Steve vs Dummy
Tony has well-documented sleep issues and nothing seemed to help, including heavy sedatives. His mind was always loud, buzzing with ideas, connections, improvements, data and most of the time it was impossible to quiet. So he tended to be awake for days at a time, writing things down, testing his ideas, drawing out designs or whatever else he felt like doing. He was, as per usual; awake in the middle of the night working on fixing a few things on his suit when Steve appears in the doorway. Tony looks up and Steve halfheartedly waves at him, obviously expecting to be turned away but Tony is curious and he’s feeling a little reckless. He could practically feel Natasha’s upcoming ass kicking already, “and what do you want?” he asks, mostly malice free, as Steve walks in the door JARVIS opened.
“Can’t sleep,” Steve says, “and apparently neither can you. I got bored enough that I figured I’d take my chances and try and attempt a conversation with you.” He must have been pretty bored then because Tony hadn’t exactly proved himself overly approachable to Steve and he wasn’t about to accommodate now.
“Hmm,” Tony says and turns back to his work, ignoring Steve in the process. He, truth be told, was also bored and he was curious to see how this would turn out. Steve, to his credit, only sighs and sits on the floor with his back to the wall across from Tony’s desk and watches as Tony fiddles with random things on the suit.
Steve sits quietly across from Tony for about twenty minutes and Tony pays him no attention but he doesn’t lose himself in his work, far too aware of Steve’s presence for that. “Bucky said you were lost in your work within minutes of him walking in, is there a reason you haven’t done that now?” Steve asks, giving Tony a shrewd look with his head tilted to the side.
“You make me anxious,” he says, stating the obvious. Some spy Steve was, it wasn’t as if the answer was complicated or difficult to put together.
“And Bucky doesn’t? You know how stupid that is, right?” Steve says, raising an eyebrow.
Logically Tony knows he’s right, it wasn’t as if Bucky was somehow less dangerous and looking at his records he probably matched Steve in the danger department, but Tony gets pissed off anyways. “First off don’t call me stupid, I’m not stupid. Second, Bucky practically exudes anxiety, he’s way too wrapped up in his own issues to create more with me, also I knew right away his Commands weren’t all that strong anyways,” he says. Steve gives Tony a skeptical look and Tony rolls his eyes, “don’t look at me like that, I’ve seen the look enough times to know what it means. That squinty eye thing you people do, like omegas are bugs that you can step on or something. It’s creepy and it makes me anxious,” he says.
“I do not look at you like you’re a bug I can step on!” Steve says, scandalized, “I don’t look at anyone like that!”
Tony gives Steve the same skeptical look he got a few minutes before and Steve glares him down, doing that squinty eyed bug thing Tony literally just mentioned, “I liked you better when you were skinny,” he says.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Steve snaps, tipping his head up defiantly.
“So you and skinny you do have something in common, I was starting to wonder if that serum personality snatched you, you know, like body snatching but with personalities. Whatever. Point is skinny you was a different person, you wanted to help people, and you had such drive to do it, it was kind of inspiring. But it’s like you got that serum and all that drive just… went away, like because you knew people would listen to what you had to say you no longer felt compelled to speak out. And you do that squinty eyed bug thing and call geniuses stupid,” he says, still bitter about Steve’s callous comment. He was not stupid, reckless, a bit of an asshole maybe, but he wasn’t stupid contrary to what everyone else thought.
Steve seems content to think about Tony’s words as Tony continues working on his suit. “I think Natasha’s wrong about you not being spy material,” he says some time later, giving Tony an appraising look.
Tony snorts, “you’ve never seen me do anything spy related,” he says. He was a fucking disaster and he was okay with that, not everyone was cut out for espionage and he was definitely one of those people.
“I saw you draw a connection to a personality change that was incredibly drastic that no one but you noticed from bare minimum observations from before and after a transformation you weren’t even present for. Give yourself some credit, that’s impressive, mostly because you’re right. I guess it’s easy to lose sight of issues when you don’t really have to deal with them anymore,” he says.
