you [make] a masterpiece

Tony earns his first marks the way most people do, when he’s placed into the arms of his mother. Two brilliant strips of yellow patterned like the gingham skirt she wears to take him home. For a long time, when he’s old enough, he trails his fingers over them, watching as they turn to thin little ribbons as he grows. 

He doesn’t get anymore, not for a long time. Not even diamond prints like around his mother’s knuckles, or pearlescent smears to match the gentle cupping on her jaw. It’s not that Howard never leaves a mark on Tony; they just fade in a few weeks time. 

Tony leaves his first mark when he’s three. Maria Stark is moving around the kitchen, humming softly. It’s a rare moment of just the two of them while Howard is off Howarding, and she’s making one of the few things Tony remembers her ever cooking. A savoury brown dish full of lamb hunks and carrots and rosemary and thyme. She whips up crumbly biscuits, always a little hard, and a strawberry glazed cake. Looking back, Tony isn’t sure he meant to. He isn’t even sure he understood what he was doing, when he reached out and grabbed her tiny wrist in his grubby, fat little fingers. The red, soft and hazy like summer petals, bloomed, and Maria had almost sobbed. 

She stopped wearing a bracelet on that wrist; Howard started wearing a watch to cover the five fat smears of lazy green.

-

He earns his next mark when he is nine, while he cries into butterscotch icecream. Jarvis is in a rare mood, gloves off and tie askew as he makes batch after batch of butter cookies. When Jarvis touches him, touches the bruise on his shoulder where his shirt is ripped, Tony thinks Jarvis left actual crumbs on his skin. 

“What are they?” Tony demands, voice wet and high and full of mucus. Jarvis chews his lip, slides the boy a warm cookie. 

“I believe, Young Master, that is Mr. Stark’s to answer,” he says gently. 

Tony kicks the table hard enough to make the saucers rattle. “See how that worked,” he grouses petulantly. 

Jarvis sits beside him, brushing at his shoulder. He frowns when the crumbs don’t move, and then says quietly, “I believe Master Anthony, they are the marks left by one Master Steven Grant Rogers.”

Tony bites his cheek hard and shuts his eyes and tries very diligently not to blubber. Jarvis gathers him into his lap and it isn’t until later, when his crusty eyes are still sore but his breath is mostly evened with few hiccups, that he sees them. 

Two dusky blue smears on either side of his Butler’s neck.

Tony doesn’t cry again, when Howard raises the collar on Jarvis’ uniform. But it's a close thing.

-

Tony knows Howard will never leave a mark on his skin. Not one that matters, that is good. It doesn’t stop him from riling his father up, from presenting his cheek so he gets as much fleshy contact as possible. He also tries to entice his mother’s marks again, as those broad gingham bands shrivel into thin little ribbons that don’t grow with him. His mother is a smear of feather light reds, rosey and pale and soft, on her elbows and her wrist and her cheeks. 

His father has another lazy green stroke across one calf, but Tony never gets another chance. 

Later, years later, when Jarvis is buried, they talk about all of the colors on his skin. Sandy looking things from his Anna, bubble gum smears from a daughter Tony never met, a million little finger prints in all sorts of colors and shades and textures from all the people who loved him. They talk about the dusky hand prints on his neck, and the one on the back of his right hand. 

They talk about this person who must’ve loved Jarvis so deeply, that the color saturated so deep it didn’t fade even in death. 

They never mention Tony’s name.

The crumb smears on Tony’s shoulder, thick and high piled after so many nights of butterscotch ice cream lose their scent, but never their color.

-

He doesn’t mean too, but Tony leaves smears on most people he meets. The cashier who always makes his favorite praline coffee gets a nutty-colored smear at the base of his thumb. His barber has an inky smear on his left pinky, where it always brushed Tony’s ear. The kid he carries around the mall one year, searching for his mother, has twin prints of glittery yellow on her knee caps, nestled right between the starry prints he assumes a parent left.

By the time he is fifteen and entering MIT, Tony recons he’s left sixteen thousand marks on people. He still only wears his mother’s ribbons and Jarvis’ crumbs, but it’s a fair trade, he thinks.

