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War Machine. Rhodey spun the insult turned superhero name around and around in his mind, mulling it over with a half drunk glass of champagne in his hand. Tony was downstairs, blasting Metallica in the lab currently housing a homemade particle accelerator, while Rhodey sat on the couch alone, color leaping out of the muted television, exploding out of the dim living room like lightning.
The last week could be summed up quite nicely in the report Rhodey had sitting on the coffee table that was concealing a hole in the floor through which Tony was running cables. It was a four inch thick monster of a report, filled with hell and mistakes, and typed with shaking hands that had almost been the instruments of Tony's destruction.
The War Machine armor made him feel conflicted. After what happened at the Stark Expo, part of him couldn't wait to take it off. But another part of him felt right having it on. That part of him wanted to do some good with War Machine. At least that part of him that wasn't telling him he was an idiot for even considering life as Tony's sidekick.
He set the glass of champagne down and turned his head away from the file, like a swimmer turned their head to breathe, just in time to glimpse Tony climbing the stairs to the living room. He looked better than he had in weeks. The replacement core was having its desired effect, and Tony was slowly filtering out the accumulated toxins from the palladium core.
His newly dubbed "badassium" element was everything Rhodey had hoped that night in the basement level lab when he'd seen the depleted palladium core: a beneficial change, not just a "good enough" quick fix for Tony's arc reactor. It was no longer killing him, and Ivan Vanko wasn't either, whether in his own armor, or pulling the strings of dozens of battle drones, not to mention War Machine.
Tony never asked him to apologize for his mistakes, and Rhodey considered it a dangerous thing to admit to Tony's ego that he was right about the government, and Justin Hammer, and a few other things. How Tony could do that, just move past everything after a half-assed non apology, with humor and grace, surprised him, although it shouldn't have. He knew Tony Stark.
Tony was the only guy he knew who could see the worst in him: the justifications, the ambition, the mistrust, the blind reliance on orders and chains of command… and still find something worthy in him, someone worth befriending, someone worth loving, someone worth keeping in his life despite it all.
"Coming to bed?" Tony asked, swiping Rhodey's champagne glass off the coffee table and draining it.
"To, what? Tuck you in?" Rhodey asked lightly, as Tony set the glass back on the table.
Tony shrugged and smirked. "Sure… and some other stuff. We've got time."
He circled around behind the back of the couch, resting his hands on Rhodey's shoulders, gently massaging him, as Rhodey kept his eyes quite deliberately on the TV screen, upon which the coverage of the medal presentation was showing. Senator Stern's angry little turtle eyes made him snort, and he looked away from the screen just in time to catch Tony's tender expression as he rubbed circles into his shoulders.
Rhodey pulled away and stood up, distancing himself. "What is this? The suit? The name? The… touching me? Seriously, what?"
"It's what it always was," Tony said carefully, his tone cautious.
Rhodey shook his head. "It's not enough, Tony."
Tony frowned. "Being my boyfriend is not enough now?"
"You don't have a boyfriend," Rhodey informed him. "We were… never official."
"I want one, and we could be," Tony declared, moving forward a step, resting his hands on the back of the couch, keeping it between them, allowing Rhodey the imagined safety of distance.
"Not with the way you play up to the press. I'm not…" he turned away from him then, struggling to find the right words. "I'm a private guy, Tony, and the Air Force… they'd find a reason to get rid of me if we went public with our relationship. You know they would. I'm not bullet proof like you. My last name isn't Stark."
"It could be," Tony offered, sounding like he was seriously considering it. "Or would you hyphenate? That's a question for, you know, future Rhodey. Rhodes-Stark? Nah, Stark-Rhodes. I wanna come first. I mean, if we get that far tonight."
"Wow," Rhodey mumbled, but he didn't leave.
He could have. He had, on the night of Tony's disastrous birthday party. But this time he didn't. Because his superiors in the Air Force associated gentleness with weakness, and always had, the longing he saw in Tony's eyes, and in the careful distance he was keeping between them, frightened him.
