about me
⋆。‧˚ʚ sugar/kyr, writer in my 20s, they/she/idc
⋆。‧˚ʚ i love asks/requests; can't promise speed
⋆。‧˚ʚ my only other platform is ao3 @ barnable
my blog
⋆。‧˚ʚ multifandom (current #1 is sentryagent)
⋆。‧˚ʚ not spoiler free but i tag recent spoilers
⋆。‧˚ʚ contains explicit fics (tagged as #nsft)
masterlists
⋆。‧˚ʚ heated rivalry
⋆。‧˚ʚ thunderbolts [mcu] [WORK IN PROGRESS]
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hii i don't know if you ever wrote something about bob being weird about his birthday due to his traumatic childhood (and adulthood) ...the potential angst i cannot resist.
hi! i haven't written like a fic about it but i do have this headcanon/ask from back in december that was about bob being evasive about his birthday due to trauma and the rest of the vault squad trying to figure when it is. i'd change some things about that if i wrote it today but i kinda love the angst of an entire year going by and it's somebody's second birthday with the thunderbolts and suddenly someone realizes that bob never had a birthday. they celebrated everyone else but bob's birthday never came up. but obviously he has a birthday, right? so it must've happened and he just… ignored it.
so, imagine. they learn when bob's birthday is and they decide to surprise him. not with a big party or anything but maybe a nice breakfast. something that's not overwhelming. except to bob, everything about his birthday is overwhelming. cue this happening <3
-
Bob felt like he was going to throw up.
Part of it was anxiety and he knew that but part of it was guilt. His friends went out of their way to surprise him for his birthday. They didn’t need to make those rainbow fruit parfaits, didn’t need to get the cake he spotted stashed on top of the fridge. They didn’t need to do anything, but they did because they loved him and he was so ungrateful he felt sick.
It wasn’t because of the food itself. He loved fruit and he was sure whatever cake they picked was great. The problem was Bob’s birthday. The problem was that his best birthday was the year before when nobody knew about it. When he spent his whole day reading and pretending the day was nothing special.
“Bob?” He turned his face into his shoulder when he heard John’s voice. It was too late to hide. John had definitely already seen his ass and feet under the stupid American bathroom stall. He pulled his knees in closer to himself, willing the nausea to pass. “Bobby, you in here?”
“Can you just leave me alone for a minute?”
“Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. I’m nauseous.” Bob really thought that John would just go away. Instead, he passed the urinals and the second stall and sat down right outside his door. They were inches apart, separated only by the thin stall. “I don’t want to talk right now.”
“We don’t have to do your birthday if you don’t want to,” said John, seeing right through Bob’s vagueness. Bob sniffed and looked down at his hands. “It’s my fault. Yelena said that surprising you would be a bad idea—hell, she just told me not to follow you now—but me and Ava… we thought that it would be okay if it was something small. Just parfait and presents.”
John’s last word made Bob pause. A tear dripped off his chin before he could understand why it was there. “I’ve never gotten a birthday present.”
“What?”
“I mean, maybe— maybe when I was a baby? Before my mom got too sick, y’know? But I don’t remember ever… yeah. No.”
How fucking sad was that? It was Bob’s thirty-second birthday, and he’d never gotten a present. Thirty-one birthdays come and gone, and no one ever got him anything since maybe he was a toddler.
“I’m sorry.” John’s voice was softer than usual. Genuine care in his tone. “I didn’t know. I— Have you ever done anything for your birthday? Like get your driver’s license? Your first drink? Night out at a club?”
Bob snorted. He almost held his words in but something about the fact that there was a wall between them made it easier to speak. Maybe because Bob could speak confidently but he couldn’t stop the tears from rolling down his cheeks. It was better when John couldn’t see.
