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Pepper giggles as Rhodey catches her by the waist, slinging her into Tony’s lap like she weighs nothing. She’s always been against this football stuff he’s into (not least of all because it makes one of her closest friends seem like he’s a meathead jock), but it is kinda fun that he can just toss either her or Tony around now. They’re always been such a terrible threesome, the kind of trio that makes teachers groan whenever they’re in a class together. They’re all brilliant, sure, but never let it be said that any one of them knows how to shut the fuck up if even one of the other two is in a ten foot proximity.
And woe be to the teachers that attempted to keep them more than ten feet apart.
She lands in Tony’s lap and sprays silly string directly into his face, which of course makes him dump her into the floor. He does so almost sadly carefully, as Tony is with all things; she and Rhodey are still trying to break him of that. He’s so scared of breaking everything around him that he’s heartbreakingly careful, just all the time.
“Rude! I’m calling Jarvis!” she says, pulling herself off of the floor by grabbing his knee. Rhodey laughs and helps her up off the ground, grabbing her hand and hauling her up. She laughs as he twirls her around, leading her in a discordant dance to exactly no music. They never do things like this. At the end of the day, Tony is Tony Stark, the heir of Stark Industries. At the end of the day, she’s Virginia Potts, future self-made woman. At the end of the day, Rhodey is James Rhodes, and he hasn’t decided exactly what he’s going to do yet, but he and Tony are gonna make it to MIT while she goes to Harvard School of Business. But, today, they’re just some high school kids.
“Jarvis is like Beetlejuice,” Tony comments from off to the side. They had watched Halloween movies all morning in preparation for the coming spooky month, something which Tony always has to throw a party for. Rhodey raises an eyebrow, stopping their dancing to pull Pepper onto the couch with him, splaying them both on Tony’s lap. The billionaire smiles down at the before petting both of their heads, running his fingers through Pepper’s hair with one hand while he scratches at James’s scalp with the other.
“Whattaya mean, Tones?” Rhodey asks, his voice softer than it has been all day, and Pepper can’t help but snuggle into him. He’s never been happier for Tony’s impractically wide couches, the comfortable ones that he keeps in his wing and away from his mother and father’s proper, prying eyes.
“You say his name three times, he appears. Beetlejuice,” Tony replies with a smile, looking everyday like the sixteen year old that he actually is. She’s just turned seventeen and Rhodey is almost eighteen, but Tony is a senior just like them. He could have skipped a lot more grades, Pepper knows, but she’s glad that he stuck behind with them. She’s glad that they caught him before Howard could push him through school on the fast track, that they got Jarvis to put the foot down on that bullshit before it got too far. She reaches up to catch his jaw, holding his face for a second.
“You’re so cute,” she says, moving her hand to tap on his nose. It’s cute when he blushes, which he always does when her and Rhodey compliment him. Speaking of which, Rhodey reaches for Tony with a hand of his own.
“She’s right, you know,” Rhodey affirms, his hand grasping Tony’s chin with his thumb swiping along Tony’s lip. Tony, flustered, blushes even darker for the attention. Pepper grabs Rhodey’s hand with her own.
“Now we’re making him all embarrassed. He looks so pretty,” she stage whispers the last bit, like it’s something that Tony isn’t supposed to hear, but she delights in the way he goes even pinker than before. She watches the moment that he realises that he can’t safely dump them both on the floor, not without risking hurting one or both of them, and how he struggles with the impulse to escape the situation anyway. She sits up instead of making him struggle. They’ve given him enough of a hard time.
“Want to carve pumpkins, boys?” she offers, sliding off of the couch and onto her heels, rocking back on them. They bought pumpkin carving shit as soon as she and Rhodey had heard that at sixteen years old, nearly a fully grown adult, Tony had never carved an actual pumpkin before. She holds in her laughter as Tony bolts up excitedly as soon as Rhodey gets the wherewithal to stand, if only because she knows how easy it is to embarrass Tony into not enjoying himself at all. She and Rhodey have an agreement, a promise really, that they as a unit will avoid making Tony sad at nearly all cost.
“Let’s do it!” Tony says, rushing past her and down the hall, nearly hitting a full tilt run by the time that Pepper stops being able to see him. Rhodey slings an arm around her shoulders, pulling her in to press a kiss on her cheek.
“You sure we’re givin’ our boy a knife?” he asks, all teasing and slow laughter as they mosey out of the room at a relaxed pace, much calmer than the childlike excitement of the boy they love. She smiles, putting her arm around Rhodey’s waist.
“You know we’d give him a lot more than that,” she replies succinctly, leaning against his strong body while they walk. They’re not the people that are ever going to keep things from Tony Stark, far too ruined on the idea of him to even imagine not sticking with him forever. She knows that Rhodey is just as far gone as she is.
“I love you, you know,” Rhodey says quietly. He’s always been the kind for quiet, private declarations of love; Tony leaves bouquets of flowers in her locker, buys her beautiful presents, sends her a thousand chocolates, one for every year that he’ll love her. Rhodey does her homework when she’s spreading herself too thin, makes sure that she and Tony eat, replaces Tony’s coffee with decaf and lets her in on the joke. He’s the immovable object to her unstoppable force, just as much as Tony is their speed of light. She’s still smiling softly, so fucking softly, when they get to Tony.
“Love you too,” she says to Rhodey quietly. It’s time to carve some pumpkins.