Tony shrugs, “it isn’t like you’re the only asshole that sits on the top of the social pyramid and was content to bury his head in the sand until terrorists fucked his life over,” he says and Steve brightens, probably thinking he made some sort of connection but Tony was just making a basic observation.
“I knew I could get through to you,” he says, smiling and mostly Command free now. So that changed with mood, interesting.
“I was making a basic observation, not trying to connect with you,” Tony says bluntly, not caring if he hurt Steve’s feelings.
Steve doesn’t seem to take offense, “sure. So what are you working on?” he asks. Tony gives him a very long and convoluted explanation of what he was doing and uses as much jargon as possible to throw Steve off. It works because Steve takes all of three seconds for Steve to start struggling to keep up and another two to lose him completely. Tony goes back to his work and Steve sighs, sitting for another few minutes before he speaks again, “okay, I get it, you don’t like me. But you must have some questions for me or about me or whatever. From what I’ve seen your mind is always running at a mile a minute and some of the things you’ve pointed out were things I had never even thought of.”
Tony decides to throw the guy a bone, mostly because he’s been wondering. “That serum increased everything good about you, it basically eliminated the flaws you as a person had and that humans as a species had, right?” he asks and Steve nods, “so that includes an increased sense of smell?” Steve nods again, probably knowing where this was going. “I don’t get it, your Commands increase in power tenfold, so does your sense of smell, but you only have a lack of control over the Commands and apparently no reaction to my heat? That makes no sense,” he says, trying to think through the logistics.
“Are you saying I should have… raped you? Because that is a level of fucked up I don’t even want to touch,” he says, Commands making a comeback.
Tony rolls his eyes, “no you twit, I’m wondering why your lack of control only sits in one area, I mean it would make sense-”
“No, it wouldn’t, alphas who like to claim that they can’t control themselves around an omega’s heat scent are barbaric assholes looking for an excuse to absolve themselves of all responsibility for their actions and blame it on idiotic beliefs of biological determinism. I cannot believe that you ascribe to that opinion,” Steve snaps.
Tony raises an eyebrow, “you done?” he asks and Steve gives him a look that would make someone lesser shrink in fear, “I don’t ascribe to that opinion, thank you, it would make sense because you’ve made excuses for not being able to control your Commands, why not make excuses for every other unhealthy alpha behavior you might have? Especially given that you’re biology is significantly better and more… alpha-y than your other alpha counterparts. I can’t believe you thought I would believe that biology makes rape okay, what the fuck? I’ve had enough people make rude comments to me on the street or on the internet or decide it’s appropriate to comment on my heat scent in business meetings to know that ‘biology made me do it’ is total bullshit. Besides, if that was true omegas wouldn’t be able to control their urges either, we’re all supposed to want kids and shit so why wouldn’t we pounce on the nearest looking fertile thing to either get pregnant or try to get it pregnant? The answer? ‘Biology made me do it’ is total bullshit,” he says.
Steve snorts, “alright then. I guess you make a point about the excuse making thing, I hadn’t thought of that,” he admits, which, duh. “I never considered the reverse argument with omegas being a slave to their ‘natural’ urges but that makes sense and if alphas who ascribe to that biological deterministic view disagree I’d wonder why,” he says.
“The alpha-omega dichotomy, like every other binary that exists, exists to promote one group over another and while biology is used to explain away and naturalize violent alpha behavior, but only for men, it serves to shame omegas, particularly women. Basically society is shit we need to throw it out,” he says. He’s spent a lot of time thinking about throwing out North American bullshit and he was pretty sure he could do it; he’s revolutionized enough stuff that he was confident he could revolutionize laws and such too.
“You’ve thought a lot about this?” Steve says and his voice goes up at the end, like it’s a question.
