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“I can’t believe this took us so long,” Steve chuckled as Tony kissed his neck. The front room was for once quiet and empty and they were happy to make good use of their luck.
The last few days had been wonderful, outside of a press conference for Steve and a few board meetings for Tony, everything had been completely peaceful. Maybe that was what had lead to the revelation.
Tony ran his hands over the firm muscles of Steve’s stomach and smiled his devious little smile, patented as much as any other Stark-made wonder, when Steve twitched and sighed under Tony’s touch.
Long looks over lunches and hands that lingered on shoulders far past what you could excuse as basic camaraderie; somehow, suddenly, it just made perfect sense. The first kiss they shared over a pile of SHIELD reports had felt inevitable. Their heads leaning together closer and closer over the files, the obvious glances at the others lips. It was impossible to tell who had bridged that last breath of distance but it hardly mattered for how much they both wanted it to happen.
It was only hours later that they fell into Steve’s bed, neither man wanting to waste any more time than they already had.
Steve made a truly undignified sound as Tony bent down to lay little licking kisses all over Steve’s stomach, each inching lower in teasing increments. “You make the best noises,” Tony mumbled against smooth warm skin, fingers hooked in to Steve’s pajama pants, pulling them lower to get at more skin that, to Steve’s frustration, he wasn’t taking full advantage of. “I think I’m going to have to record and catalogue them all one of these days.”
Steve couldn’t help but laugh, Tony was incorrigible, so Steve told him so. Tony just smiled up at him, eyes bight under heavy lashes, lines crinkling at the sides. A real honest smile, it was a kind of treasure.
Steve couldn’t hold back the words.
“Tony I--”
“What the fuck?” The door opened and the dimmed lights turned back on full blast, Steve squinted against it but he didn’t need to see to know that the voice from the door, somehow, against all reason belonged to Tony.
Vision clearing, Steve looked down at his own Tony, the one who he had shared his bed with the past three nights and then looked again to the man in the door way who was sporting a bright bruise on his cheek and had his arm around a man who looked just like Steve himself. The two pairs where indistinguishable.
Steve’s mind raced trying to understand the threat but before he could spring up to defend himself and Tony, the one in the door way spoke:
“JARVIS, kill the LMDs.”
And Steve’s world went dark.
...
“Tony,” Steve turned to the man he supported and then looked over at the robot doubles. Now deactivated, they looked to be sleeping peacefully, the Tony robot cuddled on top of the Steve one, who had an arm draped protectively around his partner. “What is going on--”
“Oh my God,” came Clint’s voice from behind them as the rest of the team made their way into the room.
“Eww, it’s like walking in on your parents, why would you program them to do that in the living room?” Peter, their newest and youngest team mate, put his hands over his eyes and continued making gagging sounds.
Natasha just smirked quietly drawing in the image and storing it away in her memory.
“I didn’t program anything like that.” Tony pulled away from Steve stiffly, hissing as he was forced then to put weight on his injured knee. Steve frowned. “I didn’t program them to do anything exactly. Their behavior is self generated, they extrapolate from our psych profiles and scans of our neuro patterns how we would respond to various stimulus and input. They act exactly like we would.
“Tony...” Steve’s eyes met Tony’s for a moment. The implication he was making was--
“Well you screwed that up, Stark,” Clint laughed behind them, slapping hands on both Steve and Tony’s shoulders. They both looked sharply away from each other.
“Must have,” Tony mumbled then broke in to some impenetrable techno babble. Steve figured it didn’t concern him so he didn’t even try to follow it. Instead, he stared out at the image of Tony in his arms, the look on both artificial faces so serene and untroubled.
“Get them out of here.” Steve ordered suddenly, cutting off Tony’s ramble. “It’s indecent and unsettling.”
Tony only shrugged. “They are, uh, pretty heavy powered down. I’m going to have to get Dummy up here or suit up unless you want to haul them down to the lab--”
“Fine,” Steve cut him off, “just throw a blanket over them or something. And don’t even think about activating them again until you’ve got them working right.” The Captain turned to leave without another word.
Tony glared at Steve’s back swallowing back some reflexive bitterness. It wasn’t worth it, not with everyone so exhausted and battle bruised.
