Chapter Text
When he wakes Tony is clutching him tight, his face buried in his side, drool steadily leaking from his parted lips. The sun is filtering through the bare windows that take up the whole of the wall to his right. The view of New York is spectacular but doesn’t hold a candle to the man in his arms. The love of his life, it sounds silly when he thinks it but it’s been the only real truth he’s known for a long time.
Which makes it so much harder to extract himself from his grumbling lover’s arms. Makes it that much harder when he packs up a small duffel with as many clothes as he can stuff in it. Makes it that much harder to leave.
But as sure as he loves Tony, as sure as he’s beyond smitten, he’s sure he isn’t stupid.
It’s less about having attended MIT as a gangly 16-year-old and more about knowing people really. And he’s always known people. Learned from his mother how to read a person ten ways to Sunday before they could even open their mouth.
So he knows the man in front of him is lying through his fucking teeth.
“It’s a business thing, I should be back in a few days,” Tony explains, his eyes focused intently on the plate of fish and fries before him.
Rhodey nods and keeps eating his own food silently. He’s not going to confront Tony on this. He’d called him out about a “business trip” just the previous week and all it’d done was start an argument he didn’t want to repeat. So if Tony wanted to lie that was fine with him. Let him have his damn secrets if that’s what he wanted. Let him think Rhodey believed him.
“Are we… are we okay?” Tony asked nervously, looking up to finally look Rhodey in his dark brown eyes.
Were they okay? What a loaded question. What a laugh.
“When are you leaving?” Rhodey asked instead of responding. He isn’t going to play this game right now. He’s not in the mood.
“Tomorrow morning,” Tony answers, still looking hopeful. Jim wants to laugh, wants to throw something, wants to shake the man he loves but instead he just nods and pushes away from the table, his appetite gone.
“Well, have a good flight.” And that’s that. He’s not going to see Tony off, not with him lying to him like this. It’s one of their rules, total honesty, and here Tony is. Lying through his teeth for the umpteenth time this week.
“Honey?” Tony asks, standing to follow him from the room.
“I’m going out. Don’t wait up.”
The last time Tony had kept something from him he’d been going off to get chemo treatments all by himself. He’d been losing hair and sleep and time in secrecy as if there was no one in the world who’d have been hurt if he’d died. Tony hasn’t ever known how to lie about small things. He’s only ever tried to keep important things from people.
If Jarvis hadn’t contacted him way back when Jim would have never known Tony’s parents had passed away. Tony had left to attend their funeral and then had been back in school like everything was fine. He’d drunk a lot more but he’d never said anything to Jim.
In their twenties when he’d been at the lowest point in his life he’d gone with Jim to see his mom’s graduation from community college high on amphetamines, hiding cuts on his wrists with an oversized suit jacket in 90-degree weather.
Tony was his best friend who never told him anything important. His best friend who’d lie to him to avoid having tough conversations. His best friend who thought he’d deserved to suffer in silence. Tony was the man he’d always loved who had almost died a dozen times and he’d only ever known because someone else had told him or he’d learned from the news or gossip magazines.
Obviously there were times where it hadn’t felt like they were best friends at all. Best friends told each other everything but Tony never told him anything.
Well lies, he did tell him plenty of those.
And that's why he'd he’d made Tony promise to be honest with him when they had finally gotten together, even if it was hard or would hurt he wanted the truth. He’d kissed Tony’s scars and held him the whole night as his best friend, his new lover, spilled his guts. He didn’t pretend to understand it all but he made a constant effort to be honest about things with Tony too.
And things had seemed fine. More than fine, he’d bought a ring months ago. A week before Tony had started lying again. Had started hiding things from him.
He couldn’t, wasn’t going to go through it again.
He’d never blamed Tony for the crash. They’d been arguing and he should have known Tony wasn’t in a good enough state of mind to be driving. He’d just been so angry, so frustrated. He’d felt so used.
“Jim, my main man! What’s going on?” Sam asked, smiling wide as he held the door open wide for Jim to wheel himself into the apartment. Sam had lucked out with a rather accessible building in lower Manhattan, which was surprising for a building almost twenty something years old.
“Hey man, just needed to clear my head,” Jim admitted as he made his way deeper into the apartment. Sam nodded, closing and locking the door behind him before stepping quickly to his side.
“What’s going on, man? You want to talk about it?”
“I don’t want to unload on you I just… I needed to vent to someone, is that okay?” Jim sighed. Sam nodded again, plopping down on his brown leather couch. His furniture reminded Jim of that first apartment he’d shared with Tony. Muted earth tones dominated this space as it had that two-bedroom apartment back then. Tony’s mother had decorated the place. She’d liked shades of brown. Jim had only met her that one time but he’d hoped she’d liked him too.
“Take good care of him, Jim. I’m counting on you,” she’d whispered before leaving, holding him in a warm embrace.