He meets Rhodey when he’s half drunk and arguing with a physics professor and leaving charcoal smears on the woman’s forearm everytime he tries to make his point and stumbles. Professor Hill is all soft crinkly eyed amusement, and she pats his knuckles and Tony shuts the damn hell up when he looks at the blooming petals of creamy white. 

Really, it looks like someone has tattooed hydrangea petals across his knuckles and he’s just drunk enough that he sits down on the floor, legs kicked out in front of him, and wails. Professor Hill is suddenly very alarmed, and looks at the only other students in the room.

Rhodey sighes a very put upon noise and picks Tony up. “I got this Prof,” Rhodey says. 

Because he’s been watching this loud-mouthed twink, and he knew this was coming. Kind of. 

Anyway.

He manhandles Tony all the way back to his dorm, thinking about the rumors of the boy who leaves color on every one, to compensate for the lack of marks on his skin. Tony flops right down into Rhodey’s bed, shirt rucking up to show off the shriveled ribbon across his abdomen.

Rhodey’s breath catches and he looks at the marks his own mama gave him, deep slithering things like water draped over his shoulders from years of her hugs, and how they’ve grown in layers with him.

He doesn’t mean to, but Rhodey adopts the runt. 

He doesn’t leave a mark on him that day, as he tugs a blanket over the kid, but it’s only because he’s careful not to touch him. 

-

Three days after they meet, Tony is mostly sober and laughing so hard cheap pizza sprays everywhere. Rhodey is wearing a tank top, having just come from the gym to meet him. The food is mostly gone and Tony’s halfway to sleep, when Rhodey finally says, “Back to the dorm then, wunderkid.”

Tony shakes his head. “Can’t. Gotta finish ‘U’ first.” 

Rhodey throws his hands up, eyes to the skies like his mama does. “Tones, doll. You haven’t slept in 36 hours and that pizza is the first thing you’ve eaten in longer.”

Tony goes to open his mouth but Rhodey jabs a finger at him. “Don’t even! The janitor busted you!”

The janitor, with his smear of red across his chin from Tony, not that Rhodey is jealous. 

“Mark would never betray me that way!” Tony cries. 

The waitress comes by, and Tony’s already brushing his hand over her wrist as he gives her his card, leaving a smear of yellow like pizza crust. She betrays him immediately saying, “I delivered a pizza to the lab three days ago, and far as I’ve heard that’s the last anyone saw him.” 

She winks at Rhodey and Tony looks at her wounded. “Sorry kid, we gotta keep boy wonder taken care of.” 

She doesn’t look at all sorry, not when she leans down and brushes her knuckles over Tony’s chin. Rhodey is surprised at the four gloss pink imprents she leaves. So is she, if the way she hustles away is any indicator. 

Tony huffs, and stands up. He immediately wobbles on his feet and reaches out for Rhodey’s shoulder. 

Rhodey waits until he rights himself, and then stares in awe at the warm, sunset orange streak now gracing his left shoulder. It’s beautiful, and Tony doesn’t even seem aware he’s done it.

It makes Rhodey think, makes him a little jealous. 

His mama leaves fountains on her families skin, deep blues that flow and his pa left smokey yellows. He thinks of Professor Hill pressing petals into her student’s skin and of his own brushed steel gifts. 

Tony, Tony leaves brushes of affection on just about everyone he meets, and it doesn’t make much sense, but it fits so perfectly.

He wonders, then, why Tony’s skin remains unblemished when Rhodey catches his elbow on the way back to his dorm.

-

Winter break comes, and Tony stays on campus, despite everyone’s best efforts. It makes Rhodey’s skin itch. “It ain’t right, Mama, Tones all by himself on that campus.” 

Mama Rhodes looks at him softly, and even though he’s a whole two heads taller than her, he’s sitting down just right for her to add to the waterfalls over his shoulders. “I know James, but the boy has to make his own way.”