“I don’t get a choice but to think about it all the time, it’s my life. Which is sad considering I’m basically on the top of the social pyramid.” He had spent a lot of time re-evaluating his life after he had been kidnapped, spent a lot of time talking with Yinsen, time talking with Clint and Natasha. In a matter of six months his world view made so many changes it was a wonder he was the same person. Yinsen once said he was a man with everything and nothing and sometimes when he was awake for a long time and alone he thought about that. He wished Yinsen was wrong but everything he had was so superficial, and it was all great, he was definitely happy that he had money, but that was all he really had. Worse, it was his own damn fault. Yinsen told him he alienated all of his relationships because he was terrified that he would be alone, which became ironic because he made his own worries come true.
Steve considers Tony’s words and eventually makes a face, “do people really make comments about your heat in business meetings?” he asks, looking grossed out.
Tony sighs, “yeah, which makes no sense because I’ve never been in heat in a business meeting for that purpose. I didn’t really have a use for those people’s companies but I decided hostile takeovers were necessary anyways and they were all so damn hung up on me being a party boy omega they practically handed their companies over,” he says. People were so dumb, thinking that his personality made him less likely to be able to get shit done. Clearly they didn’t bother to look past their own misconceptions about him to see anything resembling the truth.
Steve laughs, “nice,” he says, “very you.”
“You don’t know me,” Tony says, looking up at Steve, who shrugs.
“Maybe not, but I know enough. I remember when you first took over Stark everyone called your ability into question, you had one hell of a reputation by then, and you told them you’d make Stark a multibillion dollar company in five years. Everyone laughed at you, told you you had delusions of grandeur. You did it in two years.” Steve sounds impressed but Tony doesn’t give him any brownie points for it, it was impressive.
“It only took that long because I was slacking,” he says. He could have done it within a year and a half if he had stuck to his plan, but he decided that regular vacations were going to be a thing so he lost some time partying with, well, everyone.
Steve’s eyebrows shoot up, “you were slacking? Tony in that two years you revolutionized technology so much the only way anyone had a hope to break into that business was to work for you. You’re still the forerunner in tech and almost everyone else who has ideas only get the chance to work on them because of programs you designed. That’s hardly slacking,” he says, frowning, “what do you think about your company’s comeback when you decided to stop making weapons? At least I assume that was you.”
“It was me,” Tony confirms, “and if I was in the public eye things would go faster, but Pepper is more than capable of running Stark. People just have more faith in what I can do, which really isn’t fair because Pep has always been instrumental in my success,” he says. They met when he was twenty when a friend of hers had dragged her to one of his parties and they had ended up in a heated debate about the future of Stark Industries. Pep had been the reason he had gone back as soon as he had; assuring him that he wasn’t his father, that she wouldn’t let him be. That didn’t end up panning out but in Pepper’s defense he wasn’t very good at taking criticism and he would have done what he wanted anyways, he suspected she knew that and let him be until he came to the conclusion that he was a raging prick.
Steve tilts his head to the side, “I was wondering what you thought of yourself, interesting that you immediately jumped to Pepper’s defense,” he says.
Tony shrugs, “people are awful to her, saying that I’d hate her, that I’d be so pissed off or ashamed and worse when the entire time it’s been me making the changes. I don’t think I would have gotten half as much criticism as she has and the only reason the comeback took a year was because people doubted her left and right despite the ample evidence that the company was doing just fine in her hands, better than it had in mine even. Whenever I decide I’m bored with this I’m going to have so much fun telling everyone all of this was me and demanding apologies for Pepper.”
Steve snorts, “Pepper Potts does not look like the accepting apology type,” he says, “too proud.”
Tony laughs, “yeah, she’ll tell them to shove it in a really nice and condescending way that’ll make them look like total assholes. There is a reason I love her,” he says.
“Are you two dating then? I’ve heard the rumors of course, but neither of you ever confirmed them, not really. Actually if I didn’t know any better I’d say the two of you made a game out of the whole thing, creating entire stories just to fuck with people.” Steve frames it like he doesn’t already know that’s true but he’s seemed to have picked up on something no one else saw in those papers because he was right and his supposed relationship with Pepper always seemed to increase sales and press.
“Guess you don’t know better. We got bored of the paparazzi always being in control of our lives so we decided to manipulate them all, make them cover stories we wanted them to cover, control the media. Worked like a charm,” he says, grinning.
