TW for minor swearing
The next few days that dwindled past Bobbi weren't so bad. Natasha's house was a safe place, and Natasha, Wanda, and Pietro all did their best to make her feel like a part of their family. She helped Wanda in the kitchen, learning one night how to turn their Thanksgiving leftovers into new meals, learning the art of borscht – a red soup made from beets, of all things, that tasted far better than Bobbi had expected – another. Pietro helped her work through some of her old physical therapy exercises, to keep her knee strong and healthy, and Natasha was always ready with whatever Bobbi needed – a distraction, a place to talk through things, a reassuring smile. Clint dropped by plenty of times, usually through the window, and usually bringing laughter and levity with him, so long as nobody asked him about his parents.
Still, it all felt more like a dream to Bobbi than anything, a weird kind of limbo where she got to stay in a nice place while she waited day after agonizing day to hear how the rest of her life would turn out. She tried not to think too hard about Skye and Jemma, both stuck in places where they'd rather not be, and how much harder the waiting must be for them, because that just made her feel worse and didn't do anybody any good, but it wasn't an easy task.
By the time Sunday had rolled around, with still no word from Miss Hand or the investigator who'd spoken with her right before Thanksgiving, Bobbi could hardly stand the waiting and the not knowing. Her muscles were all tight and tense, like she'd gone to soccer practice without stretching first, and she found herself needing to hold onto her batons almost constantly, like Linus from Peanuts – a little kid with a security blanket. No one seemed to mind, of course, which was nice, but Bobbi found herself wishing that she could relax enough to not need them every second of the day.
"I have an idea," Natasha said, late in the morning, not long after they'd finished breakfast. Clint was still in bed, and Pietro and Wanda had gone to pick up some groceries, so it was just the two of them sitting at the kitchen table. "Something that might help take your mind off things, if you're interested."
"What is it?"
"Well, Hunter's been texting me nonstop since the other day," Natasha smirked. They'd used Natasha's phone on Friday to update Hunter and Mack on everything that had been going on. Apparently, the update hadn't been sufficient for Hunter. "He's very worried about you, and Mack's been sending his love, of course. They asked if you were feeling up to having some visitors, so I thought maybe we could do something low-key, watch a movie or play some video games or something? What do you think?"
"They want to come over?" Bobbi asked, feeling her forehead wrinkle slightly in confusion.
"Yeah," smiled Natasha. "They want to see you. Check in on you. And I thought it might be worth asking. You've been okay with Clint coming over, so I thought maybe… It's up to you, of course."
"That… that would be nice," Bobbi decided. "That's really nice of them."
"Well, I do tend to have good taste in friends," Natasha joked as she pulled out her phone to spread the word. About half a second passed before her phone buzzed in hand, causing Natasha to let out a snort. "That was fast. Hunter already said he's in. Eager beaver, that guy." Her phone buzzed again, and she glanced at the screen. "And apparently he has something he wants to talk to you about. He wants to know if that's okay. What's that about?"
Bobbi's face flushed as she looked down at the tabletop and gave her batons an absentminded squeeze. As much as she hoped Hunter just wanted to ask about Jemma and Skye, she knew he could ask that over text, so she had a feeling he was more interested in discussing something else that had happened that day. "He probably wants to talk about the kiss."
"Excuse me, the what?"
Bobbi winced and felt her face go even hotter. She hadn't meant to say that out loud. Ever since everything had gone down, she'd had a harder time keeping all of her thoughts inside her head. It didn't matter much most of the time – she had very little to keep secret from Natasha at this point – and no one seemed to mind that she was sharing things as they popped into her brain. This particular thought maybe should have stayed silent, though, given the look on Natasha's face. Eyebrows flying up almost to her hairline, jaw slightly slack, green eyes wide and blinking fast. A shocked, dumbfounded, disbelieving, no-way kind of face. Bobbi couldn't tell if it was a good thing or a bad thing. "It's nothing, forget I said—"
"You're telling me—" Natasha said, holding up a slender finger to stop Bobbi short. The thunderstruck look had slid away into a sly, gleaming grin, which unlatched some of the anxiety from Bobbi's lungs, at least. Natasha wasn't mad – not about the kiss and not about the secret. "—that you've been staying at my house for almost a week and you're only just now telling me that you and Hunter kissed? When? Where? How?"
"Are… are you asking me how people kiss?"
"No, I know how people kiss," said Natasha wryly. "I just meant… I don't know, I don't need all the details, but a little bit of backstory would be appreciated."
