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There's always a bit of a competition around the tower: Clint and Natasha's constant betting pool, the way that Clint and Bucky flirt over their shooting competitions, Steve's own eating competition with Thor and Bruce after the second man dehulkifies himself. While all of them could take a lesson from HR about the complications that competition within the workplace can produce, no one needs that lesson quite like Tony Stark and James Rhodes, Steve thinks. As bad as he and Bucky can be about, well, every single thing they have competed about ever since the competition got fair, at least they're not like Tony and Rhodey. That's true enough in the fact that Steve knows exactly who is thundering down the hallway long before he can see Tony.
Though Steve tries to stop him when he jets past, Tony is still running at top speed to the elevator, yelling a reply to Steve's inquiry after him rather than stopping.
"Sorry, Cap! My honeybear says he can get into a suit faster than me!"
Steve wants to be mad, but instead he smiles indulgently, sitting back in his seat and looking at Sam conspiratorially; even if he and Sam have been together less than a twentieth of the time that Tony and Rhodey have, it always feels as if they're the weathered relationship while Tony and Rhodes are in a permanent honeymoon phase. Even as it's tangentially inconvenient, it's also incredibly sweet, the kind of relationship that Steve wants to have well into his aging, and he thinks Sam is that for him. He's not going to say that because it feels like enough to bowl someone over, drive someone away, but he thinks he kinda says it just looking at Sam right now, warmth deep in his chest as his boyfriend smiles back.
"You honestly think you're cuter than us?" Clint asks indignantly, making both Tony and, actually, Bucky roll their eyes. He's not quite as competitive as Clint or Steve, mostly liking the way that it sparks something sweet in Clint's eyes and something fraternal in Steve's smile, but he's okay with losing most of the time. So long as his people are happy, he doesn't care. Meanwhile, Tony and Clint going head to head is like a firestorm waiting to happen, a hurricane in the dining room, and Bucky finds himself making the eye contact of the more sane boyfriend with James Rhodes. It's kinda surreal if he thinks about it too hard.
"Oh, I don't think we're cuter than you, birdbrain, I know," Tony replies, catty with emphasis, and then continues "We've been adorable for almost as long as you've been alive. You just don't have the experience to get with us." Tony sticks out his tongue at Clint and Clint, naturally, does it back; Bucky sometimes feels like he's dating a five year old with access to alcohol and caffeine. He loves him so fucking much.
"You know jackshit! Buck, prove him wrong. What's the cutest thing I've ever done for you?" Clint asks, but then he seems to think about it, blushing pink. "Okay, don't answer that, what's the cutest thing you've ever done for me?" he asks, leaning onto Bucky's shoulder with a pouty contemplation. Bucky grins at him and puts a kiss on his forehead, because even when he's annoying and messy, he's still Bucky's sunshine.
"Cuteness has to be reciprocal, Hawkass. If you're not cute back, it doesn't count," Tony snarks, to which Rhodes snorts.
"I am infinitely cuter to you than you are to me, Stank," Rhodey says, raising an eyebrow. Tony puts on a look of mock offense that is too obviously besotted to be even remotely real.
"Honeybear, platypus, my sun and stars, how dare you? I'm an absolute delight, I'm just the sweetest," Tony insists, leaning against Rhodey's chest with his face less than five inches from that of Rhodes. With the way Rhodey is grinning, he obviously was expecting this outcome. Instead of waiting to see it, Bucky drags Clint out of his seat, promising compensation for dropping the conversation with a look hot enough that Clint moves with him naturally, already darkening with a blush.
It’s good to see Tony happy. Natasha has to think about that every time he’s adorably competitive with his college sweetheart, because it hurts a little too much to watch someone be happy like that when she’s never had something like that herself. She thought that Phil was a bit like that, once upon a time, but it had fallen apart long before Phil had died, and they are both new people now. She’s constantly shifting like the tide and he’s gone and back again, new and new and new, even if they can still be friends. She can still taste it behind her teeth when she remembers that she loved him.
She remembers what it tastes like when she looks at Darcy Lewis, but that is something that she cannot have. Even when her little speckled sunshine, with her wide smile and her dark eyes, is competing at video games with one of the closest friends she's ever had, that best friend's husband cheering in the background, Darcy Lewis cannot be that for her. Even when Darcy beams at her when she wins, requests a high five that Natasha doesn't deny, a smile tugging at her own lips after so long without one, she won't be having that.
