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“If this was the last birthday party you were ever going to have, how would you celebrate it?”
Natasha doesn’t know why she’s here.
There’s no point in assessing Stark as a potential asset when all signs point to him dying, the metrics she’d caught a glance of before coming in proclaiming seven days from complete toxicity, and she doesn’t have enough context to know if that means death or something less permeant but she’s not optimistic. There’s no point in worming her way to his side when he’s all but told her that he’ll be dead by next year. And probably far sooner, if his erratic behavior is anything to go by.
Stark is really good at masks.
She knew that before she took this assignment. She saw the footage of him dealing with the Ten Rings with a car battery attached to his chest and his press conference when he got back and she’s seen the decades of news and pictures and profiles with those big dark eyes staring out of all of them. Stark never lets anyone seen anything but exactly what he wants them to, holds all his cards close to his chest, even from those he cares about.
It feels ignorant to call him paranoid when his godfather paid to have him killed and then tore his heart from his chest.
Stark may be feeling erratic and out of control but the only reason he’d let everyone else see that is if it served some other purpose, if he wanted people to think that, and she can’t think of a single good reason for that.
Natasha isn’t one to question orders, not on a recon mission and definitely not on one where Coulson’s her handler, but this feels cruel, somehow. Stark has lived in war. It would be a kindness to let him die in peace.
She has not made a career out of kindness.
“I would do whatever I wanted to do,” she says, because this is her job, and pushing Stark to extremes is why she’s here, “with whoever I wanted to do it with.”
It’s not lying, exactly.
She’d take Clint to Moscow, to the Bolshoi Theater, take him to a show or maybe be in one, and then wait until it’s emptied out and dark and let him eat her out while she’s stretched out in those tacky gold seats. They’d drink Husky until the vodka had turned Clint still and serious and her languid and giddy and she would not tell him she loves him because words are all lies and if he doesn’t know by now then he never will.
Stark’s face twitches, resignation or maybe disappointment, and she moves to get off the chair because she’s a professional but all of this is starting to feel like ash in her mouth.
His hand reaches out, settling heavy and warm on the curve of her hip and exerting the lightest pressure to guide her into his lap. Some of her surprise is genuine, but she curls into him, draping her arms around his shoulders and ducking down with her lips parted and eyes blown wide, because that’s what she’s supposed to do, what she’s been teasing and hinting and offering since he first saw her in the boxing ring.
She’s supposed to get an up close and personal look at his arc reactor, if at all possible. Maybe she can even kiss and rub off the makeup that’s on his neck to find out what he’s hiding under there.
His kiss is as heavy and warm as his hand, but still not too much, skill in the movements of his lips and tongue. He’s had a lot of practice and a lot satisfied customers, so to speak, and under different circumstances Natasha might even be able to enjoy this on its own merits. As is she gasps into his mouth and lets him unzip her dress and drag it down her shoulders. Her bra is small and lacy but grey, because after the initial bait and catch he’s never shown her any more real interest than he grants every pretty woman in his presence. If she’d known then she would have worn the red with gold lace overlay, just as tacky as the seats in the Bolshoi Theater and not at all her style but it would give him something to joke about, get her a wink and an amused quip and maybe even a smile that he means, and for a man that can have anything and by some reports has had everything, he’s easy to please.
She grinds down into his lap, noting with some surprise that he’s not as into the proceedings as he appears, but she decides not to take it personally. He is forty and dying and she assumes he’ll get there when he gets around to pulling down the soft cups of her bra or moves his hands between her legs rather than on her ass. She doubts he’s planning to let her get a good look at his chest considering how quick he’d been to button his shirt when she walked in, but buttons are flimsy and when he’s rolling her onto her back and inside her then he won’t be able to blame her for getting a little rough with his clothing.
“Really?”
The tone isn’t mean but it is sharp.
Natasha leans back so her ass is pressed to his thighs and their pelvises are flush. Those big dark eyes that she’s seen a million times, in a million different ways, are looking up at her and his lips are pulled back in what is clearly a smirk but something tells her is a grimace. She doesn’t have to feign her confusion at all when she asks, “Mr. Stark?”
The way her voice comes out a little too high pitched and breathless is for his benefit but it’s not an indictment of anything. Even Clint doesn’t manage that until well into hour two.
He stands, hands still on her ass as he lifts her near effortlessly, which is pretty good for a dying man. Most of her is muscle and she’s not as light as she looks. She thinks that he’s going to carry her to bed and they’re really going to get this going, but instead he turns and lowers her back into the chair. It’s not the optimal position to give a blow job. Considering his height, it’d be easier for her to just get on her knees, but he derails her strategy when he kisses her cheek, chaste and light, and says, “Sorry, Natalie. Red’s the wrong shade.”
Stark leaves her there, half undressed and kiss bruised in his chair, and Natasha doesn’t know why.
He’s saying it’s her hair and that if she’d gone for a shade closer to ginger than ruby then he’d be having her naked over his sheets now and she doesn’t buy it for a second.
Tony Stark sleeps with many women, taking little notice of age beyond old enough to drink and caring even less about race, doesn’t let his height dictate anything and takes home women that tower over him and those he towers over, and yet with all that variety, he never, ever takes home a woman with hair the exact shade of Pepper Pott’s natural red.
~
Rhodey’s never been able to protect Tony when it counts.
Afghanistan was the worst time, but not the first. He’d started MIT at seventeen, feeling young and awkward up until he’d come across someone even younger and awkwarder than him, a fifteen year old Tony Stark. He’d charmed everyone who dealt with him for less than five minutes and pissed off anyone who dealt with him for longer, still Tony even short and too skinny and absolutely no muscle or sense to get him out of the situations he got himself in.
On second thought, he hasn’t changed much.
To this day, several people consider it a sign of brain damage that he’d liked the kid from the start. Tony’s one of them.
Rhodey could bring food for both of them to the lab and have his back when he inevitably got into another fight on campus but he could do absolutely nothing about the fact that Tony never, ever called home or got calls from home and every time he came back from Christmas break or summer or even just a dinner that he’d needed to show his face at so they could get a good picture for the photographer, he was quieter and angrier and tinged with this misery that Rhodey had no idea how to deal with.
Rhodey’s parents didn’t understand him, in lots of ways, but they loved him and never let him forget it.
He offered a thousand times for Tony to spend the break with them. He knew his parents would throw a fit at the idea of a billionaire’s son seeing the inside of their three bedroom townhouse, but Tony had never slept in the penthouse his father paid for and instead used his allowance to rent a studio walking distance from campus, all stained carpets and thin walls a fridge that was nothing but soy sauce packets and half forgotten coffee cups.
The penthouse was for parties and anyone who was looking for Howard Stark’s son and the studio was for him and Tony and every piece of metal and circuitry they could pull from Boston’s dumpsters, which, for the record, was a lot.
When Tony’s parents die, he wants to be there, somebody who loves him should be there, but Tony gives him his practiced empty grin even with his eyes red and face puffy, and says, “Everybody’s going to be looking, Rhodey. If you come with me, no one will ever forget it.”
“You’re my best friend,” he says, because that’s easier than saying anything else, because he’s nineteen and Tony’s seventeen and graduating in May and too old and not old enough. Because Tony’s staying at MIT to get his masters instead of going out to Stanford like he’d been planning when he was fifteen, because things are different than they were when he was fifteen.
Because even his mother calls him Rhodey these days, catches herself doing it and curses Tony Stark with nothing but fondness.
“They’ll eat you alive,” Tony says, reminding him a lot of his mother just then. Rhodey watches Tony get in a limo surrounded by cameras, his black jeans his own and mostly that color because of one too many motor oil stains and the black button down too long and too big in the shoulders because it’s Rhodey’s, a streak of black against the blinding white of a thousand camera flashes.
Lots of things start in college and never end.
Now he’s at Tony’s fortieth birthday party and he still can’t keep him safe when it counts and the generals breathing down his neck feel like the Afghan sun that had scorched his skin until it peeled and broke and bled. There’s something going on with the arc reactor that Tony won’t tell him about it and the United States government is after the most important person in his life because he can do what they can’t and Rhodey has failed every other time, when it really mattered, but he can’t fail this one.
He skips the front entrance, taking the private elevator up that’s manned by JARVIS. It stops at the private living room rather than the bedroom but JARVIS never steers him wrong and he steps out, scanning the room until he sees Tony sitting slumped on the stairs leading down to the workshop.
He remembers Tony stepping out of the car and collapsing against him and his heart shoots into his throat. “Tony!”
Tony’s head shoots up, awake and aware, and it doesn’t do much to settle his nerves. He drops down on the step next to him, so they’re pressed together from ankle to shoulder.
“Hey gumdrop,” Tony says, sounding more tired than he looks. That’s probably thanks to the makeup that Tony’s better at applying than any woman he knows. “Aren’t you mad at me right now? You’re supposed to be mad at me.”
What the hell is that supposed to mean.
“I’m always mad at you,” he answers. “Lots of very important people are mad at you too. Most of them are senators.”
“I hate senators,” he sighs, leaning against him and tipping his head until it’s against his shoulder. He’s warm. Too warm, and Rhodey barely understand the arc reactor even after having Tony walk him through it but this is wrong, it’s all wrong.
He turns to press a kiss against the top of Tony’s head. He smells clean and coifed and cologned and they haven’t had a single moment that wasn’t about the suits and military and that’s not unusual for them, even, but sometimes it hits Rhodey with enough force that he thinks he’s going to need an arc reactor of his own to get his heart beating properly again.
He doesn’t hear the elevator open but there’s an impatient stride of heels against marble and Pepper snapping, “Tony, it’s your party so you do actually have to-”
Pepper cuts herself off and Rhodey doesn’t bother to move, doesn’t turn to face her or put any distance between himself and Tony.
“Five minutes,” she says, because that’s what she always says, because the sky could be falling down around them and there really could be tanks coming to tear down Tony’s door and she would see them together and say five minutes and somehow they would have five more minutes than it should be possible for them to have. He wonders how many hours and days Pepper has gifted them like this, in little five minute increments.
The sound of her heels lets them know she’s leaving and Tony lifts his head and says, “Wait.”
Pepper waits.
Tony swallows and shifts, so he’s sitting sideways on the stairs and one of his legs is bent on top of Rhodey’s lap because that’s the only way he’ll fit. Rhodey turns, sees Pepper standing there looking perfect as always and with an expression that he’s always refused to name.
He doesn’t care about the women Tony sleeps with – it had been his idea, even, because one of them had to and Tony would at least enjoy it. But Pepper would be different.
He’s had Tony for twenty five years but so often they’re across the world from each other, at cross purposes, are just cross with one another. But Pepper has been a constant by his side for ten years. The hours and days they’ve each spent with Tony are probably closer than most people would think, even with the fifteen year jump he has on her.