“I don’t know how to drive, Walker,” Bob admitted with a self-deprecating chuckle. “On my sixteenth birthday, I was homeless and I was high on meth and I was less than three years out from my mom trying to kill me in a crash. I couldn’t drive. I can’t drive. Oh, and my mom also started washing my mouth out with Everclear when I was seven because of her fucking paranoia so my ‘first drink’ didn’t mean fucking anything. I got drunk for the first time when I was twelve and my dad made me drink an entire six pack.
“And yeah, I did go to clubs. I went to bars. But every birthday was just like a reminder that I was still alive and I didn’t want to be. I pretty much just spent the day trying to kill myself. Every damn year. I’d do drugs until I was sure I would die; I’d go sleep with men I thought for sure would kill me; I spent two— no, three birthdays in a psych ward because I was psychotic and suicidal. And don’t even get me started on the birthdays I spent in jail.”
“Bob—”
“I hate my birthday,” he spat. Not at John but himself. At his failures. At his inability to do something so human as celebrate his life. “I fucking hate my birthday. I don’t want to celebrate it. I don’t even want to think about it. How did you even know it’s today?”
“You told us,” John answered quietly. Guilt dripped from his words. “Not directly but you… we— we narrowed it down. Kind of took a leap of faith choosing today, to be honest.”
Something about the way John said it made Bob feel both loved and like an absolute piece of shit. They cared so much about him that they gave him a surprise when they weren’t even sure it was his birthday. And in return, Bob got nauseous and ran out of the room without so much as a “thanks.”
“It does mean a lot to me that— that you— that you did that.” Bob wiped his hands over the bridge of his nose, then dropped his left into his lap and his right on the floor. The last thing he expected was for John’s hand to land on top of his, for his fingers to curl around Bob’s. Bob squeezed John’s fingers and swallowed hard. “I don’t want you to think I’m not grateful, okay? I am. I’m really, really grateful that you guys did anything for me. I just… I don’t like my birthday.”
A heavy silence fell between them. Bob leaned back against the wall as John rubbed circles into his hand, their quiet breaths the only sound in the room. Until the random crinkling of paper echoed around the room. Bob looked down at his feet just in time to see John’s free hand push a small gift under the stall, wrapped in rainbow confetti paper.
“You probably won’t like it,” was the first thing John said. Bob frowned and picked up the gift with his left hand, brow furrowed. “But at least you’ll finally be able to add a shitty present to your list of shitty birthdays, right?”
“It is one of the few things I’m missing,” Bob joked, lightly squeezing the soft gift. Maybe socks? He sniffed and dragged the back of his hand over his nose. “I’ve got shitty cake that my friend found in a dumpster. Shitty balloons some kid lost in a tree. Shitty party where I got as—” No, John didn’t need to know that. “Shitty present will really cap off the list.”
“Happy to help. You gonna open it?”
Bob released John’s hand, giving his full attention to the present. How was he meant to open it? Was he supposed to carefully remove the paper or just tear it? Did it matter? That was probably something most people learned at three years old. Bob rubbed the bridge of his nose uncomfortably and then dove right in.
He ripped the paper off sloppily, trembling hands doing their best. Honestly, Bob expected a package of underwear or something equally stupid and instead, what he found was the smallest, fluffiest little plush dog that he’d ever seen in his life. A laugh escaped him before he could stop it. John’s knuckles nudged his thigh under the stall.
“Do you hate it?” he asked. Bob shook his head, forgetting John couldn’t see him. How could he hate something that cute? “Alexei said that if we were doing your birthday, we needed presents. I was gonna get you art supplies but I didn’t know what you like and I felt pretty out of my depth and… well, honestly I was just gonna give up and get you nothing but then I saw that little guy and I remembered you said you always wanted a corgi, so. Yeah. So stupid, right?”
“Yeah,” Bob mumbled. He bit down on his bottom lip as he swallowed a shuddering breath. A tear dripped off his chin on to the corgi’s head as he hugged it close to his chest, grateful for the wall between him and John. “So stupid.”
