Heyyyy Sugar! I have been obsessed with your work,
Do you have any favorite headcanons or quirks that you’ve assigned to any of the thunderbolts? (And any favorite headcanons for sentryagent ofc).
hiiii thank you! yes i'm sure i do! this will just be a random ramble in no particular order lol and i guarantee a lot have come up in my fics before. apologies in advance for however long it gets i love these guys so much lol. i tried to keep this more focused on quirks and general headcanons or we'd be here forever but i'm happy to ramble abt specific stuff later :P
thunderbolts:
they all have comfort foods they make fun of each other for. bob's is cereal straight from the box. yelena's is hot sauce with a side of mac n cheese. ava's are chocolate chip teddy grahams. john's are hush puppies. bucky's are baby ruths. alexei's is sweetened condensed milk straight from the can.
alexei "cooks" but 95% of it is done in the microwave. he insists that everything can be done in the microwave if you get the timing right. it pisses john off an unreasonable amount. he will go in the kitchen and basically ragebait himself as he watches alexei "cook." (rip my grandma thanks for inspiring alexei's part in this.)
yelena is aroace but it took her a while to realize because she craved normalcy and attributed her disinterest to depression. bob is gay and always knew he was attracted to men but never actually accepted himself until after sentry (despite having many one-night stands and short-term fwb with men). ava is sapphic and realized between am&tw and tb* when she was unexpectedly asked out by a woman (their relationship was good but didn't last because of ava's career and condition). john is bi but never really knew until after his divorce from olivia because he's also very demisexual and literally could not imagine being attracted to anyone except his wife. bucky is mspec and knew because he had unrequited feelings for steve. alexei says he's straight but the men he was in prison with claim otherwise...
also, despite yelena constantly saying "ew" when sex stuff is brought up in the group chat, she's not sex repulsed. she just thinks it's funny. she actually believes very strongly in normalizing sex (and abolishing the idea that naked bodies = sex; she's 100% free the nipple). it's part of her very strong beliefs about bodily autonomy.
staying on this tangent here, yelena loves to sunbathe topless on the helipad and it drives john crazy. not because he doesn't support her right to go topless but because he is convinced some creep is watching her when she does. on at least one occasion he has joined her in sunbathing solely to keep an eye out for nonexistent camera drones.
bob pretty much lives in baggy clothes. he says it's because it's comfy but he really struggles with body dysmorphia. he's ashamed of his scars (from self-harm, drug use, and abuse) and doesn't feel like himself at all after sentry. it's easier to hide his body than accept it.
the vault squad is really the core of the thunderbolts. on missions they are 100% a team but day-to-day, it tends to be yelena, bob, ava, and john who are spending time together. bucky has a lot of other connections so he tends to travel a lot and he's just not there. alexei keeps his distance because he knows he embarrasses yelena often and he wants her to have time to spend with just her friends (even though he has never admitted that).
that said, in the beginning, john would often exclude himself from the group solely because he assumed they did not want him there. it took a while for the others to realize what was going on and after that, they started very explicitly inviting him to spend time with them rather than making general plans.
also, the reason they have the vault squad group chat is not only because the four of them are the closest. it's also because alexei has a tendency to make conversations very awkward very fast and bucky has made it very clear that he does not want any part of most of the conversations that they have.
john is the only person who reliably has his phone on him. bucky has no games and no social media so he never worries about having it on him unless he's expecting a call. ava pretty much only has games so she only has it on her if she's playing something. bob spent most of his life with a cheap bare minimum phone or no phone at all so he's just not at all attached. yelena and alexei are both prone to losing theirs. the fact that john is everyone's emergency contact may or may not be related to this fact.
ava and bob love to watch trashy reality shows together. especially straight people dating shows (like love is blind, etc). they have the time of their lives making fun of them. john and yelena don't get it at all. not even as a joke. i mean, who would do that? it's nothing like when john and yelena watch survival shows (like alone or naked and afraid) and armchair critique every single mistake. or when john and bucky watch military movies and tear apart their accuracy.
bob's two biggest hobbies are reading and art and he shares them with the whole team. he reads a really wide variety of books and when he finds something he thinks a friend will enjoy, he passes it along. his favorite art mediums are pencils and pastels and he has drawn several pieces for everyone in the tower.