He would say he wasn’t one to share, not the part that counts, but the truth of it is that he’s been sharing for ten years already.
“Can we go?”
Tony sounds small, and tired, and Rhodey hadn’t even noticed that Tony had threaded their hands together until his fingers are digging into his palm.
Pepper smiles, none of the irritation that had been in her voice now showing in her face. “Venice is a little far.”
“Not Venice,” he says, “I have a place – I have lots of places, you bought most of them, can we just – please? Please. It’s my birthday. Come on, Pep, it’s my birthday. I don’t want to do this.”
He’s aiming for his familiar whining tone but it doesn’t really work. He just sounds exhausted.
“What’s going on Tony?” she asks quietly. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“Not tonight.” Tony’s outright pleading now and the unease that had been itching along his spine unfurls and settles hard in his stomach. “I’ll tell you tomorrow, okay? We’ll deal with everything tomorrow. I promise. But not tonight. Tonight let’s just run away. Just for a little bit.”
“Every branch of the military is going to be coming for you tomorrow,” Rhodey says, but he softens it, pitching his voice low and settling his free hand against Tony’s knee. He’d been prepared for a fight, for a war, which is what every fight with Tony was. But whatever is going on has left his boy a little less than battle ready.
Tony looks back at him, opens his mouth, then swallows. “I built you a suit.”
He stares.
“It’s keyed to your biometrics, so if they want someone else to pilot it then they’ll have to clone you, and you’ve already told me that I can’t clone you and if I can’t do it then they shouldn’t be able to do it either. It’s also got, uh, some very specific shielding tech, and whatever they scan isn’t going to come out right and if they try and reverse engineer it key components are set to, uh, melt, if there’s enough damage done and you’re not in it, so. They can’t have my tech, because I don’t built weapons anymore, and they’d use it as a weapon, but they can have a suit, if you’re the one in it.” He’s looking at the spot above Rhodey’s head rather than right at him. “That should calm them down, yeah? Right? They don’t actually care that I have the suits they’re just mad that they don’t.”
“What’s wrong?” he demands, heart slamming against his chest. He cups Tony’s face with the hand he isn’t crushing and tries to read anything in the eyes that won’t quite meet his. Tony built him a suit, one that he intends to let him use in the service of the military, which is the whole reason he’d always refused to build Rhodey his own suit to begin with. He didn’t build weapons anymore and Rhodey had his obligations and also they barely saw each other as is and if he had a suit then every general of every branch would be riding him for an assist. But Tony made him a suit that he’s just going to hand over to him. “What’s going on?”
Tony winces and Rhodey thinks of him saying that he was supposed to be mad at him and he’s sure that however Tony originally planned to do this was a thousand times worse than what’s happening right now, which is impressive, because what’s happening right now is pretty horrible. “Not tonight. It’s my birthday.”
“You can’t use that for everything,” he says, making himself sound exasperated instead of terrified.
Tony knows him too well to be fooled but he must appreciate the effort because his lips quirk up in the corners. “I can, I totally can, until tomorrow. Tomorrow I won’t have that trump card, but I do tonight, so. Let’s go.”
The promise of a suit will get everyone to back off for a couple days. And it is Tony’s birthday.
He looks to Pepper, who looks as worried as he feels, but forces a smile of her own. “Okay, okay. I’ll make your excuses, it’s not like I haven’t done it before, and everyone can just schmooze with me instead for a change, which they should anyway, since I am CEO now.”
People always schmoozed with Pepper instead, because she was the one that Tony listened to. Sometimes people – usually people that outranked him – tried to schmooze with him to get things out of Tony, which he hated, and was one of the reasons they lived the way they did. There were a lot less people that outranked him these days, but, well, his job is still his job.
“No,” Tony says and Rhodey lets out an amused huff and Pepper narrows her eyes. “I mean – not no, but you know, no. I want you there too. It’s my birthday. And you’re my friend.”
The last part comes out a little too plaintive, almost like a question, and Pepper is answering it almost as soon as he’s finished talking. “I am. I am your friend. But someone has to deal with,” she gestures downstairs, where hundreds of people are getting drunk on hundreds of thousands of dollars of liquor.
“Happy’s going to deal with it, he said, because I asked, and it’s my birthday.” He’s frowning and Rhodey has to keep himself from reaching out and smoothing the lines around his mouth. “I want him there too, it’s Happy, but you’re right that someone does need to deal with everything, and he said he’d come pick us up tomorrow morning, wherever we were, or just me, if you guys decided to be mean to me. On my birthday.”
Tony was sitting on these steps because he was on his way to sneaking out, because Happy had probably seen the brittleness in Tony that’s putting him and Pepper on edge and told him to make a break for it. Except Tony hadn’t, because it was his birthday and he wanted to be with his friends, which was Happy, who was covering for him, and Pepper, who’s his CEO now, and him, who Tony said was supposed to be mad at him, who is trying so hard to save Tony’s ass from being declared an enemy of the nation and himself from having to turn traitor.
“Come with us,” Rhodey says and Tony lights up, a grin he almost recognizes coming across his face. “Ditching the party you’re supposed to be hosting is basically a Stark Industries CEO tradition. It would actually be disrespectful for you to stay.”
“Pepper, listen to Rhodey,” Tony orders, like ordering Pepper around ever got him anywhere.
“You can’t talk to your boss like that,” she says, but there’s that fondness and warmth that she can’t hide. “Fine. But this counts as your present for your next five birthdays. At least. The headlines are going to be atrocious.”
For a spit second Tony’s expression is made of glass but then he’s easing into happiness, relaxing in a hundred subtle ways that Rhodey’s categorized over the past two and half decades. “You got it, Pep.”
~
Pepper is twenty five with an MBA, a bachelor’s degree in economics, and a minor in art history when she becomes Tony Stark’s assistant.
She’s an associate director at an art house that’s hosting a private auction for people with too much time and too much money, a position she feels both over and underqualified to have, and is pretty sure the only reason her boss lets her attend the event that she’s organized is because she’s a size four and a B cup.
Her student loans are too crushing for her to dress like she belongs. She buys her suits two sizes too large off the rack and gets them tailored, because cheap tailored suits pass muster a lot better than ill fitting designer. Her perfume is from a little shop in Spain that she’d stumbled on while studying abroad and has faithfully been ordering ever since because exclusive can mean expensive, but it can also mean knowing about something that no one else does, like a Spanish perfumery tucked into the corner of Granada.
Her roommate had done the same thing in France, but Pepper knew better. There are no unknown French perfumeries.
She agonizes over buying the Louboutin’s she desperately wants, but doesn’t do it, because she has rent to pay and she knows better, but that doesn’t change her desire. One hundred and twenty millimeters, black leather, a pointed heel, and those red bottoms that it seems like anyone who’s anyone is wearing. In just a few years since their launch, those red soles have become recognizable everywhere and they’ll cover all the things she can’t fake. She doesn’t carry a bag because she can’t afford Chanel and her makeup is all drugstore and she leans into her natural red because she wouldn’t be able to pay to upkeep anything else. Her nails are kept short and unpolished and the only jewelry she wears are the simple diamond chips pretending to be studs in her ears, her graduation present from her parents.
If she’s got those red soled heels, people will notice them, and they might not notice anything else.
There are careers where it wouldn’t matter, but there are things she wants and people she wants to surpass, and she’s a woman, so it matters, it all matters.
Her sister calls her shallow and her mother says she’s got a keen eye and one professor had described her as focused but the truth is that she’s desperate. She tries to bury that most of all, because desperate is even worse than poor.
Tony Stark is there, thirty and brilliant, nine years into taking back his company by the balls and people are already talking about how he’s outshining his father and how he’s a disaster and a genius and an alcoholic and whatever they’re calling him in the tabloids these days.
Things are easier for men, in a lot of ways, but she doubts anything has ever been easy for Tony Stark.
He’s there under duress, somehow, irritated and drunk and unimpressed, and she’s supposed to show him around and not shout if he gets handsy and get him to spend an obscene amount of money.
He doesn’t care about the art and he looks her up and down but keeps his hands to himself and he doesn’t want to buy anything, or he’ll buy everything, whatever seems to get him out of this situation the fastest. He manages twenty minutes of nodding at her with glazed eyes before raising a hand and rubbing at his forehead, the exact same wat she does when trying to stave off a headache. She never thought she’d have anything in common with Tony Stark. “Look,” he sighs, “I don’t know anything about this crap. I never – my mom was the one who picked out the art, and worked with the decorators, and shit. What would you pick?”
She’s seen a lot of his interviews and read a lot of exposés. He never talks about his mother. “Well, without seeing the space-”
“Come on, don’t do that,” he says, looking at her with the deepest, warmest brown eyes she’s ever encountered. “Come on. You’re killing me here. Don’t – don’t bullshit me. What would you pick?”
Pepper has a favorite piece, one she wouldn’t mind disappearing into the private collection of Tony Stark, but she has something better in mind. Something she thinks he might like. “Follow me.”
“Thank god,” he mutters as they leave the main room.
She leads away from the large, imposing canvases and all their headlining pieces, things meant to fill the walls of billionaires’ mansions, to something that’s not small, but smaller. “This one.”
“This one,” he repeats and for the first time tonight he smiles. “What did I say about bullshitting me? This one. It’s a line.”
The canvas is taller than the both of them combined but less than four feet wide, white on either side with a black stripe down the middle. Now II.
“Barnett Newman completed this three years before his death and it’s a wonderful piece,” she says, head held high. “He said he wanted to paint as if inventing painting from scratch, as if no one had ever done it before.”
“It’s just a line,” he repeats, still amused. “That’s what he thought needed to be reinvented?”
She doubts she’ll ever be standing in front of Tony Stark again so she has to get this right, has to say this in a way that hopefully won’t offend him, because the other option is to say something she doesn’t mean and that’s a waste for both of them. “It’s a perfect line. Perfectly straight, perfectly black, and surrounded by perfect white. Not in color, it’s not the blackest black or the whitest white, but the tone matches perfectly. Their perfection is only obvious in their togetherness.” She could stop here, she could not embarrass herself in front of the most powerful businessman in the world, but she has achieved nothing in her life by being a coward. “The first time you drew a line, it wasn’t perfect. It probably wasn’t even straight. But you drew it again, and again, until it was, and now the lines you draw are turned into designs and schematics that change the world, from weapons you send overseas to the processor in my computer. You design as if you are inventing the world from scratch, which is why you’re doing things that others claim can’t be done, which is why you’re doing it better the rest of them.”
He's not smiling anymore, but he doesn’t look angry, or bored, or anything that will get her fired.