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Thunderbolts (Movie 2025)
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Robert “Bob” Reynolds/John Walker (Marvel)
Characters: John Walker (Marvel), Robert “Bob” Reynolds (Marvel)
Additional Tags: Religious Cults, Referenced Human Sacrifice, Hand Jobs, Frottage, No Beta We Die Like Taskmaster
Summary:
Bob was taught to suppress all of his desires, including the carnal pleasures of the flesh. It has never been hard before. But now? He was drowning in his gluttonous, treacherous need. He craves John. Desires his body in a way that feels surely blasphemous.
Bob was raised in a cult. Once he is free, he can’t help but give in to his desires.
All the pics of Lewis Pullman holding/reading books are so Bobcoded to me
But also. No man should look so pretty with a book. I can't be this easy. I'm mentally inflicting it on John rn.
ME TOO he looks so bob to me when he has a book like just look at him
(ok well i actually really hate his hair in the last one but the weird sitting is pretty bob)
holding a book just makes him somehow infinitely prettier. i honestly can't explain it. neither can john. you mentally inflicted this upon him and now this is how he realizes that he is indeed bisexual and very much has a thing for bob. early on his demisexual ass is totally oblivious to bob's sexy muscles. he does not blink twice when bob is shirtless. is unaffected when he's sweaty, clothes sticking to his skin. but when bob's wearing his soft bathrobe, curls falling over his ears, snuggled up all cozy in his chair with a book in his hands? this is where john begins to slowly lose his mind. no man should look so pretty with a book, he agrees. because how does bob look so pretty with a book that even john thinks he's pretty ?!?! it's some kind of sentry witchcraft for sure. nevertheless, john continues to fantasize about laying on the couch, bob resting between his legs as he reads his book. and if he's running his fingers through bob's hair while he reads well that's nobody's business is it?
WAIT oh my god i was going to end the post there but wait. one more thing. imagine john keeps staring at bob while he's reading. and he really doesn't yet understand his feelings for or attraction toward bob. then one day bob notices him staring and calls him on it and john is like "i uhhh was just wondering what you're reading?" and makes up some excuse about wanting to get back into reading more. bob, who thinks john is straight and has basically no reason to believe that john would be staring at him for any other purpose, naturally starts infodumping on him about some amazing book for an hour. next thing john knows he's somehow in a two person book club with bob reading books he has absolutely zero interest in solely because it makes bob happy and for some strange reason it makes him really happy when bob is happy.
i think my next overthinking post needs to be about sentry and/or void somehow because when i rewatched the movie last week i was so struck by like. how intrinsically bob he is the whole way through. like it's been a little bit since i rewatched and for some reason i thought he acted kind of idk abruptly different? as sentry, but he really doesn't! you can see this gradual climb/spiral as valentina feeds his delusions of grandeur but fundamentally bob really stays the same. and the things that the void says are clear reflections of what bob says in the vault. there's this one quote from lewis pullman that i think about all the time when i'm writing and i'm very sure i have shared at some point before because i love it:
“We wanted to make sure it wasn’t so compartmentalized, that it was always clear that it was one person. It was never this code-switching, or this kind of lily pad–hopping to a completely different person. They are all qualities and parts of one person.”
