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01.
On his best days, Tony was only late. On his worst days, he didn’t show up at all and feigned ignorance when he’d been told twenty six times within twenty four hours that he was supposed to be at the meeting or the award ceremony or the presentation. He showed up for speeches and he showed up for photo-shoots and he showed up for liquor. After he came back from that God-forsaken cave, he showed up for war when he was needed but he still didn’t show up for meetings on time or even at all.
Rhodey was his best friend, liaison and baby-sitter and when Tony was late it was always (always) Rhodey that was sent out to find him. Rhodey followed the flashing lights, beautiful women and the smell of booze until he found Tony in the middle of a crowd of barely dressed women all ready to strip naked for him and his million dollar smile. The arc-reactor glowed under his shirt while he sweet-talked another and another one—and he always looked at Rhodey with that same smile that seemed like it meant something more than the hollow little smirk he gave the careless women surrounding him.
Some days that smile was the only thing that kept Rhodey sane when he wanted to strangle Tony.
“Rhodey!” he said with his arm reaching out for him, “ladies,” he said, “excuse me.” They all pouted and Tony left them behind because they were worthless to him. There was lipstick on his neck and his collar as he slid an arm around Rhodey and pulled him into a hug. “I was waiting for you.”
“You were waiting for me?” Rhodey repeated, “I was waiting for you—you do realize that you were supposed to meet—”
Tony dismissed it with a flutter of his hand because that was all unimportant, “I had a better idea.”
“You had a better idea? Do you have any idea how to looks when you,” and Rhodey stopped so Tony had to stop with a hand on the small of his back and that tipped-back look like he was listening but only until he found enough of an opening to turn the conversation back around to him. “Decide not to show up just because you thought of a better idea.” They were too close and the women with too few clothes were still in his peripheral vision. “Especially when everyone knows what you’re idea of a better idea is. What are you doing? You’re not just a—”
“Just a what?” Tony asked. He had sunglasses in his pocket and his lips looked all pink and that was just strange to notice except that he must have been kissing bright red lipstick to get that smear across his mouth. His eyes narrowed and his lips curved up in an unspoken I-dare-you like I-double-dog-dare-you. “Just a what, Rhodey? Come on, I’m a big boy, I can take it—I’m not just what anymore?”
“Spoiled rich genius,” Rhodey said and he knew it was worthless.
Tony’s smile was infectious and he motioned toward the door, “let me show you my idea. If you still want to leave,” he pressed his hand against Rhodey’s back and they walked away from those women and through the doors. There were waiters and body guards standing in little clumps as they walked, “you’re more than welcome to leave.” The doors opened to a balcony looking over the glittering lights of the city and the bubbling fountain. There was a spread of fancy white dishes with gold edges on the table and Tony smiled at him as he motioned at the table. “I knew you’d find me,” Tony said at his shoulder.
“You could have asked,” Rhodey said.
“It’s more…spontaneous this way.” He snapped his fingers and the waiters started moving like they’d practiced the choreography. Someone offered to take his jacket and Rhodey waved them away as he sat down. Tony was smiling into the napkin he wiped his mouth on. “You’re upset.”
“No,” Rhodey said and leaned back into the chair. He looked out at the lights and the fountain and just sighed.
“I am still,” Tony said, “I always will be. A—what did you call me?”
“Spoiled rich genius,” Rhodey said. He leaned forward and picked up the glass with bubbles inching up the sides and let his elbows rest on the table while Tony picked up his own glass and leaned it forward to tap against his. “Stop making appointments you’re not going to keep.”
Tony was licking his lips after a drink, giving him that stare from across the table that offered no excuses and no promises because they both know they’d be here again. It should have been annoying and it was but it wasn’t because Tony said: “you always show up for my appointments.” He didn’t say: I wanted to see you and they didn’t call this dinner a date but it was the truth anyway.
02.
Pepper brought him a vase full of flowers with a twist of a grin at the corner of her mouth as she set them on his desk and stepped away from them like she was going to sneeze.
