[fic] Nobody Puts Dummy in the Corner
Title: Nobody Puts Dummy in the Corner
Rating: PG, some language
Fandom: The Avengers (Movieverse)
Pairings: Clint/Natasha, Pepper/Tony
Summary: Natasha is the last Avenger to move into the Tower. For Tony’s sanity, that’s probably a good thing.
Length: 4,785 words.
Natasha set her go-bag on the bedspread and rolled her neck. “JARVIS,” she said.
“Yes, Agent Romanoff? What do you require?”
It amused her that Tony Stark had selected a British man for a butler. He did cliché, but he did cliché with style, as was evidenced by the slim beauty of a personal assistant-now CEO-he’d kept around for years.
“Is Stark monitoring this room?”
“Not actively at the moment, Agent Romanoff.”
Natasha nodded, as that told her what she needed to know. Tony had the capability to monitor her living quarters. She’d dealt with that at SHIELD, but…
“Dr. Banner would like me to let you know that there is a housewarming gift on your kitchen counter,” JARVIS continued. “He said it might come in handy, particularly if you were to ask me about surveillance.”
Natasha made her movements fluid as she rolled to her feet and headed into the kitchen area of her new apartment. She would have liked nothing more than to relax with a book and some Tchaikovsky, let her body rest after the beating it had taken from being too close to a percussive grenade, but with Stark watching, she wasn’t going to let the Agent Romanoff mask slip. In truth, she would have preferred to have waited a couple of days before moving in, but there had been an implication via text message that she was afraid to seal off their little team by moving in to Stark Tower.
The present was in a little gift bag with a tag. Bruce had signed it both from “Both Dr. Banner and the Other Guy,” and it was yet another apology in a long line of them. She gave the access card a curious look, but the small hand-drawn map inside made her smile. She committed it to memory before she burned it in the sink. Her only concession to the fact that she was now among allies rather than enemies was that she grabbed a tranq gun instead of her Glock.
When her door slid open, Clint was standing on the other side, his hand raised to knock. He raised both eyebrows at the gun in her hand. “That’s a record,” he said. “What’s he done now?”
Natasha looked at his hands. “What are you holding?”
“Your ‘welcome to the insanity’ present.”
“It’s a cactus.”
“I figured it’d be harder to kill than your average houseplant.” Clint easily side-stepped her and let himself into her apartment, letting in a low whistle. “Stark likes you so much better than the rest of us. Nobody else gets a kitchen island.”
“There are entire YouTube channels devoted to just how much Stark doesn’t like me.” Natasha said. “Thank you for the cactus.”
“I hope you’ll like her. I named her Bessie.”
“Of course you did.”
“Bruce got you something, too?” Clint picked up the discarded gift bag between two fingers, raising his eyebrows when he saw the pile of ash in the sink. “Wow, if you didn’t like his gift, don’t look in the cupboards.”
Natasha immediately crossed to the nearest cupboard and opened it. When nothing but blue boxes stared back at her, she slowly closed it. Just as slowly, she turned to look at Clint.
“Thor wants to make sure you’re well-fed,” Clint said. “You could probably donate them to, like, a homeless shelter or a food drive or something.”
“Right.”
Completely at home, Clint wandered through the apartment, letting out a whistle here or there at the luxury. There was a full barre lining a mirrored wall, the perfect in-suite dance studio, but there was also a punching bag in another corner, and some targets set up for knives. “I’ve got a full range in mine,” Clint said, though she hadn’t asked, and strolled right into the bedroom. Natasha rolled her eyes, but didn’t follow him, so he called the rest to her as he explored. “Damn, ’Tash, this bed is sweet. Is this a down comforter? It is. Ooh, it’s soft.”
“Get off my bed, Barton.”
“Oh, fine.”
When Barton strode back in, he had Natasha’s other tranq gun in his hand. “So what’s the mission?” he asked, a grin on his face.
Natasha’s internal debate lasted only for a split second. She could use some backup, she decided, just for the sheer hell of it. “We’re going to fix a problem. C’mon.”
* * *
“All I’m saying is that I could add some modification to the shield, make it a little more-”
“Tony.” Steve looked exasperated-but-amused in that way only Steve Rogers could look. “The shield is fine. I don’t need any modifications to it. The design is perfect for what I need it to be.”
“But I’m just saying, there are so many possibilities,” Tony said as they made a left and headed down to the R&D floor where he kept his headquarters these days. It wasn’t Steve’s normal haunt-the guy preferred Brooklyn-but since he’d asked Tony about maybe modifying a pistol or two for him with more advanced tech, it looked like he might be hanging around for the day. Though Tony had groused, he didn’t actually mind. Steve knew how to be quiet while he worked, unlike others, and besides, it was always funny to see the other man try to piece together the various things in Tony’s lab.
Besides, Tony might finally wear Steve down about that damned shield. Howard Stark had designed that shield.
Tony wanted to make the shield better. Was that too much to ask?
Apparently, for Steve, it was.
“I’m just here about a gun, Tony,” Steve said.
“A gun, we can do. I can draw up plans for a gun worthy of the Star Spangled Man in my sleep, even. But the shield-”
“Tony,” Steve said, in that tone.
“We’ll agree to disagree and talk about it later,” Tony said. He didn’t fight losing battles for long, after all, and people could be worn down if you talked enough.
When they turned the corner and faced his headquarters, though, he forgot all about Captain America’s magical shield. “Huh,” he said, squinting. “JARVIS, did I leave that door open?”
“You did not, sir.”
“Well, that’s…potentially a bucket of trouble.”
Steve put a hand on his shoulder before he could go in and find out who had broken into his lab. Maybe Pepper had left the door open, but she was in Hong Kong at the moment, so that would have been a hell of a trick. “Let me,” the super soldier said, and Tony shrugged. He had absolutely no problem letting the captain be cannon fodder. The guy knew how to take a hit.
The lab was empty and a cursory glance around showed nothing missing, but that didn’t mean anything. “Huh,” Steve said, standing in the middle of the work tables with his hands on his hips. “That’s strange.”
“No kidding. JARVIS, did somebody break in?”
“No, sir.”
“Play back all camera angles for this lab for the past hour,” Tony said, heading over to the nearest monitor while Steve poked through one of the lab tables. Tony sped through the security footage.
