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01. looking at stars
“We should go inside,” Rhodey said like he even slightly believed it himself. His hands were one-behind-his head and the other stroking Tony’s shoulder under the pulled-open collar of his shirt. His voice was quiet like the stars winking over their heads and his skin was summer-night hot and bare against the cooling air. Tony had one elbow down against the ground and the other hand curled around Rhodey’s waist with his fingers sneaking lower and lower down to his hip under his unfastened pants.
“No we shouldn’t,” he mumbled back against the creases in Rhodey’s neck as he kissed the pulse at his throat. And his collarbone—all the way down to the little dip in the center and if the night was hotter or the light was brighter he would have been so impatient for more than this. But Rhodey was lazy in the low light and he was still and easy to touch.
His thumb was rough like the scrape of his palms and Tony liked the way they felt when they traced their way from his back to his neck and up into his hair. Rhodey was looking at stars and smiling at him before he tipped his head cheek-to-shoulder and said, “we should. I should go; I have to be in early tomorrow.”
Tony kissed his chest in a line straight down until it went from hard bone to belly flesh and then looked back up at him with his chin brushing against hot skin and shook his head. He said, “You should work for me,” like he’d said before. “You wouldn’t have to wake up early and I pay better than the U.S. government and it’s not like you wouldn’t be helping your country because you’d be helping me and I help the country.”
“Tony,” Rhodey said.
“Depending on how you look at it, you already work for me.”
“Tony,” he said again and it wasn’t forgiving but something else. It was shut up wrapped up in his name with don’t ruin this hammered into a tight space. “We should go inside.”
No. He pushed his hand against the ground and slid up against Rhodey’s body, moved a knee so he was straddling one of Rhodey’s thighs and kissed him because he wanted to argue with him—he wanted to demand answers to questions he couldn’t bring himself to ask. Rhodey’s hands were on his sides, slipping up inside of his shirt, sliding around his back and pulling him closer. He was lazy and he was warm and he didn’t want a fight so he whispered come on, come closer with his body and his mouth and the kiss wasn’t an apology but a distraction. Tony pulled back first, brushed their noses and their foreheads together, with his eyes closed and tasted Rhodey’s wine-sweet breath before he kissed him again and it was just a little thing.
“Not yet,” he said and kissed Rhodey’s jaw and his neck as he wiggled down again. Rhodey was watching stars with a shake of his head and a curl of a smile he’d never admit to and Tony kissed his shoulder with a nip of teeth to follow behind it. “Soon.”
02. secret admirer
Pepper was in the kitchen with a spread of colorful slips of paper in her fingers, smiling at them like they were love letters from her one and only. She was leaning back against the counter with a sigh of a smile. When she looked up, she looked out through the window at the fading light of the day and she pressed the papers against her chest like she could hug them and whoever had left them for her.
Rhodey stood in the doorway of the kitchen, holding his breath, thinking he should move backward and not forward when she saw him there. “I was just,” he said because it felt like he should.
“Hi,” she said quietly and then shook herself like she’d been daydreaming. “He’s in the shop, and he’s in a mood.” Then she leaned forward and turned around to pick up her flat binder and the electronic day planner she kept track of Tony’s life with. She looked at the time and then smiled at him. “I didn’t realize it had gotten so late. He has to be up early so try not to keep him up all night.”
Rhodey stepped to the side so she could move past him and it must have been just his imagination that she was blushing across the tips of her ears. He turned to watch her walk toward the door and waited until after she’d called good-bye to Jarvis and reminded him to wake Tony up on time the next morning. Once the door was closed, Happy turned from where he’d been studiously staring at the paper and looked back at the door with a smile that would have made more sense on a little boy. He was pink and nervous as he shifted on the seat and folded-and-refolded the paper.
He found Tony in the shop shaking a wrench at Dummy and snarling pointless threats at the robot like it would somehow make it work better. The music was a pulse-pounding throb that damn near shook the walls and when Rhodey turned it down, Tony turned around with that same wrench in his hand. “Don’t turn my music down,” he said.
“What’s going on with Pepper?” Rhodey asked. (Because ignoring Tony was just about the only way to deal with Tony on days like this.)
“I don’t know,” Tony said and threw the wrench back into the toolbox, “it depends on you mean by ‘what’s going on with Pepper’ because it’s not a very specific question. If you had said, why is Pepper already gone at—” he looked at his watch with an aggravated gesture and slapped the drawer on the tool box closed with another, “five forty seven, then I would be able to tell you that she’s going to be up before three in the morning because we have to fly halfway across the world because she agreed that I would give a speech at a technical conference. If you mean what’s going on with Pepper and Happy—I don’t know.”
Rhodey considered staying—and then he reached over to the volume controls on the glass panels and turned the music back up to deafening before he pulled open the door and left. He was up the stairs and sixteen steps toward the door when Tony caught up to him in a slow run.
