Tony hates Steve, he always has but he hates him even more since they pulled him out of the ice. All those fucking comparisons, the ‘why can’t you be like him’s, the disappointment that he’s not Steve fucking Rogers. Tony can’t stand it. “Is he at least as badass as legend claims he is?” Rhodey asks and Tony gives him a dirty look. “What? I’m just saying, as someone aspiring to join the military it’s relevant to my interests,” he points out.
He doesn’t even get that, Rhodey’s interest in the military. Seems contradictory to his whole nature but Tony leaves it alone. He thinks it might be because his father was in the military, died there too, and Rhodey kind of has a hero worship thing going on with his father but he doesn’t bother to point out that’s bound to end up in disappointment. Rhodey will only tell him that not everyone is Howard.
“He’s a self righteous arrogant asshole,” Tony says and Rhodey sighs.
“This is what I get for seeking out a biased opinion. Can I meet him?” he asks, earning another dirty look from Tony.
“You remember he grew up in the forties, right?” he asks and Rhodey frowns.
“How’s that relevant?” he asks and Tony can’t believe he’s the one to point this out.
“Desegregation hadn’t happened yet,” Tony says and realization dawns on Rhodey’s features.
“Shit, I was so excited I forgot about that. Well, he had that Japanese American friend even after Pearl Harbor, he seems like he might be non judgmental,” Rhodey says, managing to work around that shockingly fast.
Tony rolls his eyes, “whatever. If he says offensive shit don’t act like I didn’t tell you so,” he mumbles.
“Please, lets not act like you didn’t say offensive shit when I met you and I still kept you around. Now lets go I want to see Captain America in person!” Rhodey says, excited. He rolls his eyes again but drags Rhodey’s ass home with him so he can get this over with. Maybe Steve will be as disappointing to Rhodey as he is to Tony.
*
Of course Rhodey has to fucking like Steve. Helped that he wasn’t as much of a prick about the race thing as Howard is, not that he said anything in front of his precious Steve Rogers. Wouldn’t want to disappoint him by being himself, now would he? “What are you doing over here? You have people to talk to, why’s Steve mingling more than you are?” Howard snaps, coming up from behind him.
Great. Tony does his best to hide his irritation, “I already know everyone here dad, and I already said hello. Had a couple conversations too, can I take a break?” This stuff is just tedious to him. His first love will always be inventing, not kissing random people’s asses and certainly not being compared to Steve god damn Rogers. People only flock to him because he’s a war hero, its not like Tony has that on his side he’s seventeen. He can’t even be a war hero even if he wanted to given that he can’t join the damn army.
“No, you can’t take a break. What is it with you youth and thinking everything will be handed to you? Go back out there and do some damn work for once,” Howard snaps. “You’re not riding on my coat tails,” he adds.
Oh that makes Tony’s blood boil. Riding on his coat tails? As if. “Fine,” Tony snaps, walking away. He ends up in a four hour conversation with some oil executive that mostly makes him want to tell the guy he’s causing that hole in the ozone but at least Howard has nothing to bitch about.
*
Rhodey is giving him looks but he shouldn’t be. “I’m just saying maybe you’re misjudging him,” Rhodey says. “He’s not that bad. Massively out of touch maybe, but the guy was frozen for a bunch of years so I can forgive that.”
Only because he’s Captain fucking America. He gives Rhodey a dirty look but he’s unrepentant. “I am not misjudging him,” he says. “I’m a perfectly good judge of character and he’s awful. And Howard keeps comparing me to him like there’s any possibility of me being him.” There isn’t- Tony’s not that guy, can’t be that guy either. First of all he’s not painfully pretty, he’s so not stupid enough to get injected with some experimental serum to fight in a war, and he’s not boringly sure of his own morality. There is nothing about Steve Rogers that is anything like him and he’s tired of the comparisons.
Rhodey sighs, “has it occurred to you that maybe you’re being a bit hard on the guy because Howard is a jackass?” he asks.
“No,” Tony says, perfectly sure that his answer is correct.