“What are those?” he asked without looking up from the game of Tetris he was playing. (He was taking a break because he deserved a break and because he couldn’t make the math work and he couldn’t figure out why because he hadn’t ever had a problem with math in his life.) “More importantly,” he said, “why are they on my desk. I thought we had a policy about unsolicited flowers—or flowers in general. As I recall that policy involved donating them to the nearest trash receptacle or funeral home.”
“I thought you’d want these ones,” Pepper said.
“Why? Did someone tell you they have some sort of magical healing properties because you know I don’t believe in that?” He tapped the screen again to turn the game off because he was seconds from losing and that was just as frustrating as the equations he couldn’t balance, the grin on Pepper’s face and the sudden appearance of flowers that he didn’t want on his desk. “What, why are these still here?”
“Read the card,” Pepper said.
“I don’t want to read the card. I have you to read the card—you read the card and send back cards that say thank you for whatever the card said and I work on saving the world in my shop without flowers.” He picked up the vase and handed them back to her as he stood up and she pushed them back against his hands with that stubborn tenacity that she got only when she was serious and he was (as she called it) grumpy.
“Read the card, Tony,” she said and she never said his name like that unless she was serious. Then she let go and he was left holding a vase overflowing with oversized flowers while she turned and walked away.
He waited until she was gone before he plucked the card out of the center of the mess and dropped the vase and flowers in the trash can. Dummy watched him do it, whirring like he was disappointed. Tony carried the card with him across to the fridge, pulled open the door and flipped the little card over. He read the scrawl on the back with a chill on his skin and blamed the fridge for the gooseflesh crawling up his arms to the back of his neck.
It said: I know Pepper gave these to you, I know you threw them away. I don’t know why I’m sending them or why I was thought of you when I saw them. Rhodey signed it damn near illegibly like he must have been shaking his head by then hoping nobody recognized him.
Tony flipped the card over again and then again and smiled as the fridge door slapped shut. He looked back at the flowers hanging out of the trashcan and couldn’t figure out why the hell they made Rhodey think of him either.
03.
Tony wasn’t ever truly missing when he was wearing the suit because Jarvis always knew where he was.
“You know,” Rhodey said when he found Tony on a rooftop halfway across the world, “there are people that worry about you when you don’t answer your phone.”
Tony was laying on his back with his arms behind his head, helmet open and one knee raised—just watching the clouds in the sky while he ignored everything that Rhodey said to him. The suit was scorched black and scratched to hell all along his ribs.
Rhodey flipped open the helmet and looked around for anywhere that he could sit besides the rooftop—found nothing and sank down to sit on his ass (with a thunk that must have shook the plaster of the ceiling under them) . It wasn’t comfortable because the suits weren’t built for sitting and it seemed only inevitable that he fall back to rest on his elbows next to Tony.
“Hey,” Tony said when Rhodey was leaning back on his elbows next to him.
“What are you doing?” Rhodey asked.
“I was watching the clouds.” Tony looked at him and then up at the sky like that was the only logical answer and Tony fucking Stark of all people ever bothered to do anything so simple and sentimental as watch the clouds. “I promised I wasn’t going to waste my life.”
“Are you hurt?” Rhodey asked. There was blood at the corner of Tony’s mouth.
“I’m trying to tell you something, something I haven’t ever told anyone and you’re interrupting.” He rolled up onto one elbow and straightened his arm so he could see him, the whole suit whirring and clicking as he turned onto his side and looked down at Rhodey.
“So tell me.”
“I promised Yinsen I wouldn’t waste what he gave me, I promised him I wouldn’t waste my life—or my gifts.” He looked strange when he got serious, sounded strange when he was sober and reflecting, looked lost when he talked about those months in the cave that changed him forever and when he looked down at the black and filthy scars across the fingers of the suit he looked like a little boy and not a full grown man. “I threw away your flowers,” he said and then fell onto his back again.
He might have (maybe should have) asked what the hell those two thoughts had to do with one another, might have asked why Tony was on a roof, why he was watching clouds, why he was wearing that same suit and he didn’t. He said, “I knew you would.”
“They were nice,” Tony said.
“I’m glad you liked them,” Rhodey said back.
“They were lavender and orange roses,” Tony said and then pointed up at the sky, “does that look like a duck?”
“More like a goose,” Rhodey said.