“Rhodey,” he said.
Happy wasn’t sitting by the door anymore but the paper he’d folded and then refolded was lying across the chair with a neon bright square of paper. Tony had one hand on his arm in a loose and slipping grip and stared at the square of paper like it offended him.
“She can date, Tony,” he said and he didn’t even know why he said it or why he needed to. It shouldn’t have mattered except that Tony owned everything he saw whether they were people or things and he had never-ever been any good at sharing. “She can fall in love.”
“I don’t like it,” Tony said, “I’ll be fine. You’re right.” He looked back at the square of paper and whatever was love note was written across it. “He’s a good guy.” He said it like he was trying to convince himself of something and then. “I like him.”
Rhodey stared at him. “Tell me you didn’t consider firing Happy.”
“No,” Tony said, “she doesn’t know it’s him so there’s no reason to fire him. I thought about reassigning him somewhere else—parking lot attendant or something.”
“Tony,” he said again.
“I’m not getting involved. Happy’s a good guy—he’d be a better guy if he’d tell her that he was writing the notes and he’s a terrible speller. And he’s kind of—”
“Tony.”
Tony sighed and swallowed and was quiet for a minute before he nodded and then tipped his head toward the kitchen. “Have you eaten yet?”
03. playing instrument
There was a bottle of scotch and a sweating glass with nothing but ice slowly dying in the bottom of it sitting side by side on the piano. It was after midnight, after 1 AM in a country he couldn’t quite remember the name of and he was forehead-against-the shiny-black grand piano with his fingertips tickling keys without really playing. Not really playing, just pretending to play because he was really drinking and Tony just couldn’t do both things at the same time.
His lips were numb and his tongue was heavy and he thought he might have been singing lullabies like sick-sappy-sweet love songs to the black keys and he wasn’t too sure about that. He knew he was stroking the keys and he knew that he was all alone save for the anxious-and-bored staff sitting behind the great front desk in the adjacent room, the bored-and-smoking cleaning man that was sprawled and leaning back into the chair at table number twenty six way in the back with his broom and his long-handled dustpan making love against the wall, and Happy. Happy was there, at table five right in the front, with the bright red case at his left side and a glass of something brown and hard on the table by his damp and fumbling fingers.
Lover’s fingers, really—scribbling fingertips with black-ink marks smudged here and there because Happy was writing love notes when he thought nobody was looking. He left them on Pepper’s door and Pepper’s window and Pepper’s papers so when she should have been demanding Tony follow the schedule and follow the speech she was making moon-eyes at sticky Post-It notes that said nice things about her.
Pepper needed someone to love her, she needed someone that loved her best and would love her right.
Oh, and that thought punched him in the gut so when he sat up straight, the world swam and he shouted a curse in a grunt-groan that echoed around the empty room. Happy looked up at him from his daydreams and the cleaning-man in the back took another puff of his rolled skinny black cigarette and thought nothing of him. Tony picked up the bottle and left the cup, took a swallow and licked his lips and his gums and swallowed the taste of it until it was swimming in his belly with the day’s fucking mistakes.
“Happy,” he said.
“Yes sir?” Happy asked.
“Go to bed.”
Happy flexed in the chair, like he was flinching and didn’t smile at him at all. “I can’t do that, sir.”
Tony smiled at the bottle, smiled at the scotch, smiled at the piano as he tapped the sloppy fingers of his left hand against the keys and played chords that made no sense without his right hand to play along. He took another drink—a nice, long, hard swallow and slapped the bottle on the piano. His ass slid on the seat as he half turned, straddled the bench and let the room go silent. “Go to bed—unless you think that guy’s hiding a gun or something. Hey—guy.”
“He’s not.”
“You checked?”
Happy nodded.
Tony put his elbow against the piano, listened to it screech its dissonant objection in jumbled tones and scooted forward on the bench—looked past the stage lights, out into the dim pit of the room. Happy was watching him like he was waiting, just waiting for Tony to fall off the bench, off the stage, off the fucking face of the fucking world. “Happy—” He didn’t know what he wanted to say, the words were too loose on his tongue—something about taking care of Pepper, something about being a man, something about falling in love, something about how he wouldn’t even have to bury a fucking body if Happy fucked this up because he had ways to turn a man to dust and burn that dust away until it was bright-clean air and nothing else. “You can’t spell for shit.”
“I know that, sir.”
Tony picked up the bottle and took a drink and when he slapped it against the piano; the cleaning-man way in the back rolled forward in his seat and picked up his broom and his dustpan. Tony turned on the bench, hit his knee and grunted ow just to make noise to fill the silence of the room. He let his fingers wander, let them play notes without order until the chaos made his chest hurt and the vibrations felt like they were moving through him. His hand found a tune in the nothing, he thought of his mother in the sun-washed late evenings and how she’d play the piano when she was alone and he beat against the keys until the crescendo felt like it could have deafened him.