Twenty minutes in, he struck pay dirt.
“Oh, Natasha’s moved in?” Steve asked, sounding pleased. “Excellent, I didn’t realize that was today.”
“Can we focus on the more important fact that she’s currently breaking into my lab?” Tony asked, pointing an accusing finger at the screen. When a second figure appeared on the screen, he let out an annoyed squawk. “With backup?”
“What are they after?”
On screen, the two assassins looked around the lab. Barton picked up one of Tony’s prototypes, jumped in surprise, and looked straight at the cameras to flip Tony the bird. Tony felt absolutely no sympathy. It appeared that Natasha didn’t either, for both men watching saw her roll her eyes, grab Barton’s wrist, and haul him toward the back of the lab.
“They didn’t sneak in here for a quickie, did they?” Tony asked, outraged despite the fact that he was a little impressed. “That would be unprof-crap, those are JARVIS’s servers she’s going for.”
He didn’t bother to switch the surveillance to the new room; instead he raced back there himself now. If the damned deadpan Russian had messed with his baby, there would be hell to pay. You did not mess the man who had single-handedly privatized world peace, deadly thighs or not.
JARVIS’s servers, however, seemed to be whole when he raced into the room, though. “What is it?” Steve asked, following on his heels. “Tony?”
Tony typed frantically into the keyboard by the door, running a diagnostic. “JARVIS, you okay?”
“What’s going on?” Steve asked.
“Running at 99.997 percent capacity, sir.”
“What happened to the other .003 percent?”
“I am unsure. I believe Agent Romanoff left you a note.”
Steve spotted it before he did; the note was written on a post-it that Natasha had pinned to the wall with a small throwing knife. “‘Spy on me with your cliché butler again, Stark, and even SHIELD won’t be able to find the body,’“ he read. “‘PS - thank you for the barre.’ She’s a little…”
“Terrifying,” Tony said. “The word you’re looking for is terrifying. Ah-she disabled JARVIS in her suite. I was expecting something a little more…”
“More what?”
“Megalomaniacal.”
Steve shook his head. “She’s not that bad, Tony.”
“She’s a spy, and an assassin, and Russian. I don’t trust her.”
“Then why let her move into your tower?”
“Because if I don’t, Thor gives me the puppy dog eyes and Pepper gets that look on her face, and when Pepper gets that look on her face, I don’t get things like-” Tony belatedly who he was talking to and switched tacks. “What did they call blow jobs in the 1940s?”
“I’m not answering that.” Steve crossed his arms over his chest. “Wait, what are you doing?”
“Reinstating JARVIS in her quarters, what do you think?”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Stark,” Steve said, and the use of the last name let Tony know that the Star Spangled Man with a Plan was completely serious. “I think you should respect her privacy. It was a big step for her to move into the tower, after all.”
“She can’t just-she can’t just mess with JARVIS and expect I won’t retaliate!”
Steve folded his arms over his chest. “Would you have turned JARVIS off in her quarters if she had asked nicely?”
Tony thought about it. “Probably not.”
“There you go. Leave her alone, Tony, and let’s go work on that gun.”
“I’d rather work on a way to get payback at Natasha the Terrible, if it’s all the same to you.”
Steve clamped a hand on Tony’s shoulder and physically hauled him from the server room and back into the lab, which Tony felt was a little unfair. The team had agreed, for the most part, not to use their powers against each other in casual everyday use, and given that Steve wasn’t a 90-pound asthmatic, hauling Tony anywhere when Tony wasn’t in his suit was technically breaking that rule.
Steve just gave him a silent look when he pointed this out.
“Oh, fine,” Tony said, and looked around his lab. “Dummy, go watch Natasha.”
“Tony!”
“What?” Tony asked as he sat over his drafting table. His robot, which had been a thing of beauty at sixteen and was now far outclassed by even the coffee maker in Tony’s lab, trundled toward the door. “She said not to spy on her with my butler. Dummy’s more of a…socially-inept-yet-lovable valet, wouldn’t you say?”
“When she murders you, I’m not helping SHIELD look for the body,” Steve said, and that was that.
* * *
Steve honestly did not expect Tony to survive the night without at least serious bruising. He had a healthy and judicious respect for each of his teammates: Thor because he could summon actual lightning, Clint because he simply never missed, Tony because for all of his blather and bluster there was actually a heart beneath the arc reactor, Bruce both for the Other Guy and for Bruce’s brain itself, and Natasha because Steve was pretty sure Natasha had worked out how to kill each of them without expending too much energy in the process. At another point in his life, Steve might have been offended by that, but he’d learned, working alongside Natasha on missions for SHIELD, it was simply part and parcel of who she was.
The thing he could never predict, though, was her temper. Only two things could make her snap, and it appeared Steve was living under the same roof with both of them.
So when Tony came down for breakfast in the communal kitchen completely free of bruises, Steve’s eyebrows rose.
“Not dead yet,” Tony said as he poured himself a cup of coffee.
“Should I ask?” Bruce asked, getting up to set his dishes in the sink.
“Nope,” Tony said, and the scientists headed off to do whatever it was they did during business hours. They’d tried to explain their current project to the team before: Thor hadn’t understood, Clint had looked only politely interested, it had been gobbledygook to Steve, and Natasha had been in Palo Alto.
A couple of minutes later, Clint strolled in, scratching his stomach. His hair was sticking up in every direction, and he wouldn’t speak for a good forty five minutes or so. Everybody in the tower knew that Clint regarded mornings as the worst enemy of them all.
He wordlessly poured himself a bowl of cereal and took the seat across from Steve at the table.
Steve heard Natasha come down a couple of minutes later. Not because the spy had suddenly started making her footsteps audible, no, but Dummy’s gears and rotors made an unmistakable noise. Steve looked up as she entered, trailed by Tony’s robot.
“Good morning,” she said, mostly to Steve, as Clint didn’t even look up. “Did you sleep well?”
“Yes, thank you.” Steve eyed the robot, who followed Natasha to the breakfast bar. “And yourself?”
“Stark provided a very comfortable bed, yes. I will have to remember to thank him.” Natasha poured herself cereal from the same box Clint had used. Steve’s eyes widened when Dummy picked up the milk jug, which the spy took without a word. The process was repeated with the spoon.