the reason i really like that quote and more specifically that insight into the intention behind bob's character is because i know that lewis is very deliberate with his acting choices (and jake schreier with his directing in this movie!). so when you see things like bob pacing and wringing his hands both in the vault and in the sentry suit, i'm very sure there was a thought process behind that. like yes bob is experiencing delusions of grandeur but he is still bob with all his anxiety and desperate need to be useful. and the void is just bob too! he's still trying to help (albeit in a very fucked up way) and when he shows up in the shame room, he's just a manifestation of bob's self-hatred. he echoes what bob said in the vault, what his dad said to him, what his mom said to him. and now i am just rambling shit but GOD i love the way that they wrote this character thank you lewis pullman for portraying him so amazingly i'm obsessed
#that’s like my favourite aspect of the movie#and why I actually don’t like when people misrepresent it as DID#I think it’s important that when he refers to sentry and void as separate entities he’s trying to distance himself from aspects of HIMSELF#it’s important that in the void fight in the lab when Bob starts beating the void#that’s NOT how they win#because he won’t get through this trauma by beating himself up#void isn’t a separate evil character#and sentry isn’t separate either#he still cares for his friends and is reluctant to fight them#and he has the same underlying anxiety#and is actively motivated by Valentina manipulating him through an understanding of bob’s motivations and struggles#and I think that’s how they messed up in fighting sentry#because they didn’t see him as Bob#he was ‘that thing’#(asip voice)#newsflash asshole he was Bob the whole time (tags from @attheheartofmylove)
you understand me omg !! sorry to steal ur tags from the tags but u hit the nail on the head exactly with sentry and void it's sooo good i feel the need to ramble a little bit more so hang on just. one more second here
when he refers to sentry and void as separate entities he’s trying to distance himself from aspects of HIMSELF
this is so fascinating to me because in the attic he tells yelena "oh, it's not me 'me.' it's it. the void." he's separating the void from himself. after that yelena talks to him about depression and healing. so then when the room attacks them and yelena asks "who's doing this?" bob answers, "i think i am." before yelena talked to him, he had a mental block between himself and the void because he couldn't accept that it's a part of him. but after she talked to him, he was able to acknowledge that the void is not "it," not some separate monster, it's him. it's his depression. it's not something he can bury. it's not something he can keep denying. it's a scary part of him but it is a part of him and he's starting to accept that.
it’s important that in the void fight in the lab when Bob starts beating the void that’s NOT how they win because he won’t get through this trauma by beating himself up. void isn’t a separate evil character
100% this! i think it's very easy to look at the void as someone else since we see bob physically attack it but that's not him. that's a shame room. it's the exact same as yelena attacking herself in the bathroom, it just looks scarier. presumably, bob did use his void powers in that lab (given the shadows) so that's what he looked like then. the whole point is that bob isn't fighting a different person, he's fighting himself. he's hurting himself. he needs to lean on his new support system instead of punishing himself for struggling with trauma and mental illness.
and everything the void says is what bob said or what someone said to bob. it's not an independent thinker. it says it's shameful bob thought he could be more than nothing right after bob says he wanted to be something. it says bob doesn't matter which is essentially what he conveyed to yelena when he told her to leave him in the vault. it called him "robert the hero" which is what his father said. it tells him he can't save himself which is exactly what he's trying to do in that moment. it says he's alone because that's what yelena told him ("we're all alone"). every single thing that it says is either parroting something bob said or was said to him or trying to contradict his thoughts at that moment. it's literally just bob's thoughts being spoken aloud for everybody to hear.
sentry isn’t separate either. he still cares for his friends and is reluctant to fight them and he has the same underlying anxiety and is actively motivated by Valentina manipulating him through an understanding of bob’s motivations and struggles. and I think that’s how they messed up in fighting sentry because they didn’t see him as Bob. he was ‘that thing’
i've mentioned the "that thing" comment before but oh my god it is SO GOOD in this context. even the TEAM didn't think he was bob but he is. sentry is not a separate person, that's just how bob is sometimes because, based on what he describes to yelena twice about his highs and lows, he struggles with severe [undiagnosed] bipolar disorder. mel tells us earlier in the movie that according to his medical documents, he has a history of "delusions of grandeur." that is what is happening with bob when he's sentry. valentina is aware of these delusions so she chooses to feed them by telling bob that she accepts him, that she's choosing him, that he's perfect, that his potential is limitless. and you can see throughout that bob still has his same anxiety beneath it all.
he repeatedly asks valentina for reassurance about his powers, about sentry, about himself. sentry is not a different person, he's bob when you do the exact thing you're never supposed to do and encourage his very dangerous delusions. this is not sentry independently deciding he's a god, it's just bob believing what he's been told because of his fragile and unstable mental health. i think this is shown well with the god thing because he doesn't just randomly decide he's a god, he says he's a god specifically because of what valentina said. she is not only feeding but creating the delusions that contribute to his behavior as the sentry.