She looks at him, brushes a thumb under his eye and smiles sadly. “And you, James, you gotta make your own too.” She runs her fingers over the orange smear he’s wearing proudly on his shoulder. “If this is right, it’ll last. And if it ain’t, if he ain’t, you cherish this mark and know you still matter.”

Rhodey scoffs at her. “Ain’t like that Mama, he leaves marks on everyone.” 

Sure, his is larger than a glance and bright to boot, but it’s just mark, just another Tony smear. 

Mama Rhodes hits him hard, and then loads him up with leftovers that aren’t for him, which just makes him more grumpy.
He kisses her brow though, right over that hazy yellow kiss that hasn’t faded even when his father did, and smiles to himself at the brushed steel outline. 

-

Getting back to campus is a nightmare and a half and Rhodey almost hates that he ever left. He shows up to Tony’s apartment, and the door is already open. There’s yelling inside, frantic and desperate, that makes him tense. 

“I’m sorry! Tony, I didn’t- It wasn’t,”

“No! No I’m. No, it’s not!” Tony is curled in a corner, tears in his eyes. 

Rhodey doesn’t know the man standing across from him, fingers pressed to a smear of peachy lipstick below his left ear. He doesn’t get why they’re both crying.

Rhodey lets himself in, and ignores Tony’s friend in favor of setting plastic containers on his counter and crouching beside him. 

“Hey Platypus,” Tony chokes out, face red and nose snotty. He brushes his fingers over the orange smear and Rhodey feels more than sees the deeper streaks growing in it. 

“I’m sorry,” the guy says again. “It was just supposed to be fun.”

“It was,” Tony whispers.

Rhodey turns about and notices the peachy kiss-smear that hasn’t faded and suddenly he gets it. “Oh Tones,” he says gently. He helps Tony stand up as the guy bolts off, and he presses his hand under Tony’s shirt as he helps him walk to the kitchen. He feels the shift, the cooling of the skin under his palm and he waits until Tony is slumped forward over Mama Rhodey’s gumbo to look.

It’s almost a perfect copy of his palm, done up in a soft steel, broken only by the dip where Tony’s spine is. Rhodey has this growing warmth in his chest, and he waits for Tony to say something, anything.

Tony just sniffs into the spicy bowl, and Rhodey’s heart shatters a little. 

“I didn’t mean to,” Tony whispers.

“I know,” Rhodey says, gently. “I know.” 

-

Tony doesn’t stop leaving his emotional smudge on everyone. But there’s a decided dimness to them. 

Still. Being marked by The Tony Stark becomes the thing of legends, with hand prints on backs in dull green blurs and ribs stroked reverently in faded blues. 

Rhodey hears the whispers, about how Tony’s marks never fade. Once you bear the affection of Stark, it’s permanent.

Highly unusual, unless you’re family or intimate friends. Rhodey himself has had a few marks fade. The brown eyed girl who left a trail of wicker paw prints up his arms. The blue fatigue foliage on his palm from his first Chief Commander. Caroline Brand’s pebbled whites on his cheek. 

But no one who was ever touched by Tony has reported any kind of fading. 

It’s almost heartbreaking, when Rhodey fingers all the shades of orange on his shoulders. 

It’d almost be easier of Tony’s affection ever faded. 

-

Pepper blows into their lives smelling like pinewood and wearing windy strokes of pale color on her arms in two different shades. She’s one of the few people as unmarked as Tony, with her parent’s winds, and her best friends snowy scarf over her shoulders. 

Maybe that’s why she and Tony get along so well. 

Maybe it’s the immediacy with which she’s got a smear of chartreuse on the inside of her elbow, matching the sudden grainy oaky printed inside of Tony’s. 

Either way it breaks something in Rhodey everytime Tony comes to him, all bruise eyed and too skinny, with the woody growing on the inside of his arm.

Still. 

Pepper calls him when he’s gone, to update him on Tony, and sends him pictures of them at the beach, in board meetings. Of Tony passed out in Rhodey’s oversized hoodie, in his too small bed, in the apartment that Tony definitely should not have a key too.