Steve smiles, “that’s genius. I always wondered how much of those stories were true, they always seemed to centre around your company’s projects, always related to your politics. It all seemed very staged to me but everyone else thought I was being paranoid, thinking you were controlling the media. Guess I was half right, except you tricked them into doing what you wanted instead of outright made them.”
“Pepper came up with the plan, she’s smart like that, and they all bought our set-ups for the most part, there was that really weird story out of left field that proposed I was actually dating Rhodey, but other than that it all went as planned,” he says. It was even better because his sex life was very public and Pepper had no problem shutting people down whenever they asked about it, which had led to Pepper finally telling everyone they had an open relationship. The media had gone nuts and so had the Republicans, but at the time he’d been deep into weapons so they couldn’t shit on his too much because they tended to be a bunch of war mongering twits. Rhodey had had a laugh about the results of that, watching as they tried to come up with a way to shame his relationship without actually pissing him off.
“I remember that, the Republicans were so weird about it,” Steve says, “but then they probably wanted your bombs so I guess they couldn’t be assholes.” Tony shrugs and goes back to his work, significantly more comfortable with this situation than he had been when Steve first showed up.
Steve doesn’t seem to feel the need to force conversation and starts poking around, drawing Tony’s attention when Dummy shoos him away from some filing cabinets. Steve seems to take this as a challenge and Tony watches as Steve tries increasingly stupid and convoluted ways to try and get to the files in the corner. Tony was going to have to rewire Dummy so the damn bot was less blatantly obvious about where the important things were kept. In Dummy’s defense the files were distractions really, Tony kept everything in the floor of his lab, safely located underneath some cupboards no one would think a secret room was under.
Eventually Tony decides the Steve vs Dummy fight was more interesting than his suit and plops himself in his desk chair to observe. Dummy puts up a good fight but when Steve climbs the cupboards and jump onto the exposed beams on the ceiling he can’t really do much but freak out by the filing cabinet. He hadn’t much expected he was going to get an amusing tech vs human fight with Steve of all people tonight but he was content to watch Steve manage to swing himself from beam to beam as Dummy seemed to come to the conclusion that he was fucked. Steve manages to go from one side of the room for another and Tony can practically see Dummy scouring his own code for a solution to this problem and when Steve drops onto the top of the cabinet Dummy finds it.
Tony pulls his legs under himself as Dummy smacks himself into the cabinet and Steve nearly topples over but he regains his balance fast. Dummy seems to think this is unacceptable and his claw spins in frustration, or at least what Tony perceived as frustration considering Dummy was a robot and couldn’t technically feel emotions. Either way Dummy decides to knock the cabinet over, pulling it away from the wall and sending it and Steve to the ground, spilling the contents of the cabinet everywhere. Tony grins, happy that his tech was so loyal even if Dummy wasn’t protecting anything important.
Steve picks up one of the papers that fell out of the cabinet and frowns, “are you fucking kidding me? I just spent a half an hour fighting a robot for this?” he asks, holding up an extremely unflattering dick pic.
Tony couldn’t help but laugh and once he starts he finds it almost impossible to stop because the cabinet was full of the most unflattering dick pics he’s received and Dummy’s protecting the cabinet served as a distraction. As if he’d leave important stuff just sitting around in the corner with no real protection or even a lock or something. He couldn’t believe Steve feel for that. “This is so funny,” he says as Steve sifts through the hideous penises, “I can’t believe you spent all that time to get to that cabinet,” he wheezes.
Steve sighs as Dummy snatches one of the dick pics out of his hand and drops it into the pile he was compiling on the fallen cabinet. “Well I didn’t think anything overly important was in there considering how exposed it was but when your clawed robot started freaking out I figured it was something at least kind of important. I should have known when you sat back to watch instead of reacting,” he says, “I’m guessing Dummy and the cabinet serve as a distraction of some sort?”
Tony shrugs, “something like that,” he says, “though Dummy’s supposed to be less subtle, but I named him Dummy, how subtle can the bot be?”