“That’s just because it’s a white cloud. It’s a duck. According to some flower theologians, orange roses symbolize passion and lavender roses mean love at first sight.” Tony pointed up again, “that looks like mashed potatoes.”
“Ice cream,” Rhodey said.
“That sounds like an idea,” Tony said and he turned over to push himself up and held his hand out so Rhodey would take it. “Let’s go get some.”
“In the suits?” Rhodey asked, “do you have a credit card in there?” His answer was the click of Tony’s helmet closing and the sound of him taking off. Rhodey sighed and stepped off the roof before he took off after him.
04.
Pepper stopped by his work station with a tight little tickle in the back of her throat and a curiously interested stare at whatever too-brightly colored magazine was open on her clipboard. He didn’t look but she made sure to turn it around so he could see it. “You can’t do things like this,” she said, “it makes—”
“Do things like what?” Tony asked, “work?” He smiled at her and ignored the spread of pictures in the magazine because he always had and it hadn’t made him look bad to anyone that mattered yet. “I try not to as often as possible.”
She smiled at him in that sweet and sincere way that she did and then lifted the picture up so he could see it more clearly. “It makes him look bad. Everyone expects it from you but not him. So if you’re going to date him...”
“I’m not dating him,” Tony said.
“You’re eating ice cream with him, in a park, in public after he sent you flowers.”
“That’s not dating. That’s ice cream. If eating ice cream with someone constitutes dating then I’ve been dating you for years. I think I might have dated my Mother a few times—and that’s not right: Ice cream does not constitute dating.”
But she just smiled at him and left the magazine on his table while she started in on the day’s list of to-do and harangued him about things he hadn’t given her definite answers about when he owed them to her. He deflected and she insisted and somehow he ended up having to come up with another speech. He leaned back into the chair trying to work out if he could recycle an old speech and picked up the magazine while she gave him specifics he wasn’t going to commit to memory.
Rhodey was grinning in the grainy picture they had, licking the ice cream as it melted down the side of the cone and looking oddly boyish inside of that monstrosity of a suit. The War Machine was a impressive suit after Tony stripped all of the Hammer tech out of it and installed his own improvements.
“I’m going to go out,” he said.
“I’ll tell Happy,” Pepper said. She didn’t even seem surprised and he hated that about her (and he loved it about her too).
He slapped the magazine down, found his leather jacket by the door and pulled it on as he headed up the stairs to find Happy licking mustard off his thumb while he pulled on his suit jacket and tried to swallow and ask where they were going all at the same time. Tony turned to walk backward toward the door, pointed a finger at Pepper, “don’t wait up, honey.”
“I never do,” she assured him.
Hours later, when Rhodey finally got back to his apartment, he opened the door with a frown and stopped short when he saw Tony laying across his couch with his legs across the arm and his feet kicking in the air idly. “I don’t need this,” Rhodey said.
“Not exactly the reaction I was hoping for. I’ve been waiting for you all afternoon—”
Rhodey was looking at the lock on his door with another frown, “Did you pick the lock?”
“No—You don’t a TV, you don’t have a decent computer—you don’t have a stash of porn under your bed. None of your music is worth listening to—”
“How did you get in?” Rhodey asked, “if you didn’t pick the lock?”
“I had copies made of all of your keys,” Tony said, “the point I’m trying to make is that you’re—would you close the door? I’m trying to talk to you.”
“You have copies of my keys?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“For situations like this.”
“Like what?”
Tony stood up because it seemed like he should have been standing up for this sort of thing and he tugged at his shirt and felt awkward standing in front of Rhodey when he hadn’t ever really felt awkward standing in front of anyone in years and definitely not since he became Iron Man. “Pepper thinks we’re dating.”
Rhodey laughed.
It was like fission down his spine the relief and the disappointment that couldn’t settle which was the more powerful. Tony shifted on his feet with a smile plastered on his face and shrugged with a short lift and fall of his shoulders. “You never stopped looking for me.” And Rhodey went quiet. “You probably should have. I don’t even know what it must have cost you—ten years worth of favors? Money? Rank? I don’t know anything that means more to you than your job, than your country and—”
“You’re my friend,” Rhodey said.
“Yeah,” Tony agreed. “Your friend.”
