Chapter 5
Because Peter had been worried about Tony’s health and avoided telling him that his damn goggles broke Tony decides to teach Peter how to fix them himself. It was a useful skill anyways, and god knows he might not always be around to fix them for Peter. Aside from the very real possibility of death in regards to this whole bond breaking thing there was also the fact that he travelled a lot and in regards to heroing he also got injured enough to put him out of commission. Hell, his ribs were still sore from where Steve smashed his shield into them. He was tempted to give the shield back to T’Challa- despite being the governments property technically the metal had been stolen from Wakanda. It rightfully belonged to the king. He doesn’t do that though because it would be petty and immature and he was sure T’Challa would agree.
Peter, though, is at least excited to learn about his own suit. Which was also a necessary thing- knowing how things worked gave you mastery over them and in his situation mastery over himself was the difference between life and death. Tony didn’t think his unusually attractive aunt would be very impressed to find out her fetus nephew was a superhero and surprise, he’s dead now! Even Tony wouldn’t be impressed with that so he teaches Peter what’s going on in an attempt to make sure he didn’t do something stupid and dangerous like fighting some random villain with no fucking sight. It wasn’t like he was that one guy in Hells Kitchen who was rumored to be blind- and obviously he could handle himself- Peter was used to having eyes and going without them made him almost more dangerous than the villain he was fighting. Plus doing stupid dangerous things was Tony’s shtick and he wasn’t being taken over by a literal child.
“Hey, I um, changed a couple things about the way the eyes narrow. Sometimes they moved too slow or quick so uh- is that okay?” Peter asks and Tony frowns at him over his notepad. Today he only felt like he was kind of dying so he figured he’d get work done. Pepper had been worried enough about him that she called him earlier, before Peter got here, and asked if he was okay so he figured it might be time to get off his ass.
“Yeah of course that’s fine. This is partially why I wanted to teach you how to handle your suit anyways, you can predict and respond to your needs far faster than I can. So yeah, do what you need to do to make it more efficient for you and please, for the love of god, stop dumpster diving. If you want some random old tech thing, just ask,” he says. The poor kid, he couldn’t imagine him going through some trash to get a freaking DVD player of all things. Didn’t everyone have one of those these days? And god, that computer in his room was just sad to look at. He sent the poor kid a Stark laptop just because he still had nightmares about out dated tech ruining Peter’s life. For some reason the dreams always seemed to end with Peter getting eaten by the computer. He blamed the weird dreams on Steve’s clearly fucked up imagination because that did not come from him and apparently now the bond was starting to kick in like a normal bond.
Yesterday he spent a solid two hours debating on whether or not he wanted to listen to some shitty forties music that he sure as hell wouldn’t have been interested in without Steve’s influence. Shitty forties music. Uh, no. “I don’t wanna like ask for things, that’s just rude,” Peter says, wrinkling his nose and drawing Tony’s attention back to him. Right, he was having a conversation like a normal human. He needed to get his shit together and this freaking bond with Steve needed to fuck off.
“Look kid, your dumpster diving makes me sad. Do an old man a favor and just ask for stuff, it’s not rude if I tell you that it’s okay,” he points out.
“It’s weird. And what will I tell aunt May? And the media will probably think you’re like… my sugar daddy or something. Actually aunt May might think that too and that’s just… awkward. I don’t want to have to explain to my aunt that I don’t have a sugar daddy, there are some things a teenager never needs to experience,” Pater says, looking freaked out.
“Tell your surprisingly hot aunt that it’s part of the bursary thing. It’s not like I’m not known for finding some random brilliant student and funding their education and stuff. Congrats on being my new pet student. Boom, solves the media issue too.” Genius. Which really shouldn’t surprise him given that he was, in fact, a genius.
“Do you not know about Millennials? We don’t like asking people for things. It’s weird and that’s why we always looked so freaked out in Lush stores. The customer service is too good and we just want to hide behind the bath bombs,” Peter says, mimicking said frightened look. Tony throes back his head and laughs because Peter was ridiculous.