Which is why he’s not at all surprised that the next time he comes home, Pepper ends up with slate grey palms like wings on her shoulders.

“He gets a ring of them?” Tony cries in outrage. 

Rhodey blinks at him, unamused, but Tony slaps at his chest.

When Rhodey looks down, sure enough there are twin branches of a red wood, deep grains and gentle curves, from where her arms had wrapped around him. He grins, stroking over it. “How?” 

He asks her. 

Pepper shrugs, “I’ve always left forest on people.” 

Rhodey thinks if he sniffed it, it’d smell like wood, but that would be weird. “It is, Tony. It’s still weird,” he says to the nose buried there. 

-

“No,” Rhodey tells him.

“But Platy-”

“I hate this idea,” and he does, almost as much as he hates the hurt in Tony’s brown eyes.

“It’s The Captain America,” Tony says softly. 

Which is why Rhodey hates it. He was there for some of those arguments. For the pain in Tony’s eyes when Howard had sneered at him, bearing the sepia handprint framed in a glowing orange gem. 

“You don’t wanna hurt yourself that way,” Rhodey insist.

Tony clenches his jaw and squares his shoulders and Rhodey knows he has lost. But he doesn’t have to stay for this.

Still, he listens to the recordings as someone catalogues all of the marks on Steven Grant Rogers, Captain America. 

“Bruise-blue lips to the left cheek, matching palm print on the forehead, courtesy of one Sarah Grant Rogers, presumably from years of temperature checks. Four rouge colored prints on the left shoulder, matching the kiss under his right ear, courtesy of one Margaret Elizabeth Carter, also known as Peggy. Deep webbings of lace in cream, some more ragged and dusty looking, draped across his shoulders, torso, and behind his knees, of unknown origin. One palm print on his right pec, diamond patterned almost wrapped in a pearlescent sheen, Unknown origin.”

It’s a kindness that prevents Howard’s mark from ending up on the records.

It’s cruelty to whoever left the lace.

“I have theories on that one,” Tony says over the video screen. 

Rhodey of course, is gifted with a view of a buzzing Dum-E and Tony’s shirt slipping up to reveal the lower half of a gleaming palm. “Tony, camera,” he sighs. 

He gets two seconds of Tony’s brown eyes, before it’s all screwdrivers and oil again. 

“Theory?” Rhodey prompts when it’s clear Tony has forgotten he’s there.

“James Buchanan Barnes,” Tony says. “His best friend who is historically pictured draped all over both skinny Steve and big Steve.”

“And the more ragged lace? Rhodey asks, brain whirling.

Tony looks at him then, and his eyes are sad, soft. “Not sure, but I’m betting those happened after Capscicle broke him out of Azzano.”

It makes sense, in a way that makes Rhodey sick. 

He’s studying Tony, and the exhausted slump of his shoulders and he says, “I miss you.”

Tony actually puts the wrench down to look at him. He gives Rhodey a warm smile with soft eyes and touches his fingers to the screen. “Miss you too, Platypus.”

-

Rhodey is working on paperwork when his shoulder starts burning. Pepper calls him on the phone Stark built, the one that breaks so many Air Force regulations as well as other laws. “Tony,” he begins.

Pepper is weeping, her usual composure undone over the phone. “He’s missing!”

“I’ll find him,” Rhodey says, already grabbing his emergency go bag.

He loses track of time. 

He hasn’t showered properly, slept properly, or eaten properly. 

It’s only the raging heat of his shoulder that keeps him going.

And then he’s flying over a dusty landscape, everything the same for miles, when he sees a stride that shatters everything in him. 

Hazy, pulling Tony into his arms. Fuzzy, Tony wired up. Too bright, his fingers tracing the exploding scars in Tony’s chest, fingers trailing over the glowing metal. 

Rhodey doesn’t notice the silver threads for an embarrassing amount of time, but when he does he can’t help stroking them, and wondering who gave them to Tony. He also can’t help noticing the dark steel threads that grow by them. 

