FIC: not words but meanings

[_samalander]

Title: not words but meanings
Author: _samalander
Fandom: Avengers
Rating: G
Wordcount: 7400
Warnings: None.
Characters/Pairings: Rhodey and Tony friendship, with background team.
Summary: James Rhodes loves Tony Stark dearly, and he has to learn to deal with the fact that, while Tony loves him back, Tony has some new friends, and new plans, and they don't always involve Rhodey.
Notes: I started this as a meditation on Tony's emotional issues that was going to be called "Hard to Love" from a country song that has been stuck in my head for like, my entire life. And then at some point it turned into a story about Rhodey meeting the team, and learning to come to terms with the fact that they're the ones who Tony rides with, when he can't be there.

"The language of friendship is not words but meanings." -Henry David Thoreau

There are too many people to thank for ushering me through this- sugar_fey, Pixy, Sav, Ruby... if you encouraged me to get this done, I thank you.


Sometimes Tony wondered how people did it, any of them. He would sit and watch the easy way other people interacted - even Clint and Natasha fit into the fabric of the team, in the shabby little restaurant, though they'd deny it if he said so. Or chalk it up to being professionals, maybe, but it was more than that. It was a way of relating to people that he'd never had.

He knew what he was. He'd known for a long time that he was a brat and an annoyance and something to be put aside for later. If his father's blithe indifference hadn't been proof enough, the social interaction, or lack thereof, for a 14-year-old at MIT had been decisive.

Not to say that everyone discarded Tony. Far from it; he was rich and handsome and smart, and there were people just cunning enough to see through the cracks in his demeanor to the loneliness, and latch onto him like leeches. He had made that mistake too many times in his youth. Young Tony Stark, so starved for attention and affection that he'd let anyone in, let them play with his heart until they broke it.

They always broke it.

The way Tony figured, his heart had been broken so many times, it had only been a matter of course that it stopped working, that it turned against him in the end.

Of course there were exceptions, like there were to every rule, outliers and anomalies that made the human experiment just vaguely interesting to him. There was Rhodey, and there was Pepper.

Tony had no illusions about what Rhodey was to him. Rhodey was an experiment in friendship that had somehow weathered Tony's event horizon, somehow passed into the mass of him and refused to be pulled apart by gravitational forces. Rhodey was the reliable outlier; he was the first type one error to cause Tony to reject his null hypothesis of human worthlessness. He was Tony's first real friend, and even if Rhodey wasn't as smart as Tony, even if Rhodey was older and more mature and they just barely escaped a bloody brawl once every few years, Rhodey would always be Tony's first call if he was on the side of the road.

In the world of cellphones and valets, Rhodey's number was one of two that Tony still knew by heart.

Two days after the battle of Manhattan, standing with Pepper in the ruins of his penthouse, Tony had planned how he would convert the tower to incorporate the other Avengers into it - everyone had a floor, they would all have a place and a home.

And when his phone rang, for once, he answered it.

"Tony."

"Rhodey."

There was a silence, a silence that spoke more than either of them were willing to say, a silence that said you're alive and you scared me and next time you ride with me.

Finally, Rhodey sighed. "You didn't call me."

Tony shrugged, though it was lost on the phone. "Not my call."

"Because that's ever stopped you before?"

That was fair, but Tony had no intention of saying so. "I was busy getting yelled at by Captain America. You know he thinks I'm too stylish?"

Rhodey laughed. "Does he?"

"Said I was all style and no substance."

"Well, have you seen the calves on your suit?"

"Hey!" Tony smiled. "That's just, you know, sartorial."

He could imagine with no difficulty the eye roll that earned from Rhodey, even as he tried to bite back a smile. "Crime fighting chic?"

"You know me."

"I do."

The silence came to rest between them again, and Tony glanced over his shoulder to where Pepper stood, barefoot and beautiful, futzing with the layout of Natasha's suite - apparently she felt she knew better than Tony what a female Master Assassin wanted in her bathroom, which wasn't totally fair, because Tony knew more about whirlpool baths than most other people on the planet.

"Rhodey, I'm with Pepper--" he began.

"Of course," Rhodey cut across him. "But I'm in New York on Friday for work, and we're getting together for drinks."

Tony grinned without hesitation; of course Rhodey wanted to check up on him, use his own eyes to make sure that Tony hadn't come to any harm working outside of his friend's supervision.

"Come to the tower," Tony said, "when you're done with work."

"Yeah," Rhodey agreed, before taking a long breath. "You're okay?"

"I'm okay," Tony agreed.

"That stunt with the nuke--"

"Saved more lives than you or I can count."

"Yeah, well. Never again."

"Can't promise that," Tony sighed.

"We'll talk over dinner."

"Dinner? What happened to drinks?"

"I need you sober for that."