“Just ask for something if you need it, kid, I don’t bite,” he says.
“Neither do Lush employees,” Peter points out and Tony snorts. What a kid.
*
T’Challa looks tired and Tony sympathizes, “are you alright?” he asks. He wishes that he was there but sadly he wasn’t much able to travel to Wakanda in his condition and T’Challa had a country to run. It would have been nice to be around T’Challa, Tony felt better when he was there, but realistically that wasn’t happening.
“I… I am not sure how I feel,” T’Challa says, rubbing his temples.
“Well you look exhausted,” Tony says. He sort of looked like Tony did on a good day- pale, bags under his eyes, and a clear tiredness in his posture.
Tony gets a half a smile for his efforts, “thank you for that, dear. This whole mess of involving Wakanda into world politics has been taxing and my people have not been easy on me. They likely would have been had I retracted my father’s decision to move us outwards but the decision was important to him, and to me. That does not mean that Wakanda as a whole has been impressed with this,” he says. He shakes his head and rubs his temples again, obviously stressed with the political mess around him.
Tony could relate- getting the Avengers off their charges hadn’t been easy and while T’Challa had been more than cooperative he had had to pretend like he was not currently harboring a team of superpowered individuals. And Tony had had to play that game too, and then there was all that mess afterwards and he mostly didn’t have to deal with the UN after he got the Avengers off their charges. Not that the rest of the world was impressed with that given that he had been quoted saying that there would be consequences. And there should be, but there were bigger fish to fry. Even after all of that Tony only sill half knew what T’Challa was dealing with- it wasn’t like he was the president or anything. Thank god. “Some of Wakanda has to agree with you though, right?” Tony asks, unsure of how the country did much of anything. Other than tech- they had some awesome tech.
“Some, but the loud minority is… well, loud and insistent. There have been an unusual number of political hate groups on the rise looking to return Wakanda to its ‘glory days’- which should not be regarded as glorious, mind you. I never would have thought I would see the day when that White Ape group was seen as anything but disgusting or even laughable but they are gaining a frightening amount of power,” T’Challa says.
“White Apes? The fuck kind of name is that?” he asks. Seemed a bit odd to him to say the least, but so was what little he knew about the Black Panther and T’Challa’s role as both political leader and the Black Panther. The position and associated responsibilities were around long before T’Challa had taken up the mantle but what Wakanda needed warriors- T’Challa’s words- for in this day and age he had no clue. He figured there was some sort of cultural significance he wasn’t getting. Or maybe that was the closest English word; Tony had that issue switching languages sometimes because translation wasn’t really exact.
“There is whole history behind white apes in Wakanda- the animal not the hate group- they were mutated because of the vibranium, that does not matter. The point is that they became associated with divinity due to their mutation and the assumption that if you consumed the flesh of one of these apes you would gain powers-”
“So like the Black Panther then, minus eating the animal,” Tony says,
T’Challa gives him a look for interrupting and Tony shrugs sheepishly, gesturing for T’Challa to continue. “Sort of like the Black Panther, except to gain power you eat the heart shaped herb. Anyways, white apes ended up deified and their cult following… they left something to be desired. They quickly became associated with outdated ideals and Wakanda’s past, not Wakanda’s present. They wished to return the country back to a time when the monarchy was cruel and merciless here and no one should have any desire for that but apparently that is more desirable than being with the rest of the world! And if I hear one more thing about my relationship with you I will scream. Just because I am dating an American does not mean I have any desire to bring American ideals to Wakanda. No offense,” he adds hastily but Tony only laughs. It wasn’t like he minded, thought if Wakanda could share their tech he’d be a happy guy.
“So your uh… White Apes want to… out you even more in charge?” Tony snorts, “that’s the least effective hate group ever. And I’m offended that Wakanda doesn’t like me because I am a delight,” he says very seriously.
T’Challa throws back his head and laughs, “yes, you are a delight but Wakanda has not been fond of the outside world for a long time. It will take them time to come around but they will like you eventually, you are genuinely lovely,” T’Challa says, smiling. “And to be fair to the White Apes they would seek to disempower me first, but that is not happening.”