She swallows and continues, “Barnett Newman said of his paintings that he hoped that they had the impact of giving someone the feeling of their own totality, their own separateness, their own individuality, as that’s what they did for him. This line is you and everything that you will do. You make it look easy, Mr. Stark, but that doesn’t mean it is.”
The silence stretches between them but she refuses to be the one to break it. She’s said quite enough, probably too much, and she can feel the heat rising up her neck and pinpricks of sweat along her arms.
Finally he says, “Thank you, Miss Potts,” and the thing that surprises her most is that he remembered her name.
Tony Stark buys Now II and a week later there’s a box with an obnoxiously large bow on her desk and a manila envelope with a job offer and a business card.
Pepper calls the number on the card and as soon as it picks up she demands, “How did you know? Are you spying on me? Are you spying on everyone? That’s what my uncle says but he’s crazy. I hope he’s crazy.”
“Hello Miss Potts,” Tony Stark says down the line. “Your sister said caught you looking at them. She was very derisive about it, by the way.”
“You spoke to my sister?” she says, appalled. She doesn’t even speak to her sister if she can help it.
“Stark Industries’ background checks are very thorough,” he says, “especially for the position of my personal assistant. Are you calling to accept the offer?”
“I’ll think about it,” she says, then hangs up.
Her hands are shaking as she finishes pushing aside the tissue paper. One hundred and twenty millimeters, black leather, a pointed heel, and bright red soles.
She accepts, of course, underqualified in every way for one of the most sought after positions in the world.
She does her best to be excellent at her job, and eventually she is, but Tony never seems to care about the mistakes she makes, smoothing over several potential disasters when she first gets hired. It’s been ten years and she’s weathered every storm by his side and knows him like her shadow and yet sometimes she’s still left floundering, as out of sorts and confused as she was by that box on her desk with a big bow.
Like right now, when they’ve taken one of his cars with the iconic STARK 8 license plates removed and tossed in the trunk, because the windows are tinted and a flashy expensive car isn’t going to raise any eyebrows when that’s all anyone who’s here is driving.
Tony drives, because he hates letting anyone else do it, and she’d worried that he was drunk or high but that disproves it because he’d never get in the driver seat with her and Rhodey in the car if that were the case. Rhodey sits up front, reaching over to let his hand rest on Tony’s thigh as they wind up the PCH. She curls up in the back and tries, not for the first time, to figure out what’s going on and how she can fix it, but instead her mind wanders.
When she first met Rhodey, she’d stumbled over calling him Major Rhodes three different times, too used to hearing Tony talk about him, before he’d waved his hand and said, “It’s fine, you can call me Rhodey too. Tony likes you.”
She hadn’t known anything then, but it had stuck out to her that that was his qualifier. It wasn’t that Tony had told him about her, it wasn’t that he found her likable himself, it was that Tony liked her, and that was enough for him to allow her familiarity.
An hour after sneaking past the paparazzi, they’re pulling in to a property in Santa Barbara that she thinks Tony might have won in a poker game, or in one of those rich people charity raffles that give her a headache. It’s a townhouse, notable only for its proximity to the beach and how secluded it is, surrounded by foliage tall enough to give the illusion of privacy. It’s where Tony used to go to avoid Obadiah, because it was close enough that he could still get back to for meetings or anything else, but not any place that he would think to look for him. Pepper tries not to read too much into it as Tony leans out of the window to look into the retina scanner and the gate opens to let them in.
They step inside and Tony bolts for the bedroom, shouting, “I’m going to change out of this crap, order some food, yeah?”
She and Rhodey look at each other and there’s a moment where she thinks one of them is going to say something about how off this all feels and then he asks, “Indian?”
“Sounds perfect,” she answers, “order like six mango lassis, I’m going to drink half of them.”
He’s laughing as she ducks into her own room, shedding her dress and her shoes and washing off her makeup. She and Happy have copies of all their favorite things on all of Tony’s properties. Rhodey doesn’t, exactly, because that would apparently be too obvious, but Tony has several outfits that are too long in the leg and broad in the shoulder and an aftershave that he never uses. She slips into the navy silk sleep shirt that goes to her knees, because she thinks what Tony wants is something like a middle school sleepover, and feels vindicated when she returns to the living room and he’s wearing the red pajama set from the same company.
He never wears the shirt, preferring to go topless or with a short sleeve, but he has the long sleeved monogrammed top on too, and she thinks it’s probably for the same reason that he hasn’t washed the makeup from his own face and does her best not to think about it.
“See!” Tony crows, grinning at Rhodey. “Look at Pepper! You’re the odd man out now, sweet tart.”
Rhodey’s still in his suit, although he has taken off his shoes. “You’re being ridiculous,” he tells Tony, “I’m comfortable in this.”
“It’s my birthday,” he says and Rhodey rolls his eyes but heads towards Tony’s bedroom.
Pepper forgoes grace to bounce onto the edge of the couch, tucking her legs beneath her. “What are we doing? I think we have boardgames somewhere. Not Monopoly.”
“You won once,” he protests, but it’s been years since anyone but Happy will play that with him, and that’s only because Happy is an eternal good sport. “Cards? And food. And movies. No Titanic, you always cry.”
Exactly like a sleepover.
“Clueless?” she offers, then, “Ooh, and Ever After. You can’t complain, it has Drew Barrymore.”
“Chick flicks,” he scoffs but he’s relaxed and smiling and it’s been so long since she’s seen Tony not at the edge of something that it makes her eyes burn.
“You love chick flicks,” Rhodey says and when she twists to see him she bursts into giggles.
He has on drawstring pants with little images of the Iron Man helmet screen printed all over and a black tank top with a decal of the arc reactor on his chest. “Where did you get those?” she asks Tony, still laughing, and wondering if he can get a pair herself. She maintains that it’s tacky for Stark Industries to produce their own Iron Man merchandise and bad form for them to wear the bootlegs publicly, but what she wears in her own home is her business.
Rhodey crosses his arms and raises an eyebrow. “Now I’m ridiculous. I hope you’re happy, Tony.”
He softens and crosses the distance between them, looping his arms around Rhodey’s waist and looking up at him. “I am.”
Rhodey hesitates and she almost gets up to find something to do in the kitchen but then he’s leaning down, kissing Tony with a gentleness that makes her heart clench. Tony melts into it, like he always does, and she wishes so fiercely that this was something they could both have every day of their lives and not just in stolen moments.
“I’ll grab some drinks,” Rhodey mutters, kissing Tony’s forehead before pulling back.
Tony watches him go with a look that makes her anxiety spike but then he’s smiling again and saying, “Are you planning to spend all night like that? You’ll give yourself a headache.”
“You give me a headache,” she retorts, having no idea what he’s talking about until he’s standing behind the couch and reaching out to pull the pins from her hair. He’s good at this, plucking out each one without tugging too much on her scalp, so she lets him.
He’s just gotten the last one and her hair is down around her shoulders when Rhodey returns with a beer for each of them. Tony takes it without comment and sits next to her on the couch, dropping the pins on the side table. Rhodey sits on Tony’s other side and tugs him until his head is resting on his shoulder and Pepper pulls up Clueless on the flatscreen because Rhodey likes to make fun of Tony by comparing him to Cher.
The food arrives and they briefly relocate to the floor and spread everything out around the coffee table. Tony and Rhodey like their food spicy enough to eat through the styrofoam, but thankfully Rhodey had remembered her own tolerance because there are several dishes that don’t make her eyes water. He really had gotten six mango lassis, although she ends up having to sacrifice one of hers to Rhodey because Tony claims three for himself and refuses to share. They play Uno because they can’t find the pack of regular card anywhere and Rhodey wins three games in a row, which is when Tony accuses him of cheating and that derails into how one would cheat in a game of Uno anyway.
By the time Dani first meets the prince in Ever After, Tony has crawled fully into Rhodey’s lap and every few minutes Rhodey drops a kiss against whichever part of Tony he can reach. Tony complains about how movies like this cast aspersions against goatees and cheers when Dani frees herself. When she looks up from the credits, Rhodey has twisted sidewise and pulled Tony between his legs, his arms around his waist and the kiss he’s pressing against the side of Tony’s mouth is about two minutes away from devolving into a full makeout session.
She yawns for the pretense and says, “I think that’s it for me.”
“Already?” Tony asks, eyes pleading even though she knows full well Rhodey is going to be more than distracting as soon as she’s in her room. “Okay, maybe I do negotiate with terrorists. We can watch Titanic.”
She loves him always, but sometimes it washes through her like a wave, sweeping away all her common sense with it. “Happy birthday, Mr. Stark,” she says, leaning over to kiss his cheek. “I’m going to bed.”
Tony leans into her and she forces herself to pull back because there’s no other option.
“You don’t have to.”
She blinks, sure she’s hearing things, but Rhodey is looking at her, face completely serious, and it was his mouth that said those words but they don’t make any sense.
“It’s okay,” he continues, while her and Tony are frozen in place, “he loves you.”
“Rhodey!” Tony snaps, high pitched and wide eyed, but he doesn’t deny it.
She swallows, Rhodey’s unexpected cruelty so surprising that she can only think to say, “He loves you.”
She’s not going to get in the middle of that. She doesn’t even want to. Rhodey makes Tony happy and he’s a good man in a hard place who has loved Tony for over half his life. She can’t have that, but what she has with Tony is good too.
Rhodey smiles, all that love he has plain on his face. “I’ve been informed more than once that he can multitask.”
“Rhodey,” Tony says again, except this time it comes out low, like a warning, but he still doesn’t say that he doesn’t love her.
It’s so unfair that it makes her eyes sting. She has never crossed that line. She has always, always respected Rhodey and never taken Tony’s lingering glances to heart, has coveted Tony’s place as her boss and her mentor and her best friend and let go of everything else.
“What, I’m just another girl so I don’t count anyway and it’s his birthday so why not spice thing up a bit?” she demands and hates herself for how her voice trembles.
Sometimes she wants Tony so badly it leaves her breathless but she never, ever wants him so much that she’s willing to lose him.
Tony tries to reach for her but can’t get far with Rhodey’s arms around him. His face is creased in concern, and all he’d wanted was a quiet birthday with them, why is Rhodey ruining this? She hates this. It’s unfair to both of them.
Rhodey raises an eyebrow, cool and calm like he isn’t breaking her heart. “You never would have been just another girl, Pepper. You both know that. If this was just about sex, you two would have been sleeping together for years and we wouldn’t even be talking about this.” He licks his lips, his first sign of nervousness, and she uses that to ground herself. “You’ve been his partner in every way but this for the past decade. If that’s all you want, fine. But if you want more, then I’m telling you that’s okay with me. Not because you’re a woman. But because you’re Pepper Potts and Tony loves you.”