Dummy also pulled out her chair for her. Natasha thanked the robot, where she might have given anybody else on the team a withering stare, depending on her mood.
Tony, Steve saw, had gravely miscalculated his revenge.
“Anything in the news?” Natasha asked, and Steve realized he was probably gaping.
He blushed a little and handed over the newspaper, which he knew Tony only ordered in paper form for his sake. The others probably read the news on their screens or tablets or what have you, but Steve liked the sight of print on a page.
“Thanks. Where’s Thor?”
“New Mexico. Visiting Jane.”
“Oh. I’m sorry I missed him-I got his housewarming gift last night.”
“Yeah, I think Tony might have actually bought him stock in whatever company it is that makes Pop Tarts. Oh, speaking of which.” Steve belatedly remembered that he’d brought his own gift for her downstairs on the off-chance that she might show up. He went to the cabinet and pulled a gift-wrapped-Pepper had done that for him, as he’d been all thumbs at his attempts-package from the shelf. “Here, it’s not much, but welcome to Stark Tower.”
Natasha gave him a surprised look as she took the package. “Wow,” she said. “Thank you. What is it?”
“You’ll have to open it.” Steve felt another blush coming on, and cursed himself. Why hadn’t the serum gotten rid of that particular bad habit? “It’s not much…certainly nothing compared to a cupboard full of Pop Tarts.”
“Barton got me a cactus named Bessie,” Natasha said and, flicking out a knife that Steve wasn’t sure where it had come from, she slit open the wrapping paper. Her eyes widened marginally as she took in the drawing, but he couldn’t read her expression. He shifted nervously in his seat. Finally, she looked up. “Is this your work?”
“I…yeah. I was there last year for a conference for SHIELD, and I thought…I thought maybe you’d want something from your homeland.” Steve rubbed the back of his neck, positive that he was bright red all over. “If you hate it, you know, you could use it for target practice or whatever. I won’t be offended.”
“Why would I hate it? It’s wonderful.” Natasha gave him one of her rare smiles over the framed drawing of the Red Square. “Thank you, Steve.”
“No problem. Like I said, it’s not much.”
“It is more than that, and you know it.” Natasha turned to Dummy, who was hovering over her shoulder. “Here, Zaychik moi, you carry this for me.”
Gently, Dummy took the artwork in his clamp.
Clint finally looked up from his cereal bowl, taking in the room with bleary eyes. He did not seem at all surprised to see Natasha sitting next to him, but he did a double-take at the sight of Steve. “Huh,” he said, and looked behind him. He scratched his head. “What’s up with the robot?”
“Do you like him?” Natasha asked. “He’s keeping an eye on me for Stark.”
“Oh, is that what he’s doing?” Steve asked, and Natasha’s smile, this time, looked very pleased with itself.
* * *
The others in the tower took no time at all to grow used to Natasha and Dummy being constantly in each other’s company. Wherever Natasha went in the tower, the robot followed; it spent its nights powered down in the hallway outside of Natasha’s apartment, it trailed after her to the firing range in the basement of the building, it even hovered over her shoulder during game night and movie nights with the other Avengers. Whenever Natasha left the tower to report in at SHIELD or take a mission, Dummy reluctantly made its way to Tony’s lab to help out its creator with some project or other. But the minute Natasha was back in the tower, Dummy abandoned Tony to follow the redhead around.
At first, it amused Tony. “It won’t last,” he said to Bruce. “She’s too independent. It’ll drive her nuts sooner or later.”
Bruce had nodded. He’d decided not to share his observation that as far as trolls went, Tony might think he was king, but Natasha had clearly taken a few more lessons in how to be unflappable than he had.
The others started taking bets. Bruce didn’t bother. Because he worked in the lab with Tony, he had a front row seat to see the way losing Dummy to spy on the only female Avenger put a hitch in Tony’s working stride. By the end of the first week, a frown was beginning to appear between Tony’s eyebrows. By the end of the second week, Tony complained of a headache, and Bruce figured it was because the other man spent the entire day grinding his teeth together.
By the end of the third week, Bruce suggested that maybe they should just trust Natasha and have the robot stop following her around. Tony had glared.
Luckily, Clint, Steve, and Natasha were called away for a mission in Istanbul for over a week, leaving Dummy free to assist Tony in the lab. Bruce might have suspected Tony didn’t even notice, had Tony not occasionally glared at Dummy occasionally for no reason at all, as if Dummy had betrayed him.
Bruce just smiled to himself and continued calibrating the new spectrometer Tony had purchased for the lab. Natasha had given him a very nonspecific thank you the day after she’d moved into the tower, which told him she appreciated the access card. He didn’t mind having JARVIS around in his quarters-the e-butler was rather handy, truth be told-but given that Natasha didn’t like things she couldn’t control completely, having that sort of surveillance on her all the time would have been hell for her.
“Dr. Banner?” JARVIS asked.
Bruce looked up from the spectrometer panel. “Yes?”
“You asked me to alert you when Agents Barton and Romanoff and Captain Rogers arrived on the premises.”
Across the lab, Dummy raised itself to its full height. Without a single glance at Tony, who was buried under the hood of his new Ferrari, the robot wheeled away.
“Oh, right,” Bruce said, watching Dummy go. He vaguely remembered doing that. He’d wanted to talk about Steve about providing some blood samples. “Thank you, JARVIS.”
“My pleasure, Doctor.”
“Dummy-wrench,” Tony said, holding a hand out from under the car.
Bruce headed over to that side of the lab and handed Tony a wrench. “Your robot rabbited, by the way.”
“What?” Tony pushed himself out from under the hood and gave Bruce an annoyed look. “Why would he-Dummy! Where the hell did you go now?”
“Natasha’s back,” Bruce said.
Tony pinched the bridge of his nose between his forefinger and his thumb. “I called off that order,” he said. “I specifically called off that order because Captain Conscience did that thing where he tried to guilt trip me, and dammit, I was tired so it worked.”
“Maybe he didn’t hear you?” Bruce asked.
Tony muttered something under his breath that was not very complimentary to robots in general. Bruce hoped JARVIS wasn’t listening.
