Chapter Text
Rhodey’s being weird. Tony doesn’t realize at first, during the shift of the Rhodes clan leaving and Helen returning. He feels—refreshed, almost. He joins Helen in the lab for the better part of a week, and even with the gap between their respective specialties he feels like he’s helpful, like he’s a pair of fresh eyes she can use. (It’s a shadow of those giddy months he’d spent with Bruce in the tower, back when they’d first been getting to know each other but instinctively knew that they worked together. But that’s okay. Even if god only knows where Bruce—or the Hulk—is these days.)
Helen’s a more responsible scientist than anyone Tony’s ever worked with before—insists on only entering the lab during daytime and eating regular, balanced meals. Tony, who once ate a mint he found lying under his worktable after fifty-six hours of no sleep, is in awe of her.
He’s in regular correspondence with the new SHIELD, mostly through calls with Maria Hill but occasionally with face-to-face meetings, none of which go what he’d call ‘well,’ although he earns a grudging acknowledgement from Fury that his little press tour hadn’t been a disaster.
It—‘helps’ is the wrong word, but it sure alters public opinion when the Secret Avengers get involved trying to stop an illicit weapons sale and end up derailing a decade-long CIA investigation in the process. Tony does a radio interview, talks about the importance of oversight and digs out the phone Steve gave him afterwards, stares at its unobtrusive weight in his palm and doesn’t even attempt to untangle the maelstrom of emotions he’s feeling.
The point is that it’s a busy few weeks, and he doesn’t realize Rhodey’s being weird until a Friday afternoon when he’s underneath a prototype of a new Quinjet (as close to a meditative state as he gets these days) and suddenly he’s bolting upright and hitting his head against the metal and trying to pinpoint the exact moment Rhodey stopped touching him.
Tony’s never been what you’d call a tactile person—in point of fact, he hates physical contact with people he doesn’t know well. Rhodey has always been the exception, the one person who never felt overbearing when he touched a hand to the small of Tony’s back, wrapped him in a hug, or tapped him on the arm to get his attention. All of these casual and not-so-casual touches have been a sustained component of their friendship, something Tony had been taking entirely for granted.
On Saturday, it’s the first thing he brings up with Emma.
“It’s weird,” he’s saying, “right? Like, it’s gotta be that there’s something I’ve done wrong, only he usually tells me when I’m being an asshole.”
“Have you considered asking him?”
“Um,” Tony says. “No?”
“Why not?”
Tony fidgets. He wishes, not for the first time, that Emma’s office was more like the movie standard of a therapist’s office; he wants to lie back on a couch and lament as dramatically as possible. It’s considerably more difficult to lament while sitting up, he thinks.
“I don’t want to fight with him,” he says.
“There’s no guarantee it would be a fight,” Emma points out. There’s a chip in her deep purple nail varnish, right at the tip of her index finger. Tony fixates on it while he talks.
“It always seems to end up that way, with me.” Part of him feels like he should say more, enumerate the ways he’s hurt the people he loves and been hurt in return. But—Emma knows. If she needed to jog her memory, she could just switch on the news.
“Do you and Rhodey fight often?”
“No—just, you know. Sometimes I’m a bit much. You heard about my, uh, would’ve been my fortieth birthday?”
“Refresh my memory.”
“Right, so, well, I was dying—not that that’s a defense, I should’ve probably—anyway, the arc reactor was slowly poisoning me and my brain was like cool, let’s throw a party! and it got, like, way beyond ‘call the cops’ out of control, so Rhodey tried to stop me, and he, kind of,” he says, pausing for breath, “stole an Iron Man suit. Handed it over to the military.”
Emma hisses in a breath. “After you—”
“Yes, after I vowed not to make weapons for the government anymore. That was a hell of a publicity workaround, I’ll tell you right now. But he was right, I shouldn’t have been in the suit in that condition. I’m—I’ve been trying to drink less.”
