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tomiyeee · 5 years

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finished the story quests for bl3 (but barely any of the side missions yet) and i got...Opinions(tm)

(sorry if this doesn’t cut on mobile! also if you want to hide spoilers i’m tagging all my bl3 posts as “bl3 spoilers” so ny’all can blacklist it)

in no particular order:

i honestly wanted to give gearbox some slack and try my best to like this game bc i know people had probably unfairly high expectations for this game given all the build up, but they really just kept letting me down in everything but the graphics

said this before but overall, the characters are all Quite lackluster

^^ tyreen and troy included. adding the word "bitch" to every sentence does not automatically make it funnier

that being said, i super love their backstory + relationship with typhon/nekofeyo-whatever

the character designs are equally boring. moxxi was the only one who got a real improvement imo. lilith and maya are okay. rhys...i dont think i have to explain. lia...i dislike her hair; the black felt like it balanced out her design better and the white streak was interesting and cool but full white just looks bad tbh. zer0 feels less sleek and more bulky which doesnt fit him much. tina lost her pretty color palette and cute outfit. where are all the bright pretty color palettes in general???? there are other colors besides brown and black???? use them?????

ending of pre-sequel: “you will need all the vault hunters you can get” me: “ooh does that mean all the vh’s from previous games are back? i can’t wait to see everyone meet each other! :D” bl3: only nine of them come back, 3 of them die, the rest are involved in maybe one mission at most

boss fights. super. boring. and tedious. i mean this could be partly because i was playing on ps4 which made it extra not fun but if the only reason the fight is difficult is because they have a lot of health...it's not fun or challenging. i want fights like handsome jack with interesting mechanics. i want fights like angel with emotional impact. i want fights like the pre-sequel final boss that i forgot the name of with variation that isnt just "now they have an attack that shines bright lights in ur eyes, covers the whole arena, and can knock you down in one hit im looking at you traunt and killavolt". tyreens fight was the only one that i somewhat enjoyed because of this. all the others were just like "ughhhh again?"

im really enjoying melee amara playstyle. taking out badass enemies in four hits is my jam. this is just my fallout 4 playthrough all over again babey heck yea

typhon just wanted to be a good dad!!! he called tyreen starlight which is adorable!!! he did the best he could and tyreen hated him for it!!! i don’t blame either of them for that tbh, it makes sense from both their perspectives. tyreen definitely should have been more understanding, but she’s a dick so :/ (not saying this is a writing flaw, just a character flaw)

hammerlock needs higher standards in men but i really appreciate the undeniably in-your-face "fuck you" to all gamer dudes

i really. hate. how little the player character seems to matter in the story. in pre-sequel the vh's all had unique dialogue AND npcs would respond, sometimes even with character-specific lines. even when it was the same across vh's, it still felt like the npcs were interacting and speaking directly to them. the player character felt like a character of their own, rather than just a vessel for the player to do quests and kill enemies with or an errand runner for the important characters. i thought that was the direction they were going in with bl3 too but this just feels like bl2 only worse. there’s a separation again between you and the story and it feels like you’re just watching things happen. now ur not just a silent protagonist, but instead your a speaking protagonist who gets completely ignored. whats the point of including unique dialogue if it's not even acknowledged beyond an "uh-huh, moving on"?

sometimes the logic just feels kinda dumb. the twins killed/disabled maya and lilith in a heartbeat, they can literally disintegrate the most powerful beings in the universe, but the vault hunters? absolutely not. they must fight them for 40 minutes and then die.

after the fight with troy, no one even touched tyreen. there's no way they could have thought "yup she's definitely dead, no need to shoot her in the head or anything just to make sure. we didn't do anything to even hurt her, we just assumed." turns out she's 100% alive and gets up to start the apocalypse. who'da thunk! i know they wanted the end to seem more dramatic but it just seems stupid that they could have stopped tyreen like 5 missions earlier had they even the slightest bit of common sense.

lilith was one of the biggest threats to tyreen and troy's whole plan. of course they should leave her alive and simply steal her powers. let's kill the monk siren instead.

i know they didn't include this to give all players a fair experience instead of favoring sirens, but it kinda sucks playing a siren character and it's just completely ignored outside of ur action skill. tyreen and troy are sapping siren powers left and right, but they choose to leave you with yours. when you enter the eridian place with typhon tannis starts glowing because it has "something to do with sirens". what about the one standing right next to her? this applies to bl2 as well...jack i would willingly charge ur vault key for u pls why do u take lilith instead :'(

oh yeah speaking of tannis! i LOVE that she got angels powers. for some reason it just makes me really happy. maybe it's bc i think it's sweet that part of angel survived. maybe it's because it makes for cool fanart. maybe it's just cool. idk. also like that we got a solid explanation of what angel's powers were (influence over technology). i always thought her having control over it in bl2 might've been cuz it was hyperion tech and she had access to it same as she had access to the satellite from bl1. it wasn't super clear since it seemed like she could also materialize things like the ammo during her fight.

that also reminds me: all the dramatic reveals in this game felt kinda badly done.