“Ho Yiensen,” Tony croaks. “That’s what’s…” 

Tony never speaks about it again, after he passes back out. Rhodey never asks, even if his fingers itch to trail over it. 

-

“Rhodey,” Pepper says impatiently. She threw a newspaper at him earlier, and hasn’t stopped tapping his foot.

“I know!” He grouses. “I know, it’s not Tony’s.”

And it isn’t. Even he can tell the garish sludgy not brown-or-green isn’t Tony’s. But he also isn’t exactly sure why it matters. Tony’s mark is on so many people…

“No one,” Pepper says. “Not since,” and she trails over, fingers pressed to her lips. “And this bitch is trying to act like!” 

It would be a hell of a lot funnier if Rhodey didn’t suddenly feel the same anger coursing through him. “What can we do?”

Pepper sighs. “Tony doesn’t want us doing anything.”

Rhodey snorts at her. “Pepper, honey. When have we ever trusted Tony to take care of himself?”

They don’t really do anything. Just one phone call and a little bit of cash thrown at the artist who made the mark, and the girl’s lies are exposed. Tony eyes Rhodey and Pepper suspiciously, but they say nothing and he says nothing, and like a lot of Tony’s emotions, it gets gently tucked away. 

-

Rhodey likes Captain America. He does, really. But he doesn’t like the way he looks at Tony. It’s somewhere between nostalgic fondness and disgruntled amusement. 

He also doesn’t like Steve’s gemstone flurries marking everyone. 

Rhodey doesn’t quite understand Tony’s rage. Not at first. But Steve claps his hands on Tony’s shoulder and Tony’s arm explodes with red streaked blue stone, and Tony loses it. He swings at Captain America, leaving a raging streek of deep red across the Captain’s cheek that stuns everyone.

Rhodey eyes the mess, and then leans over to Pepper, “Is it normal to punch someone and leave a mark?”

Pepper leans into him, whispers, “Is anything related to Tony normal?”

He laughs, a startled barking noise and shakes Steve’s hand. 

He’s only mildly disappointed he doesn’t get gemstones, but it’ll come. Pepper already has topaz flurries curling into the marks left by himself and Tony. 

-

Tony is drunk, shirtless, and staring into a shattered mirror. “He touched Jarvis’ mark,” Tony says. His voice is shattering ice.

Rhodey sucks in a breath and rolls forward, eyeing the blue-red flurries. He can still see Jarvis’ crumbs, but he can see them under a sheen of gemstone glitter. They’d be easy to miss if someone didn’t know to look, and Rhodey is honestly a little surprised they’re visible at all. 

“Jarvis’s love is more than a cupped palm of crumbs, Tony,” he says gently. Be he pulls Tony in close and pretends not to notice the faint sheen of metal wings growing on Tony’s back.

-

Fury’s mark surprises Rhodey. He’s not sure he’d have ever noticed, if he hadn’t watched Fury chuck Natasha Romonave under the chin and leave a faint blue block. 

Which is why when he notices the dull blue patch on Tony’s arm, and on his own, he’s kind of surprised.

He isn’t even sure when they earned them, and he never asks, but he watches Tony a lot more closely after that.

Natasha kicks Tony with her toes, and he gets an obnoxious neon pink press on his thighs. 

Sam punches him gently in a bicep, and and there's feathery, mint-green washes left behind. 

Clint pulls him into a headlock, and Tony proudly wears the deep, purple, shattered glass necklace like he’s a king. 

He gets in trouble at a board meeting when he walks in wearing just a suit jacket and those marks, but Tony just laughs. 

Rhodey smiles, because it’s nice, seeing Tony so wrapped in these people.

His own gift to Tony stays mostly a secret, and Rhodey isn’t sure how he feels about it. 

Especially when Bruce leaves a glowing green puddle on Tony’s stomach, after helping work on the arc reactor. 

Rhodey isn’t jealous. “I’m not Mama! I’m glad so many people care for him!”

“And for you,” she reminds him, touching the wood and the blue and his own gemstone caress. She doesn’t touch the orange, with its multitude of shades, but he can feel her gaze. “You can’t be mad when you hold yourself back,” she tells him gently. 