“I’m going to go say hi,” he said instead, picking up the book he’d finished the night before. It had talked about some of the political climes in Imperialist Russia and their lasting effects on the current global economy, especially in relation to food distribution. Natasha had mentioned that she wanted to read it when he was done. “I’ll leave you to it.”
Tony grunted and slid back under the Ferrari.
He decided to drop off the book before going to see Steve as the latter would probably want to offer him a cup of coffee and a chat and he wanted to catch Natasha before she hit either the gun range or the mattress.
He found her in the hallway, kneeling next to Dummy as she bent over one of his panels. “Hello, Dr. Banner,” she said without looking up. “Didn’t hear you coming. New shoes?”
“Tony designed them by studying the way you and Clint walk around,” Bruce said, sheepish now.
“Glad to be of service.”
“Um, what are you doing to Tony’s robot?” Bruce just didn’t feel comfortable calling the thing Dummy to its face.
“There’s a part in this servo that’s causing trouble,” Natasha said, returning to her work. “I picked up a replacement in Istanbul. A friend owed me a favor.”
Bruce eyed the robot.
“The fez was all Clint, who you just missed.”
“I see,” Bruce said, slowly, looking at the jaunty red hat perched atop the robot’s “head.” Dummy’s servos made another noise and it sounded like the robot was…no, that wasn’t possible. Tony hadn’t programmed this unit with nearly the same amount of artificial intelligence as JARVIS. “I think it likes the hat.”
“Clint will be pleased.” Natasha closed the panel and sat back on her haunches. When she rose to her feet, she patted the robot next to the fez, absently, and Bruce tried very hard to fight the feelings of sheer wrongness the whole situation was radiating. “Oh, is that the book you were reading?”
“Yes, I finished it.” Bruce held it out to her. “I highlighted some stuff, I hope you don’t mind.”
“Not at all. Thank you, Doctor. I’ll get it back to you by the end of the week.”
“Are you sure? It’s pretty dry.”
“We could all use a little more dry in our lives,” Natasha said, and Bruce caught a flicker of something in the way she looked away.
“Bad mission?” he asked, surprising himself. He knew that SHIELD had sent the others on some rough missions before, but he didn’t ask and they didn’t tell. They respected that he wanted nothing to do with SHIELD.
“It was not the easiest, no, but thank you for asking.” Natasha gave him a polite smile. “We will all be fine. How was Stark?”
“Happy to have his robot back, for one thing.”
“I’m sure.” Natasha petted-for there could be no other word for it-the robot on the head once more and this time Bruce was sure of it: Dummy purred.
Before Bruce could say anything, the entire building shook with the unmistakable rumble of thunder. “Oh, look,” Natasha said. “Thor’s home. I’m going to go get cleaned up and find something to eat. Are there any plans for dinner?”
“I’ll call out for pizza,” Bruce said.
“Thanks.” Natasha gave him a final smile and slipped into her apartment, Dummy following on her heels.
The lure of pizza had everybody abandoning their various apartments and kitchens for the community kitchen once more. Thor came first, always called by the scent of food alone and especially the call of pineapple pizza, for which he’d developed a fondness. Clint, Natasha, and Dummy rolled in together, of course-Bruce wasn’t entirely convinced that Clint hadn’t been on the other side of the door to Natasha’s apartment during their conversation, after all-and Steve, looking tired, followed behind them. Pepper came in from a shareholder’s meeting and immediately kicked off her heels, settling in next to Bruce. “Where’s Tony?” she asked as Natasha nudged Dummy.
“He’ll be up soon, he’s working out a calibration issue,” Bruce said.
Dummy brought over two slices of pizza for Pepper and trundled away to fetch a glass of wine.
Thor eyed the robot. “What sort of sorcery is this?” he asked.
“And why is it wearing a hat?” Pepper added.
Dummy’s head lowered.
“Now he thinks you don’t like his hat,” Clint told Pepper.
“What?”
“Clint bought him the fez,” Natasha said. “And it’s technology, not sorcery, Thor.”
The Norse god did not look very reassured, but he relaxed his grip on Mjolnir slightly, which made Bruce relax. He really did not want to see what would happen if anybody hurt Dummy with Natasha around.
Indeed, the CEO of Stark Industries looked chagrined. “I like your hat,” she told the robot, who perked up immediately.
“Oh, don’t encourage this.” Tony walked in, scowling at the lot of them. He pointed accusingly at the fez. “What is this?”
“It’s called a fez, Tony.”
“I know what it’s-” Tony sighed and picked up a piece of pizza. He eyed the robot malevolently as he bit in. “I’ve lost you completely, haven’t I? To a Russian, at that. My capitalist heart cries.”
“I’m sure we could work out a custody agreement, Stark,” Natasha said, her voice dry.
“Cute. Very cute.”
“You could have weekends and every other holiday,” Clint said, slinging an arm around the couch behind Natasha’s shoulders. The redhead eyed him, but he didn’t remove the arm. “Think of all of the fun things you could do. You could take him to the zoo. I bet he’d love the zebras.”
“There’s not a single assassin on this planet that I don’t hate right now.”
“Aw, chin up, Tony.” Pepper scooted over to make room for him on the couch. Bruce wondered what she could possibly say that would make him feel better, but Pepper had a mischievous look on her face. She kissed Tony on the cheek. “You do like the zebras.”
“What is a zebra?” Thor wondered, and Steve leaned over to explain.
“In the course of a month, I’ve lost .003 percent of my butler, the loyalty of my robot, and the support of the light of my life.” Tony let out a gusty sigh. “Why did I let you crazies move into my tower, anyway?”
“We question your sanity daily,” Bruce told him reassuringly, and Tony rolled his eyes. The scowl on the inventor’s face only deepened when Dummy rolled away to rest its head on Natasha’s shoulder, jealously nudging Clint’s arm out of the way.
Bruce figured out that it was kinder not to tell him that if nothing else about Natasha Romanoff was normal, it wasn’t likely her pet would be, either. Tony had probably already figured that one out on his own, anyway. But he did have to smile the next day when he came down to the lab to find Dummy hovering beside Tony, that ridiculous fez still perched on its robot head.