Tony laughed. "Of course you do. See you Friday?"

"Waiting with my soul clenched," Rhodey laughed, and Tony couldn't help but join him because Rhodey quoting Neruda was never not funny.

"I know you are," Tony said by way of goodbye before he thumbed the disconnect and tossed his phone onto the bar.

Pepper smiled as she watched him pour himself a drink. "How's Rhodey?"

Tony shrugged. "Mad at me for saving the city."

"You really think that's why he's mad?"

"What changes did you make?" he asked, taking a sip of his scotch.

Pepper smiled and took the glass from him, stealing a sip of her own, and Tony felt himself shiver as she licked the remnants from her top lip. Damn, but she was beautiful.

"Mostly Natasha's suite," she said, returning the glass and moving back to the model, spinning it so he could see.

Tony smiled and joined her, looping an arm around her waist and laying a gentle kiss on her shoulder.

Rhodey was, and always would be, a simple man. He was a soldier and a patriot and a good person in a way that Tony wasn't. Tony did things that he himself didn't understand, for reasons that he could never quantify. But somehow they fit together and Tony would never know how, or why, it was that way.

But some odd number of bottles into the night, they were both shitfaced on the floor of Tony's alternate apartment, where he was staying while the penthouse was being repaired. Rhodey was flat on his back, staring at the ceiling, while Tony lounged, loose-limbed, against the sofa.

"Where's Pepper?" Rhodey slurred, for what was at least the third time that night.

"Beijing," Tony said, though if he had to be honest it could have been Belgium or Belgrade or Belarus, he wasn't sure anymore and words were all slippery.

"I like Pepper," Rhodey smiled, and Tony nodded.

"I like her too," he agreed. "Like, like green eggs and ham. On a boat with a goat and stuff."

"Your sex life is weird," Rhodey laughed, tossing his forearm across his eyes. "Like, really weird."

Tony swallowed another mouthful of something that burned on the way down, though he was hard-pressed to remember what it was, now, and words came bubbling up in the drink's wake, spilling from his lips without the consent of his brain.

"How come Fury didn't want you to be an Avenger?"

It took Tony a minute to register that he had asked the question, and therefore he wasn't actually expected to reply; long enough to see a look of what could have been regret on Rhodey's face.

"He did," Rhodey said, propping himself up on his elbow to take a gulp from a bottle of water that he didn't remember opening, but there it was.

"How did that go?"

"Not well."

"Tell me."

Rhodey let himself fall flat onto his back again. "It went like, he came to the base, and wanted to ask me, it was just after that-- you know, the Hammer thing at the expo --and he asked me if I knew about SHIELD. and I said sure, and he told me about the Initiative, which, I'm still not sure why they call it The Avengers unless it's because X-Men was taken or something? I don't, anyway. He told me about it and I said that no, I was a soldier and they wanted you, and he said that you were a cock, and I agreed. But you, man, this is your shit, the suits. I can, I mean, if mine was all, like, fucked up in battle, I was, you know, that's it. But you, you could fix it and then you would do stupid shit like fly down a space-turtle-thing's throat and take a nuke into space, and they wanted you, cock or not."

Tony nodded. "I am pretty great at that shit."

"Right?" Rhodey laughed. "I am so drunk. Why do I always get drunk with you?"

"What did Fury say to all that?"

"I guess he-" Rhodey rolled onto his side, so he could look at Tony's face. "It's like this- I don't want to be a hero, Tony. I don't. I just, I need to keep people safe. Keep you safe."

"I keep people safe," Tony objected, tilting his head so he was at the same angle as Rhodey. "I keep them totally safe. Iron Man, he's the weapon you never have to fire."

Rhodey shook his head. "No, if he never needed to be fired or whatever, you wouldn't keep, you know, going into battle. Loki would have shit himself and hid, not tossed you around like a rag."

"I object, he did not--"

"He threw you out a window."

Tony sniffed. "Lucky shot."

"Godlike strength and a challenge," Rhodey said, which, okay, totally fair. There had been some challenging going on.

"Look," Rhodey sighed, "You can be a hero, and I won't - I mean, I won't like it, but I'll let you because we both know I can't stop you. But don't pretend you're a deterrent. You're an invitation."

Tony scowled. "By your logic, Captain America--"

Rhodey nodded. "Every fucking hero, man, they all have their villains. Red skulls and the Abomination and Vanko and Hammer, someone is always - you can't be king of the mountain forever, you know? You're gonna, it's the same in the military, we get a big gun, they get a bigger one. Mutually assured super heroes, or something."

"I, well yeah, but, I mean, you think people are going to get their own Hulk now that the Avengers beat the Chitauri back to wherever the fuck I was?"

Rhodey shrugged. "Probably, man. Probably."