“When Pepper left Tony he was a mess. I, of course, didn’t find out until weeks later. Not until she’d called me and asked me, begged me, to check up on him. He’d been in the bathroom when I got in, broken glass everywhere. I thought he was going to die, there was so much blood.
No one knows about that night. He was conscious enough to beg me not to call an ambulance so I called some private doctor he had on speed dial. Turns out it wasn’t the first time that had happened. Just the first time I’d been there, that I’d known.
He’d almost died that same way so many times and no one had told me. I was so mad. Furious. My best friend was suffering and I couldn’t… hadn’t even been able to help. Hadn’t gotten the chance.”
At first it had seemed unfair. People had a right to their secrets, that’s what his mother had told him.
‘You can’t force honesty, Jim. Not on anybody but especially not from the person you love.’
He’d known she was right, she was always right, but it hadn’t made all of it hurt any less. He loved Tony, so so much, with everything in him he loved Tony. Had left Carol in the middle of the night after that call from Pepper. Had driven from their vacation in Pittsburgh to New York like a speeding bullet to make sure he was okay.
He’d done everything he could for the man, but most importantly, he’d always been honest with him. Always been open. Too many people had lied to Tony and he didn’t want to be one of them, not ever.
So what did it say about him that Tony was so fine with lying to him? That Tony kept so many secrets from him? What was wrong with him?
Tony was twenty-four years old and rail thin. Jim only knew because his sister Jeannette had seen a special report about him on the news. Jim called in a favor with his superior officer to get emergency leave. He’d rushed to California like a chicken with its head cut off, so worried that he’d get there too late.
When he got to Tony he was higher than he’d ever been, hallucinating, and standing on the highest ledge of his house.
When he’d seen Jim running from his rented car to the house he’d smiled and Jim’s heart broke for him. Not for the first time and certainly not for the last.
“I’m so tired, Sam. It feels like there’s a river between us that I can’t cross. But I’ve been trying anyway. Tony’s got so much guilt and self-loathing and trauma that I feel like a monster sometimes, like I’m demanding too much from him and I guess maybe this is how Pepper felt. Like her setting boundaries was just another thing feeding Tony’s turmoil. It’s frustrating, shit man, it’s frustrating.”
Sam nodded his head, sitting closer to the edge of his seat now. And that made Jim feel like shit too. He’d been thinking about talking to Sam about whatever it was going on between him and Steve and Bucky but then the lies had gotten to be too much and he’d just barged his way into his friend’s home and started unloading on him when he already had so much to deal with.
“Hey man, I can see what you’re thinking and you need to stop. I’m good, you’re my friend and I want to help. If just listening does that then that’s what I’ll do, okay?”
Jim nodded his head. He had other good friends but none that lived as close by as Sam. None that he wanted to even share this with but Sam.
“Look at us, man. Stuck on a pair of fools,” he joked. Sam cracked a smile then and chuckled along with him.
“We should start a support group. Bet we’d get a lot of people to join too. There’s got to be more like us. Falling in love with your best friend is hard enough in normal circumstances. Harder when they’re a recovering addict or they’re engaged,” Sam laughed.
“Who’s engaged?”
“Steve, he didn’t-they didn’t tell you guys?”
Jim shook his head and shrugged.
“Didn’t tell anyone.”
That night it was raining and Jim had been snuggled up with Carol, laughing quietly as they’d joked together. Their relationship was easy and light and he appreciated it. She was probably the first woman, first person, in a long time that he’d been really ready to settle down with. Hell, they’d even talked about maybe having children one day.
She wanted a house full, he’d have been happy with just one.
They were laughing breathlessly between kisses when he’d heard a pounding at his door that had them both instantly alert. Nothing good came from any four am visitor.
When he’d found Tony soaked to the bone and fidgeting on his front steps he hadn’t even blinked, just invited him in and rushed to grab him some towels to dry off with. Hadn’t even gone back to Carol to explain the situation, just sat in his guest room with a shaking Tony for the longest time before she’d come down to see what was going on.
She wasn’t surprised or even particularly angry when she saw who it was wrapped in his arms. But she was upset. Their break up a few days after was a testament to that.
“I just… I have so much more to say. There’s so much to unpack between me and Tony. But I just- I can’t, I won’t carry his emotions and my own anymore. It’s too much. I’m in a damn wheelchair and I didn’t even for a moment get to be angry about that. Not because Tony wouldn’t let me but because I wouldn’t let me. I don’t know when it happened Sam but at some point I stopped being me.
And shit, I think I’m doing this wrong because originally I came thinking I needed to tell you to face the music with Steve and Bucky. To talk to them because those two lug heads have been in my house all hours of the day mopping around and waiting for you but don’t go back there because they need you to carry them. Don’t go there and push down your own feelings. You deserve more than that. We both deserve so much fucking more than that. Okay, do you hear me Sam? We deserve more than being someone's rock. We deserve someone acknowledging our feelings too." Sam nodded, his hand now clutching Jim's tightly. The two of them sat there together in silence for a long moment before a banging at Sam's front door shook them both out of their own thoughts.