When the hand touched the back of his neck, the fingers were so familiar they must have been a dream from earlier-that-day. (He’d stood at the window in the fine-fine hotel room in that country he couldn’t name, tasting his jealousy like bile while Pepper sighed in ignorance about her secret-lover sending her love-notes. He had pressed his fingers against the glass with a ringing phone against his ear and when Rhodey had finally, finally answered it, he had still been half-asleep and mumbling concerns and complaints. Tony made up things to say, made excuses, he said: I miss your body, why didn’t I make you come? and Rhodey had listed a reason that sounded like a good reason about work and responsibility and order and obligation. Tony hadn’t said, I want you here because he didn’t want him there.)
Happy was scraping his chair against the floor now; the chain-links on the red-and-silver case were jingling as he carried it up and set it on the stage. It scraped its way across the wood and Tony looked at it and not at Happy.
“Good night,” he said.
“Good night, sir.”
When Rhodey sat next to him, it felt like he weighed a thousand pounds and the whole room was heavy. He was silent and close and Tony plucked a quirky little tune on the keys and said nothing because all the space between his ears was white and blank and furry around the edges. “Pepper said I should come.”
Tony looked at him then, at the fatigues he was still wearing, at how he looked like he’d been awake for hours and hours and the worry-and-concern in the lines on his face. He had something biting to say, something sarcastic and ungrateful and just awful that he wanted to say but he didn’t say anything.
Rhodey sat next to him, didn’t move the scotch and didn’t try to move him—he just sat next to him and listened to the music until it lost its way and Tony was exhausted. Rhodey put an arm around him when Tony leaned forward with his head against the piano keys and he kissed the back of his neck without accusing him of all the things he’d done.
“I made her angry,” Tony said, “I told her to stop wasting her time because she worked for me.” He tapped the keys on his right, let his eyes closed, thought of how Pepper had been white-and-hurt and pink-and-furious all at once. He thought of how she’d been before that when she was sitting in the chair holding onto her love-notes and daydreaming about her perfect-romance.
“I know.” Rhodey kissed the curve of his neck, and when he spoke; his voice was so close it could have been under his skin. “She loves you too,” he said, “she loved you first.”
Tony wiggled his arm between them and behind Rhodey’s back and pulled him closer, turned his face so he could smell the stink of him and closed his eyes just to enjoy it. “I don’t think she was the one that loved me first.”
Rhodey’s grin was teeth against the back of his neck. “That’s not what I meant.” Then, after a beat, “but you’re right.”
Tony smiled and curled his hand into a fist in the back of Rhodey’s fatigues and pulled at him so he was closer-closer and then close enough to kiss.
04. kissing it better
“Are you ever going to get up?” Tony asked from over there somewhere to the side where Rhodey couldn’t see him. He sounded disgustingly chipper for a man that had been drowning in a scotch bottle the night before and had to be literally carried to bed because his feet kept slipping right out from under him. “The day is half over and I’ve got somewhere I’m sure I’m supposed to be in a few hours.”
“Leave me alone,” Rhodey said to the pillow and not to Tony.
“What was that?” It sounded like he was chewing his words out around a mouthful of something sweet and he was close to the bed, butting his knee against the mattress. “Come on, honey bun, you can’t stay in bed all day.”
Rhodey snorted at that and turned his head so he was watching Tony walk toward the doorway. He was wearing his worn out jeans without a shirt and from the way they shifted when he walked they weren’t even buttoned yet. (Oh there were reasons he put up with Tony that had nothing to do with his charming personality.) Rhodey pulled a pillow down to wrap his arm around it and pulled the blankets back up so they were covering his back.
Tony was making noise in the other room, picking at the trays of food and talking business with Pepper about what he had to do today. Rhodey snoozed because it was warm and the sheets were so damn soft and he was hours behind on sleep and hungover from jet lag anyway.
When Tony came back, he crouched at the side of the bed with a pastry in one hand and frosting around his lips that he was catching with his tongue. He tipped his head to the side to look at Rhodey and smiled at him like it was just so fucking funny.
“What?”
“Nothing,” Tony said, “get up, really. You’re too young to be an old man already.”
“Do you want me to get up or tell you to go to hell because I’m not sure which one you’re going for. I know which one I want to do but I’m not sure it’s what you want.”
“Tell me why you’re not out of bed.”
“Jet lag.”
“Jet lag? That’s not a reason, your jet lag is not stronger than my scotch and if I slept off my scotch, you slept off your jet lag—now get out of bed.”
“No,” Rhodey said.
Tony considered that with his elbows digging into the mattress as he chewed on the rest of the pastry. His hair was a mess and licked his fingers until they were clean and he’d worked out a solution to the problem—or thought he had— “Come on,” he said, “we’ve got orange juice and whatever you want for breakfast. Do you want me to cook something? I’m sure they’d let me cook something.”