Tony let his breath drain from his lungs. This was heavy stuff, the kind of stuff he and Rhodey only got down to while they were drunk, and with Pepper in his life, there wasn't even a cavalcade of dancing stewardesses to keep them distracted.

"You want a taco?" Tony asked. "I think I need some fucking refried beans."

Rhodey nodded. "Taco," he agreed.

Rhodey woke on Thursday morning - or really, it was 11am so he should probably give in and call it afternoon - with the kind of headache he felt would be more appropriate for terrorists and murderers than a man who just needed to check on his best friend.

He managed to stumble his way to the kitchen, which was miraculous because not only was he upright, but he remembered where the kitchen was, and opened the fridge to reveal some kind of violently green concoction with his name written on it. In Pepper's exacting handwriting.

"Jarvis?" he asked, and the AI chimed in the affirmative.

"Is Pepper here?"

"Miss Potts is in the study, Colonel Rhodes."

He took a sip of the drink which, probably because it tasted like mud, took his mind off his hangover. "And Tony?"

"Mister Stark is in his workshop with Doctor Banner."

Oh, well. if he was busy then Rhodey could take care of himself.

Rhodey steeled himself and let the rest of Pepper's torture drink slide down his throat before leaving the glass on the counter and demanding Jarvis help him find her.

She was eerily immaculate for a Saturday morning, but Pepper had always been the type of woman who looked equally at home in pajamas as a cocktail dress. Rhodey felt a little self-conscious about the pajama pants that were clearly Tony's (a size too small and decorated with robots, of course) and the undershirt he was wearing, which looked like they had been slept in because, well, they had been.

"Hey," Pepper greeted him, without looking up from her StarkPad. "Sleep well?"

"Your boyfriend is Satan," Rhodey said, grinning, as he took a seat on the couch in her office. Honestly, the tower had been down for about four days, how was this level already a perfect place to live?

"Yeah," Pepper agreed. "But look at that body. He works out."

Rhodey raised an eyebrow. "Did you just quote that song to me? The sexy one?"

"I can be a CEO who likes LMFAO," she grinned. "I'm multifaceted like that."

"So you are," Rhodey said. "Thanks for the horrible concoction."

"You're welcome."

"What are you doing back? Tony said you were in Beijing?"

Pepper laughed. "I was in the Bronx. I have a girlfriend from college who lives there, and it was her bachelorette party. Might as well be Beijing, for all Tony knows. Out of sight, out of mind."

"He didn't call you either, huh?"

"He did," Pepper shook her head. "I missed it, what with watching New York get destroyed."

"That'll happen," Rhodey agreed. "But that's a step up for him, right? Actually calling?"

"I guess. I just--"

"I know. I want him to cut it out, too."

"No," she said. "It's not that. I get it, the hero thing. Even before he was Iron Man, he needed to think he was saving people's lives. I just wish he-- I wish he cared more about his own."

"That's kinda what I meant," Rhodey said. "I wish he'd let someone take care of him for once."

"And a pony?"

"Where the hell would I keep a pony?"

"I don't know, but it's about as realistic."

Rhodey hated to agree that Tony was, on occasion, hopeless, but on this one, Pepper was right. There was just no way either of them would ever convince him to let them care about him.

"I want to keep him safe," Rhodey sighed.

"I know," Pepper said. "But you should, I mean, the others he fought with, the Avengers, they did a pretty good job of keeping him alive, if not unscathed."

Rhodey set his jaw against the retort in his throat- anyone could keep Tony from dying in battle. But it was the day-to-day, the general business of being Tony Fucking Stark that was the real danger, and he wasn't sure they were up to all of that. And she knew that, better than he did in some ways.

So he bit his lip and stared at the jagged, beat-up skyline through the window behind Pepper, stoically avoiding the rest of the conversation.

She turned back to her work after a minute, and he watched her poke at her pad for a little while before he took his leave, wandering back to the room he had woken up in for a shower, and maybe an aspirin.

The shower felt better than almost anything Rhodey had ever imagined, and there was a certain shock of relief when he stepped from the steamy bathroom into the chilly air of the room he'd woken in, where someone, probably someone Tony paid entirely too much to do such work, had laid a pair of jeans and a t-shirt that actually fit him.

Rhodey smiled to himself as he slid them on, and then padded, barefoot, down the hall again to see about that aspirin because damn but Tony could drink.

The man sitting in the kitchen wasn't what Rhodey expected. He was broad shouldered but slim, and older than most of the people Tony, with his illusions of youth, surrounded himself with.

The guy looked up at Rhodey's entrance, and then stood, abandoning his book on the table, to offer his hand.

"Hi," the guy said. "You must be Rhodey. I'm Bruce. Bruce Banner."