Playing on the screens on the wall was a nature documentary where the zebras ran free over the savanna.
Rating: PG, some language
Fandom: The Avengers (Movieverse)
Pairings: Clint/Natasha, Pepper/Tony
Summary: Natasha is the last Avenger to move into the Tower. For Tony’s sanity, that’s probably a good thing.
Length: 4,785 words.
Natasha set her go-bag on the bedspread and rolled her neck. “JARVIS,” she said.
“Yes, Agent Romanoff? What do you require?”
It amused her that Tony Stark had selected a British man for a butler. He did cliché, but he did cliché with style, as was evidenced by the slim beauty of a personal assistant-now CEO-he’d kept around for years.
“Is Stark monitoring this room?”
“Not actively at the moment, Agent Romanoff.”
Natasha nodded, as that told her what she needed to know. Tony had the capability to monitor her living quarters. She’d dealt with that at SHIELD, but…
“Dr. Banner would like me to let you know that there is a housewarming gift on your kitchen counter,” JARVIS continued. “He said it might come in handy, particularly if you were to ask me about surveillance.”
Natasha made her movements fluid as she rolled to her feet and headed into the kitchen area of her new apartment. She would have liked nothing more than to relax with a book and some Tchaikovsky, let her body rest after the beating it had taken from being too close to a percussive grenade, but with Stark watching, she wasn’t going to let the Agent Romanoff mask slip. In truth, she would have preferred to have waited a couple of days before moving in, but there had been an implication via text message that she was afraid to seal off their little team by moving in to Stark Tower.
The present was in a little gift bag with a tag. Bruce had signed it both from “Both Dr. Banner and the Other Guy,” and it was yet another apology in a long line of them. She gave the access card a curious look, but the small hand-drawn map inside made her smile. She committed it to memory before she burned it in the sink. Her only concession to the fact that she was now among allies rather than enemies was that she grabbed a tranq gun instead of her Glock.
When her door slid open, Clint was standing on the other side, his hand raised to knock. He raised both eyebrows at the gun in her hand. “That’s a record,” he said. “What’s he done now?”
Natasha looked at his hands. “What are you holding?”
“Your ‘welcome to the insanity’ present.”
“It’s a cactus.”
“I figured it’d be harder to kill than your average houseplant.” Clint easily side-stepped her and let himself into her apartment, letting in a low whistle. “Stark likes you so much better than the rest of us. Nobody else gets a kitchen island.”
“There are entire YouTube channels devoted to just how much Stark doesn’t like me.” Natasha said. “Thank you for the cactus.”
“I hope you’ll like her. I named her Bessie.”
“Of course you did.”
“Bruce got you something, too?” Clint picked up the discarded gift bag between two fingers, raising his eyebrows when he saw the pile of ash in the sink. “Wow, if you didn’t like his gift, don’t look in the cupboards.”
Natasha immediately crossed to the nearest cupboard and opened it. When nothing but blue boxes stared back at her, she slowly closed it. Just as slowly, she turned to look at Clint.
“Thor wants to make sure you’re well-fed,” Clint said. “You could probably donate them to, like, a homeless shelter or a food drive or something.”
“Right.”
Completely at home, Clint wandered through the apartment, letting out a whistle here or there at the luxury. There was a full barre lining a mirrored wall, the perfect in-suite dance studio, but there was also a punching bag in another corner, and some targets set up for knives. “I’ve got a full range in mine,” Clint said, though she hadn’t asked, and strolled right into the bedroom. Natasha rolled her eyes, but didn’t follow him, so he called the rest to her as he explored. “Damn, ’Tash, this bed is sweet. Is this a down comforter? It is. Ooh, it’s soft.”
“Get off my bed, Barton.”
“Oh, fine.”
When Barton strode back in, he had Natasha’s other tranq gun in his hand. “So what’s the mission?” he asked, a grin on his face.
Natasha’s internal debate lasted only for a split second. She could use some backup, she decided, just for the sheer hell of it. “We’re going to fix a problem. C’mon.”
* * *
“All I’m saying is that I could add some modification to the shield, make it a little more-”
“Tony.” Steve looked exasperated-but-amused in that way only Steve Rogers could look. “The shield is fine. I don’t need any modifications to it. The design is perfect for what I need it to be.”
“But I’m just saying, there are so many possibilities,” Tony said as they made a left and headed down to the R&D floor where he kept his headquarters these days. It wasn’t Steve’s normal haunt-the guy preferred Brooklyn-but since he’d asked Tony about maybe modifying a pistol or two for him with more advanced tech, it looked like he might be hanging around for the day. Though Tony had groused, he didn’t actually mind. Steve knew how to be quiet while he worked, unlike others, and besides, it was always funny to see the other man try to piece together the various things in Tony’s lab.
Besides, Tony might finally wear Steve down about that damned shield. Howard Stark had designed that shield.
Tony wanted to make the shield better. Was that too much to ask?
Apparently, for Steve, it was.
“I’m just here about a gun, Tony,” Steve said.
“A gun, we can do. I can draw up plans for a gun worthy of the Star Spangled Man in my sleep, even. But the shield-”
“Tony,” Steve said, in that tone.
“We’ll agree to disagree and talk about it later,” Tony said. He didn’t fight losing battles for long, after all, and people could be worn down if you talked enough.
When they turned the corner and faced his headquarters, though, he forgot all about Captain America’s magical shield. “Huh,” he said, squinting. “JARVIS, did I leave that door open?”
“You did not, sir.”
“Well, that’s…potentially a bucket of trouble.”
Steve put a hand on his shoulder before he could go in and find out who had broken into his lab. Maybe Pepper had left the door open, but she was in Hong Kong at the moment, so that would have been a hell of a trick. “Let me,” the super soldier said, and Tony shrugged. He had absolutely no problem letting the captain be cannon fodder. The guy knew how to take a hit.
The lab was empty and a cursory glance around showed nothing missing, but that didn’t mean anything. “Huh,” Steve said, standing in the middle of the work tables with his hands on his hips. “That’s strange.”
“No kidding. JARVIS, did somebody break in?”
“No, sir.”
“Play back all camera angles for this lab for the past hour,” Tony said, heading over to the nearest monitor while Steve poked through one of the lab tables. Tony sped through the security footage.