She feels frozen, like this moment is set in amber and anything past it feels impossible. Rhodey isn’t cruel. He isn’t doing this to hurt them. He’s giving them permission. It’s all simple and understandable and leaves her reeling, unsure of how to process or act on any of it. Tony is looking at her, equally frozen, equally vulnerable.
Rhodey huffs and reaches out, grabbing Pepper’s wrist and tugging her forward. She stumbles against the edge of the couch and then is tipping over both of them. She reaches out to catch herself, ending up bracing herself with her hands on Rhodey’s shoulders and her face a few inches from Tony’s.
He looks up at her and swallows before repeating, “You don’t have to.”
Except when Rhodey had said it he’d meant You don’t have to go and Tony is saying You don’t have to stay and doesn’t that just say everything about both of them?
Pepper has never gotten anything in life by being a coward. She can feel her heart pounding in her ears but she lets her head drop forward and seals her lips over Tony’s.
He kisses her back without hesitation, but it’s slow and gentle and undemanding, and that just makes her push herself even closer. She can feel him hard against her hip, a counterpoint to his tenderness as he settles a hand against the small of her back.
She pulls back to breathe and Tony says, “I love you.”
He’s breaking her heart and settling it into a different shape and she grins against his mouth and mutters, “I know,” because the reference will make him laugh and she does love him and everyone’s known that for years but now they can say it and act on it and she’ll thank Rhodey for this when Tony isn’t around to overanalyze it.
She undoes the buttons on his stupid silk shirt as they kiss, because she wants her hands on him, and he tenses when she runs her hands over his stomach in a way that makes her pull back.
“Don’t,” he starts, but it’s too late.
“What’s this?” she asks, brushing careful fingers against the dark, bismuth-like rash spreading out from his arc reactor.
He swallows and grabs her hand, moving it away, and she’s worried she’s hurt him, but all he says is, “Not tonight. Tomorrow I’ll explain, but not tonight, okay?”
Pepper looks to Rhodey, who’s holding himself so tensely that Tony must be able to feel it, but he meets her eyes and then nods, forcing himself to visibly relax.
She squeezes his hand, says, “Okay, tomorrow,” and kisses him again.
They move to Tony’s room because couch sex with two of them is easy enough and nearly impossible with all three of them.
“Are we moving too fast?” Tony asks as she pushes him back onto his bed. “We don’t have to-”
“Ten years,” she answers and Rhodey laughs behind her. She feels a little strange getting naked in front of him, but it is Tony’s birthday and she doesn’t want to wait and she’s obviously not going to ask Rhodey to leave, so threesome it is. Besides, she’s caught him bare-assed enough times over the years that it only seems fair.
Rhodey doesn’t touch her more than incidentally the whole night, but she thinks that she can get him to make out with her for Tony’s next birthday.
~
Tony wakes up sweaty and overheated and his first thought is that the palladium poisoning has progressed to a fever. Then he takes stock of his body beyond the panic and grins when he realizes that there’s a more immediate explanation.
He’s laying on his side, Rhodey curled against his back with a leg between his and an arm around his waist, which is always how they sleep when they actually manage to share a bed. Tony maybe has an inclination to flail in his sleep that can only be mitigated by pinning him in place. Or at least that’s what Rhodey says whenever Tony teases him about it.
What’s new is Pepper snug against his chest, apparently unbothered by the light of the arc reactor with her forehead pressed into his shoulder and her arms trapped between them. His arm that isn’t busy falling asleep underneath her is draped over her shoulders.
It’s perfect and wonderful and everything he’s ever wanted and also he’s boiling alive.
Tony tries to be careful as he extricates himself from between them, except that Rhodey is a soldier that can and has slept through a bomb going off and Pepper doesn’t so much as twitch as he climbs over her, which makes him think the times she’s instantly snapped awake at him calling her name is a learned a behavior.
He gives himself thirty seconds to enjoy the view then places a line of pillows between them for modesty now that they don’t have him as a literal buffer. As funny as their reaction would be to waking up in each other’s arms instead of his, he wants to minimize their anger towards him where he can.
It’s not his birthday anymore. Tomorrow is here and now he has to have the conversation that he was literally planning to die rather than have. He puts in a grocery order and goes to take a shower, grimacing when he realizes how shit he looks, the rash from the palladium covering nearly the whole left side of his neck and most of his chest. It’s not his best look.
He has to shower, because of the nearly boiling alive and the sweating and the various fluids that have dried and crusted over him in places, but he still mourns the loss as he scrubs himself down. He’s a little gross, as a person, and the same way he likes the feeling of motor oil stained into his pores as proof that he’s built something, he likes having traces of Rhodey and Pepper on his skin, also as proof that he’s built something. The bruises and bite marks do that too, he supposes, and are significantly more hygienic.
Tony pulls on the Iron Man pajama pants that Rhodey had deigned to wear last night because he knows that Rhodey will want to wear something pressed and buttoned for the conversation he promised them, although he swaps out the tank top for one of his own because he comes with his own arc reactor. The groceries are waiting on his front step when he’s done. It’s amazing what can be delivered these days, or maybe just what crap people are putting in their bodies. Whole Foods has all of the ingredients for his disgusting chlorophyl swill that he absolutely wouldn’t be drinking if his life didn’t depend on it. It reminds of him that unfortunate time he did a guppy shot in college.
The blender isn’t exactly quiet but still no movement comes from the bedroom, which doesn’t surprise him when it comes to Rhodey but does a little with Pepper. He unearths a straw from the cutlery drawer because sucking it all down as fast as possible with minimal contact with his taste buds sounds pretty good right now.
He tosses his phone on the counter and says, “JARVIS, were you listening last night?”
His phone lights up as his AI’s voice comes from the speaker, “Unfortunately, Sir, I am always listening. I’m not sure what is more deserving of a congratulations – you agreeing to have an honest conversation or your performance with Colonel Rhodes and Miss Potts.”
“The latter, definitely,” he grins, turning his attention to the several dozen eggs he’d ordered, just in case. “Come on, talk me through cooking some omelettes, I don’t want to burn the place down or whatever.”
“It’s remarkable how similarities that exist between creator and creation become so readily apparent in certain circumstances,” JARVIS says, dryly enough that Tony knows he’s being insulted.
It still takes him a second to make the connection and then he demands, “You’re comparing me to Dummy? Low blow.”
“If the shoe fits, Sir,” he replies, completely unrepentant.
“I get no respect,” he complains, but he’s grinning as he cracks eggs and cuts vegetables, the easy movements falling into familiarity. He probably doesn’t need JARVIS to talk him through it this time, when he’s not coming off from an attack and everything going to shit and too busy arguing with himself on how much truth to give to pay any attention at all to either the stove or his hands. But his AI is someone he cares about too, and it’s comforting to have his voice in his ears even if he doesn’t really need it.
It's not easier now, but it is simpler. He is going to tell Rhodey and Pepper the whole truth and whatever the consequences are, well, at lease he won’t have to deal with them for long.
He’s depressing himself now. He throws the sausage in the pan, then turns down the heat when the sizzle is a little too loud and JARVIS’s tone turns disapproving.
His mother taught him how to do this. Neither of his parents cooked, obviously, but his mother had at least been capable of it. She hadn’t come from the same level as wealth as his father, and while it had been expected that she’d marry well and never work a day in her life, there’d also been the assumption that she’d have to be capable of occasionally pulling together a meal.
Some of his worst and best memories from his childhood feature omelettes, which sounds insane, but it’s true. If his father disappointed him, didn’t turn up to something or lost his temper or forgot that Tony wasn’t actually one of his employees and was eleven, and his mother knew about it, she tried to make it better in a way that wouldn’t put her at cross purposes with her husband. She’d wake him early the next morning, saying she needed his help, and he’d always been desperate for their attention as a kid, so he was nearly giddy at the idea that his beautiful, competent mother needed help from him. Then she’d pull him into the kitchen and claim her hands were cramped, her eyes tired, her feet throbbing, and all she wanted was an omelette but because of the aforementioned ailment she couldn’t make it herself, and wouldn’t he help her?
The further he got from being literally four years old, the less believable it all was. But by the time he’d hit double digits it was enough of a routine that half the time she didn’t even bother to come up with an excuse.
He knows how to make an omelette, he’s had making omelettes seared into his memory, and when he can actually give it enough attention not to fuck it up, they turn out pretty good. Getting the cheese perfectly melted is the hardest part but that’s what the broil setting is for. He turns on the coffee maker when they’re about done, something he’d been avoiding before because from experience that will get both Rhodey and Pepper out of a sound sleep.
Five minutes later, Pepper shuffles into the kitchen wearing his button up that he’d left crumpled on the bedroom floor over a pair of leggings, looking adorably ruffled.
“Nothing smells burned,” she says.
“Good morning to you too,” he says, leaning down to kiss her and then placing a mug of plain black coffee into her hands. Sometimes she tries to talk herself into adding milk in an effort to protect her enamel, but that’s more of a third cup of the day thought process.
Neither of them saying anything further and Pepper has handed him her empty cup, which he assumes is a request for him to refill it, when Rhodey joins them. He’s also freshly showered and in the charcoal pants and white dress shirt that he keeps in the bottom drawer, where all the clothes that are actually Rhodey’s size are always kept, even though he knows for a fact that there’s a pair of jeans in there too.
Rhodey glances at the stove and his expression goes blank and he stops, falling into parade rest like he always does when he’s genuinely thrown off by something. He relaxes by degrees into a grimace and Tony tries and likely fails not to look apologetic while he hands Rhodey his disgusting sugar only coffee. Rhodey, unlike Pepper, knows what him cooking omelettes means. He actually met his mother, after all, but it probably doesn’t help that the only other times Tony had made them had been as the precursor to the conversation where they agreed to keep their relationship a secret and right after his parents died.
He'd burned a lot of omelettes right after making the second Iron Man suit, but since he never managed to work up the courage to have a proper conversation with either of them about it, they don’t know that.
Rhodey sits next to Pepper and Tony brings everyone’s plates to the table, sitting across from them and clutching his own mug to keep his hands from shaking.
“Tony,” Rhodey says, his tone of voice snapping Pepper to full wakefulness in a way that not even the second cup of coffee had managed.
“Eat first,” he says, shrinking back under both of their gazes. “Come on, I worked really hard on these, finish half, or something, before we do this.”
Pepper is the one to break the stalemate, taking a delicate bite. The surprise one her face would be insulting if it wasn’t fully justified. “This is really good!”
“I can make things. I’m literally the best engineer on the planet, I can handle some eggs,” he says, pretending to be offended anyway because the other option is to panic about the very near terrible upcoming conversation.
Unfortunately, he’s a genius who’s fully capable of doing of two things at once, so it’s not very effective.