"There's not much to it. I just kind of… pecked him on the cheek before I went into the warehouse. I didn't really think about it. He said something nice and instead of saying 'goodbye' or 'thank you' like a normal person, I… gave him a kiss."
"You kissed him before running towards the sound of gunfire. That's basically the most melodramatic and badass thing I've ever heard," Natasha laughed.
"Do you think he's upset?" Bobbi asked nervously. "We just made up; I don't want to… He didn't seem upset when I saw him after we got out of there, but there was a lot of other stuff going on. Maybe that's why he wants to talk."
"Bobbi, are you serious? Have you noticed the way he looks at you? I'd bet all the money I'm going to need to pay for college that he's not upset. He probably liked it, because he likes you," Natasha assured her. Bobbi blinked.
"You think so?"
"Don't you?" Natasha asked gently. "Most of the time when we're together, he can't take his eyes off you. He was miserable while you two were avoiding each other. He drove with you to go get Skye and Jemma."
"I still can't believe he did that. We weren't even speaking before that happened, and then he went and did that for me," Bobbi said with a shake of her head.
"It sounds like the kind of thing a person does when they care about you."
Memories of something Hunter had said to her in the car swirled up to the forefront of Bobbi's mind. I was being thick, he'd told her. That happens to me a lot, particularly when it comes to people I care about. Care. Care. Care. Bobbi was still getting used to the idea of there being a whole big group of people here who cared about her. It was nice, but it was unsettling sometimes, too. Foreign and uncomfortable and vulnerable in a way she had been trained not to be. And the way Hunter said it, the way he talked about caring, that felt even more foreign than the way the rest of her people seemed to talk about caring. Like there was some extra layer to it that she hadn't quite figured out the complexities of, but that she wasn't totally opposed to exploring, either. Something about Hunter made Bobbi want to push further with him than she did with their other friends, made her want some unnamable more that she didn't exactly understand.
"Look, if you don't want to talk with him about the kiss, you don't have to," Natasha said, reeling Bobbi's attention back into the kitchen. "I mean, you should probably address it at some point, for both your sakes, but it doesn't have to be today if you're not ready. He'll understand."
"No, I'll… I'll talk to him. I just have to figure out what I want to say."
"Well, the first thing I'd figure out is whether you want the kiss to mean something or not," Natasha shrugged. She stood and started clearing the table, shuffling their empty bowls into the sink and giving Bobbi a minute to think. "If you don't want it to be a big deal, or you'd rather just forget about the whole thing, tell him that. If he's halfway decent, which I know he is, he should respect that."
Bobbi ran her thumb along the handle of her baton, staring hard down at the smooth wood and working hard to keep her face straight. Something about the idea of just forgetting the whole thing ever happened made her throat feel strangely tight. She wasn't sure she wanted that. She wasn't entirely sure what she wanted at all, but she didn't want to shut the door on the Hunter who'd opened up to her in the car, or on the Bobbi who'd been bold enough to take a step towards him.
"Or maybe you don't want to forget about it," Natasha said slowly, correctly interpreting Bobbi's embarrassed silence. "Do… do you like him?"
"I… I don't know. Maybe," Bobbi admitted. She felt sheepish, not embarrassed exactly, more like self-conscious. This wasn't a kind of conversation she had any practice in having, so she had no usual tricks or scripts to lean on, and there was a level of vulnerability around uncovering all the confusing, intangible, impossible to name feelings that made her feel acutely aware of just how out of her depth she truly was. Still, Natasha was a good listener, open and kind and free of judgement. Her comfortable silence felt like an invitation for Bobbi to keep going. "I guess I don't really know how I feel about him. He's obnoxious. Stubborn. A troublemaker. But he's loyal. Funny. Kind, in his own Hunter sort of way. He cares about people, about me. I… I like the way I feel when I'm around him. Relaxed. Safe. Happy."
"Those are all important things. You deserve people you feel good around."
"And don't get me wrong, I feel good around other people, too. Phil and May, Skye and Jemma, our friends. They all make me feel happy and safe too, but it's… not exactly the same, either."
"You don't want to kiss any of them," Natasha said, a teasing sort of smile twitching across her face. Bobbi blushed, but felt her face arranging itself to mirror Natasha's.
"No. I don't want to kiss any of them."
"And if Hunter asked, would you want to kiss him again?"
"I feel like this is the part where I'm supposed to find a way to change the subject," Bobbi smirked. She tried to keep her tone casual and breezy, but her deepening blush gave her away.
