mouth in response. His own hands begin to roam her body as if they have a mind of their own – across her thighs, up her back, over her neck, into her hair, and back again, all the while drawing her impossibly closer. She moans in spite of herself, falling further into him and almost disappearing into his strong embrace. She can feel the frenzied thrum of his pulse as it mingles with hers, reverberating throughout every fiber of her body until she's practically trembling in his arms. She drags her fingernails down the back of his neck in an attempt to regain the upper hand, but despite the groan she manages to draw from his throat, he maintains control, seizing the opportunity to wrap one arm around her waist, thread the fingers of his free hand through her hair, and twist their entwined bodies around so that she's lying beneath him.

Bob's mouth finally breaks contact with Helen's as her back thumps against the surface of the couch. She gasps for air while his lips trail down her neck – lord knows she desperately needs to breathe – but she's aching to lose herself in his kisses again, oxygen be damned. She arches her neck despite her desire to protest, however, and when he reaches the edge of her collarbone all her resolve nearly evaporates. A soft whine escapes her throat as his nose eagerly nudges the neckline of her pajama top, his mouth claiming every inch of bare skin it can find, marking her as his own. She tightens the grip of her thighs around his hips in response, eliciting another groan from her husband's own throat, before hastily undoing the knot on the belt of his robe and slipping her hands beneath the hem of his shirt. He inhales sharply as she presses her palms against his warm skin and runs them up and down his torso in a steady rhythm, fingers delicately tracing the ridges of his muscles. Eventually his lips make their way back to her face and he once again consumes her in a scorching kiss that burns away the air in her lungs. His soft mouth folds over her lips, swallowing every whimper and every sigh that wrenches free from somewhere deep inside her, and she digs her fingernails into his chest to anchor herself lest she completely drown underneath him.

Neither of them knows how much longer they continue on like this, but at some point Bob pulls away again, resting his forehead against Helen's, his breaths ragged and uneven. Helen extricates one hand from beneath his shirt to lay it on his jaw.

"I hate you," she pants breathlessly, a smirk tugging at the corners of her lips.

"Guess we're even, then," he chuckles. She can feel the rumble in his chest quiver against her body and she shivers involuntarily.

"For the record, I'm not sorry for nagging you."

"Oh, I know you aren't. But I couldn't just let you get away with it."

She rolls her eyes. "Of course not."

"You really like them, don't you?" He waggles his eyebrows at her suggestively overtop the rims of the item in question.

"No," she quips, her smirk widening. "They look godawful. Take them off."

"As you wish," Bob replies with a smirk of his own, pulling back slightly and lifting a hand to remove the glasses and place them onto the coffee table. "Better?"

"You know, to be honest, it doesn't make much of a difference. You look terrible regardless."

Bob lets out a playful growl and pounces, smothering his wife's face with kisses and attacking her stomach with a bombardment of tickles.

"S-stop!" she giggles, writhing beneath him.

"Shh," he murmurs teasingly, breath hot against her ear. "You'll wake the kids."

"Shut me up, then."

He ceases his tickling and shifts his body to gaze into her eyes once more before speaking. "Gladly," he whispers, leaning back in so that their noses touch. "But not here."

In one quick, seamless movement, Bob stands up from the couch, scooping Helen's body up into his arms. She keeps her legs hooked around him and wraps her own arms around his shoulders, burying her face into her husband's neck as he strides down the hallway to their room, closing the door behind them with a soft click.

A/N: In my defense, I was not intending to write that intense make out session, okay, but I hit a roadblock while I was writing and then that happened, and it ended up being the only way to move the story along. It's not my fault, I swear xD Anyway, special thanks to my friends Grace and Alisha for letting me bounce around this ridiculous premise and helping me come up with ideas (and a fitting title!) for it. Thank you for reading, and please don't forget to leave a review!