“We’re not dating,” Rhodey said. “I can’t—I won’t date you.”
He let that burn down his spine for a minute and then smiled with a little snort of breath out through his nose. “Rhodey,” he said with both hands on Rhodey’s shoulders, pulling him close enough to smell—he never noticed before the way he smelled so fucking good, how he tensed and relaxed when Tony touched him, how he leaned in close to hear him talk.
“Pepper never stopped hoping,” Rhodey said like he was cutting him off.
“You found me,” Tony said, “and we’re dating.”
“No we’re not.”
“Yes we are.”
“No we’re not.”
“Yes we are. We are because I said we are.”
Rhodey laughed, “that doesn’t work in relationships Tony.”
“You said relationship, I didn’t say that. We’re dating; US Weekly says we are. According the National Enquirer you’re pregnant with our second child.”
“What?”
“I’m just that good,” Tony said and Rhodey looked aghast while Tony laughed at him and squeezed his shoulders. It was awkward in the dry air between them because he wanted to wrap his arms around him and crush their mouths together—drag him backward to the couch or bedroom and spend a few hours learning his body and he couldn’t and he wasn’t ever any good at not doing things. “We’re dating. We’re going on a date right now, change this—wear something nice. I’ll wait here.”
“Tony,” Rhodey said.
“Go,” he said. He must have looked serious (or pitiful) because Rhodey nodded and started unbutton his jacket as he headed back toward his bedroom.
05.
Tony’s version of a typical holiday was pretty much exactly like Tony’s version of a typical day. It started early, it lasted until late and it was loud, almost obnoxious and always, always bigger than life. When they’d started talking about the Fourth of July on the phone weeks ago, (because they did that now, they talked on the phone in the evenings while Tony insulted Dummy and interrogated Jarvis and perfected his already perfect machines,) Rhodey had suggested something small and simple and fireworks.
Small and simple just weren’t words in Tony’s vocabulary and it was pointless to even attempt to try to reason with him. By the time Rhodey got to the house just before noon, Pepper looked pink and frazzled and she looked at him like he was a savior and pulled him aside away from the men delivering boxes of what Rhodey assumed to be alcohol.
“I thought he was having the party on the beach,” Rhodey said.
“He is,” Pepper said, “with a concert and fireworks and dancers and catering and tiki torches.” Her voice was tight and high and her knuckles were white. “This is for the after party.”
Of course there was an after party. “What can I do?”
Her eyes got bright when he asked and for a minute he was almost sure she was going to say something insane but she just smiled at him with that same sweetly innocent little smile and said: “get him out of here, I can handle all of this,” she motioned around at the chaos of people in and out of the kitchen behind them, “but I can’t handle this and him. Not today.”
Rhodey nodded and Pepper thanked him and sent him to Tony’s room. Up the stairs and around a curve, through the open door and Tony was sitting on the end of the bed half-dressed in a suit (who wore a suit to a beach party, really) with the shirt unbuttoned all down his chest and held closed only by the button above his waistband where it was already tucked in. He had one hand on his chest, spread around the arc-reactor and the other against his knee with a tie throw across his thigh.
“Something wrong?” Rhodey asked.
Tony looked at him, “no. It…tickles sometimes. If you hold it for a minute it stops.” He moved his hand away and picked up the tie and gave it a second stare as he stood up. “I’m not going in the water,” he said, “and I am wearing a suit. My father said always wear a suit.”
“Why are you doing this?” Rhodey asked.
“What?”
“All of this? You don’t care about the Fourth of July and you don’t need a beach party as an excuse to drink—hell, you don’t need any excuse to drink. Two years ago you wouldn’t even have known it was a holiday.” Rhodey watched him in the mirror as Tony fixed the tie under his collar and started working on his shirt buttons. He was getting tan again, looking healthier every day and it was strange to realize that he hadn’t even realized how healthy Tony hadn’t looked until he started to recover.
“You care,” Tony said.
Rhodey wanted to say something—wanted to point out how that was stupid or how he didn’t like parties or how Tony could be doing so much more with his money than wasting it on rented beaches and big explosions and in the end he just sighed. “Want to go get a cheeseburger?”
“Right now?” Tony asked.