"Bobbi and Hunter, sitting in a tree," Natasha said in a sing-song voice, barely containing her laughter. "K-I-S-S—"
"Okay, okay, look, it's to be determined," Bobbi told her. She rolled one of her batons back and forth under a finger, sending it gliding across a small section of the tabletop. The sound of wood rolling on wood made for an almost soothing buzz that Bobbi could practically feel in her fingertips as it filled the air. "We just have to talk about it, I guess."
"I believe in you guys," Natasha smiled, returning to her seat. "I have a good feeling. This is going to turn out way better than the time I encouraged Clint to ask out this senior girl he'd been crushing on our freshman year. Laura something, I don't even remember. I'm pretty sure that's the only shot he's ever missed."
"You actually told him to go for it? And you both thought he stood a chance?"
"What can I say, we were young, naïve…" Natasha laughed. "I was trying to be supportive; he was working on his confidence. It backfired pretty spectacularly. She didn't even know his name, poor guy. I haven't really tried my hand at matchmaking ever since."
"Until now," Bobbi pointed out.
"Here's hoping I can improve my track record."
Natasha had rolled Clint out of bed just in time before the doorbell rang less than an hour later, revealing Hunter, Mack, and to Bobbi's surprise, Elena.
"I hope it's okay that I came, too," Elena said, lingering in the doorway and rocking a little on her crutches. "Mack told me a little bit about what happened and I wanted to see if you were okay." Okay. Okay.
"Of course it's okay," Bobbi smiled. "It's good to see you on your feet again. Well, foot, I guess."
Elena's injured foot was closed up in an orthopedic boot, a fuzzy sock stretched over the end of it to shield her toes from the late November chill.
"Almost one month of recovery down," grinned Elena. "My doctor's happy with my progress. One more month on crutches to be safe, but I might get to move to a walking boot for the last two months, then physical therapy and, hopefully, running again by spring break. I'm being careful, though – I'm not missing next season for anything. Once we get you on the team, there's no way we're not making it through the playoffs."
"I guess I have to start reconditioning soon," Bobbi realized.
"As soon as I'm cleared to run again, you can call me up if you need a training partner," Elena said confidently.
Hunter, who had come into the house but was still within earshot of the two girls' conversation, let out a laugh. "Better her than me. Our season's over. I'm not running again for at least half a year."
"Yeah, until coach starts up winter workouts," Mack ribbed him, shrugging out of his coat and taking Elena's for her to hang up by the door. "Then you'll be sorry."
"My poor decisions are my own," Hunter scoffed. "Nothing sorry about it."
"We're glad to see you, Bobbi," Mack said, once they had actually come inside and settled on the couch or, in Hunter and Clint's case, on the floor. "We've been worried about you. How… how is everything?"
Bobbi paused for a minute before answering. She had left her batons on the table in the kitchen, trying to ease herself back into the habit of not having them within reach every second of the day, but she wished she hadn't done that now. Her hands twitched with the urge to twirl them, but she settled for clenching her hands tight, rubbing her thumbs across her other fingers. It did the trick. "It's… okay, I guess. Staying here's been good. Great, really. I've heard basically nothing from my social worker about Skye and Jemma, or the investigation, though, so it's been a lot of sitting around in the dark."
"That's got to be tough," Mack frowned.
"They haven't even told you if Jemma's out of the hospital yet?" Hunter asked incredulously. "That's rubbish."
"Miss Hand was here before Thanksgiving. She said then that Jemma was doing okay," shrugged Bobbi, sadness tinging her words. "That's all I've heard, though."
"There's got to be an update soon," said Mack. "It's been, what, like four days since you've seen or heard from your social worker? Surely they wouldn't let it go that much longer."
"Never underestimate the otiosity of bureaucracy and protocol," Natasha said drily.
"Nice. SAT word?" Clint held out a hand for a high five, which Natasha gave him with a grin.
"I studied hard for that test," she said, unmistakable pride punctuating her voice. "Have to flex it every now and then."
"It just doesn't seem right that they'd make Bobbi and the rest of their family sit around for so long waiting to hear back," Mack scowled. "I know it's a holiday and everything, but still… it's their family. They shouldn't have to be apart for longer than absolutely necessary."
"Miss Hand said they were going to go as fast as they could with it," Bobbi told him. "But I guess they still have to be thorough. Either way, sitting around being mad about it doesn't help anything."
"Just lets you enjoy the stubborn satisfaction of righteous indignation," Hunter pointed out with a waggle of his eyebrows. Teasing face.