She kisses his temple and he knows he’s gonna have a blue puddle there, so he leans into it, gripping her arm to leave his own steely embrace.

-

Steve Rogers leaves gemstones all over Tony and the others. Casual little stone flurries as he corrects positions and claps shoulders and bumps jaws. They all start looking like obnoxious displays of stones and glass, neon and living green. 

Everyone has a small forest from Pepper, and an even smaller steel support from himself, but Tony.

Jesus, does Tony leave fluttering smears of color all over everyone. 

“I look like a damn abstract painting,” Sam complains once, prodding at a purple-orange-brown smear on his stomach. 

But Rhodey can hear how pleased he is, how much he loves it.

Rhodey has earned a few more smears himself; sunrise red down his neck, blue like a skie on his collarbone. He can’t even describe all the colors on his arms and his chest and his ankles.

-

Because he’s Tony fucking Stark, he goes missing around christmas and comes back with a new series of touches.

“Relaxe Rhodey-bear, they’re from a kid,” Tony grins. 

They’re hip high fuzzy looking mauve marks, and Rhodey frequently walks in to see Tony absently brushing his fingers over them. 

“Harley is a good kid,” Tony says. “You’d like him.”

“So let me meet him,” Rhodey finally demands. 

Tony grins and he makes a series of calls and then Mama fucking Rhodes flies into town with a white kid with curly hair in tow. She grins at Rhodey, and he can already see the waterfall on the kid’s palm and resigns himself to a new… cousin? This brat is NOT going to be his brother. 

Harley runs up to Tony, patting his cheeks and leaving fuzzy mauve smears and talking a mile a minute about potatoes and guns. 

By the time he’s warmed up to Rhodey, demanding rides on his shoulders and leaving a mauve strap under his chin, Rhodey is smitten.

“It’s like a hug inside of you!” He says, feeling almost giddy. He can’t stop stroking his fingers over the marks, grinning each time the warmth expands in his chest.

Harley ends up with metal knee pads and a million paint smears, and a waterfall kiss on his cheek by the time Tony flies him home. 

Mama Rhodes eyes glimmer and she says, “About damn time you gave me a grandson.” She frowns, a quivering amused thing as she adds, “Even if you are going out of order.”

She isn’t wrong though, and Rhodey makes it a point to visit Harley as often as he can.

-

James Buchanan Barnes blows into town and Rhodey doesn’t think Tony has ever hated being right more. Because every time the Winter Soldier punches Captain America in the face, a new series of scar-colored, ripped lace mars the Captains face. 

By the time they capture the guy, Steve’s gems have cracked almost all the way off Tony’s skin.

Rhodey aches to see Steve’s skin still littered with Tony.

But not as much as he aches looking at the reminder of how deep Tony’s affection goes. 

“Do you even,” Rhodey begins to ask once.

He stops when he sees Bucky’s skin. Part of him looks dusty, even though Rhodey knows he’s clean. Large tracts of browns and oranges, sepia fades over his chest and his stomach and his back. They’re overlaid with a hundred million glittering flurries, all the gentle, fleeting touches Steve has given him since Bucky came back.

“You should,” Rhodey snarls, storming out. 

How the fuck does Steve Rogers not understand, if Bucky Barnes wears the touches of before and after?

Rhodey watches Tony. Watches the way he frowns every time he sees Bucky’s skin, everytime he sees the lace growing on Steve, creating a web around all of the other marks. 

All of the gems have fallen off Tony, leaving weird, pale patches of skin. 

Objectively, Rhodey knew that marks could fade. It happens, as relationships break apart, as people pass. But he’s never seen them go like that. Completely erased off someone’s skin, leaving it shiny and new and empty.

-

Tony throws himself more and more into work after. He withdraws from people, cuts himself off from everyone but Rhodey and Pepper, and even then, he shies away from their touch.

Peter is the only one leaving marks on Tony, and that’s just because the kid’s enthusiasm can’t be shied away from. 