"James Rhodes,"

They clasped hands, and Rhodey was a little disappointed at how normal the guy looked - the Air Force might not have been involved in the search for the Hulk, but everyone with a high enough clearance knew who he was and what he potentially could mean to the government.

Bruce, though, Bruce didn't seem to be in even the same zip code as the big green monster Rhodey expected.

"Tony got called into a teleconference with someone in Bern, and I thought it was a good time for coffee. And," he glanced at the cover of the book he'd abandoned, "The House at Pooh Corner."

Rhodey nodded. "Sounds about right. You know where they're hiding the aspirin?"

Bruce nodded, turning to a cabinet with the grace and confidence of someone who flat out lived in this space, and produced a bottle of pills, which he tossed to Rhodey with the same practiced ease.

"Thanks."

"You two drink a lot last night?" Bruce asked as he grabbed a glass, which he filled with water at the sink before he handed it over.

"Yeah," Rhodey sighed, before downing the pills. "I always end up drinking too much with Tony."

"I know the feeling."

Rhodey raised an eyebrow, regarding Bruce for a long moment. "You drink?"

Something about the gaze, probably the sheer bulk of judgment Rhodey was shoving into it, seemed to be making Bruce downright uncomfortable. "Uh, no?" he said, moving to the other side of the table, so it was at least between them. "But I get the letting down your guard thing?"

"You'll forgive me if I have some reservations about someone with your condition letting down his guard?"

Bruce shook his head. "Yeah, of course."

"So, what are you two working on?"

Bruce shrugged. "Mostly he's showing me his toys - the labs are intense, but he's an Engineer and I'm a physicist. Not exactly the same branches of science."

"I get that," Rhodey smiled. "Like Army and Air Force. We all fight, but Air Force is better."

Bruce's mouth quirked upwards. "Of course."

"So, are you working with SHIELD?"

"No. No, they just wanted me to find the Tesseract."

"And you did."

"And we did. Me and Tony, together."

"Oh. Well. Good job, then. And with the stopping Loki thing." Rhodey stilled his face from flinching - he hadn't meant to let anything creep into his voice, but he knew it had, knew that Bruce had heard the scorn in his voice, the unspoken rebuke.

Bruce regarded Rhodey for a long moment. "What do you mean by that, Rhodes?"

"Just that you played a vital part, and that's impressive for a man of your... condition."

"My condition is what took down Loki."

"And the Helicarrier."

"Last I checked, that was still flying."

Rhodey squared his shoulders, facing the other man with the solid stance of a Western gunslinger, and Rhodey was 12 again, playing John Wayne and Captain America in the street with the other boys, and Bruce was the bad guy in his crosshair.

"It's not personal," he said, "just that Tony, well. I'd rather Tony kept living, you know."

"Of course. So he can make you new ways to kill people."

"No, so he can make me more ways of stopping you."

From the doorway, Tony coughed. "Boys, are you fighting?"

Rhodey didn't look up. "Just letting Dr. Banner know that he shouldn't lose control and kill you. You know, when he becomes a monster."

Bruce sneered. "Yeah, the killing of innocents is all up to the Army."

"Good thing I'm in the Air Force."

"Guys!" Tony stepped up to the table. "I have seen both of your dicks, and mine is the biggest. Calm down."

Rhodey couldn't help himself; he smiled.

Across the kitchen, Bruce shrugged.

Tony sighed. "I'm supposed to be the immature one. Come on, don't make me be the adult here."

He was right; Rhodey knew it, and he was pretty sure Bruce did too. They were being cocks to each other.

"I care a lot about this idiot," Rhodey said, gesturing towards Tony with his thumb. "It's not that-- Just please be careful with him."

Bruce nodded. "I try not to hurt people."

"It's true," Tony offered, "you should have seen him grab me from the air. Not that I saw it, you know, at the time, but later, man, the footage. He was like- BAM- like out of nowhere. Without him, the Hulk I mean, Bruce wasn't exactly there, without him, I'm gone. Road kill."

Rhodey had seen it, he'd watched the battle from every angle he could over the past few days, trying to get an idea of what they'd done, and what the military needed to be ready to do. But that didn't mean he had to like it. Or Bruce.

But instead of trying to make that point, or any argument that would inevitably end in yelling and then more drinking, which Rhodey was stalwartly opposed to given that his head was in the danger zone for fucking exploding, he nodded.

"I did see that. It's--" he sighed, because he knew he was beat. "I appreciate you saving him. And, you know, New York."

Bruce smiled thinly. "I'd say no problem, but, well, it was a hell of an undertaking."

Tony laughed, and if it was a little more strained that it should have been, neither Bruce nor Rhodey mentioned it.

"Let me show you," Tony said, stepping in to clap Rhodey on the back, which echoed through his achy body like a much harsher collision, "the plans I have for this place! This floor, this is gonna be Bruce's--"

Tony used the hand on Rhodey's back to steer them out of the room, and down to the workshop, trading quips with Bruce as they went.