"Is that why you stayed mad at Bobbi for way longer than you should have?" Elena asked, smirking. It took everyone a split second to process what she had just said, then the entire room burst into raucous laughter.
"Burn, Hunter," Clint crowed, clutching at his stomach as he rolled on the floor. "She totally got you there."
Hunter gaped for a minute, opening and closing his mouth in disbelief before amusement sparkled in his eyes and his mouth eventually curled into an impressed, albeit humbled, smile. "I didn't even know you knew about that."
"Mack told me," Elena said simply. "He tells me basically everything about you guys."
"Everything?" Hunter gawked, turning his attention to Mack, who was wiping his streaming eyes and struggling to keep his laughter under control.
"Not everything," Mack promised. "Not like secrets and stuff. Nothing I don't have permission to share. But pretty much everything else."
"Hiding some deep, dark secrets, Hunter?" Clint chuckled, elbowing Hunter in the ribs. Hunter gave him a playful shove.
"Of course not. We've reached our secret quota for the year, as far as I'm concerned."
"Oh really?" Mack raised an eyebrow. "So you wouldn't care if I just told everybody about the girl you've been sweet on for the last couple of months?"
"That's…" Hunter spluttered, going red in the face. "That's rubbish, mate. And totally untrue. I won't stand for this kind of libel."
"Slander," Natasha muttered, to no one in particular. "Slander is spoken. Libel is printed."
"And even if it was," Hunter continued, ignoring Natasha's correction, "it wouldn't be a secret. I'm an honest man."
"You're right about one thing," Clint snickered. "It's definitely not a secret."
Hunter grabbed a loose pillow from the couch and smacked it into the back of Clint's head. "You don't know what you're talking about."
"Maybe we should pick a movie," Bobbi said abruptly, cutting off the conversation and causing Clint to freeze with his hand inches away from grabbing another pillow to retaliate.
"Excellent idea," Natasha nodded, extracting the pillow from Hunter's hand and giving it to Elena instead. "We should probably keep the brawling to a minimum, given that a third of our party are in knee braces and ankle boots."
"I vote Star Wars," Clint said immediately, springing up to pull down a box set of DVDs.
"You always vote Star Wars," Mack rolled his eyes.
"Not true. I voted for Blade Runner last time," pouted Clint. "And you guys said no."
"Star Wars is good with me," Natasha shrugged. "Bobbi?"
"I like Star Wars," smiled Bobbi.
"At least someone has refined taste here," Clint sighed. "Okay, real question though, what order should we watch them in? Chronological by production date? By canonical timeline? Also how do we feel about including the sequel trilogy?"
"You're such a nerd," Hunter snorted.
"Like you don't have the rosters and stats of the last fifty years' worth of Liverpool teams committed to memory," teased Mack. "Everybody has their favorite subjects."
"Joey and I like to watch 4 and 5 first, then go back and watch the prequels, and finish with 6," Elena suggested. "That way you start the story, build up to the Vader reveal, then flash back to get all his back story and then return to the present to finish the arc."
"You're a mad genius," Clint said, awestruck. "And just in case it wasn't clear before, you now have a standing invitation to any and all future movie parties."
"Let's just watch Return of the Jedi," Bobbi decided, scanning her gaze over the glossy covers of her favorite movies. "I need something with a happy ending right now."
"Is that the one with the vicious teddy bears?" Hunter asked. He settled back on the floor, stretching his legs out across the carpet and leaning against the front of the couch. The way he settled, Bobbi could look down and see the top of his head, could count the hairs on there if she wanted to. Something tingled on the back of her neck that made her feel like she should look away, but she couldn't make herself quite do it. "Because I do very much enjoy the vicious teddy bears."
"They're Ewoks," Bobbi corrected him gently. "But yes, this is the one with the Ewoks."
"We'll get the movie fired up," Natasha said then, her voice a little louder than it really needed to be, in Bobbi's opinion. It was like she was making an announcement. "Bobbi, do you want to go make some popcorn?"
"Um, sure."
"Great. Hunter, go help her."
"I just got settled," Hunter whined. "Make Clint go."
"No, you should do it" Natasha said stoutly. She flicked her eyes up from the TV remote, which she was fiddling with, and gave Bobbi a very pointed look, the slightest tilt of the chin. A go on, work with me look. It clicked.
"Just come on, Hunter," Bobbi said, getting to her feet and holding out a hand to help him up from the floor. "We'll be fast."
"Fine," he grumbled, slouching after Bobbi back towards the kitchen. "I'm blaming both of you if I can't get comfortable again, though."