“Yes, right now. You can invite everyone that works at your favorite Burger King to the party.” He picked up the suit jacket off the bed behind him and held it out to Tony. “I’ll drive.”
They ate cheeseburgers in Burger King with Tony wearing his sunglasses and his suit and attracting attention like shit gathered flies. Tony offered invitations to everyone behind the counter and signed the one he handed to the woman that made the cheeseburgers. He blew her a kiss and gave her a hundred dollar tip and she damn near fainted when he touched her hand.
After, in his truck, Tony was slouching in the seat, playing with his tie and looking out the window—counting landmarks back to his house and he said—suddenly, “keep driving, don’t go back.”
“Tony,” Rhodey said.
“It’s my party and if I don’t want to go, I don’t have to. Pepper’s there, she’ll take care of it.” Tony was asking him something he wasn’t saying with words. (Saying, take us somewhere, take us anywhere, take us somewhere I can hold your hand.)
“Ok,” Rhodey said. He drove until they were out of the city, into the next one, got lost on a main road and ended up in the parking lot of a mini-golf place that was covered with flags and streamers and boasted the best putting in the tri-city area.
“Here?” Tony said from the passenger seat with his elbow on the window and his head leaning out toward the glass. “All of the places in the world you could have gone and you brought us here?”
“Nobody’s here but us,” Rhodey said.
“True.” And then Tony pushed open the door and stepped down out of the truck, he stopped with his hand on the handle and looked back at him. “But I didn’t bring any money so you’re going to have to pay.”
“Bullshit.”
“You drove, you pay.” He was grinning when he said it, on the balls of his feet and being so clever with his sly remarks (those ones that Tony himself didn’t even know how to decipher). “It’s in the rules.”
Rhodey rolled his eyes and he paid and they played mini-golf until the squeal of fireworks in the dark lit up the sky beyond the street lights. Tony held his hand in the shadows of nowhere with nobody to see them but the employees standing behind the counter watching the TV and not the fireworks.
06.
Rhodey was there because Rhodey was always there. Tony was eating pizza on his nice white couch getting little smears of red sauce on the upholstery that would drive Pepper crazy tomorrow and the TV was making noise that he couldn’t quite make out over the sound of Rhodey laughing.
That was all he could hear—all that mattered—Rhodey’s laugh and his smile and how his eyes got small when he grinned but they were so fucking bright. His teeth were all white and his shoulders looked so damn big in that jacket. Tony hadn’t put a lot of thought (not a lot) into the logistics of having sex with Rhodey because he’d been preoccupied with other things. And all at once , with that laugh and that smile and the way he could touch Rhodey as easy as reaching out fingertips and running them down the back of his neck, tracing the vein in his throat until it hit his shoulder and leaning in close to get the scent of his skin full in his throat, sex seemed very important.
“Tony,” Rhodey said low as a whisper.
Tony touched his cheek and it was five-o-clock rough at ten-thirty at night. This lips were dry under his thumb and his pulse was hammering where his pinkie pressed across it. Tony thought about saying something but he couldn’t find any words that meant what he wanted to say so he said nothing. He shifted on the couch so his knee was under him and Rhodey’s head was tipped back and his throat was bare and his lips were wet because he licked them. His eyes were sliding closed and his hand was curled around Tony’s neck pulling him down.
It was just a kiss. He told himself that as his heart started racing and that funny tickle in his chest vibrated until he couldn’t stop himself from smiling and was close to giggling. It was just a kiss; just the same as all the other kisses. Rhodey held him with an arm around his back, a hand against his ribs and he opened his mouth with that easy give that said: take me how you want me, take me how you need me. Tony was on his knees, waddling sideways, getting close like thigh-to-thigh close and holding on with two hands.
Just then, with the taste of pizza and Rhodey’s tea and the leftover bubble of giggles on their tongues, sex was just about the only thing that should have mattered in the world. He closed his eyes with his forehead against Rhodey’s and listened to the way he breathed, slid his hand down so it was against his chest and felt the way he shivered with his throbbing heartbeat.
“Tony,” Rhodey said and his eyes opened, looked up and closed again. His hand pulled at his neck and Rhodey’s head tipped back and to one side, their lips brushed together without pressing into a kiss.