the very first one with zer0/katagawa. like the whole time i was walking around looking for him i was trying to think why he might've turned/something must have happened to him or rhys. everyone was saying it was undeniably zer0. i finally meet him and take one look at his bright ass maliwan armor and its like. really. you couldnt have made it anymore obvious that thats not zer0. and then his helmet gets knocked off and surprise! it's not him. i totally didnt already figure that out with one glance 10 seconds ago. (maybe even earlier when you got glimpses of him around the building but i always missed it cuz i was looking at the fish tanks n shit)

also the tannis reveal. she was speaking to me in the same way that only known siren characters could. weird unexplained things were happening and seemed to be related to tannis. i wonder if she's a siren? surprise! she's a siren.

tyreen and troy knew about the great vault through some unknown means. typhon was talking about having a son and a daughter who he told stories about the great vault. typhon calls tyreen his daughter a while later and lilith acts surprised like honey ur a little slow, i figured that out several lines ago.

basically i'm not saying they were so obvious that i knew from the beginning of the game; i only figured them out a little before they were outright stated. but it was enough that it kinda ruined the effect and the characters acting surprised only when it was blatantly spelled out for them just made it annoying.

i feel like most of this is pretty negative, but i don’t mean that i hate the game and was miserable playing it. it was honestly okay...like i said i wanted to like it, but gearbox hates me specifically and killed/ruined all my faves just to spite me sooo...*waves hand back and forth in a sort of “ehhh” gesture*. i think my opinion on bl games from most to least fav would be: tftbl, bltps, bl2, bl3, and bl1. so it’s not the worst, but deeefinitely not one of my faves. i mean jack’s not in it (or if he is he doesn’t have a big role) so it’s already at a huge disadvantage. the ending was ok, it was all dramatic n stuff and it kinda makes sense i guess, but it was just about as okay as the rest of the game really. i don’t hate it but it’s not great either yknow?

#equishit #bl3 spoilers

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ca1e70-deactivated · 4 years

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a list of my entirely way too niche headcanons ive actually implemented for everyones imagination:

name options ive used and refuse to retire: david elizabeth strider (sometimes i dont feel like being a douche to others and saying thats not his name), harley davidson strider, and david james strider for the sake of simplicity

im not gonna tell yall the like. oc exes ive given him bc thatll take eighteen years.

i dont rlly have an explanation on the ghost thing besides the fact he just can? ive occasionally pulled from family ghost stories and experiences bc i somehow got landed with family members who lived in a haunted house for a decade and enjoy scaring me with all the stories (including the time my cousin literally died on the kitchen floor from a bronchial spasm and one of the friends that was over asked my aunt later what was up with the old man she saw in the corner of the room that night - my cousin is fine btw shes just a huge bitch and a third grade teacher and i dont like her)

whether or not hes done drugs is based on absolutely nothing besides how im feeling in that moment. either hes the designated driver and sober friend forever or he got fired from his job after doing a line at work during graveyard with some random customers theres no inbetween (this absolutely happened @ waho. if dave works at waho hes a mess of a person and thats on the diner itself.)

ok look i hc dave w/schizophrenia besides when i was 14 i had a hyperfixation with learning about it and then at 16 was prescribed a medication and had side effects so wack my therapist genuinely thought 14 yr old me was onto something and its a weird way to cope with the idea that lady put in my head that i might “develop it in my twenties” which i turn 20 this year and i havent been able to stop obsessing and panicking over the prospect so PLEASE dont come in my inbox calling me ableist im not out here all harley quinn in suicide squad with the voices ok hes medicated, he goes to therapy, the hard fast delusion that lil cal was nearly sentient and informed bro of every single thing dave did no matter how asinine it was is no longer a debilitatingly affecting him ANYWAYS

i actually use the chicken/egg farming family pretty often just because its hilarious to me to give dave like. an actual mom and dad. hes literally an uncle to like three different kids he just never visits because they make fun of his skinny jeans and he hates one of his (incredibly bare-bones ocs all of them) brothers who threatened to bash his head in with a little league bat after dave broke his star wars lego set apart on accident (but not rlly) so their parents were like “why dont you stay with your brother in the big city for a lil while champ” and then they just never picked him back up? and thats on favoritism

the other one is that his name is actually david reed and hes the middle child of a family of three who literally live the standard golden retriever white middle class life only they went to disney land or something equally as dumb one year when dave was like 6 and he wandered off so bro literally just went “huh free game” because frankly he was an idiot who thought maybe i should take this kid home because its real dangerous in parking lots and then it was too late to NOT have it seem like a kidnapping and thats why daves never had a summer job, seen his birth certificate, or gone to school. but vaguely remembers what kindergarten was like and having a pet dog and calling someone mom as a kid.