"I think you'll live," Bobbi teased. They slipped around the corner and into the quiet seclusion of the kitchen. Bobbi, who now knew exactly where the microwave popcorn was stashed, pulled a couple of bags out from the cabinet. "Besides, now you can ask me about whatever thing it was you said you wanted to talk about."
"Oh." Hunter blinked, looked around like he was only now just realizing that they were alone. "Oh, yeah. That's… well, how about that. Lucky me."
"So are you going to ask, or do I have to guess?"
"Do you want to guess?" he asked, his mouth dancing upwards, chasing his cheeks up towards his eyes, making his face fold up into a playful, happy, Hunter face. She had missed seeing that face.
"I have a theory."
"Well now I have to know," he grinned. "I have to know if I should add 'mind-reading' to the list of things you're scarily good at."
"Well if I was you, and everything that happened on Tuesday had happened to me—"
"—which it did—"
"—then I would probably want to ask about that," Bobbi finished. "About what… what happened with us."
"About you abandoning me to go barreling towards gunfire to save your sisters?" he chuckled.
"About what you said to me and about… me kissing you."
"I guess we're having the serious version of this conversation, then," Hunter said quietly, the traces of teasing falling away. His eyes got cloudy, serious, but the smile remained, a little softened by the shift in demeanor, but still very much there. He was still there. He wasn't upset with her for forcing the conversation to take a turn, he wasn't running away from the subject they needed to broach. Something about him, standing there, letting the jokes drop but holding onto the smile, gave Bobbi a surge of confidence.
"I think we should."
"Can I start, then?" asked Hunter. Bobbi nodded and his smile deepened. "Well first off, I meant what I said to you that day. I do care about you, Bob. A lot, actually, if you must know." Care. Care. Care.
"I care about you, too," Bobbi told him. "More than I maybe realized at first. But after everything that happened between us – my lie, our fight, you helping me out the other day – I think… I think I'm starting to understand how much you mean to me."
"Is that so?"
"I really missed you," she admitted.
"I missed you, too."
"And I'm really glad we're friends again," she continued. She swallowed hard, trying to figure out how to pivot into the next part of what she wanted to say. Without really thinking about what she was doing, she scooped up her batons from the kitchen table and began to spin them slowly, thoughtfully. "And us being friends again is why I think I'm kind of nervous to talk about the rest of it."
"The rest of it being…?"
"The kiss."
"You mean when you kissed me on the cheek like my grandmother?" Hunter chuckled. Bobbi felt her face grow warm, and she stared down at her hands as they gave her batons another hard pump.
"Relax, Bobbi, I'm only joking," Hunter said gently. "It was a nice kiss. I liked it. I'd have liked to have had more of it, if you hadn't gone running off into the warehouse of certain doom."
"You liked… you wanted more…" She echoed him faintly, trying to give her brain a second to catch up to the words that were inching their way into her ears.
"I mean, yeah." A flicker of a grin danced across his face, but it blanched away just as quickly as a different thought struck him. "Unless… ah, shit… don't tell me I… I didn't misread that, did I? Shit, I'm sorry, Bob, you said you were glad we were friends again and I just completely… Just ignore it. We can be friends. I want to be friends."
"No, Hunter," Bobbi cut him off quickly, before he could spiral off too far out of her reach. She gritted her teeth. This wasn't exactly how she had envisioned this conversation going. "No, that's not what I meant. I'm no good at this stuff, the talking and whatever."
"Me neither, clearly," he cracked. "Maybe we shouldn't get so hung up on the talking part. I'll just ask you outright. The thing I wanted to ask in the first place."
"Okay."
"When you kissed me the other day, did you do it because we were being reckless and saving your sisters and might never see each other again, or did you do it because you like me, more than a friend?"
"A little bit of both," Bobbi finally said, after a minute of careful consideration. "But more the second one, I think."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
"So if I asked you another question," Hunter said slowly, "like say, can I kiss you again?, what would your answer be?" He didn't move towards her, didn't take her hand or swoop in for a kiss the way someone might in a movie, but he did keep his eyes on her, watching, waiting for an answer. His face was smooth, relaxed, smiling – a hopeful face – and it filled Bobbi's stomach with a cloud of butterflies, but it was his patience, his holding back for her to make a move, that caused her heart to swell with a sureness and a comfort that gave her the confidence to do something she never would have imagined herself doing even just a few months ago. She nodded.
"Yes."