“Have you ever considered stopping completely?” When Tony doesn’t answer, Emma says, gentle, “I have a colleague who runs an Alcoholics Anonymous group, same building, twice a week.”
Tony blanches.
“I’m not name-calling,” Emma points out. “You know you have a problem.”
“I was dying,” he says. His voice sounds very small.
“And that was the first, and only, time you got dangerously drunk?” she asks. “The was the only period of your life during which you were drinking on a daily basis?”
“This isn’t the first time I’ve been called—that,” Tony says.
“Who else?”
“Uh, TMZ. The National Enquirer. The Daily Mail.”
“Anyone you know personally? Anyone who was saying it from a place of concern, rather than judgement?”
He thinks of 1992, thinks of Rhodey stood beside his hospital bed looking half furious, half concerned, with a vice-like grip around Tony’s hand. Never do this to me again, he’d said. There’d been a leaflet for AA next to the bed; Tony never found out whether it was Rhodey or a doctor who’d left it there. He hadn’t picked it up.
“Sort of,” he says.
Emma lets him get away with not explaining. “I’m only asking you to consider it.”
For all that anonymity is there in the name, though, Tony knows that he can’t guarantee that his picture won’t be on Twitter the moment after he walks through the door. And while Tony Stark could afford to be labelled an alcoholic for the world to see, Iron Man can’t. It’s not worth the risk.
He says, “Maybe,” and although Emma doesn’t look entirely mollified, she gives him a nod.
“As for Rhodey,” she says, “I really do think you should talk to him. Tell him how you feel.”
“How I feel?”
Emma clearly hesitates. “That you—love him, and care for him, and that physical touch is an important part of your relationship.”
“And then I’ll ask him to the prom.”
If Emma did unprofessional things like face-palming, Tony’s instinct tells him that’s what she’d be doing. After staring at him for a good few seconds, she says, “And then I guess you’ll ask him to the prom.”
Tony spends three more days having careful conversations with Rhodey that don’t stray anywhere close to the dangerous, needy territory that his brain’s in—but on Wednesday he starts thinking about how Emma will get that pinched not-quite-disappointed look on her face if he goes back on Saturday and tells her that he chickened out of having the conversation. He finds himself caught between a rock and a hard place, or at least just between two slightly awkward places.
“Hey, pumpkin,” he says, Thursday evening. Rhodey smiles over at him from the kitchen. “Want to watch a movie? I can get Dum-E to make us popcorn.”
“I’m not touching anything that bot makes,” Rhodey responds. “Do I get to pick the movie, or is this another one of your attempts to make me watch all the Lord of the Rings films back-to-back?”
“I try that once…” Tony mutters. “When I say movie, I mean I can put Doctor Who on and cuddle.”
So much for being subtle. He avoids eye contact, shifting around on the couch like a discontented cat.
“Classic or new?” Rhodey’s voice is a little bit off.
“New. Tennant. Or Eccleston, if you’re in the mood. Just not—”
“Anything past season 4, I know,” Rhodey says. “Still think you should give Capaldi a chance.”
Tony looks up at him. “Which season do you want?”
“Dealer’s choice.” Rhodey’s expression is unreadable. He looks like he’s humoring Tony—he often does—but the skin around his eyes is crinkled, as if there’s a smile he’s biting back.
“Okay,” Tony grins, rubbing his hands together. “Two-parter. Future. Theme of theology.”
“Good choice.” Rhodey, finally, sits down next to him. There’s still a few inches of space separating them, and Tony doesn’t know whether he’s allowed to bridge it; he plays with the hem of his tank top and waits for Rhodey to make the first move.
Once the stalemate (albeit one of his own invention) has become unbearable, he flicks to the appropriate episode and presses play, tries not to watch Rhodey out of the corner of his eye. They’ve both watched the episode before, perhaps half a dozen times, because they’re huge sci-fi geeks even when the science is questionable at best.