im not making a bullet point about his sex life headcanons just use your imagination and acknowledge the fact bro essentially worked within the sex industry and i enjoy putting dave through trauma as a catharsis

i stopped doing this one usually but if he did go to school hes been in percussion since fifth grade and played the drums in his high schools jazz band as well as various edgy teenager garage bands he likes to pretend dont have a youtube presence and that hes absolutely never been shirtless in front of plenty of his classmates because he wore a hoodie to a show like an idiot. idk occasionally ill put him in an actual band he doesnt hate but keeps separate from his lil turntechGodhead internet persona (which i will ALSO touch upon in a sec) until they wind up getting looped into a tour with some bigger named band that has a show in *insert beta kid here*’s city and hes gotta come clean solely so he can visit his online friend. sorry derseasterous thats the one time weve ever run into each other and i made him have a crush on one of his bandmates i was in my anti-daverose phase where i made dave a hoe and also didnt want to admit i still loved the ship all these years later

i hate it so much but you know the whole vr loli trap voice shit that was popular a while ago? hes fucking baller at it for some reason. he did it as a joke while talking to bro and they both about shat their pants. if im feeling real ambitious, hes got a separate soundcloud solely dedicated to doing dumbass rap covers or making his own but in the voice under the pseudonym elizabeth “beth” davids that he will never admit is his. well, he will, but hes gonna be really fucking embarrassed about it. irony or not.

talking abt seperate soundclouds and stuff ive always had it where turntechGodhead was his like. essentially internet fucking persona facade shit he used because we all had that phase where we wanted memorable urls and stuff but also didnt want to totally ignore the nagging fear of people finding you in real life, until it turned into real life ppl finding you on the internet. so he also has basically an adjacent set of social media under the same name but its just a boring username i havent decided on so everyone he knows irl doesnt mix up with what hes made for himself as TG and the people he knows as TG dont know what highschool he goes to. (this occasionally comes with the territory of ppl on parp being pissed that daves “lying” or “hiding things” from his friends as if he was doing it out of spite instead of just keeping embarrassing tagged photos and videos from football games or when he ate shit at the skatepark from fucking with his “rap career”)

every once in a while i get on a kick where hes just german. like, i just replace houston texas with hamburg germany and have him apply to a university in whatever state is applicable for whoever im chatting with and it goes from there? sometimes he moved when he was little and went through the whole visa thing, sometimes he didnt go through the visa thing, sometimes hes a dual citizen because of family and shit, its all dependent on what suits the situation best.

one that ive been fucking with for a while but hardly break out (until recently with like 5 roses in the span of one day hell yeah) is that he has a neighbor at the end of the hall who is like a thousand year old witch lady that hes basically adopted as his mother figure in lieu of not having one and shes totally cool with it, especially bc when she kicks the bucket she fully plans on giving dave all her occult stuff so her figure-skating coach and realtor daughter doesnt sell it at a garage sale and lets it all go to waste. she also once brought rose up by name in a conversation without any prompting of her existence which dave didnt realize for days, and then one time cryptically stopped and stared at an empty space in the wall, went “she has potential, you know.” then looked at him sitting on her kitchen counter with a smile “lots of it” and hes thought about that weekly ever since. (it is important to note one of the occult items he leaves her is literally her own personal book of shadows shes been filling out for decades its like a 600 page leatherbound book dave has no idea what its used for but the sheer amount of homemade spells and etc in it is like. gonna murder rose the second this chick gets her hands on it i promise you.)

theres the standard strife shit? im not rlly gonna get into those theyre all basically cookie cutter bullshit. its just standard bro and dave abuse talk. i like to inclulde the whole 24hr live cam up in the apartment that definitely watches dave in every room besides his own and the bathroom, but that quickly delves into the prospect of middle-aged men stalking him online and basically sexually harassing him in his own god damn home by talking about how they can see him just trying to take his shoes off in the living room after getting home and frankly? its not one of my best takes! but once you throw it into the headcanon bin, its there forever.

he actually really does do something with his photography but not enough to warrant anything exciting, but he has his own branding for it and regularly takes pictures of his friends or anything else he thinks is moderately interesting enough to take pictures of, but those are just thrown into shoeboxes under his bed in favor of posting genuine shots because he wants to keep his image intact and blurry photos of jade smiling in the tree they climbed up together while bec paws at the base of it while whining isnt exactly something he wants the whole world to see.

i also pretty often but him into either paleontology OR i put him down as trying to become a mortician because he thinks handing roadkill once he graduated from museum giftshop specimens to doing his own taxidermy on the side has prepared him enough to perform an occasional autopsy and start embalming real human corpses. (sometimes i put my own desires in and make them his bc i have to project at some point and put him through the same EMT course i dropped out of bc it was one semester and he already has pretty decent first aid skills, but he definitely didnt expect it to be as fucking wild at times as it is, but whats he gonna do? get a job back at waffle house? the company hes working for just offered to pay like half his associates in paramedicine tuition and hes already got all his pre-recs done when he started for paleo. at least its a stable job and hes got the ability to be compassionate in the moment)

im running out of things that ive done to the poor kid. OH

hes not a virgin he had a girlfriend all four years of high school (shes also one of his optional and designated exes plz keep up) and their relationship ends in one of two ways: she dies in a car accident a week before their high school graduation, or she stops talking to him entirely a week after their high school graduation until a couple years later she gets into (guess what) a car accident with her current wife/girlfriend and dies which leaves behind their daughter. who just so happens to also be daves daughter. her name is hannah and i love her like my own but no one ever likes her and thats on the conditioning of dirk. does dave end up taking her in? yes. shes awesome and the first time he takes her to the park to like run off some fucking steam she disappears for two minutes and dave is moderately terrified until she comes back holding a dead baby squirrel and thats the moment he realizes huh maybe things really do be genetic.