“Still think that’s a stupid name. And these White Ape people, they do know that you just about took out the most successful assassin in history single handedly repeatedly right? Because I feel like they should know that you’re a total badass and they’re not going to win their fight,” Tony says. It was framed in a flattering way but T’Challa took on Bucky, Sam, and Steve and almost won too. If it wasn’t for the cops showing up he had Bucky and he had successfully outsmarted Sam and Steve up until then. That was no easy task, Tony dealt with Bucky and Steve and he had had a significant amount of trouble, T’Challa had gotten Sam off his ass too. That was more than a little impressive given that T’Challa was one man who outsmarted and beat three men’s asses and two were enhanced. Sam was pretty damn smart too, even if he didn’t have enhancement outside the wings.
“You flatter me,” T’Challa says, ducking his head a little and Tony is positive he sees a little pink in T’Challa’s cheeks. “Even if that was not true they would not win their fight. People may see the merit in their argument now but that is only because they assume my plans, my father’s plans, will not work out for the best. They will and the White Apes will lose power again. And if they do not they are fools to think I am an easy target- the last time I ran into them they regretted it. I have improved in my training considerably since then- they would do best not to underestimate me,” T’Challa says, a dangerous undercurrent to his words.
“It isn’t flattering if it’s true, honey,” Tony point out.
*
Rhodey wasn’t used to helplessness- his entire life he’s strove to be independent, to not rely on anyone but himself. It was important to him, to his mother, that he did that and now he was stuck in a role where accepting help wasn’t an option. Obviously Tony was more than willing to help and had helped on more than one occasion but it felt off. He was used to Tony needing him and he liked that role, helping others meant having yourself together and now he didn’t know what any of that meant and it scared him a little. Tony, aside from the differences in how he moved and thought, treated him basically the same too but Rhodey could feel himself tense up every time he spoke because he expected Tony to treat him like everyone else had.
He wasn’t sure why exactly, Tony never treated him the same as everyone else did. When he met Tony reaching up for that book in the MIT library Tony had glared at him and told him he hadn’t needed any damn help, thanks, and stomped off. Rhodey had been too damn floored by the fact that he was pretty sure he just met his soul mate and he was rude to go do anything about it. But Tony was an easy guy to find and it was like they kept running into each other everywhere after that. Finally after a week of Tony avoiding him every time they inexplicably ran into each other Tony all but threw a coffee at him and sat down across the small table he had stationed himself at to work on his homework. He spent an unnerving amount of time glaring at Rhodey until he rolled his eyes and told Tony that he was pretty sure they were soul mates.
Back then one way bonds were really hush-hush, no one ever talked about them and Tony’s confusion was apparent. When he told Rhodey that he hadn’t felt anything Rhodey shrugged and told him that he had, but it was fine if Tony wanted to walk away. Back then the notion of non-romantic bonds and queer men were pretty unheard of too, unless it was AIDS people were discussing. Of course that hadn’t occurred to Rhodey until after he told Tony that he was his soul mate. Tony didn’t flip out though, or claim that people regularly claimed to be his soul mate- which was true- instead he shrugged and told him his soul mate was defective for liking coffee with sugar in it. Rhodey told Tony he was defective because he was rude as hell and Tony threw back his head and laughed.
In the following years it became apparent to Rhodey as to why Tony was so withdrawn and emotionally distant, and he was happy to have Tony keep his distance to a point. Tony Stark was his soul mate and that would come with a lot of perks Rhodey had no interest in. when he joined the military he intentionally went by the name ‘Jim’ at first because ‘Rhodey’ was the nickname Tony gave him and he didn’t want people to make the connection. He worked his way up on his own and Tony was happy to play like he didn’t know him when they saw each other though Rhodey had always wondered why. He didn’t ask though because he was intent on making a name for himself outside of Tony’s and he was pretty sure Tony understood that, even if he was also pretty sure that Tony was convinced that Rhodey was ashamed or something.