everything that we see in the movie is bob at his most extreme but it's still bob! what happens is exactly what he says in the vault: "there's a high, then there's a big low, and then my memory just goes blank." this has been happening since well before bob had superpowers. he actually says he's had the episodes since he was a kid. but from the way he talks about it and the fact that he was using hard drugs (which mask many symptoms), we can pretty much assume he's never been diagnosed with anything. maybe bob compartmentalizes sentry and void because that's what he's been doing his whole life. if he doesn't remember it, it didn't happen. that's easier than facing the worst things that he's done.
Bob and John being each others anti depressant like they are having a hard day but if the other text or they are together then they are all happy and bubbly and yelena and Ava tease both of them but they are just so in love
aww yes i love this 🥹🫶 there are sooo many good scenarios that you could create out of this concept i don't even know where to start !!
like the thunderbolts are away on a mission and john is having the worst fucking time and he's just snapping at everyone all day. then that night when they get back to their hideout ava and yelena look over and he's smiling at his phone like the happiest person on earth and they're just like yeah, he's definitely texting bob.
or bob being deep in his depression and he's just laying on the couch cocooned in a blanket. until john sits down with him and pulls him into his lap and starts kissing all over his face and squeezing his ass and suddenly bob is laughing for the first time in a week.
maybe another time john is on the couch and he feels like shit but then bob sits down on the other cushion and puts his feet in john's lap and how is john supposed to be depressed when bob is tickling him with his mismatched bert and ernie socks?
yelena struggling to get bob to eat anything only to find him in the kitchen with john an hour later. he's not eating a meal, he's sitting on the kitchen counter with his legs spread and john is standing between them letting him taste something off a spoon. yelena calls them gross but she's just happy he's eating.
something pissing john off and he's angry so he goes to the training room to punch it out and when bucky goes to check on him, he finds john is gone and there are sounds coming from the locker room that sound very happy and very none of his business.
bob being home alone and he's sad and lonely and then john texts him and suddenly he's got butterflies like a teenager and they're having the most random conversation but bob can't stop smiling and he can't remember why he was so depressed in the first place.
Wait did you say Hades and Persephone but make it SentryAgent? Did you say that Bob's dad sold him to John? Or maybe you said Bob being upset that he can't pet all three of Cerberus's heads.
omg yes!! i said all of those things it's like ur reading my mind!! but firstly i gotta point out how silly this sounds when our persephone's name is bob. i almost started typing "bob, born of two gods" and then i just. why is your name bob. why would two gods name their son bob. anyway...
robert is the son of two gods. he is, by all accounts, the most beautiful person in the world. too beautiful, according to his distant father, who berates robert often for taking after his mother too much. then one day john comes across robert and decides he's perfect. he asks robert's father for robert's hand in marriage. robert's father of course decides to take advantage of this situation. money exchanges hands and next thing robert knows, he's being dragged down to the underworld.
oddly enough, robert doesn't seem to be particularly bothered by the situation. he's pretty quiet except to tell john that he'd rather be called bob. john asks if bob is okay with the fact that they're going to be married. bob just shrugs and says "better than staying with my dad" which baffles john because he literally just abducted bob to the actual underworld. like he is forcing bob to live in the underworld. and bob is just cool with that. what the hell kind of a husband did he choose?
they wed immediately and it's when bob is in his beautiful, delicate wedding robes that john learns his beauty is not a reflection of his character. bob looks very soft, almost feminine with his soft brown curls and the flowers that adorn him. but every time he opens his mouth, he's calling john a dick in a different way. and when they have sex that night, bob won't stop mumbling critiques until it feels just right for him. which john actually kind of likes because he knows bob feels good but also he feels a bit embarrassed and emasculated by the whole experience.