Tony caught his shirt in a fist, held it tight even as it slipped out of his clenching fingers and pressed their mouths together again. It all came undone in that kiss—all the things that they never said and never did, all of Rhodey’s frustration and determination and loyalty and all of their confusion and all of their resistance and all of Tony’s pride and all of his arrogance and all of his mistakes all at once.
He moved so he was kneeling over Rhodey’s lap, felt the hands on his back, slipping to his waist, how Rhodey was just hanging on with loose palms. But that kiss was all catch and press and a wet moan and he pushed his elbows against the back of the couch and pressed his whole body against Rhodey’s and thought about nothing but how he felt.
Like this, oh hell, just like this—sight and smell and touch and taste and feel--until it was all that was important in the world and nothing else mattered.
07.
Tony called right after he got hit by a RPG and right before the tank rolled into sight around the corner of a building that was crumbling to pieces. His back was aching from the force of the impact of the RPG that had thrown him through two walls before it exploded and knocked him flat on his ass and the tank was aiming at him like it meant to prove that Tony Stark wasn’t the only genius that could make weapons.
The call was a buzz in his ear before it was automatically answered and somewhere across an ocean, Tony was just waking up with a giddy little hop to his step and a cup full of something green and questionable. “Hey,” he said, “how’s it going over there.”
“Great,” Rhodey said.
“You look good—what’d you get hit with, that is not going to be easy to scrub off. You know,” and Tony said that like he was taking a drink and licking the taste of that disgusting shit off his gums and out from between his teeth. “There’s a tank.”
“I know.”
“Are you going to do something about it? Shoot at it with one of those guns? Or all of them? Bust its bunker with the ex-wife?”
“Are you ever going to let me live that down?” Rhodey asked. The diagnostic for the suit was on the display in the cramped space in front of his face next to the caller-ID picture of Tony in a suit that kept shaking as he planted his feet and raised his arm. “It was one time.”
“One time you stole my suit and let Hammer get a hold of it and nearly killed me and a whole convention center full of civilians. One time you actually believed that Hammer made something that would work. Are you going to take care of that tank?” He sounded vaguely concerned halfway across the world sitting in front of his view screens.
“I’ve got it.” He used the missile on his arm and then dropped his hand down by his side. It took a minute and the men inside the tank were scrambling for the escape hatch when it exploded. The chaos of gunfire came back like a pounding thunder against the suit and he sighed.
“Want help?” Tony asked.
“I’d hate to trouble you before your shower,” Rhodey said and he started shooting back at them until the walls they were standing on crumbled and the buildings caved in under their feet. “Was there a reason you’re calling me?”
“There was,” Tony said, “but now I’m distracted watching you use that big gun of yours.”
“Tony.”
“Happy anniversary,” Tony said.
“What?”
“Happy. Anniversary. Last year, today, I let you become my sidekick.” He drew in a breath and took another drink of that God-awful green shit before he said, “you really do look good out there. Sure you don’t want help?”
“You’re giving a speech today,” Rhodey said, “you’re not getting out of it. Go take your shower and get dressed and I’m not your sidekick.” He stood in the wreckage of the town and waited for gunfire or grenades or tanks to come and find him. “And I can’t believe I’m saying this but, happy anniversary.”
“Call me when you get back, we’ll break into a dorm and have sex on one of those little beds.”
Rhodey snorted, “I’m sure you got laid enough in college you don’t need to—”
“I was underage, skinny and awkward when I was in college. I’m rich, handsome and a superhero now. Call me—no, call Pepper and she’ll tell me, we’ll celebrate your one year sidekick status.”
He wanted to say he wouldn’t, he wanted to think he wouldn’t and he just nodded at nobody and sighed again. “Shower,” he said.
“Behind you,” Tony said, “don’t wait for them to hit you in the chest with a rocket launcher this time.” Then he blew a kiss at his monitor and the sound was loud enough that Rhodey could hear it. “I’m here if you need me.”
08.
Rhodey sat against the passenger side door in the convertible, listening to the tinny noise of the movie sounds that were broadcasting through speakers. He was holding a box of popcorn in his lap, nibbling on the kernels while he watched the movie and Tony was sitting almost sideways in the driver’s seat watching Rhodey.