When the military finally caught onto their friendship Tony had been halfway through a weapons deal with Tony and his superior had approached him about it. Rhodey had flat out turned down the position as the military’s liaison with SI because he hadn’t wanted a promotion because he had a connection to Tony. Funnily enough it turned out that everyone already noticed that the only one who seemed to be able to handle Tony’s attitude, arrogance, and mood swings was Rhodey- which was why he got the position. The fact that they were friends had only clued his coworkers into how he could deal with Tony. To be fair he wasn’t that bad if you knew what to avoid with him. He had a lot of problems that he refused to deal with and the result was extreme touchiness in regards to a number of different subjects. Years later Rhodey recognized the symptoms in his men- PTSD.
So he worked his way through the military, made deals with Tony for them, and then SI shut down the weapons sector and effectively killed Rhodey’s job. But he understood why Tony was doing what he was doing even if it negatively affected him. And then that deal with fucking Hammer. That was the last time he ever took advice to talk to that goddamn twit about anything but being a joke, but he at least got to keep his job. Then Tony gave him a suit and oh boy did that change his position in the military. He had an individualized job that only he could do and it was in part because of Tony, but he was the only one qualified to run the suit anyways. First, Tony set it up so that Rhodey’s fingerprints were required to get the suit to actually function, but the suit was also designed entirely around Rhodey’s very specific skill set.
There were a lot of things he never anticipated out of life and becoming a literal superhero was one of them. He never expected for random children to recognize him on the street as him rather than Tony’s friend and it was surprisingly nice. When he was a kid there weren’t may heroes that looked anything like him to look up to and he never expected to be that person to kids like him, but it never failed to make him smile. He never expected that the suit, despite being an obvious link to Tony, would have gave him a considerably large identity outside of the man but that was what he wanted anyways. He loved Tony, always would, but he never wanted to benefit off of him. He was strong, independent, talented, and capable enough all on his own and he never had an interest in the things Tony could do for him. He also had no idea how rare that was for the man, rare enough that when Rhodey told him he could walk away with no apparent motivation behind the words Tony had been intrigued enough to stick around.
But now their positions were completely reversed, Tony was taking care of Rhodey now and he had no clue how to take that. On one hand he knew he needed it- as much as he hated to admit it there were things he was flat out incapable of doing himself, but on the other hand that has never been what his and Tony’s bond has looked like. It’s always been him taking care of Tony, making sure Tony didn’t do something stupid, calling him on his bullshit when he did, and he didn’t want that to be reversed. He liked his bond just the way it was because it was another symbol of his independence- Tony came to him for advice, came to him for help, because he understood and he was put together enough to handle it and now it was all messed up and Tony knew it. Contrary to popular belief Tony was pretty attuned to emotion, he just ignored the ones he found irrelevant.
“Can I tell you something I’ve never told you before?” Tony asks, throwing a chip at him. He bats the chip away, glaring at Tony as he does.
“I know I don’t get a choice, and if you tell me anything about your sex life you are banned from speaking to me for the rest of your life. There are things a man never needs to know about his best friend,” Rhodey says, shaking his head. Usually that was a bonding thing between guys but Tony came out of the woodwork with the most ridiculous stories and they usually ended with Rhodey either cringing or trying to escape the room to save his ears from the rather explicit detail of his best friend’s sex life. And Tony was great with the details, too damn good for his own good a lot of the time.
Tony laughs, “nothing about my sex life, Rhodes. Though to be fair that’s partially because I don’t currently have one, but when I do I’ll let you know,” he says and Rhodey starts waving his hands around.
“If you ever want me to be able to look T’Challa in the eye or even be in the same room as him you will keep that to your damn self,” he says, shuddering. That had been a pairing he never saw coming though he’s long known about his interest in men too. He tended to keep that far more low profile than his interest in women though and given the recent news articles printed about him Rhodey saw why. People were damn cruel. He would think that no one in his right mind, even Tony on a bad day, would date the king of a foreign nation that was well known for disliking outsiders for attention after this Civil War thing but the media had other ideas. Plus Tony was a pretty attention-getting guy, he didn’t need T’Challa for that. At some point he’d like to ask T’Challa what he thought of that, especially with all the news mingling around Tony’s supposed betrayal to the good Captain that Rhodey was tempted to punch, even if he could only reach the man’s dick to punch. Especially because he could only reach Steve’s dick to punch.
