The chipped ceramic mug warmed Y/n’s hands, the lukewarm coffee doing little to chase away the New York chill seeping through the drafty window of her Brooklyn apartment. Nineteen, she reminded herself, and already feeling the weight of a life spent staring at schematics and dreaming of Stark Industries. Tony Stark, Bruce Banner, Natasha – they were gods in her mind, and she’d spend her life trying to earn a spot beside them.
She’d lost her phone last week. A culinary disaster involving a rogue toaster oven and a misplaced bag of flour. The resulting mess had cost her a new phone, and the false confidence that she remembered her parents’ numbers.
“You’re really weird,” a voice chirped from her laptop speakers.
Y/n didn’t bother looking up. It was Sam, probably. He had a habit of dropping in on her late-night coding sessions. “You think I don’t know that?” she replied, fingers still dancing across the keyboard.
Her phone buzzed with a new notification. A group chat. A dozen faces she’d barely spoken to, all crammed into a digital room. She opened it.
!New Message!
!New Notification!
!New Email!
The screen flickered with a torrent of texts. Wanda Maximoff was sending emojis. Pietro was spamming her with links to questionable memes. Bucky was… sending her a heart. Sam was there too, of course, dropping a casual “Hey, how’s the coding going?”
Y/n scrolled through the chaos, a small smile tugging at her lips. It was ridiculous. She barely knew these people, and yet, here they were, flooding her inbox with random thoughts and inside jokes.
“Magic me away then,” a message popped up from Wanda.
“Don’t test me,” Y/n typed back, a little faster. She was beginning to enjoy this.
Another message: "I think I like her."
Pietro was being...forward.
"Just ask her out already."
Y/n shook her head and laughed, typing back a message, "What do you want?"
A new message popped up from Bucky, "Sometimes you're just mean to me."
"You know it's because I love you," she replied.
The screen lit up again with a flurry of messages, each one more absurd than the last. Tony Stark was sending her a link to a video of a cat playing the piano. Bruce Banner was asking if she’d blown up his lab again. Steve Rogers was asking if she and Sam were dating.
Y/n laughed again, louder this time. It was chaotic, it was messy, and it was exactly the kind of distraction she needed. She glanced at the clock. 3:00 AM. She was still coding, still dreaming, still hopelessly, wonderfully weird.
A new message popped up, this time from Natasha: “Hey so I have a problem.”
Y/n typed back, a grin spreading across her face. “Who’s body am I burying?”
Natasha’s reply was instant: “Don’t ask.”
Y/n laughed again, and a new message popped up, this time from Peter Parker, "This bitch empty!"
"YEET," she replied.
A new message popped up from Thor, "Well some people don't like that."
"WHY DOES IT MATTER? LOVE IS LOVE," Y/n replied.
A new message popped up from Loki, "Want to prank someone with me?"
"You read my mind, darling."
Y/n smiled, and a new message popped up from Scott Lang, "I'd follow you to the quantum realm Scott."
"Thank you," she replied.
A new message popped up from Stephen Strange, "How much do I have to pay you to teach me magic?"
"No," she replied.
A new message popped up from T'Challa, "Do you like cats?"
"Did Sam put you up to this?" she replied.
A new message popped up from Vision, "Have you ever been in love?"
"I am a computer. I do not fall in love."
A new message popped up from Shuri, "Are you allowed to do that?"
"I'm a princess, I do what I want."
Y/n smiled. It was chaos, but it was her chaos. And for the first time in a long time, she felt like she belonged.