ok at the bottom of the list im gonna add the couple of times hes been a camboy which usually coincides with the live apartment cam thing and the amount of people in his dms calling him hot or whatever, but typically its more of a started the day he turned 18 and basically dipped around 20 in favor of showing up randomly with no warning to complain about a video game dick in hand because it gives him an outlet that wont annoy his friends bc this is the fifteenth time hes had a lot to say this week about a certain boss battle and also the comments fuel his ego and daddy issues.

the last one wasnt the bottom but literally unless its explicitly proven otherwise every time anyone rps with me there is the underlying fact dave strider was a goalie on his high school lacrosse teams all four years and (shocker another one) definitely had the hots for one of his teammates like major hots like first gay experience hots. like it was painfully obvious that teammate also liked him back hots. like one night at a team sleepover one of the other guys was like can yall just makeout and get it over with were fucking tired and dave really had the balls to be offended and ask what the fuck they were talking about while literally sitting halfway in the mans lap bc for some reason they had to share the same chair.

he is also guilty until proven innocent of being the worlds biggest loner outside of that sports team and even though hes literally a jock he still opts to eat his lunch alone in the hallway or something like that and has a tendency to leave girls on read, but bc hes got an in with the rest of the jocks hes basically drug around to plenty of parties and since hes conventionally attractive enough and popular in the aloof way that he is, hes got plenty of tagged insta posts and twitter directs and snapchat streaks going.

THESE WERE ALL NO GAME AND DONT INVOLVE SHIPS BC I LIKE TO KEEP MY OPTIONS OPEN AND THEYRE LITERALLY ALL BASED OFF RPS IVE DONE I HOPE YALL JUDGE ME ACCORDINGLY

#theres probably so many more i mean #ive been on parp for at least 5-6 years now #ive been on cherubplay probably the same amount of time #and my memory is totally shot to fuck but these are just what i know ive done in the last YEAR #or thought were wild enough to remember #i put it under a read more bc frankly its really fucking long #and i dont want this to represent me entirely #these are also heavily situational based and not like. emotion or reaction based much?#some of them are #i guess i could rename this to like. things ive done on parp #but theyre technically still headcanons a lot of them can coincide with whatever #so theyre not very specific situations #anyways #this took me an hour

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writings-andstuff · 7 years

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Coincidences Part II (Bucky x Reader)

You guys have waited way too long for this and for that I’m sorry. But here it is, so I won’t start it with my usual long-winded preamble.

Happy Reading!

Pairing: Bucky x Reader (Modern AU thingy)

Words: 5046 (yikes, that’s the longest fic I’ve ever written)

Warnings: The usual tiny bit of swearing

Excerpt: For a moment, you wonder how this became your life. Yesterday, you were just another girl worrying about everything except her lack of a love life. Now that’s all you can think about because you’re flirting with a complete stranger. How insanely insane is that? For all you know, he could be a forty-something year old dude with three ex-wives and a beer-belly that could carry triplets. Somehow, though, you don’t think that’s likely.

Series Tags: @melanie451 @sebstanwassup @colagirl5 @winenighthoe @lovemarvelousfics @gotnotfeature @sebastianst-n @alwayshave-faith @hollycornish @iggytheboywonder

Tags: @langinator @fairchild21

Your name: submit What is this?

New Message from Mr. Catarcs

3:42 a.m u up?

You blink your eyes blearily and shift in bed. The sheet is wrapped around your legs like sweaty vines, constricting your movement. You growl angrily and throw them off, sitting up and relishing in the cool air of your apartment. Despite the frigid cold outside, you somehow still manage to wake up sweating. Maybe you’re a mutant.

Glancing over at your phone, it dings again to impatiently let you know that you still haven’t opened the text that woke you up. Usually your phone is switched to silent because of your job at the diner. There are always so many phones going off that it’s almost impossible to tell which is which. It’s just easier having your phone on silent because then you’re never worried about whether your phone is ringing or if it’s someone else’s. It saves you a lot of unnecessary anxiety.

But ever since last night’s conversation with James, you decided that you wanted to hear your phone ring with a text. It’s the first time in your life that you don’t want to miss a text.

You pick up the offending piece technology and swipe it open. Sure enough, the text is from James and you grin despite the fact that this message is the same one that woke you at—you squint at your alarm clock—3:49 a.m.

Deciding you are both thirsty and in need of some time in the open air of your apartment and not under the suffocating sheets, you get up and stretch. The floors are cold as you pad to the kitchen and fill a glass with water, shooting a text back to James.

3:51 a.m I am now

You wait for an answer while downing your glass of water and putting the empty glass in the sink again. Maybe he fell back asleep when you didn’t answer right away.

For a moment, you wonder how this became your life. Yesterday, you were just another girl worrying about everything except her lack of a love life. Now that’s all you can think about because you’re flirting with a complete stranger. How insanely insane is that? For all you know, he could be a forty-something year old dude with three ex-wives and a beer-belly that could carry triplets. Somehow, though, you don’t think that’s likely.

You have no proof of this, and absolutely no reason to believe he isn’t a creep except for a gut feeling. You resolve to ask his age whenever he decides to answer you.

You think about that. He could lie to you and tell you that he’s 20 when he’s really a lot older than that. The only way you’d truly know is if you meet him in person.