Even when Tony invites the two of them to a dinner and a movie deal that feels awfully like a double date, Natasha goes anyway, because Tony is one of her best friends, and Darcy is going to be there. She gets along with Rhodes much like she gets along with Barnes; there's a degree of difference, but there's also a civility made through eye contact and wry smiles. When Tony and Darcy try to outrun each other to a specific seat in the tower movie theater, Natasha looks at Rhodey and they both smile, hopelessly head over heels for their respective bright eyed brunette.
Thor and Tony place bets like it's going out of style. Even more than Natasha and Clint do, though Bruce would never spread the rumor; he likes to let people assume that he's not witness to any of the competitive acts, instead letting them garner the impression that he doesn't think about those things at all. Instead of stopping his god and his best friend, he looks at Rhodey.
"I bet that Tony tries to bet money and Thor tries to bet in gallons of mead," Bruce says, a hint of a smile curving his mouth. Rhodey raises an eyebrow.
"You're gonna have to try harder to get me to take a bet I know I'll lose, doc," the colonel replies, smiling back still. They both lean back in their lawn chairs, taking sips of mojitos as Thor and Tony argue over who could make a bigger cannonball: Thor with Mjolnir in hand, or Tony in the suit. Before they can decide to actually test the thing out, Bruce stands, putting on the smile that he knows charms the charmer in Thor even if he doesn't want it to.
"Thor," he says simply, tilting his head at his boyfriend as he does, to which Thor immediately melts. Thor makes comments about him looking like an Asgardian creature that looks quite like a dog whenever Bruce does this, and it always makes him smile.
"My love," Thor replies, leaning down to set his forehead against Bruce's as he often does. Bruce sees out of the corner of his eye as Rhodey approaches Tony from behind, wrapping his arms around Tony's middle and nosing along the back of his hairline. It makes him smile as Tony giggles, as old as he is, and he wonders how he lucked out enough to be this happy. He didn't think he'd ever get to anything like this.
"Vision! I need a score settled!" Tony calls through their apartment at an ungodly hour (so maybe it's nine in the morning, and maybe it's not ungodly, but Wanda is bitter), banging open the door. Wanda curses her boyfriend for letting the apartment be open access to his pseudo father figure, dashing her head beneath the pillows and hiding her body beneath the blankets that she lifts onto herself with her powers. She wouldn't hide so much of herself if it weren't for what she and Vision had just been doing, but well. She hates Tony Stark (except for in all of the ways that she loves him more than anything for saving her brother, for taking them in, for giving them a home, for giving her Vision). But, she hates him right now.
"And what would that be, my friend?" Vision asks with a sigh as he floats out of bed, manifesting some clothes onto his physical body. Wanda is grateful as he floats through the door, making sure that the conversation with Tony is kept well away from her nudity. She pulls on one of the sweaters that Vision leaves around, cashmere and much too big for her, and a pair of shorts that she is almost sure were first Pietro's. Actually, they may have been Clint's at one point, with how both she and her brother love to pilfer from the archer.
"What score are we settling?" she asks as she comes out of the room, scrubbing a hand through her hair that only musses it up more, but she doesn't care. If Tony knows exactly what they were doing before he interrupted, all the better; he always gets angry when people interrupt him and his 'honeybear,' so she may well be angry with him if she wants.
"Rhodey says he's a better shot with the repulsors than me. Vis keeps an even more in-tune record than Fri or Jesse - the AI in Rhodey's suit, if you didn't know - so, ergo, he's the best source," Tony explains, and Wanda has to restrain herself from physically pushing Tony out of her apartment.
"Anthony. I am not awake yet. You may acquire my boyfriend in approximately an hour. Until then, leave our apartment," she requests, to which Tony nods, wincing.
"That's fair," he says, shrugging his shoulders and exiting. Wanda's eyes cross back to Vision.
"Bed?" she asks, and he smiles before he picks her up.