*
Yeah he knows that Howard is awful, he hears the stories from Tony all the time and frankly when they first met Rhodey was horrified. He mentioned the abuse he suffered like it was normal, expected even and he didn’t know how to handle that. When he asked his mom, his go to whenever he has no idea what he’s doing, she had told him that justice doesn’t come for those who can pay off the system and the best he could do was offer Tony support. So that’s mostly what he did, even if he needed tough love every once and awhile, like with this whole Steve business at least until shit hit the fan with it.
“What the fuck am I supposed to do?” Tony asks, looking half out of his mind and yeah, Rhodey can’t say he blames him. Guy has no idea how not to be rich, he’d be dead in two weeks if not for Rhodey to help him out. Okay, that’s an exaggeration but still. Tony really doesn’t know how to live outside his wealth and this isn’t going to be easy for him.
He sighs. “Your interests were never Howard’s, Tony. Maybe this is a sign to do what you’ve always wanted,” he points out. “No more Howard holding you back.”
“Yeah, no more fucking anything!” Tony yells and Rhodey lets it go because Tony is freaking out right now.
“Tones- you’ve never needed that. Its rare that people have talent like yours- you can get scholarships to cover tuition until your done school, you already know who to go to if you need someone to invest in your ideas, and you know how to run a business already. You have all the tools you need to get by without Howard, you don’t need him,” he says softly. And its true, both the rareness of Tony’s raw talent and his ability to get out of this. Being disowned is going to suck. But Tony is never one to sit by and do nothing, and with his talent he won’t need to either. If Rhodey’s been getting job offers based off his skills Tony sure as hell will too, now that he’s no longer attached to Stark Industries.
Later, when Tony gives him all the details of what happened- namely that apparently Steve is now Howard’s next in line to take over the company, he goes to find word of the change in the news. With all the anger Tony has towards Steve thanks to Howard’s bullshit comparing the two non stop he doesn’t think he realizes how uncomfortable Steve looks with all this. But he doesn’t tell Tony that either, he’s not ready to hear something like that.
*
Tony ducks around the corner to avoid Pepper because paperwork is awful thank you, and his job is mostly inventing not CEOing. That’s her job. And yeah okay he has to do his share of the paperwork blah, blah, but still. He’s got things to invent, projects to fine tune, companies to eat. He’s been trying to topple Hammer Industries, which is really only the cheap version of Stark Industries and given the state of the company in recent years that’s so not what anyone wants to be. At this point Stark Industries is the cheap version of itself and Hammer Industries is a cruel mockery of it.
An arm sneaks around his waist and Tony looks behind him to find Rhodey. “Platypus, excellent, save me from Pepper,” he tells him but Rhodey rolls his eyes.
“Nope,” he says, hauling Tony over his shoulder and carrying him towards Pepper’s office.
“This so isn’t fair! I married you!” Tony says, deeply offended at this betrayal.
“Well Pepper gave me the best wedding present and all you need to do is sign shit Tony, its not hard,” he tells him, hauling his ass back to Pepper’s office. When they get there he plops him down and Tony gives him a dirty look for being such an ass. He’s been gone for like ever and he comes back to treat Tony like this? Travesty.
When he turns around though he nearly walks back out. “Tony give the man a chance,” Rhodey says, stepping in front of him right away.
“How about no,” Tony tells him, hurt that he’d ever think this is a good idea. Genuinely hurt too, he knows how hard things were for him when Howard literally threw him out in favor of Steve and what the hell good could this possibly do?
“I want to give you the company back Tony, I never should have had it to begin with,” Steve tells him like he’s got any room to ask that of him.
“Tony,” Pepper says. “Sit down and look at the numbers.”
He could leave, he knows he could, and he knows Rhodey and Pepper might not fault him for it either, but curiosity at the disaster that his father’s company has become pulls him back. Or maybe it’s a kind of sick glee that he was right when he told Howard Steve would ruin everything. Regardless, he walks over to Pepper’s desk, avoiding Steve has he does it, to pick up the folder she’s got set out for him.
To say the numbers are abysmal is frankly a compliment. He turns to Pepper, “no. And not for the reasons you might- how the fuck did it get this bad?” he asks Steve in particular, who looks away. Guilt, Tony thinks, and that pisses Tony off. He chose this so why the hell does he look so guilty about it?