“Right. Whatever, I’ll be in my garage sorting this shit out.” Tony walked out in the same incensed manner that Steve had, leaving the rest of the team in uncomfortable silence.
“Was it something I said?” Peter asked, looking around at his teammates.
---
Steve had a lot to talk over with Fury after the fight and Tony had his robots to play with so avoiding each other hardly took any conscious effort. But days turned into weeks and Tony hadn’t been seen out of his lab for far too many of them. A third missed training session in the gym meant that Steve had a responsibility to talk to him now.
Descending the stairs to the lab, Steve was surprised at the quiet. Normally at some point on the way down he would hit a wall of thundering bass and screaming electric guitar that worked to repeal all but the bravest form approaching. Some how the silence was more jarring that the horrible offensive noise he was expecting.
“Tony? Steve tapped on the glass, and saw the man jump fractionally but give no other response. He was surround by blue wire frames of lord only knew what; some sort of circuitry, but it was thick as smoke around him and he wondered if even Tony could make sense of that much chaos. Steve keyed in his override code and pressed into the lab, Tony's fish tank world.
“You’ve been down here a long while,” Steve stated evenly as he approached Tony, who was still singularly focused on his work. Steve noticed two still forms under sheets like bodies in a morgue but for the number of wires ruining out from under them and hooking in to some kind of display.
“Give me another look at the synaptic simulators. No. lets see the whole processing node. Okay, now we are getting somewhere. Side by side with default settings--”
“Tony?”
“Hey, yeah, what, mission?” Tony didn’t turn around and as much as it got on Steve’s nerves to talk to the man’s back, he tried to stick with the gentle approach.
“No mission.” Steve leaned against a table. “Just making sure you are still alive.”
“Well, you can be sure I’m not a robot double because those still aren’t working.” Neither man laughed.
“You missed three training sessions.”
“I’ll make them up latter.” Steve shook his head, there was an empty promise if he ever heard one, “I just need to figure this one out.” That rang a lot more true and stood to worry him.
“I don’t know Tony, seems like you just forgot to tell your robot you date girls.” Steve tried to keep it light but Tony chuckled with a dark sort of humor.
“I think that’s because it would have horribly confused a few of my dates.” Steve stared blankly not making the connection. “The door swings both ways. No? Sometimes I fuck men? I think I have some video if you still--”
Oh.
“You didn’t have to swear.” Steve said just to say something.
“At least that’s the worst of your objection, was worried you’d get all Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell on me.”
“That got overturned,” Steve stated plainly and Tony actually turned around at that. “And it’s about time too, never made any sense to me. A man is what he does not who he... well, you know.” Tony laughed and relaxed, leaning his elbows back on to his work table.
“Well you know, it’s all sort of on a scale anyway. Most people aren’t all black and white, straight or gay. Some are but everyone's got an exception or two. I don’t know a woman alive who wouldn’t give it a go with Angelina Jolie.”
“Who?” Tony laughed, not unkindly.
“Really pretty woman.” Steve nodded.
“So maybe, your robot is just my robot’s exception.” Tony actually looked at Steve, really looked at him, and Steve held the gaze.
“Is that your scientific opinion?”
“Sounded like it was yours.”
“Yeah, thing about that is you have to take the word robot out of it. It should be us down to the letter. They shouldn’t be able to do things that we wouldn’t do, you can’t have a Cap that would kick a puppy or a Tony that would, I don’t know--’
“Show up somewhere on time?” Steve offered with a smile.
“Exactly, people would talk and that is the exact opposite of what we want with these things. So I need to figure out where the program diverges from the mind maps I generated so I can fix it.”
“I think you’re going to be at it for a while.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence there, Captain.” Tony gave an offended grunt and buried himself back in his work.
Steve sighed and headed for the door. Before stepping out he turned and tried one last time.
“You might be a genius Tony, but even you can’t find something that doesn't exist.” Steve shut the door behind him and walked up the stairs while Tony carried on with his project.
For exactly 48 seconds, before--
“Hey, Steve, Steve, wait up, what did you mean? Steeeeve!”