“No I don’t want you to cook; I just want you to leave me alone so I can sleep.”
“You’re not sleeping.”
“Because you’re not leaving me alone.”
“Even if I left you alone you wouldn’t be sleeping. You’re awake so tell me why you’re not out of bed. I’ll get Pepper in here; she can always get people out of my bed.” He shifted on his feet so he was kneeling instead of crouching and leaned in farther on the bed.
“I’m not afraid of Pepper,” Rhodey said, “and she’s the one that told me to come because you were acting like a spoiled baby.”
“Was not.”
“Fine.”
Tony sighed and then leaned back and straightened up. “Fine,” he said. He pushed his hands against the bed and moved to stand up. It was every-bit the gesture of a spoiled kid that hadn’t gotten his way and Rhodey wanted to let him go pout, wanted to let him go work it out on his own and he groaned a curse into the pillow as Tony turned to walk away.
“My back hurts,” he said—and it wasn’t even a lie.
“I’m sorry, what was that?”
“My back hurts.”
“Your what hurts?”
“My back,” he said again and got his elbows under him to look up at Tony and his little half-grin-half-smirk.
“Why didn’t you say so?” Tony dusted his fingers across the ass of his jeans and picked up a bottle of oil off the floor like he’d been planning this whole thing the whole damn morning. It would-have and wouldn’t-have surprised him if it was all a plan. Tony twisted the cap off as he put his knee against the bed and Rhodey looked over his shoulder at him as he swung his other leg across Rhodey’s waist. “Why does your back hurt?”
“Might have been carrying your heavy ass and the suit or your jet,” Rhodey said.
“It was not my jet; my jet is specifically designed to be comfortable.” He sat back on Rhodey’s thighs and tipped the bottle so the oil dripped down the back of his shoulders and slipped down his spine.
“Not everything you own is the best.”
“Here,” Tony said and handed him the bottle with the cap held on loosely. He pressed his oil-slick fingers against Rhodey’s shoulders until he was laying flat on his chest, “hold that for me.” The mattress moved when Tony shifted and Rhodey drew in a deep breath and let it out. The scent of the oil was strong and soothing and Tony’s hands were warm and strong against his back.
“You need to apologize to Pepper,” Rhodey mumbled with his eyes closed.
“I’m not sorry.”
“Tony.”
“Rhodey.”
“Apologize to Pepper and apologize to Happy.”
“Did you fly across the Atlantic just to tell me what to do, because if that’s why you’re here, it’s a wasted trip.” He was pushing his weight against his hands now, staring at the small of Rhodey’s back and slipping them up the length of his spine to his shoulders and when he curled them around his shoulders with his fingertips digging in just above his collarbone it hurt in a good and in a bad way and Tony’s breath was against the back of his neck.
“That’s not why I’m here.”
Tony kissed the back of his neck and the side of his neck and pressed his chin against his shoulder and whispered up against his ear, “so you came for the back rub then?”
“What back rub? You’re not rubbing.”
“Hm?” Tony hummed against his neck before he kissed the skin just below his ear and down to his jaw. He was slipping his hands down his back, digging in just right and Rhodey dropped his head forward with a groan. “Where does it hurt?” He kissed his neck again, leaning against his back and the open zipper on his jeans was catching on Rhodey’s skin and scratching. “I’ll kiss it better.”
“I have this strange pain in my ass,” Rhodey said.
Tony grinned against his shoulder, swallowed back a laugh that shook straight down his body to his hips as he shifted on his knees. “Do you?”
“Mm,” Rhodey agreed.
“I can fix that for you.” His fingers were slipping down, thumbs working under the waistband of Rhodey’s boxers as he kissed his shoulder and the back of his neck.
“I’m sure you think you can.”
The next kiss was between his shoulder blades and Tony’s smirk was a smug little chuckle saying, “you know I can.”
“So shut up and do it.”
05. drunken confession of love
They were back in sunny California three weeks before Happy got drunk enough to finally just spit it out. Tony was bruised, leaning back against the wall by the open bar at some society affair or another with some girl that was tall and thin and wearing absolutely ridiculous high heels, sipping his midnight snack from a cut-crystal glass that was sweating down his fingers when Happy finally made a move.
Pepper looked beautiful in blue. She looked elegant with that necklace against her throat and her hair pulled back. And she looked like out of place with a little girl’s blush on her skin. When Happy shuffled up behind her he looked like a kid wearing his father’s clothes and he shook himself like he was gathering the courage he couldn’t find in any of those drinks he’d been steadily sipping since the start of the night. When he cleared his throat, she turned around to look at him and her smile was so fucking endearing that it made everyone else in the room look like a cheap imitation of life. Happy said something with a gesture of his hand back at the nearly empty dance floor—he was flushed and she was blushing when she nodded and handed off her long-stemmed glass to someone.
