“Pay attention to me!” Tony whines, wiggling around on the couch.
Rhodey sighs in annoyance because he’s just trying to read his damn book in peace because he’s been meaning to read it for the last two hundred years and Bucky was getting annoyed at his not reading it. If he had time to sleep for seventy years he had time to read or so Bucky thought. The only plus side to that long nap was that when he woke up all his stuff had become antiques and was worth enough money to keep him afloat for awhile.
“I am reading,” Rhodey tells his newly acquired human subjugate. Sam had been worried for his mental health after his nap so he had suggested getting a subjugate because it worked out for him and Bucky. Rhodey didn’t have the heart to tell them that he didn’t want a subjugate so he ended up going and picking up a troubled human off the street, cleaning it up, an explaining that vampires were real, blah, blah, now I own you. Sort of. Rhodey has told his newly acquired subjugate that he can leave at any point and that time when he disappeared for a month was a blessing really, he’s never liked the idea of owning anyone, but then Tony came back with groceries one day and never left. Sam and Bucky thought this was good for him but Tony’s constant begging for attention- sometimes literally- was kind of exhausting.
“And I am bored. I have ADD, I need things to do,” Tony tells him. This is the first Rhodey has heard about this ADD but it didn’t surprise him in the least. If someone had this diagnosis back in his time he knew a few people that probably could have made use of the therapy techniques. Of course now there were options but most of them were unavailable to Tony either because drugs made his blood taste weird and Rhodey was too lazy to do things with him.
“You can leave whenever you want, go entertain yourself elsewhere, just don’t do drugs or drink,” Rhodey tells him, giving him an annoyed look.
“There goes everything fun,” Tony whines. “Come on, lets go do things! Lets go visit Sam and Bucky or something, or like build a robot, or travel somewhere cool. Or, or, you could tell me cool historical facts,” Tony says excitedly.
“I don’t know any cool historical facts,” Rhodey says honestly.
Tony rolls his eyes, “you’re like eight million years old, you have to know at least one historical fact!” Tony says in an offended tone.
“I’m only seven hundred, asshole. And I didn’t really pay attention to what was history and what wasn’t at the time,” he says. Tony blinks up at him from where he’s lying on the couch and he sighs, “one time Thomas Jefferson tried to buy me and I punched him in the face. And I think I got drunk with Alexander Hamilton one time. Oh, and I met the last czar of Russia once but he was five at the time so it wasn’t very impressive.” That was it, that was all he knew as far as historical facts and Tony was clearly unimpressed.
“How did you end up in a position where Jefferson was prepared to buy you?” he asks because of course he had questions.
Rhodey sighs, “look, it wasn’t a good time in my life given that the whole of America was after my ass for whole new reasons. I mean I just escaped being hunted for being a vampire and then I’m being hunted down for my skin color. Anyways, I took a nap and some jackass stole the box I was in and… it wasn’t a good time, okay? I almost died in the sun, I punched a Founding Father, no one had a good day that day. Also I can’t remember the details.” Things got a little hazy for a vampire when they were low on blood.
“That’s it?” Tony asks and he sighs, “you are the most boring vampire ever,” Tony tells him.
“How about you tell me where you went for a month?” Rhodey asks in part because he wants to distract Tony but mostly because he was actually curious. Usually when a subjugate took off they went back to whatever drug they were on when they were found. Bucky was on opiates, probably to numb the pain of his lost arm, and Tony had been on a few different things as far as Rhodey could tell. Alcohol was his main choice of drug though. When he came back he was obviously sober though, even if Rhodey couldn’t smell it he could taste it.
Tony sighs, “I had some stuff to take care of. Family things,” he says evasively. “So, lets bake cookies,” he says in a not-so-subtle change of subject.
Rhodey sets down his book because Tony obviously wasn’t going to leave him alone until he was sufficiently distracted.
*
It takes him two more months to discover that Tony is easily distracted by mechanics and for the next month after that it’s a lifesaver. Tony was pretty high energy and Rhodey was decidedly not, but then he starts noticing all of Tony’s unhealthy habits. Like his habit of staying up all night, or drinking so much caffeine that Rhodey cold actually taste it in his blood. He hadn’t even known that was possible. Plus there was Tony’s lack of eating or drinking that resulted in poor human health, and his bad lab standards that left him wounded but he refused to stop working so his cuts had a higher risk of infection.
