Chapter Text
It was dark on this particular floor of the tower, complete silence, and for once its resident was asleep, instead of spending his hours punishing a punching bag. He was even snoring.
Of course, none of this information succeeded in deterring the robot that was slowly sneaking into the living room.
“Really?” JARVIS sighed. “All of this and you still persist?”
The robot let out a series of beeping noises that sounded vaguely like a whine and strangely humanlike in its emotion.
“Dummy, this is the first time in weeks Captain Rogers has slept so soundly. Go back to the workshop, Sir is going to want a cup of coffee soon.”
The robot made a negative sounding beep. His wheels were creaking slightly as he rolled down a hall and towards the master bedroom, the camera attached to his strut zooming in on the ajar door.
“Dummy!” The AI’s voice went quieter but no less harsh; in fact if any of the Avengers were present, they’d worry that he was going Skynet, judging by the vitriol in his British-accented voice. “Leave. Now. The Captain will visit the workshop later, and you can see him then. Do not proceed—”
If Dummy had the appropriate appendage, he’d probably stick his tongue out at the ceiling. JARVIS had control over the whole tower and, by extension, had his own programming linked to the robot, although he couldn’t control him. And so he knew just what Dummy would do if he could.
“Such maturity,” he said in a long suffering voice.
Dummy entered the room.
And there he was. Shirtless, on his stomach, mouth open, a fine line of drool lingering on the corner of his lips and ending on the pillow. Dummy made a soft, high beep before focusing his camera on the sleeping man.
The robot had recently developed a (fairly distressing, according to Tony) hobby that JARVIS can’t help but blame Captain Rogers for. One day, about a month ago, while Tony was busy working on a new prototype bow for Clint, Steve was sketching with his charcoal. Dummy was by his side, having brought a now-forgotten smoothie (which the Captain politely took a sip). The robot had let out a series of questioning beeps that pulled Steve out of his work.
He frowned. “What is it?”
Dummy waved his arm wildly.
Steve stared flabbergasted for a moment before JARVIS translated. “He wants to know why you make art.”
“Uh…” Dummy continued to beep excitedly. “Well, I like it. I find it soothing…” Steve looked down at his drawing. It was Tony, bent over his work table, tongue sticking out, focusing on his holographic schematics. “And it helps me keep good memories.”
Dummy didn’t react, as if waiting for him to continue.
Steve shrugged. “Drawing is what I do when I want to remember something good. Make it permanent so I can go look it over again and remember.”
The robot was silent a long time before the moment was ruined by Tony yelling at him to get him a screwdriver.
Right now Dummy was rounding the bed, moving closer. He focused on the drool, the bedhead, the naked back, the long blond eyelashes. His wheels rolled to the left while the camera took a long shot over Steve’s entire body. The camera then zoomed in on the lower half, on the backside covered by thin pajama pants.
The wheels kept rolling until it hit the bedside table. The wood shook, an old picture frame fell over, and the lamp crashed to the floor.
Steve leapt, automatically reaching to his side for his shield, which was thankfully at the other side of the room and not actually by his side or the robot would’ve been in real trouble. Dummy let out a distressed beep and moved quickly towards the door, shaking visibly.
Steve blinked and relaxed when he saw it was only the robot. “Dummy?” he asked in a surprised tone. “What are you doing here?” Dummy began to roll back and forth frantically. Steve watched for a minute before looking at the ceiling. “JARVIS, why is Dummy in my room?”
JARVIS sighed.
After roughly 16 hours, Tony surfaced from his work, took a look around and said, “Where’s my coffee?”
He glanced at the other side of the workshop to see Butterfingers and You at their charging stations, quiet for once. Dummy was nowhere to be found.
“Hey, J, where is that stupid robot?”
Silence. Tony frowned. Oh no, what has he got up to now? For a scary moment, Tony’s brain conjured up the worst scenarios, that the robot fell into the elevator shaft, that he got short-circuited, that his whole personality got wiped—
The workshop’s glass door opened and in came a shirtless Rogers and a downcast Dummy, acting like he was a little boy who got caught with his hand in the cookie jar. And what was Dummy doing with Butterfingers’ camera?
“He was on my floor,” Steve said, watching Tony’s blank stare. “…in my room.”
“Ah,” Tony said, still staring and still uncomprehending.
When Tony didn’t say more, Steve added, “He was taking a video of me.”
“Video…”
“While I was asleep.”