Suddenly you’re a little dizzy. This is just way too much to worry about at four a.m. You decide to just talk to him. You genuinely like his personality, and you don’t have to worry about all that other stuff until you actually meet him. If you actually meet him. That’s a big, neon-colored, flashing sign in the middle of absolute nowhere if.

Your phone dings and you look over from where you’re clutching the counter. You don’t notice how hard you were gripping the counter until you pull your palms away and it stings, lines etching themselves across your palm.

4:03 a.m srry didnt mean to wake u

Before you can even formulate a response, he’s texting you again. A double text. Gasp.

4:04 a.m just couldnt sleep. i was wondring if u wanted to talk

You tilt your head at your screen. He’s up in the middle of the night, and the first thing he does is text you? Why? Does he not have other people he can talk to? A stupid part of you, the same part that wants to meet him in person, thinks that maybe it’s because he wants to talk to you.

Maybe he does. Probably not. It’s too much to hope for. All his other friends are probably asleep. Regardless, not answering is not an option. Well, it is, but it’s not one you’re likely to explore, not when your chest has those freaky bubbles in it and your stomach is doing that stupid flippy-thingy. Nope. This, you decide, feels like High School when a cute boy texted you first and the instinct to giggle shot up to level 12.

4:06 a.m alright. what about?

Capitals, Y/N. What the hell happened to capitals?

You take your phone and pad back into your room, perching yourself up against the headboard with your knees drawn up to your chest and your phone in your hands as you wait for a response. Worrying your bottom lip, your mind drifts to work. You’ll have to get up in about three hours to be at work on time. Man, you’re going to be tired.

It’s then that your phone dings. You decide then that talking to him makes it worth the fatigue.

4:11 a.m twenty questions?

4:11 a.m Fine, but since you woke me up you have to go first.

The three dots that mean he’s typing pop up three different times before the response finally comes through.

4:15 a.m whatd u go to school 4?

You laugh.

4:15 a.m getting down to the nitty gritty personal stuff I see

You think for a moment. Telling him what you do isn’t divulging too much about yourself, so you decide it’s okay.

4:16 a.m lol yup thats me. i want the deep personal stuff. might just ask what ur fav color is nxt

4:16 a.m 1. editing; 2. sorry, that’s sacred info

4:17 a.m 1 ah i understand y ur a grammar nazi now…2 obviously

Thinking for a moment, you decide that favorites are just too cliche. Any conversation anyone has with some new friend ends in questions that start with “What’s your favorite…” You really want to know how old he is, but you figure you need an ice breaker before you get to the actual nitty gritty.

First, though, you must take the bait to piss him off:

4:19 a.m What would you have done if I hadn’t gone to college?

With a yawn, you lie back down and curl on your side, sitting your phone on the nightstand in front of you with your eyes glued to it. Once you realize that staring at it isn’t going to make him type faster, you turn over.

You’re totally not too eager. There’s no—

Ding!

You flip over so fast that you rip the sheet from the other side of the bed and end up with half of it between your stomach and the bed. It pulls from the bottom corner of the bed and is slightly uncomfortable, but you don’t care.

4:22 a.m high school?

4:23 a.m I didn’t go to high school FOR anything

You’re not sure if the use of caps-lock is weird, but you send it off anyways, deciding that emphasis on that one word is crucial to your meaning. He replies within seconds.

4:23 a.m i mean dunno bout u but i went to learn

You laugh, probably louder than is necessary.

4:24 a.m Touche. What’d you go to school for?

4:26 a.m repeating questions isnt alowed

Frowning, you wonder if he actually didn’t go to college. Should you push it? Maybe you should just change the question. There’s a part of you, the curious part that wanted to be a reporter when you were young, that really wants to know.

There isn’t too much time for you to think all of that before he’s texting you again. Usually, you’re the one to mercilessly double-text. James, it would seem, has you beat in this department. Also, you didn’t want to double-text a complete stranger.

Before you even look at the text, it hits you again: this is a complete stranger. The thought of not answering enters your mind again, but you push it down. No harm in just talking if neither of you meet, right? Right?

Right.

4:27 a.m i joined the military right out of HS

It’s a real Oh moment, and you find yourself staring at your screen as if it’s a real person. The military? What are you supposed to say to that? What’s the protocol for a text that you’re not sure how to answer? Should you just leave it alone? No; if you leave it alone then he’ll think he freaked you out. He hasn’t. Your brain is just short-circuiting on an answer.

Should you think him for his service? No. Not yet. You don’t want to call too much attention to it in case he doesn’t want to talk about it or he’s had bad experiences, but you’re still not sure how to respond. Have you taken too long already?

You summon up some courage and type out a message.

4:31 a.m Oh wow. Well, what would you have studied if you had gone?

You cringe, totally not meaning for that to sound like you were completely skipping over the issue altogether. James doesn’t seem to mind though, if his response is any indication.

4:32 a.m hmm history i think. ive always liked ww2 4 some reason

4:33 a.m well you’ve got AP european history girl right here. 1 of only 11 in the whole senior class to take it.

4:34 a.m well, smartypants i get 2 q’s bc u asked 2

You feel that you handled that effectively, and you were already beginning to formulate a plan in your head while he thought about his questions.