Twenty minutes in, he struck pay dirt.
“Oh, Natasha’s moved in?” Steve asked, sounding pleased. “Excellent, I didn’t realize that was today.”
“Can we focus on the more important fact that she’s currently breaking into my lab?” Tony asked, pointing an accusing finger at the screen. When a second figure appeared on the screen, he let out an annoyed squawk. “With backup?”
“What are they after?”
On screen, the two assassins looked around the lab. Barton picked up one of Tony’s prototypes, jumped in surprise, and looked straight at the cameras to flip Tony the bird. Tony felt absolutely no sympathy. It appeared that Natasha didn’t either, for both men watching saw her roll her eyes, grab Barton’s wrist, and haul him toward the back of the lab.
“They didn’t sneak in here for a quickie, did they?” Tony asked, outraged despite the fact that he was a little impressed. “That would be unprof-crap, those are JARVIS’s servers she’s going for.”
He didn’t bother to switch the surveillance to the new room; instead he raced back there himself now. If the damned deadpan Russian had messed with his baby, there would be hell to pay. You did not mess the man who had single-handedly privatized world peace, deadly thighs or not.
JARVIS’s servers, however, seemed to be whole when he raced into the room, though. “What is it?” Steve asked, following on his heels. “Tony?”
Tony typed frantically into the keyboard by the door, running a diagnostic. “JARVIS, you okay?”
“What’s going on?” Steve asked.
“Running at 99.997 percent capacity, sir.”
“What happened to the other .003 percent?”
“I am unsure. I believe Agent Romanoff left you a note.”
Steve spotted it before he did; the note was written on a post-it that Natasha had pinned to the wall with a small throwing knife. “‘Spy on me with your cliché butler again, Stark, and even SHIELD won’t be able to find the body,’“ he read. “‘PS - thank you for the barre.’ She’s a little…”
“Terrifying,” Tony said. “The word you’re looking for is terrifying. Ah-she disabled JARVIS in her suite. I was expecting something a little more…”
“More what?”
“Megalomaniacal.”
Steve shook his head. “She’s not that bad, Tony.”
“She’s a spy, and an assassin, and Russian. I don’t trust her.”
“Then why let her move into your tower?”
“Because if I don’t, Thor gives me the puppy dog eyes and Pepper gets that look on her face, and when Pepper gets that look on her face, I don’t get things like-” Tony belatedly who he was talking to and switched tacks. “What did they call blow jobs in the 1940s?”
“I’m not answering that.” Steve crossed his arms over his chest. “Wait, what are you doing?”
“Reinstating JARVIS in her quarters, what do you think?”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Stark,” Steve said, and the use of the last name let Tony know that the Star Spangled Man with a Plan was completely serious. “I think you should respect her privacy. It was a big step for her to move into the tower, after all.”
“She can’t just-she can’t just mess with JARVIS and expect I won’t retaliate!”
Steve folded his arms over his chest. “Would you have turned JARVIS off in her quarters if she had asked nicely?”
Tony thought about it. “Probably not.”
“There you go. Leave her alone, Tony, and let’s go work on that gun.”
“I’d rather work on a way to get payback at Natasha the Terrible, if it’s all the same to you.”
Steve clamped a hand on Tony’s shoulder and physically hauled him from the server room and back into the lab, which Tony felt was a little unfair. The team had agreed, for the most part, not to use their powers against each other in casual everyday use, and given that Steve wasn’t a 90-pound asthmatic, hauling Tony anywhere when Tony wasn’t in his suit was technically breaking that rule.
Steve just gave him a silent look when he pointed this out.
“Oh, fine,” Tony said, and looked around his lab. “Dummy, go watch Natasha.”
“Tony!”
“What?” Tony asked as he sat over his drafting table. His robot, which had been a thing of beauty at sixteen and was now far outclassed by even the coffee maker in Tony’s lab, trundled toward the door. “She said not to spy on her with my butler. Dummy’s more of a…socially-inept-yet-lovable valet, wouldn’t you say?”
“When she murders you, I’m not helping SHIELD look for the body,” Steve said, and that was that.
* * *
Steve honestly did not expect Tony to survive the night without at least serious bruising. He had a healthy and judicious respect for each of his teammates: Thor because he could summon actual lightning, Clint because he simply never missed, Tony because for all of his blather and bluster there was actually a heart beneath the arc reactor, Bruce both for the Other Guy and for Bruce’s brain itself, and Natasha because Steve was pretty sure Natasha had worked out how to kill each of them without expending too much energy in the process. At another point in his life, Steve might have been offended by that, but he’d learned, working alongside Natasha on missions for SHIELD, it was simply part and parcel of who she was.
The thing he could never predict, though, was her temper. Only two things could make her snap, and it appeared Steve was living under the same roof with both of them.
So when Tony came down for breakfast in the communal kitchen completely free of bruises, Steve’s eyebrows rose.
“Not dead yet,” Tony said as he poured himself a cup of coffee.
“Should I ask?” Bruce asked, getting up to set his dishes in the sink.
“Nope,” Tony said, and the scientists headed off to do whatever it was they did during business hours. They’d tried to explain their current project to the team before: Thor hadn’t understood, Clint had looked only politely interested, it had been gobbledygook to Steve, and Natasha had been in Palo Alto.
A couple of minutes later, Clint strolled in, scratching his stomach. His hair was sticking up in every direction, and he wouldn’t speak for a good forty five minutes or so. Everybody in the tower knew that Clint regarded mornings as the worst enemy of them all.
He wordlessly poured himself a bowl of cereal and took the seat across from Steve at the table.
Steve heard Natasha come down a couple of minutes later. Not because the spy had suddenly started making her footsteps audible, no, but Dummy’s gears and rotors made an unmistakable noise. Steve looked up as she entered, trailed by Tony’s robot.
“Good morning,” she said, mostly to Steve, as Clint didn’t even look up. “Did you sleep well?”
“Yes, thank you.” Steve eyed the robot, who followed Natasha to the breakfast bar. “And yourself?”
“Stark provided a very comfortable bed, yes. I will have to remember to thank him.” Natasha poured herself cereal from the same box Clint had used. Steve’s eyes widened when Dummy picked up the milk jug, which the spy took without a word. The process was repeated with the spoon.