Rhodey still didn't trust the guy, but he had to admit, Bruce was a little more stable than Tony, for whatever that was worth, and that would have to be enough for now.

It was the truth of their jobs that Tony and Rhodey couldn't get together all that often - especially now that Tony was basing his life out on the East Coast, and Rhodey was still in California.

Three months after the battle of New York, Tony reopened the tower and sent actual engraved invitations to his team members. Which were mostly ignored; though Steve had the manners to RSVP and Banner had never rightly moved out, Thor was still in Asgard, and no one was rightly sure where Clint and Natasha had gotten to, or if they were still alive. Tony said they'd surface eventually, and there was no use in anyone holding their breaths, so no one did.

Rhodey was back in New York the week after Rogers moved into his suite and he was pretty sure that he had to meet Captain America, because dude, Captain America, so he called Tony and asked if they could get together.

"I don't know," Tony smarmed, "I haven't done my homework, so Pepper might not let me out to play."

Rhodey took that as a yes, and pretended that he wasn't surprised when his bio signature operated the elevators that took him to the residential levels up at the top of the tower.

Tony was waiting, lounging in his new living room, when Rhodey stepped off the elevator. There were two drinks on the table, and Rhodey crossed himself before he took a sip of his; he needed all the divine help he could get tonight.

"Hi," Tony said, after a few minutes.

"Yup."

Tony rolled his eyes. "What did I do?"

"Nothing. I mean, yeah, I'm not happy about the Quinjet crash, but you called and-- am I really going to meet Captain America?"

Tony laughed. "Yeah, but we just call him Steve."

"No."

"No what?"

"No," Rhodey took another gulp of his drink, "I don't think I'm gonna do that."

"I'm afraid I'll have to insist," a voice said from behind them, and Rhodey turned to find himself face-to-face with Captain Freaking America.

"Steve," Rhodey's boyhood hero said, offering his hand.

"I'm James," he offered, shoving a stiff hand toward Captain Rogers.

"He's Rhodey," Tony corrected, "and he's being a weirdo."

Steve smiled, and Rhodey felt a few of the knots of tension in his neck melt, because Captain America was smiling at him, and that was all kinds of cool and man would eleven-year-old Rhodey have peed his pants if he had known this was going to happen, like, ever.

"So you're the War Machine," Steve said jovially, taking a seat on the couch and gesturing for Rhodey to join him.

"I-- yeah," he drew a shaky breath as he perched on the cushion next to Steve. "I'm the War Machine."

Steve, and that would never be okay, calling Captain America Steve, nodded. "I saw the footage of the Expo fight. You two were in sync."

"Kinda," Tony laughed. "Except for the part where we were in the kill box, fighting about who the big gun was."

"That part never made the official report," Rhodey shrugged, willing himself to relax a little, but the sheer existence of Captain America was tripping him up. "Somehow the newspapers didn't get that."

"Imagine," Tony shrugged, "a newspaper report where I was wearing pants AND didn't look like a douchebag."

Steve shook his head. "So it was the Weekly World News?"

A surprised laugh bubbled its way out of Rhodey's chest; who would have guessed that Stalwart and Brave and True were just fronts for Wickedly Sarcastic?

Tony, for his part, made a face of righteous indignation, which just made Rhodey laugh harder.

"You're dicks," Tony said, crossing his arms and legitimately pouting.

Rhodey shrugged. "Nice to know that there's someone to keep your head small when I'm not around."

Tony made a face which, on another man, would have been downright immature. Somehow, it suited Tony.

Rhodey grinned at Steve as the latter began telling a story about his best friend from back in the second world war; the way his commandos fought in the same kind of precision as Tiny and Rhodey, which quickly fell into chronicles of the battles they waged and the victories they celebrated. It was old soldier talk, the kind of stuff Rhodey had heard before from men older than him, and the kind of talk he found genuinely interesting in a lot of ways. For all that military procedure and technology was changing every day, there was still a sense of camaraderie and brotherhood that breached the walls between Army and Air Force, a shared distrust of the CIA and SHIELD and anyone else who worked behind closed doors for shadowy masters, and a certain amount of glee in the fact that even Tony, with his large and heavy brain, couldn't quite grasp what they were talking about because he had never been there, in the trenches.

Tony had about $400 of pizza delivered, which Steve pronounced "adequate" and by the end of the night, Rhodey was less drunk than a normal night with Tony, but somehow more relaxed.

"You're going to take care of him," Rhodey slurred, clapping Steve on the shoulder and gesturing to the armchair where Tony was either asleep or doing a damn good job pretending.

"Who? Tony?" Steve was obscenely sober, and Rhodey had a few words for that, but he wasn't sure how to pronounce all of them anymore.