See, you know next to nothing about the military or what it’s all about except that it is for valiant people who want to serve their country. You can respect that, but you want—nay, need—to learn more. Convincing yourself that it’s purely for research purposes and not for anything else.

Regardless, you need to know more. It’s probably better to get it from someone who has been through it rather than from some cold, impersonal online source. And besides, you just so happen to know someone who was in the military. Someone who, in fact, lost a limb in the line of duty: Bucky Barnes.

As far as you know, Bucky lost his left arm in the military. You’d asked him before how he lost it and he hadn’t answered you, opting instead to change the subject to Steve and his new (at the time) art studio. It had been suspicious, but you understand that it must not be easy to speak about something like that.

You’ll have to go talk to Steve tomorrow morning to get Bucky’s number, but you think that maybe you’ll treat him to lunch in exchange for him giving you some details about the whole military thing. At the company, you get an hour off for lunch, which is just enough time to go out, interrogate a friend (respectfully, of course), and head back before the hour is up.

The plan was formed and you had your head already set on it. By the time James’ reply comes in, you’ve tuckered yourself out thinking that whole plan out. It is really late—er, early—after all.

4:41 a.m 1 how was ur day 2 how r u likely to spend a friday night

4:43 a.m I feel like I’m taking a Buzzfeed quiz

You yawn again and type out your answers.

4:44 a.m my day’s just begun. it’s four a.m. And probably reading or something

You put your phone down, thinking that you’ll just leave it there and wait for his reply, but you end up turning over and falling asleep.

In the morning, you turn your phone on silent again while you get ready for work, playing some music while you apply some light make-up.

It turned out that James hadn’t answered you anyway, so you would have been up waiting for a text that wasn’t going to come. Good thing you passed out.

Glancing at the clock, you notice that it’s 7:02 a.m and that Steve should be up. You don’t have to be at work until 8 and it’s not a long bus ride to get to work so you figure you can spare half an hour to haggle your best friend into giving up Bucky’s phone number. You wonder why you haven’t thought to get it sooner, figuring that you just never needed it.

You and Bucky only ever hung out with Steve or the rest of the gang. He was a friend of yours, but the two of you had never been too close in the two years of knowing each other. That said, you had heard a lot about each other even before meeting from Steve, and Bucky had expressed in the past how annoying he found it when Steve was constantly mentioning you in casual conversation.

It was the same with Bucky for you. Steve had been talking about his best friend Bucky ever since you had met him. It was in that way that you and Bucky had gotten to know each other sort of inadvertently.

Heading out the door and across the hall, you knock on Steve’s door lightly a few times. He’s a light sleeper anyways, and you don’t want to wake the whole hall with loud knocking. You only opt for knocking this time in case he’s not decent or something. Otherwise, you would have used your key.

Sure enough, Steve answers the door within a few minutes, clad in flannel pajama pants, a white V-neck, and holding a steaming cup of coffee. It smells amazing, and you realize then that in your rush you’d forgotten to make yourself some.

“Got another one of those and half an hour?”

Steve raises an eyebrow but steps aside to let you in. He’s a morning person, so you were sure on your way over here that you wouldn’t receive any resistance.

“What do you need?” he asks you, pouring you a cup of coffee not unlike how he’d done it the night before. He pours in a generous amount of milk and some sugar before stirring it and handing it to you, just the way you like it.

Blow, sip—“Mm,” you hum. “I need Bucky’s phone number.” You say it as nonchalantly as you can manage so as not to raise any flags to Steve, but by his surprised expression you can tell that you’ve raised them all.

“Bucky? Why?”

You shrug like it’s no big deal. “He has some info that I need.” It sounds so covert and cheesy that you almost giggle, but you manage to keep your composure while sipping your coffee again.

Steve tilts his head to the side almost imperceptibly, leaning his back against the counter across from you as you sit at a stool by his island. Said island juts out from a wall to half-enclose the kitchen area like a wrap-around ‘J’ with the island as the tail.

After a few moments of silence, it becomes clear that Steve is waiting for you to elaborate, and when you don’t indulge, he sighs, setting his cup down and crossing his arms.

“Okay, but don’t call him now,” Steve says, already ruffling in a drawer for a pen and paper. “He—he has trouble sleeping, and he needs as much of it as he can get before he has to work. And he’s taking Friday off so he has to log in more hours to make up the difference.” Steve hands you a piece of paper with numbers scribbled on it.

“Got it,” you said, taking the paper and sticking it in your bag. “Thanks, Steve.”

“Yeah,” he smiles at you. “No problem.”

You stand and head to the door, plan in motion and feeling good about it. Then you remember something and turn as you’re walking toward the door.

“Steve?”

He lifts his head from where he’s still standing in the kitchen sipping his coffee. You realize you’ve left yours there, but decide that it’s okay. You’ll survive. Somehow.

“Yeah?”

“Mom is bringing over pasta around two, but I won’t be home,” you can already see his eyes lighting up. “I told her to make extra and that you should be back by then. Can you—”

“—keep it here until you get home?” He knows you so well, it’s scary. “Yeah, but don’t expect me not to try some of it first.”

You fix him with a warning finger. “I’ll be over at seven and I will expect there to be enough for dinner and lunch tomorrow.”