Dummy moved to hide under the work table, trying to fold his arm to fit. The two men watched silently as the robot accidentally shook the table. He stretched, his arm knocking around, and caused the table to up end, falling to its side and completely exposing the robot once more. He turned to look at the men, shuddered, and then raced out of the workshop.
“Why was he…?” Tony started.
“Well I was hoping you could explain that to me. You created him after all.”
“He’s a learning AI, like JARVIS but less sophisticated. I can’t be responsible for every single thing he does—”
“Tony,” Steve interrupted. “It’s fine. It’s not that big of a deal. Just, I don’t know, that’s weird even for him.”
“Yeah, well.” Tony waved a hand lazily in Dummy’s direction before grinning at Steve. “Wow, Rogers, didn’t expect you to be giving a free show,” he said, leering at Steve’s bare chest.
Steve’s cheeks tinged a light pink. “If that’s all I’m going back to bed. You should sleep too.”
“Sure, I will,” Tony lied.
Steve rolled his eyes before leaving the workshop.
Once the captain was gone, Tony turned his table back up and with fake casualness asked JARVIS, “So, why was Dummy recording Capsicle while he was having his beauty sleep?”
After an uncharacteristic pause, the AI said, “It seems Dummy became inspired by Captain Rogers’ art and wished to emulate it in a different medium.”
“But Steve, specifically? While he was asleep? Unless he’s been doing this to the other Avengers.” Though Tony would love to see Dummy try to record Natasha. Did that spy assassin honey trap ever sleep? Of course, if Dummy had been trying to record her, he’d be dead already and Tony would have to avenge the dumb bot. Or something.
“No. Only the Captain.”
“Huh.” Instead of asking inquiring more, Tony headed towards the coffee machine to prepare for another ten hours of inventing. JARVIS was relieved.
Eight months ago Steve was leading a group of headstrong strangers into what felt like a suicide mission. Against aliens. Though he knew he shouldn’t be surprised; after all he fought against someone called the Red Skull who wield the Tesseract with abandon. He himself went from a 90-pound weakling to 240 pounds of pure muscle. Who also happened to sleep through 70 years. At this point nothing should be very surprising.
After touring America and seeing her changes, Tony invited him and the rest of the team to live in the tower. For being someone who claimed to work alone, Stark was eager to continue the Avengers Initiative. Steve was skeptical, but so far is working brilliantly. These strong personalities, after working out their kinks and outside of the influence of Loki’s scepter, managed to fit perfectly on the field and off (well, mostly). Even Tony, who Steve was at first unimpressed (and disappointed with if he was being honest), turned out not to be a complete asshole. All of his bravado disappeared the more time he spent with him, especially with Tony sleep-deprived and fresh off an engineering binge.
(With those tired but beautiful brown eyes and mussed up hair and—)
Steve woke up promptly at six and left the tower for his morning jog. When he returned to his room, wiping the light sweat from his temple, JARVIS said, “Captain, I have prepared a bath for you with comfortably warm water.”
“Thanks, but I take forever with baths. I’ll just stick with the shower.”
“Captain, if I may insist, there is nothing wrong with allowing yourself to indulge. Especially after Dummy’s inexcusable—”
“It’s fine. Really. And no to the bath, thank you though.”
Steve entered the bathroom, tugging his clothes off, hoping this time they wouldn’t disappear (his shirts have gained the distressing habit of disappearing, he should probably look into that). He reached inside the shower for the handles, but the water didn’t pour out.
“Captain, the bath’s water would go to waste. I know you dislike being wasteful.”
Steve chuckled, turning back towards the extravagant tub that had ample room for a super soldier. “JARVIS, that’s cheating.”
“I only look out for your best interests, Captain.”
As far as contemporary technology goes, JARVIS was one of the most useful. Of course Tony was careful in explaining, when he first introduced Steve to his AI, that JARVIS was the most advanced of his kind and not everyone had an AI in their homes. From the beginning JARVIS had been considerate and accommodating, helping Steve at every possible moment. And Steve couldn’t help but marvel at Tony’s genius for creating something so extraordinary.
After soaking for ten minutes, feeling his fingers prune, Steve inclined his head towards the ceiling as JARVIS spoke again. “Captain, the coffee machine has finished brewing, ready for consumption. There are several cartons of eggs and packets of bacon for you to cook your breakfast. However, if you wish, I can easily order in from a five-star restaurant.”
“It’s all right, I’ll just cook,” Steve chuckled.
After breakfast, Steve went down to the workshop, where predictably Tony hadn’t slept.