Rhodey says nothing, gripping his fork too tightly. Pepper obviously picks up on it, but she’s a trooper, and talks about SI’s upcoming mobile releases. Tony responds enough to keep the conversation going and to give Pepper time to eat but in spite of his own words, he barely picks it at his own plate.
“Okay,” Rhodey says, cutting him off as soon as Pepper’s eaten half of her plate and put her fork down. He’s gotten through two thirds of his own omelette but Tony doubts he tasted any of it, which is a shame. It really did turn out well. “What’s wrong with the arc reactor?”
“Something’s wrong with the arc reactor?” Pepper demands, eyes narrowing.
“Nothing’s wrong, it’s working perfectly,” he retorts, his offense this time very real. Then he winces, because that wasn’t the right response, considering. “It is. But – there are some, well, side effects, I guess, of the palladium core. That are becoming a problem.”
“What side effects?” Pepper asks, back straight and eyes focused.
“Uh,” he considers going through it, running through the exhaustion and the strain it’s putting on his liver and kidneys and all the little symptoms that make him miserable, but it’s just delaying the inevitable. At this point, there’s only one side effect that matters. “Well. Just. You know.” He just has to say it. He doesn’t want to say it. They’re going to be so upset. “Death.”
Pepper jerks back in her seat like he’s slapped her.
Rhodey reacts slower, his eyes closing and his elbows hitting the edge of the table as his head sinks into his hands. “How long?”
His mouth is so dry and his tongue feels too big for his mouth and takes a sip of now cold coffee before he can make himself answer. “Six days.”
“You’ve known for six days?” Pepper asks.
She’s smarter than that, but he can’t judge her for hoping. He shakes his head. Rhodey still hasn’t lifted his head from his hands.
“You are not dying in six days,” she says, firm and certain and every inch the woman he made his CEO.
He loves her so much.
“As of last night, the palladium toxicity in my blood had reached seventy six percent of survivable levels,” he answers. “It’s not a perfect estimate. I could have seven days.”
“You could have five,” Rhodey says, voice too muffled for Tony to make anything out from it besides the words themselves.
He could have five.
“JARVIS has been running the calculations and he’s been conservative with it,” he says. “It’s more likely I have eight than five.”
“You are not going to die,” Pepper says, phone in hand and no longer looking at him as she types furiously. “Have JARVIS send me all your stats.”
“Pepper, there’s nothing to be done,” he says gently. “Without the arc reactor, the shrapnel will make its way to my heart within a few hours. The palladium is the only viable core but it’s poisoning me. Chlorophyl helps with the symptoms, but the palladium mimics my red blood cells. Even dialysis won’t do me any good.”
“We’ll remove the shrapnel,” she says, still focused on her phone.
He stares, because if it were that easy he wouldn’t have the arc reactor to begin with. “You can’t. They’re impossible to get to without damaging my heart, which is a little counter productive, I feel.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she says, “we’ll get you a new one.”
“A new heart?” he asks. “Pepper, come on. I have like eight things that disqualify me as a heart transplant recipient. At least half of them have been very well documented by the tabloids.”
“I believe any transplant committee will find a substantial donation to be motivating enough,” she says. “You’ve personally pioneered enough life saving medical breakthroughs that one heart is the least they could do.”
He leans over to place a hand over her phone.
She jerks away from him, finally meeting his eyes again in a glare. “What? What, Tony? I’m busy.”
“Don’t you think it’s a little unethical to push me to the top of the list that I’m not qualified to be on?” he asks.
“Do you think ethics will stop me from saving your life?” she spits. “I will track down whoever is left from the Ten Rings and rip their hearts out of their chest myself before I let you die. Leave me alone, I’m handling it.”
She stands up quickly enough that her chair topples back and he bolts after her. She doesn’t make it more than two steps away before he’s grabbing her wrist, pulling her back as gently as he can. Her face twists, but before she manages to start yelling at him again, he says, “It won’t work. The chances of me surviving surgery aren’t good-”
“Better than doing nothing,” she starts.
He talks over her. “And even if it I do, it won’t save me. The palladium can’t be cleared from my blood prior to surgery. Without the arc reactor continually releasing palladium into my system, my kidney will be able to catch up, but not until then. Combine that with a new heart and even if you replace half my blood with transfusions, I won’t make it.” He squeezes her wrist, rubbing his thumb against the back of her hand. “I don’t want to die on an operating table, Pepper.”
She crumples, first her face then the rest of her. He catches her around the waist and holds her against him. She fists her hands in the back of his shirt and she’s trembling and he hates this. “I don’t want you to die.”
“I know,” he murmurs, kissing the top of her head. “I’m sorry.”
Pepper shifts, moving so her ear is pressed precisely to the left of his arc reactor and squirming as close to him as she can get. He rubs a hand up and down her back and says nothing, knowing exactly what she’s doing. It’s the only way to hear his heart beat unassisted.
Rhodey has his back to them, still hunched over.
“I’m sorry to interrupt, Sir,” JARVIS says, voice coming through clearly from the kitchen counter where he left his phone. “But I’ve just received a security alert regarding the gate. The gate was hacked and a car is coming up the driveway. The camera’s picked up Miss Rushman and Agent Coulson.”
Ah, shit.
“I’ll deal with it,” Pepper says, pulling back and wiping her face. “I did tell Natalie to give Phil priority.”
“Wait,” he says, but she’s already walking away, and he doesn’t have the time to go after her, just in case she’s not successful at sending all of them away.
Rhodey still hasn’t moved.
He approaches cautiously, squatting down next to him and placing a tentative hand on his knee. “Hey, honey bear. You’re making me nervous.”
“This isn’t how it’s supposed to go,” he says, still muffled.
Tony reaches up, lightly tugging at Rhodey’s hands. He gives in, lowering them to hang between his knees, and Tony’s heart gives a painful clench that has nothing to do with his arc reactor. Rhodey’s eyes are red. At least he’s not crying. Pepper’s tears are awful, but manageable. Rhodey’s would undo him completely. “Yeah. Sorry.”
“I’m the soldier,” he says, voice straining with the obvious effort it’s taking him to keep his tone even. “I’ve been to war. I’ve been blown up and shot and then gone back to do it all again. That’s what I signed up for. That’s what you signed up for. It was supposed to be me.”
He remembers how terrible it was, especially in the beginning before the fear had become common. He couldn’t even be listed as Rhodey’s next of kin. Enough people in the military owed him favors that he’d hear if anything happened to him anyway, since their friendship was public enough, but the truth of it was he hadn’t wanted him to go at all.
His military contracts had as much to do with his father’s legacy as they did with him having one officer in particular that he was trying to keep safe, as it did with him identifying too much with spouses and children and parents and never wanting anyone else to live his worst nightmare.
The fight he and Rhodey had after he shut down weapons manufacturing had been less about the act itself and more about what Rhodey thought it meant.
“I’m sorry,” he repeats, because he doesn’t know what else to say, because if he says what he’s thinking, that he’s glad that Rhodey’s the one that will have to move on, then he’s going to get punched. “I love you.”
“Don’t,” he breathes out harshly, squeezing his eyes shut. “Don’t, Tones.” Then, after several deep breaths, “I love you too.”
“Yeah, but I’ve loved you longer.” Rhodey lets out sharp bark of laughter that sounds dangerously close to a sob. “I loved you practically at first sight, remember,” he continues, because this is important. “It was like getting struck by lightning. You took a little longer, which is fine, but this doesn’t change anything, understand? Even after I’m dead, I’m maintaining my lead, you don’t get to take it from me just because I’m no longer around-”
“Tony,” he interrupts, sounding a little less wretched. “Okay, okay, jeez.”
“I’m serious,” he insists. “No matter how long you love me, it doesn’t matter. I’m always going to have loved you first. I’m always going to have loved you longer.”
Rhodey reaches out, sliding his hand over Tony’s shoulder to grip the back of his neck in a bruising grip. “I’m going to love you the rest of my life, Tony.”
He winces. That sentiment had been comforting once. Now it just breaks his heart. “I’m sorry.”
Rhodey shakes his head but whatever he was going to say is interrupted by JARVIS. “Incoming, Sir.”
He pushes himself to his feet, Rhodey letting his hand drop and standing with him as Pepper rounds the corner with multiple people’s footsteps behind her.
Woah.
“Oh, no, I already told you to fuck off before,” he says, crossing his arms before glancing over and doing a double take. “Nice catsuit.”
“Is he talking to me or you?” Fury asks Natalie.
“I wouldn’t presume,” she answers.
He blinks. “You’re SHIELD? Oh, come on, I thought for sure you were private. Damn.” He pauses. “Wait, why did you plant one of your people in my company? You could have just made an appointment. Pepper likes Coulson.”
“Pepper liked Coulson,” Pepper corrects darkly, coming to stand next to him, so he has her and Rhodey on either side.
Natalie frowns and Coulson rubs a hand over his mouth to hide the twitch of his lips that Tony thinks might count as laughter. “I told you that you were made.”
“How?” she asks, but she’s not talking to Coulson.
Now he’s the one confused. “Wasn’t I supposed to know? You kicked Happy’s ass in the ring within two minutes of us meeting. You did that to get my attention, because you are not my only pretty employee, and the position of my assistant is actually competitive. I had to be the one to choose you. Hence, the ass kicking. You knew I was going to be curious after that, of course I was going to dig.”
“Yes,” she agrees. “But you were supposed to find my history of living on the street and competing in black market run fight clubs. Only my manufactured history is searchable.”
“Not totally manufactured, I bet,” he says dryly. “Anyway, yes, I found that. I also found,” he raises his voice, “J, give us a slide show, will you?”
The television in the living room flickers on and a series of pictures fill the screen. All of them Natalie, in different countries and different hair colors and outfits, and all of them pictures not of her, just ones she’s in the background in. Half of these were pulled off people’s Facebook vacation albums.
“You’re not on any of the usual government databases, and I did break into them personally to double check, so I figured you were private. I thought you were trying to get access to my personal files for the armor.” He huffs. “I feel a little insulted, actually. I thought I meant something to you, but you were just, what, babysitting? Harsh.”
Pepper is pinching the bridge of her nose. “You thought she was a corporate spy and you kept her around?”
“Well, I wasn’t able to find out who’s, and that seemed like important information to get before I fired her,” he says. “Besides, she’s a decent assistant. It’s so hard to find good help these days.”
“Where did you get those?” Natalie asks, frowning at the images.
“Around,” he waves his hand vaguely. “Don’t worry, your cover was more than enough for SI’s standard background check. But my assistant isn’t a position that gets vetted by HR, you know.”
Her frown deepens.
“I take Sir’s safety very seriously,” JARVIS offers. “Anyone who will have such intimate access to him must be checked as thoroughly as possible. Even so, it took me several weeks to compile all of these. Please do not be alarmed. It would be almost impossible for any other program or person to achieve the same.”