“God, they’re stupid,” he says, halfway through the episode. He’s lucky that Rhodey doesn’t mind his tendency to narrate things. It always annoyed the hell out of Pepper, and Bruce, and the whole team on movie nights.
“Mm,” Rhodey says.
“Imagine if, right now, she admitted she was in love with him,” Tony continues.
“Wouldn’t have changed anything,” Rhodey points out.
“Maybe not—which, as a thesis, I sort of reject, but—at least they’d both have known. This will-they-won’t-they, it’s bullshit. Just imagine it, being in love with someone and spending every waking minute with them, and keeping your feelings to yourself until you’re literally stranded on a parallel universe, and even then—wait, hang on, do you reckon parallel universes are a thing? I should probably get on that. Is anyone at Stark Industries already on that?”
“On what?”
“Discovering the multiverse,” Tony says, “if there is one. Which, probably, right? I mean, if there are aliens there’s probably a multiverse.”
It’s a testament to the therapy that he’s perfectly fine with talking about the aliens, these days.
“Your logic, as ever, astounds,” Rhodey says.
“Don’t knock it, some of my best inventions were a product of free association.”
“And based on Doctor Who episodes?”
“And based on Doctor Who episodes,” Tony replies, nodding seriously. “I’ve been trying to invent a time machine since 2005.”
“If anyone could invent time travel…”
“Yeah?”
“…it’d probably be Bruce Banner.”
Tony stretches out to kick Rhodey in the thigh, and then—leaves his foot there, just unobtrusively resting atop Rhodey’s leg. He keeps his eyes fixed on the screen, allowing himself to invest in the characters-of-the-week, most of whom are destined for tragedy. He tells himself that he’s imagining the tension radiating from the body next to him.
He groans when, ten minutes later, Rose kisses the Doctor’s space helmet. “See, this is what I mean,” he says, ignoring the way his eyes are slightly watery.
“You could probably afford to buy the BBC,” Rhodey suggests. “Force them to reshoot the series to your specifications. Rose and the Doctor get together in episode one. The Weeping Angels are only used once. More Captain Jack. Am I missing anything?”
“I never said episode one,” Tony says. “A little pining is good for the soul. But, I mean, you’ve gotta admit it’s ridiculous, right?”
“They end up together eventually.”
“She ends up with his clone,” Tony whines, wiggling his toes to emphasize the point. “Which, also: have we looked into cloning yet?”
“You mean, has Stark Industries dived into the ethical minefield of human cloning? I don’t know, man, shouldn’t you know this stuff?”
“Not CEO anymore,” Tony says. “And not on the best of speaking terms with the actual CEO.”
“That won’t be forever,” Rhodey reminds him, voice horribly gentle. Tony kicks him again, even though he can’t really feel it. It’s the gesture that counts.
“No, I know.”
“You and Pep—I just, I always saw you sticking it out,” Rhodey says. “I thought that was it for you.”
Tony sighs, tips his head back. “Yeah, me too, for a while there.”
“So you’re not gonna try to win her back? Ever?”
He makes a noise that’s somewhere between a laugh and a sound of despair. “It’s not a romantic comedy, sugarbun. I’m not gonna stand outside her window with a boombox.”
“I guess not,” Rhodey says.
“I’m just,” Tony says, “I’m never gonna stop being a hot mess, and I can’t expect someone else to deal with that, you know? Putting up with my bullshit’s like a second job. You should know.”
“It’s not so bad,” Rhodey murmurs, an unbearable warmth running through the words. Tony’s skin prickles, like a full-body electric shock, and he doesn’t know how to respond.
It’s during the Doctor’s triumphant speech in the second episode that Tony realizes a couple of things in quick succession.
The Doctor says, If I believe in one thing—just one thing—I believe in her, and Tony finds his eyes drawn, inexorably, to Rhodey. The first thing he thinks is, Oh.
The second thing he thinks is, Shit.