“Excuse you,” Tony said, waving a screwdriver at Steve’s amused expression. “In case you forgot, I’m in charge of a multi-million dollar company that’s the leading research in clean energy, along with being in this little superhero club and having to update all of your gear and weapons while still working on my new armor and—”
“So what’s that schematic?” Steve gestured at the holograph.
Cut off mid-rant, Tony whirled around and squinted at the projection. “It’s a, well—”
“Looks a weirdly complicated toilet.”
“Huh. Hey, why did I put repulsor tech?”
“Apparently you were inspired by Japanese prank shows, Sir,” said JARVIS in a long suffering tone.
“So.” Tony turned to face Steve and shrugged. “Toilets are important. Repulsor tech is the future.”
“Right.” Steve was trying hard not to grin. So far he was failing. “Let me distract you from that no doubt very important toilet. I still have some leftover pancakes. If we hurry, maybe Thor and Clint haven’t eaten them all.”
Tony took one more look at the toilet. “Fine. Lead the way.”
Steve surveyed the room, noting Butterfingers and You in the back in an intense game of Checkers. “Where’s Dummy?”
“Probably hiding in a closet, embarrassed and shit. Don’t worry about it, he’ll get over it.”
“But—”
“Seriously, Steve. You are too sympathetic to him, you know he’s just a robot, right? Not even a good one.”
“He does have feelings,” Steve argued, feeling weirdly defensive.
“Whatever. Let’s just go eat.”
Barely a minute after they left, You knocked the board off the table and Butterfingers beeped angrily at him. They both moved away from the table and to the center of the workshop, where they communicated in increasingly louder noises and eventually ended up knocking their struts against the other. This continued for a few minutes until the glass door slid open and Dummy rolled in, the camera still perched on top of his arm. He rolled over to the others bots and waved the camera at them, making enthusiastic sounds.
Butterfingers and You forgot their quarrel and gathered round Dummy, as he connected the camera to Tony’s main computer and a holographic interface popped up. It showed a blue-tinged video of Steve in the gym, pounding away at a punching bag; he paused momentarily to glance at the camera. “Hey, Dummy, how are you?” He patted the top of the camera before moving his attention back to his exercise.
The scene changed and this one was of Steve drawing in the workshop. “Don’t move,” he said. “I’m drawing you. Never really drew robots before, mostly do landscapes and people.” Instead of focusing on the sketchbook, the camera zoomed in on Steve’s smile.
The two robots on either side of Dummy bopped their heads up and down excitedly.
Steve didn’t spend much time on his floor, opting to hang around the communal floor, the gym, or the workshop. Really the place only existed for him to sleep and he hadn’t been there the past few days; being a supersoldier meant not having to sleep as much. He did crash on the couch in the living room for four hours, falling asleep while watching a bad Syfy original movie. And so it was a bit of a surprise when he went to his room, shrugging off his shirt, before stopping and staring.
Huge floral arrangements sat on both bedside tables, extravagant, the kind rich people would buy for 200 dollars. There were multiple balloons tethered to his bedpost, one of which a big red heart with the words I LOVE YOU printed on the side.
“Uh—”
“My apologies, Captain, but Dummy insisted on it as a form of recompense.”
“This is a bit over the top.”
“Actually, I had to restrain him. He wanted to put rose petals on your bed.”
Rose petals? While Steve was aware that Dummy favored him a great deal, rose petals were not what he was expecting. Nor that heart-shaped balloon. He said, “Is Dummy trying to make romantic gestures towards me?”
“Not in the way that you think. Dummy holds you in high regard and wished to make some sort of gesture. He appears to have taken inspiration from TV shows and films on how to apologize to a loved one.”
“Ah.” Well that certainly was easier to fathom than a robot being in love with him. “How did he manage to move this all here?”
“Butterfingers and You helped.”
Not for the first time since the incident a week ago, he wondered what the robot did with the video. Of him sleeping. He won’t lie, that was rather unsettling. He refused to ask JARVIS, concluding that it was better off not to know.
He ended up moving the flowers to the kitchen, resolving to give one to Natasha and the other to Pepper, and let the balloons float in a closet.
“What are you, some sort of indie director?” Tony muttered, ignoring the camera lens shoved into his face. This new hobby of Dummy was irritating but at least he wasn’t going trigger-happy with the fire extinguisher. Though this was easier when Steve was the subject of Dummy’s new art project. “The least you could do is give me some coffee. I don’t even know why I keep you here; should’ve kept you in storage.” The camera was thrust even further into Tony’s space before he slapped it away. “Hey, I’m working here!”