“I’m not the movie,” Rhodey said.
“You’re better than the movie,” he said. Better because he wasn’t something fictional projected on a giant screen outside in the late summer heat. He was real and Tony could touch him and lick him and—
“Happy’s watching you,” Rhodey said.
“Happy’s watching the movie.” And only because he had the suit with him, only because Pepper insisted that he take someone, only because Rhodey said it wasn’t worth fighting over and he couldn’t honestly believe that he ever left home without being followed by at least two body guards anyway. “He’s not watching me sit here watching you, he definitely isn’t watching me do this,” and he leaned across the console in the middle, avoiding the gear shift and kissed the popcorn butter-and-salt on Rhodey’s lips.
“He’s not?”
“No,” Tony assured him. He kissed Rhodey’s jaw and his neck and ran his hands down the stretchy T-shirt cotton of his shirt to the button of his jeans. He smiled at the worn-out ease of the button coming undone and how the zipper peeled apart all on its own.
And then it started raining. Like a monsoon in California and all the teenagers sitting on the hood of their cars were screaming at the weather. Happy jerked in the car two slots away from them and looked over at him.
Rhodey was getting soaked, pushing the popcorn to the floor board and just laughing. Tony laughed with him, against the curve of his neck as his back got soaked and the water pit-pattered against the leather seats. Rhodey was slippery now, slick skin on his throat, tight T-shirt sticking to his chest and he smelled like he’d been steaming hot before, like sweat and something like steam. Tony kissed him with one hand on the car door and the other between Rhodey’s thighs.
“You’re going to ruin the upholstery,” Rhodey said between this kiss and that, “if you don’t put the top up.”
“I can replace it,” he said between that kiss and the scrape of his teeth across Rhodey’s throat. He worked his hand down inside his pants—found his skin hot and dry and curled his wet-and-cool hand around him and squeezed. Rhodey wriggled and Tony laughed against the soaked collar of his T-shirt. “Lift up,” he said and Rhodey did. Tony tugged his pants down just far and bent down to kiss the band of exposed belly flesh—lick the taste of rain-water and fabric softener off Rhodey’s skin and listened to the catch in his breath.
There were fingers in his soaking-wet hair and rain water tickling his eyebrows and licked his way down the wrinkles in Rhodey’s belly from how he slouched until he was pressing kisses between the open V of his jeans.
“Yeah,” Rhodey said to him, to his mouth, shifting in the seat and pushing his own jeans down. His voice sounded like a growl turning into a moan and edging between primal and needy and it was a perfect twist to his ears and the thumb stroking his scalp was so sweet saying: do this, do this for me—for you—just do this.
09.
Rhodey had a plan and it went like this: wake up, leave, find something that Tony wouldn’t find ridiculous, sentimental or overtly romantic that he didn’t already own to give to him for their anniversary, come back, eat something, give the present to Tony, endure his comments, have a lot of sex, and go back to sleep.
And this day went like this:
He crawled out of Tony’s bed before sunrise—or tried, he crawled toward the edge of Tony’s bed with the intention of escaping undetected but Jarvis turned on the low-lights when he moved and it was that magical moment between sleep cycles for Tony when he woke up like a harassed bear. Rhodey would have offered explanations but offering sex was simpler and Tony fell back to sleep with a grin on his face after a short but apparently effective blow job. Rhodey said mean things to Jarvis in the bathroom and used Tony’s brush when he brushed his teeth.
He found his clothes—pressed, of course—and pulled them back on with the intent of leaving. But there were fresh strudel in the kitchen smelling like heaven and he ate one or two before he finally found his keys and made his way for the door. Jarvis announced his departure and it echoed through the house loud enough to wake the living dead—and Tony who complained at high volume from upstairs and compelled Jarvis to lock all the exits. So Rhodey cursed Jarvis all the way back up the stairs to where Tony was sitting up in the middle of the bed with his hair in knots and tangles and a slanted-sleepy frown across his face and his arm held out and fingers curling inward saying come back.
