Chapter Text
It wasn't as though Rhodey had never thought about it before. He'd thought about it the first time he'd ever met the Captain. But, because he wasn't a total egomaniac (unlike some people) he didn't feel the need to point it out.
Besides, they'd been meeting in a social setting, so it was “this is Steve,” “yeah, Hi, James Rhodes, call me Rhodey.” And then Tony had hijacked the conversation – “I thought that was my nickname for you! Now I'll have to think of another one. How about Rhode Island? See, no-one will expect it because it's already a thing” and everything had gone in a familiar vein from there.
Tony had, of course, in his hyperactive-bumblebee way, been trying to keep his friend comfortable.
Rhodey would have died before admitting the level of hero-worship he'd had going when he'd discovered that Captain America was back and running around and taking out bad guys, but Tony had clued in anyway. Possibly due to Rhodey's forced calm whenever Cap was spoken of. (“Rogers stopped by,” “Oh, did he? Cool, cool... uh... cool.”)
But, after several weeks of merciless commentary on the subject, Tony had arranged for a casual meeting. Actually, considering how smoothly it had gone, Pepper had probably done the actual organizing. Just a little team-and-extended-team get together one weekend. Tony had shoved Rhodey at his childhood hero and stood by with his third-most irritating grin plastered across his face.
It had gone well, and Tony had been surprisingly supportive, not even bringing up the Captain America Original Action Figure that he knew Rhodey still hid in his loft.
Still. The one thing Rhodey had actually allowed himself to hope for had not happened, although he had tried not to think about it.
After several months of casual team meetings, he had almost completely forgotten about it, and now there was the excitement of being drafted in as one of the new avengers. Rhodey could have forgotten his own birthday in the moments after he'd first heard “Avengers, assemble!” called out.
Then Sam Wilson, of all people, brought it up.
***
They had just finished their first afternoon of official training as a group – nothing serious yet, mostly just demonstrating their abilities to one another. Rhodey had been a little embarrassed after seeing the crazy stuff Wanda and the Vision pulled, momentarily deflated and wondering why the rest of them were even needed. He shrugged off what was essentially an invitation to showboat, something he'd normally quite enjoy, saying that the suit was pretty much like Tony's, and nothing new.
Cap's disappointed look at Rhodey's lack of self-esteem was making him wish that the ground would just swallow him up already, when Sam lightened the mood by giving him a good-natured shove and telling him to “stop trying to play it cool.”
“Come on, War Machine, race me! You too, Siri,” he called to the Vision, taking off. “Show me what you got!”
Spurred by the enthusiasm, Rhodey had taken the invitation - discovering to his great pleasure that he was in fact faster than the Falcon, although Sam was slightly more agile, and quicker to adapt from aerial to ground-level combat. (They couldn't tell whether the Vision was actually trying or not. He was mostly following, and watching them with an expression of polite interest.)
Wanda flitted about some, but she had only just started trying her telekinesis for levitation, and she kept losing her grip and crash-landing. Eventually the Vision took her by the hand and led her for a few laps, dragging her up when she started to fall.
Honestly, those two still kind of freaked Rhodey out. He tried not to show it, but Wanda in particular made him pretty nervous. Steve and Natasha seemed to trust her, which meant she must have done something right, but still. Mind control, man.
At the end of the afternoon, Steve had wound down with a kind of gentle pep talk about new directions and the old team spirit remaining with its new members. There were none of the clichés Rhodey had been bracing himself for, like greater than the sum of its parts and so on. The captain wasn't half-bad at speech making.
Sam seemed to see it differently, though, as after Steve was done he asked if he'd prepared the speech in advance. Steve threw a towel at his head with a smirk and a “You're dismissed.”
“Thank you, Captain,” drawled Sam, with a lazy nod of a salute. As the others made their way out, he turned to Rhodey and saluted a little more smartly. “You too, Colonel.”
Steve glanced over.
“You did know he's a colonel?” Sam asked. “He outranks you.”
“Ah, geez, I never put that together. Sorry, Colonel.”