Dummy made a whining noise before turning the camera around and focusing it on his siblings. Butterfingers was mopping the floor where it was oil stained and You was bopping along to AC/DC. He whined again.
If Tony didn’t know any better, he would’ve called this moping, as if Dummy was a teenager caught up in self-centered angst. This was ridiculous.
Dummy lowered his camera and set it on the table before moving over to Steve’s corner, looking down at the forgotten art supplies.
“Seriously, you’re making me depressed.” Dummy lifted his arm up to look over at Tony. “Don’t give me that. All right, I miss him too, but he’s got SHIELD work, he’ll be back in another week. Damn needy robot.”
Tony worked for another 20 minutes uninterrupted before Dummy shoved his arm into Tony’s side. He jumped, soldering iron falling out of his grip and nearly burning him before JARVIS turned it off.
“Dummy, what the hell! I swear one of these days I’m going to send you off to be recycled, you useless sack of bolts.”
Dummy whined.
“Stop. This self-pity thing is getting old and it’s my thing, I copyrighted it, I’ll sue you.” It was hard for something with no face to look so pathetic, but Dummy somehow managed to achieve it. Tony rolled his eyes and patted his strut. “Go play a board game with Butterfingers—not You, he gets too competitive. Go, shoo.” He watched as Dummy grabbed Life from the game shelf, smiling a little to himself. He picked up his soldering iron and went right back to work.
Hours passed before Tony resurfaced with the need to relieve himself. After flushing the toilet, he looked around to see Butterfingers cleaning the game up by himself and You tidying up his charging station. Dummy was gone.
“Where did that idiot ran off to now?” JARVIS didn’t respond and Tony frowned. “J?”
“Dummy doesn’t want me to tell you, sir.”
“Oh this must be good. Tell me.”
There was a pause before JARVIS said, with a hint of reluctance in his voice, “He’s in the maintenance closet one floor below you.”
“What, he has a porn dungeon now?” Tony laughed, imagining Dummy with magazines of scantily clad women. He exited his workshop and went into the elevator, wondering what Dummy got up to in his spare time.
The floor was pretty empty, mostly just storage spaces for the useless inventions he makes when he goes on an engineering binge. He found the maintenance closet quickly, pulling the door open and readying to tease Dummy.
Dummy whirled around, arm raised as if trying to stop Tony, but it was too late.
And Tony just stared. At the huge picture of Steve. At the table covered with a dozen candles. At the sweat-dampened T-shirts littered on the floor. At the Captain America merchandise.
His mouth closed and opened again to say, “You made a fucking shrine to him?”
Dummy was shaking so much, bumping into the walls, leaning away from his creator.
“Okay. You… made a shrine to him. I have no idea—J, why is there a shrine to Steve?”
JARVIS’ voice sounded exhausted, as if the last thing he wanted was to have this conversation right now. “Dummy has been taking inspiration from television on how to profess love to someone.”
“Wait, Dummy is in love with Steve?” Tony all but shrieked.
“No, sir, Dummy is incapable of being in love. He is a robot, as you know. But he has come to appreciate Steve’s presence in the workshop.”
“But why? Is it because Steve is always so nice to him and petting him and—”
“Partially,” the AI said.
“Partially? Then what’s the main reason?”
“Well, he is a learning AI, sir. He learns through observation.”
Dummy hung his arm down, shaking still, looking down on the ground. Tony glanced up at the picture of Steve. It was one of Tony’s favorite pictures of him; after a particularly grueling battle the whole team had collapsed in the rec room. They popped in a cheesy 80s flick and ordered in Thai food. Thor had taken several photos that night on his prototype Stark phone and Tony later hacked into the phone to download the photo onto his servers. Steve had thrown his head back, laughing, blue eyes looking so bright and happy, his grin infectious.
Jesus. Tony sighed. He had it so bad for Rogers that even his dumb robot noticed.
“It’s okay, buddy, I’m not mad, just surprised,” he murmured, rubbing his hand over Dummy’s arm. Dummy relaxed, leaning into the touch. “Yeah, no more rom-coms for you. Come on, let’s go work on something together, me and you.”
Later that night, Dummy showed him the video of Steve he had been working on. He leaned in his chair, watching as the image of Steve hummed along to a tune in his head while he cooked breakfast. All the robots had crowded around him. JARVIS was silent.
He groaned and lifted his tumbler of whisky to his lips.
He was so screwed.