words: 1,608

Shuri had come to stay for the entire month. Peter didn't really know her, well really, he didn't know her at all. She was a genius princess, and he was a kid on food stamps. Plus being a superhero and also a genius, but anxiety doesn't focus on the good parts.

It was three in the morning, and Peter couldn't sleep. One of the things he'd adopted from Tony was the philosophy that time was a societal construct, so he wandered towards the labs in a giraffe onesie and holding a fruit punch juice box. The bluetooth headphones Mr. Stark had given him went over his ears, and he sang along to the song since the walls were sound proof. Peter opened the door to the lab, still singing.

"It's going down for reaallll! Wa wa wa wa wa wa-"

Peter choked when he realized the lights were on. "Mr. Stark?"

"It's me!" Shuri called out.

"Oh, uh, hi!" Peter nodded. As his eyes adjusted, he realized the princess is wearing a Winnie the Pooh onesie and bright green crocs while working on something. "I just couldn't sleep. Watcha doing?" Shuri moved to the side so he could see a prosthetic arm on the table. "Is that for Uncle Bucky?" Oh Jesus, this wasn't going well.

"Yeah. Can you help? He doesn't like getting new ones, so I have to make this one really good so it can last a while. We made a deal, so I can only replace them once a month now." Peter walked closer. "This part on his wrist is basically his kimoyo beads, and it's also water proof, heat and cold resistant, bulletproof, and obviously it's magnetic, but don't tell him. It also works as a wireless speaker, and there are charging ports here for phones and stuff. Any ideas?"

"Can he text people on it?" Peter supplied.

"Do you know what kimoyo beads are? Do you want some? T'Challa said I could give them out."

Peter nodded, but his attention was still on the arm. "What if we had it connect to an earpiece? Maybe we could make him an AI?"

Shuri grinned and complimented the thought. Once they'd designed the hardware for the earpiece and camera and basic software for the AI, it came to the part of writing a script.

"What if it narrates everything, but like a wattpad writer would?" Peter suggested.

"How does that sound?"

"Well, first of all, they over describe everything, and just try to use unnecessarily unique words in general. Like if they were describing my eyes, they'd say chocolate, gold-flecked orbs. And they'll use any words except dick."

Shuri coughed and raised an eyebrow.

"Um, yeah, so that's kind of a stupid idea," Peter mumbled, rubbing the back of his neck.

"No, no, I like it, but what do you mean by the last part?" Parker, you idiot. Why can't you just shut up before you embarrass yourself?

"Um, like shaft, length, manhood, rod..."

The princess laughed, "you white people." Peter wanted to simultaneously raise an eyebrow and let his Brian explode from relief, and he struggled to right his face. "That'll be funny, let's go with it."

Shuri was a little bit like MJ, in that she knew to not tease too much. Peter's self-confidence wasn't trash, but it crumbled easily.

"White wolf, we have a new arm for you," Shuri smiled politely, holding out the arm. "This goes in your ear, and here, let me just place it- see? It's practically weightless!"

Bucky grinned, clenching and unclenching his metal fist experimentally. "Thanks, Shuri." Shuri nodded and ran over to Peter. Everyone had sort of noticed the two teenagers' quick friendship, but neither of them had many friends, so Stark, T'Challa, and the rest of them were more glad than suspicious. Besides, wouldn't quiet Peter be a good influence on the princess?

Peter and Shuri had matching earpieces that tuned into his arm's frequency, listening to the feed it was giving. The switch to turn on Bucky's earpiece was in Shuri's hand, but the two friends had decided they'd wait for a good time to flip it. For now, they could listen to all Bucky's encounters.

"Hey Buck," Steve nodded, sweeping his chiseled fingers through the golden mop of hair on his scalp. "New arm?"

Bucky bobbed his head, his cheeks starting to resemble Himalayan pink salt.

Shuri bit her lip with a smirk. "Did you write that?"

"Google searches lists of things that are the color and it chooses the one with the longest name."

Steve brushed the new limb gingerly, fascination glinting in his pupils. Unfortunately, he couldn't stay; he'd agreed to train with Nat today. Bucky's heart cascaded as his love waved and turned, and he caressed his inhuman forearm where Steve had touched just seconds before.