*
Bucky looks frustrated with the computer he was holding so Tony takes pity on him, walking over to see what Bucky was mumbling to himself. “For fucks sakes,” he mutters, “I don’t want to fuck single busty Russians in my area; I want to prove Steve wrong about the American Revolution, damnit.” Tony doesn’t mean to start laughing but Bucky just said all that with a straight face and a serious tone.
Setting the computer aside Bucky looks over at him, “it isn’t funny,” he says with meaning and really, it probably wasn’t to Bucky, but to him it was hilarious.
“Fine fine, what are you trying to find?” he asks, walking over and cringing at Bucky’s screen, “what have you done to it? No you keep your hands to yourself, you have tortured this machine enough. It’s okay,” he tells the computer, “I’ve got you,” he says and pets the screen.
Bucky gives him a look that was so done it looked like his soul exited his body and left a dead eyed shell behind. “God Bucky, call your soul back to yourself and get your shit together,” he says, “it’s the poor computer that’s suffering, what the fuck did you click on?” he asks, sifting through a freakish amount of junk. He’s literally met five year olds who knew how to use a computer with more efficiency that Bucky.
Bucky lets out a long drawn out sigh, “I’m not that good with tech,” he says as if Tony hadn’t just exited out of like fifty ads Bucky somehow managed to open.
“I have brown eyes,” he says and Bucky frowns at him, “I thought we were stating very obvious things,” he says.
He gets another dead eyed look as Bucky’s soul takes another exit so he figures he’d fix Bucky’s poor abused computer. Skye chooses to show up then, frowning as Tony clicks through more shit, “what the hell did you do to it?” she asks, all but running over to try and remove the tech from him so she could liberate it from his torturous grasp.
“I did nothing, he did this,” Tony says, pointing at Bucky.
Skye looks between the two of them, “he doesn’t get that back until he knows how to not do… this,” she says, gesturing to a virus Tony uncovered and that was only the first of many.
“Duh,” he says and continues his diagnostics on the poor machine. Skye gives him a skeptical look but figures that he’s competent enough that she can take off again, sparing the computer an empathetic look.
“Can you just give that back?” Bucky asks, holding his hand out. Tony gives him a look but Bucky doesn’t seem to get the point and they end up in a staring contest that Tony eventually wins. He was good at staring contests, he did it a lot in business and alphas always got all weird when you refused to stop looking them in the eye. It worked with anyone, but more so when someone was trying to assert their dominance and you refused to cave in. Bucky seems to accept that he wasn’t going to give up the computer, which he was not, and instead he flops back into his chair and continuously gives him looks so Tony knew he was unimpressed.
“So while I bring your computer back from the brink have you slept with Sam?” he asks because he was still curious about Sam’s sex count.
Bucky frowns at him, “have you slept with Sam?” he asks, obviously finding the question weird and invasive, which was fair, but he underestimated how little shame Tony had in his sex life.
“Mmhm,” he mumbles, clicking through Bucky’s mess.
Bucky looks shocked, “you too? When? How? I knew he already managed to get to Skye, and also Clint because Coulson was really upset about it, but he got to you too? I thought he was working of thawing Loki,” he says, frowning.
Tony snorts, “we got together pre whatever this is. Tell Sam to quite while he’s ahead, Loki’s basically being Elsa from Frozen makes a lot of sense because he’s got a frozen heart that will not be thawed with sibling love,” he says, “so like more like the original tale.”
“I hope not, the original is creepy,” Bucky says, “but Sam’s got to you too?” he asks.
Tony nods, “Steve?” he asks and Bucky nods, “damn. Sam’s got a superpower or something.”
“If you’ve fucked Sam you know he has a whole slew of superpowers,” Bucky says, raising an eyebrow.
Tony thinks about it and nods, “that is true, everyone should have sex with Sam, it’s an experience and a half,” he says and that was an understatement and a half, “seriously.” And he’s had experiences, Sam had such talent he was a category unto his own. Bucky gives him a very serious nod.