Work Text:
When Jim got accepted into MIT, he did not expect to be rooming with a fourteen year old kid.
A fourteen year old kid who thought he could party his way through college, hook and blow, sleeping with whoever he wanted, sleeping whenever he wanted, and occasionally setting off the dorm room fire alarm.
Often setting off the dorm room fire alarm.
He was a nice kid, Jim wouldn’t lie. Okay, he was a bit of an asshole, but never to Jim. He was what Jim was sure he thought a courteous roommate should be. Kept to his side of the room, didn’t mess with Jim’s stuff, wasn’t overly loud or obnoxious while Jim was trying to study. For a fourteen year old, he really wasn’t bad.
“Come on, it’s only rocket science,” he would joke whenever he helped Jim with his homework. And maybe he would have never thought that he would be asking a fourteen year old to help him with his homework when he was a senior in high school, but come on, this kid was like a certified genius, clearly knew his shit, and Jim never once had to really ask Tony to help him before the kid was jumping with excitement to explain a concept.
They weren’t even in the same major, what the hell?
So things were going great, really, all of first quarter, and Jim kind of expected them to stay that way the rest of the semester. Hell, the rest of the year.
And then Thanksgiving break hit.
Jim would really call it more of a Thanksgiving weekend, because they were only actually given off Thanksgiving and the day after, but it was long enough to make an impact, it seemed.
Anyone else would chalk it up to the stress of finals, but Jim knew Tony and he knew that that wasn’t it. Tony had been acting a bit off before break, actually, but Jim noticed it even more the days following the break when Tony returned from his parents’ place and they both resumed classes.
Tony went out less, staying in the dorms when everyone else that he usually hung out with was out partying, and Jim had on good authority that Tony hadn’t had a date in the entire week after break. And Jim didn’t want to be a creep or anything, but up until that point, Tony had had no qualms about changing his shirt in their room or sleeping in a tanktop, and Jim wasn’t convinced that the changing weather had everything to do with it.
It wasn’t until Jim saw the bruises that he knew he needed to do something about it.
Tony had been taking off his sweatshirt, because with all the programs he had running their dorm room got hot as hell sometimes, and the shirt underneath had ridden up enough that Jim could see a smattering of faded bruises along his lower back.
Fuck.
“Hey, Tony,” he started carefully, not really sure how he was supposed to go about this but knowing that a fourteen year old should definitely not have bruises like that. Well, no one should have bruises like that, but especially not Jim’s kid roommate who at the end of the day really just wanted to make robots and be a nerd about science. Definitely not him.
A sick, nauseated feeling swooped through his stomach, but he continued on when Tony let out a distracted hum.
“What happened to your back?”
“Hmm? My back? What– Oh! Nothing. Um. Nothing happened to my back.”
Jim was too concerned to poke at what a piss poor liar Tony was.
“Tony…”
“It’s nothing, Rhodes,” Tony said flippantly. “I– I forgot something in the lab. Good night.”
And just like that he was gone.
Tony did a decent job at avoiding him, for about a week. Then Tony got in trouble for going to a bar when he was only fourteen, and the cop personally walked him back to his dorm and told him to stay there, and Jim wasn’t there when it happened because he would have talked to the cop himself about the damned bruises on his kid roommate’s back even if Tony had told him to “piss off” over a dozen times, but when he got back to the dorm he was obviously going to take advantage of Tony’s dorm-arrest, even if it only lasted the night.
“You know I’m here for you, right, Tony? Whatever it is you’re going through, at any point in time; I’m here for you.”
“What do you know, Rhodes?” Tony spit back angrily. The thing about Tony? If he got angry enough, he would definitely talk.
“I know enough to know that you shouldn’t have damned bruises on your back!”
“No, you don’t know a fucking thing, that’s what. You don’t know anything about anything!”
Classic teenager response.
“Tony,” he sighed. “Look, I like you, okay? I just want to be your friend. And friends help each other out–”
“--friends screw each other over,” Tony interrupted, kicking his foot angrily against his desk. “No one actually helps each other, oh no.”