"Yeah, you got the idea, brothers in arms and stuff. You're gonna be good to him."

"I take care of my team," Steve offered, with a melancholy smile.

Melancholy fit Steve as well as snarky and sarcastic had, and again Rhodey was thrown for a loop as his childhood idol proved, again, to be downright human.

"Thanks," Rhodey smiled. Steve just nodded, and that was enough.

Clint and Natasha were different than anyone else Rhodey had ever met. Granted, he met Natasha back before the expo, when she was working for Pepper, but she hadn't exactly been Natasha then; she had been Natalie Rushman, and the only reason Rhodey hadn't asked her out was because he and Pepper were too busy worrying about Tony.

When he met her again, she had her partner, Clint, at her side, and Rhodey was pretty sure he'd never had a shot, anyway.

"Colonel Rhodes!" she greeted him, as he walked into the common living area that used to be Tony's penthouse - it would never cease to amaze Rhodey that Tony and Pepper had abdicated such prime real estate for their new team. It spoke to a more evolved Tony, one Rhodey wasn't as sure he even knew anymore.

"Hi," he smiled, taking in the downright domestic setting - she was on the sofa with Clint's feet in her lap, both of them reading in silence. Bruce occupied the armchair, absorbed in his own book, though he looked up and nodded briefly at Rhodey as he entered. "Is Tony around?"

"He was," Natasha said. "He got called to a thing, though. "Something about shareholders. He said to tell you he'd be back in under an hour."

"Pepper said two," Clint offered, not even looking up. "But she's a pessimist."

She wasn't, not to Rhodey's mind, but he let the comment slide; who knew what version of herself Pepper exposed to him; she was guarded in her own subtle ways.

Rhodey shrugged and moved to sit in the chair Bruce wasn't in, a modern monstrosity of a couch-thing that he didn't even have a name for.

"I saw you guys in Lisbon the other day," Rhodey said, trying to find a comfortable position. "Hell of a battle."

Natasha shrugged, but Clint looked up with a smile. "It was, yeah."

An awkward silence settled across the room, the turning of pages the one noise that moved through the fog of Rhodey's uncomfortableness.

"So," he sighed, after a minute. "What are you reading?"

Natasha glanced at the cover of her book. "Jurassic Park?" she said it as half a question, and Clint nodded to back her up.

"She has me reading Gorky, which is a hilarious name for a bummer of a dude, so I'm making her read Michael Crichton."

"But it's dumb," Natasha sniffed. "These idiots lock themselves on an island with deadly animals and only have one rocket launcher. They deserve to be eaten."

Clint laughed. "She has opinions."

"What would you do differently?" Rhodey asked.

Clint shrugged. "I don't do animal jobs anymore. I would never have gone to the stupid island."

Natasha nodded. "Yeah, that. But also, more rocket launchers."

"You have never used a rocket launcher," Clint said, giving her a nudge with his foot.

"Yeah," she furrowed her brow. "Cape Town. And Saginaw."

"Right," Clint said. "Of course, Saginaw."

Rhodey watched them with a slight smile; it was good to see that they were able to relate to each other, gave him hope for the rest of the team. If Natasha managed some warm feelings for Clint, it seemed likely that she would have a few for Tony - and, he admitted quietly, it was nice to know she had feelings, despite what she might want the general public to think.

"What would you do?" Clint asked, inclining his chin towards Rhodey.

That was a damn good question. "Depends," he said. "Do I get my suit, or a plane or what?"

"Anything you can carry, I guess."

"Then I take the suit and blow the T-rex up."

Natasha shook her head. "Inelegant."

"Says the woman who wants more rocket launchers."

"This is a really stupid conversation," Bruce offered, from across the room. "Everyone knows you can't clone dinosaurs by inserting frog DNA, it's-- dinosaurs were more avian than reptile."

Rhodey nodded in agreement, but Natasha and Clint took a moment before they broke into laughter. Which should really not have surprised Rhodey as much as it did, but he found himself grinning along with them, as Bruce scowled.

"Just because I'm not scientifically possible either--"

Natasha laughed so hard she snorted, and Bruce gave into the smile that had been playing along his lips.

"So, one vote for stay off the island, one vote for more rocket launchers, one vote for Iron Man, and one vote for scientific accuracy?" Clint asked. "Have we polled Steve?"

Bruce shook his head. "Steve is not ready for Jurassic Park; Steve is still working through the Cold War."

Rhodey flinched. "How's he taking that?"

"He says he wishes he could get drunk," Clint said, "but once we got him through McCarthyism and into Neo-Keynesian economics, things seemed to be going a little better."

"I can't even imagine," Rhodey shook his head. "Having to catch up on all that."

"He's got those two," Bruce smiled, gesturing to Clint and Natasha, "who are terrifying tutors."

