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Chapter Text

On Tony's seventeenth birthday, they assigned him his best friend.

When Tony looked at James Rhodes for the first time, it was as if he'd opened the dictionary to the word "tightass" and a living creature had sprung fully formed from it. He was the very model of a modern major general, if major generals were scrappy-looking black kids. The creases in his uniform could have cut glass, and he had toppiness fucking radiating off him, that kind that young tops had before they really got broken in good.

Tony resolved to hate him, just on general principle.

"Come on, Obie, you're really going to stick me with some high school dropout flyboy?" Tony moaned; the kid couldn't have been a day over twenty-one, twenty-two at the outside.

"Actually, I graduated college early," James said, with a military fuck-you undertone.

"Couldn't have been a good college," Tony said.

James raised an eyebrow at him. "Is there any college I can say that will actually impress you?"

Tony squinted at him. "London School of Economics."

James shrugged. "Hate to disappoint."

Tony stepped into James's space and brushed imaginary dirt off his epaulets, looking at his insignia. James could have slapped him for it, could have done any number of things, probably should have, but he didn't rise to Tony's taunt. "Second lieutenant? Are we wasting officer material on corralling underage subs now?"

Obadiah chuckled in that way he always did when he thought Tony was being amusing and embarrassing at the same time; he did it a lot, and Tony hated it every time. "What Tony means is that he's flattered." James did, in point of fact, score major points when he looked at Obadiah like he was absolutely full of shit.

Tony kicked and screamed and was- intentionally this time- pretty much the biggest brat he could possibly be, but it didn't get him anywhere. Tony wasn't eighteen, so if his parents- and by his parents, he meant Obadiah, because he wasn't entirely sure his mother and father even knew about it- wanted him to have a Protector, by God he'd have one. So the papers were signed, and there they were, Tony and this kid, who filled out a button-down and belted jeans- he belted his jeans- even worse than he did his uniform. Tony sat on his bed, having picked his room specifically because it was awkward for two people to be in it who weren't in bed together; James leaned back against the dresser, since there was no chair for him to sit on.

"What exactly do you expect to happen here?" Tony asked, crossing his legs and sitting back, his palms on the bed. "Are you just going to push me around, or am I going to have to fear for my virtue night and day?"

James raised an eyebrow. "You're cute, but you're not that cute."

Tony sat forward. "Fuck you, I am that cute," he said, offended. "I am absolutely that cute." He bounced his foot, looking James over. "I guess you don't know anything about robotics."

"May have come up once or twice when I was majoring in engineering," James said.

Tony gave him a hard look. "If they were going to insist on having me watched, why didn't they send me some idiot jarhead instead of someone like you?" he asked, unsure if he wanted a flippant answer or an honest one.

"One, 'jarheads' are Marines, and they generally have better things to do," James started, and Tony rolled his eyes. "Two, you don't honestly think they'd let someone who couldn't tell his ass from his elbow babysit you, do you? Even if you weren't Tony Stark, you'd get bored of running circles around them in about twenty minutes, and from what I hear, there's nothing more dangerous than you when you're bored."

"So they sent me a puzzle box so I'd keep quiet for a while," Tony said, and James made the universal shrug that meant 'you said it, not me.' "Did you volunteer for this, Lieutenant?"

"I drew the short straw," James said, a wry look on his face, and Tony honestly didn't know if he was kidding or not. "Why did you want to know if I knew about robotics?"

"Oh, right right right," Tony said, hopping up and walking towards the door. "If you're staying, you're helping me with fabrication. Come with me." He looked at James over his shoulder. "James sucks, by the way."

"What do you mean it sucks?" James said, a little taken aback. "It's my name."

"It's a perfectly ordinary top's name," Tony said.

James looked at him expectantly. "Yeah, exactly."

"That means it's boring," Tony told him. "Can't you be Jim, at least?"

James pursed his lips. "I hate that name."

Tony looked at him speculatively. "I'll think about it. Come on."

--

James actually was rather useful in the workshop; he knew his way around a spanner and everything, and that wasn't even a sexual reference. As much as Tony really did hate to admit it, he might have been more help than Dummy, though Tony was still determined to like Dummy better.