So he starts trying to gently curb his habits by leaving food and water around but that only works for so long before Tony mostly starts ignoring that too. And his sleep habits only seemed to get worse so finally Rhodey has enough and bans Tony from his lab space.
“You were the one who got annoyed when I had nothing to do and now you’re complaining because I have something to do?” Tony snaps, obviously angry.
“No, I’m worried about your health because you spend too much time playing in the basement. I’m supposed to be the undead creature that hisses at sunlight and people, not you,” he says.
Tony rolls his eyes, “so now you’re jealous that I’m like stealing your reputation or something?” he asks and Rhodey rolls his eyes right back at that ridiculousness.
“You need to get your head out of your ass because no, that is not what I’m saying. I’m saying that you need more than one hobby and we are going and doing things today so put some pants on and also I’m hungry so you better not have spent the last three days living on coffee,” he tells him. Judging by the guilty look on Tony’s face he had spent the last few says living on coffee. Rhodey makes a mental note to feed the human.
*
Sam knew it would work. Bucky had his doubts but Bucky had no creativity and no brainpower. Plus Sam has gone to school for counseling, he knew some things. Rhodey has spent the last two hundred years in an apathetic state and what he needed was a friend, one that wasn’t Bucky or Sam. He needed someone who needed him and a subjugate was perfect for it. Having Tony around meant that Rhodey had to look after something and unlike a plant he’d feel bad if he killed Tony. So he and Bucky went and found Tony and gifted him to Rhodey, who wasn’t happy about it but he didn’t have much choice but to deal with the plucky human now. Besides, it was better than the life he left.
Rhodey hadn’t agreed and let Tony go, which Sam decided would have been noble if not for the fact that he could have re-exposed vampires to humans and the last time some jackass did that they were hunted to near extinction. Humans didn’t like what was different from them. Hell, half the time humans didn’t even like other humans for arbitrary reasons. But Tony had surprised them all and came back. Since then Rhodey had obviously come to terms with Tony’s presence and could no longer use the ‘you snatched him off the street, he had no choice’ excuse because he did have a choice now. It wasn’t like Rhodey made an effort to hunt him down at any point; he was free and clear of any vampires in his life.
After that it was a slow realization for Rhodey that humans needed more care than vampires and once he figured Tony out he also discovered that he had a whole new set of problems. Bucky had too, which had pulled Sam out of his funk because he had developed a liking for Bucky’s blood and he didn’t want his food source doing something stupid. That, and he did genuinely care about Bucky even if he liked him much better as a vampire. He was a lot less trouble that way.
Tony’s bad habits forced Rhodey to actually interact with him though because if he didn’t he spent absurd amounts of time in the basement with his inventions. It was better than Bucky’s habits, he was always taking off to go find some dead best friend Sam ended up finding just so he stopped running off every ten minutes. It hadn’t been a good moment for Bucky but at least he got a little closure. That had been when Sam offered him immortality as a vampire but Bucky didn’t take it for another seventy years. Vampire blood kept humans from aging normally but Bucky was getting too old to change even though he looked biologically thirty so he finally agreed. Sam would have been happy to let him die a natural death; he’d start aging normally without Sam’s blood and he’d die off extra old but Bucky opted to turn into a vampire.
He figured Tony would go the same route once he stopped fighting Rhodey on near everything and Rhodey, in an effort to keep his new human companion from dying, went after him every time. It took time but eventually Sam starts to see Rhodey actually enjoying Tony’s shenanigans and starting a little of his own like he used to before he hit the vampire version of a mid life crisis.
“Think he’s over the fact that we technically kidnapped Tony yet?” Bucky asks as Rhodey chases Tony down through a busy street as they both tried to avoid being hit by cars. Tony was trying not to die; Rhodey was trying not to get hit so he didn’t have to explain why he didn’t die. Sam has no idea what Tony was after but he was focused on something.
“No, he frowns on the whole process of acquiring a subjugate,” Sam says.