The woman at his side was mumbling something, just babbling and he nodded his head and took another drink because he needed a drink. Happy wasn’t smiling, looked like he was barely breathing, holding Pepper’s hand in his with his other on her waist like a proper gentleman. Pepper was a nervous dancer—she always babbled and trembled and always had to leave because she thought everyone was watching her.
Tony took another drink and another and smiled at the woman with the mean heels and said, “excuse me,” and set his glass on the edge of the bar and tipped the men behind it that had been so terribly accommodating the whole night through.
He wasn’t drunk but he wasn’t sober and his body ached under the suit because he’d gotten his ass kicked in a desert by a group of mercenary soldiers and their fucking rocket propelled grenades. And the tank—he hated tanks. Outside it was a sprinkle of rain against the concrete and he stood at the edge of the curb just about where the bright lights started to fade—there was a cluster of busy security guards and stubborn paparazzi sharing cigarettes with the valets. The air smelled like burnt-out light bulbs and the inside of his head felt like a drumbeat.
The woman with the killer heels was right behind him with a selfish smile and he tipped his head back just to feel the rain dropping on his face—pushed his hand through his hair and turned around to face her.
“I thought you might want some company,” she said. Her dress was fit around her body like skin, painted around her curves so perfectly that she might as well been naked. When she moved, she moved like a snake, all slink and no backbone—sliding up to him and walking her fingertips up his tie while she smiled at his face.
He thought about fucking her, thought about how she’d look spread out across his sheets with her dress in a damp puddle on the floor—he thought about her hair against the pillow in knots and what she’d sound like when she was reciting the same old chorus of groans and moans and pretty high-pitch squeals. He thought of all the things he could do to her and what Pepper would say in the morning when she was still love drunk on romance. Tony thought: I could fuck her right here in a closet, in his car, in a corner dark enough to hide her real face and the thought was like poison in his mind. It twisted in his gut like a possibility to be the worst he could be and with the liquor in his belly and still a real taste on his tongue; he ran his hands down her arms. He held her elbows in a loose-fitting grip and said, “no, not really, that’s why I didn’t ask you to come with me.”
She wasn’t even offended, just insistent, pushing closer, saying: “I bet I could change your mind.”
“I don’t doubt for a minute that you think more of yourself than I do,” he said and dropped his hands away from her. It took a matter of seconds for her to work that one out and her eyebrows twitched like she was going to be offended by it but he smiled, “maybe next time.”
“Once in a lifetime opportunity,” she said and tugged at his tie like it was going to jerk him back into reality.
“You’ll just have to live with that regret,” he said.
Pepper was hurrying down the steps with Happy right behind her looking harassed and embarrassed. “Tony,” Pepper said in exclamation and then looked at the woman that was turning away from him with a mean sneer and a shake of her head. “What was that? Who was she?”
“You expect me to know? Happy,” Tony said.
“Sir?” Happy said.
“You can’t drive.”
“No, sir,” Happy said.
Tony rolled his eyes, looked at Pepper while he motioned at Happy, “I have a driver that can’t drive—a body guard that can’t guard.” He looked at Happy who was looking red and shifting on his feet and pointed up at the building, “can you go get me that bottle of scotch?”
When Happy was working back up the stairs, Pepper was fixing his tie and straightening his collar, running her perfect fingers down the lapels of his coat so they were flat and he put his hands over hers. She looked at him with her lips pressing tight together like it was only her good will that was keeping that lecture behind her teeth at bay. “Tony,” she said.
“You could have anyone,” he said.
She looked to the side, said, “Tony,” like she was so exasperated she didn’t even have the energy. Her hands were warm under his, against his chest and she let him hold onto her until she looked back at his face. “You could have everyone—you have had everyone. It drives me crazy and I’m not even with you—you’re a genius but you’re the last person I’d take advice from about anything that has to do with love.”
“I don’t need everyone, I have Rhodey.”
Her hands curled into little fists under his and she tugged at his jacket with a smile at the corner of her lips. He wasn’t sure what she heard him say but he was sure whatever she thought it was wasn’t what he said and she leaned forward and kissed him and it felt like nothing. “Good,” she said when they were close enough to bump noses and then she leaned back and he was still hanging onto her hands. “It’s good to hear you say that.”
“Say what?”
Happy was back, stepping all over himself and holding out the bottle. “Here,” he said and frowned at Tony’s hands and Pepper’s hands and didn’t stop even after Tony let her go. “Alright?” he asked her and not him.
“What did I say, Pepper?” Tony asked.
“What did he say?” Happy asked.
Pepper just smiled and turned to look at Happy with a grin that could have lit up the city. “We should find someone to drive us home, since none of us can drive.”
Happy handed him the bottle of scotch, shoulder-to-shoulder close and whispered at him, “what did you say?”