Dummy was his best friend before James showed up. The best thing about Dummy was that Tony could shut him off.

"Why are you here?" Tony asked, as he carefully soldered his grand vision together; James was presently being no help at all, but Tony didn't want help for this part. "I know the gist, something about reining me in, general idea that I'll take it better if I have someone to pal around with, skip that. I want to know why you are here, physically, in my workshop, at this time."

"You haven't kicked me out yet," James told him.

Tony considered this. "True, but essentially nonresponsive."

"Anybody could have done this," James said. "They could have sent anyone. It could have been any number of people from the company, or other Air Force personnel. It could have been Mister Stane." He wasn't wrong on that point; Tony had long suspected that the only reason Obadiah wasn't his Protector is that the age difference was a little too creepy. "They didn't. They sent me. I'm going to do the job and do it right."

"A lot of people have thought I'm a full-time job," Tony pointed out.

"Can you blame them?" James said, and Tony couldn't really argue. "Look, I don't think you need anybody to stick up for you, but some people don't listen for shit. I'm going to know you, and I'm going to know what you want, because somebody has to advocate for you."

"I am willing to wager actual cash money that that's not what they sent you for," Tony said.

James had this funny little smile in his face; Tony liked it. "Nope."

"I want to hate you," Tony said honestly, "but I'm liking this 'fight the power' thing you've got going on."

"Thanks, I think," James said. Tony handed him a socket wrench, and that was the last they spoke about it.

--

Tony could have pushed James a lot more than he did in those early days. Truth be told, he was stuck on a problem with Dummy's scheduled upgrade that took pretty much all the time that he wasn't using to sloppily dash off papers and proofs that were better than anything his classmates could have come up with even if they had Alan fucking Turing sitting next to them. Apparently Tony's working himself half to death wasn't any of James's concern, which was nice, because otherwise it all would have gone very, very poorly for everyone.

But, no, he'd see James now and again, be vaguely aware that James came in while he was working and checked to make sure he wasn't actually dead. Every now and again, Tony was pretty sure he and James had conversations about this and that, maybe went for waffles or something; it was just that he didn't remember a whole lot that people said to him when he was working sometimes, sort of like when you were woken up in the middle of the night for a phone call and then fell back asleep.

Tony didn't actually find James's threshold for intervention in his life until he was done with the upgrade and implemented it. Obviously what he needed was a victory celebration; obviously where he needed it was the new club across town. He might have been seventeen, but he was also Tony Stark, and he and his friends drank wherever he wanted whenever he wanted.

Tony was never actually sure how his Protector found out where he was; for all Tony knew, he'd left a post-it on the fridge about it. However it happened, he came storming in to where Tony was flirting mercilessly and drinking heavily. He looked generally like he was going to knock the place down with the force of his anger.

For some reason this was really funny to Tony. "Here comes trouble," he said, cracking up before he could even get the words out.

His Protector looked around at Tony's friends, and more than one of them slunk away. Amateurs. Tony had been caught by the very best and gotten out of it before, and he didn't see why this should be any different.

"Can I get you a drink?" Tony said, smiling widely. "I'm buying. I'm buying for everyone."

"You're drunk, you're underage, and you're going home," he said, pulling Tony up out of the booth by his arm.

"Oh, Rhodey," Tony said, falling against him. "Rhodey Rhodey Rhodey."

"I see you found me a new name," Rhodey said, sounding amused underneath all the aggravation.

"It suits you," Tony informed him. "Rhodey, if you're here to protect my good name, there's a person in that corner who thinks I can't tell he has a camera. The damage has already been done."

Rhodey's face hardened. He sat Tony back down. "Excuse me for a moment."

It was a few minutes before Rhodey came back, still annoyed, but when Tony looked through the crowd for the photographer, he was nowhere to be found. "Did you just commit destruction of property and/or assault for me?" Tony asked, a little amazed.

"Who's he gonna tell?" Rhodey said. "Even if he does, I don't give a fuck about your good name. Come on. We're leaving."

Tony let himself be pulled up again and frog-marched out, still kind of dazed by the whole thing. Rhodey didn't say anything about it the next morning; he just set Tony's alarm for eight.

