Spider-Son & Iron Dad two shots

Being Good

Spooktober 02: Heartbeat

Colonel James Rhodes has been working all week long on paperwork. His eyes have started to blur at the mere mention of an email, and at first that was funny, but with a chill in his spine, he's suddenly been remembering all the times his sister joked about him having cataracts in his old, ancient age.

Needless to say, maybe he should take a day. He's earned it. He deserved it. So he called Tony up to schedule a weekend at the Compound— and chuckled when his point was relatively proven by Tony's alarm and immediate worry about the whole thing.

It had just been a while since the two of them had enjoyed each other's company without any kind of universal threat looming over them. When Rhodey was still doing PT nearly every hour of his waking day, Tony had been pretty rigid in not wanting to leave his side, and that was fine, but at some point Rhodey realized he'd been doing it mainly out of guilt; so Rhodes shut that down fast and decided to impromptu move back home.

It didn't mean Tony wasn't supportive, or that Rhodey was angry— it just meant that Tony needed some tough love, and this time it meant giving him the space he needed to sort through the stuff he kept shoving down and hiding away.

But Rhodey's doing fine now. He's going to all his appointments, he's not in any more pain than usual, which is all you can ask for in his age, history, and career. He hasn't had problems with his braces, please stop asking, Tony, and he just wanted to hang out with his family.

So he made the drive, pulled into the Compound at about two in the afternoon. He walked in, and was immediately greeted by his best friend. But he had some weird growth at his side—almost as tall as him, but scrawny, and mousey, talkative, and—oh, right, a super-powered teenager was following him around.

"Sorry I didn't warn you," Tony had explained to him privately, while the kid had went ahead to the elevators. "He was out of school today, and his aunt was busy with work, so I kept him."

Rhodey gave him an artful side-eye. He hadn't sussed out whether Tony was joking, whether there was a punchline that he was supposed to be waiting for. "Oh, no, that's... that's fine."

Tony nodded, looking ahead to the elevator. Then he grinned, he shouted out to the kid: "Hey, don't go pressing too many buttons over there! Don't want a repeat of last time."

The teenager groaned, leaning back on the wall. "Oh, come on! That was one time, Mr. Stark."

Tony chuckled, and on catching Rhodey's lost gaze, started shrugging and waving it off. "It's just a— kid did something funny the other week, I'm pulling his leg about it."

"Right, ok," Rhodey said easily.

Yeah, no. That makes total sense. Tony usually adopted kids off the street and then made inside jokes with them like they were family. Of course. How could Rhodey forget? This was super normal behavior for the guy he'd known for the past... Thirty years? Jesus, they were getting old.

And then in the blink of an eye, Rhodey's remembering the echo of an equally scrawny blond kid in some Tennessee dump, and Tony telling him how smart the kid was, if only he'd had some good education, some direction, how far he'd probably go in life. Then, after a few drinks, in a much quieter voice, Tony asked him if he thought he'd make a good father.

("What?" Rhodey had blubbered, just confused then as he was now. "Are you thinking of actually taking this kid?"

"No," Tony huffed, and he sounded so despondent about all of it, so much more downcast from how he usually presented himself. "No, of course not. I just... When I think about all the parent stuff, the being-a-dad stuff, it makes me sick to my stomach. I start thinking of my dad, and then I'm just stuck in this cycle of shit and it's awful."