“I don’t know,” he said back.
Pepper was already on the phone making calls, finding them drivers and smiling against the receiver in the slow-falling rain while she talked quietly and sweetly. Happy found an umbrella and kept her dry when the rain got heavy, stayed close-close to her with his shoulder hanging out so he was half dry and half soaked and all an idiot so it didn’t matter. Tony sat on the soggy steps with his booze keeping his belly warm until Rhodey showed up looking smugly amused.
He hugged Pepper with a toothy-grin and smacked Happy on the arm and nodded his head and listened to something or another—the story of their romance while Happy kept his arm around Pepper’s waist and nodded his head along. When Rhodey was done talking small talk in a loud voice he came over to the steps and looked down at him with that same idiot’s grin.
“What?” Tony asked.
“Pepper told me what you said,” Rhodey said.
“Maybe you should tell me what I said because I don’t even know what it was.” He didn’t stand up and Rhodey didn’t sit down so they were looking at one another at strange angles with the rain against Rhodey’s back.
“You know what you said,” Rhodey said, “I do too.”
“Maybe you know what I—”
“No,” Rhodey said, “Tony. I do too.” (Like I love you.)
Tony smiled and raised the bottle in salute to all those things that they weren’t any good at saying. “I know what I said. Just don’t expect me to say it again.”
Rhodey caught his arm and pulled him up—pulled until he was close and the smell of Rhodey’s soap and jacket was crowding in his head with the blurry sense the scotch gave him. He caught the jacket in his slippery fingers and let go of the bottle, heard it crack against the ground and didn’t care. They were close enough to taste each other’s breath in the sunshine-bright lights and there were men with cameras that were about to become millionaires. “I don’t,” Rhodey said. “I never did.”
“Good.”
“Good,” Rhodey said.
Tony pushed his hand against Rhodey’s chest, up across his collarbone where he could touch his neck with his fingertips and the scotch was swimming in his belly like fish, making everything seem kind of hazy around the sides. “You’re waiting for me to say it now.”
“No, I’m waiting for you to kiss me and wondering if you’re too drunk to get it up and figure that doesn’t matter because I’m going to fuck you either way.”
Tony laughed and Rhodey grinned and it must have been the bright flash of the paparazzi cameras making him dizzy and stupid because he kissed him hard—just mouth against mouth. He leaned in close with drunken lips and said: “I love you,” so quietly nobody but Rhodey could have heard, “and I’m not too drunk.”
06. making love
Tony said ‘I love you’ in his ear like it was a fever in his body, with that infuriating rich boy grin and his perfect white teeth. He’d been wet from the rain from his scalp to his expensive shoes and giggling with giddiness while the paparazzi snapped picture after picture after picture freeze-framing the moment to sell to anyone that would buy and everyone would get a good long look at the moment that nobody thought would ever happen.
Two weeks later, there was a spread of media from trashy tabloids to the New York Times that had the pictures splashed around with sensational by-lines suggesting everything from a torrid affair to a secret marriage. US Weekly was especially proud of itself for being right about something finally. Rhodey kicked them around with his feet while he leaned back into his couch and slouched and contemplated eating something but couldn’t figure out what the hell he even wanted to bother with—ended up doing nothing but playing with the tie on his house robe and tipping his head sideways to stare at his own face repeated across glossy-magazine covers and dingy newsprint.
It had been hilarious at first—when he was still caught up in the sight and smell and taste and feel of the strange new universe where Tony loved him. When he was trapped in bed with an insatiable megalomaniac that was so amazingly self-centered and so fucking pliable in the afternoon when the sunlight from the windows got warm enough to make his skin prickle. Tony laughed when they had sex—he always, always laughed and rolled in the sheets and clung to his arms with tight-gripping fingers and blunt fingernails.
When the reporters raged for stories—Pepper had been polite and then deadly polite and finally curt while Tony smiled at the attention, laughed at the stories across the news and went right on with his life like it was only inevitable that the universe would revolve around him and whoever his lips were involved with.
Pepper had been tight-lipped and furious in the kitchen with her phone in her hand like she was trying to crush it with her bare hand. Her cheeks were bright red and her eyes were closed so tight she might have been bruising her eyelids—Rhodey thought he should have apologized to her, thought he should have done something to help her besides wading through a barrage of hungry reporters repeating ‘no comment, no comment, no comment’ until his throat ached from the words. But Happy was there, shuffling in with his repentant shoulders and he ran his hands up her back while she sighed and tipped her head back to look at him with a little-white-smile framed by red lips. His hands were big on her shoulders and she sagged into his touch like it was the only safety in her world. Happy whispered silly things in her ear that made her smile, made her giggle and his hands slid around her body, his arms wrapped around her and his lips pressed kisses against her neck while the phone rang in her palm and she left it unanswered.