Dummy also pulled out her chair for her. Natasha thanked the robot, where she might have given anybody else on the team a withering stare, depending on her mood.
Tony, Steve saw, had gravely miscalculated his revenge.
“Anything in the news?” Natasha asked, and Steve realized he was probably gaping.
He blushed a little and handed over the newspaper, which he knew Tony only ordered in paper form for his sake. The others probably read the news on their screens or tablets or what have you, but Steve liked the sight of print on a page.
“Thanks. Where’s Thor?”
“New Mexico. Visiting Jane.”
“Oh. I’m sorry I missed him-I got his housewarming gift last night.”
“Yeah, I think Tony might have actually bought him stock in whatever company it is that makes Pop Tarts. Oh, speaking of which.” Steve belatedly remembered that he’d brought his own gift for her downstairs on the off-chance that she might show up. He went to the cabinet and pulled a gift-wrapped-Pepper had done that for him, as he’d been all thumbs at his attempts-package from the shelf. “Here, it’s not much, but welcome to Stark Tower.”
Natasha gave him a surprised look as she took the package. “Wow,” she said. “Thank you. What is it?”
“You’ll have to open it.” Steve felt another blush coming on, and cursed himself. Why hadn’t the serum gotten rid of that particular bad habit? “It’s not much…certainly nothing compared to a cupboard full of Pop Tarts.”
“Barton got me a cactus named Bessie,” Natasha said and, flicking out a knife that Steve wasn’t sure where it had come from, she slit open the wrapping paper. Her eyes widened marginally as she took in the drawing, but he couldn’t read her expression. He shifted nervously in his seat. Finally, she looked up. “Is this your work?”
“I…yeah. I was there last year for a conference for SHIELD, and I thought…I thought maybe you’d want something from your homeland.” Steve rubbed the back of his neck, positive that he was bright red all over. “If you hate it, you know, you could use it for target practice or whatever. I won’t be offended.”
“Why would I hate it? It’s wonderful.” Natasha gave him one of her rare smiles over the framed drawing of the Red Square. “Thank you, Steve.”
“No problem. Like I said, it’s not much.”
“It is more than that, and you know it.” Natasha turned to Dummy, who was hovering over her shoulder. “Here, Zaychik moi, you carry this for me.”
Gently, Dummy took the artwork in his clamp.
Clint finally looked up from his cereal bowl, taking in the room with bleary eyes. He did not seem at all surprised to see Natasha sitting next to him, but he did a double-take at the sight of Steve. “Huh,” he said, and looked behind him. He scratched his head. “What’s up with the robot?”
“Do you like him?” Natasha asked. “He’s keeping an eye on me for Stark.”
“Oh, is that what he’s doing?” Steve asked, and Natasha’s smile, this time, looked very pleased with itself.
* * *
The others in the tower took no time at all to grow used to Natasha and Dummy being constantly in each other’s company. Wherever Natasha went in the tower, the robot followed; it spent its nights powered down in the hallway outside of Natasha’s apartment, it trailed after her to the firing range in the basement of the building, it even hovered over her shoulder during game night and movie nights with the other Avengers. Whenever Natasha left the tower to report in at SHIELD or take a mission, Dummy reluctantly made its way to Tony’s lab to help out its creator with some project or other. But the minute Natasha was back in the tower, Dummy abandoned Tony to follow the redhead around.
At first, it amused Tony. “It won’t last,” he said to Bruce. “She’s too independent. It’ll drive her nuts sooner or later.”
Bruce had nodded. He’d decided not to share his observation that as far as trolls went, Tony might think he was king, but Natasha had clearly taken a few more lessons in how to be unflappable than he had.
The others started taking bets. Bruce didn’t bother. Because he worked in the lab with Tony, he had a front row seat to see the way losing Dummy to spy on the only female Avenger put a hitch in Tony’s working stride. By the end of the first week, a frown was beginning to appear between Tony’s eyebrows. By the end of the second week, Tony complained of a headache, and Bruce figured it was because the other man spent the entire day grinding his teeth together.
By the end of the third week, Bruce suggested that maybe they should just trust Natasha and have the robot stop following her around. Tony had glared.
Luckily, Clint, Steve, and Natasha were called away for a mission in Istanbul for over a week, leaving Dummy free to assist Tony in the lab. Bruce might have suspected Tony didn’t even notice, had Tony not occasionally glared at Dummy occasionally for no reason at all, as if Dummy had betrayed him.
Bruce just smiled to himself and continued calibrating the new spectrometer Tony had purchased for the lab. Natasha had given him a very nonspecific thank you the day after she’d moved into the tower, which told him she appreciated the access card. He didn’t mind having JARVIS around in his quarters-the e-butler was rather handy, truth be told-but given that Natasha didn’t like things she couldn’t control completely, having that sort of surveillance on her all the time would have been hell for her.
“Dr. Banner?” JARVIS asked.
Bruce looked up from the spectrometer panel. “Yes?”
“You asked me to alert you when Agents Barton and Romanoff and Captain Rogers arrived on the premises.”
Across the lab, Dummy raised itself to its full height. Without a single glance at Tony, who was buried under the hood of his new Ferrari, the robot wheeled away.
“Oh, right,” Bruce said, watching Dummy go. He vaguely remembered doing that. He’d wanted to talk about Steve about providing some blood samples. “Thank you, JARVIS.”
“My pleasure, Doctor.”
“Dummy-wrench,” Tony said, holding a hand out from under the car.
Bruce headed over to that side of the lab and handed Tony a wrench. “Your robot rabbited, by the way.”
“What?” Tony pushed himself out from under the hood and gave Bruce an annoyed look. “Why would he-Dummy! Where the hell did you go now?”
“Natasha’s back,” Bruce said.
Tony pinched the bridge of his nose between his forefinger and his thumb. “I called off that order,” he said. “I specifically called off that order because Captain Conscience did that thing where he tried to guilt trip me, and dammit, I was tired so it worked.”
“Maybe he didn’t hear you?” Bruce asked.
Tony muttered something under his breath that was not very complimentary to robots in general. Bruce hoped JARVIS wasn’t listening.