“Fine, fine. I’ll consider your nice request. That’s irrelevant though, because what I wanted to tell you was that you’re a fucking asshole,” Tony says and he’s serious too, Rhodey could see it for one, but he could also feel it through the bond.
“I… what?” he asks, frowning in confusion.
“When I came back from Afghanistan, by birthday even though that was a little warranted- a lot warranted actually, but mostly after New York. Seriously man, I was having panic attacks in public, writing ‘help me’ on children’s drawings instead of autographs and you pretty much told me to get over it. Pepper too, and it left me in a tough spot because I damn well knew the Avengers didn’t like me and neither did the only two people I had left and JARVIS was an AI. Poor bastard could only do so much,” Tony says, “I know you probably thought you were helping but you just made it worse. A lot worse, isolation is like the last thing someone with bad mental health should have.”
Rhodey frowns again because what? Tony had never told him any of this, obviously given that this was the first hew as hearing about it. “I… you hate being babied, I mean I know most of our relationship is me taking care of you but I got good at hiding that I was doing it. I thought… I figured that maybe being blunt like that might help you. I didn’t think it did the opposite…” There hadn’t been any indication through the bond that anything had changed but then Tony got good at hiding things anyways even if he didn’t have a reciprocating bond. Tony had been so intent on ignoring his parent’s deaths that Rhodey flat out hadn’t felt his pain until he got a call at home from Tony, who sounded completely normal on the phone until he said that his parents were dead and then the bond opened up a world of pain. He would have liked to never feel the loss of a parent again, but sadly both of his were dead too though his ma went long after Tony’s parents and his father died before he was born.
“I know you were trying to help in the only way you knew how, but I know that saying or doing the wrong thing can be detrimental. Our bond might not go two ways but I’m not an idiot, I can see that something’s wrong and I’m not looking to make things worse for you so if… I don’t know, you need to talk or something just say something. I won’t judge,” Tony says and Rhodey knew that already. Tony was pretty good at that too, except with Steve of all people, they were in a constant state of judging each other and that was why they failed as a bonded pair. Rhodey knew full well that that wouldn’t be a thing with him and Tony but… but he didn’t know how he felt about saying something either so he stays quiet for a long time.
“That’s the problem you know,” he says eventually, figuring me might as well just get it out.
“What?” Tony asks, frowning.
“That you’re willing to help, that you do help. I’m used to my independence and I don’t like… I don’t like that you’re taking care of me. I like to take care of me,” he says.
Tony makes a face and his confusion comes through the bond loud and clear, “you are taking care of you Rhodey, I’m just sort of… here taking suggestions,” he says.
“What the hell does that even mean?” he asks, confused.
“It means that maybe you should rethink independence for yourself. You do realize that you direct all the help you’re getting from me and hired caregivers, right? We don’t know what you need, you need to tell us what you need and then we respond to you. You haven’t lost independence; it’s just shifted from what you’re used to. You’re still in control of your life and your freedom; you just have some people assisting you with that now. It’s not really that different from before, it isn’t like you didn’t regularly have a bunch of people in your life helping you anyways. At work on any given day you worked with a bunch of people to get something done. It’s just a different form of that,” Tony says, shrugging like it was no big deal.
Except to Rhodey that was a huge deal and Tony’s words were… well they were true. “I… didn’t think of it that way,” Rhodey admits.
“Yeah, well that’s why you have me around. I am a genius,” Tony says, proudly sticking his chest out.
“Oh calm down, I’m a genius too in case you forgot,” he says. Which people did consistently do much to his annoyance.
Tony deflates some, “fun sucker,” he accuses.
“Truth teller,” Rhodey corrects and Tony sticks his tongue out at him.