"You two?"

Clint shrugged. "It just so happens that Steve and I click, and Natasha can explain some of the Russian stuff with the twentieth century." He glanced at his partner, who was stoically pretending to not listen, though there was a hint of a smile around her eyes; it occurred to Rhodey that she was proud of her ability to help, that she enjoyed being able to teach someone something.

"I don't know how much good we do, but we try," Natasha said, just barely audible to Rhodey.

He nodded. He knew that feeling all too well - the idea that sometimes it was the trying, and not the succeeding that mattered. Sometimes it was the being there while someone needed you that matter more than anything you could or couldn't do. He had been Tony's friend long enough that it wasn't hard to understand that sometimes, you presented his awards and sometimes you wore his suit - you did what he couldn't, and even if he never asked for anything, you gave it because you loved him.

And if Natasha and Clint got that, well. Maybe they thought it specific to Steve, but Rhodey was pretty sure he could count on them to watch over Tony, too.

Thor was easy to get along with. Rhodey would admit to a bit of trepidation- but who wouldn't facing a real life god- but the mountain of a man who greeted him was also the bearer of kind eyes and a gentle, if boisterous, handshake.

"I have heard the tales of your bravery," Thor greeted him, and Rhodey had to smile.

"It's all lies," Tony grinned, clapping Rhodey on the back. "This guy, he shot JR, buried Jimmy Hoffa, and can explain the popularity of Twilight."

Rhodey raised an eyebrow. "You get any of that?" he asked Thor, who shook his head.

"I have grown used to not understanding," he said, and Rhodey's heart broke a little for the big guy.

"Don't worry, no one can keep up with Tony."

Thor grinned and Rhodey couldn't help it; the smile was so sunny, so genuine, it was hard to reconcile this grinning face with the fierce warrior he'd seen on TV, with a man who was literally a thing of legend.

"Bruce taught me how to do google," Thor shrugged. "I find that helps."

Well, fuck. A real life Norse god, using google to look up Jimmy Hoffa. Rhodey was pretty sure that ranked somewhere near the top of his "weird shit Tony has shown me" list, which was a long and comprehensive list that involved more porn that Rhodey cared to admit.

"So you find computers pretty intuitive?"

Thor nodded. "Sometimes I have to ask for assistance, but Bruce and JARVIS are fine teachers."

"And me," Tony said.

"Yes." Thor agreed. "You taught me where to find the naked women."

Oh. Good.

Rhodey, it turned out, fit in really well with the Avengers team - even Thor, though of course, because Thor was in and out of the realm so much, they'd not spent a substantial amount of time together. If Rhodey wasn't around them as often as he might want to be, it still stood that when he managed to drop by the awkward silences gradually grew fewer and farther between. And some time in the year it took for him to get there, the nagging feeling in the back of his mind, the one that protested that Tony was going to get himself super killed by something stupid, managed to quiet until it dropped away. Somehow, through knowing the four people who lived in Tony's tower, Rhodey was beginning to believe that Tony would be safe and cared for.

Until one day he wasn't.

Rhodey was used to phone calls from the Avengers - every so often, Steve would call to talk military, or Bruce would call for advice on getting Tony out of his lab - he assumed that he was Pepper's backup, and well, as Tony's oldest and best friend, Rhodey had a few tricks of his own. (Though "steal his armor and fight with him" didn't seem to be a great idea, somehow.)

So when the phone rang on a Thursday afternoon, about an hour after the Illinois National Guard had been told to stand down in Chicago, Rhodey was apprehensive.

When it turned out to be Steve, he was confused.

"Tony's missing," Steve said, by way of greeting.

"Excuse me?"

Steve's exasperated sigh was a rather transparent mask for his worry, but Rhodey would let him pretend if he needed to.

"We were in Chicago," he said. "Tony dropped off the comm, and we thought it was just a hit to the suit, but then we found the suit, and he's not in it."

Rhodey felt his heart skip at the words. "Tony is missing?"

"We need you in Chicago."

Rhodey nodded before he remembered that they were on the phone.

"Yeah, I can do that. Did he lose his trackers?"

The silence on the line spoke volumes.

"Trackers?"

Rhodey couldn't help letting a breath out. "When he got back from-- you know, he fitted himself with a few trackers. Have you talked to JARVIS?"

Steve swore. "Why didn't Pepper know about this?"

"Pepper and he weren't dating then. I don't know why he hasn't told her since."

"Okay." Rhodey could feel Steve recalibrate over the line. "Get the suit, get here. We're getting Tony back."

"On it," Rhodey said. "And Steve?"

"Yeah?"

"We'll find him."

Tony hated being unconscious.

Well, he didn't mind it much while he was doing it, but the afterwards tended to remind him of Afghanistan, waking and finding that he wasn't who he was when he went to sleep; that he was broken and held together by spit and prayer.