“Well I can see why,” Bucky says. Sam raises an eyebrow and Bucky shakes his head, “what? You saying you’d like to get kidnapped and thrown into a new life?” he asks.
“That’s literally how I became a vampire and to add insult to injury the damn vampire was after my sister. It turned out fine for me, and for you,” he adds. “There might be better ways but who could go missing from human society without anyone noticing? Only addicts and prostitutes are that invisible,” he points out. Sure he’d like to give humans more of a chance to end up in their positions but exposing themselves to the wrong human gets two responses. One, they tell everyone and have enough proof that no one thinks they’re nuts or two, they stick with their position long enough to get turned into a vampire and go on a killing spree. Or the rare third option- someone notices they went missing and some vampires had to cover their ass. Addicts and prostitutes were invisible but they also had a lot to gain out of the symbiotic relationship vampires had with their subjugates.
“Fine then, I didn’t appreciate it,” he says and Sam sighs.
“So I remember,” he mumbles. Bucky was notoriously difficult, there were vampire horror stories that were told about his terrible adjustment to being Sam’s subjugate.
“Why did you deal with that for so long anyways? It would have been easier to let me go,” Bucky points out.
“Go back to what? Overdosing on opiates? Trying to find a best friend you forgot was dead because you got into to many drugs again?” he asks and Bucky winces. “You didn’t have a life Bucky, I was trying to give you one but you weren’t very happy about it,” he says.
“You snatched me out of a back ally, Sam,” Bucky deadpans.
“You snatched Tony out of a back ally so don’t even,” Sam says. “Besides, do you have a better idea for explaining this to humans?”
“That time with Bruce went pretty badly…” Bucky admits.
“Exactly. Better to at least tell them in a private place where they can scream about vampires all they want and then we can let them go if they’re that resistant.” Bruce had been released after he proved to be a bit too much though not without a little adjustments to the mind. It wasn’t something he liked doing, despite his occasional immoral activities he didn’t like actually messing with human minds. Vampires could control human minds but that didn’t mean they should.
At least when he grabbed a human or two off the street he could reason with them, there was no reasoning when they were under the affects of mind control. Humans were truly vulnerable then. Some vampires preferred that as a way to gather subjugates but Sam preferred them lucid enough to listen to what he had to tell them. Though if they were like Bucky they listened and ran off anyways. Sam only hunted him down because he had found Bucky in a time where claims of vampires would be taken very seriously and he didn’t much want to get staked. That and Bucky was reckless and if he didn’t hurt himself he would hurt others. Somewhere along the way he had developed an affection for Bucky too, and long after that Bucky learned to love him back. He had worried Bucky’s feelings were a product of prolonged exposure to him but Bucky did plenty of travelling when he had been turned into a vampire. Sam figured if he kept coming back than he actually cared.
“I still think we can find a less barbaric way to find subjugates, we can’t just kidnap them forever,” Bucky says.
“When you find another method I’m listening but until then our methods do work. Besides, for now it looks like our plan with Rhodey is working,” he says, gesturing to Rhodey walking down the street with a sheepish looking Tony walking beside him carrying a box.
“You can’t run into the middle of the street for some damn kittens!” Rhodey yells at him.
“They’re small and defenseless!” Tony yells back, hugging the kitten box closer.
“You’re small and defenseless!” Rhodey tells him. “Now give those things to the Humane Society or something and lets go home before you start saving puppies too.”
“No! I didn’t save them to give them away!” Tony says, offended.
“I’ll take a kitten,” Bucky says before Sam could stop him. He gives Bucky an annoyed look and Bucky grins, “you kidnapped me that one time, I earned a kitten or three.”
“Not with all the damn trouble you caused me all over Romania,” Sam mumbles but he lets Bucky have a kitten anyways because he did feel a little bad about how they met. Also they kittens were unexpectedly adorable.
*
“I’m just saying if someone was just out and out about the vampire thing I probably would have listened,” Tony tells Rhodey, who rolls his eyes.
“Would not. No human ever is, I know because I was one. Then Sam bit me,” he says and he looks annoyed about it.
“Man, Sam has a bad habit of sticking his fangs where they don’t belong,” Tony says.