She’s still frowning. It’s a little disconcerting.
“Anyway,” he says, “can you all leave? I’m kind of busy right now. In fact – I’m absolutely slammed with work at the moment, but I’ll have some time for you in say, I don’t know, eight days? Yeah, eight days, then my schedule is wide open for my very good friends over at SHIELD.”
It’s likely too soon for either Rhodey or Pepper to find him funny, but that doesn’t change that he very much is.
Fury sighs. “I’m here to talk to you about your father.”
“Oh, kill me,” he says instantly.
Pepper steps on his foot. He’s just grateful she’s not wearing heels.
~
Coulson reads her in on the way to Santa Barbara. Natasha doesn’t say anything, because Director Fury is driving, and it’s not her place. She wonders if Coulson waited to read her in until just now for that reason.
“You’re thinking so loudly that you’re giving me a headache,” Fury complains. “Bitch at me now if you’re going to. Fuck knows I won’t have any patience left after dealing with Stark.”
She understands, intellectually, not wanting to give up SHIELD property and information to a man with no connection or loyalty to them, especially when it wasn’t impossible that he’d discover a solution without their help. He was Tony Stark, after all.
However.
“You’re giving him the last week of his life to try and figure out something that hundreds of SHIELD scientists have failed to figure out over the past two decades,” she says and lets just enough disapproval leak into her voice that he knows she means it.
“He’s a pessimist, he probably has closer to two weeks if he can stay out of the suit,” Fury answers. Then, with the closest to admiration that she’s ever heard from him, “None of those scientists were Tony Stark. I bet the bastard won’t even need the week.”
Pepper greets Coulson warmly then sees her, clocks her outfit choice, then sees Fury and her kind face goes flat and disapproving. Natasha notes that she’s wearing the shirt that she last saw on Tony Stark, so it appears that he really had gone and gotten himself a different redhead.
Rhodes is here too. Fury suggests that he and Stark speak in private. Pepper suggests he get to the point before she has him removed for trespassing.
Pepper is stone, but Rhode’s eyes tell her either he’s discovered a new allergy or Stark has told him, and likely Pepper, the truth of his life expectancy.
That’s confirmed that when Fury mentions the possibility of new knowledge available that his father left behind, still not saying anything about his health outright, Stark rubs his forehead and says, “You couldn’t have show up, I don’t know, twenty minutes earlier? It would have saved me a lot of trouble.”
“Tony,” Pepper says in warning before pressing her lips together. “We’re going to have a conversation about you keeping important secrets from us. Especially regarding you dying.”
“I can literally feel my will to live sapping away,” he replies. “Don’t do this to me, Pep, come on.”
“You told them,” Fury says flatly. He doesn’t seem upset. Natasha thinks this might be what he looks like when he’s surprised.
Stark shrugs. “I was blackmailed.”
“Bribed at best,” Rhodes says, speaking for the first time.
A smirk curls at the edge of Stark’s mouth, the same lazy satisfaction that she’s seen him display in dozens of interviews discussing SI’s stock prices before it smooths out into a more neutral expression.
She gives Rhodes a second look, not having anticipated that. Rhodes has been Stark’s best friend more or less publicly for over twenty years, but there’s never been a record of either of them having any sort of romantic or sexual relationship with other men. It seems odd to her that their first dalliance with the same sex would be with each other, even on the heels of Stark telling him that he’s dying. Especially if Stark had also slept with Pepper last night. Then again, plenty of men insist that their sexual escapades are completely heterosexual as long as a woman is between them during it.
It's almost believable, except things seem remarkably comfortable between the three of them. And Rhodes comment of bribery wouldn’t make any sense unless Stark had been on the receiving end of his attention and not Pepper.
Maybe it’s not new. Rhodes is military and Stark has been in the media’s spotlight since before he was born. They have plenty of reasons to hide any sort of sexual relationship between them, even if it’s casual. It’s odd they’ve never gotten caught with any other men, but the military is notoriously tight lipped about that sort of thing. Stark isn’t, however perhaps its simply preferences coming into play.
The more Fury talks about his father, the more agitated Stark becomes, brushing off every attempt he makes to say that Howard Stark had possessed any positive feelings about his son.
Parents are difficult. Legacies are hard. Children are harder. But Natasha’s read Stark’s file and she doesn’t understand how much of a disappointment he could have possibly been when he was labeled a genius as a toddler and has lived up to that label every moment of life. Howard Stark had wanted a child capable of continuing his work and running his company and Stark’s name started appearing in design schematics while he was still in middle school.
He had problems in school, pranks and fights and some explosions that were the consequence of putting Tony Stark near a chemistry lab rather than the result anything malicious. Plenty of stupid rich boys get in more trouble than Stark ever did.
“Lithium dioxide leaves you worse off after it fades,” Stark says, pulling her attention back to the conversation. “I didn’t use it for a reason. The side effects aren’t worth it.”
“I think we’re past the point of worrying about side effects,” Fury says.
“I think not worrying about side effects is how we got in this position in the first place,” Pepper points out.
Fury shrugs. “Either you figure out a way to save your own life and the side effects won’t matter or you’re dead in a week before they have a chance to manifest. In the meanwhile, it gives you the strength and energy to focus.”
She was supposed to stab him when she got a chance, but that’s when they were planning to talk to him alone. Pepper is already pissed at them and Rhodes doesn’t exactly seem friendly either. Stabbing Stark in front of them certainly won’t help matters.
Stark rubs at his chest. The rash probably feels like it’s burning him, with is the least lethal of the ways the palladium is harming him but it is the most painful. “Good point. Fine.”
“Agent Romanov,” Fury says.
Natasha takes out the syringe and moves forward, but Rhodes steps in front of Stark, glaring. He holds out his hand. “I’ll do it.”
“How do we know that’s actually lithium dioxide?” Pepper asks.
Stark rolls his eyes. “What, it’s poison? If they wanted me dead all they have to do is wait.”
That gets him two dirty looks. Natasha places the syringe in Rhodes’s hands and Stark tilts his head to the side. Rhodes is gentle as he eases the needle into the muscle of Stark’s neck and presses down the on the plunger.
Stark hisses through his teeth, but the effects are immediate, the rash fading and Stark’s breathing coming out deeper and smoother. “Damn. That’s nice.”
“We aim to please,” Fury says dryly. “Agent Coulson has the research and he’ll hang around to assist-”
“No,” Pepper says.
Fury raises his eyebrow. “No?”
“No,” she repeats. “We don’t work for you and Howard Stark left all of his intellectual property to Tony. Unless you have a separate will making allowances for any research left in SHIELD’S hands, then any discoveries made from this are the property of Tony Stark. Ph – Mr. Coulson isn’t a scientist and if we need one then we have our own. You will leave Howard Stark’s research with us and if we discover anything, we’ll decide if it’s to be shared.”
“That’s not-”
“Tony’s dying,” she cuts him off. “I’m not. No matter what happens, Mr. Fury, you don’t want me as the enemy. If you don’t think I’m capable of making your operation public enemy number one before you’ve even properly come out as public, then you’re severely underestimating me.”
Rhodes nods, eyes hard, and Natasha doesn’t need to tell Fury how difficult a colonel could make things for them if he was sufficiently motivated.
“Incoming,” Stark’s AI announces.
They all turn as the door opens and Natasha knows who it is by the heavy footsteps alone.
Hogan freezes when he sees all of them. He’s in his typical suit and he has a box of Randy’s Donuts in his hands. “Uh.”
“Is that for me?” Stark asks, closing the distance between them to reach for the box.
Hogan lifts the box into the air, out of his reach, which is a low blow. “No, it’s for my other boss who doesn’t have secret meetings with shady government agencies without telling me.”
“It’s not a meeting, they just showed up, don’t be like this,” he says, his brown eyes going wide and pleading like he’s a quarter of his actual age.
Hogan relents and lowers the box back into grabbing range. “Happy birthday, Tony. The cleaning crew’s already gone through the house and most of the reporters have gotten bored waiting for you to get back.” He pauses. “I wouldn’t look at the headlines. Lots of people have a lot of speculation about you and Pepper skipping the party.”
“Not Rhodey?” Stark asks, mouth already full of donut.
“No one really saw him arrive and considering every branch of the military is calling for your head on a pike, his supposed absence doesn’t seem to have raised any red flags,” he says, also producing a napkin from his pockets that Stark ignores.
If anyone was ever playing babysitter to Stark, it was definitely Hogan, and not her.
“Why are you still here?” Pepper asks them bluntly, arms crossed.
“You should have finished the omelette, you’re mean when you’re hungry. Here, have a donut,” Stark says, waving the open box beneath her nose. The loss of the worst of his symptoms seems to have put Stark in a much better mood. That’s why the initial plan had involved stabbing him first.
“Good luck,” Fury says.
Stark salutes him with a donut.
They’re silent until they’re back in the car, then Fury says, “Mr. Coulson, huh?”
“She’ll get over it,” Coulson says. “If Tony lives. If he doesn’t, I’m requesting an assignment to somewhere remote and dangerous where no one owns so much as a cell phone.”
“Denied,” Fury answers automatically.
Natasha smiles and looks out the window as the scenery whizzes past them. It’ll take a miracle for Stark to figure this out in time to save himself.
Luckily, he’s got a decent track record with those.
She changes and returns to Stark Industries as Natalie Rushman to review pending contracts since they still need someone on the inside at least until this situation is handled.
A few people make teasing comments about her being demoted that she laughs off and then she loses herself in doing the actual work to go along with her fake job. At this point, all there is for her to do is wait.
She eats lunch at her desk, even though that’s frowned on at Stark Industries, and it’s sometime after everyone else has returned that her phone rings.
It’s not at all who she’s expecting.
“You’re late,” Stark says as soon as she answers.
“I’m at the office reviewing the terms for our next rubber cement subcontractor,” she answers, more off balance by this phone call than she should be.
“Well, that’s useful, I guess, except that’s not your job. I didn’t fire you. Did you quit? I don’t remember you quitting. If I didn’t fire you and you didn’t quit, then you’re late for work, Miss Rushman,” he says, even though he knows that’s not her name.
She’s not a scientist. She’s SHIELD, who Pepper had clearly told to fuck off.
There’s nothing Stark could possibly need from her.
She shuts off her computer and grabs her purse. “My apologies, Mr. Stark.”
“I’ll let it slide, just this once, because I’m such an easy going guy. You know that Stark Expo diorama that’s hanging on the wall in the executive suits? Take it down and bring it here. Carefully. Not a single tree bent, got it?”
“Understood,” she says, stepping into the elevator and hitting the button from the top floor.