He holds his hands up. “Hey, we all know my metabolism requires a lot of calories per day, and two is just in time for a late lunch.”

“Steve,” you warn.

“Alright,” he laughs. “I’ll leave some of your mother’s pasta for you for dinner.”

“That’s all I ask.”

You walk back over, kiss his cheek, take one more sip of your coffee, and then leave.

You tap your foot on the ground impatiently as you wait at your desk for the clock to turn from 11:29 to 11:30 so you can head for a bathroom break to call Bucky and find out if he’s busy for lunch.

James hadn’t texted you all day, but you figure that’s okay. He doesn’t always have to text you. He has a life. You push him mostly out of your head, or you try to. You fail miserably.

He’s the reason you’re meeting with Bucky anyways. As much as you don’t want to admit it, that’s the truth. Of course, you can’t tell Bucky that. You’ll just sound stupid. And then Bucky will tell Steve and Steve will have some sort of “talking to strangers is bad” intervention with you. You definitely don’t want to endure that.

11:30 hits and it’s officially been half an hour since your actual bathroom break. You don’t want to call attention to yourself in the office that you share with a whole bunch of other people in too-tightly-packed cubicles. You grab the slip of paper Steve had given you and head to the elevator.

By the time you make it to the downstairs bathroom, you realize that you forgot your phone upstairs on your desk. Great. Now what are you going to do? If you go back up to get it, you’ll look suspicious. Of course, you shouldn’t really care what your coworkers think of you, but you do. Everybody says they don’t care about peer acceptance but most actually do.

It’s human nature.

You sigh angrily and look around. The lobby is all marble floors and a little shop where they sell overpriced snacks and drinks. There’s a desk to the left of the elevator bank with one woman sitting in a black wheelie chair making and taking phone calls.

Can you just ask her to borrow one of her phones? There’s an empty seat next to her. Maybe you can explain your situation and just ask this woman if you can borrow the phone.

The only thing is that you don’t know this woman. Your supers rented the office space with the endless rows of cubicles from the people who owned the building. This woman obviously works for the building management, and not for anyone you know.

You decide it’s better that she doesn’t know you. It’s less personal. You can call Bucky, discuss details, and be done with it.

You sidle over and lean on the high desk. Its polished marble top is so high that you have to lean over it a little to see the woman. She’s plump, with dark hair, blue eyes, and a squished face. She looks the opposite of friendly. She’s wearing a black headset that you realize is some sort of Bluetooth.

You wait until she is done speaking to talk to her.

“Um, hello?”

She doesn’t look at you for a moment, reaching up instinctively as if she thinks you’re in her headset before she realizes she’s speaking to a real person. She eyes you.

“What?”

You were right to guess she wasn’t very friendly.

“I was wondering if I could borrow your phone,” you say kindly. “I have to call someone and I accidentally left my phone upstairs.”

She looks bored and eyes you for another second before looking back at her computer screen. “Just go up and get it.”

“It’s urgent,” you lie. Man, this is going to be awkward after you make the call right in front of her and she finds out its personal.

She eyes you again. “You have five minutes.”

You smile at her. “I’ll only need three.”

You wait as she plops one of the black phones on top of the counter, and it’s so high that you have to go up on your tiptoes to see the number pad.

“Type extension 382 first, then the number.”

With that, she gets back to her work and you pull the phone from the receiver. You flatten the paper on the desk and do as she instructed.

You wonder if he’ll even pick up. This will be an unknown number to him, and you know that if it were you, you wouldn’t answer.

It rings three times before a familiar, gruff voice answers.

“Hello?”

“Bucky? It’s Y/N.”

He sounds surprised. “Y/N?” There’s a pause, a honking noise, and then he sounds as if he’s realized something. “Steve gave you my number.”

“Yeah,” you say. “I had to call you from a work phone, though.”

You catch the woman looking up at you briefly and can tell she’s annoyed that this is a personal call. You’re sure this call needs to be as short as you can possibly make it or else you’re afraid she’ll just cut it herself.

“Oh.”

“Listen, are you busy for lunch in, like, half an hour?”

Bucky thinks for a moment on the other line and the lady looks at you again, her gaze becoming more venomous. You’re pretty sure that once she looks at you a third time she’s going to end your call for you.

Just as you’re about to scold him for an answer, Bucky speaks up.

“Yeah, I’m—”

You feel bad, but you have to cut him off.

“Okay, great. Meet me at the Deli down the street from Steve’s studio at 12 sharp. My treat.”

Bucky chuckled on the other end. “Your treat? What do you need from me?”

You smile despite the situation. “Just your brain.”

“Sure you don’t want Banner or Stark for that one?”

“I’m sure,” the woman was giving you her last angry glare. You had to go. “See you then, Buck.”

“Looking forward to having my brain probed. Bye, Y/N.”

You hang up, thank the lady, and make your way back upstairs as fast as you can. 12:00 can’t come quick enough.

Bucky wonders what you want to talk to him about as he drives a company truck to the deli and parallel parks a couple blocks down. The flatbed of the truck is filled with mismatched pieces of junk, from broken computers to the plastic from the top of a printer. It’s all stuff that can be broken down and reprocessed at a plant.

The city is taking down an old building and putting a new office building up in its place. It’s Bucky’s job as the assistant to take all the not-so-useless junk and dispose of it somewhere where it can be reused.