“I don’t know,” he says eventually, “I told Howard I’m not good with numbers. I don’t even have an eight grade education, I never should have gotten that company but-” he cuts himself off, looking away.
“Keep reading,” Pepper tells him. “You’ll take an interest.”
He doubts that but he continues through the notes, judgment turning to genuine pain at how horribly things have gone down hill for the company. Jesus. Of course he knew already how it could end up like this anyway- Steve’s Captain America, no one is going to be on his ass like anyone else with investors. SI paid the price too, but when he gets to the bottom line he frowns. “The fuck is this? There’s no way the company made money in this condition let alone millions.”
“I know that,” Steve murmurs. “What? Don’t need any education to know a bunch of minuses don’t equal a fat bottom line. This is what I found and I um… I don’t entirely know what I’m looking at,” he says, handing Tony another file.
He snatches it, still annoyed with him but dead confused about the profits SI supposedly made. He’d assume it was some kind of Enron situation if not for the second file giving a whole different story. “Pepper, call every high rankling police official we know. And Rhodey, this is a threat to national security get… get everyone you can think of on the line,” he tells them.
Holy fuck.
*
Steve watches as Tony cleans up what’s his mess, mostly, because as it turns out those weapons deals he didn’t understand weren’t to companies he didn’t know the names of even after he tried to look them up. The weapons deals were to terrorists. At first he didn’t know how Tony made the connection, but as he watches the flurry of action that ensues he learns that Tony was familiar with the way terrorists get weapons because of Rhodey. Apparently he spends a lot of time tracking terrorist activity and told Tony about some of it. He knows Rhodey isn’t supposed to talk about details like that but he’s glad he told Tony enough that he knew what he was looking at now.
That Howard was wrong about Tony is something Steve already knew. He knew it even before Howard had thrown his own child away for such stupid reasons but Howard refused to listen. And Tony, he hated Steve. He gets why he supposes, he’s heard the way Howard constantly compared him to Steve but he never seemed intent on listening to Steve whenever he tried to correct it. And the way Howard went on about it, it became exhausting to say anything anymore.
He never should have stopped though- Tony isn’t just competent, he’s exceptional. Within less than twenty four hours he has an entire investigation underway that he’s mostly heading himself and he’s dug up a lot. First of all once Steve gave him access to everything, not that he needed it with his computer skills, he quickly compiled evidence of money being in places it shouldn’t be and found where that money led even faster. What surprises him though is who seems to be the main person behind it all- Obadiah Stane. The man used to be a good friend of Howard’s, good friend of his too Steve thought. Always more business minded so Steve had freely admitted to giving him oversight of things he guesses he shouldn’t have.
As it turns out he decided to take some of Tony’s old weapons designs and turn them into a way to make money. Doesn’t seem to matter to him that its terrorists who are buying his weapons.
“Tony,” Steve says, managing to catch him alone after some effort. Tony glares at him, clearly still not happy to be around him. “Thank you, for all this. And sorry,” he says, not even sure what he’s apologizing for. There’s way too much to get into with that.
Tony looks away, an odd look crossing his face before he shakes his head. “I never wanted into weapons,” he snaps. “Because I knew this shit would happen.”
Steve sighs. Source of many Stark family fights, he’s familiar. Always ended in Howard defending the business, pointing to Steve as a war hero, and talking about his involvement in making the atom bomb like it was an accomplishment. Steve, even during the war, hadn’t been comfortable with that but Howard has always been single minded. Tony had grown up in a different era though, seen what happened in Vietnam and wanted nothing to do with it. He’d wanted to focus on environmental technologies, later he did and his research is way beyond Steve. But he’s been reliably informed that its unparalleled, that he’s the top of his field.
“Its not your fault,” Steve tells him. “You got out a long time ago.”
Tony gives him a dirty look. “I got kicked out,” he snaps.
“Yeah, and you built something entirely new for yourself. Don’t discredit that now,” Steve tells him. “Not because someone found old designs and used them.”
“If I never drew them they wouldn’t be there to use,” he mumbles.
Maybe, Steve thinks, but there was no way he could have known old designs in Howard’s basement were going to be the start of someone else outfitting terrorists with his stuff. Given that he got out of SI when he did its reasonable to assume he didn’t think he’d have any involvement in weapons let alone involvement like this.