In reality, Steve's had explained his reason for leaving and apologized fifteen times over. Bucky's other hand had brushed against his metal one as he went to see if this arm worked as well to bitch slap Sam.

The former-assassin crossed the room to where the man he liked least of all in the tower stood. Bucky took in the chestnut complexion of his foe. The microscopic curled strands of hair like dark oak with a thin beard framing his lips. Bucky stared into the polished and veneered mahogany eyes that glinted suspiciously.

This was the test for every new arm. Seventy-six trials had taught Sam to be a little more than suspicious. Redwing fluttered out of sight behind his head, waiting to block Bucky's hand when he rose it. What Sam forgot was that Bucky's hearing was better than most, and he heard the drone's quiet whirring.

Bucky raised his flesh hand quickly, anticipating the flash of pain from the collision with his nemesis's drone. Momentarily after, he struck Sam's clean-shaven cheek exuberantly. Bucky paraded off, a sense of accomplishment rising in his chest.

Bucky walked away with a slight smirk. In the corner, Shuri and Peter chewed their lips to keep a straight face. Peter accidentally let slip a sort of whimper, and the teens lost it. The avengers had gotten used to their antics and figured they'd seen a branch where something similar had happened. A vine.

Finally, dinner was over, and nothing was planned for that night which meant Steve and Bucky would be taking advantage of the compound's amazing sound-proofing. Peter and Shuri had been listening to the feed of Bucky's life for the past few hours, and it was starting to get old. The super soldiers, on the other hand, didn't know anything of the electronic Wattpad writer.

After quite a bit of consideration, Peter and Shuri had decided that the lab was a pretty safe place to watch from. It was designed to shield everyone else from mistakes that happened within it's walls, but it could easily do the opposite. The teens had hacked into the hallway's security feed to know when they should turn on Bucky's feed. Naturally, both of them agreed that they were too innocent to have a feed from inside the couple's room.

"Peter, do you know morse code?" Shuri asked randomly.

"Um, yeah. Ned and I memorized it in fourth grade so we could blink at each other from across the room." Peter had become a little more comfortable with oversharing with the princess since he found out she'd usually done things equally if not more weird than he had.

"These are really good earpieces, so I was wondering if I gave you a bracelet or something, you could tap it, and it could send it to my earpiece and vice-versa. Just if Stark drags you to one of his meetings or something, so you're not bored. Otherwise, we'd be wasting these."

"Yeah, that sounds great. Oh, they're going in." Peter and Shuri turned up the sound on their earpieces, waiting for the right moment for to flip the switch.

Steve and Bucky backed up towards the bed, and the blond super soldier cupped his boyfriend's cheek, rubbing his thumb over his sideburns.

"Now," the teens murmured in unison, letting Bucky hear his life being narrated.

Steves lips slammed into his. Bucky shoved his love away, looking around wildly. 'Where was this voice coming from,' he wondered, desperately scanning his surroundings. As the voice continued to narrate his actions, Bucky became more and more desperate.

"What's happening?" Bucky asked.

"Buck, everything okay?" Steve asked

"Make it stop!" Bucky begged to an unseen god. Little did he know that this was no act of god. "Sam! I will murder you!" Bucky wrongly accused. "STARK!" How would he know my little cinnamon roll babies were the ones who did it?

"What?" Bucky asked. "Peter and Shuri?" Ding ding ding!

Bucky reached for the door, unconsciously flexing his muscles in annoyance.

"Peter, he's not actually mad, is he?"

"Nah, we're good. I just added that part because they overdramatize things and have dramatic random emotional changes."

Bucky stared at his arm in shock. He hadn't realized how huge his biceps were (Damn, like can I have that serum?).

"Peter! Shuri! What the hell?" Bucky roared loudly. He stomped through the hallway.

"What the hell???"

(Bucky had said, "But I'm not stomping," and then, "Why didn't it say I said that?" For the record, it's because it's not important to what the 'author's' 'writing' about.)

Peter and Shuri figured it probably wasn't good to mess with Bucky's head for much longer, and turned off his earpiece. Still, it was probably better to spend that night in the lab.