Chapter 7
Dawn finally at last began peaking its way up over the ocean and through the twisting man-made maze, that was the city horizon, revealing a mess of half-dozing bodies laying mixed up together on the floor of the penthouse's great room. Not the worst place, or way, to find himself waking up thanks to a Tony situation.
Barnes had come slinking in at one point( four am) with all the skittish reluctance of a stray and then had proceeded to try and skitter off to who-knows-where again but Steve had carefully detangled himself out from the tangle-pile of Tony, Pepper, Bruce, Thor, and Loki and managed to catch him at the door. The blond soldier moved carefully, as the other froze up at his very proximity, deliberately telegraphing each of his slow movements and attempts to get close but while also broadcasting a clear wish not to crowd the other. Every time the cyborgic assassin twitched in almost terrified seeming flinches Rogers would ease back. Not far and not like he could hide how much it was costing him to hold back from his childhood friend. But eventually Steve managed to take hold of his Bucky. Grasping him much as on would something like a moth that they wished not to harm but was too easy to accidently crush. Barnes' eyes had flickered between Rogers and the others. And Rhodey had found himself reacting to the scrutiny by trying to pull Tony and Pepper closer to himself protectively, despite( or maybe further fueled by) the responding resistance from where the other Avengers were wrapped around them, while never taking his eyes off the possible threat. A few beats latter the Winter Soldier seemed to melt slumping into the hold for a moment before switching into insistently tugging his mate out of the room with him. Rhodes was only able to look away from the spot where the two old-time soldiers had been standing when Thor startled him by unexpectedly moving to drop his own blond head burrowing his face in the crook of Loki's neck with a sound that reminded Rhodey that Barnes and Tony( who yeah had somehow been the only one that managed to sleep through the entire thing ) weren't the only two to have once been taken from their loved ones and declared dead.
The trickster god murmered something too low and alien for his ears to make sense of just as Barton scooted in closer breaking the settling solemnness with a too Tony-like manner that consisted of whining in exaggerated yet soft-voiced complaint "Aw man, look at that, we like totally missed the slumber party! My cool status at school is gonna be like completely ruined now!"
"Means you'll have more time now to keep up with your grades." The more senior agent quirked a almost-smile at the archer before laying a reassuring hand on a now worriedly confused Thor to let him know that Barton wasn't being serious. Hard to believe this Agent Coulson was the same guy who had come across as just another middling bureaucratic paper-pusher when they'd first met him. With Clint's head resting on his shoulder, and the rest of the Avengers resting safely and peacefully in sight, or at least within acceptable range, the government suit looked more like contently relaxed yet vigilantly alert guard-dog watching over his household. None of the three SHIELD agents looked like they had been up all night but then again they also didn't look like they'd gone to bed at any point either.
Romanov though briefly eyed the unopened bottles, that were laying on the floor under the table nearby that Tony had needed to be coaxed out from under earlier, and settled in softly next to Banner. The incident hadn't been bad at all since the other man had seemed more interested in cuddling the booze than actually drinking any of it. But he had gotten his hands on the stuff while the rest of them were mostly being distracted by wondering if they should have been worried at the way the former weapons-designer had hot-footed it out of his lab in a way that was too uncomfortably reminiscent of the times when something was unintentionally about to blow up. Thankfully this time nothing actually did so there was really no clue to what that bit of Tony-weirdness was about.