“I’m going to go say hi,” he said instead, picking up the book he’d finished the night before. It had talked about some of the political climes in Imperialist Russia and their lasting effects on the current global economy, especially in relation to food distribution. Natasha had mentioned that she wanted to read it when he was done. “I’ll leave you to it.”
Tony grunted and slid back under the Ferrari.
He decided to drop off the book before going to see Steve as the latter would probably want to offer him a cup of coffee and a chat and he wanted to catch Natasha before she hit either the gun range or the mattress.
He found her in the hallway, kneeling next to Dummy as she bent over one of his panels. “Hello, Dr. Banner,” she said without looking up. “Didn’t hear you coming. New shoes?”
“Tony designed them by studying the way you and Clint walk around,” Bruce said, sheepish now.
“Glad to be of service.”
“Um, what are you doing to Tony’s robot?” Bruce just didn’t feel comfortable calling the thing Dummy to its face.
“There’s a part in this servo that’s causing trouble,” Natasha said, returning to her work. “I picked up a replacement in Istanbul. A friend owed me a favor.”
Bruce eyed the robot.
“The fez was all Clint, who you just missed.”
“I see,” Bruce said, slowly, looking at the jaunty red hat perched atop the robot’s “head.” Dummy’s servos made another noise and it sounded like the robot was…no, that wasn’t possible. Tony hadn’t programmed this unit with nearly the same amount of artificial intelligence as JARVIS. “I think it likes the hat.”
“Clint will be pleased.” Natasha closed the panel and sat back on her haunches. When she rose to her feet, she patted the robot next to the fez, absently, and Bruce tried very hard to fight the feelings of sheer wrongness the whole situation was radiating. “Oh, is that the book you were reading?”
“Yes, I finished it.” Bruce held it out to her. “I highlighted some stuff, I hope you don’t mind.”
“Not at all. Thank you, Doctor. I’ll get it back to you by the end of the week.”
“Are you sure? It’s pretty dry.”
“We could all use a little more dry in our lives,” Natasha said, and Bruce caught a flicker of something in the way she looked away.
“Bad mission?” he asked, surprising himself. He knew that SHIELD had sent the others on some rough missions before, but he didn’t ask and they didn’t tell. They respected that he wanted nothing to do with SHIELD.
“It was not the easiest, no, but thank you for asking.” Natasha gave him a polite smile. “We will all be fine. How was Stark?”
“Happy to have his robot back, for one thing.”
“I’m sure.” Natasha petted-for there could be no other word for it-the robot on the head once more and this time Bruce was sure of it: Dummy purred.
Before Bruce could say anything, the entire building shook with the unmistakable rumble of thunder. “Oh, look,” Natasha said. “Thor’s home. I’m going to go get cleaned up and find something to eat. Are there any plans for dinner?”
“I’ll call out for pizza,” Bruce said.
“Thanks.” Natasha gave him a final smile and slipped into her apartment, Dummy following on her heels.
The lure of pizza had everybody abandoning their various apartments and kitchens for the community kitchen once more. Thor came first, always called by the scent of food alone and especially the call of pineapple pizza, for which he’d developed a fondness. Clint, Natasha, and Dummy rolled in together, of course-Bruce wasn’t entirely convinced that Clint hadn’t been on the other side of the door to Natasha’s apartment during their conversation, after all-and Steve, looking tired, followed behind them. Pepper came in from a shareholder’s meeting and immediately kicked off her heels, settling in next to Bruce. “Where’s Tony?” she asked as Natasha nudged Dummy.
“He’ll be up soon, he’s working out a calibration issue,” Bruce said.
Dummy brought over two slices of pizza for Pepper and trundled away to fetch a glass of wine.
Thor eyed the robot. “What sort of sorcery is this?” he asked.
“And why is it wearing a hat?” Pepper added.
Dummy’s head lowered.
“Now he thinks you don’t like his hat,” Clint told Pepper.
“What?”
“Clint bought him the fez,” Natasha said. “And it’s technology, not sorcery, Thor.”
The Norse god did not look very reassured, but he relaxed his grip on Mjolnir slightly, which made Bruce relax. He really did not want to see what would happen if anybody hurt Dummy with Natasha around.
Indeed, the CEO of Stark Industries looked chagrined. “I like your hat,” she told the robot, who perked up immediately.
“Oh, don’t encourage this.” Tony walked in, scowling at the lot of them. He pointed accusingly at the fez. “What is this?”
“It’s called a fez, Tony.”
“I know what it’s-” Tony sighed and picked up a piece of pizza. He eyed the robot malevolently as he bit in. “I’ve lost you completely, haven’t I? To a Russian, at that. My capitalist heart cries.”
“I’m sure we could work out a custody agreement, Stark,” Natasha said, her voice dry.
“Cute. Very cute.”
“You could have weekends and every other holiday,” Clint said, slinging an arm around the couch behind Natasha’s shoulders. The redhead eyed him, but he didn’t remove the arm. “Think of all of the fun things you could do. You could take him to the zoo. I bet he’d love the zebras.”
“There’s not a single assassin on this planet that I don’t hate right now.”
“Aw, chin up, Tony.” Pepper scooted over to make room for him on the couch. Bruce wondered what she could possibly say that would make him feel better, but Pepper had a mischievous look on her face. She kissed Tony on the cheek. “You do like the zebras.”
“What is a zebra?” Thor wondered, and Steve leaned over to explain.
“In the course of a month, I’ve lost .003 percent of my butler, the loyalty of my robot, and the support of the light of my life.” Tony let out a gusty sigh. “Why did I let you crazies move into my tower, anyway?”
“We question your sanity daily,” Bruce told him reassuringly, and Tony rolled his eyes. The scowl on the inventor’s face only deepened when Dummy rolled away to rest its head on Natasha’s shoulder, jealously nudging Clint’s arm out of the way.
Bruce figured out that it was kinder not to tell him that if nothing else about Natasha Romanoff was normal, it wasn’t likely her pet would be, either. Tony had probably already figured that one out on his own, anyway. But he did have to smile the next day when he came down to the lab to find Dummy hovering beside Tony, that ridiculous fez still perched on its robot head.
Playing on the screens on the wall was a nature documentary where the zebras ran free over the savanna.