“Okay, awesome, great,” he answers, sounding distracted again. “Rhodey, don’t touch that, there’s an order to this madness, I promise.”
It cuts off abruptly enough that she assumes JARVIS ended that call.
Pepper isn’t in the office today, which she supposes should be expected, and she’s still Stark’s assistant so no one bats an eye at her request to take down the diorama or her requisitioning a company truck. She does get an uncertain look when she jumps into the driver’s seat, but before she can get too irritated about it the manager says, “It’s not safe to drive in heels.”
“I’m a professional,” she answers, remembering at the last moment to give him a dazzling smile before pulling out onto the street.
She thinks she’s just here to make a drop off, the gate opening so she can drive directly to Stark’s personal garage and workshop. Except after she helps Stark fit it all back together on one of his worktables, he asks her, “What does this look like to you?”
They’re alone, Rhodes and Pepper likely upstairs and dealing with the press and military respectively. “A park?”
He shoots her a grin, eyes bright, and says, “We can do better than that. J, give me a three dimensional rendering.” To her, he adds, “I could have made one off photos but I figure this isn’t something where we have any room for error.”
She doesn’t know what he’s talking about, so she keeps silent. She watches as he manipulates the design, streamlining it and transforming it from a park to an atom.
Half a day. It had taken him half a day to discover what hundreds of scientists had spent twenty years failing to figure out.
JARVIS says the new element is a viable replacement for palladium, but can’t be synthesized. Stark isn’t phased at all, grinning at her over the bright blue dot he’s holding in his hand. “Hope you brought that catsuit. We’re going have to do some remodeling and you’re going to need to do some heavy lifting. Rhodey talks a big game but he bitches something awful when I make him carry things.”
His smile is painful with its brightness, his eyes crinkling at the corners, and she’s watched hundreds of hours of footage and spent weeks masquerading as his assistant and she’s never seen him smile like this.
“I lied to you,” she says, in case he’s managed to forget that somehow.
He doesn’t so much as blink. “Yeah, but I knew you were doing that. You being a liar was already factored into my assessment. The SHIELD part is a little disappointing, but I’ll recover.”
She’s not sure what to do with that, so she asks, “What are you going to call the element?”
“It already has a name,” he answers. “My father didn’t create an element out of thin air. He hid the atomical structure because the material itself was no longer available. The only piece of vibranium he had he turned into Captain America’s shield.”
“Vibranium,” she repeats, thinking of how long not only SHIELD but several world organizations have been trying to replicate the properties of the mythical metal and how nothing ever stood up to the stories. “That’s an alloy.”
It’s what everyone thought. It had to be.
Except that all the information about Captain America’s shield had been lost during the war and Fury had thought that Stark would find the answer to his heart problems in Howard Stark’s notes.
“I don’t know what he left behind in SHIELD,” Stark says, unable or maybe not bothering to keep all the bitterness down, “but metal composition is sort of a big deal for a weapons manufacturer. Maybe I don’t know my father at all, but I know his work. That shield wasn’t an alloy. Vibranium may be as lost to us as Captain America, but that’s fine. Now I know how to make more.”
“JARVIS says it can’t be synthesized,” she reminds him.
He grins. “He still has a thing or two to learn. Right, J?”
“Always, Sir,” the AI replies, managing to sound warm and mocking at the same time. “You are an education.”
“I didn’t program him with the sass, he did that on his own,” Stark tells her. She’s smiles, but in spite of the face she’s made a career out of being unreadable, he frowns at her. “Don’t be weird about this, come on. I even saved you a donut. You can’t have it if you’re going to be weird.”
He shoves aside a stack of papers, unearthing the partially smushed box of Randy’s Donuts. He grabs it and opens it, revealing one glazed donut whole and untouched, if a little lopsided.
“You’re the one being weird,” she says finally, picking up the donut and biting into it, the sweetness bursting and dissolving against her tongue.
“I get that a lot,” he tells her before pushing open door to the workshop and yelling up the stairs, “Good news! We’re in hardware mode!”
Hardware mode?
Pepper shouts down, “Absolutely not!” and Rhodes groans, “Not again.”
“It’s going to be fun,” Tony assures her. “I’ll let you have the sledgehammer.”
She does like sledgehammers.
~
Rhodey lies to several important generals and senators, telling them that Tony is hard at work creating an Iron Man suit for the military’s use and he’s staying by his side to help the process along. He doesn’t feel at all bad about it because the suit, sleek and chrome, is already made and also he doesn’t care about orders – there is nowhere he’s going to be right now except by Tony’s side.
The discovery of an element that will take the place of palladium makes relief sweep through him, so heady that he’d kiss Tony if Romanov wasn’t here.
He doesn’t like that Romanov is here.
Tony, despite what he thinks of himself, is actually a pretty good judge of character, which is why Rhodey doesn’t understand why he’s letting the superspy hang around.
Pepper finishes up her call and says, “Don’t knock down any walls and be careful of the load bearing ones. I’m moving to your bedroom.” Because it’s the only room in the house besides the workshop that’s sound proofed.
“I know, I know,” Tony rolls his eyes. “I designed this place myself, this isn’t like Chicago.”
He remembers Chicago. Specifically, he remembers Pepper’s frantic calls and Tony’s grudging hospital visit in Chicago. In his defense, the building’s blueprints had been missing some important information.
Pepper doesn’t at all have the same restraint concerning Romanov, or maybe she has different concerns and is staking her claim. She grabs the front of Tony’s shirt and pulls him down enough to slot her lips against his. Tony returns the kiss immediately and Rhodey doesn’t regret pushing them together, because Tony’s loved Pepper for years and it’s never made Tony love him any less before and if he thought it would now, then he wouldn’t have done it. But he is jealous of the ease, of the way she can just kiss him no matter who’s watching and it doesn’t matter.
“I told you that you weren’t going to die,” she says, quiet and fierce.
Tony rubs his thumb across her cheek. “Add it to your pile of I told you so’s, Miss Potts.”
“Already done, Mr. Stark,” she returns. She pauses to squeeze Rhodey’s arm as she passes and it eases something inside of him to see his relief and fear and desperate hope reflected in her face. Maybe the best part of this is it means all of them are less alone now.
Tony claps his hands together. “Nat, there’s an electric box in the middle of the living room floor, start there while Rhodey and I prep the workshop.”
“Nat?” she repeats incredulously, then, “Why is all of this locked behind concrete anyway? These things are usually more accessible.”
“I like to tinker,” he admits. “It was maybe a concern of some people that if I had easy access, I might tinker the house right off the cliff.”
“You would have,” Rhodey says and he can hear Pepper’s laugh from halfway up the stairs. “I’m sticking by this one, Tones, I won’t feel bad about it.”
“Bitch, bitch, bitch,” he says, taking the stairs to the workshop two at a time.
Rhodey follows at a more sedate pace. He’s just reached the bottom step when Tony crowds him against the wall, looping his arms around his neck. “Hey.”
“Tony,” he hisses, but it’s at odds with the way he settles his hands against Tony’s hips.
“It’s good news, it’s great news, stop worrying for a second and just–” Rhodey kisses him, because he wants to anyway, and it’s one of the only ways he’s found to get Tony to stop talking. He’s been kissing Tony for over half his life and it never fails to make him feel warm and heavy and more in his body than any other time. Kissing and touching and holding Tony makes him feel alive and every time he’s faced with the possibility of it being taken away from him, it’s gutting.
His lips feel bruised when he pulls back and Tony goes on his tip toes to kiss him one more time before stepping back and saying, “We have so much shit to move, we’re going to need so much room for this, please be careful about it, you know I have a system.”
“Piles of shit is not a system,” he says for maybe the thousandth time since they met.
“If it works, then it’s a system,” he insists, also for the thousandth time, and Rhodey smiles and doesn’t kiss him because then they’ll never get anything done and he’d prefer if the palladium stopped poisoning Tony sooner rather than later.
Romanov appears downstairs to announce she’s sufficiently destroyed the floor upstairs. She must have taken some time to raid one of the generically stocked guest rooms, because she’s exchanged her skin tight dress for leggings and a too large SI t-shirt along with a pair of sneakers that look a little big, but are at least close toed. She throws herself into making holes in the wall big enough to run the pipe through with a sort of glee that he doesn’t think is at all faked.
“Wouldn’t this be easier with a particle accelerator?” he asks after Tony video calls R&D and makes them run though several untouched prisms they have before picking one and telling them that Happy will be along to pick it up shortly, as long as a laundry list of slightly more generic materials.
He grimaces. “Yeah, but I don’t own one. Yet. And I’m not asking Pym for shit. This will work fine, probably. I miniaturized the arc reactor in a cave, I can synthesize vibranium in my basement.”
And his father had said he was unable to synthesize vibranium because he was limited by the technology of his time, so Tony’s going to do this with technology that was available at the time, if only Howard had thought to use it in an unorthodox manner, which Rhodey knows wasn’t his strong suit, at least compared with his son. No one had described Howard Stark as methodical or systemic before meeting Tony.
Sometimes, Rhodey wonders if Howard made himself more like that on purpose, to put distance between himself and Tony. From the many stories of what Howard was like when he was younger, he would have thought that he’d get it, the way Tony’s mind works.
Rhodey’s met a lot of smart people. Hell, he is a smart person – he earned his place at MIT fair and square. But when it comes to quicksilver intelligence and the pure creativity of invention, not a single person has even held a match to Tony. He’s never asked, because he thinks that he won’t like the answer, but sometimes he thinks that it has to be lonely, to be that smart and crazy and have people that admire and help and support you but no one who gets it.
It’s dark by the time everything is set up and JARVIS and Tony have both checked and rechecked all their calculations.
“Ready?” Tony asks, grinning. “You’re about to see history.”
Happy squints. “Do we need the sunglasses? It’s really dark.”
“They’re not sunglasses, and yes, because your retinas are very valuable to me,” he answers.
Pepper is frowning at the scope. “If you don’t want this to burn through the wall and actually hit the silver, you’re going to want to adjust it about twenty degrees.”
“Maybe I did want to burn though the wall, did you think about that?” he asks, but dutifully adjusts it. “Okay, there, any more comments from the peanut gallery or can we get this show on the road?”
Romanov is looking at the labyrinth of pipe that the three of them had laid out. “What are the chances that this will explode?”
“Low, now stop talking,” he says and Rhodey grins. “We’re starting now, I can’t take anymore hurtful commentary on my genius. I’m going to get performance anxiety. J, take it away.”
JARVIS doesn’t reply, but a very ominous whirring does start from what both sounds and feels like the base of the house. Tony swore up and down nothing he was doing would mess with the structural integrity of the house but he still spends about five seconds convinced the house is going to vibrate apart. Then a beam of pure white light is hitting the silver triangle dead on – thank you, Pepper – and they all watch as Tony synthesizes vibranium in his basement.