He lay on the bed with Tony laying across his chest like he wasn’t about to allow another escape attempt and Jarvis came back at seven sharp to announce the weather and the tides. Tony looked up at him with a smile that was fully awake and full of nothing approaching good intentions. Rhodey thought about telling him that he needed to but Tony stripped him naked and rode him until they were both soaked in sweat and shaking.
He washed Tony’s hair in the shower because it was knotted and Tony complained about the conditioner that was supposed to prevent knots. So Rhodey combed his fingers through the mess of it and undid all the tangles while Tony stood there watching his face. When it was done and they were rinsing the white suds out of Tony’s hair, he had a grin on his face with his eyes closed. “You have the stupidest looks,” Tony said.
He had another strudel because Tony had half the plateful and a few turnovers that showed up after Rhodey’s second failed attempt to leave. Pepper showed up like it was business-as-usual and thought it was plain strange that Rhodey was still there when she was sure he had to leave. Tony waved his hand at that and picked up another turnover to go.
When he tried to leave again, Jarvis stopped him at the door and told him Tony needed him in the shop. Rhodey thought about ignoring it all the way down the steps and through the glass doors. Tony was working on his hot rod, crouching in those ass-hugging jeans of his and frowning at the display that Jarvis was showing of the engine. It was picture perfect innocence and Rhodey sighed and Tony looked back at him and smiled and said: “I wanted to work on those upgrades to the War Machine. I need your input—and your body.”
Need was not, of course, the most accurate term. Tony stripped him almost naked and took a whole new set of measurements by hand just so he could skim his fingers across Rhodey’s skin and drive him crazy and then Jarvis scanned him and Tony tossed the measuring tape over his shoulder like it was worthless to him. Rhodey was already half naked and Jarvis said it would take at least thirty minutes for the new measurements to produce a new rendering of the War Machine— That was all bullshit because if Jarvis ever worked that slow on anything Tony would have gutted his servers and rebuilt him. But Rhodey didn’t say no to the blow job when Tony shoved him onto the couch and crawled up between his legs.
His input was invalid because Tony deemed it as such so they fought about his suit and Tony’s ideas and big guns and sleek designs. Rhodey shouted and Tony smirked and they ended up in a dog pile on the floor having the disagreement with their lips and tongues and bodies. Tony let himself be pinned and Rhodey didn’t think too much about that, just worked out his aggravation with a nearly-too dry slide against Tony’s hips and waist and kissed him until he had no breath to argue.
When he tried to leave after lunch and just about the time that Tony dozed off for twenty minutes—Jarvis had a security meltdown and assured him that the house was on lockdown and nobody was allowed in or out. Tony laughed and Rhodey frowned and Jarvis apologized but Rhodey ended up on the couch snoozing away the afternoon sun with Tony’s head in his lap.
Pepper woke them up after four and said she was through for the day. Jarvis let her out without so much as a hiccup of static and Tony tipped his head back to look up at him. “Happy anniversary,” he said.
“I can’t believe you,” Rhodey said.
“I can’t believe you, you didn’t get me anything for our anniversary—we’ve been at this for a year and I don’t rate so much as a vase of flowers?”
“You wouldn’t let me leave.”
“You have override codes.”
“You planned this. You planned the whole thing,” Rhodey said.
“If I let you leave you would have bought me something and I would have had to pretend to like it and leave it sitting around the lab forever and you wouldn’t like seeing it because it wouldn’t what you wanted to get me and I wouldn’t like it because it took up space and eventually I would have dismantled whatever it was and used it to build something else and you would have gotten angry at me and it would be a whole fight—so really, I was just saving us both the trouble.”
“Unbelievable.”
Tony rolled over so he was sitting on the couch next to him with his knee against Rhodey’s thigh and an elbow across the back of the couch. “You know I’m right. I have everything that can be bought that I want.”
So stay with me, Tony didn’t say, just stay with me today. Rhodey sighed and nodded, “you could have asked.”
They had cold-cuts and chips for their anniversary dinner, argued about guns in the shop while Tony ran upgrades and worked on remodels that would make the War Machine faster and preserve its power and presence. They made it back upstairs before two in the morning—after their anniversary was over technically and made love on clean sheets until Tony was pressing those fevered too-close kisses against his cheek like he was biting back words he didn’t know how to say.