A week after the pictures, a few days after the reporters dwindled their nagging calls to twenty times a day, Tony had been crouching at the engine of his beloved hot-rod, talking loud over the news and the dull roar of another story about another tragedy. Rhodey sat in the seat with a wrench in his hand, listening to Tony talk about engines while Jarvis offered commentary on outrageous theories. Tony had been on his knees, outside the car, with a streak of grease up his forearm and sweat dripping down from his temple when he said: “you should come work for me.”
Rhodey laughed, he said, “No.” He thought of Pepper in the kitchen with her red cheeks and her white knuckles.
Yesterday, after almost a week without sharing space, Tony had shown up at his door with a trail of body guards in his hallway. Happy was standing just behind his left shoulder looking one way then the other, acting like there was an assassin waiting down the hall and Tony just shrugged. “Save me from them,” he said.
“You’re their boss, fire them.”
Tony smiled, “Pepper apparently is the only one they’ll listen to. I keep telling them to go away, so could you call my mother and tell her I’m at your house and you’ll make sure I brush my teeth and change my underwear.”
“Are you wearing underwear?”
“With these jeans?”
Rhodey shrugged and took the phone when Tony offered it. He assured Pepper that Tony was safely inside his apartment and she thanked him sweetly. When the door was closed they could still hear the shuffle of feet outside in the hall—Happy was explaining how everything was going to work and Tony collapsed on his couch.
Tony caught the edge of the tabloids and skimmed through the words with a shameless smirk and tossed them on the table-top with a lazy fling of his arm, “looks like you’re really my girlfriend now.”
“I am not your girlfriend.” But Tony pulled him closer and down and Rhodey forgot about words and details and the feet shuffling around outside his door. With his thighs sprawled open and Tony kneeling between his knees—with his naked shoulders shifting and his busy fingers and palms stroking his skin from thighs to nipples while he put his tongue to good use—all he could think about was how his hair was thick and his mouth was slick and how fucking good he was at everything he did. How he was good at this; how he looked good like this.
After, Tony crawled into his lap with his breath stinking like dick and come and kissed him with his tongue all hot and lazy and his lips swollen and wiped dry. He had one hand against Rhodey’s chest and the other across his cheek, head tipped to one side, saying stupid things like: “so what are you?”
“I’m what I always am,” Rhodey said.
They had sex in his bedroom and ate Chinese take-out while they watched black-and-white movies and Tony talked about nothing important at all. They ended up laying on one another, Rhodey traced the arc-reactor and wondered why he always expected it to be hot or cold but never the same temperature as Tony’s skin. He listened to it hum over the sound of Tony’s breaths and all the little things he kept talking about that meant almost-nothing-at-all.
“You should come work for me,” Tony said again. He was tracing Greek letters and old math problems across the back of Rhodey’s shoulders—barely wearing his jeans while the TV flickered in the dim light of the bedroom and drew shadows on his thighs.
Rhodey said, “no.”
Tony sighed and ran his thumb down Rhodey’s spine—he wasn’t angry and he wasn’t frustrated and he wasn’t worried for a moment that he wasn’t going to get his way. Not ever, not Tony. “Why? I’ll pay you more and you’ll have more freedom and—”
“No,” Rhodey said again, he put his leg across Tony’s, ran a hand down his chest to his belly and turned his head so he was looking up at him.
“Why?”
“I’m not going to be your employee.”
“That’s the stupidest reason I’ve ever heard—I wouldn’t be your direct boss—I’m nobody’s direct boss.”
“You’re everyone’s direct boss,” Rhodey said, “I’m not coming to work for you.”
“Then don’t,” Tony said, “just quit your job.”
Rhodey laughed and Tony rolled him over so he was on his back and staring up at Tony. The blue glow of the arc reactor made strange bruised shadows on his cheeks. “And do what? I don’t need someone to pay all my bills and take care of me. I do just fine on my own.”
“I know. But you could do better with me.” Tony was lying against him, elbows to the bed and his open zipper was scratching at his skin while he shifted with his words like he was sure if he just got close enough he could make Rhodey change his mind.
“Tony.”
“I said that,” Tony said, “doesn’t that make a difference? Doesn’t that change something? I haven’t even thought about being with anyone but you in—weeks—months. I’m not exactly well-versed in relationships but isn’t something supposed to change?”
“What?” Rhodey asked, “what do you want to change? You want me to give up my job and move into your house and we can get a dog and have a few kids?”
“Don’t be—”
“What?” Rhodey asked, “don’t be what? Realistic? You change your mind all the time, Tony—I know that.”
“I’m not changing my mind about you,” Tony said like he meant it.
Rhodey said nothing at all because he had nothing he could say—just repeated: “No. I’m not working for you.”
So Tony let it drop, lay against his chest stiff and awkward before he pushed himself away without a reason or a word, found his clothes in the dark and left with a slam of the bedroom door.