When Tony calls for him, he sounds unsure. That's the first thing that makes Rhodey narrow his eyes, concern coloring his features and trailing him down the hallway to find his best friend, the love of his life, his husband. They've been married for almost as long as Wanda and Pietro have been alive (excluding Pietro's stint in being dead), and there's still an alarming number of things that can make Tony insecure. It's never that he's insecure in Rhodey, has been sure of Rhodey since long before Rhodes followed him into hell and brought him out screaming, but there's always the inkling in Tony that he's just like his father, that he hurts people, that he's no good, even when he is at his kindest. Rhodey hates Howard Stark, and wants to thank Bucky Barnes every single day, even if it's maybe not appropriate.
"Honeybear?" Tony calls for him. Rhodey can hear his boy chewing on his lip, can hear the way his voice is almost shaking, can see him in his mind's eye. Feeling like this means that Tony is swathed in a sweatshirt that once belonged to Rhodey himself, sweatpants relegated to the floor as the small man stays in boxers, knees curled up to his chest on their bed as he covers himself in their blankets. Tony is much too old to be curled up like that now, complains about how it hurts his back, but sometimes it's the only thing that makes him feel safe. Rhodey walks a little faster through the apartment, cursing all of his meetings with presidents he doesn't care about, because Tony matters more than anything.
"Tony? What's up, baby? You okay?" he asks as he comes in, sitting on the bed next to Tony. Tony is exactly how Rhodey assumed he would be, except he's wearing his necklace, the ring of it held in his hand. The ring is a melted down version of Rhodey's first set of dog tags, a promise ring that Rhodey had made for him the first time he came back from war. It was before there was plastic and rubber surrounding the metal, before DoD identification numbers, just something that meant Rhodey and something that made Tony feel at home even when home was six thousand miles away. Rhodey had actually asked Tony out with that ring, jumping directly from best friends to 'we're gonna get married someday' and he has no regrets.
"Hey platypus. I'm fine. How was your trip?" Tony lies, forcing the smile that Rhodey hates more than anything. Tony likes to pretend that he's okay sometimes, and it really grinds Rhodey's gears more than he can say; he likes Tony open, likes him when he feels comfortable enough to communicate, and he hates leaving Tony. He shuts down every so often when Rhodey leaves, and usually the colonel can foresee the downward spiral, but not always. Based on the way that Tony is clinging to his promise ring, it's a bad one this time. Rhodey climbs further into bed and pulls his boy against his chest, pressing a kiss to Tony's temple.
"Tell me what's wrong, Sparky. No 'I'm fine' bullshit," Rhodey insists, speaking against Tony's temple comfortably. They've been close like this for what feels like a century, and there's comfort in the warmth of Tony's golden skin, in the prickle that his hair always has after a recent cut, even now that it's salt and pepper rather than the inky brown that Rhodey had gotten used to in college. Even before he admitted to loving Tony Stark with his entire self, they had shared rooms and beds and lives for years. Being apart for any time feels unnatural, and Rhodey isn't the codependent one out of the two of them.
"Are we too competitive? Am I too competitive? I just... I don't want to drag you into fights all the time by being... me. I don't want you to have to deal with that, and if it's only being brought up to me now, you've probably dealt with it for a long time and I just... I feel bad," Tony explains, still not looking at Rhodey, but the explanation is better than Rhodey expected, to be fair. He feels anger boil in the bottom of his stomach, but now is not the time. Tony just closes up with the application of anger, even in his own defense, and Rhodey will not be contributing to that anymore than he already has.
"I'm going to need names and locations of anyone who brought that up to you, but it can wait. Anyway, Tones, don't you think that if it bothered me, I would have said something?" he asks, soft as he puts another kiss on Tony's forehead, tilting Tony's chin up to make the other man look at him.
"I mean, yeah, but -" Tony starts, but Rhodey shakes his head.
"No buts, Sparky. Your competitive nature is something I love about you. It keeps me on my toes, keeps things interesting, and you're so pretty when you get all up in someone's face. I love seeing that. So, if you can tell me who said something..." Rhodey trails off, flashing a grin as Tony hides his face against Rhodey's throat, obviously blushing.
"No tattle telling," Tony says, sounding approximately six years old, and Rhodey snorts out a laugh, dragging Tony off of his chest.
"I still haven't gotten a welcome back kiss, poindexter," Rhodey complains pointedly, raising an eyebrow. Tony raises an eyebrow in challenge, his grin coming back with a speed that Rhodey loves more than anything.
"Oh, I'll give you a welcome."