“Tony, you were a teenager when you drew up those designs. You didn’t know what would happen with them,” Steve says. “You were never even in the company that did all this and you were pressured by your father to do what little you have done. This isn’t your fault. If its anyone’s its mine, I should have seen this sooner.”
There’s so much that didn’t add up but numbers aren’t his best subject, never have been. He’s good at strategy sure, gifted at it even, but that’s not really relevant in the setting he was in and he’d been happy to let Obadiah take a look at everything that wasn’t adding up. It was the perfect cover for him honestly, and perfect for everyone else who went along with his insane plans.
He can see, for a moment, that Tony wants to confirm that for him, that all of this is his fault but he doesn’t. Instead he deflates a little. “If you really feel that way, that I was pressured by Howard why didn’t you ever say anything?” he asks, voice waspish, accusatory.
“I did, but Howard sure as hell never listened.” Neither did he but he doesn’t tell Tony that because he’s not ready to hear that yet. He’s too angry at him, at Howard, at the rest of this mess to hear what Steve’s trying to tell him.
“Yeah, okay,” Tony mumbles. “I never saw you say anything.”
He never bothered to stick around long enough, Steve wants to say, because he always left right after Howard made some stupid comparison that neither Tony nor Steve agreed with. “Tony, you avoided me and Howard both at nearly all costs and I get it. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t say anything, of course I did. The way the man treated you was awful, that’s not who he was when I first met him.”
Tony considers this, eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Then why stick around if you hated him so much?” he asks, drawing Steve’s feelings out to an extreme. He didn’t hate Howard though his feelings weren’t far off from that in the end.
Steve sighs, running his fingers through his hair. “If he treated you like that with me around I didn’t want to see what he did when I wasn’t there to see it. Same reason Peggy stuck around, and the same reason your mother did too. We all knew he was holding back because we were watching and given how nasty he was none of us wanted to see what would happen if we left.” God knows Tony would suffer more than he already was. And Maria, she barely lived long enough to fight Howard on disowning their son. She’d been in a nasty car wreck not long after, having left Howard in favor of her son but no one ever told Tony that. Peggy suspected, and Steve agreed, that he’d blame himself for his mother’s death if he knew she’d taken off in that snow storm to go to him. Her death was hard enough on him without that too.
Tony crosses his arms over his chest and glares at the wall across from him and says nothing. Steve doesn’t either; he just lets Tony work through all that.
*
Pepper looks down at the morning paper because she’s a weirdo who still reads it in paper form. “Well, all things considered this went well!” she says, shaking her hands in the air a little.
Rhodey laughs, “oh yeah, Tony only told Steve he hated him to his face twice and now he mostly only resents the guy,” he says. Poor bastard is trying hard to make up for it too, and maybe he doesn’t know Tony well enough to know that when he told Tony that he was so much better than Howard ever was that meant a lot but Rhodey knows how Tony took that. Its nice to see him move past all this after so many years. He’s spent too much time on Howard and the poison he left in Tony’s life.
“I meant capturing terrorists but sure, Tony not hating Steve is nice too, if infinitely less important,” Pepper says primly but he damn well knows she agrees.
“Uh huh Potts. I already knew about the terrorist thing though I was there,” he says, letting that sink in a little. Yeah, he’s a total badass and he knows it.
Pepper rolls her eyes and throws a pen at him. “You so aren’t cool, Rhodes,” she tells him and that’s rude, hurtful even.
“Is that how you talk to a hero?” he asks and Pepper throws back her head and laughs.
“Oh that’s cute! Sorry, but I can’t see you outside of everything I know about you and I happen to remember that time you got your wisdom teeth taken out and you cried when Tony told you he was married because your stupid ass forgot he was married to you.”
He shakes his head, “that’s rude Pepper. That was one time and I think that letting that color all your interactions with me is unfair on account of me knowing about that time you missed a flight because of explosive diarrhea after some bad sushi. But I don’t let that disrupt my view of you as a competent and impressive business woman,” he says, nose in the air.
“You tried to convince him to divorce you so he could marry you,” Pepper says. “Face it, you’re not that cool.”