"Just by the way," Tony said casually. "War Machine? Bullet proof."
Rhodey grinned, unable to stop himself. "You're not helping."
"Hmm… helping?" Tony repeated, moving around the couch, forcing Rhodey to turn and contemplate leaping over the coffee table to avoid him. "Not my aim here. Getting you into bed though… It's in my top four right now."
Rhodey scoffed and pretended heat wasn't creeping up his neck at that moment. "And the other three are what?" he asked, cursing the slight tremor in his tone that undoubtedly told Tony exactly how much he wanted him.
"Uh, one, kissing you. Do I need to demonstrate? No," Tony said with a grin when Rhodey gave him a wide-eyed stare upon realizing he was serious about that demonstration. "Okay. Two, getting you out of these clothes. Three… well I'm counting this as foreplay, and uh, you know what number four is."
Rhodey was rendered temporarily mute by the seriousness with which Tony listed his priorities for this evening. He'd always done this: fixed things with sex and expensive gifts. There was a reason for that. It worked. At least for a while. And it had gotten Tony out of just about every argument ever.
Rhodey could feel himself weakening and he exhaled slowly. "Tony…"
"I'm not asking for anything public," Tony assured him, sinking into a seat on the couch. "I wouldn't… do that to you, Platypus. The scandals, the headlines, the misinformation, the court dates… it's my mess. You have a respectable … something. I get that."
Rhodey frowned and considered him. "What are you asking for then?"
"You," Tony said simply, appearing so vulnerable in that moment that Rhodey felt a painful lump rise in his throat. "Privately. As privately as you want. Hopefully involving some very… private things. Parts? Lots of… touching and funny sounds."
Rhodey shook his head, fighting the smile that tried to curve his lips, and losing. "Is that why you gave me the suit? To win me over?"
"Uh, gave?" Tony repeated, tossing him a look. "Took. You took it. You chose the suit. I chose the name. That's the deal."
"That's the deal," Rhodey softly echoed him. "Partnership?"
"That's a very official word for someone who's been largely unofficial," Tony observed, cocking his head at him.
Rhodey hesitated. Few people in the world understood him. Even fewer wished him well. But Tony did. He offered safety and secrecy (two things that Tony rarely chose for himself) because he understood why Rhodey needed them. That emotional intelligence (something else that Tony wasn't often credited with having) settled the matter in Rhodey's mind.
"Officially then," he said, moving to sit on the coffee table, perching opposite Tony. "You tell me before you pull any stupid stunts, whether you think it's stupid or not. We'll discuss it first. That's a partnership."
"It seems a bit restrictive," Tony commented, his tone teasing. "Like… every time? What about stupid thoughts? I've got a lot of those."
"Those too," Rhodey said firmly, looking seriously at him. "Forewarned is forearmed."
Tony smiled. "Okay… War Machine."
He leaned in then, and Rhodey did too, without needing to think about it, as if he'd planned to place himself so deliberately in the path of Tony's lips. Maybe he had. The press of Tony's mouth against his lips was familiar, soft, warm, enticing, but also new: new relationship terms, new vulnerability, new honesty, and new accountability to each other.
Tony pulled back before long and said a little breathlessly, "You know that's a maybe, right? The forewarning thing? Sometimes I think you're better off not knowing."
"I'd rather know," Rhodey murmured, taking both of Tony's hands in his, heedless of the oil, grease, and sweat trapped in the grooves of Tony's palms.
"Okay, we'll give it a test run," Tony offered with a half shrug. "Check back in four to six months? Analyze the results?"
"Fine." Rhodey laughed softly and squeezed Tony's hands. "Bed?"
"Now you're talking," Tony declared.
He didn't move though or try to free his hands from Rhodey's clasp. Instead, he leaned in to kiss him again, something that Rhodey welcomed. His future — their future — was bright, maybe dangerous. Okay, he was pretty sure the armor was bullet proof for a reason. But he could count on Tony's tech, and on Tony himself, to keep him safe in every way that counted.