“Congratulations, Sir,” Jarvis says quietly, the terrible whirring coming to a stop and the laser flickering out.
Tony moves to jump over the pipe, then seems to reconsider how they’re keeping it up with the worst jury-rigged system Rhodey’s seen since the last time they got drunk and played Mouse Trap, and ducks underneath it instead. He uses pliers to pick up the shimmering triangle, grinning as he holds it out to them. “The alchemists dreamt of turning lead into gold. I give you silver to vibranium.”
Romanov starts clapping, and for a moment he thinks it’s mocking and he hates her, but when he turns to look the smile on her face seems real enough and she sounds genuine when she says, “Good work, Tony.”
Pepper and Happy are clapping too and Tony flushes and beams, holding his miracle of engineering aloft, so beautiful in victory that Rhodey wants to kiss him badly enough that he can feel it in his bones.
It’s a familiar feeling and he moves past it. Tony’s spare arc reactor accepts the vibranium core without issue and JARVIS gets to running a serious of diagnostics on it. Tony wants to help JARVIS run the tests, insisting it will go faster with the two of them, and also Rhodey can tell that having his workshop in such a state of disarray is making him twitchy, but there’s no point in disassembling anything until JARVIS confirms that the core is functional as is and they don’t need to run through this experiment again.
Pepper says, “None of us have eaten dinner. I’m ordering pizza and you’re eating at least six slices in front of my face. Then you can do science with JARVIS.”
“You are so mean to me,” Tony says.
“You like it,” she answers, all dimples.
Tony turns huge, betrayed eyes in his direction but Rhodey just shrugs. “You do like it.”
They’re all hanging out in the kitchen instead of the living room, since it doesn’t have a giant hole in the floor, and debating whether Romanov ordered pineapple on her pizza as a form of psychological warfare while she ignores them and drizzles barbecue sauce on top, which brings the whole thing to an all new layer of offensive, when Tony’s phone rings.
Vanko is still alive. And Justin Hammer is an idiot who’s going to get a lot people killed.
Pepper is sending alerts to all the SI employees who are scheduled to attend the Hammer Expo, of which she was supposed to be one of them, and Romanov has disappeared to change back into her uniform. Happy is going to drive her and Pepper over to Hammer Industries to see if they can remotely shut everything down, which he’s dubious about. It’s not like they’re going to just let the CEO of Stark Industries waltz in and mess with their classified programming, but Romanov insists that won’t be a problem.
He's more concerned about Tony.
“You can’t use the core yet,” Rhodey shouts as Tony ignores him and goes down to the workshop. “We still don’t know what effect the vibranium will have-”
“If I wear the suit with the palladium core to a fight this big, the use will increase the palladium toxicity to the point where it will kill me,” he says, grabbing the vibranium core over JARVIS’s protest.
“Using the suit makes it worse? And you were still,” he says, cutting the thought off hallway, distracted and furious, both at this news and because Tony is right.
He winces, possibly at his tone or possibly because he’s just yanked out his arc reactor and tossed it on the table. Rhodey hates seeing the hole in his chest. He shoves in the vibranium powered arc reactor, giving it an extra smack for good measure. “Yeah, sorry, I did cut down on my use a lot. And I even tried to find something to replace it! But it turns out even high speed racing isn’t the same thrill as piloting the suit, so, you know.”
“That’s what that shit in Monaco was about?” he demands but Tony doesn’t answer, instead grimacing and swaying on his feet. Rhodey reaches out to steady him, “Woah, okay, maybe we should take that out now-”
“This feels awesome,” he wheezes. “Tastes weird – like metal. And coconut?”
“JARVIS,” he says.
“The vibranium core seems to be reacting well to Sir’s physiology and seems to be actively clearing out the palladium. I still would not recommend going out with it untested.”
Tony straightens, absently patting him on the chest. “I’m doing this AJA, got it, now get me my suit. And Rhodey’s.”
He stares. “What?”
“What, you don’t want to help? I just assumed you would want to, you know, assist in the kicking of Hammer’s ass and take your suit out on a little test run, but if you want to wait here all safe and sound then I’m not complaining-”
“Shut up and give me my suit,” he demands.
Tony grips the back of his neck and pulls him down for a kiss, then says, “Okay, maybe you’re right, maybe I do like it.”
~
Natasha is terrifying.
Pepper had been aware that she had to be skilled, of course, but knowing that theoretically and trailing behind her as she takes out security at every level is quite another. She’s also not bad computer programming wise, and is actually helpful at untangling the mess of code that Vanko used to take control of Hammer’s inferior suits.
It also doesn’t hurt that she finds the files with the arc reactor information Vanko had given them and destroys them without her having to ask. She even offers to set the lab on fire, but Pepper knows Hammer isn’t the type to keep paper files, and also they’re already on shaky enough ground legally as it is.
She waits until they’re outside Hammer Industries, just the two of them while Happy is busy handing out SI business cards to those that had managed to put of decent fight. She doesn’t like liars. She likes liars that try and worm their way to Tony’s side and manipulate even less. But Tony doesn’t seem to be holding a grudge and Natasha had helped them and not just in ways that are because she’s following orders.
“Thank you.”
Natasha turns to her carefully, too controlled for Pepper to read anything in her face. “I’m glad everything worked out.”
It’s noncommittal and cautious and Pepper just nods and lets her read whatever she needs to into that.
They hear the repulsors first and Natasha’s curls go flying as Tony and Rhodey land in front of them, denting the pavement. The suit is more than capable of landing softly, so they did that on purpose. Their suits are riddled with bullet holes – or bullet dents, as Tony insists she calls them, because holes implies that they made if through his suit which they absolutely did not – but both of them seem downright cheery when their face plates open. Rhodey cracks his neck from side to side. “That was fun.”
“Hammer’s stock is going to tank,” Pepper says. “We could do a hostile takeover and burn it to the ground.”
Maybe she’s regretting rejecting Natasha’s offer to burn down the lab a little bit.
Tony places a hand over his heart. “Baby, don’t talk dirty to me when I’m in the suit, there’s not enough room in here.”
Natasha’s lips press together which gives the impression of disapproval but Pepper’s pretty sure it’s to prevent her from smiling. “I have to report in with SHIELD. They’ll handle some of the legal fall out. Fury will probably be giving you a call in the morning.”
Tony pulls a face. “Tell him the answer is no and also he’ll have to pry my equations for synthesizing vibranium from my cold dead corpse.”
She does smile this time. “I’ll paraphrase.”
“Don’t paraphrase!” he yells at her retreating figure. “Word for word, Nat! Tell him to kiss my ass!”
“You have got to stop antagonizing the leaders of powerful organizations,” Rhodey says.
“Everyone needs a hobby,” he says. “Hey, honey, want a ride?”
Pepper raises an eyebrow. “I’m driving back with Happy. I’ll meet you two at the house.”
Rhodey shifts his weight, something that’s even more noticeable in the suit. “I’m getting like a hundred calls right now, I should really deal with – everyone.”
“Tomorrow,” she says, because Tony won’t, because he’s made a life out of letting Rhodey go, because the past twenty four hours have been stressful and strange and they deserve this, all three of them. “Come home tonight. We’ll fabricate a medical report or something if they decide to be asses about it.”
Rhodey hesitates then looks to Tony.
The want on his face is so naked and obvious that Pepper doesn’t understand how it can even be a question. But it’s always been that obvious and Tony has always let Rhodey leave, because that’s the life the two of them live, almost as dedicated to their careers as they are to each other. Almost.
Maybe because Pepper suggested it, or maybe because Tony is learning to be selfish in the important ways, he says, “Just twelve hours, pumpkin pie. How mad can they get over twelve hours?”
Rhodey lets out a breath, but his shoulders loosen and he’s smiling. “I guess I’ll find out.”
When they’re all home, they shower and eat leftover pizza and fall exhausted into Tony’s bed without discussion. It won’t always be like this, because Pepper is going to get a lot nights where she has Tony to herself while Rhodey is working who knows where, and he deserves to have nights with Tony to himself too and she won’t ever begrudge him that. But after everything, none of them want to be alone, and so they curl around Tony in his too large bed, keeping him safely tucked between them.
She falls asleep with her head pressed against Tony’s shoulder and Rhodey’s laughter in her ear as he and Tony talk about something she’s too exhausted to try and pay attention to. It’s warm and comfortable and nothing she thought that she’d be allowed to have and so she finds herself fiercely grateful for every bit of it.
~
“Tony Stark: yes,” Fury reads from her report, raising his eyebrow. “Where’s the assessment for Iron Man?”
“Irrelevant,” Natasha says coolly. “Anyone can pilot the Iron Man armor. Only one man can build it.”
She’s prepared for a fight, for an argument, for Fury to order her to complete her assessment as assigned and for Coulson to give her one of his bitchiest looks for pissing off Fury, again.
What she’s not prepared for is for him to smile at her. “Congratulations, Agent Romanov. You pass.”
Irritation and disappointment sweep through her although she keeps her expression even. “Another loyalty test?”
It’s only to be expected. She’s been providing exemplary service to SHIELD for years, but Clint had turned her to bring her in. It’s to be expected that they’ll never truly trust her. Once a traitor, always a traitor.
“What would be the point of that?” Fury asks. “Look, you’re good, but Stark’s been wearing masks and playing to his reputation since before you were born. He earned his first headline when he was six. I knew Howard. I liked him, even, most days. But he wasn’t an easy man to get along with, preferring to be viewed as all flash and no substance, especially when he was younger. Lots of people fell for it. And despite how much he’d hate to hear it, Stark is a lot like his old man. I had to know if he’d fool you too. But you’re the best for a reason.”
The trust means more to her than the praise, but she doesn’t dwell on either. “Why did you have to know if I’d be able to read him?”
“Because if you’re going to successfully work together, you’re going to need to understand each other,” he answers.
“You want me to be his handler?” she asks, surprised at finding herself not totally opposed at the idea. He’ll certainly need it, considering how quick he is to piss people off and how his combat experience is almost entirely solitary, to say nothing of how he’ll chafe under the leadership of anyone he doesn’t trust. He follows Rhodes and Pepper’s leads easily enough, but they’ve spent years earning that. Whoever the team lead is for the Avengers is going to have to prove themselves if they want Tony to give them the time of day, which is an attitude no one qualified to lead the initiative is going to put up with. Someone needs to be his buffer.
“Agent Coulson is the handler for all members of the Avengers Initiative,” Fury says.
She’s circled back to irritation. “Then what is the point of all this?”
He leans back, smiling at her in a way that has her itching for something pointed. “You’re being reassigned. Welcome to the Avengers, Agent Romanov.”