Pepper and Rhodey love his weird brushes of cream and milk. Web-like shapes that seem alive, that move with them.

“Harley, just ask him,” Rhodey sighs. 

Harley looks at him, leaving mauve cuffs around Rhodey’s wrists. “I can’t!” He wails. He looks close to crying. “Peter won’t!” Then he is sobbing and Rhodey looks over at Pepper who looks just as confused. 

Mama Rhodes clucks at them both, and replaces Harley’s tears with her own brand of flowing rivers. “Harley baby, you got more Peter-webs on you than even that Tony Stark. And Lord knows I’ve caught glimpses of mauve on that boy I did not need to see and you did not need to leave.”

Even Rhodey is blushing, remembering the mauve brushes on Peter’s hips. Later, he’ll remind Harley he’d better be glad Mama Rhodes hadn’t seen the moving threads trailing below Harley’s underwear band. 

“She’s right, Harley baby,” Rhodey says gently. “That boy is so besotted with you, I think you could talk him out of Tony’s lab.” 

Is it selfish he’s hoping it’s true? 

Harley curls into Rhodey even though he’s too tall and too lanky, but Rhodey wraps him in his steely embrace, layering himself over years of cuddles and and weaving the steel into Tony’s own gifts. “Thanks, Papa Rhodes,” Harley says softly, nosing another mauve blanket into Rhodey’s collarbone.

Pepper scoffs, and Harley holds a hand out with a watery pout and she smiles and goes to hold his hand, watching her mahogany forest splinter in between Peter’s webbing. “Is Papa Tones okay?” Harley asks her with a whisper.

Pepper’s grin shatters a little, and she says, “I’m sorry, Harley. I wish I knew.”

-

Clint surprises Rhodey one day, handing him a beer and pointing to Natasha and Bruce. “Think there’s a proposal coming?” 

Rhodey blinks, and says, “I thought you…?”

Clint shakes his head, smile a little rueful and eyes a little sad. “No. I love her, probably more than anyone, but not that way.” 

Rhodey nods, like he understands, and studies the green glow that seems to envelop Nat. The way Bruce’s skin is a glowing neon billboard. They look… garish together, but somehow beautiful. 

“Has there ever been anyone?” Rhodey asks suddenly. 

Clint stares ahead, chugging his own beer. When he answers, his voice is calm, but Rhodey hears something beneath it. “No. I tried once; shield agent named Bobbi.”

“What happened?” Rhodey pries. He asks of his own curiosity, but also because he thinks Clint wants to share this.

“I tried, but,” Clint chews his lips, watching Harley and Peter wrapped around each other and the shy touches Bruce and Natasha share. Even Steve and Bucky are sitting close, touching from ankle to shoulder. “I love them, all of them. I’ve loved a lot of people. And I like companionship. But there’s romance missing. Bobbi said,” Clint bites down on the words, like they hurt to admit. Like they’re splinters caught between his teeth and he doesn’t know if it’ll hurt worse to leave then in or pull them out. “Bobbi said I could love everyone, but I never quite reached being in love with anyone.”

Rhodey doesn’t get it. He’s always been in love with Tony, since he pulled him off the floor of the physic’s classroom. He can’t imagine not ever being in love with him. But he nods his head anyway and pats a metal brace onto Clint’s thigh. “We all love you too, Clint.”

Clint snorts at him, and drains the last of his beer, but his ears are red tipped and Rhodey thinks that means he said the right thing. 

“So,” Clint suddenly blurts out. “When are you going to ask Tony?” 

Rhodey chokes on his beer and Clint howls with laughter and everyone is looking at them like they’re insane. 

-

Rhodey isn’t sure if Clint was just teasing him or not, but he can’t shake the question. With Peter wrapped up in Harley, Tony is more alone in his lab then ever, and Rhodey and Pepper have taken up a rotating shift outside the door, enforcing showers and naps and meals as often as they can.

Even Fury slips in once, and Tony makes the windows opaque. 

Rhodey doesn’t know what is said, but Fury comes out with a beautiful, lake-reflected sunset smear that looks like Tony’s face on his neck. 