so basically, what john expected was a quiet husband who would sit there and be beautiful. he chose bob because at surface level, bob seemed even more gentle and sweet than any daughter of any gods that john had seen. and yet somehow, instead of a perfect pretty silent trophy husband, he's somehow managed to get himself married to this absolute brat who won't stop calling him out for being an asshole and questioning the way that he chooses to run things in his underworld.
the worst part? he actually really likes it. for a brief moment he thought he made a terrible mistake but now he's head over heels completely in love with bob. the only problem is that he can't figure out whether bob actually loves him back. and now that john cares for bob so much, there's a deep guilt eating away at him at the idea that this life might be torture for bob. little does he know that the only thing bothering bob is that he can't find a way to pet all three of cerberus's heads at once.
so, little twist on the story. eventually, bob's father will come back for him (due to the rage of his mother). but what if instead of striking a deal with bob's father, john just lets him go? what if he's come to love bob so much that he can't bear to keep him as a "prisoner" anymore? little does he know he's sending bob back to the exact place that bob has been so grateful to escape. and, more importantly, that bob loves him too.
i think my next overthinking post needs to be about sentry and/or void somehow because when i rewatched the movie last week i was so struck by like. how intrinsically bob he is the whole way through. like it's been a little bit since i rewatched and for some reason i thought he acted kind of idk abruptly different? as sentry, but he really doesn't! you can see this gradual climb/spiral as valentina feeds his delusions of grandeur but fundamentally bob really stays the same. and the things that the void says are clear reflections of what bob says in the vault. there's this one quote from lewis pullman that i think about all the time when i'm writing and i'm very sure i have shared at some point before because i love it:
“We wanted to make sure it wasn’t so compartmentalized, that it was always clear that it was one person. It was never this code-switching, or this kind of lily pad–hopping to a completely different person. They are all qualities and parts of one person.”
the reason i really like that quote and more specifically that insight into the intention behind bob's character is because i know that lewis is very deliberate with his acting choices (and jake schreier with his directing in this movie!). so when you see things like bob pacing and wringing his hands both in the vault and in the sentry suit, i'm very sure there was a thought process behind that. like yes bob is experiencing delusions of grandeur but he is still bob with all his anxiety and desperate need to be useful. and the void is just bob too! he's still trying to help (albeit in a very fucked up way) and when he shows up in the shame room, he's just a manifestation of bob's self-hatred. he echoes what bob said in the vault, what his dad said to him, what his mom said to him. and now i am just rambling shit but GOD i love the way that they wrote this character thank you lewis pullman for portraying him so amazingly i'm obsessed
awww I think John would be a super sweet drunk and it would kinda be healing for Bob
I really love the texting fics with drunk John, he's so adorable and sweet and you write drunk texting so well
[for context this ask was in reference to me saying i wanted to write drunk!john after certain videos of wyatt came out LOL] i think he would too! i love the idea of john being a really sweet and lovey drunk. given his history i imagine it would be so easy for people to assume that he's a violent drunk do then imagine the surprise when suddenly he's just hugging everyone and crying that he loves them. it really would be kind of healing for bob because he's like "oh god this is gonna be bad" and maybe even tries to avoid john but john just wants to hug him and kiss his cheek and tell him that he's beautiful 🥲🫶
anyway. thank you sm anon! i saved this ask bcs i wanted to write some drunk texting for u which came out um. very silly. but i hope that it is enjoyable to read anyway haha
here to say that i just finished rereading your fic Left Hand on ao3 and it hits every fucking time, it's so good and you're the best.