Still, there was something comfortable about waking in a hospital, the rote white walls and the rhythmic beeping of machines soothed him because they spoke of home and technology and if he had to be unconscious, if he couldn't wake up in his own bed, he would prefer a hospital over a cave.

When he woke this time, it was with the sensation of falling; the feeling that he had landed in the bed, rather than been placed there who knows how many hours before.

"You awake?"

The voice was familiar, but masculine. "Rhodey?" Tony croaked, and he was thirsty, so thirsty.

"Yeah, hey."

"Where's Pepper?"

Rhodey smiled, something in his eyes that Tony remembered from the last time he was injured, the fall from space and into New York.

"She's getting coffee and doing some work in the cafeteria. Want me to get her?"

"Nah," His throat wasn't just dry, it was sore, like maybe there had been a tube down it, but Tony couldn't be sure. "Water?"

Rhodey handed him a glass from the bedside, somewhere out of Tony's line of vision. He drank it enthusiastically, paying no mind to the drops that ran down his chin and cheeks and pooled on the pillow next to him.

Rhodey watched him drink, taking the glass when it was dry, and Tony smiled.

"So, what the fuck happened to me?"

Rhodey shook his head. "What's the last thing you remember?"

"Fighting robots in Chicago," Tony sighed. "Though I think that might have been one of Steve's weird 40s sci-fi stories."

"No, that happened," Rhodey nodded. "It was a ploy to distract the Avengers so Hammer could borrow your brain."

"Please tell me that's not literal?"

"Oh, it's very much literal."

"Fucker."

Rhodey shrugged. "Stupid fucker, really. Didn't even check you for trackers."

"Of course he didn't," Tony scoffed.

"Which reminds me-" Rhodey took a deep breath. "Why doesn't Pepper know about your trackers?"

That was a weird question, Tony thought, even by the standards of their friendship. He took a breath. "Because she didn't need to. You knew."

Rhodey stared at him for a long moment, and Tony felt the blood creeping up his neck. He struggled to sit up, feeling more tired than he had any right to be, given that he seemed to have been asleep for a long-ass time.

"So how long did Hammer have me?" Tony asked, after a moment, and Rhodey seemed relieved at the change in topic.

"About an hour, but he managed to get you a nice little nap."

"And I was out for?

"Another four hours, just until you slept it off."

Tony rolled his eyes. They couldn't even wake him up to enjoy the drugs. Typical. "But I'm okay?"

"As okay as you've ever been," Rhodey laughed.

A nurse knocked on the door, then, and the next minutes were a bustle of how do you feel mister stark and doctor blake will be in shortly which finally resolved into a general bill of decent health, less the pre-existing heart thing, and an order for Rhodey not to rile the patient up.

"I was thinking," Tony said, as she left. "Well, I've been thinking. About that thing you said."

"I say a lot of things."

Tony nodded. "The thing about how superheroes create their own problems."

"I don't think I said it quite like that."

"No, but that's what you meant."

"Fuck you," Rhodey said, "you don't know what I meant."

"Then tell me."

"I meant, well, I mean, we were really drunk, but I meant that it's disingenuous to claim that any hero is a deterrent against evil, because it- it's more than that. And it's not your fault."

"I am Iron Man." Tony said, and tried to sink into the bed as he closed his eyes. He loved Rhodey, of course he did, but it was hard to hear that he was the cause of his own problems.

"And I let you get taken by the Ten Rings."

Tony opened his eyes. "You found me in the desert."

"And I didn't stop Obie from hurting you, or stop you from that whole mess with the dying thing, and--" Rhodey scrubbed his palm across his eyes. "I'm trying to make up for that, I guess."

Tony stared at Rhodey, his mouth agape. "You never let me down."

Rhodey shook his head, and if Tony felt a lump in his throat, he tried to swallow around it.

There was so much he wanted, no, he needed to say to Rhodey, so many points that needed to be made about their friendship and love and what it meant to have a team and a thousand other things. It was big. It was too big. Tony sighed.

"Can we-- I think we deserve a cheese steak."

Rhodey smiled thinly. "Should I call Pepper?"

"Yeah," Tony nodded. "Call Pepper and tell her I need a cheesesteak."

Rhodey complied, pulling his phone from his pocket, and Tony watched with a tightness in his chest that had nothing to do with injury or kidnapping. Maybe he would never find the words he needed to tell Rhodey; maybe they'd both go to their graves without saying things out loud, but in the meantime, there were cheesesteaks.

And in a while the team would come in and tell Tony how scared they were for him, how bad it was when he went missing, how much they loved him.

But somehow, Rhodey's quiet presence and the promise of a cheesesteak and Pepper, meant more to Tony than all the words his team could offer.