“I love Cap,” Fury says, “but he really hurt Tony.”

Rhodey nods, unsure of how to respond.
“So,” Fury says slowly, “fucking fix it Colonel.”

Rhodey nods, salutes, and can’t help blurting, “Sir yes sir!” 

Fury grins at him, and when he shakes Rhodey’s hand, the faded blue fatigue is overlaid with a dull blue sheen. 

Rhodey walks into the lab, and there are twin blue hand prints, dull but comfortable on the back of Tony’s neck, bleeding up into his hairline. 

“Hey Platypus,” Tony says. It’s quiet, raw, wet and broken. 

Rhodey takes a moment to look at Tony; he takes in the dark circles under his eyes and the hollow cheeks. But he also takes in the shriveled ribbons of his mother and the pile of butter-scented crumbs from Jarvies. Pepper’s wood, solid and warm, radiating in his elbow and Natasha’s glowing toe prints. There’s still a glowing green puddle above his belly button, and shattered glass all around his neck, and Sam’s feathers drifting all over his skin, tied together with Peter’s silky, living webs and Harley’s mauve blankets. 

His knuckles are still petal dusted, and his chest a shattering of silver and steel threads, and there are small steel prints everywhere, in addition to the palms on his back.

Funny, but he hadn’t realized how much steel he’d left on Tony.

There are still no gemstone flurries on Tony, in those large, gaping empty places. Rhodey is a little surprised to see a delicate lace pattern done up in rusted copper on his shoulder, and when he catches Rhodey’s stare, Tony cracks a broken smile.

“Murder Bro’s got an ever changing mark,” Tony snorts. But he touches the thing reverently, because they both know just how rare that mark is. 

Tony makes grabby hands at him, and like he’s pulled by some thread, Rhodey moves. Tony cups his face, thumb trailing over his brow down his cheek, and over the bridge of his nose. Tony gasps, and Rhodey pulls back, brows furrowed. “It’s gold,” Tony says.

Rhodey looks in a mirror, and sure enough, the mark Tony left is more than just a smear of color. It’s a thick band of gold, strong and solid and marking him like, like… 

Rhodey doesn’t have words, but he leans down and kisses Tony, hard and desperate.

When he pulls back, and Tony’s lips are gun-metal silver, he can’t help but smirk.

-

Mama Rhodes officially proposes to Tony for Rhodey.

She does it when Tony comes out with a tiny, shatter blue gemstone on his neck. It’s a small thing, grim looking and fractured, and Rhodey can’t stop the growl in his throat, or the possessive hand that comes up to cover it. 

When he leans back, and it looks like he left his actual hand behind, had his hand been made of steel, he feels the blush all the way down in his toes. 

Mama Rhodes blinks at them, laughs high and excited, and says, “I knew you wouldn’t make your mama die before you got married! Tony! Tony boy, you’re gonna make an honest man out of my son!”

Tony grins at her, soft and sheepish and says, “Yes, Mama Rhodes, you know it.”

-

It almost hurts, to wear the suits, and to cover all of their marks. But Rhodey sees the mauve and petal and webs on Tony’s knuckles and the wood that’s pressed to his temple. He sees his own steely kiss and he thinks, their family marks are showing and that's what matters. 

His own golden painting, his mama’s rivers. 

Mauve and web and wood, blue fatigue and blue fade on his hands. 

It’s just him and Tony at the altar, and all their friends behind them. Small and simple, because as much as Rhodey loved Tony, he wasn’t getting married with sixteen thousand strangers and a swarm of paps.

It’s beautiful. and it’s them, and when Harley and Peter wrestle them to the ground, demanding gold and steel streaks of their own, Rhodey laughs louder than he has in a long time.

Later, he presses Tony into his bed. Their bed, and kisses him, tries to fill all of those gaps with steel and tries to cover himself in gold.

“Hey, Platypus,” Tony whispers.

“Hey, Tones,” Rhodey says just as quiet. 

“I love you.”

“You damn well better, after all that!”