Hunter smiled broadly, closed the distance between them. "Is this okay?" he asked in an undertone as he slipped one hand around her waist. Bobbi's breath caught in her ribs, but she nodded. She set her batons back on the table, took Hunter's free hand in her own and held it tight, resting her other hand on his shoulder, finding the slope from shoulder down around towards the base of his neck.
The space between them grew smaller, and Bobbi was surprised by the almost magnetic pull she felt towards him, a pull that made the closeness feel like something she wanted more of, rather than something claustrophobic she wanted to run from. Then, before she knew it, they were kissing, noses bumping slightly together as they figured out exactly where everything fit between them. Hunter was hungry, almost pushy, but not aggressive, and she found herself leaning in for him to continue every time he tried to pull away to check on her. She didn't know where it came from, the instinct, and she just prayed that she wasn't making a total fool of herself. It wasn't like she'd had any real practice before now.
Everything felt electric and exciting and unnerving, like being whipped and rattled around on a rollercoaster, each second that passed between them feeling like the next drop, twist, turn, loop. It was enthralling, but something in her gut, something almost like the ominous foreboding at the top of the biggest hill, kept screaming at her that something wasn't right. As much as she didn't want to get off the ride, she forced herself to pull away finally, before the bad feeling, the wrong feeling overtook her completely.
"You okay?" Hunter's voice was a little rough, but his eyebrows were quirked up on his forehead, eyes big with concern and questions. Okay. Okay. No. Not okay.
"I'm sorry," she whispered, and to her embarrassment, she felt the corners of her eyes sting as pricks of hot tears popped up unannounced.
"It's fine," he assured her. "What's wrong? Did I go too fast?"
"No," Bobbi shook her head. "Not too fast. It's not you." She turned away slightly, so she could blink away the budding tears without him noticing. She brushed a hand along the handle of a baton to give herself something to do while she tried her best to sort out her jumbled thoughts. Hunter deserved an explanation.
"Did something happen? Can I help?" Help. Help. Help. She didn't know how to ask for help. Asking for help had gotten her in trouble so many times when she was younger that she had all but forgotten how to do it now.
"I, um..." she started shakily. She wrapped her fingers around her baton and squeezed tight, drawing in a slow breath in time with her hand. "I just think… I'm not ready."
"Okay. That's fine, really, Bob. It's okay." Okay. Okay.
"I want to be," she continued, finally turning back to look at Hunter while she spoke. She could feel her face arranging itself into regret. "I really do. I liked kissing you – like kissing you – and I like you. But there's just so much going on right now. I don't really know how to do this kind of thing, be close to people, you know? And I'm not sure where I'm going to be living for a while, and Jemma's still in the hospital, and Skye's off alone, and…"
"I get it, it's a lot," Hunter said quietly. He looked a little sad, but Bobbi could tell that he understood what she was trying to say. At least, she hoped he did. "Do you want to talk about any of it?"
Bobbi shook her head. "I wouldn't know what to say. I just know when it's all over, I'm going to cry for like, a week." She tried to force out a watery smile, but it came off more like a grimace.
"You can cry about it now, if you like," Hunter smiled. "I won't tell on you."
"I know who to call when I'm ready to turn on the waterworks," she said with a weak chuckle. "I'm really lucky to have a person like you."
"Feeling's mutual, Bob," he murmured. "I'm happy to be whatever you need right now. Happy to have you back with us. Happy you're safe."
"Thank you. For everything."
"Anytime."
They stood there in easy silence, a little mournful, a little relieved, but fully at peace with one another and with the understanding they now shared. They were about to head back out towards the living room when Bobbi realized that the bags of popcorn were still sitting unopened and unpopped on the counter.
"I don't think we can go back out there without popcorn," she said, pulling the wrapping off one bag and sticking it hurriedly in the microwave.
"Much too suspicious," Hunter agreed, a mischievous grin reigniting the spark in his eyes. "They might think we were back here snogging or something crazy like that."
It took a few minutes for the popcorn to cook, and the agitated hum of the microwave was almost so distracting to Bobbi that she nearly missed the sound of the phone ringing in the other room. She might not have thought about it at all, content to just stand there with Hunter and soak in the buttery smell of the popcorn and warm presence of a person who she trusted, if not for the sudden arrival of Natasha a few moments later, phone cradled to her chest.
"Sorry to interrupt," Natasha apologized, flicking her gaze between Bobbi and Hunter briefly before stretching out the phone towards Bobbi. "But Bobbi, the phone's for you. It's Miss Hand. She says she's got news."