He doesn’t have to be at the plant until two, and he finished loading everything up early, so he has about two hours or so to spare.

Walking into the Deli, he’s hit with a wave of merciful heat and he immediately pulls his coat off. The deli is small with few patrons a small line for take-out. One woman is sipping an iced coffee through a straw while she types madly on a computer. Two men are sitting at a table wearing yellow vests and eating huge subs. Bucky wonders if he would have ended up as one of them, working for the DPW if he hadn’t begun working with the demolition company.

It takes him barely a moment of looking around to find Y/N sitting in a corner flanked by two windows with an empty seat across from her. There’s a wrapped sandwich and a water sitting on the table in front of the other seat.

She’s smoothing out the wrapper of her own sandwich as if the creases in the paper wrapping are offending and should not be allowed to exist.

“Hey,” he says, walking over and taking a seat in front of her.

She looks up at him and smiles. “Hey,” she shoots back, and then nods to the sandwich. “Got you a BLT.”

Bucky’s suspicions are steadily growing. He pulls the paper from around the sandwich and lays it on the table as Y/N had done, though he couldn’t care less about the creases. He looks between the sandwich and the girl, eyeing both with the suspicion of someone who thinks he’s being played.

“What’s this about?” he asks.

She swallows and puts her sandwich down, looking like she’s about to ask him a ground-breaking, life-changing question. Her eyes quickly flick over to his arm and he’s suddenly very sure he knows what this is about.

But that’s strange. Yesterday—or really early this morning—he was talking to Y/M/N about him having been in the military. Now Y/N is eyeing his arm like she really wants to ask what happened but she doesn’t want to sound impolite.

Then there’s the fact that they’re both editors. That’s weird. And how Y/N reminds him of Y/M/N.

He’s an apopheniac, he has to be. He’s seeing coincidences where there really aren’t any. It’s his brain playing tricks on him. In truth, maybe he just wants this strange girl to be Y/N. Though, probably not. Then again, maybe this whole time he thought he was jealous of Y/N for being so close to Steve, he was really jealous of Steve for being so close to Y/N.

That thought derails him so fast that he doesn’t hear it when Y/N actually asks her question.

She lets out a breath as if it’s a load-off to finally ask him, and he’s struck with the realization that if he says he didn’t hear her, she probably won’t take it well. He waits for her to say something else, but when she doesn’t he takes a leap of faith based on her glance at his arm.

“You want to know how I lost my arm,” he says, rather than asks. If her expression of shock and discomfort is any indication, he’s screwed up.

Big time.

Shit.

“I mean,” she straightens in her chair. “I guess—it’s sorta part of it? Yeah.”

She sounds so lost and he feels so bad.

He still has no idea what her original question was though. ‘Part of it.’ His thoughts drift back to his earlier conversation with the girl he’s been talking to over text. The military. Could that be what Y/N wants to know about?

No, it’s just too weird. There’s no way. But he has to know.

“The military? You want to know about the military?”

She nods, looking slightly guilty. “Yeah,” he tries not to let his breath of relief show, “I—uh, fact-checking. I’m fact-checking an article.”

Bucky nods slowly, sandwich forgotten. She’s a terribly liar. “You’re a terrible liar.”

Sitting back as if she’s been punched in the gut, she blinks once, twice, three times—“I’m not lying.”

“Your body language gives you away.”

“Is that something you learned in the military?”

Bucky chuckles. “That’s something I learned from a whole lot of spy movies. Seriously, why do you want to know?”

She takes a bite of her sandwich and speaks around it. Altogether, not the most sexy, but that’s okay.

“Research,” she says slowly.

Bucky creases his eyebrows. “For?”

“For a project?”

“If you’re going to lie, at least lie with conviction,” Bucky says. “One of these days, I’m going to teach you how to lie the right way.”

Laughing, she pulls her chair in a little more and sits forward. The picture of seriousness, she says, “Alright, if I tell you, you need to promise me you won’t tell Steve.” She sounds reluctant to tell him at all. This must not have been her plan.

Bucky draws a cross over his heart with his index finger. “Cross my heart or hope to die.”

She shakes her head. “Gotta be stronger than that. You have to pinkie promise.”

He gasps dramatically. “Not a pinkie promise. This must really be serious.”

Reaching over, she swats his arm. “Buck, I’m serious.”

“Okay, okay,” he surrenders, holding up his pinkie. She links hers with his and he’s momentarily struck by how soft her skin is. Then it’s over. “Tell me.”

She steels herself, he can see it. Jeez, it must really be something serious or she wouldn’t be swearing him to secrecy using childish, yet efficient tactics. It strikes him that she tells Steve everything, same as him, so for her to say she doesn’t want him to know must mean it’s not necessarily something good.

He lets himself think for a moment that she might be about to confess that she’s the mystery girl he’s been texting. It’s much more likely, though, that she’s about to tell him she’s got feelings for Steve or something.

Steeling himself as well, he waits as she takes a deep breath.

“I may or may not—”

“You may,” he corrects. She glares at him.

“—have answered a text from a guy who was trying to text someone else—”

This is where Bucky stops listening and his internal monologue becomes one word:

Fuck.

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