What Friendship Taught Me
Another contribution to the Rhodeyweek2020 from @rhodeyappreciationweek
Prompts
Overprotective✔
Drama✔
"I dare you"✔
Relationship: Friendship Tony& Rhodey, Pre-relationship Rhodey&Tony, It’s complicated
Wordcount: 1023
Chapter warning: Swearing
Summary: Rhodey reminisced about his relationship with Tony Stark. Despite not knowing what they were beyond best friends and brothers, he knew one thing for sure: over their years, their relationship has taught him plenty of things.
Ao3-Link: What Friendship Taught Me
Being Tony Stark’s best friend had taught Rhodey a lot of things. While at MIT, it taught him that newspapers couldn’t always be taken seriously. Tony wasn’t anything like the person the magazines or news articles described, and Rhodey was more than happy to take the time to look behind the surface.
Later, after graduation, it taught Rhodey how deep grief could cut you, how fear for someone else’s health could paralyze you. Should someone ever ask him how he learned that, he would answer 16th December 1991. Even months, years later, the broken voice through the crappy speaker haunted Rhodey’s nightmares. His brother in all but blood had barely been able to say anything. Just a sob and, “Rhodey,” sending the Air Force man into a near panic.
As fast as he could, he took leave - “It’s a family emergency, Sir.” - and got to his best friend. Rhodey stayed with the genius as long as he could. He was there when the vultures tried to sink their claws into him before, during, and after the funeral. It was a mess. Some articles called Tony heartless, others shell shocked, and one memorable one dared to accuse Tony of hiring a hit on his parents in order to inherit the company early. The moment Rhodey read that specific one, he exploded.
~ Back then~
“HOW FUCKING DARE THEY?! THESE SHITHE-” Rhodey was interrupted by the sound of a soft giggle, which soon enough turned into a full-blown laugh. He turned towards the source and needed a moment to process. Tony had slipped from his seat on the couch and somehow was laughing loudly on the floor now.
The genius needed a few minutes before he got himself under control again and simply smiled at Rhodey, saying, “Stop being so overprotective, Honeybear. It’ll blow over.”
“How can you be so calm about it, Tones? They’re full of shit!” Rhodey retorted disbelievingly. He couldn’t see where his friend was coming from at that moment.
Thankfully, Tony seemed to know that for once and got up from the floor. The smaller man crossed the distance between them and just laid his head on Rhodey’s shoulder. “Because you’re here.”
Rhodey’s eyes widened. He felt like his heart would stop at that moment. All the anger he had felt dissipated and slowly, gently he embraced his friend. They stood like that a long while. When they parted Tony gifted Rhodey with the most heartbreaking soft and sad smile he had ever seen, and the military man knew he would do his damnedest to prevent that smile from crossing his friend’s face ever again.
~now~
The relationship between Tony and Rhodey was all undefined and complicated. At one point, they wound up married, after all. Rhodey honest to god had no idea how that actually came to be, but it was amusing when Tones had panicked and blown the whole thing out of proportion. The colonel wasn’t even sure if they had signed the annulment papers because of all the drama Tony caused. ‘I should probably investigate that before Tones settles down with someone and proposes…’
He loved to think back on how Tony woke up, as hungover as Rhodey himself, and screeched after he went for a leak.
Rhodey, highly unimpressed, had tried to go back to sleep until Tony came running in near hysterics, apologizing for ruining everything. That had caught his attention and Rhodey sat up, eyes following Tony’s tense form scuttling through the room and towards the hotel phone. Before the taller man could get a word in, Tony had already yelled into the phone that he needed the cavalry to be sent in. That a catastrophe of epic proportions had happened. That he was a vile, egotistical, shitty man who had tricked and betrayed his best friend.
Rhodey had been way too hungover and too confused to make sense of his friend. He groaned and swiped his hand over his face, only to feel something hard. He looked at the offending object. His brain sluggishly registered it as a ring.
A gold ring.
A gold ring on his left ring finger.
A golden wedding ring on his left finger.
Shocked, he’d looked up just in time to see Tony slamming down the phone and swearing about stupid hotel receptionists not taking him seriously.
Rhodey remembered vaguely falling into panic and screaming at Tony that he wasn’t supposed to be panicking while Tones had screamed the same to him. In hindsight, Rhodey could concede that they had both been overly dramatic and blown everything out of proportion.
Still, the relationship between them taught him plenty of things. It had taught him that family wasn’t defined by blood. It had taught him to take reports with a good amount of suspicion. Taught him how life could be the worse kind of a bitch to someone in their darkest hours and yet that person just needed one light to keep smiling. It taught him that it was ok to want things and to feel good about getting them. It taught him how situations could look like bigger monsters than they are. Their friendship had taught Rhodey a lot of good things. The most glaring of them all?
Love could come in many forms, and sometimes in a simple sentence. “I dare you, Rhodey. Don’t take my suit!”
Rhodey, being the dumbass he was, took one of his best friend’s suits on his best friend’s birthday while that man was slowly dying of poison. After everything had been said and done, Rhodey realized how well Tones had played him. How well thought out and absolutely intentional the whole thing with the suit had been. It had been Tony’s way of making sure that Rhodey stayed protected and the suit was being used for something good.
Just like with making Pepper CEO, and making Happy Pepper’s bodyguard. All those things to protect and ensure a future for them and the betterment of the world.
Rhodey had always known, but it was nice to have it proven once again. Tony loved them. Which was good, because Rhodey’s love for Tony was indescribable.