The next morning Rhodey was sitting alone in front of a spread of magazines and newspapers in his old house robe with a silent phone as his only companion in a silent apartment. He looked at them—one after the other—found the one he liked the best in US Weekly. It must have been the moment when Tony said (I love you) because his eyes were closed and his lips were curling up in a grin around the words he was whispering against Rhodey’s cheek. He stared at the picture and turned his phone over in his hands once-twice-three-four-five hundred times waiting for it to ring or for his fingers to dial.
Ten minutes and then twenty minutes and then thirty-fifty-one hundred and twenty minutes later he was dressed for the day and still staring at the photographs that were staring right back at him.
“God damn it,” he muttered to nobody but himself and found his jacket by the door. He argued with himself in his truck on the way to Tony’s house, listening to the music so loud he couldn’t hear the nagging voice in his head questioning his sanity.
When he was there he sat in the driveway with his arm against the door and stared at Tony’s house while it stared right back at him. It was ridiculous that he was the one coming here, acting like he had something to apologize for when he didn’t because he hadn’t been anything but honest and—
He sighed and pulled the key out of the ignition, he went up to the house, said hello to Jarvis when he went through the front door, waved to Pepper looking pretty and busy on the phone and the computer while she talked fast and typed fast. She called after him, shouting just loud enough he could hear her on his way down to the shop, “he’s upstairs!”
So he went up instead of down and found Tony dressed in just his jeans and his watch, staring out of the window at the ocean. Rhodey dropped his coat on the bed and walked up behind him, let his hands hang at his side and watched Tony watch him in the reflective surface of the window.
“One of these days you’re not going to come back,” Tony said.
“That hasn’t happened yet.”
Tony turned around to look at him. He smiled faintly and then looked at his jacket on Tony’s bed. “I don’t like dogs. I’m horrible with children—I’m not, we get along as long as they’re clean and a safe distance from me. I don’t want children. I haven’t ever wanted children. Do you want children?”
“I’ve thought about it.”
Tony nodded like he was settling something in his mind and stayed where he was by the window. “I’m trying,” he said, “that has to mean something.”
“Tony—”
“Just tell me if I’m wasting my time.” He was so serious standing there—looking at him with something other than arrogance and amusement. He was so still and it was unnerving with the sparkle of sunlight off the ocean behind his back.
“Tony.” It wasn’t that simple because it was never that simple—it wasn’t easy and it wasn’t uncomplicated and it wasn’t as if Tony didn’t piss him off twenty three days out of the year. They wouldn’t ever be able to live together and they wouldn’t ever be adorable in the kitchen like Happy kissing Pepper’s cheek. Nothing would ever be sane or simple or sincere—Tony would always always be Tony and if he weren’t Rhodey wouldn’t even know what to do with him like he didn’t know what to do with him now.
“Tell me,” Tony said again and he moved forward, got close—looked at him like it was that important when Tony hadn’t been that close to vulnerable since his parents had died, since Rhodey found him in the desert with blood crusted down his arms and a fever on his skin. “If I’m wasting my time, it’s a simple question Rhodey. Tell me there’s no chance that I’ll ever convince you that I’m serious and I’ll stop. We’ll do what we’ve always done.”
Rhodey licked his lips and looked at him—at his eyes—and said, “there’s not no chance.”
“So I’m not completely wasting my time?” Tony asked.
“No.”
“Good,” he said and smiled and leaned forward to kiss him. It wasn’t hungry or demanding or all lust or silly or chaste or anything at all but the echo of that word against his lips. Good. “Good?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Good,” Tony said again and kissed him again. He moved slow and steady and stripped Rhodey to his skin.
They were naked on the blankets, taking their time—kissing with their mouths and hands and Tony started giggling into the crease of his neck about nothing at all and wiggled between his legs with determination and presumptive arrogance, his arms tight with muscles as he rolled his hips down against Rhodey and hiccupped his laughs and whispered his silly-sweet-nothings. The arc reactor glowed and the sunshine was warm through the windows, Jarvis turned on music and Tony hummed along as he kissed him with sloppy lips.
Rhodey wrestled him so he was against the bed and Tony laughed with his knees pulled up and his fingers gripping-and-slipping at his skin, pulling him close, singing the wrong lyrics to the song and Rhodey bit his shoulder and sucked a hickey into his neck until Tony was just writhing under him. He leaned forward with his weight on his hands and whispered against Tony’s ear with wet lips and said: “I love you.”
Because he hadn’t said it before—not out loud—because he wanted to say it—because Tony might have needed to hear it—and when Tony laughed and kissed him and pulled at his shoulders and rolled them over, they were both giggling and stupid.
They were making something like love and the thought scared the hell out of him and then Tony kissed the tip of his nose with a sloppy smirk and it wasn’t any less scary but it was worth fighting for.