this one and Come Back to Me First are my absolute favorites of yours and i lost count for how many times i've read them, you're so talented wish you the best! xx
aaaa thank you so much anon!! 😭💖 it means the world to me that you enjoyed those ones! left hand was my first attempt at a full sentryagent fic (well unless you read this one as pre-relationship bcs before i even shipped them i somehow put too much chemistry in my platonic fics LOL) and i think it really solidified me writing for this pairing 🥲 it's probably still my favorite too. i actually thought about writing a sequel to it at one point but it seems that has yet to happen haha. and come back to me first was sooo self-indulgent i am STILL in awe of how many people enjoyed it 🫶 thank you so, so much anon, i've said it before but as a writer having someone reread my work is the absolute highest honor! i can't yet say whether they will live up to left hand but i may or may not have a couple fics in the works that i hope to add to my ao3 soon and this definitely motivated me to get back to writing them!! 🥰
Hiiii!!! First thing I love your work a ton and you're one of like three blogs I actually have notifications on for so I can save everything to read later
Something I've seen in other fics/hcs is Bob doing chores around the Watch Tower to keep busy or earn his keep or (other explanation) and I wondered if you had any thoughts/hcs about that?
IMO he could totally use it to spend more time with John. Hey, he needs to learn how to do it right! If he happens to go to the gym every time John does, that's only because the equipment will need cleaning after! No other reason!
hii anon!! thank you so much for your kindness, i am honored to be one of those three 🥹🫶 and yess absolutely! bob's "i did the dishes though" line was the inspiration for my first thunderbolts fic so i have definitely thought about bob and his chores at times throughout the last year 💖 idk if this is all of them but here's some off the top of my head tonight:
firstly it always comes up so: i headcanon that the team does not have cleaning staff in their personal areas. around most of the tower? yes. that building is huge. there are absolutely staff cleaning the conference areas and hallways and all that. but they don't go in the team's rooms or their living spaces (like the common area with the tv or the kitchen, etc). the thunderbolts have all spent a huge chunk of their lives living under someone else's control and they just want to have their space to themselves. but that does mean they have to do all the chores themselves, including bob.
there are two reasons why i think bob might take it upon himself to do extra chores. the first one is what we all know: bob wants to help. at the very core of his character is this deep desire to be useful. the sentry would obviously be the most useful but he can't use it without the void which just makes him feel even more useless than he did before he had powers. maybe he even feels like a burden to the team. so he takes it upon himself to do as much around the tower as he can to help out because he doesn't know how else to "pull his weight" when he's not able to participate in the whole saving the world thing that the rest of the team does.
the other reason is that bob does not believe that he's allowed to live in the tower with no strings attached. he spent years of his life couch surfing and he was always expected to contribute somehow. not just rent or cleaning up after himself but acting as a live-in housekeeper or committing petty crimes or sharing his drugs or even providing sex. the big thing is that the expectations were rarely clear. bob got kicked out without warning multiple times. so now that he has such an amazing life in the tower and all the food and healthcare he's always needed, he's desperate to keep it. he's doing everything he can to be useful so the team will allow him to stay. nobody knows about either of bob's reasons. if they did, they'd reassure him in a heartbeat that they would never make him leave. whether or not he'd believe them is another question entirely.
part of why bob does so many chores is also because he's just bored. there's not a whole lot to do in the tower and his anxiety makes it hard to leave for long on his own (i headcanon that the drugs he was using gave him a lot of confidence so once he's off them, he has a whole new learning curve of what his real baseline anxiety is and how to cope with that). he likes to read and do art and play games but he can only do so much at a time before he wants to stand up and do something. chores give him something to do and they make him feel useful. a win-win. plus he can listen to audiobooks while he does them which makes it way more fun.
bob usually picks up the chores that are the hardest to get wrong. he'll often do the dishes because 70% go in the dishwasher and the rest just need a scrub. he'll vacuum and sweep and mop the common areas. he does the general household laundry like blankets and hand towels. grocery shopping isn't really necessary because they get most things delivered but bob will often do that anyway because the little walk to the store is good for his agoraphobia and it makes him feel nice when he surprises the team with treats.