And eight-thirty

And nine.

And nine-thirty.

And ten.

And then he made Tony go running with him.

Tony was well aware that he deserved it. It was just that nobody'd ever noticed before.

--

Tony drank for four days straight when his parents died.

Rhodey didn't say anything, not that time; he just left meals out for him and stayed out of Tony's way, which was pretty much ideal, as far as Tony was concerned.

Tony never thanked him for it. Rhodey probably didn't want him to.

--

And then there was Chase.

Chase was very demanding and very attractive, and when he wanted Tony, he damn well got him. At first, it was pretty amazing, because Chase was fond of tying Tony up and rocking his world, and Tony was happy as hell to reciprocate in a similar fashion. Chase was almost illegally older than him, though Tony was well ahead of him academically, and he made Dean's List and headed some Greek organization that Tony never cared enough about to learn the name of; power couple was a good term.

And then they had the fight.

Chase wanted things; Chase was going places- Tony already was places, so he understood completely. And what Chase had failed to mention, or what Tony had failed to realize, was that what Chase wanted was more than expensive dinners and wild sex. Chase could have brought this up at any point in the three months they dated, he could have brought it up somewhere other than the middle of a crowded party, and he definitely could have brought it up some other way than telling Tony to kneel in front of all their friends.

Tony hadn't even been drinking that time, but he didn't need to be for that suggestion to be hilarious. It was so hilarious that Tony didn't notice for a full minute that nobody else was laughing.

"Huh," Tony said.

Chase didn't even reprimand him, just stormed off, lost in the crowd and gone before Tony could find him. He didn't even leave Tony a ride home, and everyone seemed to be curiously absent when Tony needed one; he eventually called one of his company's drivers and pretended he was too drunk to drive and responsible enough to admit it. He had the driver bring him back to Chase's apartment; on a hunch, he told her to keep the car running.

Turned out to be a great idea.

Chase flung the door open when Tony knocked, and Tony didn't know if that was better or worse than refusing to open it. "Get your ass in here," Chase growled, which would have been hot in another situation, but just made Tony want to run at that particular moment.

"You can't talk to me like that," Tony snapped. "I don't see a collar, do you?"

"Maybe there would be if you knew how to fucking act right," he snapped back.

Tony opened his arms. "How am I not acting exactly like I always act? I don't know where you got the impression that I could just turn on a dime for you without being asked."

"I'm sorry," Chase said, through clenched teeth. "I thought I was dealing with a good sub."

Tony drew in a breath. It wasn't like getting slapped; slapped meant he'd just done something wrong, and Tony did things wrong a lot. It was more like getting punched in the gut, a low, deep pain; words like that meant that he was something wrong. "Fuck you," he ground out. "Just- just fuck you. Don't ever speak to me again."

"Why would I?" Chase said, turning away. Tony could hear the hurt in his voice, and something about it felt so good, so satisfying. Tony wanted to say anything he could that would let him hear more of it, to bring Chase all the way down to his level, as low as and lower than Tony felt. For once in his entire life, though, he was the bigger person, and he turned and walked out the door.

He'd had screaming matches that lasted all night that didn't hurt even a fraction as much as those few minutes did.

The car dropped him off in front of the little house on the back of the property that Rhodey had claimed for the express purpose of getting Tony out of his hair; Tony didn't have a lot of interest in Rhodey's privacy right at the moment, because he was about to violate it in a big way. "Rhodey," he called, in a sing-song voice.

"Tony?" Rhodey answered, sounding confused. "I'm in the living room."

Rhodey was sitting on the couch, book and mug of tea on the end table next to him, already wearing pajamas, and Tony was suddenly very conscious of how he must have looked, tight, slightly shiny clothes, thick eyeliner that was almost certainly running. He sat down next to Rhodey anyway, facing him, with his legs tucked up underneath him.

"Aren't you supposed to keep me occupied?" Tony said, with his best pout. "You're not doing a very good job right now."

"It's almost midnight," Rhodey pointed out, looking at him warily. "Have you been drinking?"

"You wish," he said teasingly. "I'm very flexible when I'm drunk."

