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Tony has never been one for cliches.
Cliches are good when you’re on a stage, when you’re on the camera - in measured doses. Learning from cliches is good - understand what makes a string of words stick, understand it so you make your taglines catchier, your soundbites punchier.
Cliches are always part of that part of his world. Not - not for home.
Here’s one he’s never understood: “Today is the first day of the rest of your life.”
Before Afghanistan, it sounded like something only for people who didn’t already have the life they wanted - or so he would have told himself.
After Afghanistan, it sounded like something only for people who didn’t have the lives of the dead to repay.
“Hey,” A piece of popcorn hits his nose. Rhodey’s wheeled up, two massive buckets of popcorn in his lap. “You ready?”
“Do Vulcans have pointy ears?” Tony asks, and Rhodey grins.
“You know, Parker’s never seen any Star Trek but the reboots. And a couple of episodes of the original series, he catches them on reruns.”
“Oh my god, this is a travesty.” Tony says, as he takes the buckets of popcorn from Rhodey and helps him move from the wheelchair to the couch. “We’re implementing mandatory post-training-session binge watching, like, yesterday.”
“You think Vision would like Next Generation?” Rhodey says, scooting the popcorn buckets such that they could both reach them.
“Oh my god, Vis and Data,” Tony snaps his fingers. “Team Halloween costume? Team Halloween costume.”
Dum-e rolls up behind them, carrying a blanket, and prods Tony until he takes it and drapes it over himself and Rhodey. “There, are you happy?” Dum-e swivels his head. “Yeah, you can be part of the team Halloween costume, now scoot.”
Rhodey prods Tony’s shoulder. “Speaking of costumes - that’s my shirt.”
“It’s all part of my plan -” Tony says, leaning over to steal popcorn from the bucket in Rhodey’s lap “take all your shirts, force you to spend all your time in the compound in all your shirtless glory. Also,” Tony adds, poking the MIT logo on the front of the sweatshirt Rhodey’s wearing. “that’s my sweatshirt.”
“Fair.” Rhodey allows. “Though I think you stole it from me originally.”
Which, okay, true, but that had been ages ago, like, college. “I will allow it to be considered ‘our’ sweatshirt.”
“I can work with that,” Rhodey says, dropping his head onto Tony’s shoulder and reaching over him to grab popcorn from the other bucket. “Are we going to watch the Voyage Home or what?”
“Okay, first of all, no one actually calls it the Voyage Home, it is definitively ‘the Whale One”, just FYI.”
“Friday,” Rhodey says, half grinning, “You wanna start the movie?”
“Of course, Colonel.”
And the music starts, and the lights go down, and he’s got his Rhodey in his corner, close enough that Tony can feel him still breathing, and hell, popcorn and Star Trek and Rhodey is a pretty damn good combination.
So, yeah, maybe he still doesn’t get cliches. Maybe he doesn’t get ‘today is the first day of the rest of your life.’
But if he had to pick a day? To be the first day?
Well, there’d definitely be worse days to pick.