yelena LOVES doing hair and makeup. her favorites are eye makeup and fancy braids. she mostly does them on herself but she likes to do them with her friends too. ava is always the one she'll go to for braids since she has beautiful long hair. bob is usually her canvas for makeup because he secretly really enjoys wearing it even though he always takes it off before he leaves her room.
a lot of bob's "quirks" are actually related to his hallucinations. it took the team a long time to figure this out because he wouldn't admit that he had hallucinations (especially because he knew he had them but couldn't actually tell what was real). over time, the whole team (especially yelena and john) got really good at recognizing the difference between bob being bob and bob reacting to or interacting with a hallucination.
no alcohol is a hard rule in the tower! yelena and john have both had issues with alcoholism (and alexei but he says it doesn't matter since he can't get drunk) and bob has had issues with addiction. it's better to not have it around. so when they replaced the bar (that got wrecked during the sentry fight), they turned it into a snack bar.
sentryagent:
bob's love language (both expressing and receiving) is physical touch. john's expressing love language is acts of service and his receiving love language is words of affirmation.
FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS TO LOVERS!!! but everyone knows that about me. so let me add the reason they didn't confess their feelings for so long was because john couldn't accept that he was in love with a man and bob couldn't fathom the idea that someone actually loved him that way. john started doing his acts of service pretty early on and bob couldn't recognize it as anything related to love.
part of the reason yelena thinks it's funny to say "ew" when sex is brought up in the group chat is because john specifically has no idea she's actually totally cool with talking about it. bob has spent many nights in her room venting/rambling on about his relationship with john including their sex (with varying levels of detail). john has no idea how much yelena knows about him and bob's sex life and would probably just die on the spot if he ever found out.
bob fell first and john fell harder... sort of. the exact timeline is pretty murky. but bob was very physically attracted to john basically from the beginning. it only intensified as time went on. john, being demi, was not attracted to bob until they'd already built a deep connection. because of this, at the very beginning of their fwb, it really was just sex for bob. but it was never just sex for john, even before he realized it.
the primary reason they moved into john's room rather than bob's room is because bob was bolder in initiating during their fwb era. he'd knock on john's door for sex more often, climb into his bed in the middle of the might more often. his visits just became increasingly frequent until he was sleeping in john's bed more than his own.
before they officially got together (one of his acts of service), john took over the job of organizing bob's meds. they used to be a mess and bob would regularly forget what to take and now they're sorted into a simple container. john sorts out the pills every sunday night. the first time john leaves for longer than a week, bob almost has a meltdown because he's gotten so used to the pills just being ready for him that he's really overwhelmed and doesn't know where to start.
kind of related, when they first got together, their sleep schedules barely matched. unless they had sex late, john was always asleep early and up before the sun. bob fell asleep well after midnight and got up when he got up. but after john got his pills all sorted out, he also made sure that bob took them at a consistent time. the pills he takes before bed make him drowsy so he ends up falling asleep earlier. john adjusted his schedule by about an hour so that he would fall asleep and wake up with bob.
in the city it doesn't really come up but when they go on trips, bob is a passenger princess. except not really lol. john just loves driving, especially in trucks with the windows down. and bob does not have a license. he couldn't exactly get one when he was high all the time. john tried to teach him how to drive once but bob ended up having a panic attack behind the wheel. that's when he learned the car accident in middle school traumatized him more than he thought.
just like john is good at recognizing bob's symptoms, bob is good at recognizing john's. he often talks him down from intrusive thoughts before john can confess anything is happening. he knows how to keep john calm. like when they go in a new building, they go around and check all the exits together in case of a fire. or if he has a strong compulsion, bob will hold john's hand and make him sit with it for fifteen minutes to see if the urge subsides before he can act on it.
bob is obsessed with john's beard and john is obsessed with bob's hair. it is an unspoken rule that john must never shave past a certain point and bob must never cut past a certain point. they wouldn't break up or anything if they did, bob would just be sad the beard is gone and john would be sad he can't play with bob's curls anymore. and then they'd pout until it inevitably grows back.
So I have like… a lot of ideas for things… BUT I HAVE SCHOOL AND WORK— AND THEN I ALSO WANNA PLAY VIDEO GAMES AND
I say this as I am sitting in front of my school laptop with half of a homework assignment left to finish + other stuff that wasn’t assigned but is still pretty important (shout out to you HL Bio)