there are a few chores bob will not touch. he tried dusting exactly once but his tremors caused him to shatter a vase which triggered a panic attack because of trauma from his dad so now he won't dust anymore. he also tried to learn how to cook while the team was away but it turns out he only knows how to make struggle meals and one mocking comment from john made him give up learning. his ability to take out the trash/recycling also fluctuates because a combination of ocd and trauma from being unhoused has led to him dealing with hoarding that he's too embarrassed to talk to anyone about. cleaning out the fridge/pantry is pretty much impossible for him as someone who spent so much of his life living food insecure.
all that said, bob does struggle hard with depression and executive dysfunction. most of the time, he's able to go around completing his chores like usual. but there are times when he falls into a low and can't motivate himself to make his bed let alone clean the kitchen. during these times, he generally expects to be kicked out. for some reason the team chooses to support him instead. sometimes the guilt of not doing enough comes back in a manic episode where he will spend three days not sleeping doing literally everything.
moving on to the sentryagent fun! the two people on the team who actually like cooking are alexei and john. but alexei's cooking tends to be done 90% in the microwave so everyone prefers john's. sometimes when bob goes into the kitchen, he finds john cooking. he'll often sit down and just watch. bob convinces himself it's because he's trying to learn how to cook so he can meal prep for the team (and because he likes tasting john's food along the way). it takes him a while to admit to himself that he's learning nothing because he's too busy watching john's sexy biceps flex when he dabs the sweat off his forehead; too busy staring at his tongue when it darts out to taste a little sauce on a spoon.
on a similar topic, the gym suggestion? ohh yes. john goes to the training room to do some sets and bob follows him within a few minutes because he's suddenly remembered the mirrors need to be cleaned. please ignore it if he keeps stopping and staring at john in them while he's working. he also takes care of the sweaty towels while he's in there and may or may not hand john two or three just to keep brushing up against his sweaty arm. he always wipes down the equipment while john is in the locker room (even though john insists he can do it himself). if he's licked the bench once or twice while he's doing it well that's nobody's business but his kinky ass.
there are quite a few flowers around the tower that bob tries to care for while the team is away. what makes it hard is that some of them clearly need special treatment and nobody will take ownership of them to tell him what they are. bob has asked the entire team and they all insist they aren't theirs. he finds his answer when he wakes from a nightmare around five one morning and goes to get a drink. to his shock, there's john of all people, watering the flowers before his morning run. bob expects john to deny everything when he speaks up but john ends up rambling at him instead. he tells bob all about how from twelve to eighteen he spent his summers working in hoskins family flowers; how during the school year he'd spend hours studying in the back room with lemar. when bob asks, he shares every detail of what he does to care for the more exotic plants. they don't speak about it again afterward and bob never touches the flowers when john is home. but when he's away, bob takes that chore more seriously than any other.
of all the chores bob helps with, there is one that john has explicitly told him to stop doing. when people track in dirt, blood, etc., bob is not allowed to clean it up. in fact, everyone tries very hard to clean it up before he's able to see it. this is because john once walked in on bob trying to scrub dirty footprints off the floor. his hand was raw and tears were streaming down his face. john tried to ask what was wrong and take the sponge from him so they could talk but bob got even more distressed and insisted it needed to be clean. it took john a while to realize that bob was remembering the feeling of scrubbing his own blood off the floor as a child; of being beat senseless and then forced to wipe away the evidence so his father wouldn't get caught. even when everyone else goes straight to bed after a late mission, john always stops to mop the floors first.
john does tease bob about his poor life skills early on but when he realizes it hurts bob, he stops. he kind of takes it upon himself to help bob learn how to do a lot of things he has less experience with/was never able to learn. everything from how to cook a filling meal to how to properly clean around the base of a toilet. john pretty much always starts these lessons by snapping at bob (e.g. "why the hell are you eating club crackers for dinner come here right tf now i'm teaching you how to make 20 minute chicken noodle soup") but by the end of them, he's completely softened. it makes him unreasonably happy to see bob be so proud of himself over something as simple as unclogging a drain.