“In his defense I did find him munching on Bucky, he had to do something. Apparently biting me and giving me eternal damnation was less of a dick move than just mind controlling me and sending me on my way,” Rhodey says, shrugging.
Tony snorts, “in what world would being mind controlled be the better option? Dude, Sam gave you eternal life. You could study science and how it developed in every culture. You could study how different groups of people relied on different variations of the scientific method to generate answers to the questions they had no answers to. You could spend eternity tracking down ancient scientific formulas and experiments just for the hell of it. That’s not even getting into architecture, astronomy, math, even art even if I think art is stupid. There’s so much to learn and you only have forever. That’s amazing,” he says honestly.
If he had forever to learn, to grow as a person and a scientist he’d jump at it. The world is a wide place and human history had a lot to offer, he could amass a collection of ancient books and texts that could one day be the next Library of Alexandria. How Rhodey found no excitement in that he had no idea. It was like the kittens- he barely even thought they were cute. What kind of person didn’t find kittens cute? Even dog people thought kittens were cute.
Rhodey considers this for a long moment before he leans forward in interest. “And if you had forever what would you do with it?” he asks.
Tony describes how he’d start with Italian culture, a homage to his heritage, and from there he’d move on and learn everything there was to know about how science developed in Italy and everywhere else. Then he’d move on to astronomy, physics, calculus, hell, any kind of math or any related science. When he was done with that he’d take a look at astronomy specifically, and them probably move on to mythology given how they tended to be connected. Then architecture, or maybe he’d give art a chance, or maybe he’d look into the actual culture that countries had, or maybe food. The options were endless and there was so much to learn. He could spend an eternity learning and still have more to take in.
Rhodey listens with a surprising amount of attention as Tony talks, nodding along and asking questions occasionally. Tony might have thought he was talking too much, it was a frequent complaint from the people in his life and the ADD didn’t help it any, but Rhodey was paying to much attention for Tony to think he was annoyed with it.
*
For years Rhodey has been apathetic because being alive for seven hundred years was exhausting. There was a point when it got to be too much and he stopped seeing the point in being alive but then Sam went and snatched poor Tony out of an ally with Bucky’s help and dropped him on Rhodey’s doorstep. He still didn’t agree with their methods but Tony had left and come back, clearly he didn’t want to be anywhere else and from what little Rhodey knew of his family they didn’t sound pleasant. He only spoke positively about his mother.
Tony had been an eye opener though because he was so… alive. Maybe this was what Sam had seen in Bucky when he chased the poor bastard half way across Romania in an attempt to keep him from talking about vampires to the wrong people. If it was Rhodey finally understood what Sam was trying to do here. Tony had a fire that Rhodey, until recently, had lacked. Tony asked questions, sought out answers, and nothing he did ever satisfied him much. It wasn’t a bad thing, not like Rhodey’s apathy. No, Tony just had an insatiable curiosity that drew Rhodey in because he has lacked that for so long he sort of forgot what asking stupid questions was like. Tony wanted to know ridiculous things like whether or not cats sweat, or how the moon affected the earth’s tides, or what was at the bottom of the ocean.
It took some time but eventually Rhodey got excited about Tony’s answers too, and thanks to his extensive collection of very old shit it wasn’t like they’d be short on money if they needed to travel to find Tony’s answers too. They could even bring Tony’s ridiculous cats that had a weird obsession with that laser light Tony liked to shine on the ground.
“I told you so,” Sam tells him after they get back from an eventful trip to Madagascar.
“You know what you should have told me, you should have told me about those giant ass cockroaches they have in Madagascar. I do not mess with bugs, you know this and you let me go there,” Rhodey tells him and Sam grins.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you freak out about bugs, it’s nice to see you back man,” he says and he pats Rhodey on the back.
“Well next time you think I’m depressed or whatever you don’t need to go kidnapping humans, I can assure you that being in the presence of a bug that is bigger than my head will give me enough life to at least run the hell away,” he tells him. Behind him Tony starts laughing because unlike Rhodey he feared nothing and thought the bugs were kind of cute. There was something very wrong with that human even if Rhodey still loved him dearly.