"I didn't ask if you were drunk," Rhodey said. "I asked if you'd been drinking."

Tony shook his head. "No, no drinking." He gave Rhodey a wicked smile. "I have much more exciting things in mind."

"Tony," Rhodey said flatly, a warning.

"I'm good, you'll see," Tony said, not sure who he was trying to convince. "I can be so good." He crawled across the couch, making it look as good as he possibly could, until he was just about in Rhodey's lap. He leaned down over him, lips bare inches from his mouth. "You have no idea how good I can be."

Rhodey pushed him away, gently but very firmly, holding him at arm's length. "Tony," he said softly, and Tony hated that, the way he said it, like he was letting Tony down easy; as far as Tony was concerned, letting him down easy was still letting him down. "I don't know what happened tonight, but I'm not going to be the next person who screws you over, okay? You deserve better."

"I don't give a shit about what I deserve," Tony snarled, breaking off and shoving him away. "What does that even mean, James-"

"Tony," he said, still soft, but with steel behind it. "On your knees."

Tony slipped to the floor, looking up at him searchingly. He didn't know what it said that he'd just go like that, that he'd do for Rhodey in an instant what he wouldn't do for anyone else, no thought involved. It scared him a little. "Said you weren't going to screw me over."

"Nobody's screwing anybody," Rhodey said firmly, and Tony laughed, even though it wasn't that funny. "I just want you to calm down for a while. Relax."

Something about the way he said it made it easier; he didn't say Tony needed it, that he knew Tony better than he knew himself. He just said it was what he wanted Tony to do, and it was Tony's choice to obey or not.

"Don't leave me alone to think about what I've done," Tony told him, settling in. "I hate it when people try to do that."

"You wouldn't be here by the time I got back," Rhodey said, which was completely true. "Just be quiet. Breathe."

It was kind of funny; everyone who knew Tony for more than ten minutes knew Tony couldn't sit still at all. He was always moving, chattering or making or just being a general menace. He was a whirlwind of activity, something people got caught up in and had to fight their way out of, and he hardly expected anyone to keep up- usually he hoped they wouldn't. Everyone knew he was on a different wavelength, a higher level.

What people didn't know is that it was exhausting.

For a while he waited for Rhodey to do something, pull his hair or hit him or anything to start the party, but Tony already knew it wasn't going to be that way. Rhodey wasn't just going to let him fuck away his problems, and Tony had to try very hard not to hate him for that. Tony put his hands behind his back and shut his eyes; they only distracted him, picking threads on his jeans or finding patterns on the floor.

It was hard to find it, to grasp onto what couldn't be grasped, had to be caught without being run down. It was in there somewhere, though, and Tony fell into it, little by little. His breathing evened, the knife-edge inside of him dulling as he calmed. He focused on Rhodey, nothing else, the scent of him, his proximity, obvious as a freight train even though Tony couldn't see him. Some people didn't get it, but nobody had to. There was him and Rhodey and the darkness behind his eyelids, and, at least for now, he didn't need anything else to be whole.

He didn't need anything else to be good.

He opened his his eyes, finally, blinking a few times at the light. He put his chin on Rhodey's knee, looking up at him. "Hey," Rhodey said softly. "You feel any better?" It was hard to nod, but Tony managed. "You know you can come to me, right? I'll be here until I can't be."

That was maybe the most honest thing that anyone had ever said to Tony.

"Thank you," Tony said, even though he probably wasn't supposed to be talking; restrictions didn't seem all that important right now.

"No problem," Rhodey said, running his fingers through Tony's hair. "You ready to get up?"

Tony shook his head. "I'm good here."

"You can have as long as you want," Rhodey promised, and Tony lay his face against Rhodey's leg, letting Rhodey hold him up.

--

The Protection contract expired on Tony's eighteenth birthday.

Tony signed the new one without even having it read. Rhodey signed it. That was everything Tony needed to know.

Chapter Text

After everything went down, after the destruction and the aftermath, after Tony decided he was a superhero and started a media whirlwind, after an incredible number of debriefings, Rhodey drove back to his apartment, dead-set on getting about twelve hours of sleep. Of course, when he got there, his lights were on, and another car, slightly singed, was in his parking space.