“You help me all the time.”
“With homework, maybe,” he sneered. “Like that even counts. It’s science, you’re doing me a favor.”
“Then let me do you a favor with this.”
Tony was quiet for a long time. “You can’t do anything,” he said finally.
“Tony–” Jim started, but was cut off again.
“No, I’m serious. I know you can’t, because I can’t, and I have more power than you.”
It wasn’t said meanly, it was just true. Tony had more power than Jim ever would, and Jim was okay with that. What he was not okay with, however, was the fact that Tony had to live this life feeling like he didn’t have someone to go to when this kind of shit happened. Whatever this shit even was.
“Talk to me, Tony,” he said gently. “I’m here for you.”
Tony shook his head, though. “No one is ever just here for me. That’s not how this works. Look, just, how much do you want to keep you quiet?”
Jim considered it. What was the appropriate response to this?
“Three.”
“Three what? Hundred? Thousand? I could maybe swing more than that, if that’s really what it takes.”
“Three hugs.” Tony looked at him with his mouth gaping wide.
“What?”
“Daily.”
“What? No. You can’t be serious.”
“That’s my price,” Jim told him. “Three daily hugs. That you initiate, when you feel comfortable.”
“Rhodes…”
“Tonesssss,” Jim said back in the same tone of voice as Tony’s fourteen year old whiney one, just to lighten the mood. Tony frowned at him for a second.
“It’s Tony.”
Jim cocked his head at Tony. “It’s Rhodey.”
And somehow, that was what made Tony light up. “Rhodey! I like that. That’s your name now, no take backsies.”
“As long as you promise to our hugs, then we have a deal,” Jim decided.
Tony scrunched up his nose before very hesitantly wrapping his hugs around Jim.
It progressed from there.
“Rhodey, hug me,” Tony whined, collapsing into his friend before Jim even had a chance to ask what was wrong. “They got rid of the dummy double burger at Sean’s,” he cried out. “You know that was my favorite burger! Oh why would they do this to me?”
“You almost forgot your hug!” Tony called out as Rhodey left for his early morning exam one day. “You know, students who get hugs before exams do better than students who leave their best friends hanging.”
“I’ll keep that in mind, Jim grinned.
“I don’t want to go back for break,” Tony told him, the two of them laying on Jim’s bed. “I wish I could stay here, but Howard demands it. And you know we can’t go against Howard’s demands.”
Jim did. And he seriously did not like Howard Stark. Tony had been right all that time ago, though: Howard Stark had more power than Jim did, and any attempt of Jim’s to do something would be terribly foiled.
He knew, because he had tried.
“What if I went with you?” he asked. It was hypothetical as much as it wasn’t. “Hid under your bed when anyone walks into the room, sneak down in the middle of the night for scraps of food.”
It made Tony laugh, which was a plus. “The security is too good,” he said with a little grin. “And we both know that you can’t do stealth.”
“That was one time!”
“Call me over the summer, okay?”
“You know I will, Tones. Maybe I’ll even get a pigeon to send fancy letters.”
And every time that Tony asked him for any sort of affection, Jim only smiled and complied. From Tony hesitantly wrapping his arms around Jim, to full on launching himself onto Jim and wrapping himself around him when they got to see each other during Jim’s first time with a break from the air force, Tony was there seeking his love when his parents died, when he was running a company he had never really wanted to be in charge of, through break ups and breakdowns, Stane’s betrayal, and beyond that, with the Avengers.
Jim was there for him no matter what, beaming proudly at his best friend who knew that Jim always had his back.
“I’m upping the ante to five hugs a day,” Tony whispered to him when he got back from space, his grip weak but his love strong. “I never want to go that long without a hug from my Rhodey again.”
So Rhodey wrapped his arms around his best friend and hugged him, glad that he would never have to know what his life would have been like if MIT hadn’t placed him with a fourteen year old genius.