And Steve Captain Freaking America Rogers snapped a salute at Rhodey.
FINALLY.
“Don't sweat it,” Rhodey said, (very calmly, thank you very much,) saluting in return. “You're not official army right now, either of you.”
“Well. You're never really out, right?” Steve shrugged.
Rhodey nodded sagely. "Still. Don't worry about it."
Sam flicked the end of the towel at Steve's head. “Just as well, that would have really messed up the chain of command.”
Then they had laughed their way into the mess hall.
***
So, Rhodey was in a pretty good mood by the end of the day. He had settled into the rooms he'd be staying in while the team trained over the next few weeks, and was no longer riding the highs and lows of this might be the best thing ever but what if it isn't . He had that just-finished-a-workout good kind of tired going on, and was catching up on House of Cards.
...Then a Skype bubble appeared. Pepper Potts calling.
He answered – there was no video, and it sounded like she was walking outside.
“Rhodey?”
“Hi, Pepper, what's up?”
He already knew what was up. Pepper wouldn't call to chat this late. He could feel his mood deflating like a cheap foam airplane cushion.
Pepper, being Pepper, didn't try to soften her request with meaningless small talk.
“Has our tin-man-with-a-heart called you, by any chance?”
“No. Is he not back at the tower yet?
It was not far to travel, and Tony had been driving one of his souped-up sports cars when he'd left the base this afternoon. He could have been there in mere hours.
“Ah – ” Pepper cleared her throat significantly. “He may be, but I'm not.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, so I was just wondering if he'd called.” She sounded embarrassed.
“Pepper, is Tony not answering your calls? Do you need me to go down to the tower and defend your honour?”
“Ha.”
“Are you guys fighting?”
Rhodey really hoped they weren't.
There had been an undercurrent to the goodbyes he and Tony had said to one another; Rhodey had been a little worried, but when wasn't he a little worried about Tony? He couldn't go chasing the guy down every time he started acting weird, or he'd never do anything else. Probably end up crazier than a honey badger in an icebox, too.
“Um. No, not fighting, we're not fighting.”
“No?”
“I'm pretty sure you need to actually speak to each other to be fighting, Rhodey.”
“So you're not fighting, you're just not speaking. That sounds amicable.”
“No, I – ” Pepper sighed hard, like she was trying to blow away a cobweb. “That's not what I meant. We just kept missing each other, you know, and I've been overseas with the relief foundation, so the time difference was awkward too.”
Rhodey couldn’t tell if she was being defensive or just worried. He'd give her the benefit of the doubt. “Sure, sure.”
“He left me a few messages.”
“Saying?”
There was a brief silence, which Rhodey took as Pepper deciding how much to share.
“He wanted me to call him,” she said finally. “Which I tried, and failed, to do. So have you heard from him?”
“Not since he left earlier. Do you want me to call him?”
“No, it's late. I'm sorry to have bothered you.”
“Don't worry about it.”
“Okay... okay, thanks Rhodey.”
“Have a good... night? Uh, morning? What time is it there?”
“I don't know, my body clock stopped functioning years ago,” Pepper laughed shortly. “Night.”
“Night.”
Rhodey stared ahead at nothing for a few minutes.
At the time of the battle with Ultron, no-one had been particularly forthcoming about what Tony had done to get everyone so mad, other than “he created an AI without telling anyone and now it's trying to kill us all.” Seemed like a regular Tuesday for Tony, and by the time Rhodey was called in they'd apparently let him make another one, so clearly everything worked out okay.
Or at least okay enough to let Tony go without forcing him into a therapy session. They'd both been working pretty solidly helping set up the new base – Rhodey had figured he'd let Tony get back to Pepper and enjoy a few days' rest before subjecting him to a (mostly) friendly interrogation. But if he was fighting with Pepper...
Ignoring the fact that it was making him flash back to junior high and calling people's girlfriends for them (“Terrence wants to know why you're mad at him, Cynthia”), Rhodey decided to call Tony.
No answer. Oh well, he'd probably switched his phone to silent and gone to bed.
You know, for a good night's rest.
Sure.