Under his hand he felt his friend's sudden flinch away from the pressure of his touch and guiltily realized his hand had accidently brushed over where the housing of the reactor met scared flesh. When Tony was awake and alert he could control the automatic fear response to having someone touching that major spot of vulnerability. But asleep-. As maddeningly as it hurt to experience Rhodey knew, he knew damn it, that it wasn't intended, not a rejection, but the instant response caused by a past monster's betrayal( and let's face it, every other threat that comes across Tony and is automatically drawn to that big shiny obvious target spot) that had taught a painfully learned lesson for some sense of self-preservation. Out of everything, of all the ways all the things Tony did that he shouldn't or didn't do when he should, (all the fear and anxiety for the idiot genus' well-being that Rhodey, Pepper, Happy, and Mr Jarvis had forever taken on because the moron didn't bother having any of his own when it came to himself), it was in this tiny little fretful motion that the guy had to be a normal person. Naturally it was in a way that Rhodey himself was useless to help. He hadn't even realized it the time when Tony was hiding that he was godsdammed dying on him! He always seemed to be letting the smaller man down during the times he needed Rhodes the most. Not that Tony himself thought this, though that might have not been the best reassurance given this was Tony after all, but Rhodey wasn't convinced. How often in the past had people who knew about Soul Bond- type relationships not believed Tony was part of one? Even after the arch-reactor's appearance Tony'd had moments of discovering all new previously unimaginable highs and lows in rampant overindulgent hedonistic displays. Tony had made himself a top king of exceptionally extreme partying with expertise on some of the most exclusively leveled out-of-control shit that was over-the-edge beyond anything most other people could have pictured in their wildest imaginings. The number of times that Tony had almost been murdered or just plain died from 'having fun'.... for those who loved him his self-destructive 'Sex, Drugs, and Alcohol ' was worse than almost anything 'The Merchant of Death' could become. It wasn't right and it shamed him to his core but if Tony ever went dark-
And Tony knew. He had more than once flat-out admitted, in his convoluted and quirky Tony way, that it was Rhodey and Pepper's feelings of shame or self-disgust at doing something they thought wrong that kept him in check more than any feelings about himself ever could. 'Goes both ways Tony.' As often a they'd played Tony's moral side there had been times when he'd turned around and returned the favor.
His feelings of pride for the sweet bundle of contradictions he held snuggly onto evidently had leaked across their links again because he soon found Pepper and Tony had both moved to nestle more closely. Which was better than good....right up until the weight of Banner's gaze registered having grown impossible to overlook.
Unlike the Soul Linking between Coulson/Barton/Romanov or Loki and Thor the one Rhodes had with Pepper/Tony and to a milder extent Happy didn't merge into one with the rest of the Avengers. Actually they had a seriously complex thing trying to function here. Steve was Bonded to Barnes, but Steve( and not Bucky Barnes) was part of the Bond between the founding members of the Avengers team. Tony was Bonded to Pepper, Rhodey, Happy, and a part of that same Avengers Bond. Rhodey was not really strongly Bonded with Happy and was not a part of the Avengers Soul Boned group even though he was now a member of the Avengers team( as was Barnes and some others since Tony and Steve were evidently handing out memberships left and right)-
It was a confusing mess.
But that pretty much meant that right now Banner was too much like a rival competing with him for his Tony and Pepper. If the Hulk decided that Rhodey was a threat to the Avengers developing soul connection......
The mutate's stare was unyealding. To hold steady eye contact would be to risk challenging the Hulk. But to look away could be seen as weakness and might also rouse the green monster into trying to take away Rhodes' older and more established claim.
'No way in hell buddy boy!.' Fist bunching the soft fabric to pull his lovers closer and muscles tensing he waited for Banner's reaction.
Only it wasn't Banner who made the next move. Instead Jarvis stepped between them and calmly crouched down to wake Tony with all the dignity as if Tony was in his own bed and not passed out on the floor.
"Master Tony, Lady Pepper, if you don't rise now you will be running late for your morning meeting."
JARVIS piped up joining in with his morning report and opened the rest of the window blinds, well actually what he really did was change the settings on the window glass so that they let the increasing light in, causing more than one unhappy groan all around.
Tony whimpered in protest and tried to both burrow himself under Rhodey and scoot back closer to Banner at the same time. But the white-haired butler just continued stroking his hair in the soothing manner of one dealing with a fretful child.
"Tony, wake up."
Naturally the only answer was another pitiful sound that declared the word a bad, mean, evil place and you yourself a terribly cruel person for even thinking of forcing him to confront it... Yes, Rhodey could understand most forms of Tony-speak and 'not wanting to wake-up' was one of the most common ones and so easily familiar.
"He's faking."
'No kidding super assassin! You really think we don't know that after all the years we've been with him?'