Nothing about that surprised him at all.

Tony was laying across his couch, looking up at the ceiling. There was a bottle of scotch sitting in front of him on the coffee table; it was open, but it looked like only two or three shots were missing. It took Tony a moment to notice him, even when Rhodey was standing right next to the couch. Tony blinked up at him like he was confused as to why Rhodey was there. "Hey," he said, sitting up and swinging his legs down off the couch.

"Hey," Rhodey said, sitting down on the other end. "You lose your way driving home?"

"This is where I say something poetic about finding it," Tony said, "but I don't feel up to it."

"Fair enough," Rhodey said, nodding.

They sat in silence for a few moments, and Rhodey wondered what kind of thing this was, whether he should get Tony to talk or turn on the TV or just let the silence sit, just like this.

Then Tony looked at him, and Rhodey didn't like what he saw. He'd been seeing it a lot, ever since Tony came back, the weariness that made him look ten years older, his irritating, charming cockiness completely gone. "Leaving you was one of my bigger mistakes."

Rhodey was a little stunned; Tony wasn't really given to admissions of regret, especially not out of the blue. "You've made a whole lot worse mistakes than that," he said lightly, but Tony didn't laugh. "Breaking the contract was the right thing to do at the time."

"It was Obadiah's idea of the right thing to do at the time," Tony said, spitting the name like a curse. "Not too fond of Obadiah's bright ideas right at the moment."

"You were heading a huge defense contractor at the tail end of a war," Rhodey reminded him. "You were a twenty-one-year-old sub. I wasn't even in the country. You needing a Protector would have been a public relations nightmare, and even." He swallowed. "Even if you did, I wasn't there for you."

"You never had to be on the same continent to be there for me," Tony returned, "and I don't know if you noticed, but I'm not the world expert on public relations. Half the time, I forget there's a public."

"No, you don't," Rhodey said.

"No, I don't," Tony admitted, "but I mostly just use them to fulfill my extreme exhibitionism kink."

"Oh, trust me, we all know that," Rhodey assured him. "You remind us more than enough."

Tony snorted, amused, but then his face turned somber again. "I never should have left," he insisted. "I was young and stupid."

"Now you're old and stupid," Rhodey said. He frowned. "If you're working up to asking, I won't take you back on."

Tony waved a hand dismissively. "I already knew that. That ship's sailed." He picked at the braiding on the couch. "Even if it hadn't, I-" He looked almost sheepish. "There's this person."

"She's a good person," Rhodey told him, skipping the song and dance.

Tony shook his head. "She doesn't deserve what I do to her."

"If we start talking about people who don't deserve how you treat them, we're going to be here for a long, long time," Rhodey said, one eyebrow raised, and that time Tony did laugh. "She would be good for you."

Tony looked him in the eyes. "I could be good for her."

"Of course you could," Rhodey said calmly. "Nobody's questioning that."

Tony rolled his eyes. "Nobody's questioning it except everyone who knows about it."

"I'm not questioning it," Rhodey said, brooking no dissent. "That's what matters."

Tony looked at him consideringly. "You're a good friend," he told him.

"You're a better one than you think you are," Rhodey said.

"That says absolutely nothing at all," Tony said, giving him a look.

"I know," Rhodey said. "That's why it's easy to say."

"You're an asshole," Tony said, shaking his head, but he sounded amused. He sat back, kicking his feet up onto the coffee table and shutting his eyes.

"You planning on sleeping on my couch?" Rhodey asked.

"Already was," Tony told him. "You woke me up."

"I'll get a blanket," Rhodey said, standing.

Tony lay down, reclaiming the couch. "You're a star."

"Yeah, yeah," Rhodey said. "Don't drool on my pillows if you can help it."

Tony was out before Rhodey ever came back. Rhodey draped the blanket over him, and Tony wriggled a little, getting comfortable. Rhodey turned off the lights and went to his room, pulling off his clothes and falling gratefully into his bed.

Maybe he'd make pancakes, if Tony were still there in the morning. Maybe he'd make them anyway.